The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

  The next day, as I had expected, Mother seemed definitely ill. She lingered over one thing and another as if every additional minute she could remain in the house was precious to her, but Uncle Wada came to inform us that we had to leave that day for Izu. Almost all the luggage had already been dispatched. Mother with obvious reluctance put on her coat, and bowing without a word to Okimi and the other people in our employ who had come to say good-bye, she walked out of our house in Nishikata Street.

  The train was comparatively empty, and we were all able to find seats. My uncle was in extremely good spirits and hummed passages from the No plays, among other things. Mother, pale and with her eyes downcast, looked very cold. We changed at Nagaoka for a bus, rode for about a quarter of an hour, got off, and began to walk toward the mountains. We climbed a gently sloping rise as far as a little village, just outside which was a Chinese-style villa, built with some taste.

  “It’s a pleasanter place than I had imagined, Mother,” I said, still gasping for breath from the climb.

  Mother stood in front of the entrance of the cottage. “Yes it is,” she answered, a happy expression coming into her eyes for a moment.

  “To begin with, the air is good. Fresh air,” declared my uncle with evident self-satisfaction.

  “It really is,” Mother smiled. “It’s delicious. The air here is delicious.”

  We all three laughed.

  Inside we found our belongings arrived from Tokyo. The front of the house was piled high with crates.

  “Next, there is a fine view from the sitting-room.” My uncle, quite carried away, dragged us there and made us sit down to admire it.

  It was about three in the afternoon, and the winter sun was gently striking the garden lawn. At the foot of a flight of stairs that led from the lawn, there was a little pond surrounded by plum trees, and beyond the garden, an orchard of tangerine trees. A village road, rice fields, a grove of pines, and, in the distance, the sea could also be discerned. As I sat in the drawing-room, the sea appeared to be just on a level with my breasts.

  “It’s a gentle landscape,” Mother said dully.

  “It must be because of the air. The sunlight here is entirely different from Tokyo sunlight, isn’t it? It’s as if the rays were strained through silk,” I answered with excessive gaiety.

  On the ground floor were two fairly good-sized rooms, a Chinese-style reception room, a hall, and a bathroom, then the dining-room and kitchen. Upstairs was a foreign-style room with a big bed. This was the whole house, but I thought that it would not be especially cramped for two of us, or even for three if Naoji returned.

  My uncle went out to the only inn in the village to arrange about a meal for us. A lunch was presently delivered which he spread out in the sitting-room and began to eat. Some whisky he had brought served to wash it down. He was very cheerful and insisted on relating his adventures in China with Viscount Kawata, the former owner of the house. Mother barely touched the food, and soon afterwards, when it started to grow dark, she murmured, “I’d like to lie down for a bit.”

  I extracted the bedding from our baggage and helped Mother spread it. Something about her worried me so much that I ferreted out the thermometer to take her temperature. It was 102 degrees.

  Even my uncle seemed upset. At any rate, he went off to the village in search of a doctor. When I called to Mother, she merely nodded drowsily.

  I pressed Mother’s little hand in mine and began to sob. She was so pitiful, so terribly pitiful—no, we were both pitiful. The tears would not stop. I thought as I wept that I would like to die on the spot with Mother, that we had nothing to hope for any longer, that our lives had ended when we left the house in Nishikata Street.

  Some two hours later my uncle returned with the village doctor. He seemed quite an old man and was dressed in formal, rather old-fashioned Japanese costume.

  “It may possibly develop into pneumonia. However, even if pneumonia develops, there is no occasion for anxiety.” With this rather vague pronouncement, he gave Mother an injection and departed.

  Mother’s fever did not go down the following day. My uncle handed me 2,000 yen with instructions to telegraph him if it should happen that Mother had to be hospitalized. He returned that day to Tokyo.

  I took the necessary minimum of cooking utensils from our baggage and prepared some rice-gruel. Mother swallowed three spoonfuls, then shook her head. A little before noon the doctor appeared again. This time he was in slightly less formal attire, but he still wore his white gloves.

  I suggested that it might perhaps be better if Mother went to the hospital. “No,” the doctor said, “I do not believe it to be necessary. Today I shall administer a strong injection, and the fever will probably abate.” His answer was just as unreassuring as the previous time, and he went away as soon as he had finished giving Mother the “strong injection.”

  That afternoon Mother’s face turned a bright red and she began to perspire profusely. This, perhaps, was to be attributed to the miraculous powers of the injection. Mother said, as I changed her nightgown, “Who knows, he may be a great doctor!”

  Her temperature had dropped to normal. I was so happy that I ran to the village inn and bought a dozen eggs from the proprietress. I soft-boiled some at once and served them to Mother. She ate three and about half a bowl of rice-gruel.

  The next day the great doctor appeared in his formal costume again. He nodded gravely when I thanked him for the success of the injection, with an expression as much as to say “Exactly as I expected.” He examined Mother carefully, then turning to me said, “Your mother has quite recovered. She may therefore eat and do whatever she desires.”

  His manner of speech was so peculiar that I had all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing. I showed the doctor to the door. When I returned to her room, I found Mother was sitting up in bed.

  “He really is a great doctor. I’m not sick any more,” she said absent-mindedly, as if she were talking to herself. She had a very happy expression on her face.

  “Mother, shall I open the blinds? It’s snowing!”

  Snowflakes big as petals had softly begun to fall. I threw open the blinds and, sitting next to Mother’s side, watched the snow.

  “I’m not sick any more,” Mother said, once again as if to herself. “When I sit here with you this way, it makes me feel as if everything that has happened was just a dream. To tell the truth, when the time came for moving, I simply hated the thought. I would have given anything to stay a day, even half a day, longer in our house in Nishikata Street. I felt half-dead when I had to board the train, and when we arrived here, after the first moment or two of pleasure, I felt my heart would burst with longing for Tokyo, especially when it grew dark. Then everything seemed to go blank before me. It wasn’t an ordinary sickness. Cod killed me, and only after He had made me into someone entirely different from the person I had been, did he call me back to life.”

  From that day to the present, we have managed to continue our solitary lives in this cottage in the mountains. We prepare meals, knit on the porch, read in the Chinese room, drink tea—in other words, lead an uneventful existence almost completely isolated from the world. In February the whole village was buried in plum blossoms. One placid, windless day succeeded another well into March, and the blossoms remained on the boughs until the end of the month. At whatever time of the day one saw them, the blossoms were breathtakingly beautiful, and their fragrance flooded into the room whenever I opened the glass doors. Toward the end of March a wind would spring up every evening, and as we sat in the twilighted dining-room drinking tea, petals would blow in through the window into our cups. Now in April our conversation, as we knit on the porch, has generally turned on our plans for cultivating the fields. Mother says she would like to help. Even as I write these words the thought strikes me that, just as she said, we have already died, only to come back to life as different people. But I don’t suppose a resurrection like Jesus’ is possible for ordinary human beings. Mot
her spoke as if the past were already forgotten, but all the same, when she tasted the soup this morning she thought of Naoji and uttered that cry. Nor, indeed, have the scars of my past healed.

  Oh, I would like to write everything down plainly and absolutely without concealment. I sometimes secretly think that the peace of this house in the mountains is nothing more than a lie and a sham. Even assuming that this has been a short period of respite vouchsafed by God to my mother and myself, I can’t escape the feeling that some threatening, dark shadow is already hovering closer to us. Mother pretends to be happy, but she grows thinner by the day. And in my breast a viper lodges which fattens by sacrificing Mother, which fattens however much I try to suppress it. If it is only something which comes with the season, and nothing more! That I could have done such a depraved thing as burn the snake eggs certainly shows what a state I am in. Everything I do seems only to make Mother’s unhappiness the more profound and to weaken her.

  As for love … no, having once written that word I can write nothing more.

  CHAPTER TWO / FIRE

  During the ten days that followed the incident with the snake eggs, one ill-fated thing after another occurred to intensify Mother’s unhappiness and shorten her life.

  I was responsible for starting a fire.

  That I should have started a fire. I had never even dreamed that such a dreadful thing would happen to me. I at once endangered the lives of everyone around me and risked suffering the very serious punishment provided by law.

  I must have been brought up so very much the “little lady” as not to have been aware of the obvious fact that carelessness leads to conflagrations. Late one night I got up to wash my hands, and as I passed by the screen in the entrance hall, I noticed a light coming from the bathroom. I gave it a casual glance only to discover that the glass door of the bathroom was a glowing red, and I could hear an ominous crackling. I rushed to the side door and ran outside barefoot. I could see then that the pile of firewood which had been stacked beside the furnace was blazing furiously.

  I flew to the farmhouse below our garden and beat with all my might on the door. “Mr. Nakai. Fire! Fire! Please get up! There’s a fire!”

  Mr. Nakai had apparently already retired, but he answered from inside, “I’ll come at once.” While I was still urging him to hurry, he dashed out of his house, still in his bedclothes.

  We raced back to the fire. Just as we began to draw water from the pond with some buckets, I heard Mother call from the gallery next to her room. I threw down my bucket, climbed up to the gallery, and caught Mother in my arms. She was on the point of collapse. “Mother, please don’t worry. It’s all right. Please go back to bed.” I led her back to bed and having persuaded her to lie down, I flew back to the fire. This time I dipped water from the bath and passed it to Mr. Nakai to throw on the burning woodpile. The blaze, however, was so intense that we could not possibly have extinguished it that way.

  I heard voices shouting below, “There’s a fire. Fire at the villa!” Suddenly four or five farmers broke through the fence and rushed up to us. It took them just a few minutes to get a relay of buckets going and put out the blaze. If the fire had lasted just a little longer, the flames would have spread to the roof.

  “Thank Heavens” was my first thought, but in the next instant I was aghast at the sudden realization of what had caused the fire. It was only then that it occurred to me that the disaster had taken place because the previous night, after I removed the unburned sticks of firewood from the furnace, I had left them next to the woodpile, thinking that they were already out. This discovery made me want to burst into tears. As I stood there rooted to the ground, I heard the girl from the house in front say in a loud voice, “Somebody must have been careless about the furnace. The place is gutted.”

  The village mayor, the policeman, and the head of the fire brigade were among those who appeared. The mayor asked, with his usual gentle smiling face, “You must have been terribly frightened. How did it happen?”

  “It was all my fault. I thought that the firewood had burned out.” This was all I could say. The tears came welling up, and I stood there incapable of speech, my eyes on the ground. The thought came to me then that the police might arrest me and drag me off like a criminal, and at the same moment I suddenly became aware of the shamefully disheveled appearance I made as I stood there barefoot in my nightgown. I felt utterly lost.

  The mayor quietly asked, in a tone of sympathy, “I understand. Is your mother all right?”

  “She is resting in her room. It was a dreadful shock for her.”

  “Anyway,” said the young policeman, trying to comfort me, “it’s a good thing that the house didn’t catch fire.”

  Just then Mr. Nakai reappeared, having changed his clothes in the meanwhile, and began to shout all out of breath, “What’s all the fuss about? Just a little wood got burned. It never turned into a real fire.” He was obviously trying to cover up my stupid mistake.

  “I understand perfectly,” said the mayor nodding. He spoke for a few minutes with the policeman, then said, “We’ll be going now. Please remember me to your mother.” They all left except for the policeman, who walked up to me, and in a voice so faint it was only a breathing said, “No report will be made on what happened tonight.”

  After he had gone Mr. Nakai asked in a tense voice what the policeman had said. I answered, “He told me that they wouldn’t make a report.” The neighbors who were still standing around apparently caught my words, for they began gradually to drift away, murmuring expressions of relief. Mr. Nakai wished me a good night and started off. Then I stood alone, my mind a blank, by the burned woodpile. In tears I looked up at the sky, and I could see the first traces of the dawn.

  I went to wash my hands, feet, and face. Somehow the thought of appearing before Mother frightened me, and I idled around the bathroom, arranging my hair. I went then to the kitchen where I spent the time until it grew light in making a quite unnecessary rearrangement of the cooking utensils.

  I tiptoed to Mother’s room only to find that she was already completely dressed and seated, looking absolutely exhausted, in an armchair. She smiled when she saw me, but her face was dreadfully pale.

  I did not smile in return but stood without a word behind her chair. After a little while, Mother said, “It wasn’t anything, was it? Only firewood that was meant to be burned.”

  I was swept by a wave of happiness. I remembered from childhood Sunday school classes the proverb in the Bible, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver,” and I thanked God from the bottom of my heart for my good fortune in having a mother so full of tenderness.

  After finishing a light breakfast, I set to work disposing of the burned woodpile. Osaki, the proprietress of the village inn, came trotting up from the garden gate. “What happened? I just heard about it. What happened last night?” Tears shone in her eyes.

  “I am sorry,” I murmured in apology.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. What about the police?”

  “They said it was all right.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief.” She looked genuinely glad.

  I discussed with Osaki how I should express my thanks and apologies to the village. She was of the opinion that money would be most suitable and suggested the houses I should visit with presents of money and apologies. She added, “If you had rather not make the rounds all by yourself, I’ll join you.”

  “It would be best, wouldn’t it, for me to go alone?”

  “Can you manage it alone? If you can, it would be.”

  “I’ll go alone.”

  When I had finished disposing of the wood, I asked Mother for some money, which I wrapped in little packets of 100 yen each. On the outside I wrote the words “With apologies.”

  I called first at the village hall. The mayor was out, and I gave the packet to the girl at the reception desk saying, “What I did last night was unpardonable, but from now on I shall be most careful. Ple
ase forgive me and convey my apologies to the mayor.”

  I next visited the house of the fire chief. He himself came to the door. He gave me a sad little smile but did not say anything. For some reason, I burst into tears. “Please forgive me for last night.” I took a precipitous leave and ran through the streets with the tears pouring down my face. I looked such a fright that I had to go back home to put on some fresh make-up. I was just about to set out again when Mother appeared. “Not finished yet? Where are you going this time?”

  “I’ve only just begun,” I answered, not lifting my face.

  “It must be a terrible ordeal for you.” Mother’s tone was warmly understanding. It was her love which gave me the strength to make all the rest of the calls, this time without once weeping.

  Wherever I went the people sympathized and attempted to console me. Mr. Nishiyama’s young wife—I say young but she’s already about forty—was the only one who rebuked me. “Please be careful in the future. You may belong to the nobility, for all I know, but I’ve been watching with my heart in my mouth the way you two have been living, like children playing house. It’s only a miracle you haven’t had a fire before, considering the reckless way you live. Please be sure to take the utmost care from now on. If there had been a strong wind last night, the whole village would have gone up in flames.”

  I felt the truth of Mrs. Nishiyama’s accusation. Things were really exactly as she described, and I couldn’t dislike her in the least for having scolded me. Mother had tried to comfort me by making the joke about the firewood being for burning, but supposing there had been a strong wind, the whole village might have burned down, just as Mrs. Nishiyama said. If that had happened, not even my suicide could have served as sufficient apology, and my death would not only have caused Mother’s but have blackened forever my Father’s name. I know that the aristocracy is now not what it once was, but if it must perish in any case, I would like to see it go down as elegantly as possible. I couldn’t rest in my grave if I died in atonement for having started a fire.