Japanese Gothic Tales

by Kyoka Izumi

  2

  She turned her proud face to the side, until the white makeup on her chin was about to touch her chest.

  Startled, Sokichi looked at her again and was reminded of someone else. The crimson woman had her hair pulled back on one side and fastened with a comb. She wore a black, formal jacket that rode low on her sloping shoulders. One delicate hand was concealed beneath the loosely flowing collar, while the other guarded a yellowish-green opera bag that rested on her knees. As she was clearly over thirty years old, the simple handbag looked as though it was meant to be a gift for a child. Taken together, her crimson undergarment, her unstockinged feet, the suggestive hairdo, and the formal jacket gave an impression of discord. She had painted her face with a thick, white paste and had enlarged her lips with a red ring of lipstick. As she looked toward the distant temple, her back straight and her chin held high, she seemed like a puppet come to life, her large eyes intently focused and the narrow collar of her kimono trailing down the pure white of her throat. She was more awesome than beautiful. Her eyebrows were incomparably lovely, gentle, and well-shaped. Those eyebrows, he knew, could only mean that she was the one.

  In truth, the resemblance wasn't as perfect as that between his cousin and the woman traveling with her. Maybe he had been so struck by the match that the image so deeply implanted in his mind now forced itself upon the crimson woman. But those eyebrows. Sokichi felt as if he had suddenly swallowed the crescent moon, and that it was sparkling in his heart with a joyous light.

  Osen was her name, and she was the woman who once saved Sokichi's life. It happened at the very spot where the crimson lady was now staring, the Myojin Shrine.

  "Almost too late! A razor!"

  Even now, the sight of the temple filled him with terror. The rain clouds hovering over the wood seemed like a horrifying mask painted with lines of dreary gray. The roofs of the houses around the temple looked like rows of black teeth biting down on each other. Here and there, two or three red-brick buildings stood with their tin roofs torn up and sticking into the sky like the bright-red gums of a man-eating goblin. To those who see only the misty showers of spring, that wood, that grove of trees, must seem like three or four eyebrow brushes standing in a row. But to Sokichi, recalling the time he nearly killed himself, the same trees resembled an untrimmed beard growing wildly into the sky.

  Yes, rising like wild geese into that sky were the eyebrows of the crimson lady! Sokichi glanced at the woman again. Her eyes were fixed, unblinking, staring at the same place.

  Was it Osen?

  His heart pounded like the sea; and the train station turned like the deck of a great ship until its bow pointed straight toward the Myojin wood, which now seemed close enough to touch.

  "Sloping down in that direction. That’s Myojin Hill."

  In the house to the right and all the way to the end of the alley—

  On the morning of that fateful day, Sokichi had had one of his friends shave the boyish beard from his face. And that evening in the Myojin temple grounds, he put the same razor to his throat!

  But wait. I'm losing control of the story.

  Sokichi had come up to Tokyo without any definite plans and without a penny to spend on an education. As he had nowhere to call his own, lie joined a gang of vagabond day laborers who helped him stay alive. These were people who, through indolence and dissipation, had been forgotten by the world. They were failed medical students, some of them well along in years—some even with wives, shabby politicians, businessmen of the lowest order, charlatans, and a few who were working toward their goal of becoming policemen someday.

  He lived in a row house on Myojin Hill with a half-starved ex- medical student named Matsuda, who was staying there with his wife. At the end of their street, fronted by a willow tree and a lantern, was a room overlooking the city, the perfect place for someone's kept mistress. Her name was Osen, a woman as lovely as a dewdrop. She was the one the crimson lady resembled.

  3

  Osen made her way through the world secretly. She was mistress to the leader of their group, an enormous statue of a man named Kumazawa, who, people said, was destined to become a successful businessman someday. Ostensibly, he had ransomed her from a brothel, but actually he had persuaded her to run away with him to Myojin Hill, where he kept her secretly as his own. She was, of course, a prostitute. But Sokichi was ignorant, then and now, of what exactly her status had been. At the time, she was simply a beautiful young woman, three or four years older than he, maybe more? To him she was the charming Osen.

  It had been raining until the night before, just as it was now. But on that morning in March, the clouds had cleared like a flower in bloom. Although it was already ten, breakfast was yet to come. (I have to ask those of you who have never experienced real hunger to try to imagine what it must have been like for the boy.) No matter how long Sokichi waited, there was nothing to eat.

  Shortly after sunset the evening before, an order had been placed at the mistress' quarters for tempura-on-rice; and then again at one in the morning came a delivery of noodles that wafted their aroma all the way to Sokichi's pillow. Knowing food had been brought in, he went to see if there might be a left-over morsel . . . and because the weather was good today he was even hungrier than usual! Holding his growling stomach, he opened the lattice door to the narrow street, lined on both sides with houses fronted with gutters, just as three men appeared from the shadows of the willow tree at the end of the alley. The broad-shouldered one, wearing a soiled cotton jacket, was Matsuda, owner of the row house. He glanced over at Sokichi, who drew back into the entrance. Matsuda lifted his little finger. "What's she doing?" he asked in a quiet voice.

  "She's still asleep."

  With no real reason to join the waking world, Matsuda's wife was still wrapped in her blanket, sound asleep. Hearing Sokichi's report, Matsuda stuck his tongue out at his wife and passed by in silence.

  The next one to appear was a handsome priest, slender-faced and pale, his freshly shaven head tinged with a shadow of stubble. He wore a formal, black half-coat over his gray kimono. Actually, the jacket was Osen's, its crepe sleeves lined with red. Though he had come to their street just the night before, holding his crystal-beaded rosary and wearing a purple surplice draped like a precious cloud over his shoulders, now he was wearing a kept woman's clothes. And right behind him followed a dark-skinned, sunken-eyed, large-mouthed politician-turned-businessman. As he walked past, he pretended to strike the priest's round head with his fist, grinning and looking out the corner of his eye toward Sokichi. Having forsaken the world of politics, he had shed his formal attire and now wore a short cotton jacket and knit pants. He was called Small Plate because of his saucer- sized bald spot.

  All three men had spent the night playing cards and were now on their way to the public bathhouse. Headed the opposite direction, Sokichi wandered over to where Matsuda's woman lived with Kumazawa's mistress, Osen. Not only did he find nothing to eat, but he was immediately put to work, cleaning up after the men.

  "Sorry to make you do housework." Osen, holding the skirts of her many-layered kimono, picked up her black velvet cushion and retreated from her place before the brazier. Beneath the kimono was the enticing undergarment, tied up with a narrow under-sash.

  "Why be sorry?" laughed a short, rotund man named Amaya. "The boy's ours, isn't he?" Amaya's hair was long and uneven. He had a pot belly, around which he wore a stiff merchant's sash and an apron tied neatly with a plaited cord. He, too, was a failed medical student, now preparing for a career in business. Amaya and Osen went into the next room, which they shared with Matsuda's mistress, who was already well along in years. Sokichi, weak with hunger, his stomach growling wretchedly, managed to get the sweeping done.

  "Good job! Nice work!" Amaya said happily. "Please, madame." He turned to Osen, picking up some cushions and returning them to the brazier. For such a stocky man he was surprisingly quick. Until a few days before, he had been living across the alley in the same
row house as Sokichi, lounging around on a rented quilt as if he were a potato worm. But Kumazawa was often away on business and brought Amaya over to the second house to keep an eye on Osen and take care of things generally. Because she was Kumazawa's lover, Osen was considered Amaya's better, and his attentiveness toward her was only to be expected.

  "There," he fluffed up a matching cushion for her, turned it over, then backed away. "If it pleases your highness." In word and spirit he was witty and light, but the movements of his body were jerky, as if his body were a huge stone. And no wonder: he had been stricken with beriberi. Though he had been able to stay up playing cards with everyone else, he didn't have the strength to walk with the others to the bathhouse.

  "Please don't bother." Osen entered from the next room, holding her skirts of printed silk off the floor. A comb held her hair on top of her head.

  4

  It was still too early in the year for cherry blossoms. As Osen took her place by the brazier, a branch of flowering quince, or some other flower, accompanied by the faint scent of sunshine, threw its silhouette upon the paper-covered windows. Sokichi expected Kumazawa to take his place across from her, dressed in his matching Oshima kimono and jacket, a gold watch chain trailing into one pocket, but—

  "Is the master out?" he asked Amaya.

  Kumazawa was nowhere to be seen, nor had he been among those who went to the bathhouse. From the end of the hall echoed a roof-raising cough of someone loudly clearing his throat. Apparently Kumazawa was in the privy.

  "In here."

  "My goodness." Matsuda's woman laughed as she passed from the next room to the kitchen.

  Osen looked down at her lap and smiled. "Not very charming, is he?"

  "But that's what got you." Amaya drummed on his apron. "That's how you fell into his hands."

  "Really. Now you've gone too far."

  Even young Sokichi knew that Amaya had said something wrong, probably something obscene.

  "Sorry." Amaya bowed many times. "And to show my sincerity, allow me to touch up your face a bit for you. As I said last night, I'm not that good. But I can still pass for a pretty fair valet. Trust me." He turned to Sokichi. "You, go get the razor."

  Sokichi understood why he had to fetch it. Even if Osen could sneak away to the bathhouse, she couldn't very well visit a barber. Neither would her situation allow someone to be called in to do her hair for her. Sokichi did as he was told. He borrowed a razor from the landlord's mistress and brought it to Amaya.

  "But where's the washbasin! Use your head, boy!"

  Sokichi could tell that Amaya and Osen had something to talk over.

  "I suppose you'd like me to display my skills on someone else first?" Amaya asked her.

  "I doubt that's necessary."

  "There's nothing to worry about. If I make a mistake, it's only the boy. Look. He needs a little work around that mouth anyway."

  Sokichi was helpless.

  "Look up, way up. How's that? Good work, don't you think?"

  Osen anxiously watched Amaya's hand. Her face, moving like a veil of fine silk behind a plume of steam, flickered in the corner of Sokichi's eye.

  "Look, just like this. A little here, a little there.

  "Stop!" Osen couldn't help getting up to her knees now. The movement of her sleeves blew their fragrance to Sokichi's nose. "What's wrong?"

  "You'll shave them off!"

  "What? The eyebrows?" The razor stopped for a moment, then continued. "Who cares?"

  "No. Not above the eyes!"

  "Look, I'll be shaving your neck. Why are you worried about the boy's eyebrows?"

  From inside the toilet came the sound of yawning, clear as a bell. "Now don't start laughing!"

  "Why not?" said Amaya. "Why not laugh? Why not cry? Who cares about the boy's eyebrows?"

  "No!" Osen rose to one knee and came forward. The rustling of her clothes swished in Sokichi's heart like the far-off sound of an angelic bird making its way toward him. Osen became a mermaid emerging from the waves of the tatami mats.

  "But don't you wonder about this boy's mother?"

  Her arm, whiter than snow, reached up and stopped the razor in Amaya's hand. She took it away from him and brought the blade to her chest. She held it, stared at it. "You have such nice eyebrows," she said, looking up at Sokichi. "Your parents must really love you."

  Sokichi could see the whiteness of Osen's bosom. He knew the purity of her gentleness and yearning. But then the pattern and color of her clothes and the blackness of her hair threw shadows in his eyes.

  With her sleeve upon his shoulder, he pressed his face to her collar and began to weep uncontrollably.

  "Is that razor sharp enough?" Matsuda's woman asked from the other room. "I was going to send it out—“

  Later that day, after night had come to their street, Sokichi told everyone he was going to take the razor to the barber's shop for sharpening. But actually he had plans to kill himself with it.

  As for the details—

  5

  The three members of the gang came back from their morning bath, and everyone sat down to a game of cards, including Kumazawa, who had finally emerged from the toilet. Breakfast turned out to be sushi, stewed tofu, and a little sake. Amaya suggested that with tea they have some of the Soma crackers that were made and sold in an alley in Miyamoto-cha, just at the bottom of the steep flight of steps running down Myojin Hill. They would be his treat to Osen—salted and crisp, flecked with soy sauce, and marked with horse-bit patterns. It was Sokichi's misfortune to be the one sent to buy them.

  Ah, the appetite of a seventeen-year-old! He could barely manage to get three meals a day; and though this was by no means a difficult errand, his hunger pangs became even sharper than they had been earlier that morning. The pain spread to the bottom of his stomach, as deep as a tumble down a steep flight of steps. Tempura, noodles, baked sweet potatoes—the smell of any one of these would have tested anyone's ability to endure. But a whiff of the golden-brown Soma crackers made Sokichi's hands tremble with desire. He was nearly starved, and the beads of cold sweat that began running down his body were impossible to ignore.

  Seven sen still bought a lot of crackers in those days. From a large bagful, Sokichi stole just two, two crackers as round as silver coins. He paused at a landing where the path up the hill was so steep he could reach out and touch the steps before him. Shielded only by a thin covering of ginkgo leaves and the branches of the firs and Chinese nettles towering far above, Sokichi faced the drainage ditch that ran along the cliff and partook of forbidden fruit for the first time in his life. He chomped down on the hard crackers like a horse champing down on a bit. How wonderfully delicious!

  But he was immediately overwhelmed with guilt and embarrassment, as if he had thrown himself into a ditch and fallen to pieces like the crackers that seemed to break apart inside his stomach rather than in his mouth. It was as if he had bumped his head on an overhanging cave and poked his eye on a spike, his entire body warm with the spurting blood as he crawled like a snake up the serpentine stairway. He felt like the love-tortured Oshichi, dashing up the steps to watch the city burn, the sunlight glaring in his eyes, turning blood-red, flowing down the steps toward him. He washed himself at the Myojin Temple's holy laver and felt a horrifying chill run through his entire body.

  "Heh, heh, heh!"

  The men had sat down to play a game of cards, laughing among themselves. Sokichi immediately sensed the danger when he entered the room, feeling his face flush with guilt as he handed the bag of crackers to Amaya.

  Turning over a card and aligning it with another, Amaya passed the bag to Osen. She looked tired and hadn't joined the game. "Here. See what you think."

  Osen received the bag from where she was sitting on the opposite side of the brazier. She put it down by her knees, peered in, and innocently said, "I'll check for poison." How those words pained Sokichi! Had his guilt been all he had to bear, the story would have ended here. But there was more.

/>   "Heh, heh, heh!"

  The sound of muffled laughter had entered Sokichi's ear from the very moment he returned. Looking away from the cracker that Osen picked from the bag, he was struck from the side by the snickering of Small Plate Heishiro. With his fat cheeks, diamond-shaped face, and narrow, deeply set eyes, he laughed and crinkled his stubby nose. "Heh, heh!"

  Small Plate seemed to have drawn a bad hand and was out of the game. Holding his silver-plated pipe, he propped up one knee, placed his cheek on top of it, and laughed uncontrollably.

  6

  "Take that." The landlord turned over a card, and the priest flashed his red sleeves.

  "Damn you!" The priest threw his card down.

  Small Plate's snickering was louder now.

  Kumazawa reached for his sake cup with one hand as he stared down at the contest of bush clover, iris, cherry, and peony as the cards fell one by one onto the velvet cushion. "What's wrong with you?" He glanced over at Small Plate, who laughed again, as if he were a bug that had just eaten a mouthful of pepper.

  "Idiot!" Kumazawa licked the corner of his mouth and held out his cup. Osen took the heated sake flask from its copper boiler and paused. "Something wrong?"

  "Sorry." Small Plate laughed again. "Can't help it."

  "He's been possessed," Amaya mumbled in disgust.

  Everyone fell silent, but with the silence came only more laughter. Small Plate fell over on his side, beating his ribs with the gooseneck of his pipe as he writhed on the tatami. "Help! Ho, heh, heh! I can't stand it!"

  The red-faced Small Plate, eyes watering, squirming in agony, found a cup of cold tea, gulped it down, and immediately started to choke. He reached for an ash pot, but it was too late. He coughed and sent up a cloud of ashes.

  The priest pointed toward the wall. "Sokichi. Open the window!"