by Ivan Morris
Inosuké asked if he had seen Mon. Kobata said he had not.
“You played with Mon and you as good as wrecked our family. You have your nerve coming here now. Let me tell you something. I used to sleep with Mon when we were little. Every night I woke her up to go to the toilet and I used to go with her because the hall was dark. I carried her on my back when she was a baby. I couldn’t go outdoors unless I took her along. Until she was sixteen or so there wasn’t a day I didn’t see her or a meal we didn’t have together. I knew where she had a mole she didn’t know about herself until I told her about it, and that was after she was grown up. We were closer than brother and sister, Mon and I. When she came home with that brat of yours inside her, I did everything I could to hurt her. I got to treating her like some dirty mongrel puppy. Mother thought it was the real me saying those things and she used to look at me like a snake. She always took Mon’s part. I could see why. If she hadn’t, we’d all have been treating Mon like someone we had to get rid of. I knew all along you’d be coming around some day, damn you, and I wanted to let you know how close Mon and I were. I brought her up myself, from when she was a baby. You’re nothing but a spoiled schoolboy, and because you were lucky enough to be born a man you thought you could do what you want with her and not give a damn afterward. You could see by looking at her that she was a farmer’s daughter. It happens all the time, you didn’t see why you shouldn’t do it too. Well, it won’t work. I’m not letting you off as easy as my old man.”
As he talked Inosuké took Kobata by the wrist and pulled and twist at his arm. Tears came into his eyes. They had seemed to strike out at his adversary like whips, but now they had lost their strength. He was torn at by feelings of wounded affection so violent that he wondered himself how a confirmed profligate could be so moved. Kobata for his part felt his hand go numb. He sat there like a dunce, overcome by more than fear, wondering what sort of violence was coming next yet unable to deny whatever it might be and unable even to think of escaping.
“And you just came to apologize?”
“I can’t do anything but apologize.”
“You mean to let Mon go on as she is?”
“I’d like to see her and talk things over.”
“Will you marry her?”
“I might.”
“Damned liar!”
Inosuké slapped him full in the face and in almost the same motion kicked him to the ground.
“Just say what you have to say. What will you gain by hitting me?”
But Inosuké, putting his whole strength into it this time, struck him a blow on the jaw. “I know damned well that whatever happens to you here it won’t make a better man of you. Not as long as you live. But remember Mon. You have this much coming. You ruined her, you left her good for nothing at all, before she was even a woman. But don’t go around thinking she’d marry the likes of you. If you went and asked her she’d snap her fingers at you. You may think she’s ruined, but her mind’s sounder than ever. You won’t find any trace of the girl that was so easy for you. Not a trace. All that’s gone. And you did it. If you’d kept your hands off of her she wouldn’t have turned into the woman she is. Don’t come again. And don’t go cheating her again.”
“I was wrong. I admit it. I’m not making any excuses.”
Inosuké stood up. The fellow was too docile. The incentive disappeared, and Inosuké began to feel a little ashamed of himself. “Go on home. I’m Mon’s brother. If you have a sister yourself, you’ll understand what I’ve done.”
“Well, goodbye, then.” Kobata felt that he did indeed understand, and as the other’s face softened he began to feel something like friendliness in spite of what had happened.
Inosuké seemed to want to say something. Kobata was sure that he wanted to apologize.
“You can get a bus in town,” said Inosuké finally. “Wait at the main intersection.”
* * *
A week later Mon came home. San too was at home on a visit. The two of them took Akaza’s lunch to the shelter. He only glanced at them. He had nothing to say about the remarkable chance that the two of them were home together. As they climbed the dike, however, he gazed after them for a time.
Mon listened with no show of surprise as Riki told of Kobata’s visit. She seemed worried only about her father and how he had behaved during the interview. He had said nothing, said Riki. Indeed he had seemed sorry for the boy.
“Oh? But it was wrong of him to come. He needn’t have come. And did he see Inosuké?”
Riki thought not.
“That’s good.” Mon lay down, relieved. “There might have been trouble if he had. But didn’t you think he was handsome, Mother? Didn’t you think he had nice eyes?”
“Don’t be a fool. How can you go on praising the man who left you with a child?”
“There’ve been others since, but none I’ve been able to like the way I liked him. I let him do things I would never let another man do. Some have been a good deal handsomer, but when they’re so handsome they’re always pleased with themselves. He had just the right amount of handsomeness. But if he were to come back I wouldn’t marry him.” She laughed. “I just like to think about him. If I saw him again, he’d be just another lukewarm man.”
“Can’t you talk about anything but men?” San objected. “I could never say things like that. Why, I can’t say half the things I’m thinking. And I don’t know anything about men.”
“You wouldn’t. But when you’ve turned into a hussy like me you soon learn everything. Men are dirty. They’re dirty when you think about them, but then as time passes you forget what you’ve been thinking. You’re on your guard, but somehow it doesn’t last.”
At noon Inosuké came home. “So the slut’s here again, as bold ever. You’ll eat off of us for a week or so and then leave, I suppose. Better leave before we’re all sick of you. You’re better off away having fun with your coolies. We may not look it, but we’re a respectable family and we don’t want you dirtying the place up,”
“You shouldn’t talk to her like that,” said San. “She hasn’t been home in such a long time.”
“Shut up, brat. With a woman like Mon you can go on saying what you want and it won’t bother her a bit, and you don’t need to think it’ll reform her either. She’s not that kind of animal. Let’s not have any more foolishness from you.” He saw that Mon was still glaring at him. “When the hell do you mean to settle down and make yourself an honest living? We don’t want you around here as long as you’re in that business. And we don’t need to see that schoolboy of yours either. He had his nerve coming here. You can tell what he thinks of us.”
“You saw him, did you?” Mon turned pale and looked questioningly from her mother to her brother. San and Riki too were startled.
“That I did. I saw how he was going home and I followed him.”
“What did you do?”
“Just what I wanted to.” Inosuké looked insolently down at her and a sneer came to his lips.
“I don’t suppose you hit him?” Mon held her breath.
“That I did. He knew he couldn’t win and didn’t fight back. I felt fine afterward.”
Mon was stunned into silence. As they watched, her features beg to collapse. Her nose and mouth twisted, her face seemed to lengthen. Then she spoke, as if dragging the words from the top of a reeling mind. “Say it again, please. Say again what you did.” Her white fingers like coiled snakes, she clutched at the neck of her kimono. She had had risen from her seat, and there was a cold, murderous quality about her that made it hard to believe she was a woman. Neither Riki nor San had seen this Mon before.
Inosuké laughed softly. “I half killed him.”
“Half killed a man who didn’t fight back. Damn you.” She leaped up, “Damn you. Who the hell ever asked you to show off your rough business? And what do you have to do with him? I gave myself to him of my own free will, and I don’t need to listen to the likes of you. Who told you to kick him and step on him? Wh
y did you have to hit a man who wouldn’t fight back? Coward! Pig! Whore-chaser!”
She lunged at him and shot a plump hand at his face. There were three nail marks from his eye down over his cheek. Then, as if from a swollen berry, the red blood trickled down.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?” said Inosuké. Though somewhat taken aback, he pushed her to the floor. She jumped up again and clutched at his shoulder. As he shook her off, his big hand struck her full in the face. “Bitch! Whore!”
“Kill me,” screamed Mon. “Go ahead and kill me!” It was like the croak of a frog.
“All right. You asked for it. I’ll break every bone in your damned body.”
He had thought Mon would try to run. She did not move. “Hit me,” she screamed. “Go ahead. Kill me!”
Riki and San tried to stop him, but he only grew more violent—if he didn’t show the bitch now, she’d get into the habit. When at length the timid San burst out weeping, however, he decided that he had done enough.
But Mon would not have it. “Excuse me, but I’m different from you, running around with your snotty whores. You’re good enough to say that I’m a whore myself. A drunken whore, a slut no decent man would marry, the leavings of a woman who can’t tell her own mother and father where she’s living. All right. But let me tell you something. When someone pushes my man so far that he can’t fight back and then half kills him—I don’t care who it is, my own brother or who, he’s not going to get away with it. Go on back to your rock pile. You call yourself a man, do you? You had your nerve hitting him. Now I know the sort of brother I have, and I’m ashamed. Ashamed before the whole world. Pig! Skirt-chasing pig!” Her voice rose into a piercing wail.
That was no way for a woman to talk, said Riki. What would the neighbors think? But Mon told her to be quiet. Mon had not thought they had a bully in the family. Was she to let him go on playing big: brother to her?
“You want more, do you, bitch?”
“Go ahead, damn you. You’re wrong if you think those fists of yours can change me. That’s all over long ago. A farmer rotting away in the rice paddies doesn’t have much idea what a person like me is up to.”
Inosuké was about to lunge at her again, but Riki stopped him, and he saw that it was time to go back to work. “Just get the hell away from here, that’s all,” he growled as he turned to leave.
Mon began sobbing the moment he was out of the house.
What sort of life was the girl leading, thought the horrified Riki. Where had she learned such language? “You’re quite a woman, aren’t you?”
The tremble in her voice struck at Mon’s heart. “No, Mother. I’m all right. You needn’t worry about me.”
“But I’ve never heard a woman talk like that before. Please, for my sake, find yourself a good job and be an ordinary woman. You’re even worse than your brother.”
“I’m not as bad as you think. But there’s nothing I can do.”
Riki showed her Kobata’s card. She gazed at it for a time. “I don’t have any use for this sort of thing,” she said, tearing it to small bits. She sat sobbing quietly, her head bowed. When she had had her cry, she was the old Mon again, sprawled sluggishly on the floor as if she found herself a nuisance.
“Something must be wrong with me. I have no energy.”
“Surely it’s not that again!”
“Oh, Mother.” Mon laughed. It was rather a forced laugh, and so how it touched Riki. “I wouldn’t be coming home if that was the trouble. I came because I wanted to see you.” There was sincerity in her voice. “Whether I’m good or whether I’m bad, somehow I want to come home. I even want to see that Inosuké.
While all this was happening, Akaza was with his boats, the seven of them tied together, their decks almost under water from the weight of the rocks they were hauling downstream. He was irritably hurrying the work in preparation for the early-summer rains, only a few days off. Once that work was over there would be a vacation. Akaza disliked vacations. Anyone who wanted to work on into the summer should come ahead, he shouted.
“Raise your hands if you want to.”
As they approached the jetty, he called out a hearty invitation to the half-naked men in the boats. Akaza was in good spirits. They all raised their hands, in favor of going on to the next job. Good, good—they’d all keep busy, and the dog days wouldn’t dry them out. Then Akaza gave the order to lower the rocks. The river rocks, like steel, poured from the worker’s hands into the baskets, and even as they watched it the current pulled up and stopped, almost sadly. When a little of the water found an outlet, it roared angrily through. “Rocks over there, rocks over there,” shouted Akaza. The hair on his chest seemed to stand on end. He bent forward like a bronze statue, tense to the point of breaking.
THE HOUSE OF A SPANISH DOG
A STORY FOR THOSE FOND OF DREAMING
BY Haruo Satō
TRANSLATED BY George Saitō
Haruo Satō, the eldest son in a family of physicians, was born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1892. From his early youth Satō aspired to become a writer. Upon graduation from school he entered Keio University in order to study literature under Kafū Nagai.
He started his literary career as a poet. His early poems show a strong socialistic tendency, which can be accounted for partly by the social disorder of the time. This stage, however, lasted only for a short period; Satō’s later poems were written in the characteristically elaborate style which was the outcome of his profound knowledge and passionate love of Japanese classical literature. Some critics have even gone so far as to declare that Satō’s poems will survive and be treasured so long as the Japanese language exists.
As a novelist Satō was mainly influenced by Kafū Nagai and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. His poetic talents led his early prose writings into the realm of fantasy. “The House of a Spanish Dog” (Supein-inu no Ie, 1916) was the first of several stories that were composed in a strongly lyrical vein. In his effort to escape from the melancholy of youth, Satō attempted to produce modern versions of the “hermit literature” so important in ancient Chinese and Japanese writing.
“Pastoral Melancholy” (1919) represents the culmination of Satō’s literary art; in it he develops the style of fantasy already revealed in “The House of a Spanish Dog.” Satō’s critical mind, however, did not permit him to remain a writer of simple prose poetry, but led him to adopt a more realistic approach to his material. At the same time he tried to depict the land of Japan in the style of Western painting. To this end he used the works of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, interpreting them after his own fashion.
FRATÉ starts running all of a sudden and waits for me at the parting of the road that leads to the blacksmith’s. He is a very clever dog and has been my friend for years. I am convinced that he is far cleverer than most men, not to mention my wife. So I take Fraté with me whenever I go for a walk. Once in a while he leads me to some quite unexpected spot. That is the reason that when I go for a walk these days I do not have any set destination in mind but follow obediently wherever my dog leads me. So far I have never been down the side street that goes to the blacksmith’s. Very well, today I shall follow the dog down there. So I turn in that direction.
The narrow road is on a gentle slope which occasionally makes sharp twists. I walk along behind my dog, not looking at the scenery, nor thinking, but simply letting myself indulge in idle fancies. Now and then I look up and observe the clouds in the sky. Suddenly some flowers by the roadside catch my attention. I pick a few and hold them to my nose. I do not know what they are called but they smell good. I walk along twisting them between my fingers. Fraté happens to notice them. He stops for a moment, tilts his head to the side and gazes into my eyes. He seems to want them. I throw them down for him. He sniffs at the flowers and then glances up at me as if to say that he wishes they were dog biscuits. Then he starts running down the road once more.
I walk along like this for nearly two hours. We seem to be climb
ing considerably and before long I can command quite a good view. Below the open fields that stretch out before me I can vaguely make out some town in the distance between the mist and the clouds. I stand there for some time gazing at it. Yes, it is certainly a town. But what town can possibly be lying over there with all those houses? There is something rather peculiar about the whole scene. I am totally ignorant about the geography of these parts, however, and there is really nothing so surprising about seeing an unfamiliar town. I look down the other side of the hill. It slopes down gently into the distance. The entire surface is covered with dense thickets. It is shortly before noon and the gentle spring sun shines like smoke, like scent, through the fresh green foliage and onto the slender trunks of oaks, chestnut trees, and silver birches. The balance of shade and sun on the tree trunks and on the ground is beautiful beyond words. I feel like going into the depths of that forest. The undergrowth must be very dense, but it is surely not impenetrable.
My friend Fraté seems to be thinking along the same lines. He advances merrily into the forest and I follow him. When we have gone a little over a hundred yards, the dog begins to walk in a different way. He abandons his easy gait and busily moves his legs forward as if he were weaving. He thrusts his nose forward. He must have found something. Is it a rabbit’s footprints, or can he have found a bird’s nest in that thick grass? For a few moments he hurries to and fro restlessly. Then he seems to find the right path and walks straight ahead. My curiosity is slightly aroused and I follow him. From time to time we startle wild birds who are mating amidst the branches.
After we have walked along at a rapid pace for about half an hour, Fraté suddenly comes to a halt. At the same moment I seem to hear the gurgling sound of running water. (This part of the country abounds in springs.) Jerking his ears irritably, Fraté walks back a few yards, sniffs the ground once again, and then sets off to the left. I am surprised to find how deep the forest is. I had never imagined that there were such vast thickets in this part of the country. From the look of it there must be almost seven hundred acres of woods. My dog’s peculiar behavior and the endless forest combine to fill me with curiosity. After another half an hour or so of walking, Fraté stops once again. He gives out a couple of staccato barks. Until this moment I had not noticed it, but now I see that a house is standing directly in front of me. There is something very strange about it. Why should anyone have a house in a place like this? For this is no ordinary charcoal shed such as one finds in the forests.