A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  2

  The sun was already above Daimonji when he awoke the next morning. He washed his face, and while the maid tidied his room he went outside to the path by the river. A cool breeze was blowing, and the grass under his feet was still wet with dew. He felt very conspicuous walking along the path in full daylight. He must be brave, he exhorted himself as he approached the house, he must not be dissuaded by considerations of propriety. In all likelihood she would not be there any more, he thought; but if she was, that would indeed be a good omen.

  A man in his forties came toward him, accompanied by a neatly dressed, pretty little girl. It must be their custom, Kensaku thought, to come out for a walk every morning while it was still cool, for he had seen them a couple of times before at about that hour. He looked at their innocent, happy faces, so comfortable and relaxed, and was momentarily touched by envy.

  The young woman had not left after all. As he caught sight of her standing on the verandah he was so unnerved that it took all the courage he could muster to continue walking. She stood holding a broom, a hand towel wrapped around her hair in the manner of a serving girl. She had stopped sweeping as the little girl with the man went by, and was gazing after her, obviously charmed by the pretty sight. She had not noticed Kensaku approaching, therefore, and he was given the opportunity to have a really good look at her. Alas, she was not as beautiful as she had seemed the day before. Don’t be so fickle, he chided himself, don’t be so quick to feel cheated. She must in the meantime have sensed she was being stared at, for her expression suddenly changed, and blushing prettily she retreated into the house. He was no less embarrassed, but at least he was in sufficient control of himself to note that even when caught off guard she carried herself exceedingly well. She’s no fool, he thought with satisfaction.

  He decided that rather than spend the rest of the morning househunting he would go to the museum. It would be cool there, and the exhibits would surely have been changed since he went there soon after arriving in Kyoto. After breakfast he left the inn again and got on a streetcar.

  The museum was even quieter than usual. For all he knew, he might have been the only visitor there. Such quiet he had not expected, and he began to find it unsettling. A uniformed guard, his hands behind his back and his eyes riveted to the points of his shoes, walked toward him, looking utterly bored. He walked heavily and deliberately, as though mesmerized by the hard sound of his own footsteps reverberating in the cavernous hall. The sound served only to make the place seem even more boring, even more empty. Even the scroll paintings seemed to Kensaku to be staring back at him, the interloper, in ill-tempered silence. He went around quickly, daring to stop only for a brief moment before each painting. It was when he came to Josetsu’s “Gourd and Catfish,” with which he had always felt a sense of affinity, that he was at last able to stand and gaze in comfort. It was like meeting an old friend amidst a host of strangers.

  More at ease now, he began to find several pictures that invited a response from him. A pine done by an artist of the southern school, a tiger by Lu Chi, large matching scrolls of a hawk and a golden pheasant—these he particularly liked among the Chinese paintings. “Three Patriarchs of the Ritsu Sect,” owned by Senyūji, he thought nowhere near as good as the portrait he had seen the day before in Nison’in. Nevertheless, he was much impressed by the painter’s handling of the priests’ robes flowing over the chairs.

  Inanimate things, even if they were not works of art, seemed to demand from him more than a mere passive response; they could affect him in a deeply personal way, arousing in him feelings that ranged from active dislike or an awareness of being rejected, to love and mutual acceptance. So on this day at the museum he had begun by being an unwanted intruder in alien surroundings, and then a mood of enthusiasm, of active participation, had gradually taken hold of him.

  Of the sculptures he saw, one in particular drew his attention: it was the imagined likeness of the Bodhisattva Miroku. He had gone all the way to Uzumasa to see it four or five days before, only to discover that Kōryūji had lent it to the museum. It had not been in the temple for quite some time, he was told. Somehow he must have missed it when he was last at the museum.

  He began to feel tired and in need of a change of scene. He went outside, and from Nishiōtani he walked across Toribeyama to the falls of Otowa in Kiyomizu. At the teashop there he found a bench close to the water and immediately ordered a cool drink. It was a pleasure to be able to sit down and rest his tired body, and watch the young people of Kyoto, all so colorfully dressed by Tokyo standards, strolling about in the temple grounds.

  Remembering that he had heard about a couple of new houses for rent being constructed in the grounds of Kōdaiji, he decided he would now go and look at them. They turned out to be two-storied, semidetached houses, conveniently located and by no means unattractive. He was tempted to take one of them; but too tired to set about looking for the landlord, he walked to Yasaka Shrine and from there toward his inn by way of Shijōdōri. Just on the other side of Shijō Bridge there was a cheap-looking restaurant which, for all its modesty, had a terrace overlooking the river. He went in, and thinking that since there was hardly any breeze that day the terrace would provide little respite from the heat, he chose a table far from the edge, in as shady a spot as possible. What he wanted most of all was a cool drink. He sat sideways on the chair, his head turned toward the back of the terrace, hoping to catch the attention of one of the waitresses. But it was a busy time of day, and quick service seemed out of the question.

  Two or three tables away there was a man busily eating with a knife and fork. He raised his knife, and with food still in his mouth called out in a deep voice to a waitress as she rushed by, “Hey, I want some stew! Stew, understand?” It was Takai.

  Kensaku picked up his straw hat, walked over to his friend’s table, and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Hullo,” he said. Takai turned around quickly, stared for an instant, then jumped up. “Well, well!”

  “What a nice surprise,” Kensaku said.

  “Isn’t it!” There was sincere pleasure in Takai’s face.

  They had not seen each other for two years. These two, with several other friends, had tried to start a magazine. Takai, a European-style painter, was to have designed it, and to have contributed poems besides. Unfortunately there was insufficient financial backing for the venture, and they had had to postpone publication. In the meantime Takai had had a nervous breakdown, caused mostly by a bad stomach, and had gone to a hydropathic sanitarium in Kobe, where he stayed for almost a year. Kensaku had heard that the treatment was successful and that Takai had then gone back to his home somewhere in Tajima.

  “Are you living here now?” Kensaku asked.

  “No, I’m staying in Nara. I’ve been there since spring. I’m afraid I didn’t bother to tell any of my friends in Tokyo that I’d moved. How about you—when did you come here?”

  Kensaku said that he was thinking of settling down in Kyoto. Why not Nara, Takai suggested. “I wouldn’t mind Nara,” Kensaku said, “but right now I think I’d rather stay in Kyoto.” He began to think that Takai might be the very person he might talk to about his recent experience.

  Later, at his inn in Higashisanpongi, Kensaku described to his friend in some detail his feelings about the woman he had seen the day before. Takai was clearly surprised to see Kensaku behaving so much like a lovesick twenty-year-old. “You really are serious, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m convinced that what I feel is genuine. The trouble is, I simply don’t know where I’m to go from here. I know from past experience that if I sit back and do nothing she will eventually become a dim memory. But I don’t want to let that happen.”

  “Be positive, then, and do something about it. Find out who she is, then ask someone to act as go-between.”

  “How simple you make it sound.”

  “There’s no other way. Ask someone to go to them on your behalf.”

  “I suppose you’re
right.”

  “I’d like to help in any way I can, but they’re hardly likely to put much trust in a Bohemian like me.”

  “I’d be so happy if you would speak to them for me.”

  “Really? Do you really think I would be of use?” He seemed pleased. He thought for a while, then said, “Do you think there might be a room to let in that house? If I stayed there, I could find out at least what sort of people they were. What do you think of the idea?” Kensaku agreed readily. But immediately his enthusiasm was dampened by the fear lest the overture, after having been successful up to a certain point, should suddenly be spurned. He was aware of the indignity of such fear, he knew only too well how abject it was to expect rejection as though it were a matter of course, but the awareness only increased his misery. I must overcome this fear, he told himself, I must try to have more faith.

  “Do you think she’ll be there now?” asked Takai.

  “I’ve no idea,” Kensaku answered as lightly as possible, smiling. “Shall we go and see?”

  “No, I had better go alone.”

  Kensaku explained carefully where the house was. Takai, nodding, stepped down to the garden. Kensaku was much amused as he watched Takai walk along the path by the river with affected nonchalance, his head held still while presumably his eyes busily searched for the house. But the amusement was quickly replaced by the sobering thought that if with Takai’s help he should succeed in establishing some kind of contact with her, he would have to be prepared to tell her family all about his birth. He would have to know right from the start whether or not they would regard it as a serious obstacle.

  Takai came back shaking his head and grinning foolishly. “I couldn’t find it,” he said.

  “What a dimwit,” Kensaku said, laughing. “How could you miss it? All right, we’ll go together.”

  “But I walked at least a hundred yards, and I saw no one that looked remotely like her.”

  “She’s obviously not in the house, then. Let’s go and see anyway.”

  Kensaku had his clogs brought to the garden, put his hat on, and walked out into the hot sun.

  “See that house there with the Korean blinds? That’s the one.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “And she’s there,” Kensaku said, taking care not to look in her direction.

  “Where?”

  “Right there, can’t you see? She’s sitting.” This time his eyes were gazing at Mt. Hiei.

  Takai, whose pace had slackened while he was trying to locate her, said from behind, “Yes, I see her now. Do you think we could recognize the house from the front?”

  “Let’s see,” Kensaku said, and turning around counted the number of houses that stood between it and a conspicuous three-storied one. “It’s four houses down from that big one.”

  At the foot of the bridge they left the path and entered the main street. Kensaku was somewhat nonplussed by his own cheerful mood. That a mere glimpse of the young woman should have so affected him struck him as comical; but this in no way lessened his happiness. And if all went well, he thought, a completely new life, a life that he had never known before, would open up for him. Everything before had truly been shrouded in darkness; and in that darkness, dreadful worms had bred and multiplied. Perhaps now it may all be brought out into the light and cleansed by the sun. The worms would die, the sores would heal; and at last a new life, a life that he wanted, would begin.

  He turned to Takai. “Can you really leave Nara so easily?”

  “Certainly.”

  “But aren’t you painting something there?”

  “Yes, but I’ll finish what I’m doing in two or three days. Besides, there are lots of places here that I’d like to paint, so don’t worry about me.

  They walked beside the mud wall of a temple, turned left and were on Higashisanpongi. Just a few yards down the narrow street was the three-storied house. One, two, three, four—now they were in front of her house. “You’ll be going back to the inn, I suppose?” said Takai.

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed Kensaku in disbelief. “You’re not intending to go in?”

  “It’s never wise to put such things off,” said Takai carelessly. Kensaku was overcome with uneasiness. “It’ll be all right,” said Takai, dismissing Kensaku with a nod. “I’ll see you later.” He opened the outer gate and marched down the stone-paved path toward the house.

  On his way back to the inn Kensaku remembered a story he had once heard about a certain shabbily attired student who, on seeing a strikingly beautiful girl go past in a rickshaw in Ueno Park, had followed her to her house, presented himself to her father and asked if he might marry her. The proposal was accepted on the spot. Kensaku heard the story from a teacher of Japanese literature who knew the university student, and was inclined to believe that it was true. He had laughed at the time the story was told him, but even as he laughed he had felt distaste for the intrepid young man. The very whimsicality of the act bespoke insincerity, he thought. Besides, he never did like people who did conspicuously odd things, nor, for that matter, those who found such people charming. But, he reassured himself, Takai was a far cry from that university student; he would never stoop to such tricks.

  Back at the inn he went to the bathroom and began rubbing himself down with cold water. Takai opened the door and came in. He said with a chagrined smile, “I’m afraid I was turned down. Perhaps they were telling the truth, perhaps not, but they said there was no room available.”

  Kensaku was not particularly dismayed. “They were probably telling the truth. We can ask the landlady here to find out.”

  “That’s an idea. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  The two went back to Kensaku’s room. When the landlady appeared with the tea, Takai immediately asked her, “That house down the street—Tōsanrō, I think it’s called—do you know it?”

  “Yes,” she said, pouring the tea.

  “Do they take in boarders?”

  “I believe so. I’m told that people who are outpatients at the university or the city hospital often stay there.”

  “Well, I just went in there to see if they had a room.”

  “I see.”

  “I was told they didn’t. What I can’t tell is whether they were telling the truth or whether they turned me down because they don’t take in strangers off the street, so to speak.”

  “I’ll find out for you. I used to know the people who owned the place before quite well, but it changed hands a couple of years ago, and I haven’t seen very much of the new people. But we share the same caterer, so I’ll ask him to speak to them.”

  She left, then came back with a letter in her hand. “I had completely forgotten about this,” she said, giving it to Kensaku. “I’m very sorry. It came around noon.”

  It was a fairly heavy letter, from Nobuyuki at Kamakura. On the envelope was written the word “important.”

  3

  “It is some time since I last wrote to you. I trust you are well. I enjoyed reading your last letter, and was happy to hear that Kyoto suited you. Have you found a house that you like? You must be looking forward to the autumn. How nice it will be then. No doubt you intend to come to Tokyo for a visit once you have settled in your new house there, but there is something Oei wants you to think about in the meantime.

  “The day before yesterday I got a letter from her asking me to stop by at the house on my next trip to Tokyo. She wanted my advice on a certain matter, she said. So yesterday I went to Tokyo to see her.

  “I’m sure you know that a cousin of hers, a woman by the name of Osai, has been staying with her in Ōmori. Oei doesn’t like to talk much about her cousin, but one can guess that she, too, has a demimonde background. What the woman is doing now, I can’t say exactly. All I know is that she is supposed to be running some sort of restaurant in Tientsin. I suspect that her ‘restaurant’ isn’t quite like the ordinary Tokyo restaurant.

  “Oei began by expressing her uneasiness over her present situation. He
r original intention, she said, of staying with you until you found a nice wife and set up your own household had become confused of late because of the recent complications between you and father. She wasn’t so sure any more, she said, that she ought to go on living with you. You may not like my bringing this matter up again, but I believe that Oei has a point.

  “Now this cousin of hers—they hadn’t seen each other for ten years, apparently—wants Oei to go back to Tientsin with her and help her run the restaurant. Of course by ‘help’ she means money mostly. At any rate, Oei seems rather enthusiastic about the idea. You seem happy in Kyoto and seem to want to live there, she has some money saved up—over a thousand yen, she says—and if neither you nor I have objections, she would like to go to Tientsin with Osai.

  Incidentally, she has no intention of asking for money from the family in Hongō.

  “Well, that’s the gist of it. We can talk about it in greater detail when you come up to Tokyo. But please think about it in the meantime. I for my part will try to find out exactly what kind of person this Osai is and what kind of business she is trying to involve Oei in.

  “I shall also think a little more about the question of money for Oei. I want you if possible to leave that up to me.

  “When do you think you might be coming up? It would be nice if you could stop at Kamakura on the way. I look forward to seeing you soon.”

  In some confusion Kensaku put down the letter. Go to Tientsin and help run a restaurant—what a bizarre notion it was! Yet at the same time Kensaku could not help thinking that it was just the sort of thing Oei might wish to do. But what was this Osai woman up to anyway? Suppose she was a crook about to defraud a gullible cousin?

  All that aside, it was a letter that saddened him deeply. True, he had no idea what the relationship between him and Oei would or should be in the future. But was this the way they had to part from each other, as though after all these years they were in the end nothing but strangers? Did the parting have to be so blatantly matter-of-fact? He looked for an answer that would give him solace; but there was none.