by Ogai Mori
Since I've never been very affable, I didn't even speak to those students I met quite often on the campus except when I had a reason. As for the students in the boarding house, I seldom tipped my cap in greeting. But I became somewhat friendly with Okada because of the bookshops. On my walks I wasn't as rigid in my direction as Okada was, but since I had strong legs, I let them direct me through Hongo to Shitaya and Kanda, and I paused in every second-hand bookstore. On such occasions I often met Okada inside.
I don't remember who spoke first, but I do recall the first words between us: “How often we meet among old books!”
This was the start of our friendship.
In those days at the corner down the slope in front of Kanda Shrine, we came across a shop which sold books on its stalls. Once I discovered the Kimpeibai , and I asked the storekeeper how much it was.
“Seven yen.”
“I'll give you five,” I said.
“A while back Okada offered six.”
Since I had enough money with me, I gave the dealer what he asked.
But when I met Okada a few days later, he said: “You acted quite selfishly—you know I found the Kimpeibai first.”
“The man at the shop said you bargained, but that you couldn't agree. If you must have it, buy it from me.”
“Why should I? We're neighbors, so I can borrow it when you're through.”
I agreed.
In this way, Okada and I, who had not until now been acquainted even though we lived at such close quarters, often began to call on each other.
Chapter Two
EVEN IN the days I am writing about, the Iwasaki mansion was located, as it is today, on the southern side of Muenzaka, though it had not yet been fenced in with its present high wall of soil. At that time dirty stone walls had been put up, and ferns and horsetails grew among the moss-covered stones. Even now I don't know whether the land above the fence is flat or hilly, for I've never been inside the mansion. At any rate, in those days the copse grew thick and wild, and from the street we could see the roots of the trees, while the grass around them was seldom cut.
On the north side of the slope, small houses were constructed in clusters, and the best-looking among them had a clapboard fence. As for shops, there were only a kitchenware dealer's and a tobacconist's. Among the dwellings, the most attractive to the people who passed belonged to a sewing teacher, and during the day young women could be seen through the window going about their work. If the day was pleasant and the windows were open when we students passed, the girls, always talking, raised their faces and looked out into the street. And then once more they would continue their laughing and chattering.
Next to this house was a residence whose door was always wiped clean and whose granite walk I often saw sprinkled with water in the evening. During the cold weather the sliding doors were shut, but even during the hot weather the bamboo shutters were lowered. This house always seemed conspicuously quiet, the more so because of the noise in the neighboring one.
About September of the year of this story, Okada, soon after his return from his home in the country, went out after supper for his usual stroll, and as he walked down Muenzaka, he met by accident a woman on her way home from the public bath and saw her enter the lonely place next to the sewing teacher's. It was almost autumn, so people had less occasion to seek relief from the heat by sitting outside their houses, and the slope was now empty. The woman, who had just come to the entrance of that quiet house, was trying to open the door, but hearing the sound of Okada's clogs, stopped what she was doing and turned her face. The two stared at each other.
Okada was not very much attracted by the woman in kimono with her right hand on the door and her left hand holding her bamboo basket of toilet articles. But he did notice her hair freshly dressed in the ginkgo-leaf style with her sidelocks as thin as the wings of a cicada. He saw that her face was oval and somewhat lonely, her nose sharp, her forehead to her cheeks conveying an impression of flatness, though it was difficult to say exactly what made him think so. Since these were no more than momentary impressions, he had completely forgotten about her when he came to the bottom of the slope.
But about two days later he again took the same direction, and when he came near the house with the lattice door, he glanced at it, suddenly remembering the stranger from the public bath. He looked at the bow window with its vertically nailed bamboo canes and two thin, horizontal pieces of wood wound with vines. The window screen had been left open about a foot and revealed a potted plant. As he gave some attention to these details, he slowed down somewhat, and it took a few moments before he reached the front of the house.
Suddenly above the plant a white face appeared in the background where nothing but gray darkness had been. Furthermore, the face smiled at him.
From that time on, whenever Okada went out walking and passed this house, he seldom missed seeing the woman's face. Sometimes she broke into his imagination, and there she gradually started to take liberties. He began to wonder if she was waiting for him to pass or was simply looking outside with indifference and accidentally noticed him. He thought about the days before he had first come upon her, trying to recall if she had ever glanced out of the house or not, but all he could remember was that the house next to the noisy sewing teacher's was always swept clean and looked lonely. He told himself that he must have wondered about the kind of person who lived there, but he could not even be certain of that. It seemed to him that the screens were always shut or the bamboo blinds were drawn to reinforce the quiet behind them. He finally concluded that perhaps the woman had recently come to look outside and had opened the window to wait for his passing.
Each time he came by, they looked at each other, and all the while thinking about these events, Okada gradually felt he was on friendly terms with “the woman of the window.” One evening, two weeks later, he unconsciously took off his cap and bowed when he passed her house. Her faintly white face turned red, and her lonely smile changed into a beaming one.
From that moment on, Okada always bowed to the woman of the window when he went by.
Chapter Three
OKADA'S admiration of old Chinese romantic tales had caused him to take an interest in military sports, but since he had no opportunities for practicing them, this desire had never been satisfied. This might, however, explain his interest in rowing, which he had taken to a few years before. He had been so enthusiastic and had made so much progress that he became a champion rower. Obviously, this activity was a manifestation of his desire to practice martial arts.
A type of woman in these romantic tales also appealed to Okada. She is the woman who makes beauty her sole aim in life so that, with perfect ease, she goes through an elaborate toilet even while the angel of death waits outside her door. Okada felt that a woman should be only a beautiful object, something lovable, a being who keeps her beauty and loveliness no matter what situation she is in. Okada probably picked up this sentiment unconsciously, partly under the influence of his habitual reading of old Chinese romantic love poetry and the sentimental and fatalistic prose works of the so-called wits of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties.
Even though a long interval had passed since Okada started bowing to the woman of the window, he would not investigate her personal history. From the appearance of the house and the way she dressed, he guessed that she might be someone's mistress. But this did not disturb him. He did not even know her name, and he made no effort to learn it. All he had to do was look at the name plate, but he couldn't bring himself to do this in her presence. At other times, when she wasn't there, he hesitated because of the neighbors and the passersby. As a result, he never looked at the characters written on the small wooden sign shadowed by the eaves.
Chapter Four
ALTHOUGH the events of this story that have Okada for their hero took place before I learned the earlier history of the woman of the window, it will be convenient to give an outline of that history here.
The narrative goes back
to the days when the medical school of the university was located at Shitaya and the old guardhouse of Lord Todo's estate was turned into a student dormitory. Its windows, of vertical wooden bars as thick as a man's arms, were set at wide intervals in a wall of gray tiles plastered in checkerboard fashion. If I may phrase it this way, the students lived there like so many beasts, though I'm sorry to make such a comparison. Of course you can't see windows like those now except in the castle turrets of the emperor's palace, and even the bars of the lion and tiger cages in the Ueno Zoo are more slenderly made than those were.
The dormitory had servants whom the students could use for errands. They usually sent out to buy something cheap to eat, like baked beans or roasted sweet potatoes. For each trip the servant received two sen. One of these workers was called Suezo. The other men had loud mouths buried in bur-like beards, but this man kept his mouth shut and always shaved. The others wore dirty clothes of rough cotton; Suezo's were always neat, and sometimes he came to work wearing silk.
I don't know who told me or when, but I heard that Suezo lent money to needy students. Of course it only amounted to fifty sen or one yen at a time. But when the debt gradually grew to five or ten yen, Suezo would make the borrower draw up a note, and if it wasn't yet paid at the end of the term, a new one was written. Suezo became what can really be called a professional money-lender. I haven't any idea how he obtained such capital. Certainly not from picking up two sen for each student errand. But perhaps nothing is impossible if a man concentrates all of his energies on what he wants.
At any rate, when the medical school moved from Shitaya to Hongo, Suezo no longer remained a servant, but his house, newly located no Ike-no-hata, was continually visited by a great number of indiscreet students. When he began working for the university, he was already over thirty, was poor, and had a wife and child to support. But since he had made quite a fortune through moneylending and had moved to his new house, he began to feel dissatisfied with his wife, who was ugly and quarrel-some.
At that time he remembered a certain woman he had seen every so often while he was still going to the university through a narrow alley from his house at the back of Neribei-cho. There was a dark house whose ditchboards in that alley were always partly broken and half of whose sliding shutters were closed all year round. At night, when anyone passed, he had to go sideways because of a wheeled stall drawn up under the eaves.
What first attracted Suezo's attention to this house was the music of the samisen inside. And then he learned that the person playing the instrument was a lovely girl about sixteen or seventeen years old. The neat kimono she wore was quite different from the shabby appearance of her house.
If the girl happened to be in the doorway, as soon as she saw a man approaching she went back into the dark interior. Suezo, with his characteristic alertness, though without particularly investigating the matter, found out that the girl's name was Otama, that her mother was dead, and that she lived alone with her father, who sold sugary, sticky candies molded into figures in his stall.
But eventually a change took place in this back-street house. The wheeled stall vanished from its set place under the eaves. And the house and its surroundings, which were always modest, seemed suddenly attacked by what was then fashionably called “civilization,” for new boards over the ditch replaced the broken and warped ones, and a new lattice door had been installed at the entrance.
Once Suezo noticed a pair of Western shoes in the doorway. Soon after, a new name plate bearing a policeman's title was put up. Suezo also made certain, while shopping on the neighboring streets and yet without seeming to pry, that the old candy dealer had acquired a son-in-law.
To the old man, who loved his daughter more than sight itself, the loss of Otama to a policeman with terrifying looks was like having her carried off by a monster with a long nose and a red face. Otama's father had feared the discomfort he would incur by the intrusion of such a formidable son-in-law, and after meeting the suitor, had consulted with several confidants, but none of them had told him to reject the offer.
Someone said: “You see, I told you so, didn't I? When I took the trouble to arrange a good match, you were too particular, saying you couldn't part with your only child, so that finally a son-in-law you couldn't say no to is going to move in on you!”
And another said threateningly: “If you can't stand the man, the only other solution is to move far away, but since he's a policeman, he'll be able to catch up with you and make his offer again. There's no escaping him.”
A wife who had a reputation for using her head was believed to have told the old man: “Didn't I advise you to sell her off to a geisha house since her looks were good and her samisen master praised her skill? A policeman without a wife can go from door to door, and when he finds a pretty face, he takes her off whether you like it or not. You can't do anything but make the best of the bad luck that such a man took a fancy to your daughter.”
No more than three months after Suezo had heard these rumors, he discovered one morning that the doors of the old candy dealer's house were locked and that an attached piece of paper gave notice that the house was for rent. Then, on inquiring further into the neighbors' talk while shopping, Suezo heard that the policeman had in his own native place a wife and children who had turned up on a surprise visit, whereupon a fight followed, and Otama ran from the house. A neighbor who overheard the quarrel stopped the girl from doing something rash. Not one of the old man's friends had enough knowledge about legal matters, so the old man had been quite indifferent about seeing if the marriage had been legally registered, and when the son-in-law told him he would completely handle the legal end of the marriage, the old man had had no suspicions or fears.
A girl at Kitazumi's grocery said to Suezo: “I really feel sorry for Taa-chan—she's honest and she had no doubt about the policeman, but he said he was only looking for a place to live.”
And with his hand circling his cropped head of hair, the storekeeper interrupted her: “It's a pity about the old man too. He moved away because he couldn't stand meeting his neighbors and he couldn't stay here as before. But he still sells candy where he used to, saying he can't do business in places where there are no little customers. A while back he sold his stall, but now he has it again from the second-hand dealer, after telling him the situation. I think he's got financial troubles because of the moving and such. It's as though the old man lived for only a short time in a world of dreams, freeing himself into easy retirement and keeping company with the policeman, who drank saké, acting like a god, while, in fact, he starved his wife and children in the country.”
After that, the candy dealer's daughter slipped from Suezo's mind, but when he became financially well off and could do more of what he wanted, he happened to remember the girl.
Suezo, now with a wide circle of acquaintances to do his bidding, had them look for the old candy dealer and finally located his mean quarters next to a rickshaw garage behind a theater. He learned also that the daughter wasn't married. So Suezo sent a woman to make overtures with an offer from a wealthy merchant disposed to have the girl for his mistress. In spite of Otama's objections at first, the old woman kept reminding the meek and reluctant girl of the advantages her father would get from the arrangement, and the negotiations reached the point where the parties agreed to meet at the Matsugen restaurant.
Chapter Five
BEFORE this new interest in Suezo's life, his only thoughts had centered on the students, their loans, and his returns, but he had no sooner located Otama and her father than he began to search his neighborhood for a house to establish his mistress in. He did not know whether or not he would succeed with his plan, but he was so eager to advance the scheme that he began to put it into operation. Two of the many houses he investigated pleased him. One of them was on his own street, halfway between his house, which was right next to the famous writer Fukuchi's, and the Rengyokuan, which sold the best bowl of noodles in the area. A short distance from the Shi
nobazu pond was the house that had first appealed to him, for it stood somewhat back from the road, was fenced about with bamboo canes, and had a thick-needled parasol pine and a few cypresses.
The other house, in the middle of Muenzaka, was smaller. He did not find any notice on the door when he arrived, but he had heard that the house was for sale. Almost immediately upon entering, he discovered the noise from the neighboring house and the group of young ladies at work. “I don't like that,” he said to himself, but on inspecting the interior with more care, he could not help appreciating the high quality of the timber. He knew that the former occupant, a wealthy merchant who had just died, had built the house with care in order to spend his retirement there. The place, with its front garden and granite doorway, was comfortable, neat, and superior in taste.
One night, as Suezo lay in bed, he thought about the two houses. His wife, who had tried to put her child to sleep, had herself dozed off while the infant suckled at her breast. Suezo turned away from her, her mouth open, snoring, the child pulling at the exposed breast.
Usually Suezo would lie awake in bed while devising new schemes for increasing the interest on his loans. His wife never complained about this habit, and she was usually asleep long before her husband.
Once more he glanced at her, thinking to himself: “Is that a woman's face? I doubt it. Take Otama's face. That's a woman's face, but I haven't seen her for a long time. You couldn't even call her a woman then. I wouldn't think she was more than a child. Yet even then—what a face! Gentle—yes. But with something smart in it too. It couldn't be worse now—better, I should think. How I'd love to see her now instead of that thing!”
Once more he looked down at the snoring woman. “Poor devil!” he thought. “Sleeping there and not knowing a thing. She believes I'm adding up sums, but how wrong! How stupid and wrong! If you only knew—”
