by Неизвестный
“So, I’ve finally caught you! Do you know how many times I’ve come by here recently? I’ve really been downcast at always seeing your light off when I get to the fruit store on the corner. Just picture me, will you—reluctantly dragging my feet as I make my way home again.” So said Kataoka Saburō adopting his habitual position, back propped against the wall.
“Huh? Looking at how well-fleshed you are, I’m not going to shed any tears for you, even if it is spring.”
“She really runs her life so well.”
“You don’t want to speculate at all about the emotions of one who has come countless times to unburden his heart to his old friend?”
“The penniless emotion of Suzuki Daisetzu,2 perhaps?”
“Yes, recently I’ve been completely impoverished and detached. You, however, you have a very ‘attached’ look, haven’t you? You’re out every evening— have you started a love affair?”
“Hum? Love, eh?” Kitayama Toshio hesitated. “But are there any women in Japan capable of love?”
“Whether there are or not is really beside the point—men will, after all, love women. Even though we lost the war, men will want women and women want men!”
“So can you make love with that ample figure of yours?”
“Certainly. When I start to make love, I’ll rapidly slim down.” They grilled a sweet potato on the electric stove and began to eat.
“I’m finally broke, too,” said Kataoka Saburō. “So, starting next month, I’m starting a side job.”
“Huh?”
“Shall I put some your way?”
“Translating, is it?”
“What? It’s black market stuff.”
“Hmm?”
“Well, yes, it’s dealing in medical supplies, so I can do it even while I’m working. You’re feeling the pinch yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yup, I’m really up against it. But I’d be no good at dealing.”
“That’s probably true.” The pair fell silent.
After a while Kataoka Saburō said, “The other day I met Yamanaka on my way home—all our friends are scratching around for a living!” Yamanaka was, of course, another soldier demobilized with them.
“What’s he up to?”
“What’s he up to, you say? He’s selling chocolate. You know, those chocolate bars. He buys them up and then takes them round the country villages.”
“Yamanaka does?”
“He does. But he’s not stupid, you know. That Yamanaka is doing way better than the rest of us with his chocolate bars. He buys them in at 7 yen, 50 sen a bar and sells them to the little country grocery shops at 8.50—he says he’s making 3,500 yen a month. But on the day he started up in the chocolate business, where do you think he tried first? He set his sights on Atami, which is flooded with new yen.3 That was way off target, and he didn’t sell one. But when he was walking up the hill to the station with his pack on his back, he apparently thought of the fate of Kiso Yoshinaka.”4
“Yoshinaka?”
“Right. Yoshinaka in the end was seriously wounded and told his retainers that the metal of his armor, which he used to make nothing of, seemed to weigh him down, right? Well, Yamanaka apparently felt as though each single one of those bars of chocolate he was carrying on his back was made of steel, and that if you bit one you would break a tooth—so that was the reason he couldn’t sell any!”
“He did, eh?”
“You’re not laughing, are you? I guess my humor doesn’t work on you. . . . Anyway, all our friends are in a bad way. After demobilization, they came home to find their houses had been burned; they had nothing to wear. Now their landlords are planning to throw them out of their lodgings again. All positions are filled; what are they gonna do? . . . The other day, in these freezing February days, they went and rationed out mosquito nets . . . but who has the money to buy them? Even if you bought one, it would soon end up with the black marketeers . . . and the marketeers, being the way they are, go after the stuff rationed out to war victims and buy everything up. . . . What do you think the items rationed out yesterday were? Army pillow covers and children’s shoes! . . .
“. . .”
“So, I was thinking maybe I should start a love affair of my own.”
“You can’t carry on a love affair.”
“Probably not, eh. . . . I’ll always be tubby like this, I suppose.”
“What do you eat these days?”
“Potato croquettes off the stall.”
“Croquettes? I like them too, but I don’t get fat.”
“That’s because you’re in love.”
They both laughed.
Kitayama Toshio didn’t particularly think he was in love. But Horikawa Kurako was necessary to him. When he was face-to-face with her, he felt for the first time that in the breast of the human being before him stirred the same anguish as in his own. When he looked at her face, it was brought home to him that he was already forgetting the suffering he had endured on the battlefield and trying to live a pretty aimless sort of existence. It was true that, when he had first returned to his native land, the extreme changes it had undergone had struck him like a blow to the chest. But now that impression had begun to fade, and he had come to think nothing of the burnt ruins of buildings or the long lines of open-air stalls on either side of the road and the pullulating hordes of people. And so he felt that her suffering face wiped away the fog from his heart.
The two of them often went to Ginza on their way home. She explained that, although she was living at her childhood home, she was sharing the house with relatives who were very straitlaced. So she declared that she would have to go home without fail at eight o’clock. He didn’t particularly try to hold her back. It seemed to him that he now wanted to take a new step forward in his life. Yet he did not know how to make that start. If he took that first step, then the weight of the past that hung upon him would be dispelled. But he did not know how to accomplish this.
“Are you managing to survive?” he tried asking her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
After falling silent for a while he said, “Of course, you have lived a much more straightforward life than me.”
“Do you think so?”
“It’s a wonderful thing for a human being to make another happy. I haven’t met someone like that myself. Naturally, I wasn’t able to. It’s the fact that you were that sustains you now, perhaps.”
It was evening. Above the street spread the clear, spring sky, mixed with yellow. The two of them were sitting by the window on the first floor of a café and had been conversing for a long time. He told her about how, despite his mother’s hopes, he had switched from the law faculty to the fine arts department at college and that, although she was concerned that his chances of finding a job on graduation wouldn’t be very good, his mother had still willingly allowed him to apply for the transfer. She had devoted her life to him.
“I really would have liked to have been able to see her one more time,” he said. Horikawa Kurako was silent, and he became aware that his words had made her recall her husband.
“Naturally, those six years in the army have messed up my life, but I don’t think it’s impossible for me to get over that . . . I’m going to find something sometime soon. . . . I’m sure there’s a kind of strength in me that’s rising up. I’m going to achieve whatever I want. Fortunately, the army has physically trained me for that.”
He told her a little about the conditions of warfare. And then he said that what had sustained him during the sufferings of battle had not been his learning in the least, but the suffering that was already in his heart.
“When I look at you I want somehow . . . to do something for you in some way. But I’m well aware that it’s hopeless. It really is hopeless,” she said brokenly, her voice sounding as if she were choking. He was unable to reply. For a while they silently faced each other.
One day
when Kitayama Toshio was going up the stairs to the third floor, he came across Horikawa Kurako standing stock-still, bent over at the waist.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just tripped here,” she replied, turning around to look at him. “I was thinking about something.” He saw that unhappiness flee across her face.
They met up on their way home and aimlessly walked in the direction of Kōfukubashi. Horikawa Kurako appeared unusually subdued. While walking beside her, he felt that her attention was not turned at all toward him but had slipped down somewhere deep within her body. It was a windy evening. White dust danced on the road. The planks of the wooden bridge creaked. They walked along the river toward Nihonbashi.
“Is your leg OK now?” he said after a while.
“Leg?” Her hair fell across her face as she turned to him.
“Yes, you tripped on the stairs earlier—you were limping, I thought.”
“Yes, it’s fine. Recently I’ve somehow been so absent-minded, and at that time as well I was thinking over so many things I was in a daze.”
“. . .”
“Before, I didn’t use to be like that, but for some reason, I, these days, I’ve suddenly become so helpless!”
“Hmm? You have, have you?”
“Yes. Is it odd?”
They passed through the crowds in the park and emerged into the Ginza.
“You’re always treating me. Today I want you to let me treat you to something.”
“You say always, but I only buy you coffee.”
“But still, today I’ve got a little money, you see.”
They had a simple meal, and, saying they would like some good coffee, they went into the nearest café they came to. Each had something that they wanted to say to the other, and yet, while thinking they must speak, they remained silent.
“Kitayama san,” she said at last, as always avoiding his eyes, which were gazing at her face. “The other day you said you would find something. Do you think you will?”
“Well, not so easily as all that, you know. But I’ve begun to study again. I’ve gotten into the mood to study even while doing my job. Even someone like me may be able to become a good person. Once I’ve become a good person, I’d like to die, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“. . .”
“It’s sort of as though, having lived through that war, if I can’t live in that kind of way, it would be better to die.”
“I’m sure that good days are coming, too.”
“For whom? For the Japanese?”
“No, . . .” she hesitated.
“. . .”
“I, since that time, I’ve been thinking I should find someone who would be good for you.”
“Yes.” He broke off, and then was silent for a while, considering the meaning of her words. “Thank you,” he said coldly. “But what about yourself?”
“What about me?” Horikawa Kurako drew back her face slightly.
“I heard that there’d been some talk about you marrying again,” said Kitayama Toshio, maintaining the same coldness as before.
“Oh. You heard about that?” Horikawa Kurako said, as if oppressed by the iciness in his words.
“I heard.”
“But,” she mumbled, “But I just can’t make up my mind to do it. Kitayama san, do you think I would be better off remarrying?”
“Well yes, perhaps you would.”
“Really?”
Thus they sat in the back of the café with a barrier between them, unable to find anything to say. When they headed toward Yurakuchō it was already quite late, well after eight o’clock.
On the platform was a group of made-up women on their way back from a nightclub. Their boisterous laughter rose up under the dim lanterns. The pair moved away from the women and stood side-by-side at one end of the platform, looking down at the dark streets of the city spread out below.
All the trains that arrived were going in the clockwise direction, and though they stood there for a long time, no counterclockwise train appeared.
“How long will her life be able to continue? She said she’s selling things to live, so when that’s finished, what will she do, I wonder?” He began to consider the woman Horikawa Kurako, standing unmoving beside him, her eyes directed toward the dim lanterns of the city at night. “And I, what shall I do after all? What am I looking for? . . . Do I want love from her? . . . A woman who has lost her beloved husband in the war joining together with a man who has come to know the value of his dead lover’s love through the war—it’s a bit too much like a story,” he thought. He suddenly felt that next to him, a small life was stirring. Within Horikawa Kurako’s body, its two small legs sticking out from her small skirt, he felt the existence of that pitiful living being, which carried its suffering within it wherever it went. He felt that, deep within that being, her suffering lay hidden and unmoving like a quiet, well-trained animal. “No, it is not her that I’m looking for. And what she is looking for is not me. She said that there’s no help for my suffering. And I, in turn, can’t do anything for hers. . . . But when I think that I can’t do anything even for this single, pitiful human life, right beside me . . . my existence is mine alone . . . and this person’s existence is hers alone—there’s no other way I can think, is there?”
Another clockwise train arrived.
“Shall we get on?” said Horikawa Kurako, unexpectedly rousing herself and walking forward.
“What for?” said Kitayama Toshio, while following after her, drawn on by her small back.
“Let’s get on . . . at least this will get us there, somehow.” She looked briefly back and then, without paying any heed to him, stepped inside the train. It seemed to him that a youthful seductiveness was playing across her face. He boarded the train, bumping into her as he did. Yet once in the train, they hardly spoke.
“Why? Why do you want to get on this one?”
“No particular reason. I just couldn’t go on waiting anymore.” And there the conversation ended.
A slightly breathless atmosphere had arisen between them. Kitayama Toshio felt a certain air of seductiveness flowing from the figure of Horikawa Kurako as she hung on the leather strap to his left.
“Is your place far from the station?” he said after a while.
“Yes,” she said while still looking straight ahead.
“About how many minutes?”
“It takes about fifteen.”
“So it’s unsafe?”
“Yes.” She nodded her head. “Yes, somebody who lives near us was attacked. But that time she only lost her parasol.”
“Shall I see you home?” he said. She said nothing in reply, but he saw her head gently, sorrowfully shake from side to side. Then they stood, once again with that barrier between them.
They went through Meguro and Shibuya and arrived at Shinjuku. Kitayama Toshio, still agonizing about whether he should see Horikawa Kurako home or not, walked with her to the platform of the Chūō Line.
“Shall I see you home?” he said again. As before, she made no reply.
Although the train was deserted, they stood in the doorway looking at each other. He was watching how the wind, blowing through the window, stirred the lock of hair that hung down to the nape of her neck. He observed this small body, leaning a little to the left, this living being with nothing to rely on that was set before him. He sensed that, in the end, she would not be able to get by in the world after the defeat. “Before long she’ll be feeling the pinch. . . . After all, even though our salary is supposed to be going up a little from this month, it all goes to food. . . . It must be the same in her company. . . .” And he imagined the contents of this woman’s body being gradually reduced, losing the fullness of life, being scattered somewhere like dust.
He could no longer say to her the words that he should. He felt that whatever words emerged from his mouth, they would not reach deep into the heart of this woman before him. There was, without doubt, a great suffering inside this person.
And that suffering was trying to thrust down this little woman, to crush her. Yet there is no way I can touch this person’s suffering. I don’t know the first thing about her. I only know my own suffering, and so I can only concern myself over my own suffering. . . . That’s all.
Kitayama Toshio saw that Horikawa Kurako had raised her head and was looking at him. Her white face floated before him, across the dim atmosphere that lay between them. He fixed his eyes directly on her face. . . . On the other side of her face, no doubt, there is an individual suffering that the war has brought about, he thought. He reflected how much he would like to somehow enter into that suffering of hers. If within a person like him there was even a little truth and uprightness left, he would like it to touch her suffering . . . if their two human hearts could directly meet and they could exchange their sufferings, if two human beings could in this way exchange the secrets of each other’s existences, if a man and woman could show the truth of themselves to each other . . . it would be then that, perhaps, human life could have a new meaning. . . . But it seemed that this was impossible for him.
The train was already approaching Yotsuya where she would get off. He continued to gaze with fixed eyes at her white face. Then all at once he noticed that there was a small blemish in one corner of her face. This blemish began to strangely unsettle his mind. It was so faint and small as to make it very difficult to judge whether it was actually there or not. Perhaps it was a trace of dust or soot. Or perhaps it was a mole, visible through her white make-up. In any event, the mark made his heart tremble minutely. Driven by an impulse to clearly determine the existence of this spot above her left eye, he concentrated his vision upon it. He stared at the mark. But it was not the mark on her face that was distressing him. He felt that somewhere in some corner of his own heart there was something like a small mark. And he already understood what the meaning of that small spot in his heart was. He gazed toward the mark within his heart. As he did, he realized that this mark was swelling, becoming larger. It became gradually bigger and moved toward his eyes. It was nearing his eyes from the inside. It was coming close to his eye. Ah, he exclaimed inwardly. He saw the area of the mark on Horikawa Kurako’s white face gradually widening. A large, round, red object appeared in her face. A large, round, red tropical moon rose in her face. He saw the jaundiced feverish faces of the soldiers; then the broken line of the platoon, stretching into the distance, arose before him.