Mandarins: Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  There was no need to send O-matsu to the clothing shop just to buy bleached cotton.

  “I’ll put it on myself. Just fold it and leave it here.”

  He had intended to use the loincloth to hang himself and spent a good half day thinking how he might carry out his plan. Yet being unable even to sit up without help, he could hardly expect to find the opportunity. Moreover, in the face of death, even Genkaku was fearful. Gazing in the dim electric light at a calligraphic scroll in the Ōbaku style hanging in the alcove, he sneered at his own lingering greed for life.

  “Kōno-san! Please help me to sit up!”

  It was about ten o’clock in the evening.

  “I want to take a short nap. You shouldn’t refrain from taking a bit of rest yourself.”

  “No, thank you,” replied Kōno curtly, giving him a strange look. “I shall stay awake. It is my duty.”

  Genkaku sensed that she had seen through his plan. He nodded without saying anything further and pretended to sleep. Kōno sat at her patient’s bedside, opened the latest edition of a women’s magazine, and appeared to be absorbed in it. Genkaku still had his mind on the loincloth next to his futon, as he watched Kōno through half-closed eyes. He felt a sudden urge to laugh.

  “Kōno-san!”

  The nurse in turn gave him a startled look. Leaning against the pile of bedclothes, he gave vent to uncontrollable mirth.

  “What is it?”

  “Never mind. It was nothing.”

  And yet he continued to laugh, waving his bony right arm.

  “A moment ago I was struck by something quite amusing, though I’m not sure what . . . Now help me lie down again.”

  About an hour later, Genkaku had fallen asleep. In the night, he had a terrifying dream. He was standing in a dense wood, looking into what appeared to be a sitting room, through the gap in the papered doors, whose solid board below the latticed panels was quite tall. In the room lay a child, stark naked. Though still an infant, its face, which was turned toward him, was covered with the wrinkles of old age. Genkaku almost cried out and awoke, covered with sweat . . .

  He was alone in the dark room. “Is it still night?” he wondered, but then saw from the table clock that it was nearly noon. For a moment the feeling of relief filled him with cheer, but soon he had reverted to his normal state of gloom. As he lay on his back, he counted his inhalations and exhalations. He felt a vague presence urging him on: “Now is the time!” He silently reached for the loincloth, wrapped it about his head, and pulled hard with both hands.

  At that moment, Takeo, a veritable ball of thick winter clothing, stuck his head in the door and then went running as fast as his legs would carry him to the sitting room, hooting with amusement:

  “Grandfather’s doing something funny!”

  6

  Approximately a week later, surrounded by members of his family, Genkaku died of tuberculosis. He had a magnificent funeral. (O-tori’s paralytic condition precluded her attendance.) Having expressed their condolences to Jūkichi and O-suzu, the mourners burned incense in front of the coffin, which was wrapped in white damask silk. Once outside the gate of the house, most quite forgot about the deceased, but this was clearly not true of his old friends. “The old man must have achieved his life’s dream, with a young mistress and a tidy sum of money.” Such was the unanimous sentiment of their talk.

  The sun was hidden behind the clouds, as a horse-drawn hearse moved through the streets of late December, heading toward the crematorium. Jūkichi rode behind, accompanied by a cousin, a university student, who, perturbed by the swaying of their shabby carriage, exchanged few words with him, concentrating instead on the small volume he was reading, an English translation of Wilhelm Liebknecht’s Erinnerungen eines Soldaten der Revolution. Having been up all night for the wake, Jūkichi dozed off or stared out the window at the newly constructed houses passing them by. “The entire neighborhood has changed,” he muttered listlessly, talking to himself.

  Toiling their way through streets mired in mud and slush, the carriages at last reached the crematorium. Yet despite the telephone arrangements he had made, Jūkichi was told that the first-class furnaces were all in use; there were still, however, second-class places available. To the two men, such would have been a matter of indifference, but for O-suzu’s sake more than out of consideration for his father-in-law, Jūkichi ardently negotiated with the official on the other side of the half-moon window:

  “You see, to be honest, the deceased began to receive medical care only after it was too late, and so at the very least we should like to give him a first-class cremation.”

  This fabrication proved to be more effective than he had hoped.

  “Well then, as the regular first-class furnaces are not available, we shall offer you the special first-class furnace—but without extra charge.”

  Feeling awkward, Jūkichi repeatedly offered his thanks to the kind-looking elderly man in brass-framed spectacles.

  “Oh, no, there’s nothing for which you have to thank me.”

  Having sealed the furnace, Jūkichi and his cousin returned to their shabby carriage. They were on their way through the crematorium gate, when to their surprise they saw O-yoshi standing alone in front of the brick wall. She bowed her head in their direction, and Jūkichi, somewhat disconcerted, started to raise his hat to return the greeting. But already the carriage, listing from side to side, had passed her by, heading down a street lined with leafless poplar trees.

  “Isn’t that . . .?” asked his cousin.

  “Mmm . . . I wonder whether she was already there when we arrived.”

  “I think I remember only a few beggars . . . What’s to become of her?”

  Jūkichi lit a Shikishima and replied as coolly as possible.

  “Who’s to know?”

  His cousin, saying nothing in reply, pictured in his mind a fishing village on the coast of Kazusa and then O-yoshi and her son, who would be living there . . . His face suddenly took on a severe look, and in the sunlight that had now appeared from behind the clouds, he turned once again to his reading of Liebknecht.

  COGWHEELS

  1. Raincoat

  I had been at a resort in the western hinterlands but now found myself in a taxi, a single satchel in hand, speeding toward a railway station along the Tōkaidō Line, on my way to an acquaintance’s wedding reception. On both sides of the road, dense, nearly unbroken rows of pine trees were sweeping by, as I pondered my doubtlessly meager chances of catching the Tōkyō-bound train. I was sharing the taxi with the owner of a barbershop. He was cylindrically plump, like a jujube, and sported a short beard. Even as I worried about the time, I engaged in occasional conversation with him.

  “Strange things do occur, do they not,” he remarked. “Why, I’ve heard that at the X estate, a ghost appears even during daylight hours.”

  “Even in daylight hours, you say?” I gave him a perfunctory reply, as I gazed at the distant pine-covered hills bathed in the westering winter sun.

  “Mind you, it apparently doesn’t show itself when the weather is good. It seems to come out mostly on rainy days.”

  “On rainy days it may be out for a wet wander.”

  “Ah, you’re joking . . . But they say the ghost wears a raincoat.”

  With its horn blaring, the taxi pulled up alongside a railway station. I took my leave from the barbershop owner and rushed in, but, just as I feared, the train for Tōkyō had left just two or three minutes before. Sitting alone on a bench in the waiting room, looking blankly outside, was a man in a raincoat. The story I had just heard about a ghost came back to me. I managed a wry smile and resigned myself to waiting for the next train in a café in front of the station.

  “Café” . . . a dubious appellation. I took my place in a corner and ordered a cup of chocolate. The table was covered with a white oilcloth on which broad grids had been drawn in fine blue lines. The four corners were worn, revealing the drab canvas beneath.

  The chocolate h
ad the taste of animal glue. As I drank it, I gazed about the deserted room. Pasted on the dusty walls were paper strips, advertising such offerings as rice with chicken and egg, cutlets, local eggs, and omelettes; they reminded me that here along the Tōkaidō Line we were not far from rural life and that it was through barley and cabbage fields that the electric locomotives were passing . . .

  My train did not pull in until near nightfall. I was accustomed to traveling second-class, but this time, as it happened, I had settled for third class.

  In the already crowded carriage, I was surrounded by school-girls apparently on an excursion, perhaps returning from Ōiso. I lit a cigarette and observed the cheerful flock of virtually ceaseless chatterers.

  “Please tell us what ravu shiin means,” said one of them to a man sitting in front of me; he was apparently accompanying them as a photographer. He attempted an evasive answer, but a girl of fourteen or fifteen persisted in peppering him with questions. I found myself smiling at her manner of speaking, reminding me vaguely of nasal empyema. Next to me was another pupil, aged twelve or thirteen, sitting on the knee of a young schoolmistress. With one hand curled around her neck, she stroked her cheek with the other. Babbling with fellow classmates, she would periodically pause and speak to her:

  “Sensei, you are so lovely! What beautiful eyes you have!”

  I had the feeling—were I to overlook how they munched on unpeeled apples and removed the paper from their caramels—that these were not schoolgirls but rather full-grown women. A pupil seemingly older than the others happened to step on someone’s toe as she was passing me. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” she exclaimed. It was precisely her relative maturity that made her the only one among them to typify a schoolgirl. The cigarette still hanging between my lips, I could not help ridiculing the contradictions in my own perceptions.

  The electric lights in the train had already been illuminated when at last we pulled into a suburban station. A cold wind was blowing as I stepped out onto the platform. I crossed the overpass, intending to take the electric train, when quite by chance I encountered T, a company man of my acquaintance. As we were waiting, we discussed this and that, including the current recession, of which T naturally knew more than I. On one of his stout fingers he was wearing a splendid turquoise ring that seemed hardly congruent with our topic.

  “That’s quite something you have on display there!”

  “Oh, this? A friend who’d gone off to Harbin on business got me to buy it from him. Now that he can’t do business with the cooperatives, he’s in quite a bind.”

  Fortunately, the train that arrived was not as crowded as the one before. We sat down next to each other and continued talking. T had just returned to Tōkyō in the spring from a position he had held in Paris, and so it was this that dominated our conversation: Madame Caillaux, crab cuisine, the sojourn of an imperial prince . . .1

  “The situation in France is not as bad as it appears. It’s just that the French are stubbornly opposed to paying taxes, so the governments go on falling.”

  “But the franc has plunged.”

  “That’s what one reads in the newspapers. But what do the newspapers there say about Japan? One would think that we have nothing but massive earthquakes and flood disasters.”

  Just then a man in a raincoat sat down in front of us. Feeling a bit uneasy at this, I thought about telling T about the ghost, but he was now turning the knob of his cane to the left. Looking straight ahead, he said to me in a low voice:

  “The woman over there . . . in the gray woolen shawl . . .”

  “Wearing her hair in European style?”

  “Uh-huh, with the cloth-wrapped bundle on her lap . . . She was in Karuizawa this summer. She was dressed in quite fashionable Western clothes.”

  Nevertheless, to anyone’s eye she would doubtlessly have appeared to be shabbily dressed. As I talked to T, I furtively looked at her. Something between her eyebrows suggested the expression of madness. Moreover, protruding from her bundle was a piece of sponge that somehow resembled a leopard.

  “When I saw her in Karuizawa, she was dancing with a young American. How very—what should I say?—moderne!”

  When I took my leave from T, the man in the raincoat was no longer there. I got off the train and walked to a hotel, satchel in hand. Nearly the entire way there were large buildings on both sides; I suddenly remembered the pine forest I had passed. At the same time, I saw coming into view objects quite strange. Strange? That is to say constantly turning, semitransparent cogwheels. More than once I had already had this experience, the number of such gears steadily increasing until they half blocked my field of vision. This did not last long. Soon they were gone, but then my head would begin to ache. Such was the invariable pattern. The ophthalmologist had repeatedly ordered me to give up cigarettes as a means for ridding myself of these optical illusions (were they?), but I had suffered such since when I was in my teens, well before I took up smoking. It’s started again! I thought to myself, covering my right eye to test my left, which showed no sign of the objects. But behind my other eyelid, there were many still turning. As I saw the buildings on my right disappearing one by one, I quickened my pace.

  The cogwheels were gone by the time I entered the hotel lobby, but my head still ached. I checked my coat and hat at the desk and took the opportunity to reserve a room. I then called a magazine editor to discuss a question of payment.

  The wedding reception appeared to be already well underway. I sat down at the end of a table and began moving my knife and fork. There were more than fifty guests, sitting perpendicular to the bride and groom, our tables forming a white, rectangular U. They were all, of course, in the best of spirits. For my part, I became increasingly melancholy as I sat under the bright electric lights. In the hope of fleeing my oppressive state of mind, I turned to the gentleman sitting beside me and engaged him in conversation. He was an old man, with a white beard that made him look quite like a lion. I knew him to be a renowned scholar of the Chinese classics, to which our conversation consequently turned.

  “The qílín is really a unicorn, you know. And the fènghuáng is the phoenix.”

  The scholar seemed to take interest in these comments of mine, but as I was talking quite mechanically, I found myself steadily yielding to a pathologically destructive impulse. I said that the sage kings Yáo and Shùn were, of course, strictly legendary personages and that the author of the Spring and Autumn Annals had lived long after his purported time, the work having surely been compiled in the Han Dynasty.

  At this, the scholar’s face took on an expression of undisguised displeasure; avoiding my gaze, he cut off remarks with a tigerish roar:

  “If Yáo and Shùn did not exist, then we can only conclude that Confucius lied. But it is unimaginable that a great sage should lie.”

  I did not reply, of course. Again, knife and fork in hand, I turned to the meat on my plate. At the edge of it, I saw a small maggot gently wriggling, making me think of the English word worm. Like qílín and fènghuáng, it could only refer to a mythical animal. I put down my utensils and gazed at the glass into which champagne was being poured.

  When the banquet was finally over, I walked to the room I had reserved—down a deserted corridor that gave me the feeling of being in a prison rather than in a hotel. Fortunately, however, at least my headache had faded.

  Along with my satchel, my hat and overcoat had been brought to the room. I looked at the latter, hanging on the wall, and had the impression of seeing myself standing there. I hastily threw it into the clothes closet in a corner of the room. I then went to the mirror; staring at my reflection, I could see my facial bones beneath the skin. Suddenly the vivid image of a maggot floated up into the mind of that man there, myself, standing in front of the mirror.

  I opened the door, went out into the corridor, and set off aimlessly. At the far end, where the corridor turned toward the lobby, I suddenly saw a tall electric lamp-stand covered with a green shade, the light brightl
y reflected in the glass door. This gave a momentary feeling of peace. I sat down in a chair in front of it and thought of many things. Yet I was not meant to rest there for even five minutes: someone had with extraordinary carelessness tossed a raincoat onto the back of the adjacent sofa.

  “But why a raincoat in this cold weather?” Brooding on the matter, I walked back down the corridor. At the other end was a personnel room. There was no one to be seen, but I could hear faint voices and a reply to something that was said in English: “All right.”

  “All right”? I found myself straining to catch the exact meaning of this exchange. “Ōru-raito”? “Ōru-raito”? What in the world could be “Ōru-raito”?

  In my room there would, of course, be utter stillness. Yet the thought of opening the door gave me a strange sense of loathing. After a moment’s hesitation, I went in. Trying not to look in the mirror, I sat down at the desk in an easy chair covered in blue Moroccan leather that looked quite like lizard skin. I opened my satchel and took out writing paper, intending to continue work on a short story. But the pen I had dipped in ink would not move, and when it finally did, it could only go on writing the same words over and over again: “All right . . . All right, sir . . . All right . . .”

  Suddenly there was a sound next to my bed; it was the telephone. I bolted up in surprise and put the receiver to my ear.

  “Yes? Who’s calling?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  It was my elder sister’s daughter.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Something dreadful . . . And so . . . It’s dreadful . . . I’ve also just called Auntie . . .”

  “Something dreadful?”

  “Yes, so please come quickly. Quickly!”

  The line immediately went dead. I replaced the receiver and reflexively pressed the button to call for a bellboy. At the same time, I was fully aware that my hand was trembling. There was no immediate response. I felt more distress than irritation, as again and again I pressed the button. But now I finally understood the words that destiny had spoken to me: All right, all right.