A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  Suematsu looked at his watch. “It is two-thirty already, I must admit.”

  “If we leave now,” Mizutani said, “we’ll be in Kyoto by dawn.”

  “I suppose we should leave,” Suematsu said, still not convinced. “They say it’s very exciting when they carry the shrine down the hill. It’s so steep, the men can’t check the momentum, and they start running faster and faster. They have a large rope tied to the back of the shrine, and the women act as brake by holding on to it. It’s the only time women take any part in the festival.”

  “Let’s go anyway,” said Mizutani. “Can you imagine what it would be like having to walk back eight miles in the sun?”

  Suematsu at last relented. The fires in the lower part of the town, which Kensaku had thought were like flickering cave fires, were now burning vigorously. And when the four men came out of the town, away from the fires, they suddenly felt the chill of the mountain air. From time to time they would turn around to look at the valley, which glowed red in the surrounding darkness. The walking was easier going downhill, and the road seemed shorter. But they were tired, and they said less and less to each other as they walked.

  The first to break the silence was Suematsu. “I can’t keep my eyes open!”

  “Here, I’ll hold on to you,” said Mizutani, putting his arm around Suematsu, “so go to sleep as you walk.”

  Mizutani had said it would be dawn by the time they reached Kyoto, and he was right; for just as they entered the city, the sky behind Mt. Hiei began to light up. At the streetcar terminal they were able to sit down and rest their tired bodies. In a short while the first streetcar of the day arrived. They all got on, and at Marutamachi Kensaku alone got off, to change to a streetcar going to Kitano.

  He was in Kinugasamura at last, walking toward his house in the soft morning sun of autumn. “The master is back!” he heard Sen shouting excitedly. She rushed out of the kitchen, a big grin on her face. “The baby has arrived, yes indeed.”

  Kensaku, his heart pounding unreasonably, rushed into the room that they had assigned for the delivery. Conscious of the smell of creosol or some such disinfectant, he looked at Naoko lying in the middle of the room. She lay on her back, her forehead drained of color and her hair lying loosely around the pillow; she was in a deep sleep. The baby slept in a small bed which had been laid separately beside Naoko’s. But it was Naoko, and not the baby, that engaged Kensaku’s attention. He looked at the young nurse, who bowed silently, and asked her in a low voice, “How was it?”

  “It was a comfortable delivery.”

  “I’m glad, I’m very glad.”

  Sen, seated by the door, said, “It’s a boy.”

  “Is that so?” Kensaku said.

  In relief he looked over the low screen that had been placed at the head of the baby’s bed, but the face was hidden under a piece of gauze. “What time was he born?”

  “Twenty minutes past one,” replied the nurse.

  “The mistress wanted you to know at once,” Sen said, “and we sent a rickshaw man off to find you. I don’t suppose you saw him?”

  “No, I didn’t. Let’s go to the morning room and talk there. We mustn’t wake them.”

  On the previous evening, just as Kensaku left the house, the newspaper boy had come in to deliver the evening paper. According to Sen, what then happened was that this boy, too lazy to hand the paper to Naoko who was still in the front hall after having seen Kensaku off, had thrown it to her. It fell on the stone step below the raised floor. Naoko reached down to pick it up, when suddenly she felt a strange pain in her womb. Later, when the pain returned, she realized what it meant, and had Sen telephone the midwife, the doctor, and Mr. S. She then had her evening bath (she was about to do so when the pain returned), put on her delivery clothes, and waited.

  When Sen had finished her story Kensaku said, “That was impressive.” He did indeed admire Naoko for her surprising control and presence of mind at such a time.

  “Mrs. S came at once with her maid. They left shortly before you returned.”

  “I see. Is the baby healthy?”

  “He’s a magnificent baby.”

  Kensaku wanted to ask more questions about the baby. “Will you ask the nurse to come in?”

  The nurse appeared on the verandah and sat down, spreading out the starched panels of her long, white skirt around her.

  “Please come into the room,” Kensaku said. “Wasn’t the baby born much sooner than expected?”

  “No, not really. It’s true that the pregnancy was a little shorter than normal—it was two hundred and fifty days—but I don’t think he’s exactly a premature baby.”

  “I see. And there’s no cause for me to worry about either of them?”

  “None at all.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said, bowing. But as he did so, he could not help feeling that thanking her was not enough, that he owed his thanks to something else too, though exactly what, he didn’t know. The nurse went back to the delivery room.

  He was about to change his clothes and go to the bathroom to wash when the nurse appeared again to say that Naoko was awake.

  Naoko lay on her back, her head still, only her eyes expressing her expectancy as he came in from the verandah. He looked at her pale, tired face, and thought how beautiful she was.

  He sat down beside her pillow. “Well, how are you?” he said, wishing he could have sounded less offhand.

  Naoko merely smiled contentedly, then with great effort brought out her pale hand with the veins showing and opened it in invitation. Kensaku held it tightly and said, “Was it painful?”

  Naoko shook her head slightly, her eyes fixed on his.

  “Really? I’m so glad.” Her brave denial touched him deeply, and he wanted to reach out and stroke her head. He tried to free his hand, but she would not let go. He changed his sitting position, and with his other hand that had been resting on the floor began stroking her head.

  In a voice that was low from exhaustion she asked, “What’s he like? Is he a nice baby?”

  “I haven’t had a good look at him yet.”

  “Is he asleep?”

  “Yes. Haven’t you yourself seen him properly yet?”

  She shook her head. The nurse said, “Would you like to see him?” Without waiting for an answer she pushed the screen aside, took the gauze off the baby’s face, and rather roughly—or so Kensaku thought—pulled his bed closer to Naoko’s.

  He had a red and uncannily hairy face; his head came to a point, and this point was covered with lank, black hair that looked as though it had been pasted on; and his closed eyelids were swollen. He was altogether a dismaying sight, like no baby Kensaku could remember ever having seen.

  Kensaku giggled. “It’s just as well he’s a boy, eh? Couldn’t have a face like that on a girl.”

  The nurse clearly disapproved of his remarks. “All babies at first look like this, sir.”

  The baby’s lips, which looked so delicate that Kensaku wouldn’t have dared touch them lest the skin peeled off, twitched nervously. Then he opened his mouth wide, creased his face, and began to wail.

  Naoko turned her head toward him, reached out and pressed her fingers on his quilt-covered shoulder. The look in her eyes as she gazed at him was extraordinarily gentle, extraordinarily motherly.

  Kensaku, for his part, did not in the least feel like a father. “Are you sure he’s going to look all right?”

  “His face is swollen now,” the nurse said, “but when the swelling goes down, he’ll be a fine-looking baby.”

  “Really? I’m relieved to hear that. It would be terrible if he were to grow up looking like that.” Reassured and more cheerful now, he added jocularly, “There is a comic mask in the Nara Museum that looks just like him.”

  Neither Naoko nor the nurse smiled; but Sen, who was setting the table in the next room, laughed. “What an awful thing to say, sir!”

  “I don’t suppose telegrams have been sent out yet to the various peop
le?”

  “No,” said Naoko.

  “I had better do that right away, then,” Kensaku said, and went up to his study.

  18

  All went well. Occasionally Kensaku would go into Naoko’s room to have a look at the sleeping baby, motivated more by curiosity than by fatherly concern. That this baby was of his own flesh was something he could not yet feel with any sense of reality. And he never even tried to pick him up, afraid that he would somehow hurt him if he did. But Naoko had completely become a mother. He would watch her as she nursed the baby in her bed, thinking how confident she seemed. Sometimes the sight of the baby sucking away contentedly, his nose almost buried in the soft flesh, would strike him as beautiful; and sometimes it unsettled him, for the baby would resemble some strange, rapacious creature about to devour Naoko’s white breast. If he had not so rarely seen a newly born baby before, he would have been less uncertain.

  No one came from Tsuruga. Naoko’s mother could not come until later, and her aunt, who would normally have rushed to Naoko’s bedside, was suffering from an attack of her chronic neuralgia. But Naoko seemed not at all distressed by their absence.

  The so-called ceremony of the seventh day drew near, and they had to name their baby by then. A name that appealed to them both was difficult to find; and eventually they settled for Naonori, which was a combination of the first characters of their own names, “nori” being another reading for “ken” of Kensaku. A rather resounding name for a baby, they agreed disconsolately. “But,” Kensaku argued, “he won’t be a baby forever.”

  The first week went by exceedingly smoothly. Then on the eighth night, when everyone had gone to bed, the baby started crying incessantly. He would stop briefly when Naoko put her nipple in his mouth, then start crying again. They examined his navel to see if it was giving him pain, but it seemed quite normal. Thinking that perhaps he was being bitten by a bug, they changed all his clothes, but that made no difference. Puzzled and now thoroughly uneasy, they took his temperature. It was a little higher than it should be.

  “What do you think?” Kensaku said. “Should we ask Dr. K to come?”

  Naoko said worriedly, “Yes, perhaps we should.”

  But in a little while the crying became weaker and weaker, until at last it ceased entirely, and the baby fell into a deep, seemingly untroubled sleep. With a sigh of relief Kensaku said, “What was the matter with him?”

  Naoko did not answer the question; instead she merely said, “Thank goodness it’s over.”

  “There are babies who habitually cry at night,” Sen said, then began to urge them to stick on the ceiling a picture of the devil saying his prayers. “That might help, you know.”

  The baby continued to sleep. Making as little noise as possible, everyone went back to bed.

  Kensaku lay in his bed in the study, unable to go back to sleep. He was sure that Naoko, too, would be awake, especially since in her present condition she would have had several naps during the day. But he dared not go downstairs to her, for fear he might wake the baby.

  In an attempt to settle down he was reading something light when the clock in the morning room started to strike. It was midnight, and before the loud striking was over the baby was awake and crying again. He could hear Naoko and the nurse talking.

  When he went downstairs he found Naoko sitting up in her bed with the baby in her arms. The crying was desperate.

  Naoko looked up at Kensaku and said angrily, “Can’t you do something about that clock? It woke the baby.”

  “I’ll go and stop it.”

  “Please do,” she said, vainly offering her breast to the baby. “And I’d rather you never started it again. We have no need of it.”

  When he returned from the morning room he said, “Let’s at least have some local doctor come and look at him. Dr. K lives so far away, and it’s very late. Besides, the baby is likely to stop crying soon.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll go out right away and find a doctor, then.”

  He went out by the back door. It was pitch-dark outside, and windless. He had seen a house on Onmaedōri, less than half a mile away, with a sign on it saying simply, “Doctor.” With latticed door and windows, it had looked more like a shopkeeper’s house than a doctor’s. Running part of the way he reached it quickly. He banged on the door two or three times, and a woman’s voice answered, “What do you want?”

  “Can the doctor come to my house?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Kinugasa Park, very near here. Our baby isn’t well, and we want the doctor to come and look at him.”

  “Please wait a minute,” the woman said, still behind the closed door, and went away. She came back promptly and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Tokitō.”

  “What?”

  “To-ki-tō.”

  “Tokitō?”

  “That’s right.”

  Muttering the name to herself the woman retreated inside again. This time she was away an inordinately long time. His patience exhausted, Kensaku shouted, “Please hurry!” There was no answer.

  At last the woman returned and opened the door. She was a shabby-looking woman, skinny and tall, dressed in her night clothes. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Inside the house the doctor was in the process of getting dressed. No less seedy than the woman, but small, he sported a poor excuse of a goatee. He was perhaps a little older than Kensaku. As he finished trying his sash he said, “What appears to be wrong with the baby?”

  “We don’t know. He simply won’t stop crying.”

  For some reason the doctor was now all bustle. He came hurrying out of his room, saying, “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “It is I who must apologize for troubling you at this late hour.”

  “Not at all. Lead the way, sir. I shall follow you.”

  He was being singularly accommodating, Kensaku thought, suspecting that he was a little drunk. He was certainly not one to inspire confidence, and Kensaku began to regret not having called Dr. K, however inconvenient it might have been for him. On the way the seedy doctor asked Kensaku when the baby was born, whether Naoko had ever had beriberi; and when he had finished with such professional questions, he became more personal: when had Kensaku come to Kyoto, what had brought him there, and so on. Kensaku, loathe to talk to this inquisitive man, walked on ahead. Panting, the short-legged doctor trotted after him.

  The doctor’s diagnosis, alas, was exceedingly ambiguous. He examined the baby’s soiled diaper, and pronounced that he was suffering from some kind of indigestion. No matter how much he cried, he said, Naoko was not to give him any more milk; and with that he was gone.

  The baby cried all night—or so it seemed to everyone in the house. There were indeed moments when he would go to sleep from sheer exhaustion, but when the others were about to doze off in the blissful silence, he would be awake again, crying. They thought the morning would never come.

  When finally the sky began to lighten Kensaku went out again. The family whose telephone he had been in the habit of using were still asleep, so he ran to Kitano, and from there called Dr. K’s house and asked if the doctor would come to their home before he went to the hospital.

  An hour later Dr. K arrived. A biggish man with a thick, graying mustache, he exuded quiet competence, and was a marked contrast to his seedy colleague of the night before. Cutting short the customary greetings he went straight to the baby’s side and began asking them questions about his condition. The baby was then asleep in Naoko’s bed, having just finished feeding; but when the doctor put his hand on his forehead he immediately began to cry. The doctor withdrew his hand, and watched the baby. He in turn was watched by Naoko, lying silently and expectantly beside the baby.

  “Let me look at his body at any rate,” the doctor said.

  The nurse closed the door, then picked up the baby and put him down on his tiny bed. “That will do,” said the doctor as the nurse opened up the
front of the baby’s multilayered clothing. He pulled himself close to the bed, then examined closely the baby’s chest and stomach, his neck and even his legs. He tapped him a few times, then undoing the bandage around the navel put his large, old man’s hand on the lower abdomen and pushed. The baby’s crying became more like a scream. “Let me look at his back now.” The nurse pulled down the baby’s clothes from his shoulders, and with some effort freed his little arms, bent rigid with the strain of crying, from the sleeves. She then laid him on his side, with his naked back turned toward the doctor. His fists clenched, his elbows held tight again his sides, his knees drawn up, his stomach heaving, the baby cried with all his might. Helplessly Kensaku looked at Naoko, who lay still, her eyes filled with an anger that he found strangely endearing.

  The doctor was looking closely at a red spot, about the size of a thumbprint, an inch above the baby’s buttocks. Still crouching, he looked up at Kensaku.

  “I now know what the problem is.”

  “What is it?”

  “Erysipelas.”

  Naoko closed her eyes, then suddenly covering her face with her hands turned away on her side.

  “But it hasn’t spread,” the doctor said, “and if we attend to it at once I’m sure we can stop it.” The nurse said nothing as she dressed the baby. The doctor went out to the verandah to wash his hands. “We’ll have to get a few things from the hospital. Is there a telephone nearby?”

  “Our landlord has one,” Kensaku said. “Would you like me to go and call the hospital?”

  “You could, but I think I’d better call them myself.”

  Kensaku took the doctor to the landlord’s house. There the doctor instructed the hospital to send over the necessary injection, ichthyol, oiled paper, alcohol, and other items that occurred to him as he spoke on the telephone. He turned to Kensaku and asked, “Do you happen to have any mercury chloride in your house?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And some mercury chloride, then. Send somebody over—it doesn’t matter who—right away. Tell him to come on a bicycle. Kinugasa Park—understand?”