A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  “If your thinking has reached that point, there’s not much I can say.” There was a touch of disapproval in Nobuyuki’s eyes. “But I had hoped for some kind of compromise. Compromises are not always unsatisfactory, you know.”

  Kensaku was silent. He did not think that he had said anything wrong; but he did wonder if he should have been quite so blunt. The difficulty was that neither of the two brothers could be expected to share the other’s feelings toward this man they both called “father.” Nobuyuki was deeply attached to him; Kensaku felt he owed him hardly anything at all.

  The maid brought in tea and cake. The two brothers sat in silence while she poured the tea. “Yoshi!” Oei called out from the bottom of the stairs. “I am putting some fruit down here. Please serve it to the two gentlemen.”

  Kensaku said to the maid as she was about to go downstairs, “It’s dark down there, so don’t step on the fruit.” She was much amused.

  “Let me more or less repeat what I said in the letter,” Nobuyuki said when the maid had put the fruit down and left. “Father hasn’t changed his mind a bit. And he’s even more adamant than before that you should make no mention whatsoever of the family in your writings. I told him what you yourself said in your letter, that you would do your best to avoid writing anything that would cause embarrassment. He replied that it was all very well for you to make such promises, but your standards were not necessarily his, and what you might consider harmless he might find very embarrassing. In other words, he wants you to give him a firm assurance that you will never in any way mention the family in your writings. I suppose that once one starts worrying about things like that, nothing short of the kind of guarantee he’s demanding will seem satisfactory. Anyway, I thought he was being quite unreasonable, so I said I for one wouldn’t want to interfere to that extent with your work, nor could one expect any writer to swear to absolute secrecy about his own private life. His answer was, why couldn’t you find something other than your own family to write about? The trouble with him is that he has no sympathy for your profession, and has no idea what writing is all about. I asked him—and the question does seem a little frivolous now —what then was his opinion of the sort of work you were doing. Did he approve of writing as a profession? He said he didn’t mind your being a writer at all. Then why not leave Kensaku alone, I said, and wish him success in what he has committed himself to do? And then I said something quite stupid: I reminded him of the time he had tried to build a railway line through a town on ground level instead of overhead. Had he then given much consideration to other people’s opinions? He was furious, of course, and started shouting at me.”

  Kensaku remembered the incident. Their father, on assuming the presidency of a railway company, had immediately tried to put a line through this town, and for reasons of economy had refused to consider building it overhead. To his surprise there was an uproar about it. The irate citizens had demanded to know if he had no concern for their safety. Tens, indeed hundreds, of lives were at stake. Had he no conscience? The opposition became so formidable that finally he had had to give in and build an overhead line.

  “Of course he would be furious,” Kensaku said, laughing. “Anyway, I’m not exactly trying to build a railway. Needless to say, I am not going to promise him anything. And I’m convinced that this is an opportune time for me to sever formal ties with the house in Hongō. If I don’t do it now, there will be no end to the complications that will arise. It’s good for neither side to go on looking for compromises just for the sake of appearances.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But for some reason, father doesn’t seem to want to agree to anything that’s final. There’s something else I ought to tell you. I myself didn’t know this until recently, but the money you now have didn’t come from father. Officially, you received it from him. But actually it was all left to you by grandfather in Shiba. Not a penny of it was father’s.”

  Kensaku stared at Nobuyuki in disbelief. Then he blushed with embarrassment. For ever since he first learned about his true paternity he had felt uncomfortable about the money he thought he had been given by his father. It seemed a little mercenary on his part to insist on the one hand that he have no further formal ties with Hongō and on the other to keep “their” money. He had been half-inclined to refer to it in his letters to Nobuyuki, but in the end had not done so. The reason was simple: if he returned the money, he would find it very difficult to live. But for all his reluctance to part with the money, what had saved his self-respect was his confidence in his own ability to return it once it became clear he could not keep it without seeming shameless.

  The two brothers said nothing for a while. Then Nobuyuki quietly started talking about himself. “You know, I’m still intending to resign from the company. I mentioned this briefly to father, and he was surprisingly understanding.”

  “I’m glad. And what will you do with yourself?”

  “I’m thinking of studying Zen.” Kensaku, taken aback, couldn’t think of anything to say. Nobuyuki continued: “I’ve been quite envious of you lately. From the point of view of circumstances, or fate, or whatever one may call it, you’re a more unfortunate person than I. But as far as your nature, your personality, is concerned, you’re a far more fortunate person. And no doubt about it, your way of being fortunate is far better than mine. You’re the really fortunate one of us two.”

  Nobuyuki was being uncharacteristically pontifical. Showing his annoyance Kensaku answered, “I hardly consider my own nature to be one of my blessings. And I am not so unfortunate by circumstance as you seem to think.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t express myself well. I don’t know the proper words for the kind of thing I’m trying to say. But I do envy you. I really can’t help feeling that you’re a more favored being than I am. You’re strong-willed. You know what you want, and you fight for what you want. I don’t say that I’m entirely lacking in assertiveness, but I certainly don’t have very much of it. I only recently decided to study Zen, it’s true, but I started being dissatisfied with my way of life a long time ago, and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. You asked me once why I didn’t just leave the company, remember? Well, I simply couldn’t.”

  “But why did you come to dislike the company so much?”

  “It never was a pleasant place. But at first I was able to lose myself in the bustle; besides, the novelty of earning my own living was enough to keep me happy. It’s the same with all the young fellows that we hire. They’re so pleased that at last they’re independent of their fathers. They were boys before, and now they’re suddenly men—at least, that’s the way they feel, and that’s the way I felt at first. But the feeling disappears very quickly. Those with families to support can’t afford to start asking questions about what they’re doing, I suppose; but fellows like me, who aren’t working out of sheer necessity, can’t help losing interest eventually in our kind of work. After all, we are always someone else’s employees, even when we come to be called directors. Inevitably we begin to wonder if this is all that our lives amount to. A man settles down at forty, they say. I don’t agree. From what I’ve seen, it’s usually at that age that men begin to wonder about what they’re doing. I’ve started relatively early, I suppose.”

  “Have you told father about your taking up Zen?”

  “Yes, I have. I thought he would never agree to it, but surprisingly he said he would think about it. You know that when he says that, he usually means he won’t object. I was reluctant to bring up the subject with him. There was all that business about you, and I didn’t want to add to his worries. But even I finally couldn’t stand my own indecisiveness, and forced myself to go to him. What I envy about you is that you seem always to be able to focus your attention and energy on one specific objective. My life seems quite without focus. Partly it’s because of my feeble character. But most of the trouble is in the way I live and work. And so what I shall have to do is to start building a new way of life from scratch.”

&n
bsp; How tolerant father can be, Kensaku thought with some bitterness, when it’s Nobuyuki he’s dealing with. He thought the discrepancy natural, nevertheless, and tried to tell himself that he ought not to be bitter about it. Besides, there was some childish charm in the way Nobuyuki tried to please Kensaku by telling him of the happy outcome of his own conversation with their father.

  But Kensaku could hardly share Nobuyuki’s confidence in the efficacy of Zen. Zen was becoming awfully fashionable, and Kensaku naturally felt animosity toward it. “Have you decided on the temple yet?” he said.

  “Engakuji, I think. The abbot there is the leading authority, as you know.”

  Kensaku looked at Nobuyuki doubtfully. What little he knew about this abbot, he didn’t like. He was the sort that spoke to large audiences at such places as the Mitsui Assembly Hall. For men like him, who went about scattering seed indiscriminately on barren ground, Kensaku had no respect. He could not think of any other Zen priest, however; so he kept his skepticism to himself.

  11

  About a month passed. Nobuyuki left the company, rented the annex of a farmhouse at a place called Nishimikado in Kamakura, and from there went to Engakuji every day for his lessons. Kensaku visited him once at his new abode. It had only recently been built, and stood at the foot of a jutting cliff. It wasn’t a bad place at all. In the alcove were piles of books on Zen that Nobuyuki had lately accumulated.

  With Nobuyuki now in Kamakura, the situation between Kensaku and his father became even more uncertain than it had been before. This suited Kensaku well enough. He knew that given their respective natures, any attempt at clarification of their relationship would most likely lead to unpleasantness. Besides, without formal consent from his father, he more or less had what he wanted: he had stopped going to the house in Hongō; and he was still living with Oei. No doubt his father was displeased with the turn of events. Presumably Nobuyuki, on his occasional visit to Tokyo, had to listen to his father’s complaints about Kensaku. But if he did, he chose not to report them. Kensaku, seeing no hope for a situation that would satisfy both sides, chose to remain silent also.

  What played some part in his willingness to leave things as they were was the change in his thinking about Oei. He was not anxious to find a precise explanation for this change. But of one fact he was sure, and this was that he was haunted by the superstitious notion that if he were to marry Oei, he would somehow be acting out his curse exactly as Nobuyuki had warned; it would be as though he were willfully succumbing to fate. For were not the cruel gods waiting for him, the child of a woman seduced by her father-in-law, to marry the mistress of that very same man? And what would they do to him then?

  He was in truth not half so strong as Nobuyuki seemed to imagine. When confronted by opposition he would resist with seeming conviction. But the conviction was never so firm within as it seemed outside; and as soon as the opposition weakened and he was once again free to move, he would lose whatever firmness of purpose he might have had.

  He had tried, with some success, to think of his own birth rationally and positively. But as time passed, and as the initial tension within him began to wear off, he became more apt to let it depress him. And he came to feel more and more unsettled.

  He thought of moving. Nobuyuki had previously agreed to make use of his business connections and help Oei find a house. This was when Kensaku was still in Onomichi and Oei had shown some inclination to move into a smaller house. Since Kensaku’s return, however, no more mention had been made of the possibility of their moving. Perhaps, Kensaku now began to think, new surroundings might revive his spirit and help him get into a more settled mood. Perhaps he would then start working seriously again. And so Nobuyuki was once more asked to help in the search for a house.

  One day Nobuyuki appeared, bringing with him Ishimoto whom Kensaku had not seen for some months. “Let’s go and have a look at a few houses tomorrow,” Nobuyuki said. “There are a couple in the Gotanda area, and a couple more near our property in Ōi. I’ll sleep here tonight, all right?”

  That evening the three men had dinner at a certain teahouse in Yanagibashi. With them sat two young geisha and a maid. Another geisha by the name of Momoyakko had been asked for repeatedly, but the answer was always a half-hearted assurance that she would be there soon.

  It was Kensaku that had wanted Momoyakko. “I hear that you have a geisha here in Yanagibashi who used to be a ballad singer,” he had said. “Her professional name then was Eihana.”

  “I remember her,” Ishimoto had said. “You once took me to hear her. That was a long time ago. A pretty girl, wasn’t she? She was the daughter of some confectioner, I think.”

  One of the geisha present happened to live right opposite her in the same alley, and knew a lot about her. And when even after several telephone calls she still failed to appear, the two geisha and the maid began to gossip about her. None of them seemed to approve of her very much. That they indeed regarded her with positive ill will became clear once they were certain she was not known personally to any of their guests. The men were now regaled with stories of the villainous Momoyakko: she had once picked a quarrel with a senior geisha of the district during a concert given by apprentice geisha; she had taken the ring off a drunken customer’s finger while in a taxi; she had smothered to death her own baby—this was some time ago—as soon as it was born, and she was still living with the man who had fathered the baby; a rich, young fellow had recently become utterly infatuated with her, and was always coming in his car to fetch her or, when he couldn’t come, would send a gift with a letter attached.

  It had become clear to the men at any rate that Momoyakko, the former Eihana, had the unenviable reputation of being the most wicked geisha in town.

  From the time he was a boy Kensaku had frequented the vaudeville theatre and other such places of popular entertainment. Initially he had been taken to these places by his grandfather and Oei. But later, when he was about to leave high school, he had begun to visit them by himself. He liked women ballad singers most.

  Eihana then was a petite girl of twelve or thirteen. She had the makings of a beautiful woman, but what drew Kensaku to her at the time was her seeming defenselessness. A skinny body and a pale face with very thin eyebrows—she reminded one of a young white fox. Her voice was high-pitched even for a young girl’s, yet there was in it a note of sadness. A friend once said to him, “You know, she’s the sort that will put all she has into everything she does.” Kensaku had thought the remark somehow very true. For behind the sadness and the pain in her still inarticulate singing, there was a quality that suggested great pride and rebelliousness. Later, whenever he thought of Eihana, he would remember his friend’s words.

  Others from his class began to accompany him to the vaudeville theatre. Once, when Eihana was on the stage, one of these friends—his name was Yamamoto—said to him, “I know that girl.”

  She was the daughter, he said, of a confectioner specializing in Imagawa cakes. The back of their house was immediately on the other side of the wall of the Yamamotos’ garden, though on the street in front there was another house between theirs and the Yamamotos’. This piece of information immediately aroused interest among Yamamoto’s friends. But at the time he and Eihana had never even spoken to each other.

  In the Yamamotos’ grounds there was a well, famous in the district for its fine water. That summer, about six months after Yamamoto had seen Eihana on the stage, the neighbors as usual began coming to the well with their buckets. Eihana was one of these.

  The well was near the Yamamotos’ bathhouse. One evening when Yamamoto was having a bath he saw Eihana through the reed screen that covered the open window. He thought she could not see him; but when she had filled her bucket she bowed in his direction and thanked him. After two or three more such encounters they began talking to each other. She would lean against the well crib, her hands behind her back, and he would sit on the edge of the tub, and they would talk until the water in her bucket turned
tepid. What they talked about mostly was the theatre. Not long after this Kensaku saw placed on Eihana’s little table on the stage the mug that Yamamoto had given her.

  They remained merely friends. Yamamoto’s family were nobility. They had an aged steward, very small and fierce, whom Kensaku and his friends nicknamed “the angry runt.” Even if Yamamoto and Eihana had wanted to be more than friends, the old man alone would no doubt have presented a formidable obstacle; but neither seemed much inclined to push their relationship any further.

  Eihana grew more and more beautiful, and her body gradually developed into a woman’s, though she did not put on much more weight. Her art improved, and her name began to be known.

  It was about that time that a famous ballad singer, the second Hayanosuke, announced her intention to retire soon and the choice of Eihana as her prospective successor. Eihana would thus be assured of an honored place in her profession. She would temporarily retire from the stage, study intensively at the studio of the first Hayanosuke, then formally succeed to the name when she was deemed sufficiently accomplished. But at this crucial point in her career she suddenly ran away from home to live with the son of a local bookseller.

  Their place of hiding was soon discovered. It turned out to be only a few blocks from Eihana’s house. The young man was taken home. But Eihana was immediately disowned by her parents for her offense. They were, it turned out, only her foster parents. She had been born the bastard child of some army sergeant.

  Parted from her lover, disowned by her family, her career ruined, she of course must have felt desperate. To make matters worse, she was pregnant. And so to the first man that came along she abandoned herself completely. Perhaps she loved him. But she was a woman about to drown and would have grabbed at anything that came within reach.