Mandarins: Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

6. Illness

  The wind was blowing steadily from the sea as he opened an English dictionary and searched the entries with his fingertip:

  Talaria: winged shoes or sandals

  Tale: a story

  Talipot: A palm tree native to the East Indies, attaining a height of fifty to one hundred feet, its leaves used for umbrellas, fans, and hats, blooming once in seventy years . . .

  In his mind he could clearly picture the flowers of the palms. He felt a tickling in his throat he had never known before. He found himself spitting into the dictionary. Was it sputum? No. He contemplated the brevity of life and once again imagined the palm flowers, high aloft the trees, far across the ocean.

  7. Paintings

  Suddenly—indeed suddenly . . . He was standing in front of a bookstore, looking at a collection of Van Gogh paintings, when he suddenly understood what a painting is. They were, of course, a photographic edition, but from them he felt Nature springing forth in all her splendor.

  His passion for the paintings renewed and altered his vision. He began to hone in on the sway and bend of branches and the sensual plumpness of female cheeks.

  At the end of a rainy afternoon in autumn, he was walking through a suburban railway underpass. Beneath an embankment on the other side stood a horse-drawn wagon. As he passed it, he felt the presence of someone who had walked the same path. Someone? He had no need to ask himself twice. In his twenty-three-year-old mind he saw a Dutchman with an amputated ear, a long pipe in his mouth, looking out with a penetrating gaze at the bleak landscape . . .

  8. Sparks

  Drenched by the rain, he walked the asphalt street. It was raining rather heavily. In the pervasive dampness, he noticed the rubbery smell of his mackintosh.

  From an overhead trolley cable in front of him came a burst of violet sparks. He felt strangely moved. In his coat pocket he had tucked away a manuscript intended for a literary coterie. As he went on through the rain, he looked up again at the cable behind him: it was sparkling as ever.

  He had taken a survey of life and found nothing in particular that he wanted or desired. But now those violet sparks . . . To seize those stupendous sparks exploding in space, he would happily have forfeited his life.

  9. Cadavers

  On a big toe of each cadaver hung an identifying tag, including name and age. A friend of his was bent over, skillfully wielding a scalpel as he began to peel away the facial skin of one. Underneath lay a beautiful layer of yellow fat.

  He looked carefully at the cadaver: he needed background for a short story set in the Heian period. He was, however, made uneasy by the smell—suggesting rotting apricots—that emanated from the body. With knitted eyebrows, his friend calmly carried on his work.

  “We’ve recently had quite a shortage,” his friend remarked.

  To this he had a ready answer: If I were faced with that problem, I suppose I’d resort to murder—without any sort of animosity, he thought.

  Needless to say, he kept this comment to himself.

  10. Sensei

  Sitting under a large oak, he was reading one of Sensei’s books. Not a leaf was stirring in the autumn light. In distant space, a crystal balance scale was maintaining perfect equilibrium. This was the scene he saw in his mind’s eye as he read . . .

  11. Dawn

  The day gradually dawned. At a corner of a street, he looked out on a vast market. The crowds and their vehicles were bathed in rose light. He lit a cigarette and calmly strolled on through. A scrawny black dog suddenly began barking at him, but he was neither surprised nor dismayed; indeed, he felt some affection for the dog.

  In the middle of the market was a plane tree, spreading its branches all around. He stood at the base of the trunk and looked up through those branches at the distant sky, in which a star was twinkling directly above his head.

  He was in his twenty-fifth year. It had been three months since he had made the acquaintance of his mentor.

  12. Military Port

  The interior of the submarine was dimly lit. Crouched down among the machines on all sides, he peered through a small telescope. He could see reflected in the bright light the military port.

  “There you’ll be able to see the Kongō,” an officer told him. Looking at the reduced image of the battle cruiser through the square lens, he was somehow reminded of Dutch parsley, its scent lingering even when mounted on a portion of thirty-sen beefsteak.

  13. Sensei’s Death

  In the wind that followed a lull in the rain, he was walking the platform of a new railway station. The sky was still overcast. On the other side, a few workers were chanting robustly as they swung their picks up and down in unison.

  Both their song and his sentiments were scattered by the wind. Leaving his cigarette unlit, he felt an anguish bordering on joy. “Sensei critically ill” read the telegram that he had thrust into his pocket.

  The 6 AM Tōkyō-bound train came curving round the pine-covered slope and pulled in, trailing a wisp of smoke.

  14. Marriage

  “You know, we can’t have you already wasting money,” he complained to his wife the day after their wedding. It was less his complaint than one his maternal aunt had ordered him to deliver on her behalf. His wife had, of course, apologized not only to him but also to the aunt—as they sat in front of the pot of jonquils she had bought for him . . .

  15. They

  They led a tranquil life in the shade of a broad-leafed banana tree, for their house was situated in a coastal town a good hour away by train from Tōkyō.

  16. Pillow

  He read a book by Anatole France, his head propped up by a pillow of skepticism exuding a rosy fragrance; the presence in that same pillow of a centaur quite escaped his notice.

  17. A Butterfly

  A butterfly fluttered in the seaweed-scented breeze. For an instant, he felt its wings touch his parched lips. Even many years later, the powder on those wings that brushed his lips still glistened.

  18. The Moon

  On the stairs of a hotel, he met her, quite by accident. Even in the daytime, her face seemed bathed in moonlight. As his gaze followed her (they were not in the least acquainted), he experienced a sadness he had not seen before . . .

  19. Artificial Wings

  He shifted from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though skipping over Rousseau, perhaps because in one respect, being prone to be carried away by passion, he resembled him. Leaning toward another side of himself, the coldly rational, he went to Candide’s philosopher.

  He was twenty-nine years old, and already all was gloom. Yet in this way Voltaire provided him, such as he was, with artificial wings. He spread those wings and rose easily into the air, the joys and sorrows of human life, flooded with the light of reason, now sinking below his gaze. Unimpeded on his course toward the sun, he rained down his smiles and smirks on the miserable towns below, as though having forgotten the Greek of long ago who, with his own artificial wings scorched by Helios, went plunging into the sea and drowned . . .

  20. Shackles

  Having joined a newspaper company, he found himself and his wife sharing a house with his foster parents. He entrusted himself to a contract he had signed. It was written on a yellow piece of paper. Yet on rereading it, he realized that all duties and obligations rested with him, none with the company.

  21. The Daughter of a Lunatic

  Two rickshaws were running along a deserted country road on an overcast day, heading, it was clear from the briny breeze, toward the sea. He was sitting in the one behind, wondering what had induced him to embark on this rendezvous in which he had utterly no interest. It was certainly not love that had brought him here. If it was not love . . . To avoid responding to that question, he could not help thinking that at least they were on the same footing.

  Riding in the rickshaw ahead of him was the daughter of a lunatic. Jealousy had driven her younger sister to suicide.

  There is no longer any alternative.

 
; Toward this girl, this lunatic’s daughter, driven by base animal instincts, he felt a certain abhorrence.

  The rickshaws were now passing along a cemetery that smelled of the sea. Dark gravestones stood beyond the brushwood fence covered with oyster shells. Through the gravestones he gazed out on the faintly glittering waves. Suddenly he felt contempt for her husband, unable to win her heart.

  22. A Painter

  It was a magazine illustration, an India-ink drawing of a rooster, striking in its individuality. He asked a friend about the artist.

  A week later the artist paid him a visit. It was one of the most memorable events of his life. In the painter he discovered a poem that no one knew and in so doing his own soul, which likewise he never had known.

  On a chilly autumn evening, an ear of maize reminded him instantly of the artist. Armed with its rough leaves, the tall plant spread its thin, nervelike roots over the soil; in its revelation of vulnerability, it was, of course, none other than his own self-portrait. Yet the discovery only dispirited him.

  It is already too late. Yet if the die is cast . . .

  23. She

  Standing in front of a public square as dusk was falling . . . Feeling somewhat feverish, he started to cross it, the electric lights in the multistoried buildings twinkling against a faintly silver sky.

  He stopped along the way, resolved to wait for her arrival. Five minutes later she was coming toward him, looking somehow haggard. As soon as she saw his face, she smiled and said: “I’m tired.” They walked side by side through the darkening square—for the first time together. He sensed that to be with her, he would abandon everything.

  They were riding in a taxi when she gazed earnestly into his face and asked: “Have you any regrets?”

  “I regret nothing,” he said firmly.

  “Nor I,” she replied, pressing his hand. At that moment too, her face appeared to be bathed in moonlight.

  24. Birth

  Standing in front of the sliding door, he gazed down at the midwife, dressed in her white surgical gown, as she washed the newborn. It grimaced pitifully whenever the soap stung its eyes, crying at the top of its voice. He noticed that the infant had a rodentlike odor and thought in all earnestness:

  Why have you too come into this world so full of vain desire and suffering? And why is this your burden of fate: to have the likes of me as a father?

  This was the first son that his wife had borne to him.

  25. Strindberg

  He stood in the doorway of the room and watched some grimy Chinese playing mahjong in the light of the moon, the pomegranates in bloom. Stepping inside again, he sat down at a low-hanging lamp and read Strindberg’s Confessions of a Fool. Two pages were enough to bring a wry smile to his lips . . . The lies Strindberg was telling in writing letters to the countess, his lover, were hardly different from those he himself was writing.

  26. Ancient Times

  The faded Buddhas, the gods, the horses, the lotus flowers . . . The weight they bore down on him was all but crushing. He looked up at them and forgot everything, even his own happiness at having shaken free of the lunatic’s daughter.

  27. Spartan Discipline

  He was walking the backstreets with a friend. A canopied rickshaw came racing directly toward them. To his amazement, the passenger was the woman he had seen the previous evening. Even in the full light of day, her face seemed bathed in moonlight. In the presence of his friend, needless to say, they did not exchange greetings . . .

  “What a beautiful woman!” his friend exclaimed.

  He responded without hesitation, even as he stared straight ahead to the verdant hill at the end of the road.

  “Yes, quite a beauty indeed!”

  28. Murder

  The odor of cow dung drifted across the sunlit countryside. He walked up the slope, wiping away perspiration. The fields on both sides of the road were wafting forth the rich smell of ripened barley.

  “Kill! Kill!” He was mumbling the words again and again. Whom should he kill? He knew only too well, as he remembered an utterly contemptible man with short-cropped hair. Suddenly beyond the fields of golden barley the dome of a Roman Catholic church came into view . . .

  29. Form

  It was an iron sake flask. The fine lines engraved in it had at some point impressed upon him the beauty of form.

  30. Rain

  On the large bed he talked with her about this and that. Beyond the windows of the room it was raining. The crinum blossoms, it appeared, had begun to rot. Just as before, her face seemed to be bathed in the light of the moon, and yet he could not help finding their conversation tedious. Lying on his stomach, he quietly lit a cigarette. It occurred to him that he had been living with her for seven years. He asked himself: Do I still love her? For all his habitual self-reflection, he was surprised at the answer: Yes, I do.

  31. The Great Earthquake

  It resembled the odor of overripe apricots. He vaguely sensed it as he walked about the burned-out ruins. It occurred to him that the smell of corpses rotting under a burning sun is not as unpleasant as one might think. Yet as he stood in front of a pond heaped with bodies, he discovered that gruesome2 is not too strong a word. He was particularly moved by the remains of a young girl of twelve or thirteen. He gazed at her and felt something close to envy, as he remembered: Those whom the gods love die young. His elder sister and younger half brother had lost their homes to fire. But his sister’s husband had been found guilty of false testimony and given a suspended sentence.

  Death to one and all! he could not help ruminating to himself, as he stood amidst the ashes.

  32. Quarrel

  He scuffled with his younger half brother. While the latter doubtlessly felt constrained by his presence, it was equally true he had lost his freedom because of that brother. Their relatives constantly urged the younger: “Learn from the example of your elder brother!” Yet the very advice only served to bind that same elder brother hand and foot. In their struggle, they rolled out onto the veranda. He still remembered that in the garden, under the rain-threatening sky, stood a crape myrtle, its bright-red blossoms in full bloom.

  33. Heroes

  In the house of Voltaire, he was gazing out from a window at the high mountains. Above the glaciers there was not so much as the shadow of a vulture. A short Russian nonetheless continued persistently up the mountain path.

  When night had fallen on the house of Voltaire, he wrote a tendentious poem as he remembered the figure of the Russian on the sloping trail:

  You who more than any other kept the Ten Commandments

  You who more than any other broke them

  You who more than any other loved the people

  You who more than any other despised them

  You who more than any other burned with idealism

  You who more than any other knew reality

  You are the flower-scented electric locomotive

  To which we of Asia have given birth

  34. Color

  At the age of thirty he discovered that he had a great fondness for an empty plot of land. Scattered about on the moss-covered ground were numerous bricks and tile shards. Yet in his eyes it was a veritable Cézanne.

  He happened to remember his passion of seven or eight years before. At the same time, he realized that at the time he had not known a thing about color.

  35. Pierrot Puppet

  He intended to live with such intensity that he would have no regrets at his death. He nonetheless continued to spend his days in diffident deference to his foster parents and his aunt, thereby creating for himself a life divided between light and darkness. One day he saw standing in an Occidental clothing shop a Pierrot puppet and wondered how much like one he was himself. But his unconscious, that is, his second self, had long since included this intuition in a short story.

  36. Languor

  He was walking with a university student through a field of pampas grass.

  “You and your classmates must
still possess a lust for life.”

  “Yes, but surely you do as well . . .”

  “As a matter of fact, I do not. All I have is my desire to produce.”

  That was his honest feeling. Somewhere along the way he had lost interest in life.

  “But the creative urge is really the same thing, is it not?”

  He gave no reply. Now taking distinct shape over the red spikes of the pampas grass was an active volcano, for which he experienced a feeling close to envy, though he himself did not know why . . .

  37. Woman of the North

  He met a woman who even in sheer mental prowess was his match. By composing lyrical poems such as Koshibito,3 he narrowly escaped danger. The twinge of regret he felt was as when one removes dazzling snow frozen to a tree trunk.

  The sedge hat dancing in the wind

  Will fall in time into the road.

  What care have I for my good name

  When thine alone is dear to me?

  38. Vengeance

  He sat on the balcony of a hotel surrounded by trees in bud, drawing pictures to amuse a young boy, the only son of the lunatic’s daughter, with whom he had broken all ties seven years earlier.