by Osamu Dazai
“Yes, I know, it costs money. But the question is not the money. It’s what you feel.”
Why, I wonder, couldn’t he have mentioned the simple fact that the money would be forthcoming from home? That one fact would probably have settled my feelings, but I was left in a fog.
“How about it? Have you anything which might be described as aspirations for the future? I suppose one can’t expect people one helps to understand how difficult it is to help another person.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m really worried about you. I’m responsible for you now, and I don’t like you to have such halfhearted feelings. I wish you would show me that you’re resolved to make a real effort to turn over a new leaf. If, for example, you were to come to me to discuss seriously your plans for the future, I would certainly do what I could. But of course you can’t expect to lead your former life of luxury on the help that poor old Flatfish can give—don’t give yourself any illusions on that score. No—but if you are resolute in your determination to begin again afresh, and you make definite plans for building your future, I think I might actually be willing to help you to rehabilitate yourself if you came to me for help, though Heaven knows I haven’t much to spare. Do you understand my feelings? What are your plans?”
“If you won’t let me stay here in your house I’ll work . . .”
“Are you serious? Do you realize that nowadays even graduates of Tokyo Imperial University . . .”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of getting a job with a company.”
“What then?”
“I want to be a painter.” I said this with conviction.
“Wha-a-t?”
I can never forget the indescribably crafty shadow that passed over Flatfish’s face as he laughed at me, his neck drawn in. It resembled contempt, yet it was different: if the world, like the sea, had depths of a thousand fathoms, this was the kind of weird shadow which might be found hovering here and there at the bottom. It was a laugh which enabled me to catch a glimpse of the very nadir of adult life.
He said, “There’s no point in discussing such a thing. Your feelings are still all up in the air. Think it over. Please devote this evening to thinking it over seriously.”
I ran up to the second floor as though driven, but even when I lay in bed nothing of a particularly constructive nature occurred to me. The next morning at dawn I ran away from Flatfish’s house.
I left behind a note, scrawled in pencil in big letters on my writing pad. “I shall return tonight without fail. I am going to discuss my plans for the future with a friend who lives at the address below. Please don’t worry about me. I’m telling the truth.” I wrote Horiki’s name and address, and stole out of Flatfish’s house.
I did not run away because I was mortified at having been lectured by Flatfish. I was, exactly as Flatfish described, a man whose feelings were up in the air, and I had absolutely no idea about future plans or anything else. Besides, I felt rather sorry for Flatfish that I should be a burden on him, and I found it quite intolerably painful to think that if by some remote chance I felt like bestirring myself to achieve a worthy purpose, I should have to depend on poor old Flatfish to dole out each month the capital needed for my rehabilitation.
When I left Flatfish’s house, however, I was certainly not seriously entertaining any idea of consulting the likes of Horiki about my future plans. I left the note hoping thereby to pacify Flatfish for a little while, if only for a split-second. (I didn’t write the note so much out of a detective-story strategem to gain a little more time for my escape—though, I must admit that the desire was at least faintly present—as to avoid causing Flatfish a sudden shock which would send him into a state of wild alarm and confusion. I think that might be a somewhat more accurate presentation of my motives. I knew that the facts were certain to be discovered, but I was afraid to state them as they were. One of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation—a quality which has made people call me at times a liar—but I have almost never embellished in order to bring myself any advantage; it was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow of a conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I frequently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service. This may have been a twisted form of my weakness, an idiocy, but the habit it engendered was taken full advantage of by the so-called honest citizens of the world.) That was how I happened to jot down Horiki’s name and address as they floated up from the distant recesses of my memory.
After leaving Flatfish’s house I walked as far as Shinjuku, where I sold the books I had in my pockets. Then I stood there uncertainly, utterly at a loss what to do. Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friendships—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
I had no friends. I had nowhere to go.
Horiki.
Here was a real case of a true word having been said in jest: I decided to visit Horiki, exactly as I had stated in my farewell note to Flatfish. I had never before gone myself to Horiki’s house. Usually I would invite him to my place by telegram when I wanted to see him. Now, however, I doubted whether I could manage the telegraph fee. I also wondered, with the jaundiced intelligence of a man in disgrace, whether Horiki might not refuse to come even if I telegraphed him. I decided on a visit, the most difficult thing in the world for me. Giving vent to a sigh, I boarded the streetcar. The thought that the only hope left me in the world was Horiki filled me with a foreboding dreadful enough to send chills up and down my spine.
Horiki was at home. He lived in a two-storied house at the end of a dirty alley. Horiki occupied only one medium-sized room on the second floor; downstairs his parents and a young workman were busily stitching and pounding strips of cloth to make thongs for sandals.
Horiki showed me that day a new aspect of his city-dweller personality. This was his knowing nature, an egoism so icy, so crafty that a country boy like myself could only stare with eyes opened wide in amazement. He was not a simple, endlessly passive type like myself.
“You. What a surprise. You’ve been forgiven by your father, have you? Not yet?”
I was unable to confess that I had run away.
In my usual way I evaded the issue, though I was certain that Horiki soon, if not immediately, would grasp what had happened. “Things will take care of themselves, in one way or another.”
“Look here! It’s no laughing matter. Let me give you a word of advice—stop your foolishness here and now. I’ve got business today anyway. I’m awfully busy these days.”
“Business? What kind of business?”
“Hey! What are you doing there? Don’t tear the thread off the cushion!”
While we were talking I had unconsciously been fiddling with and twisting around my finger one of the tassel-like threads which protruded from the corners of the cushion on which I sat�
�binding-threads, I think they are called. Horiki had assumed a jealous possessiveness about everything in his house down to the last cushion thread, and he glared at me, seemingly quite unembarrassed by this attitude. When I think of it, Horiki’s acquaintanceship with me had cost him nothing.
Horiki’s aged mother brought in a tray with two dishes of jelly.
“What have we here?” Horiki asked his mother tenderly, in the tones of the truly dutiful son, continuing in language so polite it sounded quite unnatural. “Oh, I’m sorry. Have you made jelly? That’s terrific. You shouldn’t have bothered. I was just going out on some business. But it would be wicked not to eat your wonderful jelly after you’ve gone to all the trouble. Thank you so much.” Then, turning in my direction, “How about one for you? Mother made it specially. Ahh . . . this is delicious. Really terrific.”
He ate with a gusto, almost a rapture, which did not seem to be altogether play acting. I also spooned my bowl of jelly. It tasted watery, and when I came to the piece of fruit at the bottom, it was not fruit after all, but a substance I could not identify. I by no means despised their poverty. (At the time I didn’t think that the jelly tasted bad, and I was really grateful for the old woman’s kindness. It is true that I dread poverty, but I do not believe I ever have despised it.) The jelly and the way Horiki rejoiced over it taught me a lesson in the parsimoniousness of the city-dweller, and in what it is really like in a Tokyo household where the members divide their lives so sharply between what they do at home and what they do on the outside. I was filled with dismay at these signs that I, a fool rendered incapable by my perpetual flight from human society from distinguishing between “at home” and “on the outside,” was the only one completely left out, that I had been deserted even by Horiki. I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got an appointment today,” Horiki said, standing and putting on his jacket. “I’m going now. Sorry.”
At that moment a woman visitor arrived for Horiki. My fortunes thereby took a sudden turn.
Horiki at once became quite animated. “Oh, I am sorry. I was just on my way to your place when this fellow dropped in without warning. No, you’re not in the way at all. Please come in.”
He seemed rattled. I took the cushion from under me and turned it over before handing it to Horiki, but snatching it from my hands, he turned it over once more as he offered it to the woman. There was only that one cushion for guests, besides the cushion Horiki sat on.
The woman was a tall, thin person. She declined the cushion and sat demurely in a corner by the door.
I listened absent-mindedly to their conversation. The woman, evidently an employee of a magazine publisher, had commissioned an illustration from Horiki, and had come now to collect it.
“We’re in a terrible hurry,” she explained.
“It’s ready. It’s been ready for some time. Here you are.”
A messenger arrived with a telegram.
As Horiki read it I could see the good spirits on his face turn ugly. “Damn it, what have you been up to?”
The telegram was from Flatfish.
“You go back at once. I ought to take you there myself, I suppose, but I haven’t got the time now. Imagine—a runaway, and looking so smug!”
The woman asked, “Where do you live?”
“In Okubo,” I answered without thinking.
“That’s quite near my office.”
She was born in Koshu and was twenty-eight. She lived in an apartment in Koenji with her five-year-old girl. She told me that her husband had died three years before.
“You look like someone who’s had an unhappy childhood. You’re so sensitive—more’s the pity for you.”
I led for the first time the life of a kept man. After Shizuko (that was the name of the lady journalist) went out to work in the morning at the magazine publisher’s, her daughter Shigeko and I obediently looked after the apartment. Shigeko had always been left to play in the superintendent’s room while her mother was away, and now she seemed delighted that an interesting “uncle” had turned up as a new playmate.
For about a week I remained in a state of daze. Just outside the apartment window was a kite caught in the telegraph wires; blown about and ripped by the dusty spring wind, it nevertheless clung tenaciously to the wires, as if in affirmation of something. Every time I looked at the kite I had to smile with embarrassment and blush. It haunted me even in dreams.
“I want some money.”
“How much?” she asked.
“A lot . . . Love flies out the window when poverty comes in the door, they say, and it’s true.”
“Don’t be silly. Such a trite expression.”
“Is it? But you don’t understand. I may run away if things go on at this rate.”
“Which of us is the poor one? And which will run away? What a silly thing to say!”
“I want to buy my drinks and cigarettes with my own money. I’m a lot better artist than Horiki.”
At such times the self-portraits I painted in high school—the ones Takeichi called “ghost pictures”—naturally came to mind. My lost masterpieces. These, my only really worthwhile pictures, had disappeared during one of my frequent changes of address. I afterwards painted pictures of every description, but they all fell far, far short of those splendid works as I remembered them. I was plagued by a heavy sense of loss, as if my heart had become empty.
The undrunk glass of absinthe.
A sense of loss which was doomed to remain eternally unmitigated stealthily began to take shape. Whenever I spoke of painting, that undrunk glass of absinthe flickered before my eyes. I was agonized by the frustrating thought: if only I could show them those paintings they would believe in my artistic talents.
“Do you really? You’re adorable when you joke that way with a serious face.”
But it was no joke. It was true. I wished I could have shown her those pictures. I felt an empty chagrin which suddenly gave way to resignation. I added, “Cartoons, I mean. I’m sure I’m better than Horiki at cartoons if nothing else.”
These clownish words of deceit were taken more seriously than the truth.
“Yes, that’s so. I’ve really been struck by those cartoons you’re always drawing for Shigeko. I’ve burst out laughing over them myself. How would you like to draw for our magazine? I can easily ask the editor.”
Her company published a monthly magazine, not an especially notable one, for children.
“Most women have only to lay eyes on you to want to be doing something for you so badly they can’t stand it . . . You’re always so timid and yet you’re funny . . . Sometimes you get terribly lonesome and depressed, but that only makes a woman’s heart itch all the more for you.”
Shizuko flattered me with these and other comments which, with the special repulsive quality of the kept man, I calmly accepted. Whenever I thought of my situation I sank all the deeper in my depression, and I lost all my energy. It kept preying on my mind that I needed money more than a woman, that anyway I wanted to escape from Shizuko and make my own living. I made plans of every sort, but my struggles only enmeshed me the more in my dependence on her. This strong-minded woman herself dealt with the complications which developed from my running away, and took care of almost everything else for me. As a result I became more timid than ever before her.
At Shizuko’s suggestion a conference took place attended by Flatfish, Horiki and herself at which it was concluded that all relations between me and my family were to be broken, and I was to live with Shizuko as man and wife. Thanks also to Shizuko’s efforts, my cartoons began to produce a surprising amount of money. I bought liquor and cigarettes, as I had planned, with the proceeds, but my gloom and depression grew only the more intense. I had sunk to the bottom: sometimes when I was drawing “The Adventures of Kinta and Ota,” the monthly comic strip for Shizuko’s magazine, I would suddenly think of home, and this
made me feel so miserable that my pen would stop moving, and I looked down, through brimming tears.
At such times the one slight relief came from little Shigeko. By now she was calling me “Daddy” with no show of hesitation.
“Daddy, is it true that God will grant you anything if you pray for it?”
I thought that I for one would like to make such a prayer:
Oh, vouchsafe unto me a will of ice. Acquaint me with the true natures of “human beings.” Is it not a sin for a man to push aside his fellow? Vouchsafe unto me a mask of anger.
“Yes. I’m sure He’ll grant Shigeko anything she wants, but I don’t suppose Daddy has a chance.”
I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one’s head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.
“Why haven’t you a chance?”
“Because I disobeyed what my father told me.”
“Did you? But everybody says you’re so nice.”
That’s because I deceived them. I was aware that everybody in the apartment house was friendly to me, but it was extremely difficult for me to explain to Shigeko how much I feared them all, and how I was cursed by the unhappy peculiarity that the more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them—a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody.
I casually changed the subject. “Shigeko, what would you like from God?”
“I would like my real Daddy back.”
I felt dizzy with the shock. An enemy. Was I Shigeko’s enemy, or was she mine? Here was another frightening grown-up who would intimidate me. A stranger, an incomprehensible stranger, a stranger full of secrets. Shigeko’s face suddenly began to look that way.
I had been deluding myself with the belief that Shigeko at least was safe, but she too was like the ox which suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank. I knew that from then on I would have to be timid even before that little girl.