It was not as if Daisuke had come to content himself with brass because he had suddenly been swept into the eye of a raging storm and had undergone a drastic change of heart from the shock—no, there was no such melodrama behind the change. Simply by using the powers of reasoning and observation so characteristic of him, he had gradually stripped off the gold plating. Daisuke held that most of it had been coated on by his father. There was a time when his father had looked like gold to him. Many of his seniors had looked like gold. Anyone who had attained a certain high level of education had looked like gold. Therefore, his own gold plating had been all the more painful, and he had been impatient to become solid gold himself. But once his keen eyes penetrated directly to the inner layers of those other people, his efforts suddenly came to seem foolish.
Other thoughts crossed Daisuke’s mind. If, over three or four years, he himself had changed this much, then during that same time, Hiraoka must also have changed within the limits of his own experience. The old Daisuke, wanting Hiraoka to think well of him, would have managed to do something in these circumstances, even if that had meant fighting with his brother or arguing with his father; and he would have come to Hiraoka to give a word-for-word account of how it had gone. But then again, it was only the old Hiraoka who would have expected this; now, he probably did not take friends that seriously.
So with only a word or two on the crucial subject, they passed the time in small talk until the sake arrived. Michiyo held the bottle by the bottom and served.
Hiraoka became increasingly talkative as he drank. Sometimes, no matter how drunk he was, his manner did not change at all; at other times, he would become enormously animated and his tone would be charged with pleasure. When this happened, he not only became more loquacious than most drinkers, but he would even raise comparatively serious issues and argue them happily with his partner. It was strange for Daisuke to realize that it was easiest to argue with Hiraoka when he fell into this state. Hiraoka used to say, shall we have a drink and show our true colors? The boundary between the two had moved far from where it had been in those days. And within themselves, each knew that having moved apart, it would be difficult to find a path that would bring them closer together. The day after Hiraoka’s arrival in Tokyo, their first encounter in three years, each had discovered that the other had already left his side.
But today, there was something peculiar. The more he warmed up to his sake, the more the old Hiraoka came out. As the sake brought him around to a comfortable point, he seemed to numb himself completely to his present financial predicament, the life ahead of him, its agonies, his discontent, the turmoil at the bottom of his heart. In a single bound Hiraoka’s talk leaped to a lofty plane.
“Yes, I failed. I failed, but I’m still working. And I plan to work in the future too. You look at my failure and you laugh—even if you say you don’t, it comes down to the same thing, so it doesn’t matter. So, you laugh. You laugh, but you don’t do anything, see? You’re a fellow who takes the world just as it’s given. Put it another way—you’re incapable of working your will. If you say you have no will to work, I won’t believe you. You’re human, after all. I’ll bet you always feel as if you’re missing something, which proves my point. I couldn’t go on living without exerting my will upon the real world and getting some concrete evidence that this world had, to some extent, become a little more to my liking because I had willed it so. That’s where I see the value in my existence. All you do is think. Because all you do is think, you’ve constructed two separate worlds—one inside your head and one outside. Just the fact that you tolerate this enormous dissonance—why, that’s a great intangible failure already. Ask why. I’ve pushed the dissonance outside, whereas you’ve shoved it into your head—and just because I’ve pushed it out, the degree of actual failure may be smaller on my part. But you laugh at me. And I can’t laugh at you. No, I’d like to, but society says I can’t, right?”
“Go ahead and laugh. Even before you laugh at me, I’ve already laughed at myself.”
“That’s a lie. Isn’t it, Michiyo?”
Michiyo had been sitting silently all this time, but on this sudden appeal from her husband, she smiled and looked at Daisuke.
“It’s true, isn’t it, Michiyo-san?” said Daisuke, raising his sake cup to be served.
“No, it’s a lie. I don’t care what my wife says to defend you, it’s a lie. Though of course, whether you’re laughing at other people or at yourself, you do it all in your head, so it’s hard to tell whether you’re lying or telling the truth.”
“Oh, quit kidding.”
“I’m not kidding, I’m completely serious. Of course, you didn’t used to be like that. No, you didn’t used to be like that at all, but you’re quite a different man today. Right, Michiyo? Anyone can see that Nagai’s proud.”
“But to hear the way you’ve been talking, it sounds like you’re the proud one.”
Hiraoka laughed loudly. Michiyo took the sake-warming bottle into the next room.
Picking at the appetizers on the table with his chopsticks, Hiraoka munched noisily with his face down. Soon, he lifted bleary eyes and said, “This is the first time in a long while that I’ve gotten drunk so nicely. But look—you’re not feeling that happy, are you. It’s unpardonable. I’ve become the old Hiraoka Tsunejirō, but you won’t become the old Nagai Daisuke, that’s unpardonable. Come on, try. Drink. I’ll drink more myself. So you drink more too.”
Daisuke recognized in these words a sincere and naive effort to take him back to his old self. And he was moved. But at the same time, he could not help feeling that he was being begged to give back the bread that he had eaten the day before.
“When you drink, even though your words sound drunk, your head’s usually clear—so I’ll go ahead and speak.’’
“That’s right, that’s the old Nagai.”
Daisuke suddenly did not want to continue. “Are you sure your head’s steady?’’ he asked.
“Of course it is. As long as yours is steady; mine’s always steady,” he said, and looked Daisuke straight in the eye. Indeed, it was as he said.
So Daisuke said, “You’ve been attacking me quite a bit for not working, and I haven’t said anything. I don’t say anything because, just as you charge, I don’t intend to work.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?—well, it’s not my fault. That is to say, it’s the world’s fault. Or, to exaggerate a little, it’s because the relationship between Japan and the West is no good that I won’t work. First of all, there’s no other country with such a bad case of beggar’s twitch. When do you think all those debts can be paid off? Oh, the foreign currency bonds might get paid. But they aren’t the only debts. The point is, Japan can’t get along without borrowing from the West. But it poses as a first-class power. And it’s straining to join the ranks of the firstclass powers. That’s why, in every direction, it puts up the facade of a first-class power and cheats on what’s behind. It’s like the frog that tried to outdo the cow—look, Japan’s belly is bursting. And see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can’t do anything worthwhile. They get an education that’s stripped to the bare bone, and they’re driven with their noses to the grindstone until they’re dizzy—that’s why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them—they’re usually stupid. They haven’t thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They’re too exhausted to think about anything else; it’s not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that’s not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won’t find one square inch of brightness. It’s all pitch black. So what difference would it make, what I said or what I did, me standing all alone in the middle of it? I’ve always been a loafer. No, I
was a loafer even when I was going around with you. In those days, I tried to look a little lively—that’s probably why I seemed talented and promising to you. Of course, if Japanese society were in sound spiritual, moral, and physical health—if it were just in all around good health, then I’d still be talented and promising, don’t you see? Because then there would be plenty of incentive to shake me out of my inclination to just loaf. But as things are, it’s no good. I’d rather be alone. As for your so-called world-as-it’s-given, I’ll take it as it is and content myself with having contact with just those things that are most suited to me. To go out and bring other people around to my way of thinking—that’s something that can’t be done....”
Daisuke paused for an instant. Then he turned to Michiyo, who sat looking somewhat uncomfortable, and coaxed, “What do you think, Michiyo-san. About my idea. Isn’t it nice and easygoing? Won’t you be on my side?”
“In a way it sounds pessimistic, and in a way it sounds easygoing. It’s strange. I don’t understand very well. But it seems like you’re cheating a little.”
“Oh? Where?”
“Where?—well, don’t you think . . .?” and Michiyo turned to her husband. Hiraoka had been sitting silently with his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his hands; without a word, he put his sake cup before Daisuke. Daisuke received it silently. Michiyo filled their cups again.
Touching the cup to his lips, Daisuke felt there was no need to say more. To begin with, he was not arguing for the sake of bringing Hiraoka around to his viewpoint; nor had he come to be lectured by Hiraoka. Since he realized from the start that the two were destined to stand apart, he had tried to tie up the argument at a reasonable point and bring the conversation around to more common social topics in which Michiyo could join.
But Hiraoka became stubborn when drunk. Thrusting out his chest, which was flushed to the roots of its hairs, he said, “That’s interesting. Very interesting. People like me who tackle a part of reality and struggle with it don’t have time to think up things like that. Japan might be poor, it might be weak—but I forget about that when I’m working. Society might be degenerating, but I don’t notice it; I keep busy in the middle of it. Oh, I suppose that the poverty of Japan or the degeneracy of people like me might disturb a man of leisure like you; but that’s the kind of thing that only a man who’s got nothing to do with the rest of society, a spectator, can say. In other words, it’s because you have the time to look at your own face in the mirror that you come up with things like that. People forget their faces when they’re busy.”
Hiraoka had naturally hit upon this metaphor as he talked, and feeling as if he had found a great ally, he paused triumphantly. Daisuke had no choice but to smile weakly. Hiraoka picked up immediately. “What’s wrong with you is that you’ve never had to worry about money. You don’t feel like working because you don’t have to in order to make ends meet. In other words, you’re still little Master Daisuke— that’s why you keep on saying these nice, refined things. . . .”
At this point, Daisuke found Hiraoka a trifle provoking and cut him short: “It’s fine to work, but as long as you’re going to work, it ought to be for more than subsistence, else it won’t be to your credit. All toil that is sacred transcends the realm of bread.”
Hiraoka studied Daisuke’s face with strangely unpleasant eyes. Then he asked, “Why?”
“Why? Because toil for the sake of subsistence is not toil for its own sake.”
“I can’t understand that—it sounds like a proposition from a logic textbook. Can’t you put it in terms that a practical man can understand?”
“I mean that it’s hard to work sincerely at a job that you’re doing just to eat.”
“I think just the opposite. It’s because you’re working to eat that you feel like working furiously.”
“Maybe you can work furiously, but it’s hard to work sincerely. If you’re working in order to eat, which do you think is the main object—work or food?”
“Food, of course.”
“See? If food’s the object and work the means, then it stands to reason that you’ll adjust your work to make it easier to eat. In that case, it won’t matter what you do or how you do it as long as you can get bread—that’s what it’s bound to come down to. As long as the content and direction, or the procedure of a given endeavor are circumscribed by external conditions, then that endeavor is degenerate endeavor.”
“That sounds pretty theoretical again. But why should that matter?” “Then let me explain it to you with a very refined example. This may sound a little musty, but I remember reading it in a book. Oda Nobunaga once hired a famous cook. The first time he ate something prepared by the cook, he thought it tasted terrible, so he gave the cook a sound scolding. After that, the cook, who had been punished for serving his finest dishes, would only make second and third-rate dishes, and he was always praised. Now, take this cook—he might have been very shrewd as far as working for a living went, but as for working for his art, which was cooking, why, he was insincere; he was a degenerate cook.”
“But if he hadn’t done that, he would have been fired. He couldn’t help it.”
“That’s why I’m saying, unless you’re a man without worries about food and clothing, doing something on a whim as it were, it’s impossible to do any serious work.”
“So that means only a man in your position is capable of sacred toil. Then it’s your duty all the more to do something. Right, Michiyo?”
“Yes, that’s true.’’
“It seems that we’re right back where we started. That’s why arguments are no good,” said Daisuke, scratching his head. The argument was over at last.
CHAPTER VII
DAISUKE WAS TAKING A BATH. “How’s the temperature, Sensei? Shall I heat it up a bit?” Kadono popped his head in at the door. He was quite attentive to these matters.
Soaking in the water, Daisuke remained motionless. “This is fine,”
he answered.
“Is it,” Kadono said abruptly and returned to the morning room. Daisuke found Kadono’s response terribly interesting and grinned broadly to himself. Daisuke had a sensibility that registered perceptions unknown to most people. He occasionally suffered agonizing experiences on account of it. Once, when a friend’s father died, he had attended the funeral. He happened to glance at his friend in formal attire, following the coffin with a green bamboo stick; the sight struck him as so funny he did not know what to do. Another time, listening to his father lecture, he had unwittingly looked at the old man’s face and was seized by an uncontrollable desire to burst out laughing. In the days before he had his own bath, he used to go to a neighborhood bathhouse, where there was one unusually muscular attendant. Whenever Daisuke went, this fellow would come dashing out from the back, crying “Let me wash you down,” and proceed to rub his back. Each time he had his back scrubbed by this fellow, Daisuke felt as if it were being done by an Egyptian. Try as he would, he could not picture the man as a Japanese.
There were other strange things. The other day he had discovered in his readings that a physiologist named Weber could accelerate and decelerate his heartbeat at will; Daisuke, who was in the habit of examining his heartbeat anyway, was tempted to try it, but when he was at the point of making two or three timid attempts a day, he began to feel that he was becoming like Weber. Startled by the thought, he abruptly halted his investigations.
Daisuke, who had been quietly soaking in the water, mechanically lifted his right hand to his left breast; no sooner had he heard the throbbing of life two or three times than he remembered Weber and immediately got out of the tub. There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, he stared absently at his legs. They began to look strange. They no longer seemed to grow from his trunk at all, but rather, completely unconnected, they sprawled rudely before him. When he got this far, he realized something he had never noticed before—th
at his legs were unbearably hideous. With hair growing unevenly and blue streaks running rampant, they were terribly strange creatures.
Daisuke got into the tub again and wondered if, as Hiraoka had said, such thoughts came to him because he had entirely too much time on his hands. When he left the bath and looked at his form in the mirror, he recalled Hiraoka’s words again. Now it was time to shave his cheeks with the broad Western razor; the sight of the sharp blade gleaming in the mirror aroused a ticklish sensation in him. Pressed by the knowledge that if the sensation became more acute he would feel as if he were looking down from a high tower, he finally managed to finish shaving.
Just as he was about to pass through the morning room, he heard the words, “Sensei’s pretty crafty, somehow.” It was Kadono talking to the old woman.
“What do you mean, crafty?” Daisuke stopped and looked at Kadono.
Kadono answered, “Oh, you’re out already, Sensei. That was quick.” Given this greeting, Daisuke could not very well repeat, what do you mean, crafty. So he went straight back to his study, sat in a chair, and rested.
As he rested, it occurred to him that it could not be good for his health to have his mind working in such odd ways; perhaps he should do a little traveling. For one thing, it would be a convenient way of avoiding the marriage issue that had reared its head again. But then, Hiraoka still weighed on his mind, and he quickly erased all thought of seeking a change of air. When he pursued the matter further, it became clear that it was Michiyo, not Hiraoka, who weighed on his mind. But even when he had pursued the issue this far, Daisuke did not feel the slightest qualms. On the contrary, he felt rather elated.
And Then Page 8