Quicksand

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  Watanuki checked his anger.

  “Forgive me; I was wrong.”

  “I’m not as shameless as you are,” she told him. “If the truth ever came out, I’d suffer far more than you! Please don’t accuse me like that again.”

  She had him at her mercy. Watanuki could no longer confront her, but that only made him wilier. Behind her back he was all the more suspicious.

  Anyway, around that time talk of marriage into the M family began. . . . That was when Mitsuko was going to the Women’s Arts Academy, just to get out of the house and have a chance to meet Watanuki, and she told me it was she herself who started the rumor of a lesbian affair with me, by sending anonymous postcards. She did it because he’d been insanely jealous ever since he got wind of the marriage proposal. He swore he wouldn’t put up with it and threatened to expose their relationship to the newspapers. Not only that, but the city councilman’s family had entered the competition, and they were doing their best to find some defect that would spoil her chance of marriage. Of course she had no desire to marry Mr. M, so she didn’t mind losing out, but what she did fear was that their investigation might turn up Watanuki’s secret and bring that whole story to light. In short, she had purposely spread her own rumor in order to cover up the true situation.

  Well, you could say she deceived me just in order to deceive other people. For her part, Mitsuko preferred to be thought of as a lesbian rather than the victim of a dubious “playboy” or a “pansy.” She felt she could escape without being pointed out scornfully and becoming everyone’s laughingstock. That was how it all started, from a notion that came to her when she heard I was painting a picture modeled on her and saw how I reacted when I passed her in the street. But I took it so seriously, I was so passionate, that before she knew it she was falling in love. I suppose I wasn’t totally naïve myself, but my own feelings were incomparably purer than Watanuki’s, and she found herself drawn to me—then too, she said, there was an enormous difference between being the plaything of a near pariah and being worshiped by someone of her own sex, even portrayed as a divine Kannon. So from the time she came to know me she recovered her self-esteem, her natural feeling of superiority, and once again the world seemed bright to her. She told Watanuki she was taking advantage of those rumors to throw people off the scent, and she could use her friendship with me as another excuse to leave her house.

  Watanuki was not the sort to accept that at face value, although he put on an appearance of agreeing with her. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” he said. But he must have felt a stab of jealousy and begun watching for a chance to drive us apart. Now it occurred to her that there was even something fishy about the incident at Kasayamachi. All that business about gambling in another room and a police raid might have been fabricated; from the beginning he could have schemed with the employees at the inn to frighten Mitsuko and then to hide all their clothes while the two were fleeing. . . . The fact was, that afternoon, before coming to my house, Mitsuko had gone shopping at Mitsukoshi and happened to run into him. She told him she was going straight to Kasayamachi after visiting me, and he should wait for her there. Watanuki could see she was wearing one of our matching kimonos. This was his chance: if he could get that kimono away from her, she’d have to telephone me, and that would surely lead to a rift between us. While he was waiting for her at the inn, he could have bribed the employees and told them exactly what to do—Watanuki was fully capable of a scheme like that and had time to carry it out. It was much too farfetched to think that people wearing their stolen kimonos were taken down to the police station, let alone that the police never bothered to call either Mitsuko’s or Watanuki’s home. But Mitsuko hadn’t suspected any such plot at the time and was far too upset to know what to do.

  “There’s only one way out,” Watanuki had declared. “You’ve got to call Mrs. Kakiuchi and have her bring you that matching kimono.”

  Watanuki’s account had been quite different. But Mitsuko told me she was so flustered that at first she couldn’t remember which kimono she had lost. Even after he advised her to call me, she had said: “I can’t ask Sister to do that.”

  But he kept pressing her.

  “Shall we run away together, then? Or will you make that call?”

  Mitsuko was desperate. She would rather die than go away with him. Utterly at a loss, she ran to the telephone. Even then she could have tried to keep him out of my sight, especially in a place like that, but she was too confused to ask him to leave ahead of her or to have me come to a nearby café.

  That was what Watanuki had aimed for when he told her to hurry and make up her mind. Once I had arrived, she said she couldn’t bear to see me.

  “Just go and hide,” he said. “I’ll smooth this over for you.”

  He did everything he could to play the role of Mitsuko’s lover and to lead me on with all his explanations and his insidious questions.

  “That’s exactly what he did,” Mitsuko said. “To tell the truth, he didn’t know too much about you until then, Sister.”

  23

  “OH, SO HE WAS trying to lead me on, was he?” I asked. “I thought he was mocking me when he said your feeling for me was absolutely sincere.”

  “Yes, and that was also to make you angry, Sister. I was listening from behind the sliding door, thinking what a liar he was but that nothing he said was going to convince you. . . .”

  Mitsuko was furious with him, once she knew she’d been tricked, but he pursued her all the more relentlessly now that there was no one to hinder him. If she accused him of deception, he replied that she was the real liar. “You were deceiving me with all your lies, weren’t you?” He never stopped holding a grudge against us. “I’m sure you haven’t broken off with her over a thing like that,” he would say. “You’re still meeting her somewhere, probably.”

  He had already seen to it that we were no longer friends, and yet either he couldn’t give up his jealous doubts or else he was only pretending, just being disagreeable.

  “Why don’t you act like a man,” Mitsuko would retort, “instead of going on and on about something that’s over and done with?”

  “No, no, it isn’t over. . . . I suppose you’ve told her my secret.”

  Actually, that was what he was most afraid of. If it ever happened, he warned her, he’d have his revenge on us.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! How could I have told Sister, when I was hiding the very fact that I knew you? But you’ve seen her; you must have realized it from her attitude.”

  “No, there was something suspicious in the way she looked at me,” he said.

  Watanuki was so used to deceiving others that he distrusted everyone—but this time it wasn’t just nastiness; he had reason to be suspicious. Since he knew about my relations with Mitsuko, he thought I must know about his relations with her, and I had never shown any jealousy over it simply because I felt safe, because I’d been told he wasn’t a real man. Otherwise wouldn’t I have exposed them? That was why he had me called to the Kasayamachi inn: so I would see that he often went to such places with Mitsuko and could hardly be a man of doubtful sexuality.

  If he had approached her straightforwardly and begged her to break off with me, even Mitsuko would have felt obliged to agree. But once she’d been tricked like that and then accused of betraying him, she had a perverse desire to turn the tables. The thought of how she had let him come between us made her feel all the more attached to me. She wanted to do anything she could to be reconciled, at least to see me again, if only for the last time. But if she went to my house, I’d probably refuse to see her, and anyway, what sort of excuse could she offer? Whatever she might say, my feelings were unlikely to change.

  Racking her brains for a solution, she finally remembered that book. . . . Of course the book was of no use to Mitsuko, and she had lent it to Mrs. Nakagawa. Once she got her idea, she spent days planning what to do—how to make the phone calls in the name of the SK Hospital, and so on. Naturally she didn’t consult anyone
; she developed the whole scheme herself. But she decided she needed a man’s voice to make those calls, so she took Ume into her confidence and had her enlist their laundryman.

  “All my efforts were just to win you back. Now that I think of it, that scene I put on, rolling my eyes and all, wasn’t so bad for an amateur!”

  Well, she had to admit that her performance was meant to deceive me, but she felt sure I could understand her motive, even sympathize with her, rather than blame her for it.

  However, it wasn’t long till Watanuki learned about our reconciliation. Mitsuko wanted to show him she had turned his own plot against him; instead of hiding it, she couldn’t wait to see how he would behave when he found out.

  “You’ve been getting together with her again lately, haven’t you? Don’t try to pretend you haven’t. I know all about it.”

  “Oh, I’m not pretending at all,” she replied coolly. “You’d only suspect me anyway, so I thought I might as well see her.”

  “Why did you have to do that behind my back?”

  “It wasn’t behind your back. You can suspect me as much as you like, but I won’t lie to you—I’ll tell you what I did.”

  “Yes, but weren’t you keeping quiet about it up till now?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I don’t have to report everything I do.”

  “Even if it’s that important? There must be more to it.”

  “But I told you I saw her, didn’t I?”

  “Just saying you saw her isn’t enough. Tell me which of you made the first move.”

  “I went to apologize to her, and she forgave me.”

  “What!” he cried. “Why should you apologize?”

  “Am I supposed to forget about her, after calling her out to the inn at that hour and borrowing clothes and money? Maybe you could be so ungrateful, but I couldn’t.”

  “I sent everything we borrowed back to her by mail the next day. There’s no need to go out of your way to thank such an insufferable woman.”

  “Oh? And what did you tell Sister at the time? Didn’t you bow your head to that ‘insufferable woman’ and clasp your hands and beg for help? ‘I don’t care what happens to me,’ you said, ‘but if you take Mitsuko safely home I’ll be forever grateful!’ And now you talk like that! In the first place, think how much trouble you’d have caused if the clothes you sent back fell into her husband’s hands. No matter what you say, she’s somebody who helped us—you don’t know the meaning of the word grateful! The more I hear, the more I think you had something up your sleeve that night. . . .”

  Watanuki looked startled. “Something up my sleeve? And what would that be?”

  “I don’t know, but isn’t it funny that you were sure we’d broken off for good, even though I hadn’t said a word about it? If you thought I’d fall into the trap you set for me, you were wrong.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about!”

  “Well, then, why didn’t the police return our stolen kimonos?”

  “How should I know, at this late date?” He seemed stung by her question and shrugged it off with an embarrassed grin. “I can’t see why you’re so upset—you ought to stop grilling me and come out with it.”

  But Watanuki was not a man to leave it at that. A few days later he brought the subject up again, this time with a touch of flattery.

  “Mrs. Kakiuchi must have been good and angry—I wonder how you managed to get around her,” he said. “That’s something I’d like you to teach me!” And: “You’re remarkably clever, for such a sweet-looking girl. . . . The women in the pleasure quarter are no match for you!”

  After this rather backhanded praise, she decided she might as well give in and tell him the whole story of tricking me into a reconciliation.

  “Where did you learn to perform that little farce?”

  “I learned it from you, of course!”

  “Don’t be absurd! I imagine you’ve played that kind of hoax on me.”

  “There you are, being suspicious again. I’ve never done a thing like that before.”

  “I can’t understand why you’d go to such lengths to be on friendly terms with her.”

  “Didn’t you tell her you don’t mind? The other day you said we three ought to be friends.”

  “I only said that because she’d make trouble if we provoked her.”

  “That’s another lie. You were trying to lead her on—I know all about what you were up to that night.”

  “And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Listen, even a worm will turn, you know, and people won’t let you get away with plotting behind their backs.”

  “You have no proof that I’ve done what you call plotting. Aren’t you the suspicious one?”

  “Suppose I am. But now that it’s come to this, I think you’ve got to go on being friends with Sister, the way you promised! You may not believe me, but I’ve never said anything unpleasant about you to her. . . .”

  Mitsuko was sharp-witted enough to tell Watanuki that one reason she came to me with her outlandish story was to help him conceal his humiliating condition. She wanted me to believe that he was entirely normal. If she went to all that trouble to preserve his reputation, why couldn’t he be a little more generous and let the three of them be friends from now on? . . . She was touching a sensitive nerve in him, coaxing and threatening by turns.

  “As long as I’m meeting you here at the inn, I intend to have Sister come too,” she declared. And she told him she didn’t ever want him to stick his nose into our relations again—if he did, she made clear, he would be the one she’d leave, not me.

  After that, he had nothing more to say.

  24

  “. . . YOU KNOW, SISTER, as close as we’ve been, I feel ashamed to confess all this to you, and I’ve been holding back, thinking it might turn you against me. I couldn’t be more miserable. But today I told you everything!”

  Mitsuko was lying with her face in my lap, weeping freely, her tears streaming onto me. I didn’t know how to console her—the Mitsuko I’d known until that day was radiant, spirited, her eyes flashing with pride, not the sort of person to betray the slightest weakness or bitterness. It was shocking to see that glorious creature lose her self-confidence and collapse in tears. After that, Mitsuko told me she had always been too stubborn to let anyone see her pain, in spite of how depressed she felt, but still, if it hadn’t been for me she’d have suffered far more. Thanks to me, she had the courage to endure misfortune; her mood brightened whenever she saw me, and she forgot her troubles. But today at last, for some reason, sadness had overwhelmed her, she could no longer suppress it by sheer willpower, the dam had burst, and the long-pent-up tears had flowed.

  “Oh, Sister, please, please . . . you’re the only one I can trust—don’t let what I’ve said turn you against me!”

  “How could anything turn me against you? I’m glad you were able to come out with it. You can’t imagine how happy I am to have you trust me like that!”

  Then Mitsuko seemed to relax, but, weeping all the while, she went on to tell me that Eijiro had ruined her life, there was no future for her, no ray of hope, she could only live out her days in misery. She would rather die than marry that man. Couldn’t I think of a way for her to break off with him? Please, she begged me, help me find a way out.

  “Now that it’s come to this, I’ll be honest with you,” I said. “The truth is, I made a pledge as brother and sister with Eijiro. We exchanged documents spelling out all the details.”

  And I told her everything that had happened the day before.

  “It’s just as I thought!” Mitsuko exclaimed. “No matter what you say, he suspects he’ll be found out, so he did all that just to make sure of you, Sister. He wants to drag you along with him if he has to give me up. . . .”

  That reminded me of how amazed he looked when I told him it was the first I’d heard that Mitsu was pregnant. “The first you’ve heard?” he had demanded, his eyes blo
odshot, the color gone from his lips. “Did she say why she couldn’t have a baby? Was it because she had some kind of physical condition?” Then it came to me that in the midst of our talk he had more than once sighed and repeated that melodramatic outcry: “Ah, what wretched luck I’ve had!”

  I had interpreted that sentimental cry as a blatant appeal for sympathy, but maybe, brazen though he was, he had been overcome by his secret grief and couldn’t help revealing the sense of isolation that he tried to hide from others. Still, he had been probing me slyly with his questions: “Why wouldn’t she tell you she was pregnant? Did she have to lie about it, to you of all people?” And then: “Her father is positively furious. . . . If she has a baby, they’ll send it out for adoption.”

  That was bad enough, but there were all those special clauses in the agreement. “Reading it over, I can see it’s more to your advantage than mine, Sister,” he had said. “That must show you how sincere I am.” And yet if he hadn’t been worried about his own prospects, why did he use all that ridiculous language to try to win my confidence? Just when did he expect to take advantage of our vow? Think of these conditions: “Elder sister will exert every effort to see that her brother and Mitsuko are brought together in formal matrimony.” And: “If the brother is abandoned, his sister will break off relations with Mitsuko.” And also: “Neither party, without the express consent of the other, will engage in any such action as running away with Mitsuko, concealing their whereabouts, or committing double suicide with her.”

  That last condition seemed to have been what he had his eye on, according to Mitsuko; the others were only added to fill it out. As legalistic as he was, Watanuki hardly needed to go to so much trouble drawing up an elaborate document. But in fact, lately Mitsuko’s attitude toward him had been more and more desperate; there was no telling what she would do. So it looked as if all his scheming was out of fear that the situation would soon go from bad to worse.