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

by Неизвестный

  If the man had been defeated, then so had he.

  If the man had suffered, then so had he.

  The big man’s cries echoed through the mountains, the volume magnified many times over. Each of these mountains resounded with the voice of this vanquished, one-eyed, one-legged man who was incapable of taking his own life.

  He sensed his own body responding to the sound like a musical instrument. He sat down beside him, leaned back against the tree, and listened.

  To the treetops quivering and rustling.

  To the grasses, drooping from lack of sunlight, shivering in sympathy.

  To the cicadas joining in, weeping together.

  The whole landscape weeping with him.

  For a while he wanted to stay right there. Just to sit and listen, and sense his body, like the red flesh he’d found inside the egg, breaking through and bearing life. There at the very origin of life itself: in that darkness, that light. Mute, deaf, and blind. Unfeeling, unthinking. A vast darkness.

  His own bones vibrating to the man’s misery, he tucked in his arms and legs and curled up like a seed buried in the earth. There, in that dense grove, amid the moist air and the tears and the scent of cedar, he knew something inside him was changing, and he felt himself lifted up on the wind like spore from the ferns.

  He cried with the man, then slept. He woke and cried again.

  Are you my brother?

  Again, he slept.

  It was me. I was the one who blinded him, crippled him, took away his power even to kill himself. It was me. And yet, what am I? Just a lump of flesh, a shape that’s come to life?

  Then he saw it.

  They were holding the memorial service at his mother’s house in Kumano. Everyone in the room was kneeling in front of the family altar. They looked so small, with their shoulders hunched forward. The priest was chanting phrases from the sutras and the people attending, many of them friends from the neighborhood, responded in chorus: “Namu Amida-butsu, Namu Amida-butsu.” His mother was sitting immediately behind the priest. Beside her were his three sisters, who had traveled from different parts of the country to attend the service. He was there too, sitting with his stepfather and his stepfather’s son. Candle flames flickered red and yellow on the altar. The service had already begun.

  He was there, in his mother’s house, listening to the incomprehensible sutras and murmuring along with everyone else: “Namu Amida-butsu, Namu Amidabutsu.” The chanting stopped. The priest burned some incense.

  But surely that was the illusion? In reality, wasn’t he here in the mountains? Yes, he was here, trembling at the sound of a man’s cries. Trembling, crying, sleeping, and crying.

  He watched his mother. A recent coronary thrombosis had left her face dark and swollen. She repeated the words of the chant and offered a sprinkle of incense.

  He wouldn’t worry about the man any more. Or about his brother. He didn’t care about himself. All he wanted was for his mother to be allowed to die peacefully, like a blade of grass that quietly fades and withers.

  Wisps of smoke were rising from the box of incense. His mother handed the box to his sisters and one by one they made their offerings. He did it too. The priest resumed his chanting.

  Suddenly it came back to him. His brother, younger then than he himself was now, had sat before this altar for nearly an hour chanting a different kind of sutra. He remembered him saying: “I’m the one who has to go.” In the morning they found him dead. He had hanged himself.

  After I die, everything will be all right again.

  Now, sounding like shamans calling up the dead, his mother and his sisters would mention his brother’s name whenever they had a chance. They looked like his blind finch. And since then, just the sight of him seemed to remind them of his brother, as though the two of them had become Siamese twins.

  The man had stopped crying. The sun was starting to sink and it was growing cold, but the damp air was still pleasant. The man was leaning against a tree stump and breathing quietly. It felt strange to think that, until moments earlier, his own flesh and bones had been vibrating to the sound of this man’s cries.

  “One more hour and we’ll reach the river,” he said. “If we follow that, it’ll take us to a village.”

  “I don’t want any more help,” replied the man. “Please, either kill me or leave me here.”

  “But, who are you?” he asked.

  The man laughed weakly. “What does it matter who I am? I’m just a beggar roaming the hills, a leper. I haven’t got a name.”

  “But I want to help you.”

  “Then you’re a fool!” The man’s voice echoed through the darkness. The sun had dropped completely out of sight and the outline of the trees, vaguely visible until just before, had vanished. Drops of moisture were falling steadily from the leaves of the trees.

  The man pleaded with him. “I can’t bear it, the thought of having to live like this for years and years. Just kill me, will you!” He gave a sudden start. “D’you hear that? They’re calling me again, from the village.”

  Yes, he heard them. Voices of men and women, young and old, calling and calling. And the mountains all rustling together with the waves of voices. The trees shaking and the grasses around his feet stirring restlessly. The ground itself seemed to be moving, making a hollow sound. Suddenly he found it hard to breathe.

  “Those voices, they’re the reason I can’t sleep at night,” said the man.

  He listened.

  It was the voices of his mother and sisters that he heard.

  “Go home,” said the man. “Go and tell them to forget about me. Tell them to stop blaming themselves. There’s no point in Mother grieving now. Our sisters are married, they should be happy. There’s no reason for them to suffer. I didn’t hang myself to cause them pain, I did it to make them happy. They must forget about me and enjoy their lives.”

  “But your own pain—your eye, your leg . . .”

  “That doesn’t matter,” came the sharp reply. “You’re a grown man now, so I’m asking you—kill me.”

  He heard his older sister’s voice calling to the man: Do you remember me?

  He heard his mother crying: The day you hanged yourself they carried you into the house, and when I looked at your face I saw the trickle of blood from your nose. You were such a beautiful boy! Why did you have to die so young? It was my fault for deserting you. I was to blame for everything.

  “Here, let me help you,” he said. He rose to his feet and reached for the man’s arm. “I don’t want your help.” The man pulled away from him.

  The trees trembled and swished. The man let out a harsh cry of pain like a wild animal.

  Just then, he thought he sensed someone abruptly stand up beside him and walk away through the trees, crunching on the ground. His mother’s voice wafted up again: You were so beautiful. Why did you have to die?

  The man roared on and on.

  “Forget your brother! I should never have been brought into this world! Forget me!”

  As he listened to him roaring out in pain, the image of that tiny, red, wriggling body returned to his mind. A pure, innocent, living thing, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, writhing in the wind and the light. Could that have been his brother reborn?

  “Go home and tell Mother. There’s no reason for her to suffer. Forget me. Her health is poor, what good is it for her to go on torturing herself, counting the years since her child died? I hear her crying, I hear my little sisters crying. There’s no need for them to mourn, they’ll spoil their looks. They should get on with their lives, give themselves body and soul to their husbands, and forget their dead brother. Tell them, please, to live.”

  Tears welled up in his eyes. Here he was, sitting on the roots of a cedar in the icy darkness, talking to a brother who died over ten years ago! Had his wounded brother been hiding in the mountains all these years, unable to meet death face to face?

  After the memorial service, he’d returned to Tokyo and found t
he blind finch dead. It had caught its leg in one of the nests in the cage and shriveled to a pulp. It looked as though it might actually have starved itself to death. He unraveled the thread that was around its leg and placed the bird in the palm of his hand.

  He stared at it for a few moments, dry and shriveled and dead.

  Now the light of the sun on it seemed strangely kind.

  OGAWA YŌKO

  Ogawa Yōko (b. 1962) received the Akutagawa Prize in 1990, just two years after her literary debut, for the story “Pregnancy Diary” (Ninshin karendaa), the somewhat spiteful musings of a woman envious of her younger sister’s pregnancy. Her work, focusing largely on the interior thoughts and feelings of female protagonists, has been greeted with enthusiasm in Japan as well as in France, where she is most widely translated, and in the United States, where the English translation of The Housekeeper and the Professor (Hakase no aishita sūshiki, 2004, trans. 2008) became a sensation among book groups. It was also made into a popular film in Japan. “The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain” (Yūgure no kyūshokushitsu to ame no pūru) also appeared in 2004.

  THE CAFETERIA IN THE EVENING AND A POOL IN THE RAIN

  (YŪGURE NO KYŪSHOKUSHITSU TO AME NO PŪRU)

  Translated by Stephen Snyder

  Juju and I moved here on a foggy morning in early winter. There wasn’t that much to move—just an old wardrobe, a desk, and a few boxes. It was simple enough. Sitting on the enclosed porch, I watched the small truck rattle off into the mist. Juju sniffed around the house, checking the cinderblock wall and the glass panel in the door, as if to reassure himself about his new home. He made little grumbling noises as he worked, his head cocked to one side.

  The fog was rolling away in gentle waves. It was not the sort of suffocating fog that swallows everything; in fact, this fog seemed pure and almost transparent, like a cool, thin veil that you could reach out and touch. I stared at it for a long time, leaning against the boxes, until I felt as if I could see each milky droplet. Juju had grown tired of sniffing and was curled up at my feet. Feeling a chill on my back, I peeled away the tape on the box I had been leaning against, pulled out a sweater, and put it on. A bird flew straight into the fog and disappeared.

  My fiancé fell in love with the house first.

  “Doesn’t it seem a little old-fashioned?” I said, rubbing my finger over a faded storm shutter.

  “Old, but good and sturdy,” he said, looking up at a thick pillar.

  “The stove and the hot-water heater are ancient,” I said as I turned a knob on the oven. It made a dry, clicking sound. The tiles on the kitchen walls had been carefully scrubbed, but they were chipped in places and the cement underneath showed through in an elaborate geometric pattern.

  “This is amazing,” he said to the woman from the real-estate office. “The stove is German, and practically an antique. It must be quite rare.”

  “It is,” she said, nodding emphatically. “It was left behind by a German student who rented the place several years ago. It’s a genuine German stove.” She stressed the word “German.”

  “Then it should never break down,” he said and smiled at me.

  We inspected the bedroom, the bathroom, and the living room, checked the doors, looked for rust on the pipes, and counted the electrical outlets. It didn’t take long. All the rooms were small but cozy. As we came to the porch, he looked out at the yard through the glass doors. It was completely bare. No plants, no flower beds, nothing at all except an occasional patch of clover.

  “Let’s take it,” he said. “It would be perfect for Juju, too.”

  “It would be good for Juju,” I agreed.

  The most important thing was that we’d found a place where we could live with Juju. Beyond that, there was very little we could do to prepare for our marriage, particularly since everyone we knew seemed to be against it. Whenever we told someone that we were considering the possibility, we’d get a sombre look and a long pause. “You should really give yourselves time to think this over,” we were invariably told. The reasons were familiar ones. He was divorced. He’d been trying to pass the bar exam for ten years. He had high blood pressure and suffered from migraines. The difference in our ages was excessive, and we were very poor.

  Juju yawned. He lay in the yard now, in an elegant sprawl, his black and brown spots vivid against a patch of clover. The fog was thinning, and there were rays of sunlight here and there.

  It occurred to me that I should be doing something. I could put up new curtains or paint the bathroom, or I could line the closets with mothballs; in fact, there were any number of improvements to be made to this old house. In three weeks, my fiancé and I would be married—a small ceremony, with only the two of us present—and then he would move here. In the meantime, it was up to me to get the house ready.

  But for now I just wanted to watch the fog. There was no need to hurry, and I was determined to take full advantage of these last three weeks of my single life.

  The next day it rained. It was raining when I woke up, and it rained all day without a break. Fine, threadlike drops slid down the window one after another. The house across the way, the telephone poles, Juju’s kennel—everything was quietly soaking up water.

  I made almost no progress with the boxes. The morning passed while I reread old letters and flipped through photo albums, and suddenly it was noon. I thought about making something to eat, but I didn’t have proper dishes or utensils in the kitchen. And it was too much trouble to go out for something in the rain. In the end, I boiled water for instant soup and gnawed on some crackers I kept for emergencies. The German stove lit immediately.

  The unfamiliar room and the crumbly cracker in my mouth made the sound of the rain seem particularly sad. I wanted to hear my fiancé’s voice, but there was no telephone. No television or radio or stereo, either. With nothing else to do, I went to the front hall, where Juju was lying on the floor, and scooped him up in my arms. Startled, he wriggled and wagged his tail with delight.

  In the afternoon, I decided to repaint the bathroom. Like the other rooms in the house, it was quite small—just a porcelain tub, a chrome faucet, and a towel rack. Still, it didn’t feel cramped, perhaps because the ceiling was high and there was a large window. The room had been painted a romantic shade of pink, by the German student, I guessed. There were faint traces of color on the edges of the tiles, but it had faded after long years of steam and soap.

  I changed into old clothes and put on rubber gloves. I turned on the ventilation fan and opened the window. It was still raining.

  The fresh paint looked better on the walls than I had expected, and the bathroom soon seemed bright and inviting. Occasionally, a drop of rain would come in through the window, landing on an area that I had just painted. I moved the brush carefully, concentrating on getting an even coat. When I was about half done, the buzzer on the front door rang. It was the first time I had heard it, and it took me by surprise. There was something wild about the sound, like the cry of an animal.

  When I opened the door, I found a boy, perhaps three years old, and a man in his thirties, who appeared to be the boy’s father. They wore identical clear-plastic raincoats with the hoods pulled up over their heads. The coats were dripping wet, and rain fell from them onto the floor.

  “We’re sorry to bother you on such a rainy day,” the man said, without introducing himself or saying why he had come. “Have you just moved in?”

  I was a bit taken aback. “Well,” I answered vaguely.

  “It’s a nice neighborhood,” the man continued, glancing over at Juju, who was stretched out on the floor. “Near the ocean, but still very peaceful.” The child stood quietly, holding tightly to his father’s hand. His yellow boots, as tiny as toys, were also covered with raindrops. There was a silence.

  “Are you suffering some anguish?” the man asked abruptly. When I heard this, I realized that he was probably a member of some sort of cult. Proselytizers from these groups often pick days when
the weather is bad, and they often bring children with them—which never fails to throw me. Still, there was something about these two that felt different from those I had encountered before. In fact, there was something that set them apart from anyone else who had ever come to my door.

  To begin with, they were empty-handed. No pamphlets or books or cassettes. They didn’t even have umbrellas. They just stood there holding hands, with their free arms dangling straight down at their sides. They seemed the picture of simple modesty.

  Furthermore, neither of them was smiling—certainly not the insistent, over-confident smile you see on the faces of religious fanatics. On the other hand, they didn’t appear sullen or antisocial, either. I had the impression that they might vanish if I stared at them for too long. Yet, despite this fragile quality, their appearance made a deep impression on me.

  I’m not sure why, but I decided to try to answer the man’s question. I repeated the word “anguish” to myself a few times, but the meaning remained somehow out of reach, as if it were an unfamiliar philosophical term. As they waited, they stood looking at Juju and me, the rain still dripping from their coats.

  “That’s a very difficult question,” I said, hesitating a moment longer.

  “It is indeed,” the man said.

  “First off, I’m not really sure that I understand the meaning of the word ‘anguish.’ In a manner of speaking, the rain in winter, wet boots, or this dog lying here in the doorway could all be considered a kind of anguish.”

  “You’re right about that,” the man said, nodding several times. “Almost anything can seem elusive once you try to define it.” After that, he said nothing more. It was an awkward silence, the kind you can’t pretend not to notice. I could have asked them to leave, could have told them I was busy. After all, I was in the middle of painting. The fact that I didn’t probably had something to do with the peculiar aura they seemed to emit.