Him, No. 2*
I
He was a young Irish man. I need not say his name or anything. I was just his friend. His younger sister, even now, calls me the like of “my brother’s best friend.” When I first met with him, I somehow felt as if I had seen his face before. No, it was not just his face. I definitely felt like I had seen the fire burning in the fireplace, and the light cast on the mahogany chair, and the complete works of Plato above the fireplace. This feeling only intensified while I talked with him. I came to think that I had seen these sights in a dream five or six years ago. However, the thought never once left my mouth, of course. He was smoking a Shikishima cigarette, and between us was a natural discussion of Irish authors.
“I detest Bernard Shaw.”
I remember his arrogant utterance of this. It was the winter of the year both of us, going by the old ways, turned twenty-five…
II
We went in and out of cafés and teahouses looking for cash. He was three times the man I was. One night when the snow was blowing something fierce, we were sitting at a table in the corner of the Café Paulista. At that time in the center of the café was a gramophone, which, if you put in a single coin, would play you some music. On that night the gramophone hardly scored our conversation.
“Call that waiter over. Tell him that whenever you put in five sen, it gives you ten sen back. Make them stop it.”
“I won’t ask for that sort of thing. First of all, isn’t it in bad taste to stop the music that a stranger wants to listen to and spent money on?”
“Then it’s in bad taste to listen to the music that a stranger doesn’t want to listen to!”
Just then the sound of the gramophone came to an unexpected and welcome end. But suddenly, a man who looked like a university student, wearing a hunting cap, stood to put a coin in. As soon as he left the seat, cursing, he tried to throw the condiment tray at him. “Gimme a break with that stupid crap.”
To try and bring him along, I decided to go out to the snowy road. However, this does not mean that my own excitement was not piqued. Arms linked, we walked without an umbrella.
“I get to the point where I want to walk anywhere on these sorts of snowy nights. As far as my feet will take me…”
He interrupted me almost scoldingly. “So then why don’t you? If I want to walk anywhere, I decide to walk anywhere.”
“That’s a bit too romantic.”
“What’s wrong with being romantic? Thinking you want to walk while not walking is nothing more than cowardice. You should walk as far as you can, even if you freeze to death.”
His tone of voice changed suddenly and he called me “Brother.”
“Yesterday I sent a telegram to my home country office that I want to enlist!”
“And?”
“No response so far.”
At one point we passed in front of the Kyobunkwan display window. In the bright display window, half covered in snow, there were lined up first pictures of tanks, poison gas, and countless other war items. Arms still linked, we stood in front of the display for a little bit.
“Above the War. Romain Rolland…”
“Hmm. It’s not ‘above’ us.”
He made a strange face. It resembled the crest of a rooster standing on end.
“What do you know about Romain? We’re ‘amidst’ the war.”
I was not keenly aware of his animosity towards Germany, of course. Therefore I felt that he had some animosity in his words. At the same time I felt that the alcohol had reached his head.
“I’m going home.”
“Oh? Then I…”
“Go get lost somewhere around here!”
We were standing in front of the railing at Kyōbashi. There was a withered willow swaddled in snow in the abandoned Daikon fish market at night. Its branches drooped over the dark and empty canal.
“Japan. What scenery,” he said to me, earnestly, before he parted.
III
Unfortunately, he was unable to join the army as he had hoped. But after he returned to London once, he lived in Japan for two or three years. However, we…I had lost my romanticism at some point. Of course, this does not mean that he did not change as well. On the second floor of a boarding house, wearing an Ōshima coat and a kimono, with his hand in front of the brazier, he complained to me:
“Japan’s getting to be more and more like America. I’m thinking I might want to live in France instead of Japan.”
“That’s just the disillusionment all foreigners feel at some point. Probably even Hearn, in his later years.”
“No, it’s not that I’m disillusioned. I can’t be disillusioned if I don’t have illusions.”
“Isn’t that too abstract. Even myself…I still must have illusions.”
“That may be so…”
With a depressed look on his face, he stared through the foggy glass door out at the high scenery.
“I may get to be a correspondent in Shanghai soon.”
In the instant that he spoke I suddenly remembered what his job was. I had always thought that he was the one of us of an artistic character. However, on top of working to support himself he worked as a reporter for some English-language newspaper. A “store” with all sorts of artists who didn’t know when to call it quits came to mind, and I tried to speak as clearly as possible.
“I’ll bet Shanghai’s more interesting than Tokyo.”
“I think so, too. But before then I’ll have to go to London one more time. …Incidentally, I wonder if you showed me it?”
He produced a velvet box from the desk drawer. Within the box was a narrow platinum ring. I took the ring in my hand, and I had no reason not to smile at the letters “To Momoko” engraved on the inside. “I ordered my name below “To Momoko,” but…”
That might have been the craftman’s mistake. Or perhaps the craftsman thought of this woman’s job, and intentionally decided against putting in the name of a foreigner. I did not so much as feel pity for his lack of care as I felt loneliness for him.
“So where are you going this time?”
“Yanagibashi! You can hear the sound of the water there.”
These were also strangely pitiful words for a Tokyoite such as myself. But before long he put on a healthy face and we began talking about the Japanese literature he loved so much.
“Recently I read Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s ‘The Devil.’ That may be the filthiest story written in the entire world!”
(After many months had passed, I took the opportunity to relay his words to the author of ‘The Devil.’ Laughing, he said to me, “At least it’s the something-est in the entire world!”)
“How about The Poppy?”
“My Japanese is no good for that. Hey, can you meet for lunch today?”
“Yeah, that was my plan as well.”
“Ok, hold on a bit, I’ve got four or five magazines here…”
Whisling, he quickly began changing into Western clothes. My back to him, I aimlessly looked through a Bookman. Then, in a break in his whistling, he suddenly let out a short laugh, then said to me in Japanese, “I can sit just fine! However, these pants are pitiful!”
IV
The last place I met him was in a café in Shanghai. (About half a year after that, he contracted smallpox and died.) Beneath a bright lapis lazuli lamp, whiskey sodas in front of us, we looked at the crowds of men and women to the left and right of our table. Save for two or three Chinese, all of them were Americans or Russians. But among them was a woman dressed in a gown of porcelain celadon, talking more excitedly than anyone else. Though she was terribly thin, she looked more beautiful than all the others. When I looked at her face, I thought of the finest Chinese diamonds. Though I say she was beautiful, that is in no way abnormal.
“What’s up with her?”
“Over there? She’s, uh, from France…hmm, probably an actress? She goes by Ninii—but forget about her, get a load of that old guy!”
“That old guy” was at the table next to us, warming a cup of red wine in his hands and constantly nodding his head to the beat of the band. Though I say it was the height of satisfaction, he was not at all a nuisance. I took quite an interest in this jazz constantly blowing from within the tropical plants. However, I had no interest, of course, in the delighted old man.
“He’s a Jew. He’s lived around Shanghai for about thirty years. I wonder what kind of wild ideas that sort of guy would have?”
“Aren’t any kind of ideas fine?”
“No, not in the slightest! I’m already sick of China.”
“Not China. You’re sick of Shanghai.”
“China. I’ve stayed in Beijing for a spell, too.”
I could not help but make fun of his complaints. “Is China getting to be more and more like America?”
He shrugged his shoulders and did not say anything for a while. I felt something close to regret, and to divert the unpleasantness I felt I had to say something.
“So then where do you want to live?”
“Wherever: I’ve lived all over the place! The only place I feel like living now is Soviet Russia.”
“Then why don’t you go to Russia? You can go anywhere.”
He was silent once more. Then…to this very day I remember his face at that time clearly. His eyes narrowed, and he began to recite a song from the Man’yoshū. “Though the world may be bitter and shameful, I cannot fly, for I am not a bird.”
I could not help but laugh at the rhythm of his Japanese. But, I was still strangely moved.
“The old man, of course, and even Ninii is happier than me! Anyway, as you know…”
I cheered up at once.
“Oh, oh, I got it, even though I haven’t asked! He must be the Wandering Jew.”
He took a swig of his whiskey soda and turned to me, as usual.
“I’m not that simple. A poet, an artist, a critic, a reporter…still true. A son, a brother, a bachelor, an Irish…and then characteristically a romantic, visually a realist, politically a communist…”
Laughing, we pushed out our chairs and stood.
“And then perhaps a lover to a woman.”
“A lover…still true. Religiously an atheist, philosophically a materialist…”
The street at night was covered in not so much a fog as a miasma. It was strangely yellow, perhaps due to the streetlights. Arms linked, we strode down the asphalt just as we had twenty-five long years ago. Just as we had twenty-five long years ago: however I no longer felt the urge to walk anywhere.
“I think perhaps I haven’t told you yet, the story of having my vocal cords checked out?”
“In Shanghai?”
“No, when I went back to London. I had my vocal cords checked, and I was a world-famous baritone.”
He peered into my face, and then smiled half sarcastically.
“Well, then, instead of being a reporter…”
“Of course, if I tried had tried my hand at opera, I could have been as good as Caruso. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“The loss of a lifetime.”
“Well, it’s not me who’s lost. It’s the citizens of the world.”
We had already walked to the shore of the Huangpu River, well-lit by ships’ lights. He stopped walking for a moment and signaled “look” with his chin. In the faint water in the mist, there was the body of a white puppy, constantly buffeted by the slow waves. And around its neck was hanging a wreath of grass with flowers. Somebody must have put it there. Though it was brutal, it was definitely beautiful at the same time. And since his singing from the Man’yoshū, I had been infected with some sort of sentimentality.
“That’s Ninii.”
“If not, the vocalist inside me!”
As soon as he replied, he gave an extraordinarily loud sneeze.
V
It was in a letter from his sister in Nice, the first in a while. Just two or three nights beforehand, I had been talking to him in a dream. No matter how I look at it, it must have been the occasion of our first meeting. When the fire shimmered red in the fireplace, it cast light on the mahogany table and chairs. While I was strangely fatigued, we talked of Irish authors unabated. But my battle with oncoming sleep was not an easy one. In uncertain consciousness I heard him say:
“I detest Bernard Shaw.”
But as I sat, at some point I drifted off to sleep. Then my eyes opened of their own accord. It was in the lingering edge of night. The electric light, wrapped in a cloth, was shedding dim light. I rolled over on my belly in bed and tried smoking a Shikishima to alleviate my strange excitement. However, I, with my eyes shut in a dream, could not help but feel that my eyes now being open was quite uncanny.
(November 29, 1926)
***
* I don’t know how exactly this relates to the previous story, “Him.” They have sort of a similar topic and were published close together, and that seems to be about it. I don’t know if it was a part of a series or whatnot.