American Stories

by Nagai Kafu

  Rosalyn, on her part, did not seem too surprised and asked me whether France or Italy was my destination and such things while engaging in the usual chitchat with the landlord and his wife.

  However, past ten o’clock, as I went outside to take her home as I had done every evening, the light from the moon was even brighter than on the previous day, this being the sixteenth night of the lunar month. Although we were used to watching the moon every night to our hearts’ content, it was so beautiful that we walked in complete silence on the grass path till we reached the hill, when suddenly I was overwhelmed by an indefinable sorrow permeating my whole body and realized I must pull myself together. Just at that very moment, Rosalyn seemed to have stumbled on a roadside stone and abruptly leaned toward me. . . . Alarmed, I held her hand; she let it rest in mine and pressed her face tightly against my chest.

  For over half an hour we stood there, embracing each other in the moonlight, without uttering a word, till our clothes grew heavy with the evening dew. There really was no word to utter. For we knew, without saying so, that no matter how much we were in love, I was a traveler, and she a daughter with her own home and parents, circumstances that dictated that we would never be able to indulge in this dream of happiness for long. There were then only two alternatives to consider. Should I sever all my ties with my homeland and seek a livelihood in this country forever, through my own effort? Or should I have Rosalyn leave her parents’ home and the land of America that had thus far raised her? Only these two. But no matter how desperate I felt, I simply could not suggest such things. Rosalyn too would never be able to ask anyone to give up everything in the world for the sake of love.

  Alas, were we, after all, creatures of common sense? Did the force of circumstance called America compel us to act thus? Or had our love not yet developed to full maturity? No! No! I truly believe that our love was never less than that of Romeo or Paulo and Juliet or Francesca. We knew well that once we parted we might never see each other again—a beautiful dream of one instant brings lifelong sorrow; still from the following day on, we would go to the deserted woods at the edge of the village every afternoon and share deep kisses, in order to show we would live on and sing of love, forever lost. . . .

  Alas, what a pity! The ship has already crossed the Atlantic altogether and is set to arrive at Le Havre, France, soon. People say that they saw Irish mountains in the morning.

  I no longer have much time to continue writing. Within the span of just one week, how far have I been separated from her!

  The farther I am separated, the more vivid her face appears in my mind. She had blond hair slightly tinged with dark brown. She always casually bundled her unusually long and dark blond hair for a Westerner, and the way she constantly pushed back some stray locks from her forehead with her fingertips was full of charm. When we were standing side by side, she barely reached my chin—for an American woman she was of quite small build, but since she was plump and always kept an extremely erect posture, she looked quite tall and big at times. Her deep blue eyes, which were like a lake, and her narrow and somewhat pointed features understandably betrayed an oversensitivity when she was engaged in an earnest conversation, but when she kept her poise she revealed an indefinable dignity and a strong and valiant melancholy. That is to say, she was just the opposite of a cheerful, bewitching beauty of Southern Europe with clear-cut outlines one is tempted to transfer to a canvas, and belonged to the type of women fairly common among the Anglo-Saxons of the North in whom a certain sharpness conceals a melancholy, and the melancholy contains a characteristically feminine gentleness. . . .

  All of a sudden, clamorous voices can be heard on the upper deck. They are saying they can see the lights of Le Havre. In the corridor outside the cabin, some are saying, “Nous voilà en France [sic],” and running.

  In the deck area, men and women were beginning to sing “La Marseillaise”:

  Allons enfents [sic] de la patrie

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé.

  I have finally arrived in France.

  Ah, but what could I do about the unabated pain of my heart? Quite unconsciously, I was recalling the poem Musset had dedicated to Mozart’s music—

  Rappelle-toi, lorsque les destinées

  M’auront de toi pour jamais séparé,

  ............

  Songe à mon triste amour, songe à

  L’adieu suprême!

  ............

  Tant que mon coeur battra,

  Toujours il te dira:

  Rappelle-toi.

  (Remember. If destiny forever separates me from

  you, remember my sad love. Remember the

  time we parted. As long as my heart resonates,

  it shall tell you, “Remember.”) 31

  Reciting it in my mind, I walked step by step toward the deck in order to pay tribute to the mountains of France, which I was going to see for the first time.

  Rappelle-toi, quand sous la froide terre

  Mon coeur brisé pour toujours dormira;

  Rappelle-toi, quand la fleur solitaire

  Sur mon tombeau doucement s’ouvrira.

  Tu ne me verra plus; mais mon âme immortelle

  Reviendra près de toi comme une soeur fidèle.

  Ecoute dans la nuit,

  Une voix qui gémit:

  Rappelle-toi.

  (Remember, when my broken heart will forever

  sleep under the cold earth; Remember, when the

  solitary flower on my grave gently will open.

  You will see me no more. But my immortal soul

  shall come back near you like an intimate sister.

  Listen attentively in the night. There is a voice

  that whispers, “Remember.”) 32

  Alas, alas.

  Rappelle-toi___Rappelle-toi___

  (July 1907)

  A Night at Seattle Harbor

  One Saturday night, I wanted to see the Japanese quarter in Seattle and furtively walked in that direction.

  I say furtively not without reason. I had been told when I landed, by a member of the crew with whom I had become well acquainted during the voyage, that in Seattle I should refrain from going to the downtown area where there were many Japanese. He warned me that this was not a place to be visited by anyone with the least sense of honor. But as so often happens, such advice only feeds one’s curiosity, so I walked down the crowded, sloping road, without being noticed, from Second to First Avenue.

  This is the most thriving part of Seattle, and although it is generally considered a newly developed city, the Ginza is no match for the way tall shops of stone and signboards are electrically illuminated in beautiful colors here. Besides, this is the early evening on a Saturday when many people come to take a walk, and innumerable men and women pass one another, rubbing shoulders and laughing under brilliant lights. At the intersections, a large number of streetcars full of passengers crisscross each other, while carriages thread their way through them. It is enough to dazzle you.

  Bumping into people frequently, I managed to go down First Avenue and, turning left, reached a street called Jackson, where I found a totally changed atmosphere. The street was still wide, but there were fewer and fewer shops, and on the pavement covered with boards horse dung was piled high here and there, while an acute stench coming from sooty smoke somewhere was filling the air, naturally making it quite difficult to breathe. Those impressed with the bustle of First and Second Avenues must be even more startled at the drastic contrast of this gloomy, dark street. I let my feet lead me for several more blocks and came upon a strangely shaped building on one side of the road reminding me of the Panorama building in Asakusa, soaring in midair like a castle. Not only did the unpleasant stench grow worse, but the area was gradually turning pitch dark, with the overpass for elevated trains running along the left-hand side of the street almost blocking the light of the gray sky.

  This was no place to linger for even five minutes. But when I noticed that this strange
-shaped building was a gas tank, I realized the Japanese quarter must lie just ahead. For I had been told that the gas tank on Jackson Street marked the border of the Japanese quarter. I covered my mouth with a handkerchief and held my breath as I barely passed under the gas tank with its disagreeable smell; then dim lights came into view, flickering at a distance.

  Coming closer, I found that the buildings on both sides were far different from those on prosperous First Avenue; they were all low, wood-frame ones, as is usually the case in poorer quarters. I happened to look up at the window of one of the two-story houses and noticed hanging there a lamp with some Japanese words, so I ran toward it and read the words, RESTAURANT, JAPAN HOUSE. I had heard about this place, but actually encountering it aroused a queer sensation in me, and I just stood there for a while, gazing at the sign for no particular reason. Soon I began hearing the sound of samisen coming from the second-floor window.

  As it was a Western-style building with windows shut, I could barely make out the dim noise that was seeping through, but surely it was a woman singing a tune. It was a kind I had never heard in Tokyo, so I stood there, struck with a sense of amusing incongruity as if I were traveling in the countryside and listening to some comic songs in a distant post town in Japan, when all of a sudden I was startled by the sound of voices behind me and turned around.

  “Oh, hell! They’re having fun again tonight.”

  “It must be Oharu playing the samisen. Too pretty to stick around in America.”

  Three Japanese were talking and looking up at the second floor. They all wore homburgs and dark suits, but their long torsos and short and, moreover, bowed legs must look quite funny to white people, I thought. They were saying in voices with a trace of some provincial accent,

  “I haven’t seen her yet; is she that pretty?”

  “When did she come? Looks like it was quite recent.”

  “Came on the Shinano (the name of the ship) the other day. I’ve heard she is also from Hiroshima.”

  I was eagerly trying to listen to this conversation, but one of them glared at me with a menacing look, and I realized all of a sudden that they must be those hooligans who are said to prowl around the Japanese quarter. So reluctantly, I left the area.

  By now, all the signs that I noticed were in Japanese characters. It was exactly as I had heard on the ship; everything, from tofu makers and shiruko restaurants to sushi bars and noodle shops, was as one would find in a town in Japan, so that for a while I could only look around restlessly, in a state of shock. In the meantime, more people were crowding into the area, but most of them were my bow-legged and long-torsoed compatriots, and the only whites around appeared to be laborers with large pipes sticking out of their mouths.

  Thinking that anything would make a good story, I first went near a hanging lantern that read SOBA NOODLES. The store was in the basement of a large house, so you had to go underground by going

  down the steps at the edge of the street. As you entered the sooty, open doorway, there was a huge room with a wooden floor partitioned into small sections with painted boards, each with a musty linen curtain drawn at the entrance as a screen.

  Inside, four or five chairs were placed around a table, and a gloomy gaslight was lit. As soon as I sat down, a deep voice said, “Come in,” and a man close to forty appeared. He was a big man with a dark complexion and a narrow moustache pointing down at the ends and was wearing an apron over his trousers without a jacket.

  As I ask, “What can you make me?” he lists, twisting his finely trimmed moustache, tempura, okame [noodle soup with fish cake], namban [noodle soup with duck or chicken], and other dishes, and asks, “Would you care for sake?”

  I order one of the dishes and smoke a cigarette, leaning against the chair; before long, footsteps are heard, perhaps of three or four people, who noisily enter the next room separated from mine by a board. As the moustached proprietor goes out to them, one of them says [in English], “Hello, good evening.”

  “Tempura as usual. Also Masamune, we want Masamune [a brand of sake],” another orders in a loud voice.

  For a while, the knocking on the floorboards of chairs being adjusted, the sound of a match striking against the sole of a shoe, and such can be heard. And then one of them says, “After our drinks, why don’t we go have a look?”

  “That place? Forget it. Whatever you do, don’t go whoring in America,” another objects, while still another asks, “You don’t want to? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you why: because it’s not worth it. It’s so cut and dried. It’s all business, an ‘all right’ affair in return for cash. Couldn’t be more ridiculous.”

  I smiled to myself, but then the proprietor brought over my order. He then must have gone next door with sake bottles and cups, for someone was saying in a reinvigorated voice, “Let’s have a drink; it’s hard to forget the taste of Japanese wine.”

  “How about the taste of women?”

  “I’d better watch out, or else I could forget that. I should be practicing now.”

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” they all began to laugh noisily.

  “By the way, how is it at your place? Are you still busy?”

  “It’s terrible. Day in and day out, I am pushed around by the red-haired [Westerner] woman to help out in the kitchen. It’s no easy matter, being a schoolboy.”

  “Well, we’re all doing it, so don’t complain. Just hope for a successful future.”

  “I don’t know if I can. Has your language gotten any better?”

  “Not at all. I don’t understand. A grown man goes to primary school every day, with ten- or eleven-year-olds. It’s been already half a year, and still no progress.”

  “At first I thought that if I worked as a schoolboy and listened to white guys speaking for three months or so, I would be able to understand an ordinary conversation, but anticipation and reality are totally different things.”

  “However, let’s not despair. Despair is followed by self-destruction and then by degradation. We’ve got to be on our guard. There are so many examples of this, you know. There are those who come to America with definite intentions of working through school but who eventually become corrupt and continue to work at white people’s houses when they are already thirty or even forty; such failures should serve as a warning. Haste makes waste, so let’s just take our time studying.”

  “Yes, I agree,” one answered but added immediately, “Let’s not be too serious, it’ll spoil the taste of sake. Today’s a Saturday, so let’s just have fun.”

  “Of course, of course! We’ve got to refuel ourselves.”

  The conversation ended up right where it had started. Even the one who had objected earlier didn’t seem to protest when the company noisily went outdoors; perhaps he was too drunk for that.

  Thinking I might be able to obtain some unusual material for my stories if I followed them, I quickly paid ten cents for my drink and hastily went out after them. Turning right at the straight main street, just as they were doing, I found that the road narrowed but was filled with more and more people, and saw on one side of it stalls grilling pork or beef with smelly oil. It seems that such a scene, with stalls in the poorer streets or bad quarters, is not limited just to Asakusa in Tokyo.

  As for those three, they are hastily climbing up the dark and narrow staircase that leads from the front of a certain small tobacco shop—owned by a Japanese—to the back.

  (Bungei kurabu, May 1, 1904)

  Night Fog

  It was one night toward the end of October. I came back to the city of Tacoma on an electric train from Seattle. The city clock must have already struck eleven. When I got off the train, there were very few people on Pacific Avenue.

  As I look up, the windless sky is covered by its nightly darkness, and, turning around, I see a dense mist about to suffuse the earth. Such weather is not unusual around this time of the year. After the cool autumn is over, I am told, the Pacific Coast area will enter the gloomy winter season when it rains ev
ery day.

  Even the nearest city buildings, five or six stories high, are totally covered by the thin fog, and I cannot discern their tops; lights beautifully flickering in windows or colored electric lights shining upon signboards are like blurry lanterns if they are only a block away, and the illumination of the tower of the city hall, which on a normal night will decorate a section of the sky in many colors, is also pitifully darker than the light of a magic lantern. I notice that from a fog-covered distance, a one- or two-car train is rushing this way. But there is no one inside the well-lit cars, and they have gone up the slope empty and vanished in the direction of the neighboring town, the sound of the wheels echoing like a storm.