A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  Kensaku decided to buy several sauce bottles, also red-glazed, from him. Only the writing on the wooden boxes that they came in, it was explained, was the work of the first Mokusen, who was now bedridden.

  The sun was about to set when they came out of the shop. A cold wind was blowing. Kensaku put up the collar of his Inverness cape and said, “I’ll catch cold if we don’t go somewhere to eat soon.”

  “I’m sure Sen will have prepared dinner for us.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Have you eaten out that often?”

  “No, not really, but since we left the house rather late, she’s probably assuming we won’t be home for dinner.”

  They came down the gently sloping hill to Gojo Bridge. The bridge was being rebuilt, and alongside it a narrow temporary bridge had been put up. As they went over it Naoko said, “So that’s Gojo Bridge.” Kensaku nodded. “My uncle is terribly excited because he’s going to get one of the old footstones from it. I think Mr. S got it for him.”

  “What will he do with it?”

  “Put it outside his tea hut and use it as a step or something.”

  “Your uncle is rather keen on the tea ceremony and things like that, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is. He’s not at all like my mother.”

  “When I met him for the first time at Tōsanrō he showed me an old wool pouch that I liked very much. He fancies such things too, does he?”

  “That’s a very old pouch. I remember his carrying that around with him when I was a child. Did you really like it?”

  “Of course. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  Naoko laughed. “I see that your tastes aren’t very different from my uncle’s. I thought as much when I saw you buying all those bottles today.”

  “And what kind of things does your brother like?”

  “He’s my mother’s child too—not what you’d call a man of refined taste.”

  “It’s better that way. Young people who cultivate elegant tastes aren’t exactly admirable.”

  “You really approve of ignorance, don’t you? You don’t want people to know anything about literature, you don’t want them to cultivate a taste for fine things … ”

  “Quite right,” he said solemnly. “To go around cultivating a taste for so-called subtleties is not a particularly worthwhile endeavor.”

  “What a strange point of view,” Naoko said, and broke into loud laughter. “That, too, I don’t understand.” Kensaku found himself laughing with her. She brought her face close to his and said, “I suppose you’d have disapproved if I had understood, wouldn’t you?” She seemed to find the thought unbearably funny.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Kensaku said, enjoying her merriment at his own pomposity.

  On the other side of the bridge they caught a streetcar. They got off at Shijō, and went to an oyster boat restaurant moored beside a narrow bridge called Kikusui. Kensaku had not been to such a restaurant since his sojourn in Onomichi, and of course he could not but be reminded of his pain then; but in his present happiness the memory cast only a momentary shadow. Besides, the atmosphere of this place was totally different from that of the gloomy oyster restaurant in Onomichi, with all those warehouses standing ominously above it. In their place now were the brightly lit teahouses of Gion and the ever-gaudy Shijō Bridge, and beyond that the Minamiza Theatre. Beneath these lay the river, glittering with reflections of their brilliant lights.

  About an hour later they left the restaurant. With a light spirit they walked through the teahouse district of Gion, mingling with the beautifully dressed dancing girls and their little attendants with their hair pulled back tight. As they came to the main thoroughfare on the Higashiyama side, Kensaku saw the shabby, little theatre where once he had seen Omasa the Viper coming out. “Have you ever heard of Omasa the Viper?” he asked Naoko.

  “I think I remember reading a novelette about her.”

  “I saw her here once.”

  “Really? I had no idea she was still alive.”

  “She goes about acting out her so-called true experiences on the stage.” He then described the large woman, her head shaved like a priest’s, as she emerged from the theatre. How hopeless she looked, he said, how utterly joyless. He told Naoko about Eihana, too, and how that spring he had tried without success to write a story about her. “A confession ceases to be a confession once it’s been made, don’t you think?” he said. “When it’s repeated, all the emotion that was there the first time is gone, there’s no meaning left. Just imagine how empty it must feel to ‘confess’ day after day in front of an audience!” How much better, he went on to say, to be like Eihana, who in her pride had asked for no forgiveness for her past crimes, who had chosen to pay for them in her own defiant way. How much more abject was Omasa’s life; of what use was her public contrition, or the public forgiveness, when all it brought was such emptiness as he had seen in her face?

  “I wonder?” Naoko said. “You know, when I do something wrong and say nothing about it, I feel awful. I feel much better when I tell someone about it.”

  “But you can hardly equate your kind of wrongdoing with Omasa’s or Eihana’s.”

  “Do you really think so?” she asked seriously.

  “Of course,” he replied, thinking how innocent she was. “When you do something wrong, it’s bound to be the sort of thing anyone can forgive once you own up to it. But it’s not that simple with people like Omasa and Eihana. Once you’ve confessed, you can forget about it, and people will let you. But people don’t let the likes of Omasa and Eihana off so easily. They demand that even after the confession the offender continue to be contrite. They don’t like to see the offender too openly enjoying the benefits of his confession.”

  “But who do you mean when you say ‘they’?”

  “Who? Well, let’s say the people who have been wronged.”

  “But that seems so vindictive.”

  “Maybe so—anyway, I suppose unless one makes a clean breast of it all, one runs the risk of feeling guilty all one’s life. On the other hand, a confession can bring one a lot of trouble too, even worse trouble.”

  “What does one do, then?”

  Kensaku, remembering his mother, suddenly was at a loss for an answer. He had pushed himself into a trap, and there was nothing he could find to say. In silence the two walked on.

  As if threatened by something Naoko said, “Let’s not talk about it any more.” She had heard about Kensaku’s mother, but it was not likely that she had associated her with the conversation. Rather, it was something she had sensed in his mood that had frightened her. She cuddled up to Kensaku. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant,” she said coaxingly. “Do think of something nicer to talk about. I get lost when you talk about difficult things like that.” Kensaku grinned. “You’ve now decided that the best way to win me over is to say you don’t understand, right?”

  By the time they reached their house in Kitanobō they were again in a cheerful mood.

  14

  About ten days later they found a newly built, two-story house that they liked very much in a place on the outskirts called Kinugasamura, and immediately moved in. It was on a cold day in January that they moved, cold even for Kyoto; and inside this new, unlived-in house with plaster just barely dry, the cold seemed intense.

  An aged janitor in the employ of Mr. S’s company was there to help them. This old man said to Kensaku, “Won’t this place be a little lonely for the womenfolk when you’re out? I’m not saying it’s dangerous, but won’t it be advisable to keep a dog?” Kensaku, impressed, asked him to find one for them.

  That night Kensaku and Naoko brought into their bedroom all the braziers from the other rooms, and waited until the room had become thoroughly warm before they went to bed.

  Kensaku chose a room upstairs for his study. He placed his desk before the north window, where the view gave him much pleasure. Immediately before him stood Mt. Kinugasa, gentle in outline and covered with pine groves. On this si
de of it were the woods of Kinkakuji, and behind it, only partly visible, were the highlands of Takagamine. To his left was Mt. Atago, much higher than Kinugasa; and if he leaned over his desk a little, there was Mt. Hiei to his right, its top covered with snow. He would often sit at his desk and simply stare at the view, not writing a word.

  He and Naoko went out a great deal. They would walk to various temples and shrines not far from where they lived—Myōshinji in Hanazono, Kōryūji in Uzumasa, Kaiko Shrine whose deity was Hata-no-Kawakatsu, Ninnaji in Omuro, Kōetsuji in Takagamine, Daitokuji in Murasakino; and in the evenings they would go to some busy part of town—by streetcar to Shinkyōgoku if they felt like going far afield, or Senbondōri, known as “the Kyōgoku of Nishijin,” if they wished to stay closer to home.

  It was at about this time that an old high school friend of Kensaku’s named Suematsu came to live in a boardinghouse in Okazaki. He was two years younger than Kensaku, but as boys they had lived near each other and so had become good friends. Four or five years before, Suematsu had entered a university in Kyoto, but through illness had had to return to Tokyo; and after a two-year absence from the university, had begun to return to Kyoto at half-yearly intervals to take the examinations he had missed. One evening this Suematsu came to see Kensaku with another young man who, he said, was a faithful reader of Kensaku’s writings.

  “Mizutani here says he likes your things and Sakaguchi’s best of all,” Suematsu said, much to Kensaku’s discomfort. To be complimented together with Sakaguchi, of all people, did not make him exactly happy; besides, he never did know what to say when someone made favorable remarks about his work to his face.

  “Mizutani is entering the university this year. He, too, is a student of the humanities. He writes poetry and things—stuff that I don’t understand too well, of course.”

  “When I have something worth looking at,” said Mizutani, “I’d like to bring it and show it to you, if you don’t mind.” He had a peculiarly straightforward manner about him, a little too clean-cut.

  “Have you met Sakaguchi?” Kensaku asked.

  “No, sir, I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  When Naoko came in with the tea and cakes, Kensaku introduced her to Suematsu—and to Mizutani. She had changed her clothes and redone her hair in the few minutes since the visitors’ arrival. With comely modesty and graciousness she poured the tea. She was every inch the model bride.

  Suematsu turned to Mizutani and said, “You know Mrs. Tokitō’s cousin, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I was at high school with Kaname, all the way through. And with Kuze.”

  Naoko for some reason blushed. Kensaku had never met Kaname, but knew he was Mr. N’s son now attending an engineering college in Tokyo. “Who is Kuze?” he asked Naoko.

  “He’s a good friend of my cousin’s,” Naoko said quickly, almost too easily. “He goes to Doshisha University here. He’s the one that said such nice things about your work to my family, didn’t you know?”

  “I see.”

  “Kuze, too, wants very much to meet you,” Mizutani said. “May I bring him?”

  “By all means.”

  Naoko sat very close to Kensaku, almost leaning against him. Kensaku, embarrassed, tried to ignore her, but was at the same time concerned lest he should appear to be doing so too self-consciously. At an opportune moment, then, he moved away an inch or two nonchalantly as he pretended to change his sitting position.

  “Does Kaname write to you at all?” Mizutani asked Naoko directly. What a familiar young man, Kensaku thought.

  “No, I haven’t heard from him at all,” Naoko replied. She turned to Kensaku. “Isn’t it terribly mean of him? He hasn’t written to me once since we got married.” Kensaku said nothing.

  “He’s apparently told Kuze that he intends to stop at Kyoto on his way home or on his way back to Tokyo,” Mizutani said, “in order to observe you in your new role.” He then laughed.

  “How nasty!” Naoko said, blushing.

  Suematsu was Kensaku’s friend, yet made shy by Naoko’s presence, he was not half so talkative as he usually was. But this Mizutani, who was a total stranger, showed no constraint whatsoever. His jokes, his facile remarks, were altogether inappropriate for someone his age; he was, in short, impertinent. He had a light complexion, a small, neat physique, and when he smiled, deep vertical dimples appeared on his cheeks. As for his eyes, they were somehow muddy. His kimono was blue with splashes of white; his long, student’s skirt was of serge, and its cord was tied in a small, tight knot, with the long ends left dangling rakishly down the front. He and Suematsu lived in the same boardinghouse, and had only recently come to know each other. Their friendship seemed to be based on a common interest in chess, cards, billiards and other such diversions.

  From the other side of the door Sen said, “Madame, will you please come here a minute?” When Naoko left the room, Suematsu, as if he had been waiting for such a chance, made a quick gesture with his hands, in imitation of someone dealing cards. He said with a grin, “Do you still play?”

  “No,” said Kensaku, shaking his head and smiling. At high school they and Oei had often played cards together.

  “Do you have cards?”

  “They should be around somewhere—the very same ones we used to play with.”

  “Oh, I’d like to play,” Suematsu said wistfully, like a child.

  “Are you keen on cards?”

  “He’s the keenest one in the boardinghouse,” Mizutani said.

  “How about your wife?” Suematsu asked Kensaku.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Letting Sen open the door for her, Naoko came in with a large cut-glass bowl filled with apple slices. Before she sat down, Kensaku looked up and said, “Do you know how to play ‘flowers’?”

  “Flowers?” she asked, cocking her head.

  “I mean this,” Kensaku said, gesturing as Suematsu had done.

  “Oh, that,” she said, sitting down and placing the bowl where everyone could reach it. “Yes, I know the game.”

  “How clever of you!” exclaimed Mizutani with eager admiration.

  “Do you know where the cards and chips are?” Kensaku asked Naoko.

  “Aren’t they wrapped in a red cotton cloth? I think I saw them when we were moving.”

  “That’s it.”

  She cocked her head again. It was a mannerism of hers. “Do you want me to find them?”

  “Please do.”

  Soon the four were sitting under the electric light, around a cushion covered with a white cloth.

  Suematsu divided up the chips, saying, “We’ll multiply the points by four—everything else will be as usual.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Naoko. “It doesn’t quite seem the same as the game I know.”

  “You know how to match them, don’t you?” Kensaku said.

  “Of course. There’s the moon-viewing group, the flower-viewing group, then there’s the boar-deer-butterfly group, and so on.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not quite how we play.”

  “Really? I’ll just watch, then. It would be best if I stayed out.”

  “You’ll learn soon enough, so do play,” said Mizutani as he cut the cards deftly. “One of us who has to be the sleeper can help you.”

  “That’s right,” said Kensaku. “Join us, you won’t find it difficult. If you’ll bring me a piece of paper and something to write with, I’ll write out the rules for you.”

  Naoko got up and left the room. Mizutani distributed the black cards. Kensaku got the crane. “I have the lead,” he said, and started dealing the red cards. When Naoko returned, Mizutani said, “I’ll write them out for you,” and took the paper and the inkstone. He explained each point meticulously to Naoko as he wrote.

  Kensaku looked at his cards briefly, then put them down. For lack of anything better to do he lit a cigarette.

  “Where’s Tatsuoka?” Suematsu asked. “Is he still in Paris?”

  “Yes. Studying very
hard, I gather.”

  “I’m told he’s the Japanese authority on airplane engines.”

  “Is that so?” said Kensaku, very pleased. “He’s already the top man, is he?”

  “That’s what they say. Does he write to you much?”

  “Occasionally.”

  Having given a summary explanation of how the cards were matched, Mizutani was now engaged in writing out some of the subtleties of point-counting.

  “Enough’s enough,” said Suematsu impatiently.

  “Wait a minute,” said Mizutani. “I’ve finished with the first part of the explanation, and now I’m on the second part. I won’t take long.”

  “How’s Oei?” Suematsu asked Kensaku.

  “She’s in Tientsin right now.”

  Suematsu was flabbergasted. “In Tientsin! What in the world is she doing in a place like that?”

  “A cousin of hers lives there. This cousin was back in Japan in the autumn of last year, and when she left, Oei went with her.” Kensaku hoped Suematsu would not ask what sort of business Oei was in. He had no reason to lie about it, but somehow he did not want to mention it in front of a stranger like Mizutani.

  “Is she in some sort of business there?”

  “Yes, something or other she and her cousin decided to do together.”

  Suematsu did not pursue the matter any further. Just then Mizutani said, “Right, let’s start.” Kensaku immediately put his cards down to indicate he was to be the sleeper. “How many points will it cost me?”

  “Twenty-four,” said Mizutani. After paying the fine Kensaku pulled himself close to Naoko and peered at her cards. “How are you doing?” he asked. Naoko held out her cards under his nose. “What do you think?”

  “Try playing them.”

  “Is this a matching set?” she asked, painstakingly checking her cards against Mizutani’s notes. The men all laughed.