美しい村 English

As if to give gentle greeting to the pale glow of heaven's clear ether,

the pulse of life stirs anew, quick and vigorous.

Hark.

World below.

Not even last night did you leave your post empty.

And this morning, your weariness healed, you breathe beneath my feet.

Already pleasure begins to encompass you.

Ceaselessly aspiring toward the highest being,

how strong a resolve is at work in you.

Faust, Part II

Overture

June 10 — At K... Village

It has been too long since I last wrote.

I have been staying here since the beginning of this month.

I had long said that I wanted, just once, to come to this highland village in the early summer like this — and now, at last, that long-held wish has come true.

No one else has arrived yet, so it is lonely, I admit — but I am spending each morning and evening pleasantly all the same.

But even so, when I say lonely, it seems nothing at all like that loneliness of early autumn in the mountains — you remember, it must have been three years ago, when I was ill and stayed on alone here until around October.

At that time, leaning on my rattan walking stick as if for support, I would go for walks along the mountain paths behind the inn, and with each passing day the drifts of fallen leaves covering the ground grew heavier, while here and there among those leaves an eerie-colored mushroom would sometimes peep out, or overhead a red-breasted bird — that impudent little bird that always seems to be mocking you — would go flitting about with such a lazy, careless air, scarcely another soul in sight; and yet, everywhere about, there seemed to linger a kind of smell left behind by the people who had departed — especially, since that summer had been unusually gorgeous and beautiful, all the more for that, an indescribable forlornness after the season had passed, a feeling, one might call it, of decline, which, because I myself was recovering from illness,

perhaps for that reason, pressed upon me all the more keenly and would not let me be — (though, to be sure, quite a few Westerners still seemed to remain.

On the rare occasion that I met one of them on such a mountain path, they would eye me, convalescent as I looked, with a certain suspicion as they passed, and rather than stirring in me any fondness for human company, it only deepened a strange sort of forlornness……) — that such forlornness is utterly absent from this highland in June is, more than anything, what I love about it.

No matter how deserted the mountain path I walk, every blade of grass, every tree, is utterly alive, brimming with the sense that summer's preparations are already complete and all that remains is to wait for the season itself to arrive.

And how lustily the mountain warblers and cuckoos sing!

It is enough to make me want to lose my temper and snap, "I have a bit of thinking to do, so won't you please be quiet?"

Westerners already seem to be trickling in, little by little, but most of the villas are still shut up.

Taking advantage of their being shut up, and since, higher on the mountain, hardly a soul ever passes by, whenever I come upon a villa whose looks I fancy, I think nothing of walking straight into its garden, sitting myself down on the veranda, and, smoking a cigarette, idling away two or three hours lost in thought.

A bark-roofed bungalow, say, a garden overrun with weeds, a veranda with a wisteria trellis (its blossoms just now magnificently in bloom), the woods of fir and larch spreading out below, and beyond those woods the mountains of the Alps — against such a backdrop as this, I find myself sketching out the plan of a novel.

It is a rather fine feeling.

Only, if I let my attention wander for a moment, newly hatched little gnats set upon my legs, or a caterpillar drops onto my hat, which rather does me in.

And yet I cannot bring myself to think of such things as any sign of nature's hostility toward me.

If anything, I almost feel that nature bears me a goodwill so ardent it becomes a nuisance.

Down at my feet I often find little leaves fallen still rolled up like sushi rolls, and to think that a caterpillar larva lies wrapped inside gives me rather a shudder.

And yet, when I imagine that such a sushi-roll-like thing will, come summer, become one of those moths with transparent wings, I cannot help but find it rather endearing after all.

Wherever I go, the wild roses are still bearing small, hard white buds.

I can hardly wait for them to bloom.

These will burst into riotous bloom, filling the air with their sweet scent, and by the time they scatter, the summer visitors will at last come flooding in, I expect.

The thought that I, all alone, may now indulge to my heart's content in the various flowers of this highland — a place where people gather only in summer — flowers that bloom ahead of that season and scatter their beauty unseen by anyone (the wild roses soon to open, for instance, or the azaleas now everywhere in full bloom), flowers so unaccustomed to human eyes, so utterly wild in character — the thought of doting on them quite alone (for the villagers, busy now with their preparations for summer, have no leisure to look at such blossoms) fills me with a happiness and a freshness of spirit I cannot begin to describe.

So please, I beg you, do not think of me only as unfortunate for having been driven, unable to bear the city any longer, to live out here in the country like this.

When do you all expect to come out here?

I pass by your villa almost every day.

Sometimes, in passing, I slip into the garden for a bit and wander about here and there.

It used to be so overgrown with grass, and now it has become such a neat lawn that I scarcely recognize it.

And you have even put up a white fence, of all things……

Somehow, even when I step into your villa's garden, I feel as though I have wandered into some other villa's garden entirely.

My heart pounds with the fear of being discovered.

I truly resent that you should have changed it so.

Only the veranda, where you and I used to talk so often, remains exactly as it was……

Ah, there I go again, sounding sorrowful.

But truly, I am not so sad as that.

For I am tasting, unbeknownst to anyone, here in these mountains, a delight in living that even you yourselves have never known.

But really, when do you suppose you will all be coming out here?

It would be far too painful to meet you here, in this very place where we first came to know one another, and find ourselves facing each other now like strangers, so I think I shall leave this village before you arrive.

Until that day comes, please allow me to stay on here, and, now and then, when no one is watching, to wander about the garden of your villa.

There I go again — what a sorrowful figure I cut!

Enough of that.

But let me write just a little more.

Though what shall I write, I wonder?

I am living now in the detached cottage at the back of this inn.

You know the one, surely?

I have it entirely to myself.

Looking up from the veranda, the wisteria trellis of the main house sits directly in view.

As I said before, its blossoms are now in full bloom.

Though it seems the peak has already passed, for today, even without a breath of wind, the petals keep falling, pattering down one after another.

And the bees that swarm about those blossoms — it is really something to see.

They buzz and buzz without end.

As I write this letter, pausing now and then to wonder what to say next, gazing vacantly up at those wisteria blossoms, the confusion inside my own head and the droning of those bees seem to blur together, until I begin to feel as though the buzzing were coming from inside my own skull.

On my desk lies Madame de La Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves,

left open, still half-read, at the page where I stopped.

I am reading this old French novel closely for the first time, and thanks to it I feel that I have been rescued, in some measure, from that strangely urgent mood that has lately possessed me.

Of all things, it is my impressions of this novel that I most wish to write to you — and yet, at the same time, I wish to keep silent about them.

Radiguet's Le Bal, which I forced upon you to read two or three years ago,

is said to have taken this very novel as its model, so it resembles it a great deal indeed.

But with Le Bal,

I was able to lend you the book so freely, without a second thought, and even after you had read it you said nothing about it, nor did I ask you anything, and yet some feeling seemed to pass between us all the same — but now, I wonder, could I write to you of my impressions of this novel as freely, as unguardedly, as I did then?

For that matter, even as I take up my pen to write this very letter, I hesitate within myself over whether I shall ever actually be able to send it to you, or whether I shall not.

Perhaps, in the end, I shall never send it at all……

Once I begin thinking such thoughts, I no longer feel like continuing this letter.

I shall set down my pen now.

Whether I send it or not, I cannot say — but in any case, farewell.

The Beautiful Village

Or: A Little Fugue

Meaning to climb up to the shrine of the Tengu on the summit of a certain low hill, I made my way up the somewhat steep mountain path, rustling through last year's fallen leaves, which lay so thick that the bare earth was nowhere to be seen; and as I went on, the leaves grew ever deeper, until my shoes sank into them to an unsettling depth, and I began to feel as though the dampness of the rotting leaves might seep in through my very shoes — so that I had all but made up my mind to turn back, when, from within a grove of scrub trees, that abandoned house suddenly rose up before my eyes.

And when I saw that its windows were all boarded up, that its garden too had gone entirely to ruin, and that the gate, half-broken and looking ready to collapse at any moment, stood left half open, I was filled with a childlike curiosity and strode straight into the garden.

And as I pushed my way through the weeds that had grown up everywhere, it seemed to me that the sight of this house had not changed in the least since I had last seen it, some years before.

But before long, the memories of that earlier time, reviving within me, made it clear that this was nothing but a curious illusion of mine.

For I recalled at last that this garden, now so overrun with weeds that it could scarcely be told apart from the surrounding scrub, had in those days looked much more like a proper garden, neat and trim.

And that curious illusion of mine, which had come over me only a moment before, could only have arisen because the feeling — that if the place had simply been left to itself these past several years, it would very likely have come to look just as it did now — had reached me before the memory of that earlier time had had the chance to revive.

And yet, as if to bear out that my hasty impression had not been entirely false, all around me the grasses and shrubs that covered this garden had been left to grow as wild and unchecked as they pleased.

Standing for the first time on that veranda, I found that through the tangled branches of the fir trees I could look straight down and see the whole highland spread out below me in one great sweep, scattered here and there with red roofs and thatched ones.

And from about where that highland came to an end, a number of other hills again rose and fell in gentle undulations, facing me directly.

Beyond those hills again, what looked to be the distant range of the Central Alps traced a faint line against the blue sky, as if scratched there by a fingernail.

And it was this that formed my jagged horizon.

Some years ago, when I used to come to this highland every summer, I would often climb up as far as the shrine of the Tengu, a little higher up from here, in order to enjoy a view almost exactly like this one, and each time, passing by this last house, I would glance somehow anxiously at the two same spinster ladies who lived there, summer after summer, and find myself secretly drawn to their life together, the two of them alone. ——

But perhaps, I thought, that was only because I had always been looking at them through the lens of my own sorrow?

(So I found myself thinking.)

For whenever I had come climbing up this hill, it was always because something sad had happened to me, and I had wanted to exchange that sorrow for mere physical fatigue.

A pure white nameplate had stood there, on which were written two surnames, each preceded by "MISS"……

Yes, one of them, I still remember, was certainly "MISS SEYMORE."

But the other I have forgotten.

And of the two spinsters themselves, only one — the one with the silvery hair and the somehow childlike face — still rises clearly before my eyes even now, while the other I simply cannot recall, however I try.

It seems that my old habit of taking an interest only in people of a type I happen to like — a habit which of late I cannot help feeling to be a grave defect in my talent as a writer — had been at work, quite without my knowing it, even in the case of these two spinsters.

……These past several years — my lonely life in hospital, which had kept me away from this highland, this highland to which almost all of my happy memories of boyhood are bound; the various events that occurred during that time; the unwilling partings from people I could never forget; and, through it all, my utter idleness……

And so, wanting to be alone again in order to take up once more the work I had for so long abandoned, and yet, with that indecisive nature of mine, feeling that to go off to some unfamiliar corner of the country would surely prove unbearably lonely, I reasoned that in this place, at least, everything would speak to me of one memory or another, and that at this time of year I should probably not yet run into anyone I knew — and so, choosing this out-of-season month of June, I had come, of my own deliberate choice, all the way to this highland.

But since arriving here a few days ago, all that I have seen and heard — the various unexpected changes in this highland, changes that seem almost to give physical form to my long absence — and, along with them, reviving now as if for the first time, the sad and recent parting from a certain woman friend whom I first came to know in this very place……

Lost in such thoughts, smoking my cigarette absently, my gaze rested on the great rock towering on the hilltop almost directly before me — the one the Westerners have nicknamed the "Giant's Chair" —

a massive, settled rock that alone seemed to have escaped every process of weathering, remaining exactly as it had always been from ages past; and at it I went on gazing, unable to look away.

Before long I set off back down the mountain path toward the village, rustling once more through the dead leaves.

Along that path, the few bungalows glimpsed here and there among the larches were, for the most part, still boarded up with the same red-ochre planks as before.

Now and then laborers were weeding in the gardens.

Some of them paused in raking to watch me pass with a look of suspicion.

To escape such uncomfortable stares I struck off more than once into places where there was scarcely any path at all.

Yet somehow, none of this led me astray from my course toward the old watermill that I had once loved so well.

I did manage to reach the spot, but the old waterwheel that had turned there, creaking and groaning, until only a few years before, had vanished without a trace.

What struck me with even greater sadness was a certain villa, standing with its back to the larches near that watermill.

That villa, which I had once visited so often, had changed entirely from the last time I had seen it, some years before.

Its garden, once bordered only carelessly by a thicket of small shrubs, was now neatly enclosed within a white fence.

Without quite knowing why, I found myself reaching out to touch that smooth-looking fence, but I only just brushed it with my fingers.

For just then something like a raindrop fell, plop, onto my hat.

And so I carried that hand, still hovering in midair, straight up to my hat.

It was a small cherry.

The moment I glanced up, I saw, spreading its branches wide directly above my head — so high overhead that I had failed to notice it until now — an old cherry tree, the very one that alone, for me, was an old and familiar friend.

Presently, I saw a tall young foreign woman emerge from among the shrubs opposite, pushing a perambulator toward me.

I did not think I recognized her at all.

As I drew close to a great cherry tree by the roadside to let her pass, a flaxen-haired little girl in the perambulator looked up at my face and smiled.

Drawn in despite myself, I smiled back.

But the young mother pushing the carriage did not so much as glance at me, and went on past.

As I watched her go, something in that sharp profile of hers began to suggest, faintly, like a watermark, the face of a young girl I felt I too must once have seen — the face this woman must have had in her own girlhood.

I left that villa with the white fence.

I took as my occasion the fact that this awkward encounter, coming just now, had thoroughly disturbed the ripples of sad feeling that the cherry, falling so suddenly onto my hat, had begun to form and spread within me.

I made my way back to the inn on the edge of the village.

The room in the detached cottage that was always given to me whenever I stayed at that inn.

The same darkened walls, the same window frames, the same garden framed within that old frame of a window, the same plantings…… only, the flowers clustering and blooming in those plantings, some I knew and some I did not, were unfamiliar to my eye.

And this, too, filled me with a certain forlornness.

From the wisteria trellis at the main house, the scent of its blossoms reached me on every gust of wind.

Beneath that trellis, the village children were playing in a ring.

Among them I recognized the innkeeper's child, whom I had often played with in years past.

Presently the other children went off.

And that one child alone remained, crouched on the ground, playing at something by himself.

I called out his name.

But the child did not even turn to look at me.

So absorbed did he seem in his own play.

When I called the name once more, the child finally lifted his grimy little face and said to me,

"I don't know where Taro is."

—Only then did I realize that this small child was the younger brother of the boy I had called out to.

And yet what a similar face, what a similar look in the eyes, what a similar voice……

A little while later, calling "Jiro! Jiro!"

a much bigger boy, one I did not recognize, came into the garden.

The little brother, who had at last begun to warm to me and seemed about to come closer, hearing this, ran off hurriedly toward him instead.

For my part, I was only just beginning to recognize that this bigger, unfamiliar-looking boy was one who had played with me long ago.

But that boy, at the peak of his cockiness, led his little brother away without so much as a backward glance at me.

⁂

Almost every day I went out walking, in one direction or another, through the village whose every corner I should have known so well.

But wherever I went, something seemed to have been added, and something else taken away.

And yet, on every road, in the shadow of some new villa I had never seen before, a cluster of shrubs would lie in wait for me, like some forgotten fragment of my boyhood.

And, every bit as tangled as those clusters of shrubs themselves, the happy memories of my boyhood, and the sad ones too, would come flooding back to me.

I walked on, my heart now tightening, now swelling, with those memories.

I stop short, suddenly.

Realizing that I have wandered far too deep into the village. ——

Along such roads, whom I met with was, on rare occasion, some Westerner out for a stroll, but for the most part only old men carrying loads of dead branches on their backs, or girls with baskets slung on their arms, looking as though they were coming back from gathering bracken.

Such figures, however, seemed to me to blend completely into the scenery of the village, and did not disturb my reveries in the least.

Though there were times, now and then, when someone, seeing me break into a much too childlike laugh of remembrance, would suddenly speak to me as we passed and startle me, and other times when someone, about to smile at me from the other direction, would catch sight of my sorrowful face and check the smile halfway……

Having, in this way, let myself be led by memory to walk unwittingly so far through the village, I found myself thinking, as if noticing it for the first time, how much healthier I had become.

I discovered in myself, through such long walks, a breath grown all the more lively.

And though I had been staying in this place scarcely a week or so, there was no denying that the early-summer climate of this highland had already begun to work its effect upon me, both in body and in spirit.

Wandering thus through a nature in which summer might already be found everywhere and yet, at the same time, seemed to have settled on no place in particular, I would notice, if only I paid attention, countless buds on the branches of the shrubs here and there — buds that would soon burst into bloom, though all of them were of that kind which scatters before the true height of summer arrives — and when I imagined that I alone would be there to enjoy their full flowering, it began to seem to me a pleasure so secret, so unknown to anyone else, as to be well worth the high price of a lonely country life such as this.

And before I knew it, I found my heart filled with something like the pleasant emotion that the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony

stirs in its listeners.

So much so that I even began to wonder whether, back in the city, I had not been exaggerating my own vague unhappiness far more than I should have.

I even thought that, had I known things would turn out like this, I need not have suffered so much after all.

And I, who had come here to work counting precisely on that very unhappiness of my own — thinking that if I set down the love affair that had lately been tormenting me exactly as it had happened, I might come to feel some fondness even for the suffering itself, and might see a little more clearly the feelings of the other party, which I still did not fully understand — found myself, because of all this, quite at a loss.

I no longer felt the least inclination even to take the matter up at all.

And so I abandoned my work altogether and did nothing, day after day, but walk.

And with each passing day I widened the range of my walks.

One day, returning from such a walk, I was stopped by the old man of the inn, who was sweeping the garden.

"When do you suppose Mr. Hosoki will be coming out here?"

"Well, I couldn't say……"

The old man had no way of knowing that this was, in effect, the same as asking when I myself would be leaving this place.

"When you left last year,"

the old man said, as though something had just occurred to him.

"you told me to plant some ferns in the garden, but I've clean forgotten where you said to plant them……"

"Ferns, was it."

I echoed, parrot-fashion.

Then, with that villa surrounded by the white fence coming to mind, "When was that white fence put up?"

I asked.

"That one? ...That was put up the year before last."

"The year before last, was it……"

I said nothing more after that.

My eyes wandering instead to one of the shrubs the old man was fussing over.

Then, noticing at last that it seemed to bear something like white blossoms, I asked,

"What flower is that?"

"This is a rhododendron."

"A rhododendron? Ah — that reminds me, old man, when do the wild roses around here come into bloom?"

"From the end of this month, I'd say, into the beginning of next."

"Is that so — there's still quite a while to wait, then. —Where would you say they grow thickest?"

"Well……over past Dr. Reynolds's hospital, say……"

"Ah, so that must be the place — the one in that postcard……"

The following morning, a thick fog lay over everything.

I threw on my raincoat and passed in front of the church, still boarded up, and cut across through the horse-chestnut wood behind it.

Once through the wood, the road bent sharply and ran along beside a small stream.

But that morning, because of the fog, the stream was not visible at all.

And only the sound of its rippling could be heard, ceaseless.

Presently I crossed a small wooden bridge.

From there the embankment path ran along the stream on the opposite side from before.

Now, just as I was about to step onto that embankment path, I suddenly stopped.

For I had caught a faint glimpse of someone crouching in the way ahead, in some strange posture.

That strange figure was crouched right at the edge of a circle of pale light that seemed, in the fog, to radiate outward from myself like a halo, centered on me.

But since the fog kept drifting without pause, at times a still thicker bank of it would come and all but hide the figure from view, only for it to grow gradually clearer again as the fog thinned.

At last I made out that it was, apparently, a Westerner, bent anxiously beneath an umbrella over some small shrub.

When the fog thinned still further, I could even tell that what this person was watching so intently seemed to be the very wild rose bush I myself had wanted to see.

He did not seem to have noticed me.

For when one is absorbed in something, believing oneself unwatched, one falls all too easily into some oddly awkward posture that afterward, try as one might, one can never quite recall — and the figure blocking my way was surely, at that very moment, holding just such a posture……

Noticing, then, a wild rose bush right beside me too, I stood stock-still, gazing at it as though it were nothing more than a rough sketch of the wild rose bush I truly wished to see. ——

At last the figure straightened up, shifted his umbrella slightly, and began to walk on.

And went on, growing steadily more blurred within the fog.

I too began walking, and finally arrived before that small thicket of wild roses.

And, imitating the awkward posture that man had just been holding, I too bent myself over it.

As if, by doing so, I might even see through to the very state of that man's heart.

The little thicket, still covered all over with small, hard buds, looked up at me with something like a pleading gaze, as though it wished to tell me something.

Before I knew it, I found myself patiently counting those buds, gently lifting one after another.

Suddenly, the strange movement of that man's hands, from just before, came vividly back to me.

And it was almost at the same moment that I noticed the little thicket giving off a scent that seemed to be that of My Mixture.

That scent, clinging endlessly to the tangled branches in the damp air and refusing to fade, seemed as though it were being given off by the little thicket itself. ——

I thought of Dr. Reynolds, who never once took his pipe from his mouth.

And I felt certain that the figure I had just seen could be none other than that old doctor.

Come to think of it, that reddish-brown thing which had been appearing and vanishing in the fog off in the distance did seem to be the building of his sanatorium.

I went on walking again along that road in the fog, wrapped in a faint, almost sacred light, feeling the frustration of one whose body seems to make no progress no matter how far it walks, on and on, with nowhere in particular to go.

My heart was filled with thoughts of that wild rose which had, a little while ago, looked up at me out of the fog with such a pleading gaze.

I had, up until now, made use of those small white flowers again and again in my poems without ever having properly looked at the real thing, but this time, I rejoiced with all my heart that the chance was at last coming for me to show those flowers every ounce of sincerity I possessed.

And such was my delight over this that it drove me not merely to murmur the verses that poets of old had sung in praise of the wild rose, but to feel the urge to shout them out at the top of my voice, every single one I knew.

⁂

The theme of the novel I had meant to write came to seem, more and more, quite pointless amid a country life such as this, in which I had finally learned to take pleasure in each passing day.

And I realized, moreover, that to write such a thing would only be to plunge myself, by my own hand, into an ever more hopeless predicament.

The example of Adolphe

came to mind.

I had wanted to raise my own small affair up to the level of a work like that one.

For the fate of Adolphe, who, being both weak-willed and yet strongly self-centered, brought unhappiness upon himself and upon others too, seemed to me very much like my own fate.

But the author of Adolphe

possessed a fierce hatred for that very weakness of character (which was, no doubt, his own) — a hatred I myself, capable it seemed of nothing but indulging that same weakness in myself, did not possess in anything like the same degree — and I came to understand, only too clearly, that were I to attempt any imitation of such a novel, it would only make myself, and others too, all the more unhappy still……

Such a way of thinking did not seem entirely to the liking of the darker half of myself, but thanks to this country life of late, that darker half of me was, little by little, being overcome by the other, brighter half.

And so what I now found myself wanting to write, however ordinary a thing it might be, was some story like an old painting — one that would fit neatly within a frame filled with flowers yet utterly without another soul, a frame such as this out-of-season countryside I was now about to live in.

I wanted, somehow, to write something of that sort — something one might call pastoral.

I had always been quite fond of works of that kind written by other people, and had even envied them for having had such experiences to write of, but it had never occurred to me to try writing such a thing myself, nor did it seem to me that I could.

But all the more for that, I now found myself resolved to try writing something pastoral of that very sort. ——

To write it, however, I had no choice but to set it against the background of this very village where I was now living, and yet I doubted whether, in the course of a stay of only a month or two, any such event could really come to pass around me.

It was a foolish thing to do, but I found myself, more than once, lying in wait uselessly in some clearing in the woods.

Wondering whether some country girl, beautiful as a boy, might not come bounding suddenly out of the trees right before me……

After such empty efforts, what came to mind at last was that abandoned old villa near the very top of the hill where the Tengu shrine stood.

To take that villa as my setting, and write on, filling in with my own imagination the somehow precarious existence of the two spinsters who had spent every summer there — that, I felt, might be something I could actually manage to write.

Calling suddenly to mind, as I did so, the beautiful bird's-eye view of the highland that I had gazed at for an hour or so after stepping into that house's ruined garden the other day, and the German word zweisam, which I had known only vaguely since my student days, back when I fancied myself something of a Nietzschean, and which seemed to suit those two spinsters so perfectly……

One evening, I climbed once more up the mountain path buried in dead leaves, all the way to that villa.

The garden gate stood half open, just as I myself had left it.

The cigarette butt I had discarded lay on the veranda floor like a small stain.

Until the sun went down, I sat there gazing at the woods, the red roofs, the hills, and, rising directly before me, the "Giant's Chair,"

so intently that I might have memorized every one of them by heart……

Now and then, at just such an hour of evening, the vacant gaze of the one I remembered so well of the two — that white-haired old woman, almost sacred in her bearing — comes vividly back to me, seated there on this very veranda, in this very spot where I now sit, as though in conversation with some friend of hers long dead……and then, for a single instant, that gaze flashes bright as a young girl's……from within the house comes the clink of dishes, made by the other woman, busy preparing the evening meal……she half lifts a hand, as if about to cross herself, but the gesture dies away, no more than a sketch left unfinished……the "Giant's Chair," which alone seems to hold some kind of language meant for her,

……Only the various images of that one spinster come back to me so vividly that I begin to wonder whether I had not, without realizing it, actually seen and remembered them all along — while the other spinster goes on forever making nothing but the clink of dishes, and shows no sign of readily stepping into my story.

No matter what I do, I cannot bring her face back to life……

One such afternoon, my gaze, which had been wandering aimlessly, suddenly sharpened with attention and came to rest on a red roof, just below me, catching the light of the setting sun.

Something small and black kept tumbling down from the ridge of that roof, only to plunge suddenly, like a pebble, from the eaves.

After a short pause, it would do the same thing again.

Wondering what it could be, I narrowed my eyes and kept watching.

And made out that it was a pair of small birds.

Mating as they went, they would tumble down together to the eaves, and the instant they plunged from there, they would burst apart, flying off in two directions at once.

Whether it was the same pair each time, or different birds, I could not tell, but the whole thing was repeated over and over. ——

Thinking that I might well work this into my story, I went on watching, unable to tire of it. ——

In this way, whatever I happened to be watching would melt directly into the story I was shaping, becoming an episode of its own, and seemed, little by little, to be developing the very theme of the story — a theme that all too often threatened to slip away from me on its own……

It was in just such a way that the acacia blossoms too came to enter my story.

I had, checking the size and number of the buds on those wild roses I have mentioned, with a foreboding that their flowering would coincide precisely with the climax of my life in the country, gone back and forth countless times before that hedge behind the sanatorium, but so entirely had that hedge absorbed my attention that I had never once paid heed to the row of acacias which, farther along, took the hedge's place in bordering the riverside road.

But one day, coming as far as the front of the sanatorium, the little path ahead of me looked strangely different from usual.

For a moment I was bewildered by the strange impression it made on me.

I had never before seen the acacias in bloom, and so I could not easily believe that the strangeness came simply from their having burst, without my knowing it, into so many blossoms all at once.

Perhaps it was because the flowers themselves bore no resemblance at all to what I had unconsciously imagined, judging from those frail-looking branches and those delicate, soft, oval leaves.

And when I first caught sight of those flowers, I had the distinctly abrupt impression that someone must have played a prank, hanging countless small, pure-white lantern-like things from every branch.

Once I finally realized that these were acacia blossoms, I decided to follow that little path all the way to its end that day.

Most of the acacia trees hung their strongly scented blossoms down so low that the tips of the flower clusters all but brushed my hat, but among them were some no taller than myself, bending almost to the point of breaking under the weight of their own blossoms, and passing close by such a tree I felt something close to sadness.

The row of acacias seemed as though it would never come to an end, however far I went.

In the end I chose one large acacia and stopped before it.

I wanted, somehow, to translate into words of my own that abrupt impression these acacia flowers had made on me a little while before.

Countless bees swarmed around the blossoms, buzzing and droning.

But there was no telling from just where in the air those bees were droning, and, having been so absorbed for some time in trying to gather my impressions into words, each time I chanced to notice that droning I could not help feeling as though it were my own brain, thrown into such utter confusion, that had begun to drone in just that way……

⁂

To the northeast of the village stood a mountain pass.

Along its old road, fir and beech trees grew so thick and dark as to shut out the light.

And around those ancient trunks, vines of wisteria, wild grape, and akebi twined and spread in the most intricate tangles.

I first began to notice such vines only after being startled to find wisteria blossoms hanging from the unexpected branch of a fir, and then, at last, making out the wisteria vine coiled about that fir.

Now that I thought of it, how many such wisteria vines there were!

Watching how the fir trees entwined by those wisteria vines had grown larger over time, until the stubborn vine had bitten deep into the very bark of the trunk, making the tree writhe as if in real agony, I could not help but feel a kind of dread. ——

One morning, on my way back down from a whim that had taken me up to the pass, I found myself walking down together with two children from the small settlement that lay at the top.

On that occasion, the children showed me still other wild grapevines and akebi vines, twined about various trees.

Since they came in autumn to gather the fruit of these, the children had memorized almost every place where they grew.

They also showed me where the birds' nests were.

They were the children of a family that sold rice cakes and the like at the pass.

The older one was eleven or twelve, and the younger about seven.

There were three brothers in all, they told me, and since the middle one had not yet come back from the village primary school, they were on their way down to the foot of the pass to meet him.

Having spotted something, the children suddenly left my side and dashed into the woods, pushing their way through the underbrush.

They stopped beneath a somewhat large shrub and, reaching up, plucked red berries from its branches and stuffed them into their mouths.

When I asked what berries they were, "Gumi,"

they answered.

Now and then they turned and beckoned to me, but since I, hindered by the underbrush, had difficulty making my way over to them, the older boy brought some of the berries over to me himself.

Imitating the children, I put one after another gingerly into my mouth.

They were rather sour.

Still, I forced myself to swallow every one of them.

Once the children had eaten every last berry within reach of the lower branches, they turned to trying, again and again without success, to pull down the higher branches, well out of easy reach, and I watched them patiently, indeed with something like real interest.

The children also tried to show me various shortcuts through the woods.

And went dashing straight down a steep, grass-thick slope.

I followed after them, my footing none too steady.

There were places where the trees grew so densely, their branches so intertwined, that scarcely any light could reach the ground at all.

And then, quite suddenly, the view before us would open out, and there would be a clearing in the woods so bright that for a moment I could see nothing at all.

When we reached one such clearing in the woods, a small stone suddenly came flying from nowhere and dropped at our feet.

The moment we turned, blinking in the light, toward the direction it seemed to have come from, we made out a small black figure disappearing behind a strange hut, windowless, backed by several beech trees, with a thatched roof so steep it was almost vertical.

Even so, my small companions made no move to shout out any curse, but instead looked up at me with a complicated expression, as though they wanted to offer me some kind of explanation and yet were hesitating over whether to say it, so that I, puzzled, asked them,

"Is that child simple-minded?"

I asked.

The children exchanged glances.

Then the older one answered me in a low voice.

"No, it's not that. —She's a mad girl."

"Ah, so that's why she lives in such a strange house."

"That's an ice house. —Her real home is that one over there."

But since that strangely shaped straw hut, said to be an ice house, blocked our view so completely that not even a fragment of anything resembling a home could be seen, it must surely have been nothing more than some small makeshift shack.

"Mad — you mean her father is?"

"……"

Both brothers shook their heads at once.

"Then it's your mother?"

"Yeah……"

Having answered thus, the older boy, glancing repeatedly at his brother, said, to no one in particular,

"Sometimes she yells right there in the river."

"I saw her once too, in the river over there."

So the younger brother answered.

"Where's 'over there'?"

"Over that way."

The younger boy, looking somehow uncertain, as though about to cry, pointed vaguely in some direction to show me.

"I see."

I pretended to understand.

"……And what does your father do?"

"He's a woodcutter."

the older brother said this time, again glancing at his brother as he spoke.

"He's a strange old man."

the younger one answered, frowning.

From behind the ice house, what looked like the face of a young girl seemed to peek out once again, but since we were looking straight into the light, before we could make it out clearly the face had already withdrawn.

After that the girl did not show her face again.

Only, not long after, we heard a strange cry.

Whether it was the girl cursing us, or someone inside the hut, unseen to us, shouting at her, or perhaps only a mountain dove crying somewhere in the woods behind — I could not say.

In any case, that indefinable cadence alone lodged itself strangely in my ears. ——

But we crossed that clearing in silence, merely quickening our pace a little.

From there we entered the woods once more.

Once inside, it seemed to grow suddenly dim, but perhaps because the brightness of the clearing still lingered on the backs of our eyes, for a while it seemed as though a strange sort of half-light drifted about us.

Following after the children as they ran on ahead down through the woods, I could vaguely sense that they were still, somehow, in a state of excitement.

And I found myself wondering just what sort of person I must have looked like to them, going down the pass together with them like this.

I even took a certain interest in this present self of mine.

On the white bridge spanning the point where the pass came to an end, a small boy stood alone, looking forlorn, his satchel still on his back.

The children I was with called out to him at once.

At the sight of them, the boy broke into a bright smile.

But upon noticing me, as though suddenly shy of strangers, he turned his small face away, toward the mountain stream below the bridge.

I too, for my part, gazed vacantly down at that stream for a while.

Picturing to myself the place, far upstream, that one of the children had vaguely pointed to a little while ago in that clearing in the woods.

Then I gave the three children a little pocket money and parted from them.

⁂

Rain began to fall.

And it went on falling.

The rainy season had come at last.

Just when such rain would let up a little, and the pass would grow faintly bright, so that one thought it was about to clear entirely, a thick fog, looking as though it had at last come crawling up from the far side of the pass, would settle over the whole upper reaches of the pass, and before long that fog would come rushing down all at once, spreading in an instant over the entire village.

Now and then such fog would thin rapidly, and through a break in the clouds one might catch a fleeting glimpse of violet sky, but it lasted only an instant, and the fog would thicken again, little by little, until, before one knew it, it had turned into a light drizzle.

I loved beyond all telling that violet color, indescribably beautiful, glimpsed for an instant through the break in the dark clouds.

And for me, unable, because of the rain, to take the long walks that had become almost a daily habit, even the briefest glimpse of that color seemed enough, in itself, to make up for the tedium of the whole day. ——

"The violets of your lovely eyes……"

Some half-remembered scrap of a Heine poem suddenly slipped from my lips.

"Ha — it's a good thing her eyes aren't this shade of violet. If they were, I too, like Heine, would have nothing to do but murmur such words and go on lamenting. —The violets of your eyes are always in lovely bloom, but ah, your heart alone has withered utterly away……"

Even through such gloomy days, the theme of my novel kept threatening, as ever, to slip away from me, but I went on patiently chasing after it.

I had long since given up on writing the story I had first planned, with myself as its hero, but in its place I found myself at a loss over even the question of just what sort of person I should choose as the hero of my story……

Somehow I could bring one of the two spinsters into my story, but the other did nothing but make the clink of dishes in the kitchen, never once coming out onto the veranda no matter how long I waited — the story of those two spinsters; the story of the old doctor, living out here with only a single nurse for company in this cold village that lies buried in snow come winter, and of his beautiful wild roses; the story of the woodcutter's wife, who is said to go mad from time to time and throw herself into the mountain stream, cursing and screaming, and of her little daughter — nothing but such formless images of these various people would rise up in my mind, only to vanish again as quickly……

One afternoon, taking advantage of a brief break in the rain, I was out walking along the road by the old watermill, lined with villas that Westerners had already begun trickling into, when from within the villa of the Czechoslovak legation I heard what sounded like someone practicing the piano.

I stepped into the garden of the still-vacant villa next door and stood listening to it for a while.

It seemed to be one of Bach's fugues in G minor.

That single melody, repeated again and again, was gradually developing itself, and since, being merely practiced, the same passage was repeated three or four times over, the whole thing seemed all the more hesitant, wavering back and forth……

As I listened, I found an eerie sort of smile rising to my face, as though I had been possessed by some spirit.

For that wavering, hesitant effect of the piano seemed exactly like my own frustrating state of mind these days, agonizing over my novel, and yet feeling, somehow, that it was gradually developing after all, little by little.

⁂

One morning, "Rain again, it seems……"

I sighed, and just as I was about to slide open the rain shutter, I noticed that bright light from outside, leaking in through a knothole, had formed a sharply defined little oval frame on the paper screen, within which several larch trees were painted, in miniature, upside down — and at that my heart suddenly leapt, and, hurrying to open the shutter as fast as I could, I only ended up fumbling and taking all the longer over it.

What I had, lying in bed, taken for the sound of rain was in fact the sound of raindrops, pooled on the fine needles of those larches, ceaselessly falling onto the roof.

And so I looked up at the blue sky, my eyes narrowed against the glare.

I stepped out into the garden once in my nightclothes, then went back into my room, changed into my flannel walking clothes, and went out into the early morning air.

I turned in front of the church and cut through the horse-chestnut wood behind it.

Now and then I looked up at the blue sky.

My face screwed up as though quite dazzled by it.

As I set off walking along a small, beautiful stream, the wild strawberries bordering the path all the way with their bamboo-grass edging were also in full bloom with flowers that scarcely caught the eye, and they greeted me as if to say they were nothing more than the merest small prelude to something truly wonderful.

When I came as far as that familiar wooden bridge, I crossed back and forth over it two or three times, not even knowing myself what I meant by it.

Then at last, with a step so light it seemed my feet scarcely touched the ground, I went along the hedge behind the sanatorium.

I realized that, in a kind of daze, I had absentmindedly walked right past the first several clusters of wild roses without noticing them.

By the time I noticed this, I was already enveloped in the extraordinary scent they gave off, which, in the damp air after the rain, hung drifting in one place without dispersing.

I had come to know the scent they gave off before I had even seen their small white flowers.

But without stopping, I walked on still, casting my first, hesitant glance upon a single wild rose I happened to be passing just then.

On that little thicket, which gazed steadily up at me from about the level of my chest, as if pleading with me for something, I made out, at first, only two or three small white flowers.

But in the very next instant, I found I could count, within that same thicket, some twenty or thirty flowers, and almost as many half-opened buds besides.

It was only the briefest moment, but once I had, in this way, gathered myself so entirely into my own gaze, I was astonished to find that those flowers, clustered so thickly, no longer gave off the same sweet scent as before.

And the harder I tried, once again, to catch that scent, the more it seemed to fade away all the more. ——

I went on walking carefully, passing one wild rose bush after another in turn, until at last I came before the very thicket over which Dr. Reynolds had once bent, that day.

I found myself stopping there without meaning to. ——

And there before that wild rose I simply stood, lost in a daze, my mind full of thoughts so vague that afterward, however hard I tried, I could never recall what they had been.

It seemed almost as if I had once seen, somewhere, this exact same wild rose — the one whose blossoms clustered more thickly than any other — and had been trying, again and again, to recall just where. ——

It was a peculiar kind of illusion that often came over me after a somewhat prolonged spell of absent-mindedness.

Perhaps, having lost the very sense of the present in that spell of absent-mindedness, I was, in some anxious haste, trying again and again to recall the present itself. ——

Then, coming back to myself, I set off walking once more.

Along the hedge I was following, those wild roses stood ranged at intervals, mingled among other shrubs of about the same height.

As though they had been arranged there according to some secret law of their own.

And that subtle intermittence, in me as I walked with a step that scarcely seemed to touch the ground, produced, before I knew it, an almost musical, rhythmical effect……

And this time, unlike before, it called back to life within me some similar memory, vivid and clear……

It was during a summer holiday about ten years ago, the first time I ever came to this village: partway up a narrow little slope, barely wide enough for one person to pass, that led from behind the inn out toward the road by the watermill, I came upon several girls, laughing and chattering, running down toward me from higher up the slope.

The moment I saw them, even though an encounter with girls of just that kind was something I had dreamed of constantly, I very nearly turned back right where I stood.

I hesitated.

Seeing me hesitate like that, the girls only laughed all the louder and came running straight down toward me.

I began to think that if I turned back now, of all times, I would only look all the more ridiculous in their eyes.

And so, steeling myself, I pressed recklessly on up the slope.

Whereupon the girls, for their part, suddenly fell silent.

And, with a look in their eyes that seemed mischievous, as though they were only just managing to hold back their laughter, they each tucked half of themselves into the roadside shrubs, which stood about their own height, and waited for me to pass.

I tried to pass by them as quickly as I could, which only made it take all the longer, and I went past them, my heart pounding……

At that instant I noticed, with a start, that the same strange fragrance had begun drifting around me once again.

As if in reproach of my fickleness for having, in that way, turned my gaze inward upon myself and forgotten all about the wild roses, those flowers had given me back that same scent as before.

Yes — that hedge those girls once formed had looked exactly like you!

……

That morning, for some reason, I turned back well short of the sanatorium, reeking as it did of creosol.

Beyond it, the acacia blossoms that had once, in their unexpected beauty, so entirely captured my heart, had all scattered now after nearly a week of rain, lying in scattered clumps along the riverside road, visible far off into the distance.

For several days after that, only fine weather continued, day after day.

Every morning, as soon as I woke, I went out walking to that same spot.

But I rarely lingered long before that hedge in bloom, more often than not simply walking straight past it along its length.

For all I really needed, so to speak, was to enjoy the musical effect produced by those wild roses, blooming in intermittent clusters along that hedge.

So that, on occasion, purely for the sake of that pleasure alone, I would deliberately walk along looking off in some other direction.

One morning, having gone as far as the front of the sanatorium in just this way and turned straight back again, I caught sight of Dr. Reynolds, who, having just crossed the small wooden bridge opposite, was only now coming up to the hedge.

He seemed to be on his way to work at the hospital from his own house nearby.

With a thick walking stick in one hand and a pipe clenched in the other, slightly stooped, he came toward me, casting an anxious glance over the hedge as he walked.

But upon noticing me, he suddenly tore his eyes away from it and walked on, looking straight ahead of himself only.

Or so, at least, it seemed to me.

And I, for my part, walked on with my face turned away too, like someone who paid no attention at all to such wild roses.

And as we passed each other, I saw through, in that old man's vacant, unfocused gaze, both his almost comical embarrassment and an ill humor of his that could not help but make me uncomfortable myself.

It was one morning, some days after that.

The beautiful sky, which had by then taken on more and more of the color of summer, seemed, to me alone, to have suddenly and sorrowfully closed itself off.

For that morning, walking along that hedge as I did every morning, but without ever really taking care to look closely, I noticed for the first time that the small white flowers of the wild roses had, without my knowing it, been almost entirely eaten away, covered now in a great many ugly, yellow-brown blotches.

⁂

……Along the banks of that small stream, where, until a few years ago, a half-ruined waterwheel had turned with a creaking, groaning sound, stood a row of old bungalows amid the scrub woods, most of them said to have been built by Westerners thirty or forty years before, but the little paths around there were so confusingly laid out that one could scarcely tell whether a given one came to a dead end or led somewhere through, so that back when I had only just first come to this village, I would find myself thoroughly at a loss whenever I went out walking alone there.

A path would seem, certainly, to lead somewhere through, only to pass suddenly right beside a veranda where some Westerners sat taking their tea.

Once again I had wandered, without meaning to, into just such a path — whether private property or a proper through-way I could not tell — when, from between shrubs about my own height, the view before me suddenly opened out, and there, at the far end, was a veranda, where, on a wicker chaise longue, a girl in a pale blue half-coat, her hair falling thick and loose over her shoulders, lay languidly reclining; and no sooner had I made this out, along with what seemed to be the girl turning her head sharply at the sound of my footsteps, than I, blushing, hurried away from there without even a proper look at her. ——

Had I looked at that girl more closely just then, I might have realized she was one of the very girls I had passed a few days before on that narrow slope behind the inn, and my confusion would have been all the greater still……

A lush green lawn, apparently mown only recently, had taken the place of that whole thicket of shrubs which had once hidden from view, on this side, the veranda where the girl used to sit, and now a pure white fence sharply marked off that lawn from this very path where I now stood vacantly……

In this way, everything had changed.

How different they looked, that vividly recollected face of hers as she had appeared when I first met her, so fresh and young, and that cold, distant face of hers from our last meeting, some months ago now — a face that has flickered before my eyes, unbidden, ever since!

Whether her actual features had changed so much, or whether it was only the image of her within me that had changed, I could not say.

But everything, no doubt, including I myself, had changed……

Just then I saw someone approaching from the far side, carrying what looked like a heavy load.

It was the old man of the inn, with a load of ferns on his back.

I remembered the ferns he had once spoken of.

As the old man bid me, I followed him hesitantly into the garden.

And while the old man planted the ferns in a corner of the garden, I sat in silence on the boards of the veranda.

Now and then he asked my advice on just where to plant them.

Each time he did, my heart tightened.

Once he had finished planting them all, the old man sat down beside me.

The cigarette I had offered him he simply tucked behind his ear, without any thought of smoking it, and drew instead a natamame pipe from his belt.

Making an effort to break out of my usual taciturn habit, I began making small talk with the old man, who himself seemed eager enough to please me.

"Old man, they say there's a mad woman up along the pass — is that true?"

"Aye, poor thing, she's a bit touched in the head, that's true — time was, we'd give her odds and ends now and again, and she'd often come down from the mountain all smiles, bringing us this flower and that. ……Only, that husband of hers is a fearful sort of man — whenever we went out of our way to bring something over to them, he'd always be drunk, and scold his own wife for feeling bad about it, saying, 'If somebody's giving it, might as well take it, eh?' ……So bit by bit we lost any feeling for them, and these days we don't trouble ourselves about it at all anymore."

"They say — this mad woman — that she sometimes throws herself into the river?"

"Aye, she does raise a scare like that now and then, but it does seem to be a bit of an act, if you ask me……"

"Is that so? —But why would she do such a thing……"

I faltered a little, calling to mind that strange ice house in the clearing in the woods, and that indefinable cry from somewhere behind it.

And I thought of that mysterious domain of the pass children, which even now made all those things feel so strange to me. ——

Children, even if such madness looks to grown-ups like nothing more than a pretense, go on and play, as much as you please, within that domain of yours alone, closed off as it is to grown-ups like that.

My talk with the old man cast an unexpected light, too, on that other character I had been struggling to develop in my story.

It was this: that Dr. Reynolds, who had lived in this village for nearly forty years now, had been hated, without exception, by everyone in the village all this time.

The old man told me how, one winter, the old doctor's house had caught fire while he was away, how not a single person in the village had lifted a finger to put it out, and how, because of this, the paper he had spent more than twenty years researching and writing had been reduced entirely to ashes — and from the way the old man told it, it seemed very much as though someone in the village had set the fire themselves.

(Just why the old doctor had come to be so hated by the villagers was not something I could quite make out from the old man's account alone, though I, for my part, did not press him about it either.) ——

Ever since, the old doctor had sent his wife and children back to Switzerland alone, and, for whatever reason, still lived on, stubbornly by himself, with only a nurse for company……

In the old man's expressionless face as he told me all this, I could make out, lingering like an old wound, some trace of a hostility he himself must once have felt toward that old foreigner.

Was this a mark of the villagers' folly, I wondered, or was it rather due to some stubbornness of temperament in the old foreigner himself?

……As I listened to such talk, I found myself recalling, with a kind of ache, the hedge of wild roses behind his hospital that I myself had come to love so dearly.

I stayed sitting on the veranda boards, lost in all sorts of thoughts, waiting for the old man to bring another load of ferns from wherever he had gone.

Then I went on watching him plant the ferns for a while longer.

But this time in silence.

And as I followed with my eyes the eerily bony back of the old man's hand as it moved, I suddenly found myself thinking of the "Giant's Chair,"

of all things. ——

I did not wait for the old man to finish planting all the ferns, and took my leave of him.

A few minutes later, I found myself once again in the garden of that abandoned villa, from which one could see the great rock directly before one's eyes.

About the two spinsters who had once lived in that villa, the old man had told me nothing at all.

"Ah, Miss Seymore, was it?"

was all he said.

He seemed as though he might once have known something, but had since forgotten it.

And he simply fell silent, looking sullen.

"Then it seems you're the only one who knows anything about it……"

I said, and gazed off at the "Giant's Chair," far in the distance, facing me across the whole stretch of highland lying below,

staring at it fixedly, with a look as though I were searching for the unseen figure of some giant somewhere about it.

Little by little, the sun began to set.

The villa just below me, whose red roof I had once seen the mating birds upon, seemed by now to have someone living in it, its windows thrown wide open, orange curtains fluttering visibly in the breeze.

Now and then the sound reached me of what seemed to be some tradesman laboriously pushing his bicycle up to that house.

I thought that before long I would probably no longer be able to idle away my time in the garden of this empty house as I had been doing.

Once that thought came to me, as though this were somehow already the last such time, I began turning the whole of my attention half toward this ruined villa itself, and half toward the beautiful village spread out below this height, its woods, its flowering meadows, its villas, and the folds of the hills, already growing hazy and hard to make out, with only the "Giant's Chair" still standing out darkly among them,

and to other such things besides.

And yet, every so often, I would lose sight of every one of these things entirely, and, noticing myself sunk in utter absent-mindedness, would give an involuntary start.

Suddenly, on one of the almost horizontal branches of a great fir directly above my head, its surroundings already grown quite dark, a mountain dove came flapping down with a startling beat of wings and alighted.

And, as though it too had been startled to find me there, it took wing again at once from that branch, looking larger still for the dimness, and flew away.

Beating its wings heavily, as if it were my own thought made flesh, its wings gleaming with an eerie blue light……

Summer

Suddenly, in the courtyard my window faced, beyond a clump of azaleas that had long since lost their blossoms, at the window of the annex, something quite unexpected seemed to begin glittering in the sun, dazzlingly bright, as though a single sunflower had bloomed there.

At last I made out that it was a tall, slender girl standing there, wearing a yellow straw hat……

The girl, who seemed to be waiting for someone, had been letting her watchful gaze wander this way and that about the courtyard, but at last she settled it on me, as I stood gazing vacantly at her from the window of the cottage.

At such a first encounter, most girls, in front of someone they believe to be watching them, will deliberately turn away, wanting to show themselves entirely indifferent to that person, but unlike such a gaze, mingled with shyness and pride, the gaze this girl fixed on me was so frank, so full of curiosity, that I felt myself quite dazzled by it, unable to look away — so that of her, as she first appeared before my eyes that day, I could recall almost nothing at all, save that yellow hat worn rather low over her brow, and the distinctive glint of her eyes, shining beneath its brim……

Presently, someone who appeared to be her father emerged from the annex.

The two of them crossed diagonally past my window, and, looking closely, I saw that she was nearly as tall as her father, if not taller.

And while the man who seemed to be her father talked at her insistently, she answered him with obvious indifference, all the while continuing to fix that distinctive gaze of hers on me, across the azalea bushes……

Even after the two of them had left the courtyard, I went on for a while directing a somewhat vacant gaze toward that window where the girl had stood, sunflower-like, only a moment before, but then I suddenly noticed that the whole feel of the place had somehow changed entirely from what it had been.

Without my knowing it, a scent of summer had begun drifting over the whole scene……

That evening, my move to the annex (since the old cottage where I had been living alone was to have its repairs begun); the next day, the departure of the girl's father; and after that, in that annex where no other guests had yet come to stay, a life spent, the two of us alone, back to back……

But I stayed shut up in my room almost every day, absorbed entirely in my own work.

That story of mine, The Beautiful Village,

which I had been writing, was made up of everything I, having been staying in this village since around June, had come upon in this still out-of-season, utterly empty highland, set down one thing after another.

And I had, just now, finished writing the part where — the memory of that brilliant, flowering acquaintance of some years before with those girls in this village, and above all the memory of that first, joyful encounter with them here, memories which, out of a certain deference toward a former love of mine, I had until then meant to keep only in the background of the story, content merely to let them lend the story's quiet, undramatic surface some faint and sorrowful shading — had, on a certain day, been called vividly back to life within me by the wild roses blooming in profusion along the roadside, and had at last, like groundwater that has finally found an unexpected outlet, come welling up, inexhaustibly, onto the calm surface of the story itself.

And now, without even the leisure to linger over the memory of those many joyful encounters of old, I was about to write, as the story's ending, my own sad resolve — dreading an awkward reunion with those girls, all of them long since flown from me, and above all with one of them in particular — to leave this village ahead of the season.

My new room was set back on the second floor of the annex, with a window facing south, from which, through the trunks of several great cherry trees, I could catch glimpses of the backs of a few villas facing the raised road by the watermill opposite.

And directly below that window ran, as a small slope, that very shortcut path where I had first met those girls, threading its narrow way through the shrubs……

So as not to let my attention be drawn away from the work I had underway, I deliberately kept my back turned, so to speak, toward that unknown girl now living, just the two of us, in that annex.

And yet, all the same, I never once failed to notice, every morning at a fixed hour, the girl climbing that slope directly below my window, a paint box swinging from her hand, on her way up toward the road by the watermill.

Watching her tall, slender figure from behind, her footing none too sure, as she climbed that little slope, whose bare earth the light, filtering through the trees at just that hour of the morning, dappled as beautifully as a leopard's hide, and picturing her, once she reached the road by the watermill above, going on by this path or that to wherever it was she meant to paint — since the paths through those woods thereabouts were so bewilderingly complicated that even I myself, when I first came to this village, had lost my way among them more than once, and since, indeed, it was through just such a mishap that this strange acquaintance between the girl and myself had first begun — I could not help feeling somehow anxious for her, wandering, as she seemed to, along those unfamiliar paths in search of some spot to paint,

I found myself thinking.

⁂

But at first I only watched her stealthily like that, from my window, or catching her by chance in the corridor, careful never to let our eyes meet.

In this way, I had not yet once looked properly at her face, and since, whenever I did see her, she was never still, and the light fell each time from a different angle, her face seemed to change with every glance.

At times, beneath that yellow straw hat worn rather low, only her wide-open eyes, refusing to melt into the half-shadow along with the rest of her face, would shine there, glittering.

At other times, without that hat, out in the garden with the full strong light falling on her face, her eyes half closed against the glare so that her usual features were half lost, only her lips — quite unremarkable until that very moment — would shine vividly as strawberries instead, and her face would seem to turn into almost another face entirely.

Before long, we came at last to exchange a few brief words, and along with that, I began often to look straight at her face — and yet, even so, I was astonished to find her face still changing ceaselessly.

At times her face had such fine color and such smoothness that my hesitant gaze would slip right off it, again and again, as if unable to find purchase.

At other times it looked somewhat clouded and dull, as though touched by fatigue, with something like a violet shade seeming to drift beneath the surface of her skin.

And then again, there were times when her skin turned entirely translucent, glowing faintly rose-colored from within.

Now and then her face resembled, in some way, one I had seen before.

But it was never, ever quite the same face twice.

One day, I spread out before her a homemade map of the village that I had drawn carefully, half in play, with colored pencils, as notes for my Beautiful Village,

and, marking on it with my fountain pen the little bridges, villas, and larch woods that might have belonged to some corner of the Swiss countryside, I showed her every spot I knew of that seemed worth painting.

Just then, gazing steadily at her profile as she bent eagerly over my dubious little map, I noticed a small mole showing near the base of her ear.

I had never noticed it until that moment, and it looked so much like some stray spot of ink that must have splashed unnoticed from my own pen that I half thought it would simply wipe away.

The next day, I learned that she had taken the map I lent her and, without delay, gone about walking the various roads of the village I had shown her, one after another.

That she had accepted my advice so readily gave me a joy I could scarcely put into words.

⁂

While she set up her easel, holding that map of the village, beneath a single fir tree that spread its branches like an umbrella beside some modest little mountain stream she had come upon by herself on one of her walks, I stood beside the easel gazing, as if seeing it for the very first time, at a small, pure white bridge, not too far off, standing out sharply through the branches of several acacias.

It was that very same small bridge, so vivid in my memory, where I had parted from the two children I had come down the pass with, back in the middle of June. ——

Seeing her crouch down and begin dabbing paint onto her palette, and fearing to disturb her work, I left her there alone and wandered off along the path beside the stream, upstream.

But my thoughts were constantly on the girl I had left behind, so much so that I never noticed a small shrub lurking around a bend in the path ahead, as if lying in wait for me, and the instant I rounded that bend carelessly, I caught my jacket on its branch and found myself stopping short.

Looking closely, I saw it was a wild rose that had lost all its blossoms.

With some effort I freed my jacket from its sharp thorns, and turned to look anew at that flowerless wild rose.

It almost seemed to me as though this shrub — which I had once taken such delight in, back when it was covered all over with small white flowers, but which I had failed even to notice now that every last one of those flowers had gone off somewhere — had bitten a hole in my jacket in just this way, as some small, final act of revenge against me……

Standing for a while before that wild rose so utterly stripped of its flowers, I found myself, before I knew it, thinking of those girls who, like those small white flowers, had gone off somewhere away from me……

These days, on account of one new girl, I had all too often found myself forgetting those girls of old — but now that I thought of it, the time when they would come, one after another, to this village was already drawing near.

I ought to leave this village quickly, before they arrive.

I really must. ——

Even as I told myself so, I doubted, on the other hand, whether I could really abandon so lightly this new happiness that had only just begun, of late, to fall into my hands.

And, unable to settle my feelings one way or the other, at a loss with myself, I went on wandering that mountain path for nearly an hour.

And in the end, when I finally noticed it, the small tear at the shoulder of my gray jacket, which I must have been tugging at unconsciously, again and again, with my fingers as I walked, had already grown large enough to be plainly visible. ——

At last I turned on my heel and made my way back down that mountain path along the stream.

And when I made out, up ahead, that small white bridge and the one great umbrella-like fir tree, I slowed my pace a little and deliberately closed my eyes.

I wanted to come upon whatever lay hidden in the shade of that tree suddenly, close at hand, as if discovering it quite unexpectedly……

In the end, unable to bear it any longer, I opened my eyes.

But she was still a dozen or so paces ahead of me.

And she, who had been crouching in the shade of the tree, apparently scraping her palette clean, rose abruptly to her feet just then, and, seemingly quite unaware of me, took the half-finished canvas down from the easel and flung it onto the grass by the roadside with what looked like careless, almost violent abandon.

The large canvas, once flung down, drifted softly of its own accord and settled onto the grass.

At the sight of this, I hurried to her side.

"Let me hold that for you."

"It's all right……I always do it alone anyway."

"How mean of you!"

"Mean, aren't I."

Bantering with her like this, so childishly, I forced the canvas from her grasp, propped it against my own shoulder, and walked on beside her along the village road toward the inn.

Now and then we passed Westerners out for a stroll, or children from the village.

Their curious glances seemed to make us uncomfortable — her especially, still unused as she was to this village.

I, for my part, trying my best to put her at ease, raised my free hand to my own shoulder and said,

"Look, I got a hole torn here……caught it on a wild rose earlier, while I was out walking alone."

So saying, careless of making the hole at my shoulder even bigger, I tugged at my jacket to show it to her more clearly.

And I began to think that there was no way I could ever cast aside this girl, who had by now grown so open with me, and leave this village all by myself.

⁂

My Beautiful Village

was, on a certain day, finally finished — a good deal later than I had planned.

July was already past its midpoint by then.

And though I had meant to leave this village the moment I finished writing, I still went on, for the sake of that one girl, putting off my departure day by day, and watched — with a feeling that somehow tightened around my heart — as the highland village, which I had used as the backdrop of my story back when it lay in that eerie, out-of-season hush, gradually entered into the summer season itself, and, along with it, as the summer visitors began trickling, one after another, into the village before my very eyes.

I had taken, more and more often, to going out walking together with that girl, after supper for instance, around the road by the watermill behind the inn, where so many of the Westerners' villas stood.

On such walks, we would occasionally meet village children who, only a month before, had even played and romped about with me, but they would pass right by us now with faces of perfect indifference.

Had they simply forgotten me already, I wondered, or did they find it strange that I should be walking about with some unfamiliar girl, and act this way because of it?

……But before long, those children too, along with the various small birds we had so often seen in the woods at first, began to show themselves less and less.

And in their place, more and more people out walking, or riding bicycles, began to pass us, casting curious glances our way as they went.

Among them were mixed a few faces I myself knew.

I had begun secretly worrying to myself that I might, at any moment, run into some old woman friend of mine in a place like this, and now and then, on such walks, when someone approaching from a distance happened to resemble one of them, even faintly, I would hastily drag the girl, who knew nothing at all of the reason, off into some pathless thicket of grass to avoid them, startling her in the process.

Walking with her like this through the woods near dusk, pointing out to her the Swiss-style bungalows, the beautiful shrubs, the ferns, that I had loved so dearly back when I still did not know her and used to wander about there alone with no particular destination, I found myself feeling something strangely odd.

For those things had, by now, lost every bit of their charm for me.

And, for her sake, I even had to make a certain effort to pretend that I still loved them as much as ever.

So entirely had I myself become filled with thoughts of her, there beside me……

And on such dim roadsides, gazing steadily at her slender shoulder as she leaned toward me, trying to get a better look at those things, I felt certain that she would never refuse me if I quietly laid my hand upon it.

And on one such occasion, I leaned the upper half of my body toward her, as if to lay my hand casually upon that shoulder.

My heart suddenly began pounding.

But at that very instant, I heard her heart beating harder still, harder even than my own.

And it was this that made me stop, leaving that caress as nothing more than a mere sketch of itself……

Even though I still did not know the real thing, I felt as though, from that mere sketch alone, I had already tasted, to the full, a singular pleasure no different from what the real thing itself would give.

⁂

As for the "road by the watermill,"

it ran almost parallel to the main street, where the post office and various grocery shops stood, on its southern side, but there were a number of narrow side streets that cut diagonally across those two parallel lines.

On one of these side streets stood two flower shops, well known throughout the village.

Both were small houses with thatched roofs, but each was surrounded by a large, splendid flower field five or six times the size of the house itself.

And running between those two flower fields, marking their boundary, forever making that pleasant sound of rippling water, was that same small stream which, until a few years before, had turned the old waterwheel far upstream with its creaking, groaning sound.

One of the two flower fields even overflowed past the road by the watermill, spilling further still onto the other side of it……

Until only recently, in this village where flowers had once covered every corner so thickly, these two flower shops had gone almost entirely unnoticed, their very existence all but forgotten by everyone — but once that season passed and all those wild flowers had scattered away, in their place, all at once, the various rare flowers cultivated artificially in these fields burst suddenly into bloom, so that scarcely anyone passing through that side street could fail to open their eyes wide at the beauty of that flower field.

But anyone passing by those two neighboring flower shops who happened to notice the shopkeepers sitting there, deep within their stores, could not have helped opening their eyes even wider still in astonishment.

For, having spotted a small, blank-faced old man in a white checkered shirt sitting deep within the first shop, one would, on coming to the next, notice with a start that there, too, deep inside, sat a small old man — utterly identical, down to the last detail, to the one just glimpsed a moment before in the other shop — wearing that same white checkered shirt, sitting there just as blankly, gazing out toward the street.

The only difference was in the wives sitting beside each of the two men — one always with her hair in disarray, plump; the other, in fine contrast, thin as a rail and apparently somewhat cross-eyed.

In short, the aged proprietors of those two flower shops were brothers, resembling each other almost exactly, like two halves of the same melon.

What was more, and rather amusing, was that these two flower-shop brothers got along terribly — they did business, on friendly enough terms it seemed, chatting away with one another, only through the summer, but once the summer season had passed, they would, incorrigibly, promptly fall to quarreling again, so that during the winter months, it was said, they might go for weeks without exchanging a single word. ——

On that side street with its two eccentric flower shops, a few small firs and maples had been planted along the roadside, and, quite recently, on the nearest of the small maples, a brand-new wooden sign had been hung, reading, "For Sale: 2 Firs, 3 Maples,"

just like that.

And now, in the flower fields on either side of that side street, sunflowers, dahlias, and all manner of other rare flowers stood in full, glorious bloom……

Telling her the story of those two flower shops, I drew her attention toward that side street I loved so much.

From the foot of one old cherry tree, its great branches spreading out over the road by the watermill, one could see, beyond the flower field lying a step below that road, a sky-blue sign, its shop's name cut out in white Roman letters, standing at almost the same height as the various red and yellow flowers around it, yet standing out sharply against them all the same. ——

It was the roof of one such flower shop, and its flower field, seen from just that angle, that she began, one day, to paint onto a large canvas……

But since the villa people thereabouts came and went along that road by the watermill fairly often, a small crowd would soon gather around her, much to her trouble it seemed, though I never once went near the place where she was painting.

I did not want any of my own acquaintances to see me looking so intimate with her in a place so exposed to view.

So I stayed shut up in my room, working still on the final touches of the manuscript I had only just finished.

(Though the whole time, what occupied my mind most of all was, in the end, her, after all.) ——

But I did want, at least once, to see from a distance the spot where she was painting that flower shop, and so one morning I climbed the slope behind the inn and went out as far as the road by the watermill to look.

And there, on the far side of that road, beneath the great cherry tree, I made out her figure, moving her palette, and, peering at the canvas from beside her, a young man in a beret, saying something or other to her.

I waited, a little on edge, hoping the man would soon leave her side. ——

"Who was that? Just now……"

Once I saw the man finally go, I hurried over to her and asked, as offhandedly as I could manage,

"He said he's a painter……He was watching for such a long time that I got quite fed up with it……"

She made a show of frowning, deliberately.

Then she turned a somewhat fierce look toward one part of the flower field.

I knew well enough that when she set herself to painting in earnest, her eyes would take on this same sort of stern, almost masculine look, and so I said nothing more……

In this way, everything she came to know in this village, all on her own, whenever I was even briefly apart from her, without me, filled me with a vague sort of unease.

One day she told me that, near the spot where I had once told her the old watermill used to stand, she often saw a lame flower seller, taking the basket down from his back and wiping the sweat from his brow while leaning on his crutches.

I myself had never once seen anything like the man she described, and, absurd as I knew it to be, I could not help feeling bothered even by the mere fact that she should so often be running into a lame flower seller of that sort.

⁂

One morning, having watched from my window as she climbed the slope behind the inn with her paint box swinging from her hand, I stood there still, leaning idly against the window, when after a while I saw a man, a flower basket on his back and a small cap on his head, going up that same slope with a hopping, jerking sort of gait.

Looking closely, I saw that he walked with crutches.

Ah, so this was the man — the lame flower seller she had said she wanted to paint as her subject!

……I could not tell for certain from his back alone, but the man seemed still a young one, unlike the flower sellers of this village, who were, for the most part, nothing but doddering old men.

And this only made it seem all the more pitiable, that he should be reduced to such work as flower-selling on account of his lameness. ——

And once I had seen, with my own eyes, this sorrowful, lame flower seller, the faint trace of jealousy I had felt toward him, simply for her having said she wanted to paint him, vanished completely, without a trace……

But that young man in the beret, the one calling himself a painter, whom I had seen a few days before talking to her so familiarly on the road by the watermill — I could not even clearly recall his face, and it was precisely because of this that his vague, half-remembered presence could not help but fill me with a certain unease.

She never said another word to me about that painter after that, and I even began to harbor the suspicion that she might, by then, have run into him any number of times, and that the two of them might have grown intimate with one another without my ever knowing it.

And then, one day, we happened to meet that same painter in an encounter that could not help but deepen my suspicions still further. ——

Since she had finally finished her painting of the flower shop, I decided, one fine morning, that we would go together, in search of a new spot for her next picture, out toward the sanatorium — a bit far, but a place I had not visited in some time.

Just as we passed in front of the church, where a small gathering seemed to be underway, a handful of Westerners visible now and then through the windows, and were about to enter the horse-chestnut wood behind it, always so empty of people, we made out, on the path through those woods ahead of us, a man strolling along, bareheaded, with something like a sketchbook in his hand.

"It's that painter from before……We've run into him again."

——Until she pointed it out to me like that, I had not even realized that this man was one and the same as that painter in the beret who had, of late, begun tormenting me for no reason at all.

So little had I actually taken note of that painter.

Making a point of averting my eyes from the man sauntering toward us, I suddenly began speaking to her rapidly, about nothing in particular.

I meant to catch her attention with my talk, so that she would not pay the man too much notice.

But she only answered what I said with a distinct air of indifference.

And she kept her eyes on the man with a look full of goodwill, one made strangely ambiguous, it seemed, only by my being there beside her.

Or so, at least, it seemed to me.

The man, for his part, cast toward her a meaningful glance, one that seemed a mere continuation of some familiar look they had exchanged at an earlier meeting I knew nothing of, and, breaking suddenly into a smile of recollection, gave a light bow and passed on by us.

I fell silent, as though I had suddenly begun thinking something over.

We passed on through the horse-chestnut wood, and before long found ourselves walking beside a small, beautiful stream.

But I walked on, wrapped in a moody silence, watching only my own feet, wondering how much truth there was in what I was now feeling, and doubting whether the whole thing might not be entirely groundless after all.

And, as though dreading any clear answer to that doubt of mine, I went on, for the longest time, refusing to look at her at all.

But at last, unable to bear it any longer, I stole a glance up at her profile from within that silence.

And I saw that she seemed to be suffering under that same silence even more than I had thought.

The dejected look of her struck me as unbearably touching.

Suddenly, my chest filled with something like remorse……

It was in the midst of such tangled feelings that I, almost without thinking, caught hold of her arm.

She resisted for just a moment, but in the end let her arm rest, poignantly, within mine……

Only after several minutes had passed did I finally begin to feel, as though only just realizing she was there in my arms, a joy quite beyond words.

Arm in arm, still a little awkwardly, we crossed that familiar small wooden bridge.

Then, along the opposite bank of the stream, we went on into the road toward the sanatorium.

The hedge of wild roses running the whole length of that road had, by then, already lost every last one of its small white flowers.

Those wild rose thickets, now nothing but leaves, could hardly help forcing me to remember the time when they had been covered in blossoms, and yet, however they might now appear, I found I could no longer feel the least stirring of emotion over them.

So entirely had everything changed since then.

And, feeling somehow that all of it was my own doing, I fell into a sudden gloom……

But once the red building of the sanatorium came into view through that hedge, I pulled myself together and pointed out to her the sunroom, far across the courtyard where yellow oxeye daisies now stood in riotous bloom.

Just then, inside that sunroom, a foreigner who appeared to be some convalescent patient lay reclining in a wicker chair, and, at that, he suddenly raised himself up and turned a languid gaze toward us. ——

From there we went on still, following the stream, straight along the riverside road, which, from about that point, began gradually to be lined with acacia trees.

Back when those acacias had been in full bloom, that road had felt so soft underfoot, so fresh, but now it had grown uneven here and there, dirtied, and even gave off something of an unpleasant odor.

What was more, since those acacia trees were still all quite small, they could not shelter us properly from the fierce sunlight, and so the riverside road felt even hotter than the road we had come by before.

Partway along, we cut through those acacias and came out onto a large, somewhat desolate-looking open space, thick with reeds, directly behind the sanatorium.

From there, the village pass rose almost directly before us, surrounded by several small hills.

——During the rainy season, whether owing to my own state of mind at the time or not, I could not help feeling that something mysterious lay hidden deep within it.

That same pass now, bathed from head to foot in a summer light that seemed bent on scorching everything it touched, seemed to press upon us with a kind of flickering, flame-like presence……

She said she wanted to paint that blazing mountain range, with the sanatorium's red roof set in the foreground.

And, to paint it from just the right angle, she chose a somewhat elevated spot in that open ground, quite unconcerned by that fierce, direct sunlight, set up her folding stool, sat down upon it, and, lifting her face now and then, dazzled, from beneath her sports cap worn at a slant, began sketching out her preliminary drawing……

So as not to disturb her work, I left her there alone, as always, and went back to the embankment we had come from, chose the shade of a somewhat larger acacia tree, and sat down there.

And as I sat gazing vacantly at a single wagtail, hopping this way and that along the edge of the little stream before me with a somewhat forlorn air, I heard someone, from the direction of the sanatorium behind me, come dragging a heavy-looking cart along the embankment with great grunts of effort, and I rose to my feet to make way.

Looking closely, I saw it was a garbage cart.

Thinking to myself what an outlandish thing to come through a place like this, I tucked my body entirely into the roadside shrubs and looked away.

But once the garbage cart seemed at last to have passed behind me, I glanced idly toward it, and saw that the boxed cart was packed full, with a kind of grimy beauty, of empty tin cans, corn husks, yellowed English-language newspapers, and withered flowers.

And in the wake of that cart there lingered, for the longest time, a smell not unlike rotting fruit……

Amused to find even something like a garbage cart possessed of a peculiar beauty so fitting for this village so full of foreigners, I watched it go for a moment, then sat back down vacantly in the shade of that same acacia — but before even a few minutes had passed, I had to rise again at the sound of yet another cart approaching from behind me.

That too was a garbage cart, looking exactly like the one before.

And over the course of about the next hour, I counted nearly ten such garbage carts passing along this embankment.

——The instant it occurred to me, for the first time, that the village dump must surely lie somewhere further along this way, I began at last to understand just why this embankment behind the sanatorium had grown so uneven and so filthy.

And, almost in the same breath, thinking to myself that so many foreigners must already have come pouring into this village, I stood there, somewhat taken aback, watching for the longest time as the last of those garbage carts, which had only just passed behind me, went on its way……

The Dark Road

"I haven't the faintest idea which way we're headed."

she said, her voice pitched somewhat higher than usual.

"To tell the truth, I've lost track myself……"

I answered, and glanced toward her, but it had grown so dark by then that I could hardly make out even the pale outline of her face.

In truth, I myself had lost any real sense of just where the mountain path we were walking led, but I made a point of laughing it off, as though it were only a joke.

——That day, when I told her about that abandoned old villa, once home to the two spinsters I had written of in my

story The Beautiful Village, she became so eager to see it for herself that, although I myself had no particular wish to see the place again, I remembered how beautiful the evening view had been from that ruined veranda, and so, after supper, we decided to climb up to the villa after all.

Expecting that the house would surely still be exactly as it had been……

But as the villa gradually drew nearer, I suddenly found myself reluctant, for some reason, to go and look upon what felt like the wreckage of my own dream, and so, using the coming dusk as a convenient excuse, and saying that the path ahead would still be quite a difficult one, we decided to turn back partway there. ——

On the way back, meaning instead to guide her to the Belvedere hill, which she had said she did not yet know, I chose a mountain path different from the one we had just climbed, but somehow, I do not know how, we took a wrong turn, and though by then it should have been time for the path to start descending, it kept climbing on, uphill, until we began to feel that we were heading further and further away from the center of the village.

Inwardly astonished that there should still be corners of this village I did not know, I nonetheless led her briskly on, pretending all the while to know the place thoroughly.

But we would, all too often, fall into silence……

Before we knew it, night had fallen entirely.

Where the larches growing on either side of the road we walked had grown up tall and crowded together somewhat, I could scarcely even make out the rose color of the dress she wore.

Only now and then her shoulder would brush against mine, and I walked on feeling her close beside me.

And then, quite suddenly, the light of some villa deep among the trees would fall across our shoulders through the low branches, and, without our realizing it, we would draw apart again, though we had been leaning close together without meaning to.

——The fact that such villas seemed to be growing more and more numerous gave us both something of a sense of relief……

Suddenly I stopped short, my heart tightening within me.

For just as I began to recognize these villas, I realized, at the same moment, that if we kept on this way, we would have to pass directly in front of the villa of a former woman friend of mine, a place I had of late been going out of my way to avoid.

And I already knew, from the old man of the inn, that her family had come to this village two or three days before.

But since I had already dragged her about so much, and was myself fairly worn out with walking, I could not bring myself to take yet another roundabout way, and so, against my own better judgment, I decided we would simply pass in front of that villa……

As the villa drew nearer and nearer, I felt my breath grow more and more constricted, my heart clenched tight, but when at last that villa's pure white fence appeared before us, I found, to my own surprise, that I could take in, with a calm quite unexpected even to myself, the sight beyond that fence: the lawn all lit up with light, and, through the fully opened window frame, part of an old round table I remembered well, upon which, as though the diners had only just left the table, crumpled napkins, plates still bearing fruit peels, and coffee cups all lay scattered, not yet cleared away, gleaming dazzlingly under the light of a lamp.

Was it simply, fortunately, that no one happened to be there, or was it rather that, by that very moment, the anxiety within me had already passed beyond its own peak?

In any case, I managed, in a state of mind fairly close to calm, merely quickening my pace a little, to walk past that white fence……

Having no way of knowing anything of that turmoil within me, she followed after me, now suddenly quickened in my pace, with a somewhat puzzled air, and said,

"Is it still much further?"

she asked, sounding somewhat uneasy.

"Well……I've less idea than ever, actually."

"You keep saying that……"

She seemed to have finally grown irritated at my manner, which she could not tell was in earnest or in jest.

And, in a tone that seemed to reproach me for it, she said,

"Can't we get back soon?"

she said.

"Then go back by yourself."

I answered, a smile even beginning to show on my face by now.

"How mean!"

"But look, you know that spot, don't you?"

I said, pointing to where a small stream murmured in the darkness ahead of us. "Isn't that the road by the watermill?"

I said cheerfully.

"Why, so it is……"

she said, looking around herself as though she still could hardly believe it.

We had, by then, already come out of the woods, and were standing at the very spot where the old watermill had once stood. ——

There the road split in two, one branch leading to the "road by the watermill,"

and the other to the "main street,"

the other way.

Either way would bring us back to the inn quickly enough, but the road by the watermill meant going down that fairly steep slope I knew so well, so we decided to go back by way of the main street.

So we took that latter road, and just as we were about to turn toward the main street at its end, I made out, within a faintly glowing circle of light near the entrance to the main street, right about where the inn stood, a cluster of five or six figures walking this way, together in a group.

I stopped short with a start.

For they looked, as far as I could tell, very much like my old women friends……

Suddenly I took the arm of the girl beside me, explaining hurriedly that someone I would rather not deal with seemed to be coming our way and that it would be a nuisance to be caught by them, and we turned back toward the old watermill we had just come from.

And, standing once more side by side at the edge of that little stream, I kept a watchful eye on both roads, wondering whether those people would come straight on from the main street, or by way of the slope behind the inn……

And, our attention entirely taken up with that, we were completely unaware of several people emerging, shining flashlights, from the very woods behind us that we had just come out of ourselves.

Suddenly we found ourselves caught in the dazzling glare of those flashlights.

Startled, we drew back from the edge of the stream……

But the men holding the flashlights, too, seemed just as taken aback to find us standing there unexpectedly, and yet when one of them realized it was me,

"Isn't that ××?"

he said, hesitantly, using my name.

At that, more startled still, I turned around, screwing up my face against the glare, and saw that it was a friend of mine from my student days.

At the same moment I noticed, behind him, two or three young women, still peering suspiciously through the darkness toward us.

They were his young wife and his sisters.

I gave them a small bow, and then, smiling somewhat awkwardly, said,

"Oh, it's you all! —When did you get here?"

"Came yesterday. Stopped by your place a while ago and they said you were out, so we went over to the Hosokis' — but that whole household's out too……"

Before my friend had even finished speaking, I noticed a cluster of figures turning the corner from the direction of the main street and coming this way.

"Well, never mind that — come by my place anyway."

Throwing out those words, I set off briskly on my own toward the road by the watermill.

And after passing a couple of villas, I went on ahead of the others, alone, straight down the pitch-dark but, to me, familiar, grass-thick slope beyond.

Before long the rest of the group came down after me too, all bunched together, relying on a single flashlight, squealing and laughing as they came……

"Goodness, I had no idea there was a road like this here."

My friend's young wife seemed to say this, halfway down the slope, to no one in particular, and it reached me, already down at the bottom of that small slope by then, as clearly as if she had spoken right beside me.

Just then, without quite meaning to, I found myself remembering that my friend's wife too had, if I recalled rightly, been among those girls I had met on that very slope some years before. ——

That encounter had left such a deep impression on me, and yet I wondered whether she, once one of those very girls (and, no doubt, the others too), had never given the least thought to that meeting with me at all, and had simply forgotten it entirely.

But then again, I also had the feeling that perhaps she had said such a thing precisely to tease me about it.

Brooding to myself over those words that had seemed to slip so casually from her lips, I stood there for the longest time, my face turned away, waiting for everyone to come down, when suddenly someone among them lost their footing, and, with a small cry of "Ah!",

seemed to fall with a thud, halfway down the slope.

Looking up, I saw what still seemed to be lying there, halfway down the slope, looking for all the world like a shrub in full bloom.

And I stood there, dumbfounded, not moving an inch from that spot, simply watching as everyone else stopped and turned to look back at the girl who had been coming down last of all.

And I found myself, quite out of nowhere, thinking of that lame flower seller who climbed up and down this very slope every morning, wondering why on earth he should choose, of all things, such a treacherous path to go by — a thought that had nothing whatever to do with the situation at hand……