Dandelions

by Yasunari Kawabata

  “A moment ago, Mr. Kuno,” she said at last, “you said it sounded like any other evening bell. How, after two or three rings, ten or fifteen seconds, did it come to sound so awful?”

  “Awful isn’t the word, I think,” Kuno said, as if to himself. “When I said all that just now about the madman obsessed with evil, the noble confessor; about being dragged into the darkness . . . it felt like some sixth sense had suddenly stirred inside me.”

  “A madman obsessed with evil . . . ? A confessor . . . ? I’m afraid there’s no way I’ll ever understand some of these things you’re saying to me, Mr. Kuno.”

  “Let me listen in silence. Isn’t that what I asked?”

  Ineko’s mother nodded, then slid the shōji open and stepped out into the hall, closing the shōji behind her. She lifted the edge of the old, dingy curtain and stood gazing out at the sea. At a little after six on a winter evening, there was nothing to look at. No light shining from the lighthouse on the island. No moon in the sky. The horizon was lost in the light mist that hung over the water. Even the gray waves racing blandly up the beach were invisible unless you were actively trying to spot them. The small pines on the beach, too, were unremarkable. Though perhaps the plainness of the evening shore suited this quiet, peaceful, aging town.

  While there was nothing to catch the eye on the beach or out on the ocean, the sky above was full of stars, though the mist dulled them. You couldn’t help imagining how clear the night must be above the haze. To Ineko’s mother, it sounded as though the tolling of the bell was ascending into the starry sky, rather than rolling out across the waves. Perhaps that, too, was an effect of the landscape. Still, she heard nothing distinctive in the sound. It hurt to remember the last time they had listened to the bell, at three o’clock, when her own daughter, who they’d just left at the asylum, was striking it. The mother had been thinking about it ever since the ringing started up again at six, of course, but the pain cut deeper as she stood there alone, gazing out at the dark sea and the night. The ordinary ringing of the bell seemed as though it might sound different in a moment. She heard it changing, and assuming the unsteadiness of the bell they’d heard at three, when Ineko was striking it. An auditory hallucination, you might say, that was not a hallucination.

  Could it be, then, that Kuno — who started saying those bizarre things about the bell almost right away — loved Ineko more deeply? Returning to the room, the mother quietly sat back down on the floor. Kuno noticed her but said nothing; he seemed to be waiting for the silence between the previous strike of the bell and the next to pass. His expression seemed less stern, though, than it had when she stepped out into the hall.

  “I guess that was the last,” Kuno said finally. He sighed. “I wonder who it was.”

  Reassured by the mildness of his tone, the mother replied, “We have no way of knowing, do we? There are any number of patients.” Then, as if to soothe him, “You’re not still feeling like you did before, are you? That business about the madman, the confessor.”

  “No.” Kuno shook his head.

  “That didn’t make any sense, Mr. Kuno. What would a confessor be doing in a madhouse? There are doctors — that’s all. A prison would have a chaplain, I suppose. But the mad aren’t sent to the madhouse to serve time.”

  “Legally, the mad can’t be punished. But doesn’t guilt often drive criminals mad? And doesn’t madness drive people to commit heinous crimes?”

  “I was told that the Ikuta Clinic doesn’t admit such people.”

  “Perhaps madness is itself wrong, from humanity’s perspective, even if you don’t commit a crime of the sort you can see, a crime that hurts another person, or society.”

  “If so, I guess every human wrong deserves our pity. After all, each of us carries inside of us the potential for madness, don’t you think?”

  “I think what I heard in the tolling of the bell was deeper than that, or if not deeper at least less easily understood,” Kuno said. “At any rate, don’t many of the techniques doctors use in asylums resemble the efforts of the chaplain, or the confessor?”

  “I’m sure they do. But as you said, that’s a different issue.”

  “Ah.”

  “And this noble confessor — where would we find him?”

  “For starters, I’d say there’s one inside each of us.”

  “I see. And you would say the one inside you is noble?”

  “Certainly,” Kuno replied right away; then, needled by this answer, he paused. “If the part of me that forces me to answer for myself isn’t noble, then the whole thing becomes silly and vulgar. More ludicrous, even, than feeling regret.”

  “I understand.” Ineko’s mother nodded. Then, “So did it sound to you as if you were the one striking the bell?”

  “If they had let me strike it, I might have hit it so hard it would have cracked, more wildly than someone who was already mad — as if striking the bell were actually driving me insane. If we’re all struggling to contain the madness inside us, what’s wrong with losing our sanity for a while as we ring a bell?”

  “Temple bells aren’t formed that way. Not like these Western instruments everyone is so crazy about these days. I don’t think Japan has ever had instruments like that — even those drums they beat so furiously at festivals. Aren’t temple bells, up in the mountains, supposed to soothe the spirit? Isn’t that how they’re made?”

  “What do you mean? How are they made?”

  “The famous opening lines of Tales of the Heike capture it very well, I think: ‘The Jetavana Temple bells / ring the passing of all things.’ Those log-like hammers they use to strike the bells can’t be swung in a way that produces such a crazy sound.”

  Kuno couldn’t argue with this, but he wouldn’t agree, either. “That ‘passing of all things’ stuff . . . I don’t hear that at all.”

  “Anyway, the doctors at the clinic let patients ring the bell because they think it may help. That’s what they said. At least the effect it has is more natural than, say, sedatives or tranquilizers. Temple bells aren’t percussion instruments.”

  “The doctor also said some of his colleagues can tell how a patient is doing just from the tone of the bell,” Kuno said, not yet entirely calm. “And then he said that when patients strike the bell, the ringing may speak for them, give voice to something deep in their hearts.”

  “He did say that, yes.”

  “And you replied that that seemed a very sad thing to say, and the doctor said not necessarily — though honestly, he didn’t really seem to be listening. You remember?”

  “I’ll never forget it. Even after Ineko leaves the clinic, I suspect,” she said. “It won’t ever be the way it was when Ineko rang the bell as a child, at Miidera. From now on, for the rest of my life, I’m sure I’ll recall those words whenever I hear a Japanese temple bell.”

  “That one just now, at six, was another voice, another patient’s heart.”

  “It didn’t strike me as the voice of a confessor, though,” the mother said. “There aren’t any confessors at the clinic. Even if the doctors at asylums sometimes question patients in that fashion, I see no connection between that and the bell. I heard nothing like a confession, no repentance, no regret, no agony. I don’t know, maybe a temple bell just isn’t the best way of communicating the heart of the person striking it. Maybe I don’t love my daughter as deeply as you do, Mr. Kuno.”

  “Our love is different, that’s all.”

  “That said, if it sounded to you like your own confessor striking the bell . . . I can’t really comment on that, of course, and neither can anyone else, but it does say something.”

  “Nothing in me made it sound that way,” Kuno said emphatically. “It was a confessor striking the bell, that’s all there is to it. A noble confessor.”

  “Perhaps you’re a little mad yourself, Mr. Kuno? First you see a nonexistent white rat on th
e riverbank, and now all this about the bell.”

  Kuno wasn’t having any of it. “Not at all.”

  “There are no confessors at clinics,” Ineko’s mother said calmly. “Though I guess the way you describe it, many of the mad are like that, forcing themselves to answer for themselves — they’re just much purer at heart, or much weaker, than other people.”

  “That’s exactly what I was saying.”

  “That it was one of the crazies?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t say which of them was striking the bell. Just from the sound.”

  “I can, actually.”

  Ineko’s mother widened her eyes. “Who?”

  “It was him.”

  “Him?”

  “The old man. I’m sure of it.”

  “What old man?”

  “Bald, missing teeth, so thin he was like a sack of bones. You saw him — practicing his calligraphy.”

  “Ah, him? To enter the Buddha world is easy; to enter the world of demons is difficult. That’s what he was writing. It stuck in my mind, because I remember seeing it on a scroll by Ikkyū,” said Ineko’s mother, keeping her gaze trained on Kuno’s face. “You think an old wreck like him would have the strength to strike the bell? He could hardly stand.”

  “I do.”

  “And it would sound like a confessor?” she asked incredulously. “Doesn’t that seem a bit delusional?”

  “It’s not a delusion. It’s an instinct, a sixth sense,” Kuno said. “Old Nishiyama may have been a wreck, falling apart at the seams, but did you notice his eyes? Did you see his face, how he held himself?”

  “No. I didn’t really look.”

  “The moment I saw him, I sensed that he had committed some terrible crime. Murder, maybe, or worse. They could have put him in jail or sentenced him to death, but instead they committed him. Perhaps the statute of limitations had expired.”

  “You think?” Ineko’s mother, startled, mulled this over. “Why would you want to look at things this way? How awful.”

  “Awful — me?” Kuno shook his head. “If anyone is awful, it’s him.”

  “Are you suggesting, Mr. Kuno, that he feigned madness while he waited for the statute of limitations to run out?”

  “I have no idea. If he did, then obviously he managed to deceive the detectives and the police and so on, so I’d certainly never know. I have no relationship to him — I’ve only seen him once. Maybe he lost his mind after he committed the crime . . . or before.”

  “You seem convinced that he’s a criminal. Why?”

  “You really didn’t notice his eyes? The doctor said he sometimes loses his temper when he does his calligraphy, that he has spasms. Who knows what’s happening then? If you ask me, the trembling is probably brought on by remorse, or horror. The old man’s eyes were pools of criminality, the worst you can imagine. Of course, his pupils had a white cast — the doctor said he has cataracts. And what does that phrase mean, anyway? ‘To enter the Buddha world is easy; to enter the world of demons is difficult.’ I bet every so often he snaps out of it, and being in his true, sane state terrifies him so much that he has one of his fits.”

  “You’ve only seen him once, as you said,” Ineko’s mother said softly. “You don’t think you’re reading too much into things?”

  “Perhaps, Mother, perhaps,” Kuno replied. “But even that emaciated body of his looked to me like the embodiment of some old crime, grown withered and wrinkled.”

  “Really? I wonder.”

  “That phrase, ‘To enter the Buddha world . . .’ — it’s a zen thing?”

  “I believe so. I’m not sure, but I think I saw it at a tea ceremony, on the scroll in the alcove. It was Ikkyū’s calligraphy.”

  “I doubt the old man is seeking some profound zen insight with that phrase, in writing it again and again, day after day. He probably doesn’t even see it as a meaningful paradox. He’s using the second half to dull his guilt, that’s all. Or more shamelessly still, to affirm his crime.”

  “A rite of atonement, you mean. His calligraphy.”

  “I guess, putting it in the most positive light, you could see it that way.”

  “It doesn’t seem like something anyone truly mad would do.”

  “No, I doubt he’s completely mad,” Kuno said. “Except that . . . well, it does seem crazy to go on writing the same phrase over and over.”

  “Supposing he really did commit some heinous crime,” the mother said, her tone no less calm than before. “You think that would make his bell-ringing sound as if a confessor were doing it? And not just a confessor, but a noble confessor?”

  “Obsessed with evil, or noble. One or the other.”

  “Still I doubt he’s strong enough to strike such a large bell, and produce that sound.”

  “Maybe when he strikes the bell a weird kind of energy, a demonic force, wells up in him. There’s probably a sort of rhythm to it, too — how you swing the hammer. You get used to it, in other words. I assume they let him do it all the time.”

  “I still don’t see how you can be so sure it was him just now, at six.”

  “What have I been saying all long? It sounded like an inquisition.”

  “And I keep saying the same thing back. You’re hearing something in your own heart.”

  “It’s true, there may be something wrong with me.” Kuno said bluntly. “But my certainty that it was him striking the bell has nothing to do with that.”

  Ineko’s mother stared at Kuno for a moment, then looked down. “Mr. Kuno, we seem to have been going in circles all this time. Why is that, do you think?”

  “Have we been going in circles?” Kuno asked. Then, as if to himself, “The next time they ring the bell is at nine. Maybe I should go up to the clinic and ring it myself.”

  “What?” The mother raised her eyes.

  “I wonder how it would sound to you, if I did,” Kuno said quietly.

  “The doctors would never let you, Mr. Kuno. Even if they did, striking a hanging bell isn’t like playing a regular instrument from sheet music. Those giant posts they use aren’t made in such a way that you could bang the bell like crazy, as you said — so hard the metal cracks.”

  “I was thinking of ringing it with Ineko, actually,” Kuno said quietly, almost sadly.

  The mother seemed shocked. “With Ineko? I doubt they would permit that, either. Ineko struck the bell at three, to see us off. Besides, they’re unlikely to admit visitors at night.”

  “They may have a rule against that, it’s true. But there are exceptions. Even at an asylum, they must make allowances for extraordinary circumstances.”

  “Extraordinary circumstances? What do you mean?”

  “No matter how many times I try, I can’t convince you that it was the old man just now, ringing the six o’clock bell.” Kuno had grown agitated again. “Couldn’t you hear the difference, Mother? Between the bell Ineko rang at three, and the one at six — the old man’s?”

  “No, honestly, I couldn’t. It was weak and unsteady when Ineko was striking it; I suppose whoever did it at six sounded more practiced.”

  “That’s all? I guess as you age, little by little, the doors to your sensations close. Perhaps your eardrums grow less sensitive.”

  “That could be. But you hear the bell’s ringing through your feelings. You admitted there’s something wrong with you.”

  “There will be if I don’t do something.” Kuno paused. “We just left Ineko at an asylum. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “To cure her.” The mother’s tone, too, grew sharper. “I said earlier that maybe I don’t love my daughter as deeply as you do, Mr. Kuno. That’s quite a thing to say. But a mother loves her child as only a mother can. And all the sorrow we have endured over the years, since her father’s death — the two of us, on our
own, mother and daughter . . . .”

  “I know, I understand. Are you suggesting I’m trying to steal her from you?”

  “Pardon me? When have I ever interfered with your relationship?”

  “Perhaps I tried to remove the part of you that’s inside Ineko.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. There’s no escaping that anyway, no preventing it. I’ll be fine as long as you two are happy, even if I end up all alone in an old-folks home or some such place.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. But don’t you think you may have doted on her too much, when it was just the two of you? Handled her too carefully, as if you were cradling a precious jewel in your palm?”

  “A jewel? That may be true.” A sad look came over Ineko’s mother’s face. “But remember, Mr. Kuno, that she saw her father fall to his death from a cliff when she was just a girl, right in front of her. I’m her mother. I may have tried too hard to heal that wound, and been more solicitous than is normal.”

  “Well, this certainly isn’t normal. Why put her in a madhouse?”

  “To cure her, that’s the only reason.”

  “Even after I said I would marry her, and cure her myself. Even when I tried to stop you. When you saw the trunk of that tree at clinic, all scratched up, you said it looked like it was crying . . . How can you be so oblivious to the tears streaming deep in our two hearts, lovers separated, one in the clinic, one outside?”

  “Ineko has somagnosia. I thought marrying you would make it worse.”

  “May I ask when her somagnosia first appeared?”

  “Hmm. I’m not entirely sure myself. Ineko says she screamed and covered her eyes when her father’s horse went off the cliff, and then fainted, right there on her horse’s back. She was still sitting there when they found her. And yet she also claims to have witnessed her father’s death, the entire thing. She believes that. I don’t know if she saw it with her actual eyes, or with the eyes of her conscience, but she’s sure she saw it. My own sense is that there’s no way a girl as young as she was then could have taken it all in so precisely, so objectively. I think she must have covered her eyes with her hands, and didn’t really see anything. It’s not like a car crash — it would have taken some time for him to fall from the top of the cliff all the way down to the water. I’ve never doubted her story, though. She may have had her hands over her actual, physical eyes, but seen it all with the eyes of her heart. I’ve always accepted what she says as the truth, and I’ve never questioned her in a way that might suggest that I’m skeptical. Not once. But you know, Mr. Kuno, it does seem a trifle odd to me that a man should sink immediately from view while the horse floats on the waves, kicking desperately. I mean, even supposing the man was dead already, and only the horse was still breathing.”