A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  He looked at the houses with the hanging lanterns on either side of him, and wondered whether he would start visiting such places again.

  Kensaku had the feeling that he was in a peculiarly irresponsible mood that day. He would therefore say nothing to Suematsu about the matter, he resolved; otherwise he was sure to say all kinds of indiscreet things he would regret later.

  “Damn,” he said, realizing that he had forgotten to bring the present he got for Suematsu in Korea. He took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  He got on the streetcar at Senbon. It was a terminal in those days, and he had no trouble finding a seat. It was like evening outside, sunless and gray; in the streetcar it was darker still, and the air was so stuffy that very soon Kensaku began to feel nausea. Unable to bear it any longer, he hurriedly got off at the Karasumaru corner of the palace and went to the rickshaw stand.

  Suematsu was coming down the stairs just as Kensaku entered the boardinghouse.

  “Hullo,” said Suematsu. “Come up, won’t you?”

  “No, let’s go out somewhere.”

  “Come up to my room for a minute. I have something to show you.”

  “Show it to me another time,” said Kensaku, anxious to avoid Mizutani.

  Suematsu looked nonplussed. “All right, let me change my clothes at least.”

  “I’ll wait for you in front of the zoo. And don’t bring anyone else.”

  Suematsu burst out laughing. “I see. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but he isn’t in right now. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Higashiyama loomed before Kensaku as he came out of the alley, its outline made vague by the dull weather. Scudding over it were numerous little clouds, all of them the color of diluted black ink. It was a limp sort of day, very dreary.

  A lone young man crouched low on a racing bicycle was circling the sports field in the park. He wore a red shirt and a pair of shorts. His shoulders swayed to the right and left, his head bobbed up and down as he pedaled against the wind. When he came around and the wind was behind him, his movements became visibly more relaxed, and the bicycle went much faster. Kensaku stood on the side of the road and watched this spectacle until Suematsu appeared.

  “I wish you could have looked at it,” said Suematsu as they started walking. “I’m told it’s a flower basin of the Fujiwara period. I picked it up in a dirty secondhand shop in Matsubara a couple of days ago. If I bring it over sometime, will you look at it and tell me what you think of it?”

  “But I know nothing about such things.”

  At the streetcar stop they sat down on a bench in the open area to wait for a streetcar from Ōtsu.

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep a worthless fellow at a distance,” Suematsu said suddenly, “but your trouble, Tokitō, is that you allow your dislike of someone to become a kind of obsession.”

  “I realize that. You see, what happens is that in the process of trying to avoid someone because I don’t like him, I come to hate him. It’s a terrible habit, I know. I always begin by liking or disliking someone immediately, and if I like a person, I assume he’s good, and if I dislike him, I assume he’s bad. But you know, I’m hardly ever wrong in my judgment.”

  “That’s simply because you choose to think you’ve been right.”

  “No, I really don’t make many mistakes about people. It’s not only people either; I’m usually right in my discernment of a particular situation too. When I sense something is wrong, I usually find later that there was good cause for me to feel that way.” As he said this, Kensaku remembered how peculiarly prophetic his distaste and apprehension at seeing Mizutani at the station had been. His intuition had certainly not betrayed him there.

  “No doubt there are times when you’re right,” Suematsu said.

  “But I must say that your trust in the infallibility of your own intuitions can be a bore to the rest of us. In fact, it’s quite frightening sometimes. Can’t you just occasionally be more rational about people?”

  “But of course I can.”

  “In matters involving your feelings, you really are a tyrant. You’re a terrible egotist, you know. True, you’re not a calculating person, and I suppose that’s a good thing. But you can be very thoughtless.” Suematsu paused, then spoke again. “Let me put it another way. Perhaps you yourself aren’t tyrannical; rather, it’s as though a little tyrant is living inside you somewhere. I suppose it’s possible that the real victim is therefore you.”

  “You can say that about anyone,” Kensaku replied. “I’m not the only one like that.” He was nevertheless forced to think that his struggle in the past had indeed been with something inside him, not outside.

  “All right,” Suematsu said, “let’s say that in your case, the tyrant within is unusually active.”

  Kensaku had always allowed his emotions to tyrannize over him; but he had not before thought to describe his own condition quite in these words. Now, as he remembered the various incidents in his life, he had again to grant that more often than not he had been wrestling with himself, that his enemy had been a creature residing within him. “You stay out of it, don’t interfere,” he had said to Naoko the night before. “I’ll find a way out of this mess.” All he was saying, he now realized, was that their problem was entirely his to solve. What a strange thing to have said to her, he thought. He said to Suematsu, “It’s true. If I am going to spend the rest of my life fighting with this thing that’s inside me, what was the point of my having been born?”

  Suematsu gave him a consoling look. “Perhaps it isn’t so bad, if at the end of it all there’s peace of mind waiting.”

  There was still no sign of a streetcar coming from Ōtsu.

  Kensaku was gazing vacantly up at Higashiyama when suddenly he noticed a weird black thing weaving its way through the clouds, against the wind. Something akin to dread gripped him for a moment, then the realization dawned on him that he was looking at an airplane. The wind had drowned out the sound of the engine; he had not expected to see an airplane flying in such weather; and because of the clouds, it had looked like a flying shadow.

  It flew past with difficulty over the Warrior’s Tomb; then gradually it lost altitude, and barely missing the roofs of Chion’in, disappeared behind the temple. “I’m sure it crashed,” Kensaku said. “In Maruyama, I think. Shall we go and see?”

  They had both read in the newspapers that the army was going to attempt their first flight from Tokyo to Osaka that day; but it had not occurred to either of them that the attempt would still be made in such weather.

  They stood up and started walking quickly toward Awataguchi.

  7

  From Maruyama the two men walked past Kōdaiji toward Kiyomizu. Nowhere did they hear any talk of the airplane. So vague had been the apparition, so uncertain was Kensaku about the state of his own mind, that had he not read about the flight in the morning paper, he might have decided that he had suffered an hallucination. Feeling a terrible hollowness inside, he talked endlessly to his companion as they walked in search of the airplane. He had earlier resolved to say nothing about the night before to Suematsu; but he had little confidence in the authority of that resolution. And as he chattered he kept on asking himself, should he or should he not tell him about it?

  For a time in Onomichi, after hearing about the circumstances of his birth, he had found himself more or less in the same state of mind. Then, however, he had felt that he had in him somewhere the strength to fight against the shock of his discovery; and he had not been wrong. Now, for whatever reason, that residue of strength seemed to be nowhere in him. I mustn’t give in, he told himself, but in vain. There was no firm foothold anywhere within reach, it seemed, and he was sinking deeper and deeper in the quagmire. It made no sense, he thought sadly, to be so much more helpless after his marriage than he had been before.

  The two climbed the stone steps of Ninenzaka, and went into the teashop on top. Seeing a rattan chair on the verandah, Kensaku made straight
for it and collapsed into it. He was so exhausted, so bereft of all vitality, that he could not keep his eyes open. Perhaps I’m ill, he thought, already half-asleep.

  Suematsu’s voice calling to him from the room brought him back to awareness. “The tea’s here. Do you want to have it there? What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well. And it’s this weather.” Limply Kensaku pulled himself out of the chair; then getting down on his knees almost crawled toward the cushion in the middle of the room.

  “I would guess from that performance that you were an extremely tired man,” said Suematsu.

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about. It’s been weighing on my mind. What makes it worse is that I feel I shouldn’t talk to you about it.” Nonplussed, Suematsu said nothing. “Keeping it to myself is proving a terrible strain. It has to do with my present state of mind.” All the while Kensaku tried to restrain himself; for he still knew that if he said anything about Naoko, he would be sorry later.

  “With your state of mind?”

  “That’s right. I feel exactly like this weather we’re having—nasty.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you sometime. But I don’t want to today.”

  “All right.”

  “Not to change the subject, but how are you getting on with your third-rate geisha?”

  Suematsu, unprepared for the question, could only smile uncomfortably. Then he said with a laugh, “Oh, so-so. The affair isn’t exactly over, but it’s lukewarm at best.”

  The affair was at its peak, Kensaku remembered, when he himself had just got married. It seemed then to be causing Suematsu a lot of annoyance. Kensaku, too engrossed in his own new life with Naoko, had not bothered at the time to inquire too deeply into it. And since then, apart from an occasional report from Mizutani on its uncertain progress—there seemed to be several ups and downs—he had heard little about it. He did know that the geisha had been as casual as Suematsu had been passionate; he knew what lonely torment Suematsu used to go through whenever the fickle woman went off with some other lover, and how useless were his jealous rages.

  “But you’re still carrying on with her, then?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Doesn’t it upset you?”

  “Not really, not any more. I suppose I don’t feel so strongly about her as I used to. You might say that I’ve stopped looking for things in her that aren’t there. As a matter of fact, we get along much better with each other now. I’ve stopped wondering what she does when I’m not with her. What would be the point? Do you remember that night at the restaurant when I behaved so badly?” Kensaku nodded. Suematsu was grinning. “Well, I’ve stopped creating such scenes in public. By the way, is that the way you’re feeling now?”

  Kensaku pondered, then said, “Perhaps it’s not very different.” Suematsu looked at Kensaku thoughtfully. “I don’t know the details of course, but isn’t it true that in matters of this kind the devil is usually of one’s own making? My impression is that seven, eight times out often, one’s suspicions are ungrounded.”

  “No, I’m not imagining anything. The incident itself is closed and the facts are clear. My trouble is that I know I must accept what has happened, and yet I can’t. That’s all. Perhaps it’s a matter of time. I may just have to wait for this mess inside me to clear up. At any rate, it’s very painful for me right now.” Suematsu remained silent. “If I try too hard to rid myself of this pain, this conflict inside me, we may very well end up living a life of lies. Perhaps the only right thing to do is to regard what I feel now as inevitable and let it run its course. I’m sorry if I seem to be indulging in a lot of abstractions.”

  “I have a pretty good idea of what you’re talking about, I think. Does it involve Mizutani?”

  “No, not directly. I might as well be blunt about it. Naoko has a cousin who’s a friend of Mizutani’s. She slept with him.” There was nothing Suematsu could say. “But she didn’t have any intention of doing so, and I really can’t hate her for it. All I ask of her is that she doesn’t make the same mistake again. I can’t believe she ever will. And I do think I have truly forgiven her. After all, she’s hardly to blame for what happened. The fact is, then, everything is over and done with. But you see, I somehow can’t accept the fact for what it is. There are cobwebs in my head, and I can’t get rid of them.”

  “As you yourself said, perhaps the best thing to do is to wait and let everything run its course. It’s probably the most natural thing to do, anyway.”

  “I have no other choice, it would seem.”

  “It’s easier said than done, I know, but try not to brood too much. As you say, the incident took place, it was brought out into the open, and there’s nothing more you can do about it. Don’t go on brooding about it—it would be stupid to let it cost you both more than it should.”

  “I understand that. But what makes sense objectively and what the person who is directly involved feels are two different things.”

  “Of course. But you’ve got to will yourself to make things better, otherwise it will be terrible for Naoko. For you right now it’s a deeply emotional problem, but you owe it to yourself to transcend your emotions. What a fine thing it would be if you could. You do have the advantage, you see, of knowing everything there is to know about what happened. You haven’t been kept in the dark about anything, and that places a certain responsibility on you.”

  “What you say is absolutely true, but I’m the last person in the world to be able to do as you suggest. Besides, I can’t help thinking that since something has happened to us as man and wife that never happened before, something that we probably assumed would never happen, we have to find a new kind of relationship. It may be an extreme way of putting it, but I mean the kind of relationship that won’t be shaken by a recurrence of the same sort of thing. I suppose that by saying this, I’m merely showing that I really haven’t taken in what you’ve been telling me.”

  “Well, I can’t say that you’re being entirely unreasonable … ”

  “There’s the saying, ‘black clouds cover the sky, yet still no rain’—I feel just like that. It’s an awful feeling.”

  “I’m sure it is. But you must look at the whole incident as a kind of test, and make sure you survive it. Do try to be prudent.”

  “Yes, thank you, I will. It would be idiotic, I know, to allow misfortune after misfortune to pile up on us through sheer negligence on my part.”

  “It would be different if you didn’t know what happened, and you had to grope in a fog of uncertainties and suspicions.”

  “I understand that. Thank you for listening. I feel much better now that I’ve talked to you about it.”

  “What’s Naoko doing?”

  “When I left the house she was in bed. She had a headache, she said.”

  “You should go back to her right away.”

  It occurred to Kensaku then that he might ask Suematsu to come home with him and comfort Naoko. But quickly he dismissed the distasteful notion. Suematsu was not the sort to look kindly on such a suggestion, anyway.

  Outside a boy selling extras ran past, ringing his bell loudly.

  As Kensaku and Suematsu came out of the teashop they found an extra lying on the ground by the door. Suematsu picked it up and said, “So there was a forced landing after all. In Fukakusa, it says.” But the other plane—two had taken off from Tokyo—had reached Osaka safely. The two friends began walking toward the streetcar stop at Higashiyama-Matsubara, down a gently sloping hill.

  8

  The days passed peacefully in Kinugasamura. At least, surprisingly little happened to disturb the surface calm. Naoko and Oei got along well with each other, as Kensaku had expected; and the relationship between Kensaku and Naoko was not bad. But—how should one put this?—while a new, morbid kind of physical attraction drew them together, there came between them an emptiness that prevented a union of their entire beings. Indeed, the stronger this morbid
desire was at any given time, the greater was their sense of emptiness afterward.

  That the seduction of his wife by another should so affect the nature of his desire shamed Kensaku. And in order to recall his earlier love for Naoko, he sought to find passion even in his morbidity, passion that would perhaps fill the emptiness. There were times when he even tried to persuade Naoko to describe in detail her own seduction scene.

  It was not long afterward that Kensaku learned Naoko was pregnant. There was no need for Kensaku to start counting back the days, for the child had clearly been conceived before he went to Korea. But what oppressed Kensaku was the thought that now, with the pregnancy, their future together had been decided.

  Often Kensaku’s despondency was such that he would want to rush into Oei’s arms like a child. But of course he could hardly do that. And when instead he sought solace from Naoko, he would suddenly find himself confronted by a steel wall, rudely awakened from his dream of comfort found.

  Summer passed, and at last it was autumn; but Kensaku’s psychological condition still remained poor. His physical health, undermined by long neglect and irregular habits, was now equally bad. He would tell himself he must pull himself together, he must mend his ways, but it was difficult to reshape his disorganized, undisciplined style of life. He had indeed become unpredictable. One moment he would be sitting at the dinner table limp, silent, and despondent, then suddenly in a paroxysm of rage he would throw all the bowls and saucers at the stone step below the verandah, smashing them to pieces. Once with a pair of sewing scissors he slit the back of the dress Naoko was wearing from the collar almost to the waist. These were only momentary outbursts as far as Kensaku was concerned, but Naoko, seeing them as expressions of his continuing rage at her one mistake, would bear them in silence. Alas, her quiet acceptance of her guilt only made him more angry, more barbarous.

  Oei had for years been aware of Kensaku’s hot temper. But she had rarely seen such extreme manifestations of it, and she seemed puzzled as to why in the last year or two he had become so prone to these outbursts.