The Hunting Gun (Pushkin Collection)

by Inoue Yasushi

  Why didn’t I continue down the road to the shore? For a simple reason. Because I could not banish my acute awareness that in no area could I possibly rival that gorgeous woman five or six years my senior, Saiko, whom I had always called “elder sister”—not in terms of the depth of my experience of life, or my knowledge, or my talents, or my looks, or my gentleness, or the grace with which I held my coffee cup, or in discussions of literature, or in my sensitivity to music, or in the application of my make-up. Oh, what humility! The modesty of a new wife of twenty, so pristine only the curving lines of a work of pure art could express it. I am sure you have had the experience of going for a swim in the ocean in early autumn and discovering that each little movement you make causes you to feel the water’s chillness more intensely, and so you stand there without moving. That was precisely how I felt then: too frightened to move. Only much later did I arrive at the happy conclusion that it was only right that I deceive you the way you had deceived me.

  Another time, you and Saiko were waiting in the second-class lounge at Sannomiya Station for an outward-bound express. This must have been a year or so after the Atami Hotel. I stood amidst a gaggle of girls on a field trip, bright as flowers, considering whether to enter the lounge. Yet another time, I stood outside Saiko’s house staring up at the soft light filtering through the gap in a curtain on the second floor, the gate before me shut tight as a clam, trying to decide whether or not to ring the doorbell—ah yes, I can still see myself that night, standing for ages awash in the insects’ shrill fiddling, as vividly as if the memory were imprinted on my eyelids. I have the sense that this was around the same time I spotted you at Sannomiya Station, but I cannot say whether it was spring or autumn. I have no feeling for the season when it comes to these memories. And there are many, many of them—things that would make you moan… Still, in the end, I did nothing. After all, had I not turned away from the road to the ocean that day at the Atami Hotel, even then? Yes, even then, even then… strangely, all it took was a vision of that achingly blue, glittering ocean, heaving itself up in my mind’s eye, and the agony that had burnt my heart—that a second before had been barely under my control, threatening at any moment to explode into madness—would subside, as if it were a thin sheet of paper that I had peeled away.

  Although for a while I came close to losing my mind, time appeared to resolve our problems, and our relationship became as smooth as it could conceivably have been. As you cooled, with the speed of a red-hot piece of iron plunged into water, I matched your coolness; and as I grew cold, you drew circles around me in your plummeting frigidity, until at last we found ourselves living here within this magnificently frozen world, in a household so cold one feels ice on one’s eyelashes. I wrote household, but that isn’t right—it has none of the tepidity or the human stench of a household. One might more accurately call it a fortress, as I am sure you will agree. For a decade now, we have been holed up in this fortress, you deceiving me, me deceiving you—though you deceived me first. Such distressing transactions we humans make! Our whole life together was erected upon the foundation of secrets each of us kept from the other. You reacted to my countless unforgivable trespasses sometimes with scorn, sometimes with disgust, at other times with an expression that was sorrowful and yet indifferent. Often I would holler from the bath for the maid to bring me my cigarettes. I would extract a movie programme from my handbag when I returned home and wave it back and forth, fanning the opening at the front of my kimono. I left trails of Houbigant everywhere, in the rooms and the hallways. I danced a little waltz after hanging up the phone. I invited stars from the Takarazuka Revue to come dine with me and had photographs taken of us, me nestled in amongst them. I played mahjong in a padded kimono. On my birthday, I asked that even the maids wear ribbons and then threw a raucous party to which only university students were invited. Naturally I knew full well how deeply all of this displeased you. But you never once reprimanded me—you couldn’t. And so there was never any friction between us. Thus the fortress’s calm was preserved, nothing changing but the air, which grew progressively drier and colder and more unpleasant, like a desert wind. You went out with your hunting gun to shoot at pheasants and turtle-doves; why, then, were you incapable of firing a bullet into my heart? You were deceiving me anyway, so why didn’t you go all the way—trick me more cruelly, trick me until I didn’t even realize I was being tricked? A man’s lies can sometimes elevate a woman, you know, to the very level of the divine.

  *

  I see now, however, that at some point there must be an end to this life I have endured for a decade, and to our bargaining. I know it because somewhere deep in my heart I have harboured this expectation, subtle but persistent: the hope that something will arrive, that even now it is wending its way in our direction! Only two possibilities present themselves as to the form this ending might assume. Either there will come a day when I stand quietly huddled against your chest with eyes closed, or I will plunge that penknife you brought me as a souvenir from Egypt with all my strength into your chest, sending up a spray of blood from the wound.

  Which of these two endings, I wonder, do you think I prefer? In truth, even I am unsure.

  That reminds me. This happened, I suppose, about five years ago—I wonder if you will remember. As I recall, you had just returned from your travels in the south. Having absented myself for two days, I returned home somewhat intoxicated, my gait uncertain, though it was not yet even evening. I had understood that you were in Tokyo on business, but for some reason there you were, back at home, sitting polishing your gun in the living room. “I’m back!” I cried, and then without another word I stepped out onto the verandah and sat down on the sofa with my back to you, feeling the play of the chill wind on my skin. The canopy for the outdoor dining table was propped against the eaves, and by some trick of the light it transformed part of the line of sliding glass doors enclosing the verandah into a mirror that reflected a portion of the room, and I could see you there rubbing the barrel of your gun with a white cloth. Worn out from too much play, feeling irritable and yet simultaneously too languid to lift a finger, I let my gaze linger on your figure as you went about your business, but without really focusing my attention. After wiping down the barrel, you replaced the breech-block, which you had also burnished until it shone; you raised the gun twice or thrice, resting the butt against your shoulder; and then all of a sudden you froze with the shotgun lifted and shut one eye, as if you were taking aim. And I realized that the barrel was pointing straight at my back.

  Did you want to shoot me? I must confess it was very interesting for me to try to discern whether, at that moment, setting aside the fact that the gun was not loaded, you possessed the desire to kill me. I pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing, closed my eyes. Were you aiming at my shoulder, at the back of my head, at my nape? I waited with bated breath, expecting to hear at any moment the icy click of the trigger breaking the stillness of the room. But the click never came. If it had, I was ready—as eager as if this were the first chance I had been granted in many years to make my life worth living!—to collapse in a dramatic, staged faint.

  Unable to bear it any longer, I slowly opened my eyes. You remained in the same posture as before, your sights set on my back. I sat motionless for a while, until all at once, for whatever reason, I was struck by the absurdity of what we were doing, and I shifted slightly, turned to look at the real you, not the one in the mirror, upon which you swiftly swung the point of your gun away, took aim at the rhododendron in the yard—the one we had transplanted from Amagi, which had bloomed for the first time that year—and then, at last, I heard you pull the trigger. Why didn’t you shoot your faithless wife that day? I would venture to say that I had done enough then to deserve being shot. You wanted to kill me sufficiently badly, and yet in the end you would not pull the trigger! If you had fired, if you had refused to overlook my trespasses, if you had driven into my pulsing heart an unmistakable loathing for your person—then, perhaps, agains
t all odds, I might have fallen meekly into your arms. Naturally, I might also have gone in the opposite direction, letting you have a taste of my own marksmanship. At any rate, you failed, and so, releasing my gaze from the rhododendron that had fallen in my stead, I tripped more shakily than necessary from the room, humming “Under the Roofs of Paris” or some such tune, and withdrew to my private sitting room.

  *

  Years passed after that without affording us any further opportunity to bring all this to its conclusion. This summer, the blossoms on the crape myrtle were more poisonously red than ever before. I felt a subtle quickening of anticipation, almost a hope, that something unusual might occur…

  I visited Saiko for the last time the day before she died. I found myself confronted, then, quite out of the blue, after more than a decade, by what was unmistakably the same greyish-blue haori whose nightmarish image, in the glaring Atami sunlight that morning, had burnt itself onto my retina. The huge purple thistle hovering above the background, its outline sharp, seemed to weigh upon the frail shoulders of the woman, now somewhat emaciated, whom you loved. I commented, as I came into the room and knelt beside her, on how lovely she looked, struggling to calm myself; but then I began to wonder what she could possibly be thinking, wearing this haori in my presence, at this moment, and all at once my blood began to seethe, to course through my body, like boiling water. I felt powerless to restrain myself. Sooner or later, this woman’s transgressions, the fact that she had stolen another woman’s husband, and the humility of that twenty-year-old bride, would have to be dragged out into the courtyard before the magistrate. That moment, it seemed, had arrived. And so I reached down into my heart and brought out the secret I had kept so carefully hidden for more than a decade, and set it softly down before the thistle.

  “It brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

  She gave a quick, almost inaudible gasp, and turned to face me. I met her eyes with a steady gaze. And I persisted; I did not look away. Because naturally it was she who should avert hers.

  “You wore that when you and Misugi went to Atami together, didn’t you? You’ll have to forgive me. I’m afraid I was watching you that day.”

  As I had expected, the blood drained visibly from her face, the muscles around her lips twitched in the most ugly manner—I am not just saying this, I truly was struck by her ugliness—as she tried to find something to say, but in the end she could not pronounce a word; she simply lowered her face, and, yes, let her gaze fall, settling on her white hands where they lay crossed on her lap.

  The thought bobbed into my consciousness, then, that this was the moment I had been living for all those years, and I relished an exhilaration of the sort one might feel standing in a downpour as the rain washed down across one’s skin. At the same time, in some other region of my heart, I sensed with an indescribable sadness that one of the two possible endings had at last settled into a shape, and was even now moving towards us. I lingered there, wallowing in that emotion, for quite a while. I was fine; I could have sat in that spot until I grew roots. How desperately she must have wanted to disappear, though, that woman! Eventually, for what reason I cannot say, she lifted her waxen face and stared fixedly at me, her eyes very still. I knew then that she would die. Death had sprung, just now, into her body. Otherwise she could never have looked upon me with a gaze so still. The garden clouded over for a moment, then was bright again. Someone had been playing the piano next door, but now, suddenly, the sound broke off.

  “Don’t let it worry you, I don’t mind. You can have him!”

  I got to my feet, went out to the verandah to retrieve the white roses I had left there when I came, put them in the vase on the bookshelf, adjusted the arrangement; and then, as I gazed down at Saiko where she sat slumped over again, at her wiry neck, it struck me—awful premonition!—that this would most likely be the last time I saw her.

  “Please, there’s really no need to fret. I’ve deceived you all these years, too. We’re even.”

  Without even meaning to, I chuckled. And all the while, how perfectly she maintained her silence! From start to finish she simply sat there, speaking not a word, so still and quiet it almost seemed she had stopped breathing. The judgement had been handed down. Now she was free to do as she liked, as far as I was concerned.

  With that, I strode swiftly out of the room, flicking the hem of my kimono up with movements so crisp and clean even I could feel it.

  Midori! For the first time that day, I heard her cry out behind me. But I continued down the hall, around the corner.

  “Are you all right, Aunt Midori? You’re terribly pale.”

  I realized that the blood had drained from my face only when Shōko, who was coming along the hall with cups of black tea on a tray, drew my attention to the fact.

  By now, I am sure, you see why it is impossible for me to remain with you any longer; or rather, why it is impossible for you to remain any longer with me. I have written at great length and said much that is distasteful; now, at last, it seems the final curtain can descend on ten years of painful bargaining. I have said more or less all I wanted to say to you. If possible, I would be grateful if you could reply, giving your consent to our divorce, before your stay in Izu is complete.

  *

  Come to think of it, I will close with one bit of unusual news. Today, for the first time in years, I went and cleaned your study in the annexe myself, rather than leave it to the maid. I was impressed by how settled it is—a very nice study indeed. The sofa is singularly comfortable, and the Ninsei pot on the bookshelf does much to enhance the atmosphere, like a blaze of flowers in the otherwise muted room. I wrote this letter in your study. The Gauguin does not quite suit the space, and if possible I would like to take it with me and hang it in the house in Yase; I took the liberty of removing it from the wall, hanging the snowy landscape by Vlaminck in its place. I also rotated the clothes in the drawer, setting out three winter suits, each paired with one of my particular favourites among your neckties. Whether or not you will be pleased, I cannot say.

  SAIKO’S LETTER (POSTHUMOUS)

  By the time you read this, my darling, I will no longer be among the living. I don’t know what it’s like to die, but I know all my joy, my pain, my suffering will be gone. All my feelings for you, this surge of emotion that keeps coming and coming whenever I think of Shōko, will have vanished from the face of the earth, just like that. There will be nothing left of me—not my body, not my heart.

  And yet, hours or maybe days after I’ve died and entered that state, you will read this letter. And it will communicate to you all these feelings I hold within me now, while I live. It will tell you, just as if I myself were talking to you, things about me, my thoughts and feelings, that you never knew before. You’ll listen to my voice as it comes through this letter as if I were still living, and you will be stunned, saddened, angry. You won’t cry. But you will look at me with that terribly sad face of yours, which no one but me knows—I know Midori has never seen it—and tell me how silly I am. I can see your face clearly even now, and hear your voice.

  All of which is to say that even after I die, my life will still be waiting here hidden in this letter until it is time for you to read it, and the second you cut the seal and lower your eyes to read its first words, my life will flare up again and burn with all its former vigour, and then for fifteen or twenty minutes, until you read the very last word, my life will flow as it did when I was alive into every limb, every little corner of your body, and fill your heart with various emotions. A posthumous letter is an astonishing thing, don’t you think? I brim right now with the desire to give you something true in the fifteen or twenty minutes of life this letter holds—yes, at least that much. It scares me to be saying this to you at this late date, but it seems to me that while I was alive I never once let you see me as I truly am. Now, writing this, I am the real me. Or rather, this me, the one writing, is the only one that is real. Yes, this is real…

  My eyes still rem
ember how beautiful the foliage was on Mount Tennō, in Yamazaki, washed by the fine autumn rain. What made it so beautiful? We stood under the eaves of the closed old gate of that famous tea house at Myōkian, just across from the station, waiting for the rain to end, gazing up at the mountain, which jutted up just behind the station, so huge and so close, and it was so beautiful it took our breath away. It was a sort of trick of the season, perhaps, that moment in November, and of the time of day, shortly before dusk. An effect of the particular atmosphere that day in late autumn, after an afternoon of intermittent drizzle—an array of colours so rich it was as if the whole mountain were dreaming them, colours so beautiful they made us afraid at the thought that we were going to climb up there, up the side of the mountain. Thirteen years have passed since then, yet the touching beauty of those leaves, on all the different trees, rises up before me as if I were there at this moment.