The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by Неизвестный

  The platoon was advancing up Mount Samat1 and, if they did not proceed at a forced march, they would inevitably come under fire from the well-provisioned, well-armed enemy advancing from the right. So they continued to march, the platoon commander giving no order to rest.

  “I’m going to let go. I’m letting go.” From the voice of Private Nakagawa, Kitayama Toshio sensed that his comrade’s strength was completely spent. The ends of his words became increasingly faint, and these pitiful words, originally spoken in a tone of appeal to Kitayama Toshio, had now lost this tone of one appealing to another and seemed rather to be words addressed to himself, perhaps showing that, at the end of life, his conscious mind was ranging around his entire lifetime—and the words made their way into the very depths of Kitayama Toshio’s heart. Yet he had no strength to do anything for his comrade in arms, be it only a simple act of encouragement, such as a pat on the shoulder. Rather, if he had begun to make such a gesture, then he would have lost the strength to keep his own body moving, only to perish himself. Steeling himself against the entreaty in Private Nakagawa’s voice, he walked on.

  “I’m letting go.” And then Private Nakagawa’s hands slipped from the horse’s reins, and he remained unmoving, his knees bent. He had chosen his fate—to be buried under the thickly lying sand. As if to show that his body had at last been set free by death, after being dragged along for so long in ropes of slavery, he shook his head slightly over the sand and then fell. Private, Second Class, Nakagawa: slow-witted, with a weak memory, continually beaten by the senior privates, ended his life on a path on Mount Samat. And, just to save his own life, Kitayama Toshio abandoned his comrade to his fate. By the time he was demobilized, his mother was no longer in the world.

  On a day on the verge of spring, he left the office with a fellow worker named Yugami Yuko. Homeward-bound workers mingled together at the entrance of the elevator. Next to the tobacco kiosk, the XX company was holding a special sale, and a crowd had gathered in front of a bare table piled with household goods. As they parted the crowd and headed toward the entrance, Yugami Yuko, indifferent to those around her, called out in a loud voice, “Horikawa san!” at which, among the knot of people around the newsstand to their left a single woman’s face turned. It was the face, shrouded in suffering, of Horikawa Kurako. With her back to the bright air outside the building, her faintly smiling face floated amidst the crowd.

  “Are you on your way home? Let’s go together,” Yuko said, coming up to her. Then she introduced her to Kitayama Toshio.

  The three of them, surrounded by people hurrying homeward, walked toward Tokyo Station. Flanked by her companions, Yugami Yuko was the most cheerful of the three: although she had lost her husband in the war and was looking after a child by herself, she seemed to be stepping out in life with the same firm tread with which she walked on the street. Her thick hair, hanging down over her navy blue jacket, ornamented her full shoulders.

  On her left Kitayama Toshio, although only halfway into his thirties, looked older. In his way of carrying himself one could detect that kind of indifference born of a wandering life and the traces of suffering that naturally went with long years spent in the army. Despite this, one could also sense the inward strength of one who had been able to come through that army life and the rigors of combat. His gait as he dragged his long legs was like a soldier’s.

  On the right, Horikawa Kurako was that day wearing a spring suit of rather bright shades, with a sky-blue stripe that seemed to gently dissolve into the evening light still lingering in the station square; she seemed somewhat closed in on herself in contrast with Yugami Yuko’s completely open, easygoing manner— and she walked with short steps, her head held down.

  When they had got to the line at the ticket window, Yugami Yuko displayed the large cloth bundle hanging from her right hand, showing it to neither of her companions in particular but holding it straight out in front of her.

  “I’ve got this today.”

  “What is it?” asked Horikawa Kurako.

  “I’m off to sell it now—it’s a skin, a bear.” From one edge of the cloth wrapper Yuko pulled out the clawed paw of some black animal. Mischievously she waggled the paw of the small bear two or three times, then burst out laughing. Horikawa Kurako laughed along with her.

  “A skin, is it?” asked Kitayama Toshio, with a pang in his breast at the thought that Yugami’s livelihood was sustained by this comical bear’s paw.

  “Yes, they say I should able to sell it for 4,000 yen; it’s a bit small, so the price is a lot less. People kept saying ‘Sell it, sell it,’ so finally I’ve decided to. I’ve really got nothing else left to sell.”

  “It’s the same with me, I’m selling off my things so I can eat,” said Horikawa Kurako. Then she turned a smiling face toward Kitayama Toshio.

  “So you’re in the same boat too? It’s terrible, isn’t it,” said Yugami Yuko.

  “Still, at least you had some things to sell,” said Kitayama Toshio. Even if his tone was cold, it was because he had been startled at the way a curtain had suddenly been lifted on the two women’s lives, and he could not find the right words.

  “But you know, it can’t go on like this forever. I can only hold out for another year. Right?” She turned her face toward Horikawa Kurako seeking agreement.

  “Yes,” Horikawa Kurako shook her head. “I’m really getting depressed about it too.” Then she pulled in her chin and on her face appeared the shadow of that deep anxiety with which she looked on life.

  The train was horribly packed, and the three of them became separated as they stood crushed by the crowd. Within the tight press of people, Kitayama Toshio reflected on the two women striving to earn a living, and on the similar circumstances that darkened the path that lay before him. His friend’s company, where he worked, dealt in metal goods—tableware and such, even extending to things like children’s tricycles—but the supply stocks had almost run out, and it had become very difficult to keep the business going. Then again, although he had previously worked in a munitions factory, his six years in the army had robbed him of his abilities as an office worker.

  Horikawa Kurako got off at Yotsuya. The train emptied a bit and Kitayama Toshio and Yugami Yuko met up again and stood near the central door.

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” observed Yuko.

  “Yes,” said Kitayama Toshio, in the voice of one lost in thought.

  “Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes, she’s pretty. She’s very pretty,” he said hastily. But he did not have the exact words to express the melancholy that he had sensed in Horikawa Kurako. It was not prettiness. It was not beauty. It was something that strangely squeezed at his heart, squeezed it and made it tremble violently.

  “Really, I always think I would like to have seen her when she was young. You know, somehow I’m not attracted to good looks in men anymore—my eye is always taken by attractive women.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You know, she is the same as me.”

  “The same?”

  “Yes, her husband lost his life in the war, you know.”

  “Is that so?” he said with apparent unconcern, but he could not continue. He saw the figure of Horikawa Kurako flash suddenly before him. Her face was resurrected directly in front of his eyes. And he felt that strange, strength-filled beauty in that face of hers forcing itself straight at his heart. It was then, for the first time, that he clearly understood the source of the sadness in her face.

  As Yugami Yuko told it, Horikawa Kurako’s wedding had been the result of a love match, and she had lost her husband in the third year of their marriage, after he had been conscripted. They had loved one another, had been perfectly happy, and her happiness had been destroyed by the war. Recently, Yugami added, there had been some talk of Horikawa remarrying, but it appeared that she was still very hesitant to make up her mind and do it.

  Having parted from Yugami Yuko at Shinjuku, Kitayama Toshio walked along the back street t
hat led off from the front of the station. The electricity substation near his lodgings had been burnt down, and when he reflected that, even when he got back, there would be no lights and he would have to spend weary hours in his dark room, he lost all desire to go home. He went into a little café, ordered a coffee and a croquette, and ate the supper that he had cooked using the electricity at work. Ordering another coffee, he lit a cigarette. He had continued to think about the two widows. It was those who had suffered from the blows of war to whom he now felt the closest. He remembered the black bear’s paw with its claws. His face was half-smiling but inside he was in deep pain, and the smile disappeared without having spread across his face. He recalled the face of Horikawa Kurako and thought how her husband surely must have been deeply in love with her. And then, that she must have loved her husband, that she had returned his love to the same degree. But now that she had lost what she had loved, what was there in her life to sustain her? Now that it had lost its object, where could that love try to flow? Was it like the lingering light of evening, which is greater than the white brilliance of midday when it sets the air of the whole sky fiercely aflame before fading away? It must be her blighted love that conveyed the twisted quality into her face, while the beauty touched with madness that sometimes radiated from her face must arise from the lonely conflagration of her love.

  Kitayama Toshio left the café and went back into the throng of people milling around the row of food stalls in front of the station. The odor of cheap fried oil hung in the air, and people, only their faces illuminated by feeble lanterns, were working their jaws. Suddenly his eye was caught by a man in front of a stew-stall kitty-corner to him, who was lifting his bowl to his mouth. Looking at the thin face of this young man clad in a pair of narrow-legged cotton army trousers, he thought, “He’s hungry. He must be working as a day laborer somewhere.” He remembered the fliers he had seen on telegraph poles by the city ward office advertising jobs: XX yen per day, lodging also available.

  “Really, how does he manage to keep going? Even if he sells off his possessions for food, he’s clearly got nothing left to sell . . . and with that body of his, his wages can’t be enough . . . although my own strength is not much to speak of.” He looked in the direction of the man’s vacantly working mouth. It was thick-lipped and it glistened red and moist above the plate. Then the man’s mouth turned into the out-thrust snout of a pig he had clubbed to death when in the army, and then from some remote corner of his body came an unbearable emotion, accompanied by a sensation of burning heat. “Ah, no, no!” he said to himself, beating down the emotion as he urged his legs onward. “It’s a pig, a pig!” Something continued to yell from inside him, arising like a feverish mass from deep within his body. In his head the pig’s lips continued to make chewing motions. That bastard fifth-year Private Matsuzawa who grabbed my water bottle off me at Lingayen Gulf . . . my mind set only on rations. . . . No! No! . . . in his head, the moist lips of the pig continued to make their chewing motion. That guy’s mouth is a pig’s, my mouth is a pig’s . . . chew chew chew . . . ah, he thought. He suddenly stood still, closed his eyes hard, and shook his head. When the pig’s mouth had disappeared from inside his head, a dark flame became visible in the pitch blackness of his field of vision. Then he slowly opened his eyes and continued to walk. The hot, dark thoughts that had thrust their way up from inside his body had already withdrawn, like an ebbing tide. As he walked, he mentally examined the region of his heart, from which those horrible thoughts he found so hard to drive away had boiled up and where flecks of emotion still remained after their departure, like black flames.

  “However much this emotion may be a rejection of humanity, it is only the emotion of an instant. Apart from that at other times I am as usual: a walking, breathing, eating human being who vaguely affirms humanity,” he thought. Yet, as he walked on, he also reflected that this human being who ate and walked was also certainly one who knew no love. If they were on the battlefield, all these people would only protect themselves, as I did myself. They would fight over food rations, wouldn’t they? They would abandon their comrades, wouldn’t they? . . . He began to think of his mother, reportedly burned to death in the air raids. A mother’s love is said to be blind. Yet what human being, apart from a mother, is able to love another human being? On the battlefield, who would have spared some of their own rations and given them to another? No one but a mother. And yet even mothers might be doubted. In his mind, the figure of his mother which had risen up before his eye changed to that of the woman who had loved him. . . . He reflected upon his dead lover. He thought of how, as an individual being, she no longer existed. And then, that it was only her love that he needed. Did there have to be a war that took the lives of many millions of people in order for me to understand the value of her love? Moving through the gaps between the people he reached the edge of the crowd, then turned back into it. Then at last, becoming chilled, he went home to his dark boardinghouse.

  Kitayama Toshio would sometimes go to drink tea with Yugami Yuko and Horikawa Kurako on their way home from work. Later on, he went with Horikawa Kurako alone. Naturally, he did not consider the feeling he had for her to be love or anything like that. It was true that his heart was drawn to her beauty. Yet it wasn’t exactly like the heart being drawn, either. It was rather that her appearance linked him to his own past, made him clearly comprehend the miserable first half of his life. He found it painful to meet her, but that pain was necessary to him. Of course if it had been pointed out to him that some feeling of love was mingled in his heart, he would probably have acknowledged it, but it was not for that reason that he sought her out. Moreover, he knew that the woman’s thoughts lay strictly with her dead husband.

  “I gather that you were very happy?” he observed to her one day.

  “Yes, really happy,” she replied, then added in a decisive tone, “I can definitely say that I made my husband happy. Even though he’s dead, I have no regrets on that score. I did absolutely everything I could for him. Of course I too was really happy then.”

  “Even in these times, there must be some people who can say the same, I suppose.”

  “He was an unhappy person. He had suffered a lot from family problems. But I’m sure that the three years he lived with me were really happy ones.”

  “And then he went into the army, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he an officer?”

  “No, he went in as a private.”

  “Oh? The Southern Front, was it?”

  “Yes, the south. He died of disease over there.”

  “It must have been very tough for him to leave you.”

  Horikawa Kurako replied in a slightly embarrassed, but decisive and clearcut tone. “Yes, he said it was just like a holiday at the government’s expense, but I knew very well what he was really feeling.”

  “I suppose you must have.”

  “After he died, people kept telling me how sorry they felt for me, but it’s my husband I have to feel sorry for. Nobody seems to think that about the dead. But that’s the only way I can see it.”

  “. . .”

  “In the end, once you’re dead everything’s over, isn’t it? It’s over.”

  “. . . Yes.”

  “Although I suppose he must have been contented if it was a death he chose for himself.”

  “Everyone around me seems to be in the same boat.”

  “You mean Yugami san?”

  “Yes.”

  And then, to this woman who had spoken of her past to him, he told the story of his past love.

  “I thought for sure you must be someone who’d had a very sad experience,” she said. The two of them then left the tea shop and, saying she had some shopping to do, she walked off toward the station.

  For a while he stood looking after her. Her back view disappeared and then reappeared among the busy crowds passing to and fro in the square in front of the station.

  “What exactly is that person trying to sus
tain in her life? Those hands that once warmly embraced her face are now gone, aren’t they?” he thought as he watched her. “Why is it that her face has to become beautiful as a result of her unhappiness?” Unaware of how bizarre this question of his was, he stood staring fixedly after her. At which he felt from within his own heart or from that woman’s figure, he couldn’t clearly tell which, a melancholy mood flowing out and settling over the whole square. It was as if it quietly descended along with the soft light of the sunset from a sky grown wider through the destruction of tall buildings, and it entered the breasts of each of those many people who had lived through the unhappiness of the war.

  One day a friend who had been demobilized with Kitayama Toshio from the South Pacific campaign came to visit him. He was a soldier who had been at the university and was one of the last new recruits to be sent out to join his company in the South Pacific from a posting in Japan. When he had first arrived from Japan, he had been nicely plump, but in less than a month the cruel heat had rapidly wasted him, and Kitayama Toshio had often looked after him in his debilitated state. Regarded as an “intellectual,” he would crumble with unusual rapidity under the punishments of the senior soldiers, and he did not possess the kind of bad faith that would attempt to buy them off with money and gifts. After demobilization, as one might have expected, he got a job at a small company near Hamamatsuchō through a senior classman from his university, but occasionally he would come to visit Kitayama Toshio to get his discontent and grievances off his chest.