What should I do! Leave the bathhouse or stay a bit longer? If I left, where in the world could I go?
Through the glass door I could see the girl on the watcher's stand. It was the girl who had been on the stand last year when I used to come here frequently. I hadn't seen her there the other day, though—that snub-nosed but round-faced girl with the healthy complexion, a girl apparently fond of men. In less than a year she had filled out so much that I hardly recognized her. It seemed to me her body was throbbing with the fire of a girl in her prime. The transformation in this young girl's body made my imagination go off in several directions.
Thinking about whether I should get out of the bath or not had diverted my mind from the question of dying, and a psychological change occurred in me. After dashing myself with cold water, I felt considerably lighthearted. When I weighed myself, the scale registered 45.1 kilograms. I had gained a kilogram and a half in less than a week.
I left the bathhouse after lighting a cigarette. The air felt good on my skin. The desire to write welled up, and I went to Matsuya's and bought a pack of writing paper.
Soon after returning to my room, I received a letter from Miyazaki. I———. He said he would send my family to Tokyo in June. I needn't worry, he said, about their traveling expenses or anything.
It seemed as if I had spent the entire day trying only to brighten my mood. I had a slight headache, and I frequently felt as if the world were becoming dark, murky.
While I was eating my dinner after returning from work, Kindaichi came in. He too said it was one of those nights when he didn't feel like studying.
"Let's enjoy ourselves just for tonight!"
And so the two of us left around eight and went to Asakusa without saying just where we were heading. We saw a movie at the Denkikan, but it was so dull that we left early, and then we walked along the quarter near the Tower. For some reason, a number of pretty girls attracted my attention. We were dragged into a certain shop but managed to make a quick escape. Then after we entered another shop, a girl full of gestures kept asking us to treat her to something. We ate some sushi.
The Shin-matsumidori! This was the shop Kitahara and I had drunk at the other day. Kindaichi and I went in around ten-thirty. One of the girls, Tamako by name, said she remembered my face. She was a pretty girl with a certain refinement, even in her words. She told us about her past, bitterly complaining about her lot and the harsh treatment by the mistress of the house. I ran my fingers over the strings of a samisen I found hanging on a wall, and the upshot was I took the instrument down and clowned around with it. Why had I done such a thing? Was I in high spirits?
No! Somehow the feeling overwhelmed me that there wasn't a place in the entire world for me. "I have a headache, so just for this one night I'll enjoy myself." These words weren't true. So what was I searching for? A woman's body? Saké? Probably neither. If not, what? I myself didn't know.
My self-consciousness made my mind sink even deeper. I didn't want to fall into the terrible abyss. Nor did I want to return to my room: it was as if some disgusting thing were waiting for me there. It was as if Hongō were some absurd distance away and to return there was too troublesome. And so what was I to do? I knew there wasn't a thing I could do. The feeling that there was no place for me in the whole wide world had made me play the fool for the sake of being a fool.
"I'm quitting the fifth of next month," Tamako said, her face sad.
"You ought to. If you're thinking of leaving, it's best to leave immediately."
"But I have debts."
"How much?"
"When I got the job, they totaled forty yen, but they piled up gradually and now they're a hundred. And I've never even had a kimono made for me...."
I felt as if I couldn't bear this any longer. It seemed there was nothing else for me to do except cry or joke. At that moment, though, I couldn't tell any jokes. And of course I couldn't shed tears.
The voice of the mistress at the counter abusing Tama-chan. Outdoors, some vulgar voice singing naniwabushi, the jeering, jocular voices of loungers outside who had passed the shop, and a tune sung by a woman whose voice seemed to have come from some hollow place.
"This is life, huh?" I said to Kindaichi.
I ordered some sakō. I downed three cups in rapid succession. In a moment I was drunk, and just like a sick bird fluttering its wings, I was struggling to keep myself from falling into the dark abyss.
The disagreeable mistress of the shop came over. I handed her two yen. I went into an adjoining room and for about five minutes slept with a girl called Oen. Tama-chan called me and I went back into the other room, where I found Kindaichi lying down. I didn't feel like saying anything. A feeling as if I had finally fallen into the abyss....
We left. The streetcar went only as far as Kurumazaka, and we walked home from Ikenohata. Leaning against my friend, I felt as if I were going along some road of inexpressible sorrow. I was also drunk.
"Some people cry when they're drunk. Tonight I think I understand that feeling."
"I know."
"After we get home, Kindaichi, will you put your arm around me and sleep with me?"
We walked along the dark street by the University Medical School while we talked about Pale Face.27
When we knocked at the gate on returning to our boardinghouse, I felt as if I were tapping my own chest and hearing something unpleasant.
Tuesday, April 27
I awoke with a start to find Okiyo standing by my bed. I sprang up even though I was so tired I could have wept.
A cloudy day.
I remembered everything about last night. It was a fact that I had slept with a girl called Oen; it was also a fact that I had derived no pleasure from it. It was a fact too that when I had again come into the main room, Tama-chan's cheeks were slightly flushed. It was equally a fact that while returning with Kindaichi, he had told me he had not slept with her but had kissed a woman for the first time in his life. And it was a fact that I had been trying to escape from some terrible sorrow assaulting me by pretending to be quite drunk while walking home, and it was a fact that the sorrow in the depths of my mind which I had wanted to leave intact without touching was the sorrow of wasting three yen to no purpose.
This morning I made up my mind that never again would I spend any money and time on women. Such, after all, had been my mask.
Even after arriving at the office, I somehow felt restless until around four, it was because I thought I would try to get an advance of twenty-five yen on next month's salary and yet dared not suggest it even though I had gone downstairs to. The company vault closed at four. When the clock above my head rang out its four beats, l heaved a sigh of relief.
A glimpse of a red shadow was reflected on the windowpane as I was trying to quiet my mind after spreading some manuscript paper on my desk. I had just heard the sound of a fire bell. It was about eight o'clock, and directly opposite my window I could see the fire that had broken out in Koishikawa. The fire raged furiously, and a clamor started in the street below. Fire! With my window wide open I was looking on as though I were seeing something pleasant I had not witnessed for a long time.
Around nine-thirty I was called to the phone. It was Kindaichi. He had gone with Nakajima and some others to the Shōkatei restaurant in Nihonbashi, and he asked if I would join them. I set off at once.
After being jostled on a streetcar for about forty minutes, I reached my destination and found four men with a young geisha. Uchiyama, the Nose, was singing a shinnai, his voice quite unlike his appearance.
Kindaichi and I left after an hour or so and returned home by streetcar.
Wednesday, April 28
A carp streamer had been hoisted on a house below the cliff. An early summer wind turned the windmill and made the carp pennant swim above the green foliage of the cherry trees.28
I got up early and visited Mr. Satō at his home on Kasumichō to ask for an advance on next month's salary. It was impossible at this time, he sai
d, so he requested I wait until the beginning of next month. On my round trip on the streetcar I found my eyes assailed by the bright colors of young leaves. It was summer!
Nothing new after I got to the office. I had spent my last yen at that unexpected party the previous night. Now, only one defaced five-rin copper coin in my purse.29
I wouldn't be able to pay tomorrow's streetcar fare.
Thursday, April 29
I decided to take the day off. I began writing a story called "The Bottom." Since I didn't go out even after the noon hour, Kindaichi came into my room. "It's because you don't have any money for the streetcar that you haven't left yet for the office, isn't it?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied, "that's one reason.... Forgive me, but I've really warmed up to my work today."
"You mean it? If that's the case, then get on with it!" With these words my friend left the room.
Though I was interrupted by Isen Satō for about two hours in the afternoon, my pen kept moving without a pause.
I spent the evening in Kindaichi's room.
Friday, April 30
If I go to the office today, I won't have any money for cigarettes. As for receiving an advance, that's out of the question until tomorrow. If I stay home, I'm afraid they'll dun me downstairs, since it's the last day of the month.
Perplexed about what to do, I finally decided to take the day off.
I wrote the first three installments of "The Bottom."
Recently a very short girl called Sumi-chan has come to work in the house. Though they say she's seventeen, she looks like she's only fourteen or so. She went back home for a while last night, and after a scolding from her mother and elder brother, she rushed outside, heading toward the seashore at Shinagawa with the intention of killing herself. They say she finally returned here alone without attempting anything. I heard it was around half past three when she got back.
She's terribly strong-willed and saucy, yet she's quite lovable. "Okiyo-san's a darling," Sumi-chan said of one of the maids older than herself. "That what's-her-name—Otsune-san. Her face is like this," the girl said on another occasion, imitating Otsune by putting on an ugly comical face.30
In the evening they came, as I expected, to press me for payment. I asked the landlord to wait until tomorrow night.
At around nine Kindaichi lent me two yen fifty sen. From that moment my enthusiasm to write passed away. In bed I read Futabatei's translation of Turgenev's "Rudin." I went to sleep nursing some deep emotion.
Saturday, May 1
Yesterday it drizzled all day, but it cleared up beautifully, and for the first time in a long while I could see Mt. Fuji. It was a little cold out due to a northerly wind.
In the morning I spent my time reading "Rudin" and "The Floating Plant." Ah, Rudin! To think about Rudin's character is tantamount to proving that I'm a man unable to do anything in this world.
When I got to the office, Mr. Satō was absent. The face of Katō, our boss in the proofreading section, looked somewhat bloated. I remained silent, deliberately refraining from apologizing for yesterday's absence.
My advance met with success, so I borrowed twenty-five yen. That meant there would be nothing to take home the next payday this month. I paid one yen sixty sen for last month's cigarettes.
I left the office at six-thirty. In the morning Namiki had come to my room to talk about that watch of his, so how should I use my twenty-five yen? If I took the watch out of hock, I wouldn't have enough to pay the boardinghouse; and if I gave them twenty yen, it would be impossible to retrieve the watch. This trivial question filled my mind, and I couldn't come to any conclusion. Actually that triviality proved more difficult than deciding to die or not. At any rate, unless I settled the matter, I couldn't go back home.
I boarded a streetcar at Owarichō. For Asakusa.
"Transfer?"
"No."
So answering, I asked myself, "You going again?"
I got off at Kaminarimon and ate dinner at a sukiyaki restaurant. Afterwards I went to a movie, but it wasn't the least bit interesting. At a magazine shop I bought the Subaru tanka number.
Even as I was thinking to myself, "Don't go! Don't go!" my feet were heading toward Senzokumachi. I secretly slipped past the Hitachiya and came out in front of a new shop on the corner called the Kinkatei, and it was just at that moment that a white hand thrust itself from the lattice of the shop and caught me by my kimono sleeve. Before I realized it, I was on my way in.
God! That girl! Hanako. Age seventeen. At a glance I immediately thought, "It's Koyakko! Her face is just like Koyakko's, only she's a few years younger."
A moment or two later I left the place with a bedraggled old woman who sold cakes. She pulled me about here and there until we came out along a tall brick wall behind the Senzoku Primary School. On both sides of the narrow lane were back-street tenement houses with all their doors closed. There was no traffic, as if the street had been consigned to oblivion. The moon was shining.
I thought, "I've finally come to the very depths of this miserable world!"
"Please wait here," the old woman said. "I'll go open the door." For some reason she kept looking around. Evidently she was afraid of the police.
She quietly opened the door of the nearest room in that deadly silent tenement building and came back part way. I saw her beckoning me in the moonlight. She showed me into that forbidding building and went out saying, "I'll keep watch from over there."
Hanako had arrived before me, and no sooner had I gone in than she threw her arms around me.
It was a small dirty place. Even at a glance I could see that the walls were dirty, the straw mats rotting, and that the room had been built without a ceiling. A small lamp on the edge of an oblong wooden brazier dimly lit up the miserable conditions of the room. An old clock ticked away monotonously.
When I entered a narrow two-mat room partitioned off by sooty sliding paper doors, I found the bed already laid out. Even the slightest laugh rattled the doors.
I looked intently at the girl's face in the dim light and saw looming in the semi-darkness a round white face exactly like Koyakko's. I was so taken with it that my eyes narrowed in ecstasy.
"She resembles her, she really does!" Repeatedly I whispered these words to myself.
"Look, my hairdo's all ruined, so don't keep staring at me like that!" the girl said.
The skin of that young girl was so soft it fascinated me. The clock in the next room kept on ticking.
"You tired already?" she asked.
I heard the old woman quietly entering, but nothing more came to me.
"What's she doing now?"
"Crouching in the kitchen. I'm sure she is."
"She's pathetic, isn't she?"
"Don't mind her."
"But she's really pitiful!"
"Well, yes, she's pathetic. She's really all alone."
"You'll be like that too when you get old."
"Oh no, not me!"
After a while she said, "Stop staring at me!"
"You really do look alike."
"Like who?"
"My kid sister."
"Oh, I'm so happy!" Hanako said, burying her face against my chest.
It was a strange night. Until then I had slept with many women. But I had always been irritated, as though I was being urged on by some unknown force. At such moments I had always jeered at myself. Never before this night had I experienced such feelings of fascination, such indescribable feelings, so much so that my eyes had narrowed in delight.
I no longer thought about anything. Enraptured, I could feel my body warming to its very core by the heat from the girl. Furthermore, the act of copulating, which had done nothing recently but leave me with unpleasant sensations, was performed twice this night in sheer pleasure. And even afterwards not a trace of disgust remained in me. We sat up in bed and smoked.
"Look," she whispered. "After you leave, turn to the left and wait for me at the corner of the second alley."
&
nbsp; At the dead end of an alley in that world of misery, I stood by the side of a hydrant in moonlight pure as water. She finally came running along the darkened half of the street, her clogs sounding lightly. The two of us walked side by side. Occasionally she drew near me to say, "Really, please do come again. You hear?"
It was midnight when I returned to the boardinghouse. I had, oddly enough, no feelings of regret. I felt only some "indefinable ecstasy."
There was no fire in my room, and my bed had not been laid out. I slept as I was.
Sunday, May 2
Otake came in to wake me. "Excuse me, Mr. Ishikawa, the master's just about ready to leave, and he told me to ask about the rent."
"Well of course. I came back so late last night I went straight to bed." Rubbing my sleepy eyes, I took out my purse and gave her only twenty yen, adding, "I'll pay the remainder around the tenth."
"Will you?" Otake said, her eyes cold and knowing. "Could you please tell him yourself at the office? We're always being scolded about it."
I turned over in bed without answering directly and said, "Oh, what a fine time I had last night."
It was about nine when a small maid came in to tell me that a Mr. Iwamoto was here to see me. Iwamoto! Who could that be?
I got up, stowed away the bed,31 and after calling him in found he was, as I suspected, Minoru, son of the deputy village master at Shibutami. He had come over with a young man born in Tokushima Prefecture who happened to be at the same inn. Minoru had traveled to Tokyo hoping his aunt living in Yokohama would help him, but after letting him stay for two weeks, she had given him, he said, travel funds and told him to go back home. But he had no wish to and with the intention of securing employment in Tokyo had put up at an inn in Kanda three days ago, quite troubled, though, because he had not known my address until today. The other person, Shimizu by name, had also turned up in Tokyo after quarreling with his family.
Romaji Diary and Sad Toys Page 12