by Неизвестный
“I’d be proud to take her anywhere. I was stupid to turn down the match. She’s the finest woman you’ve introduced to me.”
He remembered the five or six previous occasions Yazawa had tried to arrange a marriage for him. He had a particularly vivid memory of a young student he had met seven years ago. They had gone to view chrysanthemums together at Dangozaka.
“All your hard work over the years will have been in vain if you don’t marry me off to somebody. Were I to marry through another intermediary or remain a bachelor, you’d have failed at a major project. I’m afraid prospects don’t look good for success, though,” Jūkichi said.
“I feel like a fool! Your marriage problems have worn me out. But I’ve come this far. Now it’s a point of honor to find you a wife. Once I’ve accomplished that, I’m finished with the matchmaking business forever,” Mrs. Yazawa replied.
“All the women you’ve found have been very pretty.”
“I do have a good eye, don’t I,” she replied cheerfully, pleased by the compliment. “You’re the problem! I never know whether you’re serious or not. I’m getting discouraged.”
“Of course I don’t take it as a joke. I wonder, though, whether I’m not meant for marriage. If I’d married Oyae, the girl you arranged for me to meet seven years ago, I’m certain I’d be living in domestic bliss today. What happened to her? Is she still teaching school in Echigo?”
“Yes, still there. She’s the mother of two children.”
“I was attracted by her melancholy expression. She’s probably changed completely,” he said, recalling the girl’s narrow eyes and beautiful fine skin. “For better or worse, I should have married that girl,” he repeated with a sigh. “After all, not much good has happened during the past seven years. I’ve had experiences that your husband will never have, but I feel these have somehow sullied my soul. I thought I could keep my innocence and remain honest. Instead I’ve turned into a warped human being. I want a peaceful, normal life. I don’t care how hard I have to work so long as I can find mental peace. Today, I sat at my desk the whole day. I couldn’t concentrate. My mind would not stay still.”
“It’s not too late.” Mrs. Yazawa was convinced that marriage would save Jūkichi from his darkness. Marriage was the only way he could become a new man. A wife would force him to leave behind his reputation for dissolute conduct, would cure his frequent depressions, so evident in his behavior, and would put an end to his pitiful bachelor existence with only a one-eyed housekeeper for companionship. She even believed that marriage would enable him to cut down on his heavy smoking.
“I think the woman who marries you will be quite fortunate. She won’t be persecuted by a mother-in-law because she isn’t the perfect wife. No money worries with all that property of yours in the country.” She repeated her litany of characteristics that made him a good marriage prospect.
“I don’t know. If I had a sister, I wouldn’t let her marry someone like me,” he replied in all honesty. “Perhaps seven years ago it might have been another story, but now I’m not certain I could truly love a wife. More than money or an absent mother-in-law, a young woman needs a husband’s love.” Jūkichi made this mundane observation with great gravity.
“That’s true. But after you marry, love will naturally blossom between you,” she replied, ignoring his solemn pronouncement.
Taking advantage of this conversation, Yazawa’s wife said she had a certain prospect in mind, a young woman she had suggested to Jūkichi before. She would contact a woman she knew and be in touch with Jūkichi in a couple of days. Jūkichi did not object, but neither was he particularly enthusiastic. He had little expectation of good news.
“I wonder if I’ll marry even if she agrees,” he thought, doubting his own intentions. Several days later, he received a postcard from Mrs. Yazawa requesting that he pay her a visit. There was something she wished to discuss with him. Good news or bad, Jūkichi was curious to hear the result of her inquiries. He hired a rickshaw to take him to the Yazawas’ house that evening. The reply was that the young woman had become engaged to marry about two months ago. Moreover, the prospective groom was an acquaintance of the Yazawas.
“I made inquires of the Onoses. If the prospective groom weren’t somebody we knew, perhaps we could take further measures. I wish I’d paid attention sooner!” Now that Jūkichi was showing real interest, she seemed to regret all the more the failure of the match.
“I heard the young woman preferred you. Isn’t there something we can do?” her husband chimed in.
“I’ve no objections,” Jūkichi said, laughing.
“I disagree!” Mrs. Yazawa declared emphatically, as if thoroughly sick of talk about the young woman.
“But in January, you urged me to consider the girl. Now I’m becoming enthusiastic about her and you want me to give up. Maybe I should be willing to sacrifice my life to win her.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” Mrs. Yazawa snorted. She told him that Onose’s wife was determined to find him a bride, even if she had to walk the city until she dropped.
“I’m not destined to marry. This last failure is proof. I hate to impose on you further. Let’s give up!”
“I won’t be defeated!” Yazawa’s wife declared. She turned to her husband and whispered conspiratorially, “Shall we show Moriya the new one?” Yazawa nodded. His wife returned from the next room with a framed photograph she kept covered with her sleeve.
“The girl’s a distant relative of Onose’s. She’s from the provinces. Graduated first in her class at a women’s college, but she’s accomplished at lots of things, not just schoolwork. She’s twenty. But you can see from the photo that she’s as innocent as a child,” she said and placed the photograph on the table. Even before he glanced at it, Jūkichi had a general idea of what the girl would look like from Mrs. Yazawa’s description.
The lamp shone down on a countrified-looking young woman, without a hint of erotic appeal. As is usual in these situations, the three began uninhibited assessments of the young woman.
As Mrs. Yazawa foresaw, Jūkichi was not inclined to entertain the match. “If they’re coming up to Tokyo anyway, I suppose I could meet her if they want,” he offered, not refusing the match outright. Since he held a faint hope that wedded bliss might still be in store for him, he hesitated to break off talk of marriage altogether. If one prospective bride did not work out, he would move on to the next. This attitude provided him with some consolation.
“Next month when they come up to view the flowers, we’ll all get together for a meal at Mitsukoshi Department Store or someplace like that,” Mrs. Yazawa proposed. Clearly, she thought that Jūkichi might beat a cowardly retreat at the last moment, and she would set up the meeting prepared to spare the feelings of the young woman if he did not show up.
III
For Jūkichi, who had lost his job the year before, Sundays and holidays were no different from other days. There were no externally imposed restrictions on him, day or night. The result of this freedom was that his life grew more chaotic every day. When he read the newspaper, he would skip to the arts and culture page to look over the reviews for plays, literature, and music. Naturally enough, he would then go to see the exhibitions and performances that had been written about. The day after he visited the Yazawas, he left his house in the afternoon and wandered through the Hama district until he found himself once again in front of the Meijiza Theater. He entered in the middle of the day’s program. The “Mitoya” act of the play The Ritual Disembowelment of the Butterfly Woman was just beginning. Ichikawa Enjaku in the role of Ohana, costumed in extravagant kimono from the Genroku era [1688–1704], was seated in a sexually provocative pose in front of a shop. She was chattering away in the low dialect of the prostitutes’ quarter. Perhaps it is a characteristic of all of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s plays, but the impression from the stage was too detached, as if the actors were somehow missing a beat. Jūkichi’s attention was not focused solely on the stage. For more than te
n years, he had been addicted to the theater. When the plays changed at even small vaudeville halls, he would attend. But he could not sit still for the whole performance. After the first or second act, he would go out to the lobby to smoke and savor the atmosphere of the theater. Much of the actual performance bored him. He loved the smell of the crowds in theaters. The applause and shouts of encouragement from the audience filled him with nostalgia. He vaguely remembered the now deceased actor Onoe Kikugorō V in the role of Igami no Kenta. That was more than ten years ago. Who was popular in those days? He remembered Ichikawa Sadanji in such roles as Ono Kojima, Chubei, or Baba Saburobei drunkenly staggering across the stage in a sort of graceful dance. “I was raised by the canal like the wild ducks and geese . . .” This cheap, melodramatic line, with Sadanji stretching out the last syllables for dramatic effect, continued to resonate in Jūkichi’s mind in a way that the classical lines of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s masterpieces did not.
Jūkichi went up to the gallery. It was fairly empty, so he could move about and view the stage from a variety of perspectives. A man in Western-style clothing who was leaning on the balustrade happened to glance over his shoulder as Jūkichi passed. He seemed surprised and called out to Jūkichi by name. It was Kisui, the pen name of a fellow theater critic. Jūkichi knew him when he himself had been a theater critic for a newspaper some six or seven years ago. They had become acquainted when seated together in the section of a theater reserved for critics.
“It’s odd to find you here,” Kisui said.
“I look in from time to time. It’s as dull as always.”
The two went to the back of the gallery and crouched beneath the window. They exchanged news and caught up on gossip. Kisui, knowledgeable about the traditional forms of theater, was unsparing in his criticism of contemporary theater. “Even the audience is incompetent. They applaud in all the wrong places.”
“I think the plays and performances are becoming more entertaining. When I was a student, I’d pack some bread and spend all day at the theater. It didn’t matter whether the performance was interesting or not. I couldn’t judge anyway. I enjoyed everything. But after I’d been a critic for a couple of years, I stopped enjoying the theater altogether. Today, for example, while I was relaxed and casually watching the play, it was fine. But when I started viewing it like a critic, it spoiled it for me. I used to get irritated when people disparaged things just to show off their superior knowledge of the theater. Now I do the same thing. You, my friend, have a terminal case of the disease. Everyone else is here to be entertained by the beautiful costumes and dancing. You and I are the only ones caught in this critical prison.”
Jūkichi made this speech to deflate Kisui’s overblown rhetoric. Kisui merely replied, “I suppose you’re right.” He appeared to be about to launch into another tirade, however. Since Kisui had lost his job with the newspaper, he seemed to find venting his frustration more satisfying than watching plays. A workman, disturbed by Kisui’s shrill voice, turned and glared at them. “Hey! Shut up back there!”
“You complain and complain, but you still come to watch the plays,” Jūkichi observed and moved down to the front of the gallery.
On the stage, Sawamura Gennosuke, in the role of the aunt, was showing Hanshichi a short sword in a white scabbard. “This sword has doomed two generations of our family to a tragic end!, Observe the blade! Its curse shall extend down unto the third generation,” she lamented. The plot was nothing out of the ordinary, but the business about the curse of the sword sent a chill up Jūkichi’s spine. The insipid action on the stage took on new life. Either the second-rate Hanshichi or the aunt, with her long masculine features, would, in the end, succumb to the sword’s curse on the third generation. They would do all they could to escape the curse, but their efforts would be in vain and would lead inexorably to their downfall. Jūkichi thought he was glimpsing the terrible nature of fate and the impotence of reason. Gazing down from the gallery, he felt the stage was not a stage and the actors were not actors; instead, they were shadows flickering across his mind.
The curtain closed. Jūkichi approached Kisui. “Shall we go?” he invited. “I think I’ll stay for the last act,” Kisui replied. “We’ll meet in another gallery, then,” Jūkichi said smiling, and he left the theater alone.
Outside, it was growing dark, but it was still too early to go home. Jūkichi retraced his steps back through the Hama district until he came to the Ryōgoku Bridge. He stopped on the bridge and leaned on the railing. He viewed the flickering lanterns on either side of the Sumida River. Savoring the chilly but pleasantly spring-like breeze, he wondered whether there was a place where he could get enjoyably drunk that night.
At home, Jūkichi found a letter his housekeeper had placed on his bedding. “Tokiko will arrive in Tokyo tomorrow. She will visit the Onoses’ residence. Please come to my house first to discuss further arrangements. I will speak with you in greater detail tomorrow.” Taken aback by the sudden news, he nonetheless felt obligated to go. He set out for the Yazawas’ house the next morning and arrived before noon.
“I don’t know why they’ve turned this into a public occasion. I certainly told them that we wanted to be discreet. I understand they’ve announced a prospective engagement to all their relatives, and they’re bringing the father along to meet you,” Yazawa’s wife declared, looking distressed.
“Perhaps Onose misled them,” Jūkichi suggested.
“Onose told me that she didn’t exaggerate the importance of the meeting. She lays the blame on the aunt who lives in Aoyama. It seems the old woman wants her niece to marry a man from Tokyo so she’ll be nearby. She’s the one who’s most enthusiastic about the match,” Mrs. Yazawa explained. “Well, what do you want to do? Will you go?”
“I don’t have much choice. It’d be a terrible insult not to attend. But I warn you, I’m not making a commitment. If I don’t like her, I’ll refuse, and that’ll be the end of the matter.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “Getting married isn’t like accepting an invitation to lunch.” She leaned over the table and picked up the young woman’s photograph. “She’s not bad looking. Seems like a naive girl up from the provinces,” she said as if to herself as she studied the photo.
Jūkichi no longer entertained the slightest illusion that this meeting to arrange a marriage would make him feel something new. Ten years ago, on a night when the spring rain had just lifted, a friend had taken him for the first time to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter. At the sight of a beautifully dressed young woman, with a hint of the coquette about her, Jūkichi’s heart had begun to pound in his chest. Now that he was past thirty, it was hard for him to imagine recovering that same innocence and honest feeling. Years of dissipation had caused him to lose the respect he once had for women. He could not bring himself to feel the same deference he had formerly shown in his dealings with them.
“I wish I could recover the innocence of a virgin,” Jūkichi exclaimed with a sigh.
As they ate lunch and discussed their participation in previous marriage talks, a messenger arrived from Onose. Mrs. Yazawa said she would go first and look over the situation, and she put down her chopsticks and departed. Onose’s house was nearby, so Jūkichi was surprised that she was away for so long. When she returned, out of breath, she began describing the young woman without pausing to take off her coat. She fixed her gaze on Jūkichi and declared, “She’s an innocent girl. Observe her closely. She’s just as innocent as her photograph.”
“Is that so?” Jūkichi responded coldly.
“Her father seems to love her very much. I’m jealous. My father died when I was little.” She recounted how insecure she had been at her own wedding.
“Shall we go? I wish I’d shaved,” he said, laughing. They left together. “She’s such an innocent girl!” Mrs. Yazawa kept repeating on the way.
Jūkichi met Onose’s plump wife for the first time at the entrance to her house, and he was led into the main room. In the seat of hon
or was a fiftyish man with sunken eyes. He was the image of the honest merchant up from the countryside. His daughter, seated next to him, was dressed in a practical, everyday kimono and wore no decorations in her hair or on her person.
The aunt, who appeared to be an independent-minded woman, sat a little apart. At the first glance, Jūkichi wondered why he had let himself be dragged here. He said very little. There was not a hint of color or gaiety in the dim room, which had not even been swept properly. Yazawa’s wife, however, was brilliant. She brought up a variety of topics of conversation to keep the party from falling into embarrassing silence. Her movements, facial features, and manner of speaking were splendid. She seemed extraordinarily sophisticated.
They finally bade their farewells and left. “So what did you think?” Yazawa’s wife immediately asked once they were outside.
“You were right. She is an innocent,” Jūkichi replied and said nothing more. He had caused Mrs. Yazawa a great deal of trouble, and he could tell from her expression that she was hoping for a speedy and successful conclusion to this marriage proposal. Moreover, the young woman and her father had traveled all the way up from the provinces, and it seemed cruel to bluntly reject her. He told Mrs. Yazawa that he could not make a decision based on only one meeting but that if the young lady planned to spend more time in Tokyo, perhaps they could meet again. On this ambiguous note they parted. Jūkichi had not expected it, but he felt lonely after she left. He went to visit a friend who lived in the neighborhood and returned home at night. He thought about his circumstances for a while, then decided to write a letter to his family in the provinces. He wrote to his father at some length: “If I were to marry, I would hope that my relationship with the main family in the provinces could be established definitively. I would like to set up my own independent household in Tokyo and live free of extended obligations. . . .”
