舞姫 English

The coal loading is already done.

The area around the tables in the second-class cabin is very quiet, and the brightness of the incandescent lamps is wasted.

Tonight, the card-playing companions who gather here every evening are lodged at the hotel,

and I alone remain on the ship.

It was five years ago. My long-held wish had been fulfilled: I received official orders to travel abroad, and when I arrived at this port of Saigon, everything I saw and heard was new and strange. I wrote freely in my travel diary day after day, filling thousands of words, which were published in the newspapers and celebrated by readers — but looking back now, they were childish thoughts, presumptuous words, and even ordinary descriptions of plants, animals, minerals, and customs struck me as remarkable curiosities. How must discerning readers have regarded them?

This time, when I set out on the journey, I bought a notebook intending to keep a diary, yet its pages remain blank. Have I cultivated, through my years of study in Germany, a certain spirit of nil admirari — a refusal to marvel at things?

No, there is another reason entirely.

Truly, the I who now returns eastward is not the I who once sailed west. My learning still leaves much to be desired, but I have come to know the bitter turns of the floating world; it goes without saying that the human heart is not to be trusted; and I have learned, too, that even my own heart is quick to change.

The impressions of one moment — what is right today, wrong tomorrow — why should I put such things to paper for anyone to read?

Is this the reason the diary was never written? No, there is another reason entirely.

Ah — it has already been more than twenty days since I left the port of Brindisi.

Under ordinary circumstances, even a traveler unknown to me would seek to strike up a conversation and ease the tedium of the voyage together — such is the custom at sea. But I have feigned a slight illness and shut myself in my cabin, speaking little even to those traveling with me, because I have been tormented by a grievance known to no one else.

This grievance first swept across my heart like a thin wisp of cloud, blotting out the mountain scenery of Switzerland and leaving me unmoved by the ancient ruins of Italy. For a time it grew into a wrenching anguish, as though my bowels were wrenched nine times a day; now it has hardened into a fixed shadow deep within me. Yet every time I read or see something, it flares up like a reflection in a mirror or an echo answering a sound, summoning boundless waves of longing and tormenting me time and again.

Ah — how shall I ever dissolve this grievance?

Were it any other kind of grief, composing a poem or writing a verse might leave my heart feeling clear and refreshed afterward.

This one has been carved so deeply into me that I doubt even that would help — yet tonight there is no one nearby, and it will be some time yet before the steward comes to turn the key of the electric light. Come then, let me try to set down the broad outline of the matter in writing.

Having received a strict upbringing from childhood, and despite losing my father early, my studies never faltered. Whether in the days at my old domain's academy, or when I later attended the preparatory school in Tokyo, or even after entering the law faculty of the university — the name Ota Toyotaro was always recorded at the head of the class, and it seemed to comfort my mother, who depended on me, her only child, to make her way in the world.

At nineteen I received the title of Bachelor of Laws — a distinction said to be without precedent since the founding of the university — entered a certain government ministry, brought my mother from the countryside to the capital, and spent some three happy years. My superiors held me in exceptional regard, and so I received orders to travel abroad and investigate the affairs of a particular section. Feeling that now was the moment to make a name for myself and restore the fortunes of our family, I scarcely thought it sad to part from my mother, who was past fifty, and traveled far from home to arrive in the city of Berlin.

I stood, armed with a vague ambition for fame and a disciplined capacity for hard work cultivated through years of restraint, suddenly at the center of this vast new metropolis of Europe.

What brilliance it was that struck my eyes.

What splendor sought to bewitch my heart.

Translated literally, Unter den Linden might sound like a tranquil grove of trees — but standing on that great boulevard, wide as a head of flowing hair, and watching the throngs of men and women passing along the stone pavements on either side!

Officers with broad chests and towering shoulders — this was still the era when Kaiser Wilhelm I would appear at the window overlooking the street — adorned in dress uniforms of every brilliant color; fair maidens in Paris fashions; all of them a wonder to the eye. On the asphalt of the road, carriages of every description rolled soundlessly; where the grand buildings parted slightly, a fountain cascaded down with a roar like a summer shower out of a clear sky; in the far distance, beyond the Brandenburg Gate, rising above the interlaced branches of green trees, the golden goddess of victory atop the triumphal column seemed to float in mid-heaven. With so many sights crowding the space before one's very eyes, it is no wonder that a newcomer would be overwhelmed, with no time to take them all in.

Yet in my heart there was a vow: no matter what pleasures I encountered, I would not let idle beauty move me. This resolve stood always as a barrier against the things of the outer world that pressed upon me.

The Prussian officials to whom I rang the bell, presented myself with a letter of introduction, and announced my reason for coming from the East — all of them welcomed me warmly, and promised that, so long as the formalities with the legation proceeded without difficulty, they would teach or transmit whatever I needed to know.

I was glad that I had already studied German and French back home.

Without exception they asked me, on first meeting, where and when I had managed to learn the language so well.

Then, having already obtained official permission to do so, I enrolled my name in the register of the local university whenever my government duties permitted, intending to study political science.

As one month and then two passed, the official consultations were concluded and my investigations progressed steadily; urgent matters I drafted into reports and sent off, and the rest I copied out and preserved — I do not know how many volumes in all.

At the university, I found, contrary to the hopes I had entertained in my youthful imagination, that there was no special course for producing statesmen. Torn between one choice and another, I eventually decided to attend the lectures of two or three legal scholars, paid my fees, and began to listen.

Some three years passed in this way, like a dream. But when the time comes, what a man truly loves cannot be suppressed no matter how one tries. From the days when I studied without rest — glad to be called a prodigy by others, keeping my father's dying wishes and following my mother's teachings — until the time when I worked without slacking, glad to be praised by superiors as a capable hand: throughout all those years I had been nothing more than a passive, mechanical being, without realizing it. Now, at twenty-five, having long been exposed to the free air of this university, for some reason my heart grew restless; my true self, which had lain hidden deep within, gradually began to surface, as if attacking the self of yesterday.

I came to understand that I was suited neither to be the kind of politician who would soar through the world of affairs, nor the kind of jurist who could recite the law codes from memory and hand down judgments in the courts.

I reflected to myself: my mother seemed to want to make of me a living dictionary, and my superior seemed to want to make of me a living law code.

Being a dictionary might still be endured; being a law code was intolerable.

Where before I had responded to even trivial questions with the utmost precision, I now wrote frequently to my superiors arguing that one ought not to be mired in the minute provisions of the law — that if one grasped the spirit of the law, the ten thousand tangled matters would fall apart like splitting bamboo.

At the university, too, I turned away from legal lectures and gave my heart to history and literature, gradually entering a realm where I tasted, as it were, the sweetness of sugarcane.

My superior had intended from the first to fashion me into an instrument to be wielded at will.

How could he welcome a man who harbored independent thoughts and wore an uncommon expression on his face?

My position at that time was precarious.

But this alone would perhaps not have been enough to overturn my standing. For some time, among the Japanese students in Berlin, there had been a disagreeable relationship between a certain influential group and myself; they had grown suspicious of me, and eventually stooped to slander.

Yet was it without cause?

Those men attributed my refusal to raise a glass of beer with them or pick up a billiard cue to cold-heartedness and self-righteous restraint, and they both mocked and envied me.

But they did not know me.

Ah — the real reason was unknown even to myself; how could others have known it?

My heart was like the leaves of the mimosa tree: touch it and it shrank away.

My heart was like that of a maiden.

From earliest childhood, following the instruction of my elders and treading the path of study, then walking the path of service — none of it was done with true courage. What appeared to be patient, diligent perseverance was in truth a self-deception that deceived others as well. I had simply followed, single-mindedly, the path others had set out for me.

That my heart had not been disturbed by outside things was not because I had the courage to cast the world aside and ignore it; it was simply that I feared the outside world and bound my own hands and feet.

Before leaving home, I had no doubt that I was a man of ability, and I believed firmly that my heart could endure whatever came.

Ah, how things were then.

Even until the ship left Yokohama I thought myself a magnificent hero — yet I wet my handkerchief with tears I could not hold back, and I was surprised at myself. But that was my true nature all along.

Was this heart born in me, or was it born of losing my father early and being raised by my mother's hand?

That those men should mock is understandable.

But is it not foolish of them to envy?

This weak and pitiable heart of mine.

I had not the courage to approach the women who sat in the cafes, their faces painted red and white, wrapped in brilliantly colored dresses, beckoning to customers; I had not the courage to go and mingle with the men of fashion who wore tall hats, pinched their noses in spectacles, and spoke in the nasal tones that pass for aristocratic in Prussia —

I had not the courage to go and mingle with them.

Without such courage, there was no way to join the company of those lively countrymen of mine.

And because of this distance in our acquaintance, those men not only mocked and envied me — they also began to suspect me.

This was the very thing that served as the cause of my bearing an unjust charge and enduring, in a short space of time, immeasurable hardship.

It was at dusk one day. I had been strolling through the zoological garden, passed along Unter den Linden, and was walking back to my lodgings on Monbijou Street when I came before an old church in Kloster Lane.

Having crossed that sea of lamplight and entered this narrow, dimly lit alley — with bedsheets and undergarments still hung to dry on the wooden railings of the upper storeys, a tavern where a long-bearded Jewish elder stood before the doorway, and a tenement building set back in a U-shape, one staircase leading directly up to the upper rooms and another down to the home of a blacksmith who lived underground — every time I passed this remnant of three hundred years ago, my mind would fall into a kind of trance, and I would stand still for a moment. I do not know how many times this happened.

As I was about to pass through this spot, I saw a girl leaning against the closed doors of the church gate, weeping with stifled sobs.

She looked to be about sixteen or seventeen.

The hair that escaped from beneath her bonnet was a pale gold, and her clothing, though worn, was not soiled or dirty.

Startled by my footsteps, she looked back at me — I lack a poet's pen to describe what I saw.

Those blue, clear eyes, filled with worry and tinged with sorrow, half-veiled by long lashes that held in them the glimmer of tears: how was it that a single glance from them penetrated to the depths of even my cautious heart?

She seemed to have been overtaken by some unexpected and profound grief, with no time to think of what lay before or behind her, and stood there weeping.

My timid heart was overcome by compassion, and before I knew it I had drawn near and spoken: "Why do you weep? A stranger with no ties to this place may perhaps more easily lend a hand."

And I was myself astonished at my own boldness.

She looked up, startled, and stared at my yellow face. Perhaps the sincerity of my heart showed itself in my expression.

"You seem a kind person. You are not cruel like him. Nor like my mother."

For a moment the dried spring of her tears overflowed again and streamed down her lovely cheeks.

"Help me, please. I want to be a person without shame. Mother struck me for not obeying his words. Father has died. He must be buried tomorrow, and there is not a penny saved in the house."

After that there was only the sound of her sobbing.

My eyes were fixed on the trembling nape of the downcast girl.

"I will walk you home. First, please calm yourself. Do not let others hear you weep. We are on a public street."

As she spoke to me, she had unconsciously leaned against my shoulder; but now she suddenly lifted her head, looked at me as though seeing me for the first time, blushed with embarrassment, and sprang away from my side.

Uncomfortable at being seen, I followed close behind the girl as she walked quickly ahead. She entered the large gate across from the church, where there was a broken stone staircase.

Climbing it, on the fourth floor there was a door so low one had to bend double to pass through.

She gripped a rusted wire bent into a hook and pulled it hard; from within came a hoarse old woman's voice asking, "Who is it?"

asking "Who is it?"

Before the girl had finished answering that Elis had returned, the door was flung roughly open by an old woman with half-whitened hair — not ill-featured, but with the marks of poverty stamped on her brow — wearing an old quilted garment and dirty slippers.

She waited impatiently as Elis greeted me and entered, then slammed the door shut hard.

I stood there in a daze for a moment, then, looking at the door through the lamplight, I saw "Ernst Weigert" written in black lacquer with "tailor" inscribed below.

No doubt this was the name of the girl's late father.

From within came the sound of voices as though in argument, but then it fell quiet and the door opened again.

The old woman apologized with great courtesy for her rude behavior and invited me in.

Inside the door was a kitchen, and on the low window to the right hung a piece of pure white washed linen.

On the left was a rough brick stove.

The door of the room straight ahead stood half open; inside was a bed covered with a white sheet.

The figure lying on it was surely the dead man.

Opening a door beside the stove, she led me into a room.

This was a so-called mansard room

facing the street, so it had no proper ceiling.

There was a bed beneath the slanted beam that ran from the rafters in the corner down to the window — in a spot where, if one stood upright, one's head would strike the ceiling.

The central table was covered with a beautiful cloth, on which were arranged one or two books and a photograph album; an earthenware vase held a costly bouquet of flowers quite out of keeping with the surroundings.

Beside it the girl stood, flushed with shyness.

She was remarkably beautiful.

Her milk-white face glowed with a faint blush in the lamplight.

Her slender, delicate hands and feet were unlike those of a girl from a poor household.

When the old woman had left the room, the girl spoke to me in words touched with a slight accent.

"Forgive me. It was thoughtless of me to lead you here. You seem a kind person; surely you will not despise me. Tomorrow my father must be buried, and there is not a penny in the house. He whom I thought I could rely upon — perhaps you do not know him, the director of the Victoria Theatre. It has been two years since I entered his troupe, and I thought he would certainly help us in our need. But to take advantage of someone's grief and make such a shameless proposal — please help me, sir. I will repay you, scraping from my thin wages, even if I myself go hungry. If even that is not possible, then my mother says I must —"

Her eyes filled with tears and her body trembled.

In those upturned eyes there was a charm that would not let anyone say no.

Did she use those eyes knowingly, or was she herself unaware of their power?

In my pocket I had only two or three silver marks,

which would not be enough, so I removed my watch and placed it on the table.

"Take this to get through the immediate crisis. When the pawnbroker's messenger comes to number three Monbijou Street and asks for Ota, I will give him the proper amount."

The girl seemed struck with surprised gratitude; as I extended my hand in farewell, she brought it to her lips, and hot tears fell upon the back of my hand.

Ah, what an ill-omened encounter it was.

The girl who came on her own to my lodgings to express her thanks — she, like a flower blooming beneath my study window where I sat all day long with Schopenhauer on my right and Schiller on my left.

From that moment our acquaintance grew steadily closer; when our fellow countrymen came to know of it, they leapt quickly to the conclusion that I was one who hunted for pleasure among the troupe of dancing girls.

Yet between the two of us, at that time, there existed only an innocent and guileless joy.

It would be imprudent to name him, but among our countrymen there was someone who loved to meddle, and he reported to my superior that I frequently visited the theatre and associated with an actress.

My superior had already resented my considerable departure from the path of official studies, and in the end he conveyed word to the legation, dismissing me from my post and stripping me of my position.

When the minister communicated this order to me, he said: if I returned home immediately, traveling expenses would be provided; but if I remained here any longer, I could not count on official assistance.

I asked for a week's grace, and while I was turning the matter over in anguish, I received the two letters that caused me the greatest pain of my life.

Though sent at almost the same time, one was in my mother's own handwriting; the other, from a relative, reported the death of my mother — the death of my mother, whom I loved above all things.

I cannot bring myself to repeat here the words of my mother's letter; the tears well up and obstruct the movement of my pen.

Up to this point, my relationship with Elis had been, to outside eyes, purer than pure.

Lacking sufficient education because of her father's poverty, she had responded at the age of fifteen to a dancing master's recruitment and been trained in that shameful trade. After completing her course,

after completing her training, she appeared

at the Victoria Theatre, where she now held the second rank among the performers.

Yet, as the poet Hackländer said of the slaves of the present age, how precarious is the lot of a dancing girl.

Bound by meager wages, driven hard through daytime rehearsals and nighttime performances, she would put on her rouge and don her fine costumes only inside the theatre's dressing room; outside, she could barely clothe and feed herself, so how much greater must be the suffering of those who also have family to support.

It is said that among their number, those who do not sink to the lowest possible trade are rare indeed.

That Elis escaped this fate was owing to her gentle disposition and the protection of her stern father.

She had loved reading from childhood, but the only books she could get her hands on were the wretched little novels from the lending stalls called colportage.

From around the time she came to know me, she grew accustomed to reading the books I lent her, gradually developed a sense of taste, corrected the accents in her speech, and before long the letters she sent me contained fewer and fewer errors.

Thus the first relationship that formed between the two of us was that of teacher and pupil.

When she heard of my sudden dismissal, she turned pale.

I concealed the fact that she had been involved, but she asked me to keep it secret from her mother as well.

This was because she feared her mother would scorn me for having lost my income.

Ah, there is no need to describe it all in detail here, but it was at this moment that my feeling of love for her suddenly deepened and we became inseparable.

One might wonder — or even censure — that with such a great crisis in my own life before me, a truly critical moment of survival, I should have done such a thing. But the affection I bore for Elis had not been shallow from the first moment we met; and now, seeing her face sunken with grief over my misfortune and sorrow at our parting, her disheveled hair falling across her cheek — so beautiful, so touching — that face struck my mind, already inflamed and overwrought from pain and anguish, and in a state of near-trance I arrived at this point. What could I do?

The day I had promised the minister was drawing near, and my fate was pressing.

If I returned home in this state, there seemed no way for a man who had failed without completing his studies and had earned a bad name to find his footing.

And yet if I stayed, I had no means of obtaining funds for my studies.

At this time the one who helped me was Aizawa Kenkichi, now one of my traveling companions.

He had been in Tokyo, already serving as secretary to Count Akatsu, and when he saw my dismissal appear in the official gazette, he persuaded the editor of a certain newspaper to take me on as the paper's correspondent in Berlin, reporting on matters of politics and the arts.

The paper's pay was hardly worth mentioning, but if I moved to cheaper lodgings and changed to a less expensive restaurant for my midday meal, I could make a modest living.

While I was still pondering all of this, it was Elis who stretched out to me the rope of rescue, revealing the sincerity of her heart.

How she persuaded her mother I do not know, but I came to lodge with the two of them, and Elis and I, pooling our slender incomes, passed days that were happy even amid hardship.

When morning coffee was done, she would go off to rehearsal, or on other days stay home; I would head to the reading room on Königstrasse — a place narrow at the front but very deep inside — and read every newspaper, taking out my pencil and gathering material here and there.

In that room, which drew its light through a casement window cut open in the wall, I sat elbow to elbow with young men of no fixed occupation, old men who had lent out their few coins to others while they idled their days away, and merchants stealing a few minutes' rest from the business of the exchange — and at a cold stone table I would busily run my pen, unmindful of the coffee grown cold that a serving girl had brought me. The newspapers, inserted into long thin boards, hung in rows on the wall nearby, and the Japanese man who passed back and forth before them again and again must have seemed curious indeed to those who did not know him.

And when it drew near to one o'clock, on days when she had gone to rehearsal she would stop by on her way back, and she and I would leave the shop together — this girl of extraordinary lightness, so light one felt she could dance upon the palm of one's hand; there must have been onlookers who watched us go with curious eyes.

My studies had deteriorated.

The single faint lamp burning in the garret room, Elis having returned from the theatre and sitting beside it doing her needlework — at the desk next to her I wrote my newspaper articles.

This was very different from the days when I had raked dry pages of legal statutes across paper; now I dealt with the vivid movements of the political world, critical observations of new phenomena in literature and the arts, weaving this and that together, learning from Heine rather than Börne as best I could to organize my thoughts, producing various pieces. Among them, I filed particularly detailed reports on the consecutive deaths of Kaiser Wilhelm I and Kaiser Friedrich III, the accession of the new emperor, and the question of Bismarck's future.

And so from around this time I found myself busier than I had expected. It was difficult to open the few books I owned and pursue my former studies. Although my enrollment at the university had not yet been struck from the register, paying fees was hard, and even the single lecture course I had consolidated my attendance in I rarely managed to attend.

My studies had deteriorated.

But I had gained, in exchange, a different kind of discernment.

This consisted in the following: among the nations of Europe, perhaps none surpasses Germany in the diffusion of learning among the general public.

In the arguments scattered through hundreds of newspapers and journals, there are many of a truly elevated order. From the day I became a correspondent, reading and re-reading with the single trained eye I had developed during my many months of attending the university, copying and copying again, my knowledge — which had until then run along a single track — naturally became synthetic, and I arrived at a level of understanding that most of my fellow Japanese students could not dream of.

Some among them could not even read a German newspaper editorial with any competence.

The winter of Meiji 21 had come.

On the main thoroughfares they scattered sand and wielded scrapers to clear the way, but in the alleys around Kloster Lane the ground was uneven and rutted, and the main fronts alone were sheeted over with ice; in the morning when one opened the door, it was sad to find a sparrow that had starved and frozen to death lying there.

Even with the room heated and a fire stoked in the stove, the cold of northern Europe — piercing through the stone of the walls, boring through the wadding of one's clothing — was all but unbearable.

Two or three nights before, Elis had fainted on stage and been helped home by others. Since then she had been unwell, and every time she ate she vomited — it was her mother who first guessed this might be morning sickness.

Ah, already my own future was uncertain enough; if this were true, what was I to do?

This morning being Sunday I was at home, but my heart was not at ease.

Elis was not unwell enough to stay in bed but sat with a chair drawn up beside the small iron stove, speaking little.

Then a voice came at the door, and before long Elis's mother, who had been in the kitchen, came and handed me a letter that had arrived by post.

I recognized the handwriting as Aizawa's; the postage stamp was Prussian, and the postmark read Berlin.

Puzzled, I opened it and read: the matter had been too sudden for advance notice, but he had arrived the previous evening along with Minister Akatsu.

The Count wished to see me, and I should come at once.

My honor might well be restored now.

He was pressed for time and had written only about business.

I finished reading and looked up with a dazed expression; Elis said:

"Is it a letter from home? Surely it brings no ill tidings."

She must have thought it was something to do with the newspaper's fees.

"No, do not worry yourself. Aizawa — you know his name — has come here with the Minister and is summoning me. He says it is urgent, so I must go now."

No mother sending out her beloved only child could have fussed more attentively.

Perhaps she thought I might be presented to the Minister: Elis forced herself up despite her illness, selected an especially white undershirt, brought out the frock coat with two rows of buttons called a Gehrock

that she had carefully put away, helped me into it, and even tied my cravat for me with her own hands.

"No one could call this unbecoming. Come, look at yourself in the mirror. Why do you show such a displeased expression? I would like to go along with you myself."

She paused a moment and changed her manner slightly.

"No, but looking at you dressed up like this, somehow you no longer seem to be my Toyotaro."

She thought again for a moment.

"Even if you should become rich and great one day, please do not abandon me. Even if what mother says is not what she says it is."

"Rich and great?"

I smiled slightly.

"It has been how many years since I gave up any hope of entering the worlds of politics or society. I have no desire to see the Minister. I am only going to see a friend from whom I have long been parted."

The first-class droshky that Elis's mother had called for

came creaking over the snowy road beneath the window.

I put on my gloves, draped my somewhat worn overcoat over my shoulders without putting my arms through the sleeves, took my hat, kissed Elis goodbye, and descended the stairs.

She opened the frosted window and watched the carriage I had boarded drive away, her disheveled hair blowing in the north wind.

My carriage stopped at the entrance of the Kaiserhof.

At the entrance of the Kaiserhof.

I asked the doorman the room number of Secretary Aizawa and climbed the marble staircase, which I had not trodden in a long while. I entered the antechamber, where plush sofas were fixed about the central pillars

and plush-covered sofas

were arranged, and a mirror stood facing me.

Here I left my overcoat, made my way down the corridor to his room, and paused for a moment outside the door.

In the days when we had both been at the university, Aizawa had praised my conduct most highly — with what expression would he greet me now?

I entered and sat facing him, and saw that though he had grown stouter and more robust than before, his old cheerfulness was unchanged; he seemed to attach no great weight to my misconduct.

There was no leisure for an unhurried recounting of feelings since we had parted; I was brought before the Minister, who entrusted me with an urgent document written in German to be translated.

As I left the Minister's room with the document in hand, Aizawa came after me and invited me to share the midday meal with him.

At the table he asked many questions and I gave many answers.

His path through life had been largely smooth, while mine had been one of misfortune and adversity.

He listened to the unhappy experiences I poured out openly from my heart, and though he was frequently astonished, he made no attempt to reproach me; on the contrary, he denounced the other ordinary students.

But when my account was finished, he spoke gravely, offering me counsel: this particular matter had its root in a weakness of character I was born with, so there was no use saying anything about it now.

Even so, could a man of learning and ability continue indefinitely to be entangled with a single girl, living without purpose?

At present, Count Akatsu's only intent was to make use of my German.

He himself, knowing the reasons for the dismissal at that time, would not press the Count to change his mind forcibly — to appear to him as one who defends someone with a questionable past would benefit his friend nothing and cost himself.

The best way to recommend a man is to first demonstrate his abilities.

Show them, and seek the Count's trust.

And as for his relationship with that girl: even if she were sincere, even if the bond of feeling had grown deep, this was not a love born of knowing his worth — it was a relationship that had grown out of habit, a kind of inertia.

He must resolve to break it off.

These were, in substance, his words.

The direction Aizawa had shown me was like a distant mountain glimpsed by a sailor who has lost his rudder on the open sea.

Yet that mountain was still wrapped in heavy mist; whether I could ever reach it, or even if I did, whether it would bring satisfaction to my heart, was by no means certain.

The life I lived now, poor though it was, held its own happiness; difficult to abandon was Elis's love.

My weak heart could not bring itself to decide, but I agreed, for now, to follow my friend's words and sever this bond of feeling.

It is my nature: I resist those who oppose me, determined not to abandon what I hold; but to a friend I cannot say no.

When I stepped outside, the wind struck my face.

Having just emerged from the hotel dining room, where double-glazed windows were tightly shut and a great ceramic stove blazed with fire,

the cold of four o'clock in the afternoon that pierced my thin overcoat was especially bitter; and as my skin came out in gooseflesh, I felt within my heart a cold of another kind.

The translation was completed in a single night.

My visits to the Kaiserhof

grew gradually more frequent; and while at first the Count's words to me concerned only business, later he began to ask my opinion on recent events back in the homeland, and from time to time he would recount the mishaps that various people had caused during the journey and laugh about them.

After about a month, one day the Count suddenly turned to me and said, "I am to depart tomorrow for Russia. Will you come with me?"

and asked if I would come.

I had not seen the busy Aizawa for several days, and this question caught me off guard.

"How could I refuse your command?"

I am ashamed to put this down.

This answer was not given after swift deliberation.

When someone I have come to trust and rely on suddenly asks me something, I sometimes, in the space of an instant, fail to properly weigh the implications and simply agree.

Then, having agreed, and realizing afterward how difficult the thing may be, I habitually force myself to hide my momentary weakness and endure through with it.

That day I brought home the translation fee along with travel expenses that had been bestowed upon me and left the translation fee with Elis.

This should be sufficient to cover expenses until I returned from Russia.

She had seen a doctor, who confirmed that her condition was not normal.

Being of an anemic constitution, the months had passed without either of us noticing.

The theatre director had sent word that her absence had been too prolonged and her name had been struck from the rolls.

After only a month; no doubt there was a reason for such severity.

She did not seem greatly troubled by my departure on the journey.

She trusted deeply in the sincerity of my heart.

By rail the journey was not a long one, so there was nothing much to prepare.

A black formal suit borrowed to fit me, a newly purchased Gotha almanac of the Russian court nobility, two or three dictionaries — I packed these into a small bag.

packed into a small bag.

My circumstances of late had been full of anxiety, and I felt it would be oppressive to leave her behind alone; and if she were to shed tears at the station it would weigh on me as well. So early the next morning I sent Elis out with her mother to visit someone she knew.

I dressed for travel, locked the door, left the key with the cobbler who lived at the entrance, and departed.

What is there to recount of the journey to Russia?

My duties as interpreter snatched me up at once and cast me high into the clouds.

During the time I spent in Petersburg with the Minister's party, I was surrounded by the splendor of the imperial palace — the extravagance of Paris transported into the midst of ice and snow — with the glitter of countless wax candles, the flashing of numerous medals and epaulettes,

the flashing of numerous medals and epaulettes and ornate decorations,

the flutter of court ladies' fans as they sat beside ornately carved fireplaces and forgot the cold. And since among the whole party I was the one who handled French most fluently, it was largely I who served as intermediary between hosts and guests, conducting affairs.

During this time I did not forget Elis — or rather, I could not forget her, for she sent me a letter every single day.

On the day I left, unwilling to spend the night alone with only a lamp for company, she had stayed until late talking at the house of an acquaintance, waited until exhaustion came, returned home, and gone straight to sleep.

When she woke the next morning, she wondered for a moment if finding herself still alone was a dream or not.

The loneliness she felt on rising she had never felt even in the days when she struggled to make ends meet and had nothing to eat that day.

Such was the substance of her first letter.

Another letter that arrived some time later seemed written under considerable emotional pressure.

She began with the word "No" —

no, only now did she understand the full depth of her feeling for me.

Since I had said I had no close relations back home, if there was a good means of making a living here, was there any reason I would not stay?

She would bind me to her with her love and would not rest until she had kept me.

And if even that failed and I were to return east, it would be easy enough to go along with her mother; but from where would she obtain the considerable travel expenses?

Whatever work she might do, she had always thought she would stay here and wait for the day when I would make my way in the world — yet in these twenty days or so since I had set out on what should have been a brief journey, the ache of separation had done nothing but grow with each passing day.

She had believed that parting was only a moment's hardship; that, she now saw, was a delusion.

My body's changed condition was becoming gradually visible, and with that as it was, whatever might happen, please, she begged, never abandon me.

She had argued fiercely with her mother.

But seeing that her mind was made up in a way unlike her former uncertain self, her mother had given way.

On the day I came east, she would go and stay with a distant relation on a farm near Stettin, she said.

As you wrote, if the Minister comes to rely on you heavily, the travel money will take care of itself somehow.

For now she could only wait for the day I returned to Berlin.

Ah — it was upon reading this letter that I first saw my own situation clearly.

Shameful was my dull and slow heart.

I had prided myself on being decisive both in matters affecting my own conduct and in the affairs of others; but that decisiveness existed only in smooth circumstances, not in adversity.

When I tried to illuminate my relationship with another person, the mirror in my breast on which I had relied was dimmed.

The Minister had already shown me much kindness.

Yet my shortsighted eye had seen only the duties I myself had performed.

That I should attach to this any hope for the future — God may know it, but the thought had never crossed my mind.

Now, however, having suddenly come to realize it, was my heart still cold?

When Aizawa had urged me before, the Count's favor had seemed as distant as a bird on a rooftop; but now it seemed I had gained it to some degree. And when Aizawa had let fall in recent conversation the phrase "when we return home together and it continues to be this way, such and such" — might this have been something the Count had said, which, being official business, my friend had not mentioned explicitly?

Looking back, I now wondered whether Aizawa had already reported to the Count my hasty promise to him that I would sever my ties with Elis.

Ah — when I first came to Germany, I believed I had discovered my true nature and vowed never again to be a mechanical being. Was that not merely a bird with bound feet flapping its wings briefly and boasting that it had gained its freedom?

The cord on my feet could not be undone.

The one who had once pulled it was my superior at a certain ministry; now the cord — ah, how pitiful — lay in the hands of Count Akatsu.

The day I returned to Berlin with the Minister's party happened to fall on New Year's morning.

I said farewell at the station and drove the carriage toward home.

Here it is the custom to stay awake through New Year's Eve and sleep on New Year's Day, so all was silent.

The cold was fierce, the snow on the road had turned into sharp-edged chips of ice that glittered in the clear sunlight.

The carriage turned into Kloster Lane and stopped before the house.

At that moment I heard the sound of a window opening, though it could not be seen from the carriage.

Having the driver carry my bag

and starting up the stairs, I met Elis running down toward me.

The driver watched in astonishment as she cried out and threw her arms around my neck, and muttered something into his beard that I could not hear.

"How good that you have come back. Had you not come back, my life would have ended."

Even now my heart was not resolved; the longing for home and the desire for advancement had, at times, pressed upon and nearly overwhelmed my affection. But in this one single instant, all my lingering, hesitating thoughts fell away. I held her; her head rested on my shoulder; and her tears of joy fell upon it, drop by drop.

"How many floors do you want me to carry it to?"

boomed the driver, who had already climbed up and was standing at the top of the stairs.

Elis's mother had come out to meet us at the door; I gave her a coin for the driver, and, led by Elis who took my hand and pulled me along, I hurried into the room.

At a glance I was astonished: on the table were piled high pieces of white cotton and white lace.

piled high on the table.

Smiling, Elis pointed to them and said, "What do you think of all this preparation?"

and picked up a piece of the cotton cloth — it was a swaddling cloth.

"Think of how happy I am. The child that will be born — will it have black eyes like yours? Those eyes. Ah, it is your black eyes I have seen only in dreams. When the child is born, your honest heart would never let it bear a false name, surely."

She bowed her head.

"You may laugh at me for being childish, but how wonderful it would be on the day we go to church."

She looked up, her eyes full of tears.

For two or three days I did not venture to call on the Minister, thinking he might be fatigued from the journey, and stayed home. Then one evening I was summoned by a messenger.

I went and was received with exceptional warmth; after inquiring about and consoling me for the hardships of the Russia journey, the Count asked whether I had any wish to return east with him. My learning, he said, was beyond his measure, but language skills alone would suffice for service to the world; he had been too long abroad and wondered whether I had any entanglements of various kinds, and when he had asked Aizawa, he was told there were none, and so the Count felt at ease.

His manner left no room for refusal.

For a moment I was seized with dismay; and yet I found it difficult to deny the truthfulness of Aizawa's words. The thought surged to the front of my mind: if I failed to seize this hand, I would lose my country, cut off the road to recovering my honor, and be buried alive in the sea of people in this vast European metropolis.

Ah, what a spineless heart — "I gratefully accept"

was what I answered.

Even had I an iron forehead, what was I to say to Elis when I returned?

Leaving the hotel,

the turmoil in my heart as I stepped outside was beyond all comparison.

I walked sunk in thought, not knowing east from west, and several times carriage drivers shouted at me, startled me back to my senses, and I leapt aside.

After a while I happened to look around and found myself near the zoological garden.

I sank onto a bench by the road as though falling, and I do not know how many hours I spent there, slumped with my burning, hammering head resting on the back of the bench, as still as if dead.

When the piercing cold seemed to bore through to my bones and I came to myself, night had fallen, snow was coming down thickly, and on the brim of my hat and the shoulders of my overcoat nearly an inch had accumulated.

It must have been past eleven o'clock. The rails of the horse-drawn tram running along Moabit Karlstrasse were buried in snow, and the gas lamps near the Brandenburg Gate cast a desolate light.

I tried to rise, but my feet were frozen; I rubbed them with both hands until I could manage, with effort, to walk.

My steps made slow progress, and when I reached Kloster Lane it must have been past midnight.

How I had walked the distance I do not know.

Being a night in early January, the taverns and cafes of Unter den Linden would still have been bustling with people coming and going — but I was not aware of any of it.

My mind was filled, utterly and completely, with the single thought that I was an unforgivable sinner.

In the garret on the fourth floor, it seemed Elis had not yet gone to sleep; through the darkness, the single bright flame was clearly visible, and then instantly veiled by the heron-white flakes of falling snow, then revealed again, swaying in the wind.

From the moment I entered the doorway I felt a wave of exhaustion, and the aching pain in every joint was unbearable; I crawled up the stairs.

Passing through the kitchen, I opened the door to the room and entered. Elis, who had been leaning at the table sewing swaddling cloths, looked back and cried out.

She cried out.

"What has happened to you? Look at yourself."

It was no wonder she was startled. My face was ashen, no different from a dead man's; somewhere along the way I had lost my hat, and my hair was wildly disheveled. Having stumbled and fallen multiple times on the road, my clothing was soiled with snow mixed with mud, and torn here and there.

I tried to answer but no voice came out; my knees trembled violently and I could not stand. I remember reaching out to grasp a chair, but then I remember nothing more — I fell to the floor.

It was weeks before I regained my senses.

I had been delirious with a violent fever, and Elis had nursed me with devoted care; one day Aizawa came to call, learned in full the details I had hidden from him, reported only the illness to the Minister, and handled matters tactfully on my behalf.

When I first saw Elis attending at my sickbed, I was startled by how she had changed.

In those few weeks she had grown terribly thin, her bloodshot eyes were sunken, and her gray cheeks had fallen in.

Thanks to Aizawa's help she had not been destitute in day-to-day living, but this benefactor had destroyed her in spirit.

I learned afterward that when she met Aizawa, she heard of the promise I had made to him, and learned of the assent I had given to the Minister that evening. She leapt suddenly from her chair, her face turning the color of earth, and cried out, "My Toyotaro — could you have deceived me so?"

and collapsed on the spot.

Aizawa called her mother and together they helped her to bed; but when she came to after a time, her eyes stared straight ahead unseeing, not recognizing the people around her. She called my name and raved bitterly, tore at her hair, gnawed at the bedding, and then suddenly seemed to come to herself and began groping for something, searching.

Whatever her mother tried to give her she threw aside; but when her mother gave her the swaddling cloth that lay on the table, she groped at it, pressed it to her face, and wept.

After this she no longer raged, but her mental faculties were almost entirely lost, and her helplessness became like that of an infant.

A doctor examined her and said it was a disease called paranoia,

brought on by sudden and excessive mental anguish, with no prospect of recovery.

When they tried to have her admitted to the Dalldorf asylum, she wept and screamed and would not hear of it. Afterward she clung to the single swaddling cloth, taking it out again and again to look at it, then weeping.

She would not leave my sickbed, though it seemed this was not from any conscious intention.

Only occasionally, as if remembering, she would say just this: "Medicine, medicine,"

and nothing more.

My illness healed completely.

How many times did I hold Elis — a living corpse — and pour down a thousand streams of tears upon her.

When the time came to set out eastward in the Minister's company, I consulted with Aizawa and gave Elis's mother enough capital to sustain a modest livelihood, and made arrangements for the time when the child she carried in her womb — poor, mad woman — would be born.

Ah — a good friend such as Aizawa Kenkichi will be hard to find again in this world.

And yet, to this day there remains in my heart one spot that hates him.