歯車 English

I: The Raincoat

Carrying a single bag, I sped by automobile from a summer resort deep in the hills down to a certain station on the Tokaido line, meaning to attend the wedding reception of an acquaintance.

Along both sides of the road the automobile ran, little grew but thick stands of pine.

Whether I would make the up train in time was, it had to be admitted, more than doubtful.

In the automobile, besides myself, there happened to be riding the proprietor of a certain barbershop.

He was a man round and plump as a jujube, the owner of a short goatee.

Fretting over the time, I talked with him now and again.

"Strange thing, isn't it. They say a ghost comes out at Mr. So-and-so's house even in broad daylight."

"Even in broad daylight, is it."

I gazed out at the pine hills across the way, lit by the winter afternoon sun, and answered him with idle agreement.

"Though they say it doesn't come out on fine days. It's on rainy days that it appears most, so they say."

"Comes out to get wet on rainy days, does it?"

"Now you're joking with me... But they say it's a ghost wearing a raincoat."

Sounding its horn, the automobile drew up beside a certain station.

I took leave of the barbershop proprietor and went in through the station.

And sure enough, the up train had left just two or three minutes before.

On a bench in the waiting room sat a man in a raincoat, gazing vacantly outside.

I recalled the ghost story I had just heard.

But after a wry smile, I decided to go into the café in front of the station to wait for the next train.

It was a café one hesitated even to call by that name.

I sat at a table in the corner and ordered a cup of cocoa.

The oilcloth spread over the table was white with a rough checked pattern drawn in thin blue lines.

But at its corners the grimy canvas beneath already showed through.

Sipping my cocoa, which smelled faintly of glue, I looked around the empty café.

On the dusty café walls were pasted several paper slips reading "Oyako-domburi"

and "cutlet"

and the like.

"Farm-fresh eggs, omelette"

In these paper slips I sensed the countryside that lies close to the Tokaido line.

It was a countryside through which an electric locomotive ran, between fields of wheat and cabbage. ...

By the time I boarded the next up train, evening was already drawing near.

I always rode second class.

But for some reason, that time I decided to ride third.

The carriage was fairly crowded.

And what was more, all around me, front and back, were nothing but schoolgirls who seemed to have been on an excursion to Oiso or somewhere of the kind.

Lighting a cigarette, I watched this crowd of girls.

Every one of them was cheerful.

Not only that, but they hardly stopped chattering.

"Mr. Photographer, what's a 'love scene'?"

It seemed he too had come along on the excursion — the "Mr. Photographer" sitting in front of me

had somehow been fobbing her off with vague answers.

But one of the schoolgirls, a girl of fourteen or fifteen, went on asking all manner of things.

I suddenly noticed a sinus trouble in her nose, and could not help but smile a little.

And then again, one of the schoolgirls beside me, a girl of twelve or thirteen, was sitting on the lap of her young woman teacher, one arm around her neck, stroking her cheek with the other hand.

And in between talking with someone else, she would now and then speak to the teacher like this.

"You're so pretty, Teacher. You have such pretty eyes."

To me they gave the impression less of schoolgirls than of grown women.

Except, that is, for the way they bit into apples, skin and all, or peeled the wrappers off caramels. ...

But one of the older-looking schoolgirls, passing by my side, seemed to have stepped on someone's foot, and called out, "I beg your pardon."

—so she said.

She alone, precisely because she was more grown-up than the rest, struck me as being schoolgirlish after all.

With the cigarette still in my mouth, I could not help sneering at myself for noticing this contradiction.

By and by the train, its electric lamps now lit, arrived at last at a certain suburban station.

I got down onto the platform, cold in the wind, crossed a bridge, and decided to wait for the government-line train to come.

There, by chance, I ran into T., who worked at a certain company, and while we waited for the train we talked of the depression and such things.

T. was, of course, far more versed in such matters than I.

Yet on his sturdy fingers was fitted a turquoise ring, which had little enough to do with hard times.

"That's quite something you're wearing."

"This? I was made to buy this off a friend who'd gone to Harbin on business. He's done for now too — he couldn't do business with the Cooperative anymore."

The government-line train we boarded was fortunately not as crowded as the earlier one had been.

We sat down side by side and talked of various things.

T. had only just returned to Tokyo this past spring from his post in Paris.

Naturally, talk of Paris kept coming up between us.

Talk of Madame Caillaux, talk of crab dishes, talk of a certain prince touring abroad. ...

"France isn't in as much trouble as you'd think, actually. It's just that the French, being a people who hate paying taxes, always end up toppling their cabinets. ..."

"But the franc keeps crashing, doesn't it?"

"That's if you only read the newspapers. But try being over there and see. In the papers, Japan is nothing but one great earthquake and flood after another."

Just then a man in a raincoat came and sat down across from us.

I felt a slight chill of unease, and had the urge to tell T. the ghost story I had heard earlier.

But before I could, T. turned the handle of his cane sharply to the left and, still facing forward, spoke to me in a low voice.

"See that woman over there? The one in the gray wool shawl..."

"The one with her hair done up Western style?"

"Yes, the one clutching the furoshiki bundle. She was in Karuizawa this summer. Wearing rather stylish Western clothes, too."

But to anyone's eyes, her getup now was shabby beyond doubt.

While talking with T., I stole glances at her.

There was something about the space between her brows that gave her face a touch of madness.

And what was more, a sponge that looked like a leopard's pelt was poking out from her furoshiki bundle.

"When she was in Karuizawa she used to dance with young Americans and the like. Modern... whatever they call it."

By the time I parted from T., the man in the raincoat had vanished from where he'd been sitting, without my noticing when.

Still carrying my bag, I walked from a certain station on the government line to a certain hotel.

Standing on both sides of the street were, for the most part, large buildings.

As I walked along there, I suddenly thought of the pine grove.

And not only that — I found something strange within my field of vision.

Something strange? —

What I mean is a semi-transparent cogwheel, ceaselessly turning.

I had had this experience several times before.

The cogwheels gradually multiply, half blocking my field of vision — but that never lasts long; after a while they vanish, and in their place I begin to feel a headache instead — it was always the same.

My eye doctor, on account of this illusion (?),

had repeatedly ordered me to cut down on smoking.

But these cogwheels had already appeared to me before I was twenty, before I had grown familiar with tobacco.

Thinking, here it goes again, I covered my right eye with one hand to test the vision in my left.

My left eye, sure enough, was fine.

But behind the lid of my right eye, several cogwheels were turning.

Watching the building on my right gradually fade away, I hurried on down the street.

By the time I stepped through the hotel entrance, the cogwheels had already vanished.

But the headache still remained.

While handing over my overcoat and hat, I had them get me a room.

Then I telephoned a certain magazine company to discuss money matters.

The wedding banquet seemed to have already begun long before.

I sat down at the corner of the table and set my knife and fork moving.

Beginning with the bride and groom at the head, the more than fifty people seated around the white U-shaped table were of course, every one of them, in high spirits.

But under the bright electric lights, my own mood only grew steadily more gloomy.

To escape this mood, I struck up conversation with the guest beside me.

He was an old man who had let his white side-whiskers grow out just like a lion's mane.

And what was more, he was a certain celebrated Chinese-classics scholar whose name even I knew.

Naturally enough, our talk before long turned to the classics.

"The qilin is, in the end, a kind of unicorn. And the fenghuang too is the bird called the phoenix, ..."

This celebrated scholar seemed to be taking some interest even in talk like mine.

As I went on chattering mechanically, I gradually felt a morbid urge to destroy something, and began saying that Yao and Shun were of course fictitious figures, and that even the author of the Spring and Autumn Annals

had lived much later, in the Han dynasty.

At this the scholar showed open displeasure, and without so much as glancing at my face, cut off my talk almost with the growl of a tiger.

"If even Yao and Shun never existed, then Confucius must have told a lie. It cannot be that a sage would tell lies."

I, of course, fell silent.

Then I tried once more to bring knife and fork to the meat on my plate.

At which a small maggot was quietly writhing at the edge of the meat.

The maggot called up in my mind the English word Worm.

That, too, was surely a word that named some legendary creature, just like the qilin or the fenghuang.

I set down my knife and fork and watched as, before I knew it, champagne was being poured into my glass.

When the banquet was over at last, I walked down the deserted corridor to shut myself away in the room I had taken earlier.

The corridor gave me a feeling less of a hotel than of a prison.

But fortunately, at least, the headache had faded away somewhere along the line without my noticing.

In my room, of course, my bag had been brought up, along with my hat and overcoat.

I sensed my own standing figure in the overcoat hanging on the wall, and hastily flung it into the wardrobe in the corner of the room.

Then I went to stand before the mirror stand and gazed steadily at my own face reflected in it.

My face in the mirror laid bare the bone structure beneath the skin.

The maggot at once rose up clearly in this memory of mine.

I opened the door, went out into the corridor, and walked on, going nowhere in particular.

Then, at the corner leading out to the lobby, a tall standing lamp with a green shade was reflected vividly in the glass door.

It gave my heart a certain feeling of peace.

I sat down in the chair in front of it and thought about various things.

But even there I couldn't manage to sit for five minutes.

Once again a raincoat lay slung, all too limply, over the back of the sofa beside me.

"And this in the dead of winter, too."

Thinking such things, I turned and went back down the corridor once more.

In the waiters' alcove at the corner of the corridor, not a single waiter was to be seen.

But the sound of their voices grazed past my ear for a moment.

It was the English words All right, spoken in answer to something someone had said.

"All right"

? —

Before I knew it, I was fretting to grasp precisely the meaning of this exchange.

"All right"

?

"All right"

?

What in the world was all right?

My room, of course, was hushed and still.

But opening the door and going in filled me, strangely, with unease.

After hesitating a moment, I steeled myself and went into the room.

Then, taking care not to look at the mirror, I sat down in the chair before the desk.

The chair was an easy chair upholstered in blue morocco leather, its grain close to lizard skin.

I opened my bag, took out manuscript paper, and tried to continue a certain short story.

But the pen, dipped in ink, would not move no matter how long I waited.

And not only that — once it finally did move, it went on writing the same words over and over.

All right...... All right...... All right sir...... All right......

Just then the telephone beside the bed suddenly began to ring.

Startled, I stood up, put the receiver to my ear, and answered.

"Who is it?"

"It's me. Me......"

It was my elder sister's daughter on the line.

"What is it? Has something happened?"

"Yes, something terrible has happened. So... something terrible has happened. I've just telephoned Auntie too."

"Something terrible?"

"Yes, so please come right away. Right away, do you hear?"

The line went dead at that.

I hung up the receiver as before, and reflexively pressed the bell button.

But I was clearly aware myself that my hand was trembling.

The waiter did not come readily.

Feeling less irritation than anguish, I pressed the bell button again and again.

All the while, at last, understanding the word "all right"

that fate had spoken to me.

That afternoon, my elder sister's husband had been struck and killed by a train in a certain rural place not far from Tokyo.

And what was more, he had had a raincoat thrown over him, out of season though it was.

Even now I am still writing that earlier short story in this hotel room.

No one passes through the corridor at midnight.

But now and then I hear the sound of wings beyond the door.

Perhaps someone keeps birds somewhere nearby.

II: Revenge

I woke in this hotel room at around eight in the morning.

But when I tried to get out of bed, strangely, there was only one slipper.

This was a phenomenon that had, for the past year or two, always filled me with fear and unease.

And what was more, it was a phenomenon that called to mind the prince from Greek mythology who wore only a single sandal.

I rang the bell to call the waiter and had him search for the missing slipper.

The waiter, with a puzzled look, searched all around the cramped room.

"Here it is. In the bathroom."

"Now why on earth would it have gone there?"

"Well, perhaps it was a rat."

After the waiter withdrew, I drank coffee without milk and set about finishing the earlier story.

The window, framed square in tuff stone, looked out onto a snowy garden.

Every time I rested my pen, I would gaze absently at this snow.

Beneath the budding daphne, the snow was fouled with the soot of the city.

It was a sight that gave my heart a certain sense of pity.

Puffing on a cigarette, my pen idle before I knew it, I fell to thinking of various things.

Of my wife, of my children, and above all of my sister's husband. ...

Before he took his own life, my sister's husband had come under suspicion of arson.

And that too, in truth, could not be helped.

Before the house burned, he had taken out fire insurance for twice the value of the house.

What was more, having committed perjury, he was at the time under a suspended sentence.

Yet what unsettled me was not so much his suicide as the fact that, every time I returned to Tokyo, I invariably saw fire burning somewhere.

At times I saw, from the train window, fire burning on a mountainside; at other times, from inside an automobile (my wife and children with me on that occasion), I saw a fire in the neighborhood of Tokiwabashi.

Even before his house burned, this could not help but give me, of its own accord, a premonition that there would be a fire.

"Our house might catch fire this year, you know."

"What an ill-omened thing to say... Still, it would be terrible if it did catch fire. Our insurance is barely worth anything, ..."

We had talked of such things together.

But my house had not burned — forcing myself to push aside the delusion, I tried once more to set the pen moving.

But no matter what, the pen would not move easily even one line.

At last I left the desk, sprawled out on the bed, and began reading Tolstoy's Polikushka.

The hero of this story was a man of complicated character, a mixture of vanity, morbid tendencies, and a hunger for honor.

And what was more, the tragicomedy of his whole life was, with only slight adjustment, a caricature of my own.

Above all, sensing fate's cold mockery within his tragicomedy began, little by little, to fill me with dread.

Before an hour had passed, no sooner had I leapt up off the bed than I flung the book with all my strength into the corner of the room where the curtain hung.

"Go to hell!"

At that a large rat came running out from under the curtain, cutting diagonally across the floor toward the bathroom.

In a single bound I went into the bathroom, opened the door, and searched all around inside.

But not even in the shadow of the white tub was there anything that looked like a rat.

Suddenly filled with dread, I hastily changed my slippers for shoes and walked off down the deserted corridor.

The corridor was, as ever, gloomy as a prison today too.

With my head bowed, going up and down the stairs, before I knew it I had wandered into the kitchen.

The kitchen was, unexpectedly, bright.

But the row of stoves along one side had several flames flickering.

As I passed through, I felt the cooks in their white caps watching me coldly.

At the same time, I felt the hell into which I had fallen.

"O God, punish me. Be not angry with me, lest I perish."

— such a prayer, too, could not help but rise of its own accord to my lips at that moment.

Once outside the hotel, I hurried along the thawing road, the blue sky reflected in it, toward my sister's house.

The trees of the park along the road had all darkened their branches and leaves.

And what was more, every single one of them, just like us human beings, had a front and a back.

That too brought me something closer to terror than to mere displeasure.

I recalled the souls turned into trees in Dante's Hell, and decided instead to walk along the far side of the tram tracks, where nothing but buildings stood in rows.

But there too I could not walk even one block in peace.

"Excuse me for stopping you like this, but..."

It was a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three, wearing a uniform with gold buttons.

I said nothing and simply stared at this young man, noticing a mole on the left side of his nose.

Hat still in hand, he spoke to me timidly, hesitantly.

"Aren't you Mr. A?"

"I am."

"I thought as much somehow, ..."

"Do you need something?"

"No, I only wanted to meet you. I too am one of the sensei's devoted readers..."

By that point I had already touched my hat briefly and started walking on, leaving him behind.

Sensei, Mr. A the sensei, — that was, these days, the most unpleasant word to me of all.

I believed that I had committed every kind of sin there was.

And yet they, on every occasion, went on calling me sensei.

I could not help sensing in that something that mocked me.

Something? —

But my own materialism could not help but reject mysticism.

Only two or three months before, I had published these very words in some small coterie magazine. —

"I possess no conscience whatsoever, artistic or otherwise. What I possess is nerves alone."

......

My sister, together with her three children, had taken shelter in a shack at the back of an alley.

Inside the shack, papered over in brown paper, it was if anything colder than outside.

We warmed our hands over the hibachi and talked of various things.

My sister's husband, a sturdily built man, had instinctively despised me, thin and wasted as I was beyond all others.

And what was more, he had openly declared my works to be immoral.

I had always looked down on him coldly and had never once spoken with him frankly.

But as I talked with my sister, I gradually came to realize that he too had, like me, fallen into hell.

He had, it seemed, actually seen a ghost in a sleeping car.

But I lit a cigarette and made a point of talking on and on about nothing but money.

"Well, given the circumstances we're in, I think I'll sell everything."

"That's only right. The typewriter and things like that should fetch something."

"Yes, and there are the paintings too."

"While you're at it, will you sell Mr. N's portrait too? [your sister's husband] But that one..."

Looking at the single unframed conté drawing hanging on the shack's wall, I felt I could not thoughtlessly go on joking.

His face, struck by the train, had been reduced entirely to a mass of flesh, and only, so it was said, the mustache had survived intact.

This story was, of course, gruesome enough in itself.

But in his portrait, though everything else was rendered perfectly, only the mustache was, for some reason, blurred and indistinct.

Thinking it might be a trick of the light, I moved to view this single conté drawing from various angles.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing. ... It's just that in that portrait, around the mouth, ..."

My sister glanced back for a moment and answered as though she noticed nothing at all.

"Only the mustache does seem strangely faint, doesn't it."

What I had seen was not an illusion.

But if it was not an illusion, then — I decided to leave my sister's house before I could be troubled to stay for lunch.

"Oh, do stay, it's all right."

"Some other day, tomorrow perhaps... today I have to go all the way to Aoyama."

"Ah, that place? Is your condition still bad?"

"I'm still doing nothing but taking medicine. The sleeping pills alone are quite something. Veronal, Neuronal, Trional, Numal..."

About thirty minutes later, I went into a certain building and rode the lift up to the third floor.

Then I tried to push open the glass door of a certain restaurant and go in.

But the glass door would not move.

And what was more, there hung a sign reading "Closed Today"

— that, too, hung there on a lacquered placard.

Growing ever more displeased, I looked once more at the apples and bananas heaped on the table beyond the glass door, then decided to step back out onto the street.

Just then two men who looked like company employees, chatting cheerfully about something, brushed past my shoulder on their way into the building.

One of them, just at that moment, seemed to say something like, "It gets on my nerves."

— or so it seemed.

I stood there on the street, waiting for a taxi to pass.

No taxi came readily.

And what was more, whenever one did happen to pass, it was invariably a yellow car.

(This yellow taxi had, for some reason, made it a habit of causing me the trouble of traffic accidents.) In the midst of this I spotted a green car, which struck me as more auspicious, and decided in any case to head for the mental hospital near the Aoyama cemetery.

"It gets on my nerves — tantalizing — Tantalus — Inferno......"

Tantalus was, in truth, none other than myself, gazing at the fruit through the glass door.

Cursing the Dante's Hell that had risen before my eyes twice now, I sat gazing steadily at the driver's back.

In the midst of this I began to feel that everything, everything, was a lie.

Politics, business, art, science — every one of these was, to a man like me, nothing more than variegated enamel concealing this terrible thing called life.

I gradually felt short of breath and threw the taxi window wide open.

But the sensation of something gripping my heart would not leave me.

At last the green taxi came speeding up toward Jingu-mae.

There was supposed to be a side street there that turned off toward a certain mental hospital.

But today, for some reason, even that eluded me.

After having the taxi go back and forth along the tram tracks several times, I gave up at last and decided to get out.

I finally found that side street and turned down the muddy road.

Then, before I knew it, I had taken a wrong turn and come out in front of the Aoyama funeral hall.

It was a building I had not once passed even the gate of since Sensei Natsume's funeral service, nearly ten years before.

I, ten years ago, had not been happy either.

But at least I had been at peace.

Gazing in through the gravel-strewn gate, I could not help but recall the basho tree of the "Soseki Sanbo"

and feel that some chapter of my own life, too, had come to a close.

And what was more, I could not help but sense some presence that had led me back here, before this cemetery, exactly ten years later.

After leaving the gate of that mental hospital, I got into a car again and decided to return to the earlier hotel.

But when I stepped down at the hotel entrance, a man in a raincoat was there, quarreling with a waiter about something.

With a waiter? —

No, it was not a waiter — it was a doorman in a green uniform, in charge of the automobiles.

Feeling some ill omen at the thought of entering this hotel, I promptly turned and went back the way I had come.

By the time I came out onto the Ginza street, evening was already drawing near.

The shops lining both sides and the dizzying crowds of passersby could not help but make me all the more melancholy.

What was especially unpleasant was the way the people on the street walked along so lightly, as if they knew nothing of sin.

Through the dim daylight mixed with electric light, I walked steadily north, on and on.

In the midst of this, my eye was caught by a bookshop with magazines piled up in it.

I went into this bookshop and looked absently up at the tiered shelves.

Then a book titled "Greek Mythology"

caught my eye, and I decided to glance through it.

"Greek Mythology," with its yellow cover,

appeared to have been written for children.

And yet the single line I happened to read struck me down at once.

"Not even Zeus, greatest of the gods, is a match for the god of vengeance. ..."

Leaving that bookshop behind, I walked on through the crowds.

Before I knew it my back had begun to stoop, and I felt, ceaselessly, the god of vengeance stalking me. ...

III: Night

On the second floor of the Maruzen bookstore, I found Strindberg's "Legends"

on the shelf and skimmed through two or three pages at a time.

It was a book that described things not so different from my own experience.

And what was more, it had a yellow cover.

I put "Legends"

back on the shelf and this time pulled out, almost at random, one thick volume.

But this book too, in one of its illustrations, showed nothing but cogwheels lined up in rows, each fitted with eyes and a nose no different from ours.

(It was a collection of paintings by the mentally ill, gathered by some German.) Before I knew it I felt a rebellious spirit rising within my gloom, and like a reckless gambling addict, I threw open one book after another.

But for some reason every single book, without fail, hid some needle or other within its text or its illustrations.

Every single book? —

Even when I picked up "Madame Bovary,"

which I had read over so many times before, I felt that I myself, in the end, was nothing but a bourgeois Monsieur Bovary. ...

On the second floor of Maruzen, near closing time, there seemed to be no other customer besides myself.

I wandered among the bookshelves under the electric lights.

Then, pausing my feet before a shelf marked with a sign reading "Religion,"

I glanced through a single book with a green cover.

In the table of contents of this book, some chapter or other listed the words "the four terrible enemies — doubt, fear, pride, sensual desire"

— such were the words it set out.

No sooner had I seen these words than I felt a still greater rebellious spirit rising within me.

What were called those enemies were, at least to me, nothing but other names for sensitivity and reason.

But that traditional spirit, too, made me unhappy just as much as the modern spirit did — that, more than ever, was unbearable to me.

Still holding this book, I suddenly recalled a phrase I had once used as a pen name — "Juryo Yoshi,"

that word, come back to me now.

It told of a young man who, before he had learned the gait of Handan, forgot even the gait of his own home of Shouling, and crawled home in the end on hands and knees — a story from the "Han Feizi,"

the young man in that book.

There could be no doubt that, to anyone's eyes, I today was that very "Juryo Yoshi"

itself.

But that I, before I had yet fallen into hell, had already been using this pen name — turning my back on the great bookshelf, I made an effort to drive off the delusion and went into the poster exhibition room just opposite me.

But there too, in one poster, a knight who looked like Saint George was stabbing to death a winged dragon.

And what was more, beneath his helmet that knight bared half a scowling face that closely resembled one of my enemies.

I recalled once again the tale, in the Han Feizi,

of the art of dragon-slaying, and instead of passing through the exhibition room, went down the broad staircase.

Walking along the Nihonbashi thoroughfare, night now fallen, I kept turning over in my mind the phrase dragon-slaying.

That, too, happened to be the inscription on an inkstone I owned.

It was a certain young entrepreneur who had given me this inkstone.

After failing at various ventures, he had finally gone bankrupt at the end of last year.

I looked up at the high sky and tried to think, amid the light of countless stars, just how small this earth was — and therefore just how small I myself was.

But the sky, clear during the day, had by now clouded over completely.

Suddenly sensing that something bore me ill will, I decided to take refuge in a certain café across the tram tracks.

It was, without doubt, a "refuge"

— nothing less.

I felt something close to peace in the rose-colored walls of this café, and at last sat down at ease at the innermost table.

There, fortunately, were only two or three other customers besides myself.

I sipped a cup of cocoa and, as usual, lit up a cigarette.

The smoke of my cigarette rose faintly blue against the rose-colored wall.

This gentle harmony of colors was, likewise, a pleasure to me.

But before long I noticed a portrait of Napoleon hanging on the wall to my left, and gradually began to feel uneasy again.

When Napoleon was still a schoolboy, at the very end of his geography notebook he had written the words "Saint Helena, a small island"

— or so it was said.

It might, as people like us would say, have been mere coincidence.

But it was certain that it had roused terror even in Napoleon himself. ...

Gazing steadily at Napoleon, I fell to thinking of my own works.

What first rose up in my memory were the aphorisms in "Words of a Dwarf"

— that collection.

(Above all the words "Life is more hellish than hell itself."

) Then came "Hell Screen,"

and the fate of its hero, the painter named Yoshihide.

And then... puffing on my cigarette, I looked around the café to escape such memories.

It had not even been five minutes since I had taken refuge here.

And yet in that short time this café had already completely changed its appearance.

What displeased me most of all was that the mahogany-imitation chairs and tables no longer harmonized in the least with the rose-colored walls around them.

Dreading being plunged once more into an anguish invisible to other eyes, I flung down a silver coin and hurried to leave the café at once.

"Excuse me, sir, but this will be twenty sen, ..."

What I had flung down was a copper coin.

Feeling humiliated, I walked alone through the streets and suddenly thought of my house, far off among the pine groves.

It was not the house of my foster parents out in the suburbs, but simply a house I had rented for my own family, with myself at its center.

I had lived in just such a house some ten years before, too.

But owing to certain circumstances, I had rashly begun living together with my father and mother.

At the same time I had begun turning, by turns, into a slave, a tyrant, and a powerless egoist. ...

By the time I returned to the hotel, it was already close to ten o'clock.

Having walked a very long way, I found I had no strength left to return to my room, and sat down instead in a chair before the hearth, where thick logs were burning.

Then I fell to thinking about the long novel I had been planning.

It was to take, as its heroes, people from every era from Suiko down to Meiji, and to string together, in chronological order, some thirty-odd short stories in all.

Watching the sparks dance up from the fire, I suddenly thought of a certain bronze statue that stood before the Imperial Palace.

This statue, clad in armor, sat astride its horse, riding high like loyalty itself made flesh.

But his enemy had been —

"A lie!"

Once again I slid from the distant past down into the near-at-hand present.

There, fortunately, happened to come along a certain senior sculptor of my acquaintance.

As ever, he wore a velvet suit and kept his short goatee curled upward.

I rose from my chair and grasped the hand he held out to me.

(This was not my own custom, but rather one I followed out of deference to his, formed over half a life spent in Paris and Berlin.) But his hand, strangely enough, was damp, like the skin of some reptile.

"Are you staying here?"

"Yes, ..."

"To work?"

"Yes, I'm working too."

He gazed steadily at my face.

I sensed in his eyes an expression close to that of a detective.

"Why don't you come talk in my room?"

I said, in a tone almost like a challenge.

(That I, for all my lack of courage, should suddenly take on such a challenging manner was one of my besetting faults.) At this he smiled and asked in return, "Which room is yours?"

— so he asked.

We walked shoulder to shoulder, like the closest of friends, back to my room, threading our way among the foreigners talking quietly around us.

Once in my room, he sat down with his back to the mirror.

Then he began talking of all sorts of things.

All sorts of things? —

But mostly it was talk of women.

I was, without doubt, one who had fallen into hell for the sins I had committed.

But precisely for that reason, talk of vice only made me more melancholy still.

Turning momentarily puritanical, I began to mock those women.

"Just look at Miss S.'s lips. Those have surely been kissed by any number of men..."

I suddenly fell silent and stared, in the mirror, at his figure from behind.

He had, just below his ear, a yellow plaster stuck to his skin.

"Kissed by any number of men?"

"That's the sort of person she strikes me as."

He smiled and nodded.

I sensed that, in his heart, he was watching me constantly, trying to learn my secret.

And yet our talk never once strayed from the subject of women.

Rather than hating him, I felt ashamed of my own faintheartedness, and could not help growing more melancholy still.

At last, after he had gone, I sprawled out on the bed and began reading "A Dark Night's Passing,"

— that novel.

The spiritual struggles of its hero struck me, every one of them, as painfully close to home.

Comparing myself to this hero, I felt just how much of a fool I had been, and before I knew it, tears were running down my face.

At the same time, before I knew it, those tears had brought a kind of peace to my heart.

But that, too, did not last long.

My right eye began once more to sense the semi-transparent cogwheels.

The cogwheels went on turning as before, gradually increasing in number.

Fearing that a headache was about to begin, I set the book down on the bedside table, swallowed 0.8 grams of Veronal, and resolved simply to sleep soundly.

And yet, in my dream, I found myself gazing at a certain swimming pool.

There, a number of boys and girls were swimming and diving about.

Leaving this pool behind, I walked on toward the pine grove beyond.

Then someone behind me called out "Father"

to me.

I turned to look and found my wife standing before the pool.

At the same time I felt a fierce pang of regret.

"Father, what about the towel?"

"Never mind the towel. Just watch the children."

I began walking on again.

But before I knew it, the ground I walked on had turned into a railway platform.

It appeared to be a country station, a platform lined with a long hedge.

There, too, stood a university student named H, along with an elderly woman.

On seeing my face, they came walking toward me and began talking to me all at once.

"What a terrible fire that was."

"I only just managed to get away myself."

I felt as though I had seen this elderly woman somewhere before.

And what was more, talking with her filled me with a kind of pleasant excitement.

Just then the train, sending up smoke, drew quietly up alongside the platform.

I boarded this train alone and walked between the sleeping berths, white cloths hanging down on either side.

Then, on one of the berths, I saw a naked woman, close to a mummy, lying on her side, facing me.

She was, without doubt, my god of vengeance — the daughter of a certain madman. ...

The moment I woke, I found myself leaping out of bed before I knew it.

My room was, as ever, bright with electric light.

But somewhere I could hear the sound of wings, and the squeak of a rat.

I opened the door, went out into the corridor, and hurried to the hearth as before.

Then, sitting down in the chair, I began gazing at the faltering flames.

There a waiter in a white uniform came over to add more firewood.

"What time is it?"

"About half past three, sir."

But over in the corner of the lobby, a woman who looked American went on reading some book.

Even seen from a distance, the dress she wore was, without doubt, green.

Feeling somehow saved, I resolved to sit quietly and wait for dawn to break.

Like an old man, worn down by years of illness, quietly awaiting death. ...

IV: Still?

I finally finished the earlier short story in this hotel room and decided to send it to a certain magazine.

Though the fee I would earn for it was not even enough to cover a week's stay.

But satisfied at having gotten my work out of the way, I decided to go out to a certain bookshop in Ginza in search of some kind of spiritual tonic.

On the winter-sunlit asphalt, scraps of paper lay scattered here and there.

Whether from a trick of the light, every one of those scraps looked exactly like a rose in bloom.

Feeling the goodwill of some presence, I went into that bookshop.

There too, everything seemed a little tidier than usual.

Only a bespectacled young girl, talking with a clerk about something, gave me a certain uneasy feeling.

But recalling the rose-shaped scraps of paper fallen in the street, I decided to buy "Anatole France's Dialogues"

and "Mérimée's Letters,"

these I decided to buy.

With the two books under my arm, I went into a certain café.

Then, at the innermost table, I waited for my coffee to arrive.

Across from me sat a man and a woman who looked like mother and son.

The son, though younger than I, resembled me almost exactly.

And what was more, they had their faces drawn close together and were talking like a pair of lovers.

Watching them, I began to sense that the son, at least, was conscious of giving his mother a kind of sexual comfort as well.

That was, without doubt, one instance of the same elective affinity I too had known.

And at the same time, without doubt, one instance of some will that turned this present life into a hell.

But — dreading falling once more into anguish, and taking the fortunate arrival of my coffee as an excuse, I opened "Mérimée's Letters"

and began to read. In these letters too, just as in his novels, he let flash sharp aphorisms here and there.

Those aphorisms, before I knew it, began to make my spirit as hard and solid as iron.

(This susceptibility to influence was, likewise, one of my weaknesses.) Having finished my one cup of coffee, I felt myself ready to face "anything at all,"

and promptly left that café behind.

Walking along the street, I peered into one shop window after another.

A certain frame shop's window displayed a portrait of Beethoven.

It was a portrait of the sort that made him look like genius itself, hair standing on end.

I could not help finding this Beethoven faintly ridiculous. ...

In the midst of this I happened to run into an old friend from my higher-school days.

This professor of applied chemistry, carrying a large soft-brimmed leather bag, had one eye bright red with blood.

"What's happened to your eye?"

"This? This is just conjunctivitis."

I suddenly recalled that, for the past fourteen or fifteen years, my own eyes too had always developed conjunctivitis, just like his, whenever I sensed that same elective affinity.

But I said nothing of it.

He clapped me on the shoulder and began talking of mutual friends.

Then, still talking, he led me off to a certain café.

"It's been ages, hasn't it. Not since the unveiling of Zhu Shunshui's monument, I think."

After lighting a cigar, he spoke to me across the marble table like this.

"That's right. That Shu-shun..."

For some reason I could not pronounce the words Zhu Shunshui correctly.

That it should have been Japanese made this all the more unsettling to me.

But he, quite unconcerned, went on talking of various things.

Of a novelist named K, of the bulldog he had bought, of a poison gas called lewisite. ...

"You don't seem to be writing anything at all these days. Though I did read 'The Register of the Dead.' ... Was that your autobiography?"

"Yes, my autobiography."

"That one was a bit morbid, wasn't it. How's your health been lately?"

"Same as ever — nothing but medicine, that's the state of things."

"I've had insomnia myself lately, you know."

"Myself too? — Why do you say 'yourself too'?"

"Well, don't they say you have insomnia too? Insomnia's dangerous, you know. ..."

In his eye, bloodshot only on the left side, something close to a smile floated.

Before I could answer, I found I could not pronounce the sh sound

in "insomnia" correctly.

"Only natural, for a madman's son."

Before ten minutes had passed I was walking the streets alone again.

The scraps of paper fallen on the asphalt, now and then, could not help but look somewhat like the faces of us human beings.

Then, coming from the opposite direction, a woman with bobbed hair passed by.

From a distance she was beautiful.

But once she drew near, I saw that her face, beneath its fine wrinkles, was ugly.

And what was more, she appeared to be pregnant.

I turned my face away without thinking and turned down a broad side street.

But after walking a while, I began to feel the pain of my hemorrhoids.

It was a pain that, for me, nothing but a sitz bath could cure.

"A sitz bath — Beethoven too used to take sitz baths. ..."

The smell of the sulfur used in a sitz bath at once assaulted my nose.

But of course there was no sulfur to be seen anywhere on the street.

Recalling once more the rose-shaped scraps of paper, I made an effort to walk on firmly.

About an hour later, having shut myself up in my room, I sat at the desk before the window, setting to work on a new story.

The pen ran across the manuscript paper with a speed that even surprised me.

But after two or three hours, it stopped short, as though held back by something invisible to my eyes.

Unable to help it, I left the desk and paced back and forth about the room.

My delusions of grandeur were always most pronounced at such times.

In a savage kind of joy, I came to feel that I had no parents, no wife or children — only the life that flowed out from my pen.

And yet, four or five minutes later, I had to go to the telephone.

No matter how many times I answered, the telephone did nothing but repeat, over and over, some vague and indistinct words.

But whatever it was, it certainly sounded like "Mole."

At last I left the telephone and began pacing the room once more.

But that word "Mole" alone would not stop nagging at me strangely.

"Mole — Mole ......"

Mole was the English word for mogura-mochi.

This association, too, gave me no pleasure.

But a few seconds later I respelled Mole as la mort.

La mort — this French word for death at once filled me with unease.

Death, just as it had closed in on my sister's husband, seemed now to be closing in on me too.

And yet, even amid my unease, I felt something faintly funny about it.

And what was more, before I knew it, I was smiling.

What was the cause of this funniness? —

Even I myself did not know.

For the first time in a while I stood before the mirror and faced my own reflection squarely.

My reflection, too, was of course smiling.

Gazing at this reflection, I found myself thinking of my second self.

My second self — what the Germans call a Doppelgänger — had, fortunately, never once appeared before my own eyes.

But the wife of a Mr. K, who had gone on to become an American film actor, had once spotted my second self in the corridor of the Imperial Theater.

(I recall being flustered when Mrs. K suddenly said to me, "I'm so sorry I didn't stop to greet you the other day."

) And then a certain one-legged translator, now deceased, had likewise spotted my second self in a certain tobacco shop in Ginza.

Death, perhaps, would come not to me but to my second self.

But even if it came to me — I turned my back on the mirror and went back to the desk before the window.

The window, framed square in tuff stone, offered a glimpse of withered lawn and a pond.

Gazing at this garden, I thought of the several notebooks and unfinished plays I had burned, deep among the pine groves.

Then I picked up my pen and began once more to write the new story.

V: Red Light

The light of day began to torment me.

Truly like a mole, I lowered the curtain over the window and, keeping the electric light burning even in daytime, worked on steadily at the earlier story.

Then, when I grew tired of the work, I would open Taine's History of English Literature and read through the lives of the poets.

Every one of them had been unhappy.

Even the giants of the Elizabethan age — even Ben Jonson, the great scholar of his time — had sunk into such nervous exhaustion that he watched the armies of Rome and Carthage do battle upon his own big toe.

I could not help feeling a joy, cruel and full of malice, at such misfortunes of theirs.

On a certain night with a strong east wind blowing (that, to me, was a good omen), I passed through the basement out to the street and decided to visit a certain old man.

Living alone in the attic of a certain Bible society, working as its caretaker, he devoted himself wholly to prayer and reading.

Warming our hands over the hibachi, beneath the crucifix hung on the wall, we talked of various things.

Why had my mother gone mad?

Why had my father's business failed?

And why, too, had I been punished? —

He, who knew those secrets, wore a strangely solemn smile and stayed with me, talking, for as long as I liked.

And what was more, he would now and then sketch, in a few short words, some caricature of human life.

I could not help but respect this hermit of the attic.

But as I talked with him, I discovered that he too was moved by that same elective affinity. —

"That gardener's daughter, she's good-looking and good-natured too, ... she's kind to me, you see."

"How old is she?"

"She'll be eighteen this year."

That might, for him, have been a fatherly kind of love.

But I could not help sensing passion in his eyes.

And what was more, on the apple he offered me, a unicorn had begun to take shape, before I knew it, upon its yellowing skin.

(I had, again and again, discovered mythical creatures in the grain of wood or the cracks of a coffee cup.) The unicorn was, without doubt, a qilin.

I recalled that a certain hostile critic had once called me "the child prodigy qilin of the 1910s,"

and felt that even this attic with its crucifix was no safe haven either.

"How have you been keeping, these days?"

"Same as ever — nothing but jangled nerves."

"Medicine won't help with that. Have you no wish to become a believer?"

"If someone like me even could..."

"There's nothing difficult about it at all. Only believe in God, believe in His Son Christ, and believe in the miracles Christ performed, and..."

"I can believe in the Devil well enough. ..."

"Then why not believe in God? If you believe in shadow, surely you cannot help believing in light as well?"

"But surely there is also darkness with no light in it."

"Darkness with no light?"

I had no choice but to fall silent.

He too was walking through darkness, just as I was.

But he believed that where there was darkness, there was also light.

That single point alone was where our two logics diverged.

But that, at least to me, was without doubt a chasm I could not cross. ...

"And yet light surely exists. The proof of it is that miracles exist. ... Even now, things like miracles occur again and again, you know."

"Those would be miracles worked by the Devil. ..."

"Now why would you say a thing like the Devil?"

For the past year or two I had felt the temptation to tell him what I myself had experienced.

But I could not help fearing that it would reach my wife and children through him, and that I too, like my mother, would end up committed to a mental hospital.

"What's that, over there?"

This sturdy old man turned to look back at the old bookshelf, his expression taking on something of a faun's.

"The complete works of Dostoevsky. Have you read Crime and Punishment?"

I had, of course, grown familiar with four or five volumes of Dostoevsky as far back as ten years ago too.

But by some coincidence (?),

the words Crime and Punishment,

as he spoke them, moved me, and I had him lend me the book before deciding to return to the hotel.

The crowded street, gleaming under electric lights, was as unpleasant to me as ever.

Above all, running into someone I knew was something I felt I could not possibly bear.

I made a point of choosing dark streets and walked along like a thief.

But after a while I began, before I knew it, to feel a pain in my stomach.

The only thing that could stop this pain was a glass of whiskey.

I found a certain bar and tried pushing open its door to go in.

But inside the cramped bar, wreathed in cigarette smoke, a number of young men who looked like artists were crowded together, drinking.

And what was more, in the middle of them, a woman with her hair done up to cover her ears was earnestly playing on and on at a mandolin.

Struck at once with dismay, I turned back without stepping through the door.

Then, before I knew it, I discovered my own shadow swaying left and right.

And what was more, the light illuminating me was, unnervingly, red.

I stopped still in the street.

But my shadow went on moving left and right ceaselessly, just as before.

Turning timidly to look, I at last discovered a colored-glass lantern hanging from the eaves of that bar.

The lantern was swaying slowly through the air in the strong wind. ...

The next place I went into was a certain basement restaurant.

I stood at the bar there and ordered a whiskey.

"Whiskey, sir? We've only Black and White, I'm afraid, ..."

I poured the whiskey into soda water and began drinking it, sip by sip, in silence.

Beside me, two men in their late twenties, who looked like newspaper reporters, were talking together in low voices.

And what was more, they were speaking French.

With my back turned to them, I felt their gazes on me over my entire body.

It was a sensation that struck my whole body, in truth, like radio waves.

They surely knew my name, and seemed to be gossiping about me.

"[Bien... très mauvais... pourquoi?...]"

"Pourquoi?... le diable est mort!..."

"Oui, oui... d'enfer..."

I flung down a silver coin (it was the last silver coin I had) and decided to flee out of that basement.

The street, swept by the night wind, strengthened my nerves somewhat, my stomach pain having faded a little.

I thought of Raskolnikov and felt a desire to confess everything.

But that would surely give rise to tragedy — not only for myself, but for my family as well.

And what was more, whether even this desire was genuine was itself doubtful.

If only my nerves could grow as strong as an ordinary person's — but for that I would have had to go somewhere far away.

To Madrid, to Rio, to Samarkand, ...

In the midst of this a small white sign hanging from the eaves of some shop suddenly filled me with unease.

It was a trademark for automobile tires, painted with a winged design.

This trademark reminded me of the ancient Greek who had relied on artificial wings.

After soaring up into the sky, his wings had been burned by the sun's light, and in the end he had drowned in the sea.

To Madrid, to Rio, to Samarkand — I could not help but mock this dream of mine.

At the same time, I could not help but think of Orestes, pursued by the god of vengeance.

I walked along the dark street, following the canal.

In the midst of this I thought of my foster parents' house out in the suburbs.

My foster parents were, of course, surely waiting day after day for my return.

My children too, most likely — but I could not help but dread some force that, once I returned there, would inevitably bind me fast.

The canal had a single flat-bottomed barge moored alongside its rippling water.

And that barge let a faint light leak out from the bottom of the hull.

There too, without doubt, some family of men and women was living out its life.

hating one another, as ever, precisely because they loved one another. ...

But summoning up my fighting spirit once more, and feeling the whiskey's effects still on me, I decided to return to the hotel.

I sat again at the desk and went on reading "Mérimée's Letters,"

— that book.

Before I knew it, it had given me back a certain vital energy.

But learning that Mérimée, in his later years, had become a Protestant, I suddenly began to sense the face of Mérimée hidden behind his mask.

He too was, just like us, one more man walking through darkness.

Through darkness? —

"A Dark Night's Passing"

began, for someone like me, to turn into a terrifying book.

To forget my melancholy, I began reading "Anatole France's Dialogues"

— that book.

But even this modern faun was, likewise, carrying a cross upon his back. ...

About an hour later, a waiter appeared to hand me a bundle of mail.

One of these was from a Leipzig publisher, requesting a short essay titled "The Modern Woman of Japan"

— that was what it asked of me.

Why should they, of all people, have me write such an essay?

And what was more, this English letter carried the words, "We would be satisfied even with a portrait of a woman with no color but black and white, just as in a Japanese painting"

— added as a postscript in his own hand.

That single line called to my mind the name of the whiskey, Black and White, and I tore this letter to shreds.

Then, this time almost at random, I broke open the seal of another letter and glanced over the yellow writing paper.

This letter had been written by some young man I did not know.

But before I had read even two or three lines, the words "Your 'Hell Screen' is..."

could not help but set my nerves on edge.

The third letter I opened was from my nephew.

I finally caught my breath and read on through household matters and the like.

But even this, when it came to the very end, struck me down without warning.

"I'm sending you the reprint of the poetry collection 'Red Light,' so..."

Red Light!

I felt the cold mockery of something and decided to take refuge outside my room.

There was not a soul to be seen in the corridor.

Steadying myself against the wall with one hand, I made my way at last to the lobby.

Then I sat down in a chair and set about lighting a cigarette.

The cigarette, for some reason, was an Air Ship.

(Ever since settling into this hotel, I had made a habit of smoking only Stars.) Once more the artificial wings rose up before my eyes.

I called the waiter over and asked for two packs of Stars.

But according to the waiter, Stars alone happened to be out of stock.

"We do have Air Ships, sir, ..."

Shaking my head, I looked around the wide lobby.

Across from me, four or five foreigners sat around a table, talking.

And what was more, one of them — a woman in a red one-piece dress — while talking with them in a low voice, seemed now and then to glance my way.

"Mrs. Townshead......"

Something invisible to my eyes whispered these words to me.

A name like Mrs. Townshead was, of course, one I did not know.

Even supposing it was the name of the woman over there — I rose from my chair again and, dreading the thought of losing my mind, decided to return to my room.

Once back in my room, I meant to telephone a certain mental hospital at once.

But being admitted there felt, to me, no different from dying.

After endless hesitation, to distract myself from this dread, I began reading "Crime and Punishment"

— that book.

But the page I happened to open to was, from "The Brothers Karamazov,"

a certain passage.

Thinking I must have picked up the wrong book, I glanced down at the cover.

"Crime and Punishment"

— the book was, without doubt, "Crime and Punishment"

itself.

Sensing the finger of fate at work in this bookbinder's error — and in my having opened, of all pages, to that misbound one — I went on, unable to help myself, and read it through.

But before I had read even a single page, I felt my whole body begin to tremble.

It was the passage depicting Ivan, tormented by the Devil.

Ivan, Strindberg, Maupassant, or perhaps myself, here in this very room. ...

The only thing that could save someone like me was sleep, and sleep alone.

But my sleeping pills, before I knew it, had run out entirely, down to the last packet.

I could not possibly bear going on suffering without sleep.

But a kind of desperate courage rose up in me, and, having coffee brought to my room, I resolved to set my pen moving as though fighting for my life.

Two pages, five pages, seven pages, ten pages — the manuscript grew before my very eyes.

I filled the world of this story with supernatural creatures.

And what was more, into one of those creatures I painted a portrait of myself.

But fatigue gradually began to cloud my mind.

At last I left the desk and lay down flat on my back on the bed.

For some forty or fifty minutes I seemed to sleep.

But then I felt someone whisper these words into my ear, and started awake at once, leaping to my feet.

"Le diable est mort"

Beyond the tuff-stone window, dawn was breaking, cold and bleak, before I knew it.

I stood right in front of the door and looked around the empty room.

Then I saw that the window glass across the way, misted over patchily by the outside air, showed a small landscape.

It was, without doubt, a landscape of the sea beyond a stand of yellowing pines.

Timidly I drew near the window and discovered that what formed this landscape was, in fact, the withered lawn and pond of the garden.

And yet my illusion had, before I knew it, called up something close to homesickness for my own house.

The moment nine o'clock came, I resolved to telephone a certain magazine company, settle the matter of money somehow, and return home to my house.

All the while stuffing books and manuscripts into the bag set upon the desk.

VI: Airplane

I sped by automobile from a certain station on the Tokaido line to a summer resort deeper in the hills.

The driver, for some reason, had an old raincoat thrown over him despite the cold.

Finding this coincidence unsettling, I made a point of not looking at him and turned my eyes instead out the window.

Then, beyond a stand of low pines — along what was probably an old highway — I caught sight of a funeral procession filing past.

White paper lanterns and dragon-shaped lamps did not seem to be among it.

But gold and silver artificial lotus flowers swayed quietly before and behind the palanquin. ...

Once I finally arrived home, thanks to my wife and children and the strength of my sleeping medicine, I passed two or three days in fairly complete peace.

From the upper floor of my house, the sea showed faintly beyond the pine grove.

I sat at my desk on this upper floor and, listening to the doves' calls, resolved to work only in the mornings.

Besides doves and crows, sparrows too would come fluttering in onto the veranda.

That, too, was a pleasure to me.

"A joyous sparrow enters the hall"

— pen still in hand, I would think, each time, of these very words.

On a warm, overcast afternoon, I went out to a certain general store to buy ink.

But all that was lined up in that shop was sepia-colored ink.

Sepia-colored ink had always, more than any other ink, filled me with displeasure.

I had no choice but to leave the shop and wander alone down a street with few passersby.

There, coming from the opposite direction, a foreigner of about forty, apparently nearsighted, passed by with his shoulders held stiffly high.

He was a Swede living locally, a paranoiac afflicted with delusions of persecution.

And what was more, his name was Strindberg.

As I passed him, I felt something strike my body, physically, in some way.

This street was no more than two or three blocks long.

But in the course of passing through those two or three blocks, a dog, black on exactly one half of its face, passed by my side no fewer than four times.

Turning down a side street, I thought of the whiskey Black and White.

And what was more, I recalled that the tie that Strindberg had just been wearing was black and white too.

I could not, no matter how I tried, think of this as mere coincidence.

If it was not coincidence, then — feeling as though only my head were walking, I stopped for a moment in the street.

By the roadside, within a wire fence, lay a discarded glass bowl, faintly tinged with the colors of the rainbow.

This bowl, too, had a pattern like wings raised in relief around its base.

There, from the treetops of the pines, a number of sparrows came fluttering down.

But the moment they neared this bowl, every single sparrow, as though by some agreement, fled all at once back up into the air. ...

I went to my wife's family home and sat down in a rattan chair at the edge of the garden.

In the wire enclosure at the corner of the garden, a number of white Leghorn chickens walked about quietly.

And then, too, at my feet, a black dog lay stretched out.

Fretting to solve a riddle no one else could understand, I made small talk, at least outwardly composed, with my wife's mother and younger brother.

"It's so quiet here, isn't it."

"Quieter than Tokyo, at any rate."

"Are there troublesome things even here?"

"Well, this is still part of the world, after all."

My wife's mother said this with a laugh.

This summer resort, too, was in truth surely nothing other than "the world"

— of that there could be no doubt.

In the mere space of a year, I had come to know all too well how much sin and tragedy took place here as well.

A doctor who had slowly tried to poison his patient; an old woman who set fire to her adopted son and his wife's house; a lawyer who tried to seize his sister's fortune — to look upon the houses of such people was to me always no different from glimpsing hell within the midst of life.

"There's a madman in this town, isn't there."

"You mean little H, don't you. He isn't mad — he's simply gone simple."

"Dementia praecox, they call it. Every time I see him I can't help feeling uneasy. The other day, for whatever reason, there he was bowing before the horse-headed Kannon."

"Feeling uneasy at a thing like that — you must grow stronger than that, you know."

"You're stronger than I am, brother, and yet —"

My wife's younger brother, his chin ragged with unshaven stubble, sat up straight on his bedding and, as always, joined our talk with his usual diffidence.

"Because even in strength there's a weak spot. ……"

"Well, well, that's a fine thing to hear."

I looked at my wife's mother as she said this, and could not help but give a wry smile.

Then her brother, smiling too, gazed out at the pine grove beyond the distant hedge and went on talking, as though in a kind of rapture.

(This young man, still recovering from illness, sometimes seemed to me nothing less than a spirit that had shed its flesh.)

"Just when you think he's strangely unearthly, his human desires turn out to be terribly fierce too. ……"

"Just when you think he's a good man, he's a wicked one as well."

"No, it isn't so much good and evil — it's something even more opposite than that. ……"

"Then I suppose there's a child inside the man, too."

"Not quite that either. I can't put it clearly, but ...... perhaps it's more like the two poles of electricity. In any case, he holds opposites together within him."

It was then that a violent roar of an airplane startled us.

I looked up at the sky without thinking and spotted an airplane soaring so low it seemed almost to brush the pine tops.

Its wings were painted yellow.

It was a rare monoplane.

The chickens and dogs, startled by the noise, scattered in every direction.

The dog in particular barked wildly, tucked its tail, and bolted in under the veranda.

"Won't that airplane fall?"

"It's all right. …… Do you know of a sickness called airplane disease, brother?"

I lit a cigarette and, in place of saying "No,"

merely shook my head.

"They say the men who ride in airplanes like that breathe nothing but the air of high altitudes, so that little by little they grow unable to bear the air down here on the ground. ……"

Having left my wife's mother's house behind, I walked through a pine grove where not a single branch stirred, growing steadily more melancholy as I went.

Why had that airplane passed directly over my head, and nowhere else?

And why, too, did that hotel sell nothing but Air Ship cigarettes?

Tormented by these various questions, I chose to walk along a road where there was no sign of anyone.

Beyond the low dunes, the sea lay clouded over entirely in gray.

And on those same dunes stood a swing frame with no swing on it.

I gazed at this swing frame and at once thought of a gallows.

Indeed, two or three crows were perched atop the frame, and none of them, even at the sight of me, showed the least sign of taking flight.

What was more, the crow perched in the middle raised its great beak to the sky and cried out, distinctly, four times.

I decided to follow along a sandy bank of withered grass and turn into a lane lined with many summer villas.

On the right side of this lane, amid tall pines, a two-story wooden Western-style house was supposed to stand, white against the trees.

(A close friend of mine used to call this house "the house where spring dwells"

— so he called it.) But when I came to pass in front of this house, there was nothing there but a single bathtub sitting atop a concrete foundation.

A fire — I thought at once, and walked on without looking that way.

Just then a man on a bicycle came riding straight toward me from the other direction.

He wore a dark brown cap and, his eyes fixed in a strangely steady stare, was bent low over the handlebars.

I suddenly sensed my brother-in-law's face in his, and before I came within sight of him I turned off into a side lane.

But there too, in the middle of this lane, lay the rotting corpse of a mole, belly up.

The sense that something was stalking me grew more unsettling with every step.

Then, one by one, translucent gears began to block my field of vision.

Dreading that my final hour was drawing ever nearer, I walked on with my neck held straight.

As the gears increased in number, they gradually began to spin faster.

At the same time the pine grove on my right, its branches silently interlacing, began to look exactly as though seen through finely cut glass.

I felt my heartbeat rising and tried again and again to stop at the roadside.

But even stopping was not easy — it was as though someone were pushing me on. ……

About thirty minutes later, I lay on my back upstairs, my eyes shut tight, enduring a violent headache.

Then, behind my eyelids, a wing began to appear, its silver feathers folded like scales.

It was, in fact, something projected quite distinctly onto my retina.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling, confirmed, of course, that there was nothing of the kind there, and then decided to close my eyes once more.

But still, sure enough, the silver wing was there, projected in the darkness.

I suddenly remembered that the radiator cap of the car I had ridden in the other day had also borne a wing. ……

Just then someone came hurrying up the stairs, or so it seemed, only to go clattering back down again at once.

I realized that it had been my wife, and no sooner had I sat up in alarm than I looked into the dim sitting room just in front of the stairs.

There my wife lay face down, apparently struggling to catch her breath, her shoulders shaking without pause.

"What's wrong?"

"No, it's nothing. ……"

My wife at last lifted her face, forced a smile, and went on speaking.

"It's nothing in particular, really — it's only that all of a sudden I had the feeling you were going to die. ……"

That was, of all my life, the most terrifying experience I have ever had. —

I no longer have the strength to go on writing beyond this point.

To live on in a state of mind like this is a suffering beyond all words.

Is there no one who will quietly strangle me to death while I sleep?