A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  “We talked about all kinds of things. Incidentally, she’d been in bed with a cold for two or three days and got up today only because I visited her.

  “I hate to have to write what I feel I must now write in this letter. You see, I have kept something from you which I should have told you long ago. I was wrong, I know, and I am sorry. Yet even now, I can hardly bring myself to tell you. But I must, for though at first it will be like pushing you off a cliff, that will be better than making you suffer for the rest of your life because of my silence.

  “You are the child of our mother and the man you knew as your grandfather, the man you went to live with as a boy after our mother died. I don’t know the details. I heard the story for the first time from our aunt in Kobe, when I was about to graduate from high school. I think that father still doesn’t know that I know; and because I have not talked about it—why would I want to?—I know very little more than what I learned from our aunt. At any rate, you were born when we were living in Myogadani, sometime during those three years when father was away in Germany studying. And what I am about to tell you will, I feel, add to your pain; but I will not hide anything from you now. When mother was pregnant, grandfather (your real father) and grandmother wanted her to have an abortion, and keep the whole matter a secret from father. But our grandfather in Shiba apparently was furious when he heard about their plan. ‘Is not one crime enough?’ he said, and stopped them. Soon after, mother went to live with him in Shiba. He wrote to father in Germany, telling him honestly what his daughter had done. He fully expected father to divorce her. But father wrote back saying that he forgave her. And very soon after this, I have been told, grandfather in Myogadani went away somewhere.

  “When I first heard about the terrible circumstances of your birth, the curse under which you were born, I was shocked and saddened. And the question that had always been dimly present in my mind ever since childhood—why was Kensaku always treated differently from the rest of us?—was at last answered. For many years after that, I was certain that you knew too. I could not imagine that Oei would not have said something about it to you during all those years you were together; besides, even if she hadn’t, I thought it likely that you would have sensed something of the sort. It was only during that whole Aiko affair that I realized to my extreme surprise that you knew nothing about it. Today, when talking about this with Oei, I was once again reminded of what a marvelous woman she is. She had promised father never to tell you about it, and she kept the promise. ‘I wouldn’t have told him anyway,’ she said. ‘Why should I want to hurt him?’ Perhaps she is right, and perhaps I am wrong in telling you about it now. All I know is that she is an extraordinary woman.

  “I need not tell you that it was because of your birth that Aiko’s family rejected you. Her mother sympathized with you; but her sympathy was not enough to make her your ally. What more can we expect of people like that, to whom convention is everything?

  “I watched you suffer, and I felt that it was wrong to let you suffer in ignorance, not to tell you the truth however painful it might be. I was sure, too, that if I did not tell you then, you would later hate me for my silence. But another part of me wanted to believe that silence was best. Perhaps I was running away from my responsibility. But I could not bear to say anything that would increase your suffering. Besides, it was hard for me to tell such a story about our dead mother. Finally, there was the fact that you were a writer. Perhaps it was this consideration that held me back most. I was sure that if you were told the story it would appear somewhere in your writing, especially if it caused you great pain. Such an attitude may seem very limited to you, but I did not want to see father, now about to enjoy at last the peace of old age, being hurt all over again; and he would be very hurt if he were to see his wife’s old mistake being aired in public. I don’t believe that we could imagine the suffering he must have gone through when he heard about it in Germany and during the years when he tried to forget it. To open up his old wound—the mere thought of doing such a thing horrified me. Perhaps such a fear on my part comes entirely from weakness. It is true that as father gets older, I find myself becoming more and more afraid of causing him any pain.

  “At the same time, I felt I was doing you a great wrong. You had the right to know the truth about yourself, if only because in your work it is important; and my witholding it from you was wrong. If you had refused to give up the idea of marrying Aiko, I would have done my best to persuade her family to accept you; and I had resolved to tell you the truth about your birth if my intercession should end in failure. You might as well know that I was greatly relieved when you said you were prepared to forget about Aiko.

  “When our aunt in Kobe told me about you, she said sadly that you had been born under a curse. For a long time I felt as she did. But later I began to think that this was a sinister presumption more appropriate in cheap fiction than in real life. What reason had I to believe that your entire future had been damned by your birth? If everything in Kensaku’s life were to go smoothly and innocently, I began to tell myself, of what relevance would be the way he was born? Why should I worry about it so much? What is past is past, I told myself; let the past be buried; let Kensaku look to a future that is of his own making, let him shape his own fate. And then that Aiko business happened. Something that you yourself had had nothing to do with was held against you. In that affair, you were indeed under a curse. Yet, though I was shaken by its outcome, I could still tell myself not to exaggerate its significance. But this time, I sense some kind of danger in what you are trying to do. It will be like willfully laying another curse on yourself. It frightens me.

  “Whatever her other reasons may be for not wanting to marry you, the main reason why Oei has refused so adamantly is that she shares my fear for you.

  “I want to be your ally in the things you do. So far, you have never made it difficult for me to give you whatever moral support I could. But in this instance, I cannot wish you success. There is something dark waiting for you not so far away, and before my very eyes you are heading straight toward it. I must try to stop you. I sympathize with the way you feel about Oei. I see nothing at all immoral about it. But that has nothing to do with the fact that I am very afraid for you. And I am convinced that this fear of mine should not be dismissed lightly.

  “I have pretty well said everything I set out to say. I have but one worry: how much of a blow will this letter be to Kensaku?

  “Won’t you come back to Tokyo immediately? I think it would be best if you did. I could come to see you in Onomichi, but that would be a little more complicated. If you want me there, please send me a telegram. It might be fun going to Kyasha together. But do try to come back to Tokyo.

  “I am confident that you will not be thrown into absolute despair by this letter. But it will hurt you deeply, I know—more deeply perhaps than it would have hurt the rest of us, for you feel more. But please don’t let it crush you.

  “I do not think that Oei will write a separate reply. For one thing, she has not yet recovered from her cold. But she will be so happy to see you again. I, too, want to see you. I hope you will decide to come back soon.”

  As Kensaku read the letter he could feel his cheeks going cold. Sometime or other he had stood up, and now with the letter in his hand he began to wander about the tiny room. “What am I to do?” he said. “What am I to do?” In a small voice he kept on repeating the question, hardly aware that he was doing so.

  It was all like a dream to him. The being that was himself, the person he had known until now as himself, seemed to be going farther and farther into the distance like a thinning mist.

  Why had his mother done such a thing? Because of what she did he was conceived. He understood that he owed his existence to that act alone, that the two things were inseparable. Yet he could not accept what his mother had done. His mother and that shoddy, common, worthless old man—the mere thought of the association was ugly and unclean.

  He was then suddenly f
illed with overwhelming pity for his mother, his mother who had been defiled by that man. “Mama!” he cried out, like a boy about to throw himself into his mother’s arms.

  7

  He was thoroughly exhausted both in mind and body. He could not think any more. He lay down and slept for two hours.

  He woke up at about four. By then he had become almost his normal self. He washed his face, went out to the verandah and squatted there, gazing listlessly at the scene. It occurred to him after a while that Oei and Nobuyuki must be worried about him. He decided to write Nobuyuki immediately.

  “I have read your letter,” he wrote. “Yes, it was somewhat of a blow. For a time I seemed to have lost all sense of my old self. But I had a short sleep, and I am fully recovered. I am grateful to you for having said what must have been difficult for you to say.

  “I do not want to say anything about mother. Sadness—that is what I feel most for her. I have no inclination to blame her. At present all I can think is that no one could have been more unfortunate than she.

  “As for father, I somehow feel that I shall now in all likelihood learn to acknowledge, more than ever before, my debt of gratitude to him. I know that what he did for me was more than any ordinary man would have done, and I believe that I must thank him for it. I can imagine, too, the suffering he must have gone through all those years. It must have been terrible. The only question I now have concerning him is what our future relationship ought to be. Perhaps it would be best if I could, without causing him discomfort and without being unreasonable, take this opportunity to clarify our relationship once and for all.

  “But I should like to see my relationship with you and Sakiko and Taeko kept exactly as it has always been. I want this very much.

  “Please don’t worry about me. Of course what you told me made me miserable for a time, and perhaps it will again and again in years to come. I don’t want to seem to be running away from anything, but I should like not to let the way I was born weigh too heavily on my mind. Perhaps what happened was a dreadful thing. But I had nothing to do with it; I cannot possibly hold myself responsible for it. That is what I think. That is the only way, the only right way, I can think.

  “To know how I was born is unpleasant. But what is the point of letting this knowledge make me suffer? It would be both futile and absurd. And I do not think of myself as being under some sort of curse. Surely it would have been much worse if I had inherited tuberculosis. You suggest that in that Aiko affair I was cursed. But what gave me pain was not so much my being turned down as my not knowing why I had been turned down. If I had known, I should not have felt so lost. I do not say this with any thought of blaming you. I understand well why you did not want to tell me. I do not think you were being at all unfair, especially when I consider how concerned you are about father’s welfare. And I am deeply grateful that this time you decided to tell me. If you had maintained your silence, I should have had to continue living in ignorance about myself; and it is likely that in spite of my not knowing, I should have felt a heavy, dark cloud hanging over my head. I ask you again not to worry about me. Through my new knowledge about myself I shall be able to do my work with greater determination than before. And in that new determination I shall seek my salvation. There is no other way for me. By that means, I shall be able to accomplish two things at once: do the work I want to do and find myself.

  “I shall stay here a while longer. But if at any time I begin to feel helpless, I shall not force myself to stay here out of perverse pride. There are times when I want to see you and Oei very much. I should find it only too easy to play the weakling if I allowed myself. But I must settle down and try to get more work done. I have so far accomplished too little here. When it is time for me to return to Tokyo, I shall do so without reserve.

  “I can sympathize with your fear lest the affairs of our family should appear in my writings. I cannot promise that they will not appear in some form or other. But I shall try to be careful not to cause discomfort.

  “Please give my best wishes to Sakiko and Taeko. And please tell Oei not to worry.

  “I must have a little more time to think about Oei. If she is absolutely determined not to accept my proposal, then of course there is nothing more I can do about it. But in the meantime I shall have to decide for myself whether I should try once more or give up the idea entirely.”

  When he had finished writing the letter he felt as if he had retrieved the whole of his old self. He stood up and reached for the hand mirror hanging on the pillar. He peered at the face reflected in the glass.

  It was a little pale, but otherwise it was as it had been. In fact the recent excitement had given it a look of vitality. He found himself smiling. I am now really alone, he thought; and with the thought came a new, pleasurable feeling of freedom.

  He heard the old lady from next door announcing herself. Slowly and tentatively she pulled open the screen door and looked in. She had brought him the rice for his dinner. Seeing that he had not yet prepared any side dishes to go with the rice she said, “I have some dried flatfish. Shall I grill some for you?”

  Kensaku had no appetite. “No, thank you. I’ll eat later, so please just leave the rice there.”

  She put the rice tub down and left. Soon she returned with a heaping plateful of parboiled spinach, put it beside the rice and went away again.

  Kensaku was beginning to feel restless. He was in no mood to stay cooped up in the house all evening. Remembering that a kabuki troupe from Osaka was performing in the theatre in the pleasure quarter, he went next door to see if the old couple would like to go with him. Unfortunately their granddaughter now living in the nearby town of Mihara was coming to stay the night with them. The old man tried to persuade his wife to go, saying there was no need for both of them to stay at home. But she refused with a smile. She was his second wife, and had no children of her own. The girl coming that night was her step-granddaughter.

  “You can’t miss an opportunity like this,” said the old man feelingly. “After all, how often do you go to the theatre?” But his wife would not listen. Kensaku saw that so long as he remained, the same scene would be repeated endlessly. “I’ll ask you again,” he said, getting up. Holding the small lantern the old lady lit for him, he went down the hill by himself.

  They were doing the Moritsuna scene, where Moritsuna examines the severed head purported to be that of his brother. The setting was makeshift, provided by several gold screens arranged cleverly on a single-level stage. The actor playing Moritsuna danced with surprising skill to the samisen music. His art was so simple, so lacking in introspection that it was a pleasure to watch him. He made no demands on the audience, he danced to please the uncritical eye.

  Kensaku stayed for three more acts, then left. He walked slowly along the deserted road by the seashore. Loneliness filled his heart; but it was a quiet loneliness, humble and accepting. He felt as if Oei, Nobuyuki, Sakiko, Taeko—indeed everybody—had moved far, far away from him; he could see their figures, but they were tiny, like figures seen from the wrong end of a telescope. It was a truly lonely feeling, for they seemed dearer to him now than ever before. He then thought of his dead mother. She was the only one, he thought, she was the only one I ever had. Once more his mind wandered back to his childhood. He savored his memories with unabashed emotion; for they were then his sole means of emotional release. As he remembered once more the time he went up on the roof, his eyes clouded over with tears. But when unguardedly he remembered the scene in his mother’s bed, he was hit hard by the sudden realization of the sorrow she must have felt at the time. His act must have seemed to her like a cruel reminder of the sin she herself had committed. And he began to wonder whether it was because he was indeed the child of sin that he could have done what he did in her bed.

  He knew he had to stop thinking that way. Like a man who consciously brakes his quickening pace as he is going down a hill, he tried to recapture his earlier mood. He made himself think of the vastness of the
world around him. There was the earth, there were the stars (unfortunately it was cloudy that evening and he could not see them), there was the universe; and in the midst of this vastness there was this minute particle that was himself, busily weaving a web of misery in the little world of his mind. Such was his customary way of combating his own fits of depression; and this time it seemed to have some effect.

  He realized he was a bit hungry. He wondered whether he should go to the European-style restaurant he went to sometimes, but that meant walking all the way back through the pleasure quarter, and he didn’t want to do that. He decided to go instead to the oyster boat restaurant that was a short distance behind him along the shore.

  The boat—it was really a houseboat—lay beside a pier, and one got onto it by means of a miniature suspension bridge. Inside he was greeted by a lively boy of about fifteen wearing a faded blue workman’s jacket. The corridor that led to the rooms was like a small tunnel, and Kensaku had to stoop as he followed the boy. The room he was shown to also had a low ceiling, from which hung a dim electric light.

  The dreariness of the room began to affect him as he waited for the food. Deliberately he tried to direct his thoughts toward his work, but with little success. The air around him seemed permeated with a sense of foreboding. Like a heavy, dark cloud it enveloped him, and though he wanted to chase it away, he seemed to have no strength left to do so. His head and breast felt empty, like voids waiting to be filled by it. Let it come in, he thought submissively; it will go away in time.