by Naoya Shiga
The night stalls were about to open for business on one side of Ginza. Staying on the other side of the street he walked toward Kyōbashi. He held his body erect and kept his mouth tightly closed. He must tread the ground firmly, he told himself, and not shuffle along. He must look straight ahead with the eyes of a calm and controlled man and not look about him nervously as he was wont to do. He wanted to be like a man striding alone through the wilderness in the twilight, unmindful of the crying pines and the whispering grass. (Had Nobuyuki said the image was to be found in a poem by Han-shan?) He wanted to capture the spirit of such a man—even here on Ginza. And he did not altogether fail to do so. In his present frame of mind he needed desperately to cling to some such ideal.
If he remembered rightly there were two or three bookstores on this side of Nihonbashi that specialized in Chinese classics. He would buy a copy of Han-shan’s poems.
He saw coming toward him a friend whom he had not seen for some time. He was Kensaku’s senior by about five years. He had a young woman with him who presumably was his wife. It was then that Kensaku admitted to himself that only a few moments before he had seen another friend of his—this one was younger than Kensaku—walking on the other side of the street with a nicely built young woman who also had an unmistakably wifely air about her.
The friend was only a few feet away when he at last saw Kensaku. The two men stopped to exchange greetings. The friend then said, “Our home is in Gazenbō. We’re always at home in the evenings, so come and see us.”
Kensaku had no intention of visiting them. But the fact that he could not remember where exactly Gazenbō was troubled him inordinately. He must have known its location once; how then could he have forgotten it? Was it near Mamiana? “I should know,” he said, “but where is Gan … ” He stopped, thoroughly flustered for instead of ga he had said gan. He asked at random, “Is it at the bottom of Imoaraizaka?”
“It’s nowhere near Imoaraizaka,” said the friend. His wife, standing behind him, whispered something to him. He nodded. “Look, she suggests we give you our telephone number. It’s Shiba 4736.”
“I’ll never remember it.”
“It’s simple. Three and seven make ten, so do four and six. Remember, we’re always in in the evenings.”
As they parted the friend’s wife bowed politely. Kensaku thought he had seen her somewhere before, but could not remember where or when.
The encounter had unsettled him considerably. He walked on, telling himself he had to learn to be more controlled. He came to a secondhand bookstore with a sign outside that said, “Matsuyama Bookstore.” It had obviously been done by a professional calligrapher. The first thing that caught his eye as he went in was a Chinese calligraphy manual, Ten Chen-ch’ing’s One Thousand Characters. He picked it up and opened it. It was not a particularly good edition. He went slowly down the aisle, carefully perusing the shelves on either side of him. They were full of books whose titles seemed to him vaguely familiar, yet on second thought not at all familiar. There was one with a title card stuck in it that suggested that it might be some sort of collection of Ikkyū’s essays. But when he opened the book he found that it was a popular novel by the early nineteenth-century writer, Ryukatei Tanekazu.
“Have you a copy of Han-shan’s poems?” he asked the owner.
“Not just now, I’m afraid.”
“What about Sayings from the Zen School?”
“We haven’t got that either.”
Maruzen Bookstore had just closed, and the clerks were coming out of the side door. In the display window were bookcases tastelessly decorated with “Egyptian” designs.
He came to a bookstore called Aoki Suzando. He had thought there was another bookstore between this and Maruzen called Kobayashi Suzando, but either he had walked past it without seeing it or it had shut down. He bought a small collection of Li Po’s poems. About ten years before he had bought a copy of exactly the same edition of Li Po at the same shop, but like so many other things it had disappeared.
The fish market was close by. Though he was not hungry, he decided that if he was going to have dinner this would be as good a place as any to have it. He went into a side street to find a likely restaurant. A sushi maker whom he knew—he was notoriously lazy—had his stall out for a change. Kensaku walked past pretending not to see him and hoping he was not the sort to rush out and challenge a fickle former patron. There was a tempura restaurant a few yards farther, and Kensaku managed to reach it without mishap.
As he came out of the restaurant he wondered if the sushi man might not be lurking behind some corner, waiting to waylay him and give him a good thrashing. It was an idiotic apprehension, of course, but it did Kensaku no good to tell himself this.
He crossed two bridges, then turned right. He wanted to look again at a platinum watch he had seen the day before in a watchmaker’s window. The price tag had said a hundred and ninety yen. He had made up his mind that if he still liked the looks of it he would buy it. It was expensive, but if he lived thriftily for the next three months he could afford it. But as he looked at it again it seemed not half so tempting as it had the day before. This saddened him. Five years ago he would never have been satisfied until he had bought whatever it was that struck his fancy—even, say, a ukiyo print. But of late he had become more and more unable to feel such attachment to anything. Something would strike him as novel one day, then the next day it would already seem stale and uninteresting. With a sense of loss he continued to stare at the watch. Ah well, he said to himself, I’ve saved a hundred and ninety yen.
It suddenly occurred to him that if he stood in front of the shop-window much longer someone inside might begin to suspect him of being a prospective burglar. Blushing, he walked away.
He reached the house he had visited the day before. Samisen music and rowdy voices greeted him as he went in. To the maid who led him to the room upstairs he said, “Please call the woman I met yesterday.” He sat down and opened the book of Li Po’s poems, but before he began reading it he realized that his instruction to the maid was rather vague. After all, he had seen two women the day before, and she might call the wrong one. He clapped his hands, and a different maid appeared. “Tell the other maid I meant the one that came later.” To his relief he was informed that the right woman was being called. But supposing she’s not in, he thought uneasily.
The book began with two biographical prefaces. In his idealistic frame of mind Kensaku could not but find Li Po’s life extremely appealing as described in these. As he read about the poet getting drunk with his companions in the marketplace, he thought how little the great man would have cared about the terrible noise coming from the room downstairs. He would have remained untouched in the world of his making, paying no heed to all that took place outside it. Had not another poet—was it Tu Fu?—described Li Po lying on the floor in a wineshop and saying, “I have enough money in my purse to pay for all the wine I need”? No doubt about it, for Li Po wine was food for the spirit. Yet surely there must have been times when it gave him more misery than joy, for had it not eventually caused his death? Kensaku, who never did like to drink, could not envy Li Po his penchant for wine, however much inspiration it might have brought him … But why had the woman not yet appeared?
When at last she came into the room, Kensaku was struck by how much less attractive she was than he had remembered her. True, when she smiled and showed her slightly crooked corner teeth she was strangely seductive; but in repose her face was distressingly ordinary. Feeling somewhat betrayed, he made no reference to the trip. She, too, kept silent about it, seemingly without conscious effort.
Yet when he reached out and held her round, heavy breast he was filled with an indefinable sense of comfort and satisfaction. It was as though he had touched something very precious. He let it rest on the palm of his hand, then shook it a little so that he could feel the full weight of it. There were no words to express the pleasure he experienced then. He continued to shake it gently, saying mere
ly, “What riches!” It was for him somehow a symbol of all that was precious to him, of whatever it was that promised to fill the emptiness inside him.
PART III
1
His hope that the move to Ōmori might revive his spirit had proved totally vain. His life there had provided hardly a moment of relief from the oppressive misery that enveloped him. He had then come to Kyoto on a whim about a month ago, and now at last his new surroundings seemed to be having some beneficial effect on his state of mind.
The ancient land with its ancient temples and works of art led him gently back to ancient times, inviting a response from him that he had not thought possible. To escape from the present—how badly he had needed that. Yet Kyoto offered him more than a mere means of escape; for he had had little opportunity before of coming into contact with ancient things, and to live among them as he now did was, he thought, a worthy experience for its own sake. With the fleeting happiness and quiet gratitude of a man recovering from a long illness, he walked about Kyoto day after day looking at temples.
He was supposed to be searching for a house to rent; but each time he went out ostensibly on a house-hunting expedition, he would end up visiting yet another temple. Kyoto was so full of temples worth looking at.
This day, too, he came out of his inn in the cool of the morning to look for a house in the Saga area. He followed a light-colored dirt road that had become dry and dusty from days of sunshine, and stopped to see Shakadō, then yet two more temples, Nison’in and Giōji. He returned to his inn in Higashisanpongi at about noon without having looked at one house. He was satisfied, however, that he had not wasted the morning; for he had seen a fine portrait of Abbot Hōnen at Nison’in.
He idled away the rest of the afternoon in his small, hot room.
Before sunset the landlady came in to tell him that his bath was ready. By the time he had come out of the bath and sat down to dinner, there was a cool breeze blowing from across the river.
After dinner he sat on the narrow verandah, fanning himself. Immediately below him was a small, swift-flowing stream; beyond this, on the wide road recently constructed along the bank of the Kamogawa, were men and women laborers busily sorting out the pebbles that they had gathered from the river. And then there was the river itself, dotted here and there with clumps of reeds. The bank opposite looked very hot, for it was still receiving the full brunt of the western sun. Running alongside that bank was a road lined with houses, some with chimneys. Beyond stood the hills of Daimonji and Higashiyama, bathed in brilliant sunlight; to their left was Yoshidayama, and on this side of them was Kurodani. Standing above them all was the peak of Hiei. As he gazed at the panorama, Kensaku wished that autumn would come soon. Nanzenji, Nyakūoji, Hōnen’in—how pleasant it would be, he thought longingly, to visit those temples on a brisk autumn morning.
Lighting a cigarette he stepped down to the garden and walked over the plank laid across the little stream. He could feel around his legs under the kimono the warm, clammy vapor rising from the sunbaked grass. Neighborhood children clad only in jerkins, their faces covered with dirt and sweat, were still rushing about chasing grasshoppers. He walked at a leisurely pace toward Kōjin Bridge, the river on one side of him and the backs of a row of houses on the other. In these, most of which were inns of one kind or another, people could be seen eating and drinking under the electric light.
In one of them, Kensaku had noted some days before, lived an oldish man who was obviously an invalid, for besides a woman in her fifties—his wife, presumably—he had seen a young nurse in attendance. His guess was that the old man had come from the provinces and rented rooms in this neighborhood because of its proximity to the university hospital. As he now passed by the house, he saw on the verandah an unfamiliar young woman, well-built and very pretty, bent over a small cooking stove with an earthen pot on it. She was fanning the fire, and perhaps from the exertion, her plump cheeks were flushed. She was a pleasing and wholesome sight, and he was immediately drawn to her. Her beauty was not so extraordinary, yet what he felt then was somehow more exquisite, more disturbing, than anything he felt before on seeing some attractive woman in passing. Like an adolescent with awakening passions he quickly looked away, made almost breathless by the acute happiness that came over him.
When he reached the bridge he turned around and began to walk back toward his inn. This time he stayed close to the river so that he could look at her again from a safe distance. She was now standing on the verandah, engaged in animated conversation with the older woman who stood below her on the ground, on this side of the small stream. As he watched, the two of them threw their heads back and laughed. Only the young woman’s laughter, pure and joyful, reached his ears. It was so infectious, Kensaku found himself wanting to smile in response. The laughter ended and the older woman sauntered toward the river, holding an open fan. She had the relaxed look of someone who had just had a bath. The young woman took the lid off the pot and went inside.
She had the sleeves of her kimono—much too good for housework—tucked up with a cord. He surmised that she had come just for the day to help the older woman. She was clearly unused to housework; for in the way she did her chores there was the childish enthusiasm of a novice.
As he passed the house the young woman came out on the verandah again. He felt himself going a little stiff when he imagined he was being stared at, but otherwise he managed to stay relatively calm this time.
The unsettling yet pleasurable sensation remained with him after he got back to the inn. That it was more than a passing fancy, he was sure. But what was it all about, he asked himself, and what was he to do about it?
He had to go past the house again, for she would surely not be there on the following day. He went to the front hall himself to fetch his clogs, then went out once more over the stream to the grassy bank, busy with people who had come out to cool themselves. He walked toward the house, more hesitantly this time.
She was sitting on the verandah with the older woman, enjoying the cool evening air. Behind them in the room a mosquito net had been put up under the electric light. They were looking toward the river, away from the light, while he had to look straight into it, so that he could not see their faces very well. She must have just come out of the bath. She wore an ill-fitting, cotton kimono so stiff with starch that it stuck out around the shoulders. The clumsiness of her attire was rather engaging, he thought. The two women fanned themselves as they talked quietly and intimately.
When he reached Kōjin Bridge, he crossed it and walked back along the opposite bank. He could see in the distance across the river the two women sitting side by side. They looked like silhouettes on a paper lantern.
He boarded a Higashiyama-bound streetcar at the foot of Maruta Bridge. It was crowded, for it was the time of evening when the citizens of Kyoto came out of their houses to visit their favorite cool spots. He got off by the stone steps of Gion, having had to stand all the way.
He felt unusually composed; and as he realized that even in the crowded streetcar he had deported himself with unself-conscious dignity, a feeling of gentle, innocent happiness came over him. That his impression of the woman’s beauty should have permeated his being even to the point of affecting his deportment was proof, he thought, that it was more than a whimsical attraction. The love of that noble knight, Don Quixote, now came to mind. He had read the novel when living in Ōmori, and at the time he had not given much thought to Don Quixote’s love. But now, when he thought of his own condition, he realized that it was meant to be more than a mere tool of comedy. Of course he did not wish to compare the woman he had seen today to Dulcinea. But did not Don Quixote’s love, as it grew and became purified in his heart, make him even more noble, even more brave? It was not comical at all, Kensaku thought, feeling for the moment a strange sense of identification with the knight.
He was so absorbed in his newly found sense of dignity and contentment that he concerned himself not at all with the question of where hi
s infatuation might lead him. He made his way through the crowded streets of the Shinkyōgoku quarter, unaffected by the bustle around him. By way of Teramachi he proceeded directly to Marutamachi and from there back to the inn.
Now he began to wonder what he should do next. Of one thing he was certain: he would not allow this precious feeling to die, to become yet another fleeting, soon forgotten moment in his life. But how was he to try to effect a meeting with her? The fact that they lived in the same row of houses could hardly provide him with an excuse to approach her unintroduced. Passively waiting for some fortunate accident to bring them together was out of the question, for they were both temporary residents in that neighborhood. Also unlikely was the prospect of his venturing under some clever pretext to manipulate his way into the house where she was staying. What was he to do then? No doubt about it, he told himself impatiently, he could be exceedingly unenterprising in such situations. He remembered that an old friend of his in a similar predicament had driven his car up to the front of the young lady’s house, tampered with the engine, then gone to the house and, pretending that the car had broken down, asked if he might leave it where it was for the night. The following day he had gone back with his manservant to get the car, called on the family to thank them, and in this way had made himself known to her. But what could Kensaku do that was equally effective, short of throwing a fainting fit before her very eyes?
He decided to go out and try to catch a glimpse of her again. When he reached the house he found that the storm doors had not yet been closed, but a green cloth cover had been put over the light above the mosquito net, and there seemed to be no one about. Had they all gone into town, he wondered disappointedly, or had she gone home, escorted to the station or wherever by the old couple? And as he walked back to the inn he could not help thinking that even if she was indeed single, she could still be already spoken for. The thought made him feel terribly helpless and forlorn.