Mandarins: Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  That afternoon my sister’s husband had been struck and killed by a train in the open countryside, not far from Tōkyō. The body had been found dressed unseasonably in a raincoat. And now I was here in this hotel room, continuing to work on that same short story. In the wee hours, there was no sound in the corridor, though sometimes I could hear from outside the door the sound of wings. Perhaps someone somewhere was keeping birds.

  2. Vengeance

  I awakened in my hotel room at about eight. When I tried to get out of bed, I could only find one of my slippers. For two years now I had been constantly plagued by such fears, remembering, moreover, the one-sandaled prince of Greek mythology.

  I called for a bellboy and asked him to look for the missing slipper. A dubious expression on his face, he went about searching the small room.

  “It’s here,” he reported, “in the bathroom.”

  “How could it have gone there?”

  “I suppose it could have been a rat . . .”

  After he left, I drank some coffee without cream and resumed my work. The square, tuff-framed window looked out on the snow-covered garden. Each time I set down my pen, my gaze would be lost in the snow, which, spread out under a budding winter daphne, was besmirched by the soot of the city. It was somehow a painful sight. While smoking a cigarette, my pen again motionless, I let my mind wander over this and that. I thought of my wife, my children, and especially my sister’s husband . . .

  Just before committing suicide, he had been suspected of arson. The charge was hardly surprising in light of the fact that prior to the destruction of his house in a blaze, he had insured it for twice its value. He had also been given a suspended sentence for perjury. Yet a greater cause for my anxiety than his suicide was the awareness that whenever I returned to Tōkyō I was sure to see a fire. Once from a train window I had seen passing hills aflame; another time I was in a taxi (with my wife and children) when I saw one in the area around Tokiwabashi. Even well before my brother-in-law’s house had burned down, I thus had more than adequate reason for knowing myself to be possessed of pyric premonitions.

  “Our house may burn down sometime this year.”

  “Such ill-omened talk! It would be a catastrophe . . . We are so poorly insured . . .”

  My wife and I had had such an exchange, but it was not our house that had burned . . . In an attempt to rid my mind of such obsessions, I picked up my pen once more and began to move it across the page, but I was at pains even to complete a single line. I finally stood up from the desk and lay down on the bed to read Tolstoy’s Polikoushka. The novella’s protagonist has a complex personality: a blend of vanity, morbidity, and ambition. Yet with but a few revisions, this tragicomedy struck me as a caricature of my own life. I had the eerie feeling that through this story I was hearing fate sardonically laugh at my own plight. Not an hour had passed before I abruptly sat up in bed and in the same motion threw the book with all my strength against the curtains in the corner of the room.

  “Damn it all!”

  At that moment I saw a large rat scampering diagonally from under the curtain to the bathroom. I bounded after it. Opening the door, I searched everywhere, but there was no sign of it, not even under the white tub. With a sudden sense of horror, I hurriedly threw off my slippers, donned my shoes, and ran out into the deserted corridor.

  It was as dispiriting a prison as it had been the day before. With drooping head, I walked up and down the stairs and then found myself in the culinary quarters, which were surprisingly bright and cheery. On one side, several stoves were burning. I felt the cold look of several white-capped cooks as I passed on through and simultaneously had the sensation of having fallen into hell. At the moment, a prayer rose spontaneously to my lips: “Chastise me, Lord, but spare me Thy wrath, lest I should come to naught . . .”2

  I left the hotel. The blue sky was shining brightly on thawing snow and slush, as I plodded toward my sister’s house. The trees in the park along the way, their branches and foliage, were all black; like human beings, they each had both a front and a back. The realization brought more than uneasiness; I felt something closer to dread. Remembering the spirits in Dante’s Inferno transformed into trees, I decided to walk on that side of the streetcar tracks on which there was an almost unbroken line of buildings.3

  Yet even then I found I could not walk one hundred meters in peace and tranquillity:

  “Excuse me . . . ,” came a timid voice.

  It was a young man of about twenty-two or twenty-three. He was wearing a school uniform with gold buttons. I saw a mole on the left side of his nose. He had taken off his cap. I stared at him without speaking.

  “I believe I have the honor of addressing . . .”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Ah, I somehow thought so . . .”

  “Have you some business with me?”

  “No, I merely wanted to speak to you and say that I am one of your faithful readers.”

  I raised my hat by way of acknowledgment and immediately set off.

  “Sensei! Sensei!”

  At the time, this had become for me a most unpleasant term. I thought myself guilty of all manner of crimes; yet, when the occasion arose, I would be addressed as “Sensei” all the same. I could not help sensing an element of disparagement—but what was it?

  My affirmation of materialism forced me to deny any sort of mysticism. Several months before, I had written in a small coterie magazine: “I have no artistic conscience; I have no conscience whatsoever. I have only nerves.”

  With her three children, my elder sister had taken refuge in a makeshift hut at the back of an alley, the interior walls papered brown. It was colder inside than outside; stretching our hands toward the brazier, we talked about this and that.

  My brawny brother-in-law, who instinctively despised me all the more for my scrawniness, had openly denounced my writings as immoral. I in turn treated him with icy contempt; not once did we have a candid or cordial conversation.

  Yet as I talked with my sister, I came to the realization that he too had been leading a hellish existence. In fact, I was told that he had seen a ghost on a sleeping car. Lighting a cigarette, I nonetheless endeavored to restrict my remarks to matters financial.

  “Under the circumstances, I intend to sell everything.”

  “Yes, you’re right. You could probably get something for the typewriter.”

  “And then there are the paintings.”

  “Do you want to sell the portrait of him? . . . Even that one?”

  I looked at the unframed conté sketch on the wall and sensed that this was no time for lighthearted chatter. The train had turned him, even his face, into no more than a lump of flesh, the only recognizable feature, it was said, being his mustache. The entire story in itself was, of course, undoubtedly loathsome. Yet the portrait was a perfect rendition of his every feature—except for his mustache, which, strangely enough, struck me as blurred. Thinking that the problem was the balance of the light, I tried to look at it from different angles.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing . . . The portrait . . . Something around the mouth . . .”

  My sister turned her head and then, as though quite unaware, remarked:

  “The mustache seems a bit faded, doesn’t it?”

  What I had seen was not an illusion. But if not, then . . . ? I decided to leave, without accepting my sister’s invitation to stay for lunch.

  “But surely you can stay a bit longer!”

  “Perhaps I can come again tomorrow . . . Today I have an errand in Aoyama.”

  “Aoyama? You are still feeling unwell?”

  “I’m constantly taking medicine. The sleeping pills alone are more than enough trouble. Veronal, neuronal, trional, numal . . .”

  Half an hour later I found myself entering a tall building and taking the elevator to the third-floor restaurant. I pushed on the glass door and, when it did not open, saw a lacquered sign announcing that on this day the restaurant wa
s regularly closed. Feeling increasingly out of sorts, I gazed through the door at the arrangements of apples and bananas on the tables. I turned to go.

  Two men, apparently company employees, were engaged in lively conversation as I left; they brushed my shoulder as they came through the entrance. I thought I heard one of them say: “. . . terribly irritating.”

  I lingered on the pavement and then looked for a passing taxi. But such were rare, and the few that I saw were invariably yellow. (For some reason, yellow taxis make it a habit of involving me in accidents.) I was finally able to wave down an auspiciously green vehicle, determined after all to make my way to the psychiatric hospital near the cemetery in Aoyama.

  “Terribly irritating . . . Tantalizing . . . Tantalus . . . Inferno.”

  Tantalus was, in fact, myself, gazing through the glass door at the fruits on the restaurant table. I stared at the back of the driver, cursing the Dantesque vision of hell now twice brought before my eyes.

  As I brooded, I thought of all that is no more than lies covered with multicolored enamel, concealing from me the true horror of human existence: politics, economics, art, science . . . A worsening shortness of breath drove me to roll down the window, but from the feeling that my heart was being squeezed I had no relief.

  My green taxi had now finally brought me to Jingūmae, where, turning into an alleyway, one would come to a certain psychiatric hospital. Yet today I somehow could not remember the location. I had the driver follow the streetcar line up and down several times and then resigned myself to getting out and walking.

  I was able at last to find the alleyway. I walked the muddy twists and turns and then at some point went in the wrong direction, finding myself in front of the Aoyama Funeral Pavilion.

  Since the funeral of Natsume Sensei, I had not so much as passed by the gate. Then too, some ten years before, I was unhappy. But at least I had been at peace. I gazed at the gravel spread out inside and remembered the banana plant in his house, the Villa Sōseki. Irresistibly I felt that my life too had come to an end and it was no accident that destiny had brought me here—to this place and at this time, a decade later.

  Leaving the hospital, I took a taxi to return to the hotel. As I was stepping out in front of the entrance, I saw a man in a raincoat engaged in a quarrel with what seemed to be a bellboy. No, instead it was an automobile attendant, dressed in green. I took this to be somehow a bad omen and, deciding not to go in, hastily turned around.

  The day was waning as I came to Ginza-dōri. The shops lining both sides of the street and the dizzying bustle of people only worsened my sense of gloom. It was particularly distressing to see them passing blithely to and fro, as though oblivious to any concept of sin. I walked steadily onward, heading north, in a mélange of electrical illumination and fading sunlight.

  Along the way, my eye was caught by a bookshop with piles of magazines on display. I went in and, having looked absentmindedly at the contents of several tiers, pulled out from one of the shelves a volume: Girishia-shinwa. In this yellow-covered book of Greek mythological tales, intended for children, the first words I happened to read sent me instantly reeling: “Even Zeus, the grandest of the gods, is no match for the goddesses of vengeance.”

  I left the shop and again made my way through the crowds, stooping as I went, as though sensing behind me those same Furies in relentless pursuit.

  3. Night

  On the second floor of Maruzen, I found in a tier of books an edition of August Strindberg’s Legends and perused it, two or three pages at a time. The experiences described there did not vary significantly from my own; moreover, the cover was yellow. I returned the book to the shelf and now pulled out almost at random a thick volume. In one of the illustrations, there were cogwheels with eyes and noses no different from those of us, of human beings. (A German had compiled these sketches, drawn by mental patients.) In the midst of my depression, I felt my spirits revolting. In desperation, like a gambling addict, I began to leaf through book after book. Yet wherever I looked, there was invariably a sentence or an illustration that concealed more than a piercing needle or two. All of them? Even when I picked up Madame Bovary, which I had read and reread countless times, I found that in the final analysis I was myself but another bourgeois Monsieur Bovary.

  I was almost the last customer there on the second floor, as the sun began to set. Wandering between the electrically illuminated tiers of books, I stopped in front of the religion section and perused a volume with a green cover. One of the chapters listed in the table of contents was entitled: “The Four Most Dreadful Foes: Doubt, Fear, Hubris, and Sensual Appetites.” No sooner had I seen these words than I sensed all the more strongly my inner revolt. For me, at least, these “foes” were nothing other than a matter of sensibility and reason. All the more unbearable was now the awareness that traditional ways of thinking contributed as much to my unhappiness as did modernity.

  Yet as I held the book in my hand, I suddenly thought of the pen name I had once used: Juryō Yoshi, borrowed from the story told in Hán Fēizĭ of the lad who, before he had learned to walk like the people of Hándān, forgot how to walk in the manner of his own people in Shòulíng and thus went crawling home like a meandering reptile. Now I am surely seen in the eyes of all as that same Juryō Yoshi. Yet at least I had assumed the pen name before falling into hell . . . Endeavoring to drive away the demons that haunted me by putting this tier of books behind me, I walked to a poster exhibit directly ahead of me. One showed a knight, apparently St. George, slaying a winged dragon. Beneath the helmet I could see his half-exposed, grimacing face; it closely resembled that of an enemy of mine. Again I remembered Hán Fēizĭ and the story of the master dragon-slayer. Without moving on to the exhibition room, I descended the broad staircase.

  Night had already fallen as I walked along Nihonbashi-dōri, still brooding about the proverbial slayer of dragons—surely a fitting inscription for my own inkstone. That very object had been given to me by a young man of business. Having failed in various undertakings, he had gone bankrupt at the end of the previous year.

  I looked up to the towering heavens to remind myself of how tiny is the earth amidst the light of countless stars—as, by consequence, am I myself. But after a day of clear weather, the night sky was covered with clouds. I suddenly felt a vaguely hostile presence and decided to take refuge in a café on the other side of the streetcar tracks.

  It was indeed a refuge. The rose-pink walls offered some sort of peace and comfort; I happily collapsed at a table in the rear. As luck would have it, there were only two or three other customers. I sipped my cocoa and puffed on my usual cigarette, sending bluish smoke up against the pale red wall. The harmony of the gentle colors was likewise cheering. A few moments later, however, I saw to my left a portrait of Napoleon and my anxiety was back with me all too soon. Napoleon as a student had written on the last page of his geography notebook: “Sainte Hélène . . . petite île.” It may have been, as we say, a coincidence, though the fact remains that it inspired fear in Napoleon himself.

  Even as I continued staring at him, I thought about the works I had written. The first to float into my mind were the aphorisms included in Shuju no Kotoba—in particular, “Life is more hellish than hell.” And then, the protagonist of Jigokuhen, the painter Yoshihide, and his fate, and then . . . I puffed on my cigarette as I glanced about the café, trying to escape from such memories. I had sought asylum here a mere five minutes before, but in that brief time the café had quite altered its appearance. Particularly disturbing were the imitation mahogany tables and chairs and their utter lack of harmony with the color of the walls. Fearing that I would fall once again into anguish known only to myself, I threw down a silver coin and hastily started to leave.

  “Hello, sir? That will be twenty sen . . .”

  I had put down a copper coin. Feeling deeply humiliated, I made my way along the street, abruptly remembering the home I had once had in the middle of a distant pine forest—not the subur
ban house of my adoptive parents but rather the one I rented just for myself and my family. I had been living in that sort of arrangement some ten years before, until certain circumstances led me rashly to take up residence again with my parents. It was also then that I became a slave, a tyrant, a powerless egotist . . .

  It was not until about ten o’clock that I returned to the hotel. I was so weary from my long walk that I lacked even the strength to go to my room. I threw myself into the chair in front of the fireplace full of burning logs. I thought about the novel that I had intended to write. It was to be an episodic work of some thirty chapters in chronological order, progressing from Empress Suiko to Emperor Meiji, with the ordinary people of each age in the fore. As I gazed at the dancing sparks ascending, I found myself thinking of a bronze statue in front of the Imperial Palace and the armored figure sitting grandly astride his horse,4 the very embodiment of loyalty. And yet his enemies . . .

  “No, no, it cannot be true!”

  I came slipping back down from the distant past to the immediate present, as I was fortuitously met at that moment by an upperclassman from university days, a sculptor. He was, as ever, dressed in velvet and was sporting a short goatee. I rose from my chair and shook his hand. (This was not my custom but rather his—the result of half a lifetime spent in Paris and Berlin.) His hand had a strangely reptilian dampness.

  “Are you staying here?”

  “Yes.”

  “On business?”

  “Yes, on business, among other things . . .”

  He stared at me with what seemed to be a quasi-investigative expression in his eye.

  “What about continuing this conversation in my room?” I issued the invitation as a challenge. (Though lacking in courage, I have the unfortunate habit of leaping at an opportunity to provoke.)