by Неизвестный
The balmy breeze, refreshing and quiet as if in a midspring night, lulled my senses, and the silence prevailing on the sea calmed my mind. I felt completely empty. I could sense not sorrow, loneliness, or joy. I was conscious only of an exquisite feeling of comfort. Still, as though suffering from an acute pain, I sank into a nearby lounge chair and turned my eyes toward the horizon. I could already count several shining stars in the evening sky. As I gazed at those beautiful lights, I felt an irrepressible poetic urge that became harder and harder to suppress. I wanted to sing beautiful songs, from the bottom of my heart and at the top of my voice, at the Mediterranean in twilight. Then, even before I actually began, I felt as if my imaginary songs were being conveyed in a beautiful voice over the gentle waves until they gradually receded and finally disappeared in the distance.
I stood up from the chair, let my face feel the pleasant breeze, breathed the warm and calm air all the way into my lungs, gazed at a particularly beautiful distant star, and then opened my mouth to sing. Alas, I must have been too impatient, for I had completely forgotten which song to sing. Never mind, I said to myself, I don’t have to worry about the words; the tune alone would do. So I started to vocalize “la, la, la.” But again I was at a loss over which tune to choose. I was aghast at myself and tried desperately to remember some tunes. The purple waves were undulating as if they were expecting my clear voice to float forward while the stars were sparkling impatiently like the eyes of a young woman.
Finally I thought of the opening siciliana of Cavalleria Rusticana, sung to the sad accompaniment of the harp as the curtain opens. That tune expressed the violent emotions of southern Italy as well as the indescribable desolation of an isolated island. To a Japanese ear, the long, drawn-out tune of the aria sounds like a boatman’s song. Nothing seemed more suitable for the occasion, and, feeling quite encouraged, I tried to sing the opening passage. But all I could remember was “O Lola, bianca come [sic].”
I realized that this could not be otherwise, for the song was in Italian. So I decided instead to sing the song of the sailor on the mast in the opening scene of Tristan und Isolde, which would actually be more fitting in my situation. Alas, this time I remembered the libretto but not the tune. No matter how much I wanted to sing Western songs, they all were very difficult. Had I, born in Japan, no choice but to sing Japanese songs? Was there a Japanese song that faithfully expressed my present thoughts—a traveler who had immersed himself in love and the arts in France but was now going back to the extreme end of the Orient where only death would follow a monotonous life?
Yet there was more to my disappointment than just being unable to sing difficult Western songs. People would often sing “Oshoro Takashima” and praise its tune as suitably sad and fine, but apart from the mere coincidence that this oiwakebushi, a packhorse-driving song, had something to do with traveling, was it not too incongruous to one’s feelings toward the twilight in the Mediterranean that was so evocative of Greek mythology? All jōruri ballad dramas, including those of the Takemoto and the Tokiwaza schools, expressed complex emotions quite well, but considered as “music,” they were more like poems recited to the accompaniment of musical instruments than songs and were too remote to appeal to immediate sensations. Utazawabushi popular ballads merely conveyed the faint laments heard in the pleasure quarters in a bygone era, while yōkyoku nō chant, filled as it was with Buddhist pathos and classical grace, was simply out of character in a twentieth-century steamboat and should instead be heard aboard a rush-roofed boat as one listened to the sound of the oars against the scenery of a distant seashore lined with pine trees, like an India-ink drawing. There were other examples, such as Satsuma biwauta1 and the sonorous recitation of classical Chinese poems, but these would arouse a sense of simple, melancholic beauty only when their initial monotones matched the peculiarly Japanese monochromatic background.
I was plunged completely into despair. It was as if I belonged to a country that had no music to express overflowing emotions or contradictory sentiments, no matter how deeply one was moved by them. Was there another such nation, another such race, in the world?
At that moment, from the deck below I heard two or three English railway laborers on their way to work in the colony of India, singing with a woman of uncertain background who apparently was going to Hong Kong. Judging from the comical and frivolous tone, the songs were apparently popular in music halls or some such places in London’s East End. They had no musical value whatsoever, but for that very reason, as I listened attentively, I thought they expressed remarkably well the mood of English laborers traversing the ocean to work in distant tropical lands, in perfect harmony with the atmosphere of the shabby third-class cabins or the dimly lit deck.
Oh, happy people! English culture has bestowed even to the lower-class laborers a kind of music that is fit to convey the forlorn feelings of a traveler. In contrast, Meiji civilization has caused us only endless anguish without giving us any means to express it. Our feelings are already too far removed from the antiquated music of the feudal era, and yet if we rush to embrace the music of the West, we will find the inevitable distance from its climate and manners, no matter how strongly we profess our attachment to it. We are a miserable people. You Poles who have lost your homeland and you Russians who have lost your freedom—you still have your Chopin and your Tchaikovsky!
As the night advances, the dark water glistens, and the sky gradually comes to possess a strange luster, making it look frighteningly unfathomable. It is astounding how bright the stars are and how many of them there are. Toward the mysterious sky above the Mediterranean, as we proceed near the coast of North Africa, the songs of the English laborers are plaintively vanishing. Sing, sing; you happy people.
Gazing at the star-filled sky far above, I think of the dreadful islands lying at the end of the long, long passage, some forty days from now. How could I ever have left Paris so unthinkingly?
OZAKI KŌYŌ
Ozaki Kōyō (1868–1903) was perhaps the most popular novelist of his day. Many of his stories and novels were published by a leading national newspaper, thereby ensuring a wide readership. By far the most successful of his novels was The Gold Demon (Konjiki yasha), published serially from 1897 to 1903 but remaining uncompleted at his death. An excerpt is presented here. Filled with exciting and melodramatic scenes, the novel’s triumphant success is reminiscent of the excitement caused by the novels of Charles Dickens in Victorian England. The Meiji reading public was fascinated by this dramatic rendering of such new topics for literature as romantic love and capitalism.
THE GOLD DEMON (KONJIKI YASHA)
Translated by Charles Shirō Inouye
Chapter 8, Atami, Part 1
The moonlight spilled into a misty sky, and the ocean, faintly white, spread endlessly into the distance like a blanket of innocence. The quietly lapping waves came sleepily to the shore, and the steady press of the ocean breeze dulled the senses as Kan’ichi and Miya came walking on the beach.
“My heart is so full I don’t know what to say.”
They walked another five or six steps before Miya finally spoke. “Forgive me.”
“It’s too late for apologies. What I need to know is if this is your parents’ idea or if this is what you really want.”
Miya didn’t answer.
“Until I came here, I really believed in you. I knew you wouldn’t say yes to the proposal. But whether I believed in you or not, this isn’t something that should happen between a man and his wife. Last night I had a long talk with your father. He asked me to cooperate.” Kan’ichi’s voice trembled, choked with tears. “Your father and mother have been good to me. I was ready to do anything they asked. You know, I’d go through fire and water for them. But not this. This is worse than anything I can imagine. This is too much to ask. I shouldn’t say this, but I hate your father now. Of all the things he could have said, he told me that if I cooperated with him, he’d send me overseas to study. I may be an orphan of a poor family, b
ut I’m not about to sell my wife so I can go abroad!”
Kan’ichi stopped, turned toward the ocean, and started to cry. Miya approached him, now for the first time, and looked into his face with tenderness and caring in her eyes.
“Forgive me. It’s all my . . . please, forgive me.” She grabbed Kan’ichi’s hand. And when she pressed her face to his shoulder, he let out an audible cry.
The waves seemed to float toward an unknowable horizon; the moonlight filtered down upon the sand of the bay. Amid the veiled whiteness of sky and water, the two of them, standing together, seemed like a blotch of sumi ink.
“So I was thinking. Your father said he was to work on me, and your mother would try to talk to you. That has to be why they went through the trouble of bringing you here. If they ask me, I’m in no position to say no to them. All I could do was hear them out and try to be agreeable. But you. No one would blame you if you refused. If you made it clear that you couldn’t imagine being happy with Tomiyama, then their plans for you would end right there. When I realized they brought you here so I wouldn’t be around to influence you and when I saw that they were going to force this marriage on you, I was beside myself with worry. I didn’t sleep all night. I knew it would never happen, but what if they appealed to your sense of obligation and forced you to go along with their plan? I told people at home that I was returning to school, but I came here to see for myself what was going on. Fool! What a damned fool I am! Where could you find a bigger fool in this entire world? Only now, at twenty-five years old, do I know just how much of a fool I am.”
Overcome with sadness and fear, Miya sobbed.
Kan’ichi had been trying to hold his anger back, but the floodgates of wrath finally opened. “Miya-san, you’ve betrayed me!”
Miya started to shudder uncontrollably.
“You said you were sick. But you really came here to meet Tomiyama. Didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t the only reason . . .”
“Wasn’t the only reason?”
“The way you come to these conclusions. It’s awful. You keep saying such awful things.”
Kan’ichi ignored Miya’s tears.
“Miya-san, you should know all about being awful. Cry all you like. What about me, Kan’ichi, the biggest fool who has ever lived? If my eyes cried blood, it still wouldn’t be enough. If you hadn’t consented to the proposal, why would you come here without telling me a word? If you say it’s because you left in a hurry and didn’t have enough time, you at least could have sent a letter afterward. Judging by the way you left town in such a hurry and how you’ve been keeping me in the dark, it looks like you were planning to meet Tomiyama all along. Maybe you even came here together. Miya-san, you’re an adulteress. What you did was the same as adultery.”
“How can you say that? You’re being so unfair.”
Kan’ichi sobbed wretchedly. He turned away when Miya tried to draw near to him.
“If you lost your chastity, why aren’t you an adulteress?”
“When did I lose my chastity?”
“I may be a fool, but I’m not about to let my wife play around with another man. You had me, Hazama Kan’ichi, for a husband—a straightforward man. But then you left me, and you came here to play at the hot springs with someone else. Tell me you’re not an adulteress.”
“If that’s how you feel, then I guess I really don’t have much to say. If you think I came here to meet Tomiyama, well, that’s just your imagination. He heard we were here and came afterward.”
“Why would Tomiyama do that?”
Miya suddenly had nothing to say, as if her lips had been nailed shut. Kan’ichi believed that if he pressed her in this way, she would feel remorse for her mistake. She would confess her sins and then pledge her body, if not her very life, to his every whim. Even if he believed it would never happen, he secretly wished for it in his heart. Why, then, did she not show even the least sign of compliance? He grew frustrated, knowing her changing heart and realizing that his desire to pull the fragile morning glory from the wall where it clung so tightly was only an empty dream.
My Miya has thrown me away! My wife has been stolen away by another man! The woman I cherished more than life itself has come to loathe me as if I’m nothing but trash. Rancor filled Kan’ichi’s bones, and wrath exploded within his breast. Losing control of himself and of his connection to the world around him, he even considered devouring whore’s flesh to cool his feverish mind. Suddenly, he felt as if his head were going to split open. Unable to stand the pain, he fell on his butt in the sand.
Miya, too, immediately fell to the sand and embraced Kan’ichi. His tears gushed from beneath closed eyelids and soaked his ashen cheek. They wandered sadly there in the moonlight while the panting of his breath resonated with the heart-crushing pounding of waves. Miya embraced him from behind. She held him tightly as they rocked back and forth together. Her trembling voice encouraged him. “Kan’ichi, are you all right?”
Kan’ichi lifelessly took her hand in his. Miya tenderly wiped the tears from his face.
“Miya-san. This is the last night we’ll share together. This will be the last time you’ll take me into your arms and the last time for my words to reach your ears. Today is the seventeenth of the first month. Miya-san. Remember this night. Next year at this time, where will I be when I look up and see the moon? And the year after that? And ten years from now, on this night, of this same month. I’ll never forget this night for as long as I live. How could I? Even if I die, I won’t forget. Do you understand, Miya-san? The seventeenth of the first month. Next year, on this very night, I’m going to show you this same moon through your tears. And when that moon . . . blurs in your tears, remember that Kan’ichi is somewhere else and that he hates you and that he’s crying just as I am tonight.”
Miya held Kan’ichi with all her might and began sobbing wildly. “Don’t say such sad things, Kan’ichi-san. I have a plan of my own. I know you’re angry with me, but please. I just need a little more time. I have a thousand things I want to tell you. But everything is so hard to talk about. The one thing I can say is that I haven’t forgotten you. I’ll never forget you as long as I live.”
“I don’t want to hear it! You say you’ll never forget me. Then why did you betray me?”
“I didn’t.”
“No? Then why are you getting married? What rubbish! Do you think you can have two husbands?”
“Listen to me. I have a plan. Just a little patience, and I’ll show you what’s really in my heart. You’ll have proof I haven’t forgotten you.”
“Nonsense. What are you saying? That you’re selling yourself to Tomiyama in order to make ends meet? Your family has seven thousand yen in the bank, and you’re the only daughter, right? You already know who your fiancé is. You know that in four or five years he’ll have his degree and that he has a future waiting for him. And didn’t you just say you’d never forget me? So what reason do you have to go out of your way to become engaged to someone like Tomiyama? Could there be a more ridiculous story in the whole world? The way I see it, it’s like this. When a woman who doesn’t have to marry goes out of her way to get married, there has to be some other reason. Is there something wrong with me? Or is it because you want to marry someone with money? It has to be one or the other. Tell me which. Don’t hold back. Come, Mii-san, be honest with me. A woman who has thought about getting rid of her fiancé shouldn’t have to hesitate now.”
“It’s all my fault. I’m sorry.”
“So there is something wrong with me?”
“Kan’ichi. You’re not being fair. If you doubt me, I’ll do whatever I have to do to prove myself to you.”
“So it’s not me? Then it has to be Tomiyama’s money. And your new marriage is all about greed, and so is my divorce. You agreed to this new arrangement, right? You’ll say you were forced by your father and mother and that you gave them your consent because you had no choice. But I can think of a few ways you could have broken it off. I
f I wanted, I could be the bad guy and bring this all to a halt without disgracing you or your parents. But I wanted to find out what you were thinking before making any plans. Tell me. Are you really thinking of marrying Tomiyama?”
Kan’ichi concentrated all his energy in the stare that focused on Miya’s troubled face. They walked together down the beach—five steps, seven steps, ten steps—and she still did not answer his question. He looked up into the sky and sighed.
“Fine. All right. Now I know.”
It was senseless to say more. He wouldn’t open his mouth again. He tried to calm his troubled heart by forcing himself to look away, out to sea. But he couldn’t bear the pain, and when he looked over to say something to Miya, she wasn’t there by his side anymore. She was twenty yards behind him, by the breakwater, holding her face with both hands and crying.
Her wretched figure was illuminated by the moon and tossed by the blowing wind. There she stood, sadly, ready to perish, lost at the edge of the endless ocean where the waves were breaking whitely. It was both beautiful and sad in the extreme, making Kan’ichi forget his anger and resentment, making him feel for a brief moment that he was gazing at a painting. When he thought once again of how that beautiful person would never be his, he wondered whether it were all a dream.
“A dream, a dream. I’ve been watching the longest dream.”
He hung his head and followed his feet as they took him farther down the beach. Still crying, Miya approached from behind until, once again, they were walking silently side by side.
“Mii-san. Why are you crying? What do you have to cry about? Your tears are a sham!”
“That’s right.” Her voice was so choked with tears he could barely hear it.
“Mii-san, I wanted to believe that you, of all people, didn’t think that way. But now I see your heart is full of greed. How pathetic you are! Miya-san, aren’t you disgusted with yourself? You’ll be successful someday, maybe you’ll even live a life of luxury. Maybe that’s what you want. But you should think about me, the one you abandoned for the sake of money. Call it vexation. Call it mortification. Miya-san, I wanted to stab you! Don’t be surprised. More than that, I wanted to die. How do you think I felt, trying to deal with those feelings and watching myself not being able to do a thing about your being stolen away by someone else? How does it feel? Or maybe you think it doesn’t matter how others feel, just as long as your own needs are taken care of. So what was Kan’ichi to you? What did I mean to you? I spent some time with your family and imposed on everyone’s hospitality. But I was your husband, wasn’t I? I don’t ever remember signing up to be your gigolo. Miya-san, you made me your plaything, didn’t you? From the start, I thought the way you were acting was a little distant, and now I know why. From the very beginning, you thought of me as nothing more than a temporary distraction. You never did have true emotions for me. Not understanding that, I loved you more than I loved myself. I thought of you so much that I had no other joy in my life. So, Mii-san, do you still want to cast aside someone who loves you that much?