FLOATING CLOUDS Uki’gumo Hayashi Fumiko

 FLOATING CLOUDS

 Uki’gumo

 Hayashi Fumiko

Characters

 

Kōda Yukiko --- A main character of the novel. She worked as a typist in Vietnam during Great East Asia War.

Tomioka Kengo --- A journalist who had a romantic relationship with Yukiko

Kuniko --- Tomioka Kengo’s wife

Iba Sugio --- Yukiko’s ex-lover who lived in Tokyo. A younger brother of Yukiko’s elder sister’s husband Iba Kyōtarō.

Masako --- Sugio’s wife.

Mogi --- an engineer sent by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to Hai Phong in Vietnam

Shinoi Haruko --- A typist working in Saigon.

Nakawatari --- A man working for the military press bureau

Engineers Mogi and Kuroi, an old man of a mine squad Seya --- staff members to be deployed to Da Lat

Mr. Makita Kizō --- The chief of Regional Forest Office in Da Lat.

Niu --- A Vietnamese maid for an accommodation facility of Regional Forest Office in Da Lat.

Half-breed Mary --- A Vietnamese secretary of Regional Forest Office in Da Lat.

Kano Hisajirō --- A forester

Prof. Yasunaga --- A professor of College of Agriculture and Forestry.

Tadokoro --- A lumber marchant, and Tomioka’s business partner.

Koizumi --- Tomioka Kuniko’s ex-husband.

Mr. Marcon --- A French director of the Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Saigon.

Joe --- An american soldier whom Yukiko met in Shinjuku.

Mr. Harold --- A researcher of the Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Saigon.

Tani Seiko --- Osei, a not-married wife of a bar master Sēkichi in Ikaho.

Mukai Sēkichi, --- Osei’s not-married husband at the age of 48.

Ōtsu Shimo --- A woman in her 40s, hospitalized in obstetrics.

Makita’san --- A nurse in obstetrics

Narimune Senzō --- The founder of the religious sect, the Ōhinata’kyō.

Hika --- A friendly young doctor in Kagoshima.

Tatsuke and Noborito --- The staff of the local forestry office in Yakushima Island.

Tsuwai Nobu --- A war widow and the home helper to take care of Yukiko.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floating Clouds

 

 

 

If the most wretched misfortune is to throw away the reason and hate the reason, provided that the reason is the basis of all things and all the things are the reason itself …… .  

Lev Isaakovich Shestov^[*104]

 

 

 

.. * 1

 

A train to arrive late at night was far preferable. Therefore, she intentionally hung around all day long in the town of Tsuruga^[*207] after that she was released from a three-day stay in a detention camp. She said good-bye and separated from more than 60 other women at the detention camp. She found an inn located near to the customs warehouse, and seemingly used both as a household goods store and as a resting place, where she stayed alone. Yukiko, after a long time, could throw herself on tatami mats at her homeland, Japan.

   The inn’s staffs treated her with hospitality and boiled the bath for her. They seemed not to bother themselves to replace the used water with fresh water for a small number of lodgers a day. The water was turbid, however, Yukiko, who had traveled a long way by ship, felt comfortable at the temperature of the hot water clouded with dirt of human skins. Watery sleet precipitating on the window of the sooty dim bathroom also moved deeply Yukiko’s solitary innermost thoughts. The wind was blowing. She opened the dirty glass window and looked up at the rainy leaden sky. This was the poor sky of homeland, which she looked at for the first time in a long time. She held her breath admiring the scenery. She placed both hands on the rim of the oval bathtub, and shuddered seeing a comparatively large raised scar of a sword cut on her left arm. Despite that, Yukiko, while pouring softly the hot water on the scar, mediated many fond memories in remembrance, and gave in to a suffocating life to be continued from today beyond her control. It was boring. After missing a high tide, things turned tedious. Yukiko, always meditating, washed her body slowly with a dirty washcloth in the narrow sooty bathroom, which seemed to her something misleading of reality. The cold wind blew in from a chink in the window and pierced her skin. Yukiko felt a splash of the season, who had forgotten a touch of cold wind like this for a long time. After the bath, she went back to her room, where her bed was ready on a rusty tatami mat, and charcoals were burning in a poorly made wooden box type brazier, beside which a small bowl with full of rakkyō^[*152] pickles was placed on a tray. She took a kettle from which the boiling water was overflowing, and poured the boiling water in to the tea pot. Yukiko put a piece of rakkyō in her mouth. Two or three female voices were coming noisily in a crowd on the corridor, passing outside a white paper lattice door, the shōji^[*176], of her room, and then Yukiko sensed their entering the next room. She pricked up her ears. Familiar voices in the next room separated only by sliding paper panels, the fusuma^[*42] reminded her of some geishas who shared the same boat with her as far as Tsuruga.

   “After all, it’s quite good that we returned back. Since we arrived in Japan, our bodies are ours. Isn’t it so? ……”

   “I feel very cold, and helpless. ……  I don’t have any winter clothes. It’s hard to prepare outfits, first of all.”

   Despite their grumbling, their voice sounded cheerful, and they giggled all the time for something that nobody knew what was funny.

   Yukiko, having nothing to do, lay in bed, and remained absentminded for a while. She felt depressed and could not rid herself of wretched feelings. Besides, the noisy disturbance lasted incessantly for a long time. Throwing out the hot body on a sticky old bed was comfortable, on the other hand, she felt forlorn to go on her long train journey again the next day. A visit to the immediate family was not attractive any more to her. Yukiko reflected on going to Tokyo directly and visit Tomioka. Tomioka fortunately had left Haiphong of Vietnam in May. He promised Yukiko to arrange all required procedures and wait for her. When she arrived at Japan and was blown in the cold wind of reality, however, she realized that his promise was like a promise between Urashima Tarō and prince Otohime^[*209], the truth of which would not be confirmed until after she met face-to-face with him. As soon as the boat arrived in Tsuruga port, she sent him a telegram. Repatriates were supposed to spend three days in the detention camp, and soon after the investigation finished, they left in the direction of their own way for their hometown. During three days, she did not get a reply at all from Tomioka. If she was in his position, she also would not be ardent to send a reply back to her wartime lover. Yukiko somehow gave up her hopes already. She had a temporal sleep, but the time did not pass so much. The shōji looked dark, across which, in the next room, the light was lit. It seemed that women in the neighbor room were taking supper. Yukiko also felt hungry. She pulled her rucksack from her bedside toward her, from which she took a lunch box supplied on the ship. A package of 4 pieces of cigarette of Camel brand^[*16], a supply of tissues, a pack of hard biscuit, packed powder soup, a tinned pork and potatoes and others were tidily packed in a small brown box, from among which Yukiko picked up a chocolate bar and nibbled on it lying on her belly. The chocolate was not sweet at all.  ― The yellow red color of the sea seen from the Do Son Bay^[*31] appeared wistfully on her eyelids. Yukiko, on the deck of the ship, stared intently at the scenery so as to print it in her mind, thinking that she would never see again a white lighthouse over the Do Son Bay and the green of thick woods on Hon Do Island, in her life anymore. The scenery as such of the foreign land almost faded away, and she felt it wearisome even to remember the views. Women in the next room probably scheduled to go on a night train. After supper, she heard that they paid their bill to the madam of the inn. Yukiko put the powder soup into her teacup, poured the boiled water in it, and drank her soup, hearing noises in the next room. She also ate the remaining rakkyō. Before long, each of them, saying, ‘thank you for all your help,’ went lively away following the madam along the hallway. While hearing voices of women, Yukiko thought that they were also going to go back to their home countries, and felt like being induced to go away together. Yukiko had talked with the geishas while being aboard the ship, and got the news that they worked at restaurants in Phnom Penh in Cambodia in a two-year contract. Although they were ostensibly the geishas, they were actually recruited by the military to work as comfort women, ianfu^[*68], in other words, certified whores. ― Among women who got together to the detention camp in Hai Phong, there were nurses, typist, secretaries and clerks. The great part of women, however, were crowds of the ianfu. The ianfu were gathering one after another in Hai Phong from cities they worked. It was a surprise to Yukiko to know that so many Japanese women had been in the overseas. ― Kōda Yukiko had worked as a typist at a cinchona garden cultivation laboratory in Institut Pasteur^[*72], which was located between Da Lat and Turon^[*208]. She arrived at Da Lat in autumn of 1943, 18 Shōwa. The city is located 1,600 m (5,249 ft) above sea on the Lang Biang^[*103] Plateau, the high and low temperatures were 25 Celsius (78.8 Fahrenheit) and 5 °C (41°F), respectively. Da Lat was very comfortable to live in, maybe because of its location in the Central Highlands region. A number of French people ran tea plantations there, and it was quite new for Yukiko to hear sweet sounds of French language under the clear sky on highlands.

An idea to write a letter to Tomioka came up suddenly to Yukiko’s mind. Although she did not know what to write, her thoughts would come together while writing a letter. Discouraging and skeptical feelings she had in the detention camp in Hai Phong might bounce back little by little, while recalling that she had reached the same ground as Tomioka. Yukiko asked an errand boy of a canteen to go buy a package of letter papers and envelopes.

 

 

.. * 2

 

Yukiko changed her mind. Another different idea occurred to Yukiko that she should go directly to Tokyo and visit Iba. If his house had not burnt down, it might be good for her to stay first at his house until meeting Tomioka. Iba’s memory in her mind was only loathsome, but, she had no choice. She did not send any message to Shizuoka, so, he would not wait for her. ― She took a train of an early morning departure from Tsuruga. At the dark station before dawn, she recognized faces of two men who had been on the same boat as she, however, she intentionally kept away from them and boarded the car behind.

The train was surprisingly crowded, and all passengers climbed into the train cars through windows. Yukiko also could barely get into the car through a window. Everybody felt like Shunkan^[*178] in awkward situations. Passengers around looked curiously at Yukiko wearing summer clothes in winter. It was clear to everyone that she returned from tropical Asia. Yukiko, who was standing and was jostled by the crowd, also glanced, around herself, their indeed war losers’ appearances. Their complexions were spiritless and pale, supposedly because it was still dark outside. Faces lacking defiance overlapped in cramped train cars. She felt it to be like a slave cargo train. It also reflected a malaise little by little into Yukiko’s innermost feelings. How has Japan changed ……? The beaming faces of erstwhile soldiers, once sent by waves of the rising-sun flags, were nowhere to be seen. Hideous looks, with traces of fatigue, of dark mountains and rivers extended in heaps out of train windows.

The train arrived at Tokyo next evening. It was raining. She got off the train at Shinagawa station. Immediately opposite the Ministry Lines, Shō’sen^[*177] were rear windows of a dance hall. From the windows, heads of some dancing partners swirled and turbulence under dark lights appeared. Melancholy melodies of jazz flew while drizzling like flickering gleams of light. Yukiko shivering in the cold looked up at the windows of the dance hall on the ridge. A couple of tall Military Police with glittering white caps on their heads stood at the end of the platform. The platform was crowded with grimy people. While listening to sounds of jazz, her taut nerves loosened, and her feelings became slovenly. Despite that, her innermost feelings remained empty, wondering in a fear whether she could survive from tomorrow. A great part of the crowd on the platform carried their rucksacks on the back. From time to time, Yukiko found surprisingly a woman with red lips and a foreigner, arm-in-arm descending stairs, and stared at the woman in showy clothes as if she watched steadily something rare. The way of life in prewar days in Tokyo had uprooted altogether and transformed.

It was the last train that Yukiko got off at Sagino’miya^[*156] station of Seibu Line. She crossed the railroad crossing, and went on to the familiar power plant. She walked on the broad street, in rain, and three young women coming from behind passed briskly by the side of Yukiko. All the three women covered their head and cheeks with showy clothes, and put up the collar of their coats.

“Today, I sent him off to Yokohama. I’m sure that he has a wife over there, you know. ……  It was an affair of an instant. In the same way as a momentary glimpse of human life. It might be good, I have to say. ……  He presented his friend to me. Don’t you think it ridiculous that he pressed a different man to his ex-girlfriend? The Japanese don’t understand such an idea at all. ……”

   “Take it easy. Not bad. Because, once you separate from him, you cannot meet him anymore. Change your mind. In my case as well, you see, he will go back very soon. …….  Besides, it takes me quite a time to visit him as far as Atsugi, so I’m thinking to find the next one before long. ……”

Yukiko walked quickly behind in the same direction as the lively women. Hearing their loud voice talking, she felt strange that Japan had changed that way.

Finally, at the mailpost, the women turned to the right into an alley. Yukiko was dripping wet and was exhausted. Around here, this section of the town did not change at all since she had left for tropical Asia. Turning to the left at the signboard of midwife Hosokawa, away from the second house around the corner, she saw Iba’s house at the end of narrow passageway. ‘Everyone must be surprised at seeing my miserable appearance.’ Standing in front of the stone gate, she made herself the neat under a dark street light. The hair and shoulders were soaking wet. She thought how she was reduced to want. While ringing the bell, she felt like a lie that she had been in French Indochina. A light dimly shone through the glass door at the entrance, and soon, a large shadow came down to the dirt floor. Yukiko’s heart beated strongly. The shadow was a male, but different from Iba.

   “Who is it?”

   “Yukiko ……”

   “Yukiko? Which Yukiko?”

   “I have been in French Indochina. I’m Kōda Yukiko.”

   “Ah. ……  Whom do you visit?”

   “Isn’t Iba Sugio at home?”

   “Did you come to meet Iba’san? He has not yet come back from his evacuation place.”

The shadow of the male seemed averse to opening the lock, but finally opened it in a dilatory. The man in night clothes surprisingly looked at Yukiko, a young woman without a coat, carrying a rucksack on her back, and was soaking wet.

   “I’m Iba’s relative, and just returned to Japan today, so ……”

   “Well, come in. Iba’san was evacuated to Shizuoka three years ago, though.”

   “Do you mean that Iba thoroughly moved from here?”

   “Uh, things are not like that, indeed. We have entered the house in place of Iba’san. But, the luggage boxes of Iba’san have been already delivered here.”

   Hearing voices between Yukiko and the man, seemingly the man’s wife holding a baby in her arms appeared in the doorway. Yukiko spoke to his wife about circumstances that she repatriated from French Indochina. Between Iba and this man, there seemed to be a certain disagreement on the right of residence in this house. The wife was kind enough to say, “It is cold, here. Please come in to the room,” although she seemed not very pleased about it.

A package of rice balls for her lunch was a special service offered by the inn in Tsuruga, and then, after a long distance railway traveling without eating and drinking, she felt as if her body was floating in the air. She went walking, and clumsily bumped the sewing machine on the corridor on her way to the room. In the six-tatami-mat-size room, which Iba’s family always used as their bedroom, so many packed pieces of luggage were accumulated as the tatami bent in a curve downward. Hearing that Yukiko returned from French Indochina, the wife seemed to commiserate with her, and served tea and slices of dried sweet potato. The man was in his 40s, bulky in figure, ex-soldier, and unrefined. The wife was petite with white skin and a freckled face. A smile amiably dimpled her cheeks.

For the night, Yukiko borrowed a bedding set, futon, and could stay overnight in a narrow space among stacked luggage of Iba’s. Yukiko took two field rations, inclusions of dried foods and cigarettes, out of her rucksack, and offered them as a gift to the wife.

She entered the futon, lay on her back, and then tried to put her fingers into luggage for groping the contents. Packages of luggage were fastened solidly with thick wooden frames, so she could not guess at all what was inside. The wife talked that they had to vacate at least two rooms for Iba’s family, who were to come to Tokyo by the end of the year. Which rooms to vacate was a problem for her six-member family, she grumbled. They strived hard to protect the house during the period of air raids, and there was nowhere for them to go even if they were suddenly required to leave. Such requirement was inhuman, the wife added. On the part of Iba’s family, they probably got irritated as they could not live anymore in a countryside. Yukiko could guess the irritation of Iba’s family who sent their luggage much earlier than their scheduled to Tokyo. She was also informed that all of Iba’s family lived well, which was disappointingly an anticlimax to Yukiko.

 

 

.. * 3

 

Kōda Yukiko arrived in French Indochina late October in 1943^[*132], 18 Shōwa. Four typists reached Hai Phong first, accompanied by a party of the engineer Mogi sent by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. ―The engineer Mori was ordered by the Army forestry investigations in French Indochina, and his additional duty was to recruit typists who worked in the same Ministry, and allocate one typist for each quarter of the Institute locations. There were five applicants. Kōda Yukiko also applied for the work overseas, and eventually joined the party. ―　

They boarded a hospital ship as far as Hai Phong, from there, went to Hanoi by a military vehicle, where workplaces were decided soon for three typists. Kōda Yukiko was assigned to Da Lat in highlands, and another typist, Shinoi Haruko got her assignment in Saigon. It was Kōda Yukiko who drew the shortest stick. She was plain-looking and not noticeable in personality, maybe because of which she was relegated to a post in a remote place like Da Lat. She had slit eyes, and her forehead was wide. Her skin was white, but she was not amiable. Her lonely facial feature was far from eye-catching. Her military ID photo gave an older impression than 22 years of her age. The clothes with white collar suited her, but that was all. She was such a woman that other people saw her always wearing the same clothes despite that she changes clothes. Shinoi Haruko, who was appointed to Saigon, was the most beautiful of all five women, and resembled the beautiful actress Li Kōran^[*105]. On the other hand, no one paid attention to Kōda Yukiko. ― The party left Hai Phong on two vehicles, passing through Tanh Hoa, Hu Qui, and made an overnight stop at Vinh for the first night. It was 218 miles by vehicle from Hai Phong to Vinh in Southern Indochina, where they stayed at the Grand Hotel. On the way to Vinh, wildfire smoldered on hills and fields. Otherwise, in some places, forests and fields were burning and giving out yellow smoke. A great part of the region was afforestation areas, where tung-oil trees (Vernicia cordata) and pine trees were mainly planted. Maybe because they went on woodland after woodland, Shinoi Haluko heaved many sighs, and in this way, intentionally showed her disappointment. Yukiko was not unaccustomed to a long journey, and felt clapped-out. After leaving Thanh Hoa, the cars proceeded pretty fast on a long road of twilight. When the cars approached Vinh, large moths flew around four sides in the dark, and white moths flew together in a swarm, as if pieces of paper were scattered, toward the road brightly lit up by headlights of cars.

   On the left side of the hotel possibly was a canal, where Vietnamese boatmen’s voices echoed in water. Edible frogs were croaking loudly. After parking cars in a shrub under betel trees (Areca catechu) and lebbek trees (Albizia lebbeck) in the hotel, members of the party were guided to each room. Shinoi Haruko and Kōda Yukiko were taken in a tidy room downstairs with a view of the canal.

   Haruko opened a window. The sound of water flowing in the canal came in. Under a table with an orange light being lit, poor looking trunks of the two women were placed side by side. Wallpaper with printed flower patterns in pink and a double bed covered with soft blanket in light blue were clearly the taste of French people. The room was pleasingly decorated and kept in clean condition. This was like a fairy tale for two Japanese women who had lived hard for a long time under wartime shortages in Japan. After washing their face, they went to a restaurant for a late supper. A soldier wearing a white cloth of the military police around the arm deliberately approached women to check identification papers. The young soldier fondly remembered Japanese women, who were unusual around here. ― Yukiko and Haruko could not easily fall asleep that night. It was a cold weather when they left Japan. However, while they advanced southward from Hai Phong through Hanoi to Thanh Hoa, season reverted quickly to summer. They lay down on the soft and elastic bed, however, could not sleep. Croaks of edible frogs were always heard like rain drops in the ear as if listening to the sound of music in playing the shamisen^[*166] of futozao.

   Different memories before leaving Tokyo were recalled in her mind while being half asleep, such as happenings in Iba’s house, send-off meetings with friends, hectic days of many inoculations with vaccine at the Army Ministry of Japan. Yukiko felt her own destiny strange because she had never dreamed of coming as far as French Indochina. Iba Sugio was a younger brother of Iba Kyōtarō of the family her elder sister married into. Sugio had a wife and a child. Yukiko did not have any other relatives who owned a house in Tokyo. Soon after graduation from a girls’ high school in Shizuoka, Yukiko began lodging in Iba Sugio’s house to go to a typing school in Kanda. Sugio worked at a personnel section of an insurance company, and had a reputation of being an honest man. Exactly one week after Yukiko’s lodging, one night, Yukiko was raped by Sugio. Yukiko lay in a housemaid room of three tatami mat. That night, somehow, she could not fall asleep. She drowsily heard Sugio go to the kitchen and drink water. Then, a latticed paper panel, shōji, of the housemaid room slid calmly and opened. Yukiko drowsily heard it, too, and then, sounds of the shōji calmly closing and footsteps creaking the tatami. When her bosom was pressed heavily by a male weight, Yukiko was startled and opened her eyes in the dark. Smells of leather wafted, and Sugio murmured something. Yukiko could not get what he said. Male legs of rough skin entered the futon, it was not until then that Yukiko came to her sense and thought to cry out. And yet, somehow, Yukiko felt that she should not shout. So, she, making her body stiff, kept silent.

   After the affair of that night, Yukiko thought that she could not look at Sugio’s wife straight in the face. When night came, however, she slightly anticipated Sugio’s coming. Every time that he came, Sugio shoved his handkerchief into Yukiko’s mouth. Yukiko wondered why Sugio showed his intense affection to a mediocre woman like her, beyond his beautiful and witty wife, Masako. ― Yukiko had lived in Iba’s house for three years. She had already graduated the typing school, and worked in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Masako seemed not to notice at all the liaison between Sugio and Yukiko. Sometimes, when Masako took her child to stay at her birth home in Yokohama, Sugio went to bed earlier and invited Yukiko to the couple’s bed. Yukiko had no alternative, but obeyed him without any word. Between them was no talk about their future, but Sugio dealt with Yukiko as if he behaved toward a whore. ― Yukiko determined to go to French Indochina because she wanted to split the adultery into pieces. She did not speak her plan to the Iba couple, her mother in Shizuoka, her elder sister or younger brother, but held her tongue firmly until after her application passed. When her appointment to French Indochina was finally decided, she informed her blood relatives of her post overseas, and told it to the Iba couple as well. Hearing the news, Sugio’s complexion did not change.

   Yukiko, stealing a glance at Sugio who kept surprisingly frosty look, felt insult as if blew up in mind. She, however, also felt gloatingly that her leaving Iba’s house served him rightly like knocking a big nail in his mind. To Masako, Yukiko felt rather spitefulness. Maybe because of Yukiko’s sullen manner or not, Masako, from time to time, said.

“These days, Yuki’san get sulky very soon and easily. We have to marry you off quickly.”

Masako’s mention was indistinguishable whether an irony or a joke. Hearing that Yukiko would leave for French Indochina in a few days, Sugio purchased for her medicine, a handbag, female underwear and others before coming back home. Yukiko was mortified at Sugio’s doing unasked-for kindness. Masako, on her part, was perplexed at Sugio’s thoughtful behavior for Yukiko, and felt repulsion against her own husband. 　

 

 

.. * 4

 

Early morning, Yukiko saw Sugio in her dream. She strangely yearned for warmth of a human body, felt so lonely as if she had fallen into an abyss, maybe because she was in the course of a distant journey. Despite that she came up here at last, she was eager to go back to Japan. She could not get out of her mind the brisk breathing of Sugio shoving his handkerchief into her mouth. Yukiko kept recalling love affairs with Sugio although she wondered why she suddenly yearned for him while her traveling a long way from Japan, despite her longtime disgust against Sugio. She was sure that he missed her dreadfully. He was reticent, so said nothing complicated. Their liaison continued until the very day of her departure for French Indochina. She wondered why she had not gotten pregnant …… .  On the contrary, however, during three years, Masako gave birth to a son.

   Yukiko got up to discontinue her tangled memories interminably coming up. She approached with silent steps the window facing the veranda, and open it. The canal brightly shone under her eyes. Tall lebbek trees were planted in rows along the canal, and birds were chirping in voices that she had never heard before. Vietnamese were fishing together, rowing many small boats on the faintly hazy canal. Yukiko leaned out the stone-built veranda, and felt indescribably pleasant in the morning breeze. While listening to the birds’ chirping and gazing blankly at the surface of the canal, Yukiko thought that there was such a dream world like this on the earth. Swallows also were flying in flocks. The turbid sea in Haiphong was a boundary for her, after which everything disappeared into the distant void. Yukiko could not predict what life was waiting for her, hereafter.

   Soon after the early breakfast, they got on cars and started traveling to the town of Hue. On the avenue, beyond the road side trees of dicotyledonous flowering plants, casuarinaceae, smokes of cooking were rising leisurely from hovels with thatched roof along the canal. A yellow-body Citroen zinged down the broad plantation road, leaving the sounds sticking to the asphalt surface.

Vinh was a fairly important town in northern Vietnam, so men were talking among themselves about Vinh. Before long, the plantation road separated at the branch point to two different directions, one to Laos in the plateau and another to Hue. From time to time, smoke was blown from bush fire in the forest along the right side of the road. They drove quite a long distance on the plantation road aiming at Hue in large woodlands, and at last, rays of the morning sun traced landscapes whereabouts. The bright day broke. The air nicely dried in the sparkling sunshine. A cool and refreshing sky-high summer scenery opened out.

The second night stay was in Hue. In the Grand Hotel again, the party rested after a day’s travel. A considerable number of Japanese troops were stationed. The broad Hue River was flowing in front of the hotel, and the Clemenceau Bridge was near. Yukiko could not believe that so many Japanese troops had been stationed in distant areas like these. She felt that Japanese troops surged forcibly ahead. It was too lucky as it was, she thought. For all that, Yukiko did not have time even to consider whether Japanese troops could maintain this treasure for a long time in this condition. She had no choice but yielded herself to the cars running and irresponsibly left the decision to others, as such, she went on traveling only with simple feelings. To her eyes, Japanese soldiers looked wretched here in this scenery. They wore clothes, which did not fit their bodies closely, and put a field cap on their big heads. As a whole, they looked like indigenous soldiers who came out from somewhere uncivilized. Vietnamese walking about streets or the French passing by chance through the town were much more suitable figures for the town as a background. An overseas Chinese town also was cultural. Camphor trees of verdure were lined vividly along streets in the middle of the town. In the glare of the morning sunlight, shoots of camphor sprouted like gold powder in color. In the areas within the walls of the red brick palace of the Nguyen dynasty, young Vietnamese school girls, with multicolored striped socks, played football. Such a sight was rare for Yukiko to see. Along a riverside promenade, bright orange-red flowers of flame trees (Butea monosperma) and red and yellow canna lilies were in full bloom. The river was turbid yellow and an abundance of water flowed. Fishy smell river wind was blowing to the morning town.

   Maybe traveling far away from home, they seemed to enjoy freedom as if unleashed. Seya, an old man of a mine squad, always got into the car with two women since they had left Hanoi, and took a seat beside Shinoi Haruko. He, without caring his own sticky sweat, pressed, on purpose, his body to Haruko’s shoulder or kneecaps, and was impudently talking indecent stories. ―　Yukiko was envious of Shinoi Haruko, hearing that Saigon was the city resembling Paris enough to be referred to as Little Paris. She wanted to be appointed to such a post. No choice now that their workplaces were decided. Yukiko, however, knew very well that, in case of women, their lineaments exerted influence on personnel affairs and orders to be issued. She felt her fate miserable as she got a mediocre post to work at such a place deep in the highland as nobody knew, Da Lat. For a young woman, nothing was more painful than being mediocre. She felt it the burden of mind that she had to work there for one year by all means.

   When she was about to leave Tokyo, Sugio told a joke.

   “When French Indochina is the good place, invite us there. I want to be released, at the very least, from the wartime social conditions of Japan.”

   Yukiko fancied that Sugio should quit the insurance company, and apply for work in French Indochina.

   The party stayed overnight at Hue, and then, from Turon station seaside, transferred to Saigon by train. Train cars were narrow and dainty, but, the second-class car was equipped with surprisingly gorgeous facilities. There were sofas and tables, and small vent fans were rotating restlessly to produce a flow of air inside the train car. There was a shower room next to the passenger room. As a whole, it was far more comfortable than a motor trip. She ordered coffee, then a Vietnamese boy brought her coffee in a deep cup like a flower vase. Here, for the first time, Yukiko could share one room with Shinoi Haruko. The train car jolted terribly, so, Yukiko understood that the flower-vase-like gadget of a coffee cup was designed so as not to splash and spill coffee while jolting and bouncing. The women were embarrassed, in the same way as during the motor trip, by dust storm blown into the room from somewhere. Even if the facilities were luxurious, the train was filthy as yellow dust was blowing in. Haruko wore silk stockings with stylish rubber soles on feet. Yukiko wondered when and how she got those goods before nobody knew. Besides, Haruko exuded sweet scent of perfume, which Yukiko had noticed since that they got on the train. Yukiko felt miserably defeated, and found the fact hateful that she wore trousers made over from her serge school uniform, and on her feet, she wore soiled black shoes with bulging toes. After a long distance journey, her dark blue trousers became quite dirty. Yukiko jealously saw Haruko’s makeup becoming thicker and thicker, and said.

   “Shinoi’san is happy to settle down in Saigon.”

   “Ugh, we shall see when we arrive whether Saigon is a good place or a bad place. It’s you, Kōda’san, it’s great that you go to the Institut Pasteur cinchona tree garden, isn’t it? Because you are a hard worker, you will master French and Vietnamese very soon. Isn’t Da Lat the best place to go? I really think so. I’ve heard that it is a cool and nice place. ……”

   Yukiko clearly knew that Haruko, having no equal, leniently soothed her.

   “But, a scarcely inhabited place is lonesome. Above all, I feel lonely, because I have to part from you and other members so far traveling together and sharing troubles, and go into the mountains where I have no acquaintances. Besides, my workplace there must be boredom ……”

   The train went on, and on, terribly jolting and bouncing, as if it was waving along fields and mountains.

   At night, the train arrived at Saigon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 5

 

Yukiko was not accustomed to the weary journey like this, and was awfully exhausted. She tended to have an unexplained fever at times in a day. They were to spend five days in Saigon, where procedures to military took much more time than expected. So, Yukiko could not spare time even to go out into the city sightseeing.

In Saigon, they were assigned rooms at a military designation inn. For the first time since they left Haiphong, they settled at a poor inn appropriate to their social status. On the fourth day, a man named Nakawatari, working for the military press bureau, came to pick up Shinoi Haruko, who moved to a dormitory of her workplace. The inn for Yukiko and other members seemed to be a residence of the overseas Chinese. In vast and cavernous rooms without decoration, a folding bed only was furnished. Two Vietnamese women were cleaning rooms around in a languid manner. The engineer Mogi, the engineer Kuroi, and Seya were deployed to Da Lat in the same staff with Yukiko, therefore, in a dining room, only these members always got together in the corner. On a plastered finished blue wall, a large coarse map was placed. Three tall rosewood tables were placed, and everyone took meals here who stayed for their own businesses. Faces of those who came to the dining room changed always like a flowing river. ――― Despite incessant meetings and partings in the dining room, a face anytime unchangeable remained at a cool place, beside the widow. Unintentionally, this man attracted Yukiko’s attention. During a meal, he always read a book or newspapers. It seemed that he had no one to accompany him. He sat down exactly at the same time and at the same place without a single exception. His skin was dark, and his hair full. His features were oval-faced, and his profile while concentrating on reading was torpid like the dead. At night, he came back to the empty restaurant from somewhere, and drank whiskey with the bottle put in front of him. He wore a short-sleeved sharkskin shirt and brown trousers, which looked like a Vietnamese to Yukiko. Yukiko had a fever, and from time to time, went to the dining room to get ice. The man was drinking whiskey sitting rudely with his knee in an upright position on his chair, always. Even if Yukiko entered the dining room, he did not pay attention to her, but drank just like enjoying his solitude leisurely, which gave him an impression difficult to grasp. Around the inn, the overseas Chinese restaurants and shops aligned, noisily playing the music on gramophones and radios. Depending on the wind direction, a Japanese song, “You were strong, Father - Chichi’yo anata’wa tsuyokatta^[*223],” was subtly flowing into the dining room from far away. While taking medicine in the corner of the dining room, Yukiko was inadvertently attracted by this music. Nothing in particular, but, adventurous feelings came up to her, and felt like talking with the man drinking there. Her three-year experience predisposed Yukiko to believe that all men had the same disposition as Sugio, besides, she was on the journey, therefore, nothing would hinder her from speaking to the man without anyone’s introduction. She unhurriedly began reading Japanese newspapers scattered around.

   The man boldly did not care about anything, just read his book drinking sake. His skin turned red while drinking sake, and his healthily grown bare arms under white short-sleeves caught Yukiko’s eyes. She guessed at his age either 34 or 35 years. The more she thought that he was such a man for her to part without knowing his name and occupation, the more the man’s whimsical images clung to her eyelids even after she lay down in her narrow bed to sleep alone.

   On the fifth day, getting a notice of a truck service available to Da Lat, Yukiko prepared again for the next journey to join the engineer Mogi’s squad. ― A long time ago, Saigon was called by the Khmer name, Prei Nokor^[*150], which meant the dense and tall forest that once existed around the city. While looking from the truck bed, large trees were lined along the main street of Saigon, extending high in the air, under which cycle rickshaws, xích lô, were constantly running, like insects, on the slippery asphalt road. On the Quang Trung Chinh street in downtown, a French child wearing light blue clothes was playing under the roadside trees of Tamarind (Tamarindus indica), the sight of which looked like a painting. Tamarind fruit like pears grew in heaps on the trees, which gave an impression of a rural district. Not a single waste or a leaf was scattered on the street, where the Vietnamese and overseas Chinese were walking leisurely. Surprisingly enough, their garments looked much better in quality and more stylish to Yukiko’s eyes which were used to seeing poor clothes in Japan. She, suddenly, became envious of Shinoi Haruko. The fact itself that she could stay in such a beautiful town like this was the object of her envious feeling. Under thick trees along the roadside, Japanese soldiers were walking. They were walking in group, and looked lonely with nowhere to rely on, no where they scented their homeland, Japan, or even their military backgrounds. Soldiers were walking, but it might be better to say that they looked like being suddenly dropped there. Every face also of her squad on the truck bed was greasy and poor-looking, certainly due to the fatigue of the long journey. Yukiko thought that she was one of them and looked the same as them, and then, misery flashed across her heart as if she became a daughter of a day laborer lacking honor and pride. Yukiko was eager to go back to the inner lands, ‘naichi^[*126].’ Da Lat was not worth bothering about anymore. She would long for other people. So, she would not be able to live alone in such a place as Da Lat plateau. An old man of a mine squad, Seya, changed his attitude completely after Shinoi Haruko parted, and turned his smiling face to Yukiko.

   “You look so depressed. Cheer up! We have Japanese soldiers everywhere we may go. Nothing to worry about. Besides, you, as the only Japanese woman, have great responsibilities. You need to work together with the Japanese Imperial Army, don’t you? You see that.　……”

 

 

.. * 6

 

It was another 16 km to Da Lat from Prenn village, from which the road ran winding, and the driveway meandered towards Lang Biang plateau. The truck went climbing up snarling. It was from sunset to nightfall, from time to time, a white peacock flew away from a shadowy roadside woods, which made the squad members surprised.

   In wisps of evening haze across a plateau, the truck passed sometimes lined trees of higan’zakura^[*57]. In forests on horizontal flat terraces in a sloping ground, gorgeous villas were found here and there. In a villa, flowers of bougainvillea of magenta color were in full bloom. In another villa, mimosa trees were planted around a tennis court. Mimosa trees with golden blossoms were giving off faint scents around as far as their truck passing by. Yukiko felt as if she were in a dream. In the spaciousness of the plateau, she felt something incomparable to the city of forest, Saigon. A Vietnamese female farmer with a conical hat, Non La, carrying a shoulder pole with loads on each end, stepped aside to give way to the truck.

   The town of Da Lat in the plateau seemed to Yukiko to be like a mirage reflected in the sky. With Lang Biang Mountain in the background, and the lake in front, Da Lat, the town of terraces, uprooted Yukiko’s anxiety and illusions. The truck entered the white establishment which was previously used as a military resident office. A Rising Sun was put up high in the middle of the garden. A new signboard indicating Regional Forest Office was fastened with a nail on the stone gate, under which a plate with small characters of Vietnamese and French written in Indian ink was also nailed. In a reception room with a view of the lake, the squad met the chief of the office, Mr. Makita. Yukiko were assigned to work here for the time being. Only Yukiko went out of the office, being guided by a Vietnamese housemaid, to a room which was given to her. The room was at the end of the second floor, no sight of the lake or the town, however, Lang Biang Mountain was seen as if loomed on the northern window. In the garden, bougainvillea was in full bloom and a white hairy dog was frolicking on the lawn.

   Yukiko settled down into her room, at the end of the long distance journey. No rug covering even a part of teakwood floor, it seemed to be rather cool, though. A shabby bed, a high desk and a chair, probably carried from somewhere else. A narrow wardrobe painted in white broke the harmony of the dark room. Birds were chirping noisily looking for their roosts in the evening twilight. The engineer Mogi and the mine squad’s Seya went away by car driven by Mr. Makita to Lang Biang Hotel, the first class hotel in Da Lat. Mr. Makino, a short fat man in his 40s, began with working for the Forest Service Office in Tottori Prefecture^[*204], then entered the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry^[*114]. Afterwards, he was appointed to a new post as a civilian employee in Viet Nam in the spring in 1942, 17 Shōwa. His subordinate personnel were 4 people, all of whom seemed to go out surveying the mountain areas. Two Vietnamese interpreters, a forester, and a half-breed female clerk were in the office as usual. ―　Yukiko was extremely exhausted. She felt bad and did not feel like going out when an invitation for dinner in Lang Biang Hotel reached her. She lay down over a blanket on her bed, feeling continuous jolting of the truck as before, and discomfort in her ears as if a plug inserted into each ear. She wanted to sleep soundly. With her eyes closed, rustling sound from the forest was lingering in her ears like chirping cicada, which never did extinguish from the bottom of her ears. The smell of paint of the wardrobe was disgusting to her.

   That night, she ate Japanese foods alone in a wide dining room, which a Vietnamese maid cooked for her. In the center of the room, a fireplace, cheminée in French, was placed like a rock, and a piano was shining near the door. She placed her hand on a well-starched white tablecloth, where her yellow hand looking dirtier than the hand of the Vietnamese maid. In a glass fingerbowl, a flower of bougainvillea floated. A red-black fish paste kamaboko^[*81] and a miso soup with pieces of tofu looked unique to Yukiko. The maid seemed to be over 30 years of age, a woman of beautiful eyes. Her forehead became wide, and her facial skin was as dark as cinnamon-like kaki’shibu color^[*80]. She did the makeup on her flat face to be powdery-chalky. She wore earrings of blue glass marbles on her ears. She spoke a little broken Japanese. White moths flocked around on wide windows with screen panel shutters. When she almost finished supper, suddenly, a car engine loudly sounded at the yard. She thought, at first, that the director Makita came back again very soon, and then, thought another way, ‘For his return, it’s awfully quick.’ She pricked up her ears. The maid ran out, and cried in a sweet voice, “Bonsoir.” Before long, a male voice with noisy footsteps came closer, and an abrupt intruder pushed himself into the dining room. It was the man who drew Yukiko’s attention at the inn in Saigon. The tall man’s footfall was rhythmical. As soon as entering the dining room, he seemingly was slightly surprised at the sight of Yukiko. He nodded lightly greeting her, and went out quickly to the corridor.

   The maid did not come back soon to the dining room, even after Yukiko finished supper. Yukiko, while greeting back to the man, felt a flush rising to her own cheeks, and was impatient of no sign of his coming to the dining room after having gone away. Her feelings, so far fatigued and near to death, was filled with longing, as if blown from the fire. She tiptoed quickly back to her room. Yukiko applied lipstick deeply before the wardrobe mirror, combed her hair, and powdered her face, and then, went back in a hurry to the dining room below. Deep silence reigned the wide dining room, despite restless sound that the white moths were patting with their wings the screen panel shutters. After a while, the maid brought her a coffee, put it on the table, and went away. Yukiko waited for a long time, but the man did not appear in the dining room, after all. Yukiko felt discouraged, and went up the stairs to her room in a low spirit. Someone was coming up the broad staircase. She, trying to calm down her violent throbbing, pressed her ear on the door. After the noise went out, Yukiko descended to the dining room, again. Having nothing to do, she opened the lid of the piano, touched one hand to the keys, playing sporadically ‘Song of the beach - Hamabe’no Uta^[*182],’ which she had often played in her high school days. On the wall, a forest statistics in the glass frame was hung. While following her eyes the specimens such as cassia pine, Merkus pine, willow, oak, beech, and others, Yukiko severely became aware of how far she had come. No one seemed to come to the dining room, so, Yukiko went out to the garden. An enormous number of stars were twinkling clearly in the night sky. The transparent wind, as if rasping rubber balloons, blew up Yukiko’s heavy silk poplin skirt. The scent of fragrant flowers were floating from somewhere. “Bonsoir,” a greeting female voice was heard far from a narrow path. Light clouds were passing by stars. The lake was not visible. Yukiko went back to her room and leaned toward the window. After a while, a phone bell rang loudly somewhere downstairs. Soon after that, the director Makita’s car sounded like it was coming back. A sudden clamor downstairs, and three or four men’s laughter was heard.

 

 

.. * 7

 

A mountain breeze at dawn, and Yukiko heard a breeze blown through pine trees. While waking from sleep in the morning, she had a dream playing tennis on a wide lawn with that man, and felt the longing. She tried to remember the dream, which, however, was not consistent. ‘Probably, he will leave here very soon again ……’ Yukiko was filled with joy thinking an amazing coincidence of two people who were blown toward under the same roof twice.

She did her makeup carefully, and wore, shabby fabrics though, a white silk one-piece. She went downstairs to the morning dining room, where Mr. Makita and that man were drinking coffee near a wide windowsill put away the screen shutters. Mr. Makita, with a ruddy complexion, greeted her with a wide smile, but that man did not take any notice of Yukiko. He sat rudely turning his leg toward the window, looking at the hazy lake in the mist. Showing such a style in an unfriendly manner was a kind of his pose, which seemed, to Yukiko, like a stubbornness inherent in a junior high school boy.

   “Why not come over here, Kōda’san? You must have been tired from the long journey. In Saigon, your accommodation was the same with Tomioka’kun, wasn’t it?”

   As Yukiko watched the man anxiously, Mr. Makita spoke to him in a low voice.

   “Kōda’kun is a typist and is going to work here, for a time being. In half a year, she will be transferred to Institut Pasteur, I’m sure. ……”

   The man, for the first time, turned his body towards Kōda Yukiko. Remaining seated, he greeted Yukiko.

   “I am Tomioka.”

   “Is this your first meeting with her? I thought you had already been introduced. This is Tomioka Kengo’kun. He also came from the Ministry. Three months ago, he was transferred here from Borneo. ― Japanese women are rare around here, so, probably, men’s excessive favor is embarrassing you. ……  We have Kōda’san only, here. ……”

   Yukiko took her seat, far away from them, on a leather sofa. Mr. Makita recalled what Seya said about Yukiko last evening at the lobby in the hotel, ‘She is a plain woman, so, much better for work. A woman called Shinoi that we left in Saigon is fairly a beauty, so I am worried that she might cause a problem.’ Seeing an extended pictorial view of Kōda’ Yukiko from afar, he thought, she did not look so plain as Seya had said. Rarely enough, she did not apply a permanent wave to her hair, which pleased him. First of all, she was

humble. Her bare legs, which she aligned properly, were buxom, which resembled Japanese Nerima’daikon^[*130]; thinking in mind, he smiled. He felt a nostalgia for her gently sloping shoulders and the nape of her neck, the skin of which was so white as to look clear blue, in the same way as a nostalgia for a straw-mat, tatami, and a sliding door of white paper pasted wooden frame, shōji. He felt affinity of the same tribe to her, and was tempted to put together palms of his hands in prayer to her like a Shintō goddess^[*170]. Her slightly high forehead looked to advantage than his maid Niu. He liked that Yukiko did not wear hexagon glasses such as a half-breed Mary’s. A young Japanese woman came all the way to this plateau, which was like a dream to Mr. Makita. He could not have a good impression to women who went abroad, however, Kōda’ Yukiko’s impression was unexpectedly good to Mr. Makita. She also was good at makeup, better than he expected. Yukiko was not such a woman as Seya referred to, which made Makita happy. Canna lilies were arranged on the large table.

Mr. Makita, in a good mood, had a professional talk with Tomioka. Yukiko’s face, in raptures, was toward bright windows, but her innermost feelings flew aimlessly far away. Tomioka, whiffing a cigarette, crossed his arms at the back top of his chair, and leaned his back head against his own arms. On his left wrist, the red second hand moved on a black dial of his watch. He wore well-pressed heat-proof brown clothes, and fastened a cool-looking narrow belt like a plastic glass around his waist. His fresh-shaven nape looked all blue. Soon after, the bell rang in the dining room. Mr. Makita at the top, Yukiko followed Tomioka in a row into the dining room. On a white table cloth, white and purple flowers, which Yukiko saw for the first time, were arranged in a glass container, and red bowls of miso soup of tōfu were placed. Dishes of fried eggs, salted and fermented shrimp-like mysidacea called ami’no shiokara in Japanese, and other dishes were carried one after another. Yukiko sat down next to Tomioka, face-to-face with Mr. Makita. Mogi, Seya, and Kuroi, who stayed in the hotel, had not come to the office yet. Electric fans installed on the ceiling rotated, making strident noises. Mr. Makita slurping his miso soup, spoke to Yukiko.

   “I have heard that our inner lands, Japan, become harder and harder to live. You have come here, and are aware that Indochina is like paradise, I’m sure.”

   He likened this town to paradise, however, Yukiko had never lived such a rich life as this, and so, felt somewhat uneasy in mind because it was more than paradise over here. Anxiety and emptiness casted a shadow on her mind, as if she entered a millionaire’s mansion while the owner was absent.

   From time to time, Tomioka talked about Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Saigon, or blamed Japanese rough attitudes against a bureau director Frenchman in the Forest station. Mr. Makita, listening, gave responses to him in a low voice.

“First of all, it is not for poor-looking Japanese to be arrogant in the Continental Hotel.” He continued. “It might raise the antipathy to use such a sumptuous hotel as the military logistics lodging, where soldiers are meddling, about which I’m worried from the stand point of the occupation policy.”

   “We are lucky. Away from the military purpose, we have only to protect forests according to our duties. I merely appreciate it, as we are fortunate enough to work here. ……”

   Tomioka had lived in Saigon for ten days, and made some research over charcoal for producing gas at Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute on Liu Song street there. Tomioka ate bread for breakfast. Yukiko’s hand caught his attention, when it suddenly reached a butter dish to pass it for Tomioka. He curiously looked at the nice plump Japanese female hand.

   He admired the beautiful gentle hand.

   Fluffy hair grew.

   “I’m planning to go to Lenfant in four or five days, to observe studies of bamboo reinforced concrete. Kano’kun distributed to us his detailed report in reference to an interim work of firewood forests, did you see it? We cannot ignore charcoal cars, as well, can we?

They say, charcoal cars are quickly replacing gasoline cars in Japan, but, charcoal cars have been used here long before. ……  Would you please read once the report Kano’kun has described. I want to go to the Trang Bom laboratory also to meet Kamo’kun. ……”

   He talked of things of his choice in whispered tone. Then, he left the table earlier than anyone, and went back to the parlor.

   “How whimsical he is!”

   About Tomioka who went out abruptly, Yukiko commented this way to Mr. Makita, without even thinking.

   “Whimsical, indeed. Even so, he is really a kindhearted man. He writes to his wife constantly every three days …….  I cannot imitate his style at all. He is a man of strong sense of responsibility, once he underwrites something, he never fails to carry it out …….”

   Yukiko did not know why, but the fact that he wrote to his wife every three days caused her pain.

 

 

.. * 8

 

In the evening on the second day, Mr. Makita was due to go on a business trip for ten days to Phnom Penh via Saigon. He started by truck with the old Seya, who was just about to go back to Saigon. Mogi and Kuroi went to visit the districts in their charge, under a Vietnamese interpreter’s guidance. Tomioka and Yukiko were left alone behind. Tomioka occupied the best room on the east side in the center of the second floor. The best room it was, but like a clean hospital room.

Yukiko assumed being aloof from Tomioka who wrote to his wife every three days. When they met in the dining room, Tomioka merely said to her “Ohayō” or “Hi,” and seemed to pass out his typing works to Mary. The typist, Mary, went to the dining room to play the piano, at any time when she fed up with work. She had a good touch in tones, owing to a location of Da Lat as the highlands. Yukiko did not know the name of the music, by which she was enruptured from time to time. Tomioka, as wel, seemed to be fond of music, absentmindedly listening to her piano music on his desk. Mary was at least 25 years of age, but looked older because of her glasses. She had a good upbringing. She had antelope-like slender legs, and always wore navyblue socks with white shoes. Her waist was clear-cut outline, and her figure, seen from behind, was a graceful beauty. Light golden brown was her hair color, and she had her bobbed hair loosely permed, which lay on her shoulder abundantly. Yukiko was acutely aware of her own racially scanty faculty every time when she heard Mary’s piano. Mary was fluent in English, French, and Vietnamese, and managed work promptly. Yukiko sometimes thought that such an incompetent woman like herself didn’t have to come as far as the highlands in far-off Indochina. Yukiko’s duty was to write on a Japanese typewriter. She spent idle hours, soothing herself thinking that she was probably needed to make confidential documents.

   Mr. Makita’s hasty departure postphoned Tomioka’s trip to Lenfant. One day after five days had passed, Kano Hisajirō, without a previous notice, came back suddenly from Trang Bom to Da Lat with a Vietnamese assistant.

   Immediately when he entered the office, Kano astonishingly saw Yukiko, and blushed. Tomioka introduced Yukiko to Kano, who greeted each other. Kano, a single-mindedly young man who would strive for his duty to the limit of his strength, moved a chair close to Tomioka, and quickly began talking about their work.

   “Can you stay here a little longer?”

   “Likely. I have not felt well recently, and had loose bowels. Besides, I have yearned for a civilization in Da Lat. I did not imagine that Tomioka’san has returned.”

   After a long discussion about their work, they began talking familiarly and asked a maid to bring them coffee. They seemed to be truly familiar peers. Kano looked younger than Tomioka. He was too white for a man, small-sized, and athlete-like dapper, wearing an open-neck shirt and a white knee-length pants. Contrary to his physical impression, his eyes always looked timid, and was too shy to look straight at the face of the other person.

   For the first time after a long time, dinner in the dining room bustlingly began. Aperitif was a bottle of white wine which Tomioka purchased in Saigon. White wine was poured in Yukiko’s glass, too.

   “Kōda’kun, did you come from Chiba^[*18]?”

   Tomioka, usually reserved in speech, suddenly asked to Yukiko, probably as he drank.

   “Oh, not from Chiba, don’t be insolent! ……”

   “Is it so? I’ve thought that you are a woman of the Chiba type. Then, from where did you come?”

   “I’m from Tokyo ……”

   “Tokyo? Don’t be silly. Tokyo-born people are not like Kōda’kun. If any thing it is the people in Katsushika or Yotsugi^[*91].”

   “Ah, you’re terrible!”

   She felt like being insulted, and was disgruntled.

   Kano could not stand any more, and said.

   “Toimioka’san is unrivaled for his sharp tongue. So, you need not to mind. This is his disease. ……”

   “Is it so, from Tokyo …….  But, you talk in a provincial accent unlike Tokyoite, the edokko^[*33]. Kōda’kun, how old are you?”

   “Any age as you like ……”

   “24 or 5, I suppose ……”

   “Well, I’m 22 years old, despite my appearance. Tomioka’san is really a terrible person. ……”

   “Oh, really. 22, are you? A woman looks like 24 or 5, which means that she is smart. It’s stupid if you want to be seen younger.”

   Tomioka, this time, brought a bottle of Cointreau and opened it. Kano graduated from College of Agriculture and Forestry, as did Tomioka. He was appointed to the Forestry studies in French Indochina with recommendations from Prof. Yasunaga and Tomioka. The favorite of Tomioka and Kano was literature. Tomioka was a Tolstoy fan, and Kano was Sōseki^[*184] fanatic and idolized Mushanokōji Saneatsu^[*123].

“Cheers to Ms. Kōda for her coming all the way to Da Lat in Indochina!”

   Kano gave a toast and held out his glass toward Yukiko. Yukiko was moved to tears, feeling somewhat defiant. Tomioka’s drunk eyes sighted Yukiko’s look glittering with tears. The color of her eyes contained a strange magic in it. He remembered the same light glittering, from time to time, in his wife’s eyes. He, bewildered, tossed off his Cointreau. Yukiko could not endure this situation, silently putting her chair aside, and went out of the room. Outdoors was a too beautiful night to go back to her room upstairs. Yukiko strayed from the broad road glowing with dew, and rambled without purpose.

“She did care, and went away …… .”

   Kano went up stairs from the floor below to catch up with her, and knocked the door of Yukiko’s room. No reply from inside. He turned the knob of the unlocked door. On the bed, in the bright room in light, a school girl’s black pants were thrown off. Kano stood there for a while.

   Even after going back to the dining room, the black pants flickered on his eyelids, in Kano’s memory.

   “What a prim and proper woman she is!”

   Tomioka said spittingly. Kano, thinking about Yukiko who probably went outside, was eager to look for her.

   “Doesn’t she resemble the actress, Miyake Kuniko^[*117]?”

   Kano said.

   “I don’t know that actress. I hate young women coming to a place during the war like this.”

   “You are unexpectedly obsolete. ……  Da Lat suddenly has become my favorite place.”

   “Kōda Yukiko does not suit you.”

   Kano drank and poured Cointreau into his own glass, looking intently up at white propellers of still fan on the ceiling. Tomioka, wearily indeed, putting his feet on the metal frame of a screen window, sat leaning his head on the back of the chair.

   “I wonder how long a life like this will last. ……”

   Tomioka said with a sigh.

   “I don’t think we will win.”

   Kano turned a questioning look to Tomioka.

   “I have thought this way while I was in Saigon. Hey, I cannot say in a loud voice, but a turning point must be the next spring, mustn’t it?”

   “I was not informed of anything while I spent, for a long time, deep in the mountain. Is there any marked change in deployment? Any news?”

   “We cannot win, absolutely. That’s all.”

   “I don’t believe. I’m assured that we will win. What is the Japanese navy going to do?”

   “They have their tactics, I hope. ……  Tactical situations and military gains are reported everyday in newspapers.”

   Kano, who could not rid his vision of her black pants, stood up impatiently and went to switch on a vent fan. Screws of the fan started creaking, immediately, white propellers started with a clatter, and rotated with buzzing sounds. Flowers on the table fiercely swayed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 9

 

Kōda Yukiko did not come back for a long time. Tomioka, leaning his head on the back of the chair always as before, was sleeping in the breeze of the ceiling fan.

   Kano turned off the ceiling fan, and silently went out of the dining room to outside. He thought to look for Yukiko. A night crow crowed in the dark around a thick row of early-flowering cherry trees, Prunus subhirtella higan’zakura. The sky seemed to get so wet and suddenly stop its movement. Subtle lights were flickering among trees. An overly ornate villa-style establishment of the overseas chinese was seen below from the forestry office. No inhabitants there for a long time, and a desolate landscape in the garden. A faint voice was singing inside the hedge of southern ocean roses in bloom like snowflakes. A Japanese song. ‘Ah! Yukiko is there, inside the garden!’ Kano rounded the hedge into the lawn. Insects were incessantly chirping. On a broad wood bench with a curved back, Yukiko sat singing.

   Yukiko noticed Kano’s coming, stopped singing, and stood up as if looking through the dark garden.

   “What’s happened with you? Did you get angry?”

   “Nothing ……”

   “Shall we go back? The night dew is not good for your health. At a place like this, you shan’t be bit by mosquitos, which will make you sick. ……”

   “Later, I will be back alone. ……”

   “He is a good fellow, a sharp tongue though. One reason might be a nervous breakdown. ……”

   Kano put his hand on Yukiko’s shoulder, through a thin silk cloth, an unexpectedly soft female flesh heated his whole body. He had gotten drunk, and thus, was not able to control himself easily. Kano gripped Yukiko’s soft flesh of shoulder, two or three times. Yukiko passed around through his hand, but, she also, slightly suffocated, felt herself uncontrollable. Instinctively, she felt like resisting Tomioka’s insulting word, and had a desire to torment him. A man of white flesh like Kano did not interest her. Yukiko silently stood still. Kano, once again, clumsily approached Yukiko. In the distance, a faint noise of a hotel vehicle engine was coming and going.

   Such a doubt flashed momentarily in his mind that his feelings in being attracted to Yukiko possibly were caused merely by a sexual appetite, because he had just come back from a woodland of Trang Bom. Only this opportunity, however, afforded him to get her, and there probably was no other chance, he thought. He, once more, tried to stay attached closer to Yukiko, who gazed at him with fiercely glittering eyes. A smell of thick tussoks of growing grasses and flowers muffled the night air. From time to time, small chirping sounds came from grass straws.

   “Kano’san, I had no choice for getting the better of my things in Japan, so I voluntarily applied for this service and came here. …… Kano’san, you will understand that, won’t you? Under the wartime circumstances, in Japan, how can a young woman live everyday, bearing in mind the hundred million honorable death, ‘Ichioku Gyokusai^[*73]’ ? I have not come whimsically to a remote country like this. ……  I was eager to drift away to somewhere else. …… Notwithstanding, Tomioka’san told me such nasty remarks. …… Why was it bearable in my mind? We all three are Japanese. …… Even if it would be either Katsushika or Yotsugi, it’s not his concern. I have felt pain to live, and at last, drifted here. Despite that, he’s impudent sneering at me. ……”

   Suddenly, Yukiko began talking at a high pitch. Kano, suspending his own lust in the air, was looking into Yukiko’s eyes glittering like a beast. She said that she had felt a pain to live, which visualized wartime circumstances in Japan lying over at Yukiko’s background.

   “Tomioka is drunk. ……”

   Kano, saying, boldly gripped Yukiko’s upper arms again with his strong hands.

   “Hated! Kano’san also is drunk. I’m not like that ……”

   Yukiko saying stiffened. Closed her eyes, but did not shake herself off from his grip. The instant Kamo’s hot lips touched her cheek, Yukiko turned her face away. Kano’s lips stroked Yukiko’s cheek and parted from it disappointedly.

   “Yoo-hoo! Kano’kun!”

   Tomioka was calling out from the road. Kano said in a low voice to Yukiko.

   “Come afterward, you too.”

   Kano quickly walked through the grasses, and obediently went back to the road. Tomioka suddenly felt somehow uncomfortable with Kano who came out of the grasses. Kano did not have anything excuses, but silently walked apace with Tomioka to the office, while he was always exposed to the unpleasant feelings reflected from Tomioka. The night air was cool, and their shoes seemed to slip on the asphalt.

   “It’s going to snow in Japan.”

   Tomioka, after a slight yawn, said in a low tone.

   “Ah, I want to go back home, at least just for once, I want to go back home to Japan …… .”

   Kano did not reply, recalling Yukiko’s feverish words, which were caught on his chest, that she had felt a pain to live and at last drifted here.

   “Is Kōda Yukiko pretty upset?”

   Tomioka calmly pulled out a cigarette, and asked while tapping a lighter with a long strap at his fingertip.

   “Yeah, she’s upset.”

   “Aha ……”

   “She is a good girl.”

   “Ohoo ……  A good girl? Is she a virgin? ……”

   “A virgin. I was forced back.”

   Kano confessed honestly, thinking it much convenient to admit the state of affairs openly now. Tomioka, smoking a cigarette,  walked in silence.

   “Didn’t you have some loved one in Japan?”

   “No not anyone. ……”

   “Hmmm ……”

While going around the corner, Kano looked back, but Yukiko did not appear in the down slope of the road.

   “Well, tomorrow, shall we go fishing by car to Phương?”

   Tomioka’s pastime was fishing. With four waterfalls in the vicinity, Phương was Tomioka’s favorite fishing site. Kano did not have any intention to go fishing. He was not in such a laid-back mood. He came back from the deep mountains after a long time. He wanted to see people. Loneliness swirling in his mind brought him back to the office here. He was very much pleased to meet Tomioka, on the other hand, however, a chance encounter with Yukiko bursted like a wildfire in his mind. At present, Kano could not deal well with his own feeling such that his feet were cramped when he saw her black pants. Kano, with no reply, emitted a sound with his mouth like whistling for a dog. In the distant, from the direction of a garage, a dog barked faintly.

   “Mr. Makino got a good chance. Saigon and Phnom Penh are oasis for him after a long time. ……”

   “Yeah.”

   “Tomioka’san, did you enjoy in Saigon?”

   “Not, really.”

   “I doubt it. ……  You did, didn’t you?”

   “You also should go to Saigon once to get refreshed, before going back to Trang Bom.”

   “Saigon …… .  I’ve not visited there for a long time. ……”

   Kano was not interested in Saigon at all. He could not forget Yukiko’s glittering eyes like a beast that he saw tonight in the starlight. He wanted to talk with her, anyway. And, he wanted to comfort her loneliness. A night breeze seemingly appeased violent beatings of his heart after a little while. He began regretting his impatient boisterousness. She cried out tearfully that she was not whimsically drifted toward here. He admitted in his mind that his own feelings also were somewhat similar to hers. He thought it better to be a forester than being taken as a soldier. Her words were painfully touching his old wounds which he had already rid himself of. He was once convened to Corps of Engineers situated in Akabane^[*1], and then, went to the Battle of Nanging in 1937^[*13]. Memories of that melancholic war rubbed his brain lightly in passing. A shadow-like vision came forth to his eyelids; a lake, the name of which was already vague in his memories, and a boat, where he concealed a woman from sight to make out with great haste.

 

 

.. * 10

 

Tomioka felt nothing amusing. Saying ‘good night,’ he parted from Kano in front of the dining room, and went up stairs. Tomioka saw a luminous watch, which showed the time largely past eleven o’clock. The maid, Niu, was arranging Tomioka’s laundered clothes on a shelf. So slow-moving, Tomioka felt unbearably lonesome while seeing her work, and went down the back stairway to a specimen room. He lit the specimen room and sat on a wooden stool. He, while looking over dried-up specimen stored on display cases, began being at a loss and wondered, for what he sat in the place like this, having nothing to do.

He thought to write to his wife after a long time when he got back to his room. For ten days after he went travelling to Saigon, he had not sent a letter to his hometown. He thought that he could express his keen loneliness to his wife only. The sight of his wife, who faced always alone indescribable hardships in Japan lacking in all sorts of supplies, came to his mind. He wanted also to write, in addition, to Kuniko, his wife, that he would send for her soon, by suitable freight, lipstick and face powder of the Michael brand which he bought for her in Saigon.

   His throat dried, so, Tomioka went out of the specimen room to the dining room, where Kano was alone still sipping the remainder of Cointreau.

   “Has Ms. Kōda come back?”

   “Yeah, she came back and retreated to her room.”

   Tomioka drank water, and slowly went upstairs again. Niu was not in his room anymore. Tomioka, locked the door, lay back down on his bed. Hearing creakingly bending springs, he gazed at a frosted glass bulb on the ceiling light. Nothing recurred to his mind. Only the watery loneliness, like a wet towel, weighed silently on his forehead. Once he lay down in the back, writing to his wife became very annoying. Before long, he changed into yellow pajamas. Heartily laundered and pressed pajamas with no wrinkle …… . Niu’s mercy was pathetic.

   Kicking aside a blanket, he effortlessly lay down on the bedsheet. ― The door creaked at the dining room downstairs, and Kano’s footsteps came up stairs slowly. Tomioka absently murmured in mind, “Kano such a man, Kamo such a man.” Kōda Yukiko’s healthy body resembled somewhere his wife Kuniko. First of all, a surprising discovery that she understood his verbal nuance at once was resonant to Tomioka’s heart. Kōda Yukiko, who appeared alone here, showed mutual affinity in language and a way of life, which was comprehensible only to men and women of the same tribe. ― Tomioka slightly smiled fancying that Kano would not be able to sleep tonight. Kano’s irritation, pulling up a chair and opening a closet furiously, was heard from the next room very soon, indeed.

   Tomioka could not sleep. He felt like having forgotten turning off the light in the specimen room, rolled out and went to the corridor. Downstairs, Niu in light blue loungewear stood at the entrance of the specimen room.

   “I didn’t switch off the light, so I came down.”

   Tomioka whispered in Vietnamese.

   “I also came down to switch it off.”

   Niu, saying, pinched the front hem of her long loungewear and stretched out to the wall switch to turn it off. The female body, in passing, heavily pressed Tomioka, who held it in a tight embrace. As Niu seemed to say something, Tomioka abruptly kissed her lips. After a long kiss, he left her there, as if leaning her small body against the wall, and went up stairs. He felt like hearing a slight laugh of Niu in the back, like a chirping sound. While going up the stairs, Tomioka glared like a Kabuki actor, Danjūrō^[*25], and entered his own room slowly.

   The night was tranquile.

   Always, on a windy day, pine trees roaring sounded like a mountain rumbling. Tonight, however, no roaring of pine trees. Tomioka drew a landscape of pine tree forests in his mind. Long leaves’ vulnerability like the babishō^[*9]’s tassels, the Merkus pines’ broom-like appearance, and a light color of caccia trees. Branches desperately growing like small flags. Images of various pine trees came and went one after another in his mind’s eye. ― A memory of a field research of the Merkus pines in mountain forests in South Borneo in Indonesia came in to his mind’s eye again. He longingly recalled that he saw, among many soldiers, a comfort drama performance of an actress Satsuki Nobuko^[*163] in the city of Banjarmasin in south Kalimantan. He wondered whether the theatrical program was “An opportune moment of a Shintō god ― Toki’no Ujigami,” or some other drama …… .  Tomioka was surprised seeing a horde of aquatic plants like hyacinthus orientalis growing over the breadth of the yellowish turbid river, immense as an ocean. Was this, and that also, already behind him like a transient dream? ……  Plants, which were not native to the land, would not grow well. Actually, as a ground for belief, Japanese cedar, which was planted in the garden of this Forest Office in Da Lat, did not grow well. Tomioka thought, applying it in difference in races, that human beings might be the same as plants. He began assuming strangely, ‘Plants are native to the indigenous people’s land and have firmly rooted there.’ ― A distribution map of the merkus pines in Da Lat showed him the entire area of 86.485 acres, he thought, ‘How a less competent Japanese forester like me can interpret numeric figures of other people’s land?’ ……  ‘Forms of trunks and arrangements of fibers in wood are truly beautifu; however, where in the world the merkus pains in huge timberlands shall be exported? ……  ‘Aren’t we are only aliens, who suddenly came to rummage in other people’s land for their properties which have been increasing over the years?’ ……  ‘How on earth we Japanese are going to process all these magnificent timberlands?’ ……  Human beings’ minds are free. Tomioka was drowsily remembering his infant days. He could not fall asleep at all.

Tomioka put off the light.

   At the same time, in the next room, Kano opened the door, and

walked slowly down the stairs with noisy footsteps, again. ……

Perhaps? ……  Tomioka, denying a suspicion, pricked up his ears.

― After a while, with musical scales like water drops dripping

into a deep well, the piano sounded bit by bit in the dining room.

Tomioka kept pricking up his ears, thinking that his self-restraint

life while roaming in mountains for a longtime drove Kano to

distraction. Tomioka calmly sank his head deep in his pillow. A

while ago, he secretly kissed Niu. Suddenly, his own indecency

disgusted himself. ‘Kano, as well as I, love what in actuality is not a

love.’ Both men had lost sharp esprit which they lively had in their

spirits while they were in Japan. The Japanese would begin

withering like ciders which were transplanted from Japan to the

plateau of Da Lat. A low tone came out of Tomioka’s throat.

“Are we Japanese in the southern dementia?”

 

 

.. * 11

 

“Bonjours!” Mary’s soft greeting was heard at a landing, downstairs.

Tomioka looked at his wrist watch, which indicated 9 o’clock. ‘That time already,’ he got up slowly and smoked a cigarette on the bed. His head ached. He did not know what to do, his body never did want to move. Everything was vague. Birds were charmingly chirping. He slowly opened the window. Cool and refreshing outside. The sky of plateau brightly glaring down and the green on the ground seemed as if reflecting, from above and from below, each other. Niu, was standing in a flower bed in the corner of the wide garden, wearing clothes, the persimmon tannin color of which gave a bright and cool impression. Tomioka somehow hated an inexhaustible healthiness of women. After a long kiss, Niu had laughed like an insect’s chirping, whose innermost mentality perplexed him. Tomioka stretched himself to his heart’s content, and again, sat slowly on the bed. He felt the act itself meaningless even if he moved his body.

Tomioka went out to a washroom, in passing, knocked the door of Kano’s room. No answer. Gripping the knob to push it, the door calmly opened with a varnish smell. The windows were left open, Kano was sleeping in bed, only wearing an underpants of brown multiple stripes. With his face down, exposing his smooth bluish skin like an egg just finished peeling. With his mouth open, snoring like raindrops pooling to a gutter at the eaves on the roof. Tomioka shook Kano’s cold shoulder to wake him up. Kano opened his blunt eyes. Bloodshot eyes and unstable glance. Because of a foolish passion of last night, presumably.

   Tomioka, as it was, went on to the washroom and took a cold shower. ‘It’s morning, nothing happened. ……’  Spectral apparitions caused by fervor last night had disappeared into air. He, wrapping up in a large towel, was so cheered up as to go up the stairs quickly. He put on a well pressed white half-sleeve shirt and long brown trousers of gabardin, awkwardly began shaving in front of a mirror. Aroma of coffee came lingering up to the second floor. At a church, bells began ringing.

   Tomioka, tidily in appearance, went down to the dining room, where Kōda Yukiko was eating breakfast alone.

   “Morning …… .”

   To Tomioka’s greeting, Yukiko, with red-rimmed eyes from weeping, only smiled. Yukiko’s gentle facial expression embarrassed Tomioka. He, as if angry, went to his seat, and quickly ate breakfast. Niu, preparing meals, looked quite another person. She, with an expressionless face like a Buddhist statue, carried him a coffee and toast. Mary’s typing sounded busy in the office.

   After breakfast, Tomioka, as free as wind, felt like going to Mankin at a distance of 2.48 miles away. He went out alone to a forest patrol station near a royal tomb of the dynastic Vietnam. Compared with going to fishing, it was much comfier to ask and answer himself, as was a dialogue with forests, when feelings succumbed to gloominess. ― Various lumbermills existed in villages in Da Lat. Squeaky screams while tearing trees as if deafened Tomioka, who silently walked along a tortuous motorway. The roadsides were lush forestal surroundings of huge castanopsis, oplicast, nageia nagi of a family of pudocarpaceae and commonly called as Asian bayberry, and caccia trees. Evergreen broad leaved trees, crossing branches and touching leaves like kissing, thus, closely compacted together to block the morning sun. The sky was flowing like a blue river through opened forests. A sign of someone coming startled Tomioka, who looked back quickly, and saw, unexpectedly, a brisk walk of Kōda Yukiko, fluttering her white skirt.

   Tomioka thought he saw wrongly, but paused. Yukiko breathlessly came near to him.

   “What happened?”

   “What work shall I do, today?”

   “Work?”

   “Yes ……”

   “Why not ask to Kano’kun?”

   “He’s sleeping soundly.”

   A Vietnamese forester must have been in the office, but Yukiko, who had just come, did not know the Vietnamese.

   “Hasn’t Makita’san told you what to do?”

“No. He didn’t say anything to me.”

   The two people naturally started walking toward Mankin. Tomioka walked without word. Yukiko, also in silence, followed him. From time to time, military trucks and vehicles passed by. Every soldier driver caught a sight of a Japanese woman, and drove away with a startled look. Yukiko walked, intentionally away from him.

   As Tomioka did not say anything at all times, Yukiko asked once again in a low voice.

   “What shall I do?”

   Tomioka slowly looked back and commented angrily.

   “There is a royal tomb of the dynastic Vietnam. Why not take it in?”

   Tomioka was walking with long steps. Yukiko did not understand him at all, whether he was kind or not. Yukiko thought that his appearance from behind was vulgar. Tomioka hung swinging his helmet in his hand. His soundless shoes with rubber sole seemed to be comfortable. Yukiko also bought cheap white shoes somehow in Saigon, wearing them even at this time.

   The road branched off into two. Entering a narrow road, they proceeded for a while. Before she knew it, Tomioka paced and walked side by side with Yukiko, who, at last, understood Tomioka’s carefulness that he strode, a while ago, along the motor way where military vehicles were passing.

“I heard you were angry, last night.”

   “Aah, about what? ……”

“Kano said that you were angry very much with me. ……”

   “Indeed. It was unbearable to me.”

   Tomioka wore the helmet, took out an afforestation map from his map bag attached around his waist, and began walking with the map open. In the woods, a turtledove began chirping close by. The white map reflected the light onto Tomioka’s face, and he recalled his light red sunglasses, took out and wore them on his high nose. The map suddenly was dyed light red. Through a narrow opening in the sky, harsh sunshine of the plateau glared at the road. Tomioka looked somehow reluctant to walk with a Japanese woman, deeming it inappropriate toward four corners around. Even coming to the distant land, Japanese customs and habits affected Tomioka’s Japanese spirit threateningly.

 

 

.. * 12

 

Walking together this way seemed to be a sudden whim. Anyway,

huge evergreen broad-reaved trees grew thick and dense all around.

Surroundings, being filled with signs such as sweet and sticky

pollen rolled in, were too stifling for them to keep walking in silence. An unseen aircraft roaring flew away over forests. In the vicinity of the royal tomb, primeval forests spread out dark, where caccia trees

and nageia nagis loftily grew

together. Passing through the

primeval forests, 5-acre caccia tree 

afforestation area by artificial seeding

opened out in front. Kilns for producing charcoals were seen in local

people’s houses around here.

   Yukiko was tired of walking. She could not sleep well last night, probably because of that, she felt a back pain, while walking, as if being out of breath. From time to time, she, inhaled deeply, and felt refreshed. Her lungs puffed up with cool air. Despite that, Yukiko did not have even a slight interest in timberland. She was merely attracted still more to Tomioka’s long back figure. She wanted to become more acquainted with him, such longing loneliness kept her walking. Fantastic feelings adorned Yukiko to be lonely, on purpose …… .  Yukiko wore a melancholy veil patiently which would effectively create the loneliness of a woman on a journey, whenever Tomioka might look back at her. Behind the veil, Yukiko got excited herself and sighed downheartedly.

   Tomioka looked back at her.

   “You must be tired. ……”

   “Yes.”

   “I can easily walk 7.4 miles a day. In the woods, surprisingly, I don’t get tired even if I walk a long way. Besides, I can sleep well.”

   “By the way, does Kano’san stay here for a long time?”

   “Probably, he will stay here for the time being.”

   “I feel him discomfort.”

   “Why? Because he is rough? ……”

   “Last night, he was terribly drunk. I’m scared.”

   Tomioka walked slowly in silence. He, suddenly, felt it related to the reason that he also could not sleep well last night. He recalled Kano with a kind of hatred ―. Tomioka stopped in order to keep step with Yukiko, who, naturally, approached him. He unconsciously gripped her shoulder and hugged her strongly in the faintly darkness under the large tree of nageia nagi. Yukiko also was unexpectedly natural. Yukiko, breathing fast, leaned on him with her face on his chest. It was too easy. Tomioka moved her face away from his chest and watched her plump lips. He found her lips far different from Niw’s kiss of last night, and felt grateful for a value of woman closely akin who understood every fragment of words that he uttered. No need to be attentive, Tomioka felt easy, and absentmindedly gazed at Yukiko’s face showing a flash of excitement. Yukiko’s face, with her eyes closed, repressed her own rough breathing, seemed to Tomioka to resemble his wife very well. His paralyzed mind aimlessly flew a thousand miles away, although he held Yukiko’s head heavily in reality. Tomioka, while being bewildered over another desire for her, could not measure a positioning appropriate and accessible also to him in reference to Yukiko. His pure love for a woman seemed to have blurred after coming to the South. An empty heart, like a lion, who, having freely chosen his lovers in forests, was now captured and impatiently chasing a female given to him in a narrow cage, was obstructive, which Tomioka could not rid of himself while kissing Yukiko. Tomioka was kissing Yukiko for a long time, incessantly. She, completely flushed, put her nails irritatingly on his shoulder. Tomioka’s emotions cooled down little by little, and, contrary to Yukiko’s irritation, his passion for acting further had already faded away. A wild white peacock rustlingly flew out of the woods and went away.

The two people walked around, for a while, in the forest, the village, and wide plantations, and then, went back to the office much later than noon. Tomioka quickly went to pick up a towel in his room, and took a shower in the washroom. Yukiko casually looked into the office. Kano was writing, all alone, leaning over a large desk near the window. The electric fan was off, so the room was muggy. With a pen writing fluently, Kano did not look back at Yukiko. Mary probably had left the office after work. Her typewriter was covered with a cloth. Yukiko went out of the office as it was, went up stairs to her room. The door was left open, and so, she felt unpleasant. Yukiko stood still on the lookout for her bed, her desk, and others in sequence, feeling someone entered her room to look around. She found an indention on her bed as if someone had been sitting there for a while, and could not help feeling somehow uneasy. She locked the door and tried calmly lying down on the bed with her shoes on. She still felt anxiety. Only the blue sky was seen outside the open window. ‘What on earth did I come here to do?’ She felt like a pang of remorse. Situations in the Mainland Japan, where people were restlessly pursued by wars day to day, appeared and disappeared meaninglessly, like floating bubbles, in Yukiko’s head. There was no such restlessness in the reality here; however, heavy loneliness and solitude like a stone were grown inward toward the core of the body. Meanwhile, Yukiko sometimes smiled. She was self-confident of having won a man’s heart, and felt fertile, although it was not a deep promise. She did not care anymore about Iba whom she had left afar off in Japan. Tomioka as a whole was so attractive as if spouting over. Yukiko thought that she could fill her lifetime, shedding tears like a flowing river, with her love for Tomioka. He feigned indifference, however, was clearly far from indifference, in evidence, he came to her easily. It gratified Yukiko absolutely that she could hold meekly, as her own, a man of cynicism, invective, and also earnest attachment to his wife. She felt having overcome Tomioka’s cold-heartness. Her tenacity, that she did not drown easily in Kano’s passion last night, certainly graced her with today’s happiness. Yukiko contently fell asleep before she knew it.

 

   Tomioka, after taking a shower, changed into a set of clean clothes, and went to the dining room downstairs. Kano vacantmindedly sat on a wooden chair facing to the veranda. Tomioka sat down on a wooden chair beside Kano. He was holding two heavy books in his arms. The mount Lang Biang was seen in front, and, below, a lake was brightly white with reflected light. No one was in the back room, a vent fan rotating with a clatter. Niu, given an order, brought a cold bottle of beer with cold duck meat on a platter.

   “How about a beer!”

   Tomioka said to Kano, who picked up wistfully a glass of beer. Birds were chirping noisily everywhere. While they, drinking beer, looked at the landscape, tinges of the mountain changed, little by little, with the condition of the sunlight. Kano drank calmly, which was fortunate to Tomioka. These mountains, lakes, and also the sky were foreign to the Japanese and the French, equally. Despite that, Tomioka could not digest freely enough this land likewise. He was impatient at this reality. In this land, there was an immense repulsion which would reject narrow-mindedness and biased visions of Japan. All Japanese, including Tomioka, despite generously behaving, were only trifling alien substances in this land. Tomioka, a man of no talent who was made to sit in this place, realized being helpless, especially these days. No more than using a poor magic, which would get caught out sooner or later …… .  The scenery of the lake in front, however, had a haunting beauty, forever. Japanese, like ants, moved around quickly and toiled in other people’s land, where no one took notice of the Japanese. Japanese, with practical outlook, extremely cleverly came drifting, up to here, so far. Caccia trees supposedly had the age of 50 to 60 years. But, trees were cut into logs recklessly without any preparation only for reporting the number of log trees to the military. Numerical figures grinned mockingly. The Moi^[*118], indigenous people in Indochina, were employed to flow logs in the Da Nhim River. Tomioka observed, however, that logs were not freely transferred at all. Logs built up in the freight cars. Huge trees, such as caccia trees, oplicast, nageia nagi, and others, were left lying, as they were, on the riverside of the Da Nhim. Only the numerical figures, glibly showing the amount of logged trees, were passing through from desk to desk. The Moi were naïve and awkward laborers. The Japanese army made them work busy improperly like bond servants. ― Tomioka, drinking a beer, began reading the review of the applied botany and colonial agriculture. The French had come and lived in this land for many decades. To Tomioka, the Indochina product review and the review of the applied botany were worth reading. These were described by French, Chevalier^[*17] and Creveau having carried out their field works staying in this land for many years. Chevalier’s book was the everlasting greatest work, being practical for forestry in Indochina.

   Kano also became somewhat drunk, which erased the bad humor of a little while ago from his face, and talked loud, as if suddenly remembered.

   “Is Ms. Kōda sleeping?”

   “Aah ……, I don’t know what she is doing.”

   “A while ago, you took Kōda’kun to Mankin, didn’t you?”

   “No. She came later, so, I joined her to go sightseeing. ……”

   “I love her. Don’t forget it, please.”

   “Aha ……”

   “I don’t mean to be persistent, but, Corps of engineers’ officer came here a while ago, and asked me who that Japanese woman was, with whom Tomioka’san was walking intimately. So, I have thought you were quick in attracting her.”

   “You awfully persist. ……  I merely walked with her. Isn’t it the second lieutenent of the Vehicle section, who said that? ……”

   “So, I also went as far as Mankin, very soon. I looked for you, with much effort, for a long time, but, I could not find you. ……”

  Tomioka, secretly, transferred the line of sight toward the lake. He was thrilled, thinking what Kano would do when he knew that Tomioka intentionally turned aside to a path into forests.

   “Everyone has quick eyes for women. ……”

   Tomioka, in a casual air, commented.

   “Uh-oh, I’m surprised at your quickness. It’s not approving that you took Kōda’kun to Mankin while i was sleeping. A woman acts on a temporary mood. From that standpoint, you are not deserving of confidence, however ironical you are.”

   “I said to you that she came later, following me. The director has left for travel without giving her any work to do, and you were sleeping. She said that she came to ask me what to do, therefore, I advised her to go sightseeing, and went together guiding her. That’s all. No advance promise of going out. ……”

   “It’s OK, now. I fell in love with her, so, no other way than make a move onto her, anyhow.”

Smiling shyly as if saying ‘don’t disturb,’ Kano poured beer in two glasses.

   Tomioka lit a cigarette. Emitting puffs of smoke slowly, he spoke alone in mind that it was too late. But, he thought, in another way, that nothing might be too late. On that occasion, he withstood and abandoned Yukiko’s feelings halfway. He also was aware that his own fatigue was not as usual. Until the very day that he had left for Saigon, his nightly affair with Niu saved him from falling in to physical ferocity, as was the case with Kano. An intimacy with Niu was also temporary. A spiritual love had not germinated in Tomioka with any other women than his wife. The director Mr. Makino seemed to be vaguely aware of Tomioka’s liaison with Niu. Mr. Makino, however, was not such a person as to complain about his staff’s misdeeds. Only if they took responsibility for themselves. Tomioka fully appreciated Mr. Makita’s tolerance, as such.

   Before no one knew, the sun, hemmed in orange, was setting behind Mt. Lang Biang. Waves rippled finely, like scattering golden needles, on the surface of the lake. An oily smell came floating from the back of the dining room. A beautifulness in the dusk induced deep reflections in both men.

   “It is peaceful, here, as you see. But, I suppose circumstances in the inner lands Japan may be unpleasantly severe. Devoting to a love might be luxury. ……”

   Kano talked.

   “Do you think we will win in this war?”

   “Clearly, we will win. It’s too late to lose the war. We have so for carried out operations as far as here. Losing will prove disastrous to the East Asia. ……  I have never thought of losing. Mr. Makita and you are obsessed on delusional anxiety. If we lose by any chance, I would slit my stomach on the spot. ……”

   “You cannot slit your stomach so easily. I don’t want to think that we might lose, but, apparently, we cannot dispel a possibility of losing. I don’t want to say that, if possible, but, it is not always good news, by hearsay. The locals are most sensitive. The Japanese army strives to advance at a breath, keep it up, and never back down, as is the Japanese style of doing things. Japan, however, is scarce in pieces on the Generals’ Board Game, Shōgi. No Gold General, no Silver General, no flying chariot! Japanese style symbols are somewhat decreasing their influential presence in this region. We, before having not yet matured, poke around in a quandary. ……　A variety of measures to justify the war is surely being devised, but, capabilities are not adequate to go forward. It’s like a sword before a monkey, if I might give an example. ……”

“Don’t talk too scarily. Of course, there might be contradictions, but, just try doing it for better or worse, and we shall see. After all, in the worst case, we will be defeated honorably to death. It would be good if we die. We shall die. ……”

   “How irresponsible!”

   Tomioka said as spitting, and went to toilet. Soon after Tomioka went out of the dining room, in exchange, Kōda Yukiko, with a well-slept look, came in. She was fully dressed up, wearing a one-piece of gingham red check pattern. Her hair was tied up with a blue thin ribbon. Kano was startled, and turned back at last, looking at her.

   “You must be hungry, as you did not eat lunch, did you?”

   Kano said, offering her a chair. Yukiko mildly sat down on the chair next to Kano, crossing her bare legs. Golden sunrays reflected on Yukiko’s face, which looked clearly raised above the background plane as a sculpture in relief. Her lips shone red like having sucked blood. He smelled the very scent of Japan. Kano felt nostalgic, and sniffed, wondering what the scent was. Soon he realized it the scent of camellia oil. Yukiko’s hair shone lustrously. Kano took a bulky western-style envelope out of his pocket, and put it on Yukiko’s lap.

   “Please read it later.”

   Yukiko, in a fluster, wrapped it into her handkerchief. Tomioka stolidly came back from the toilet. He, intentionally, did not give her even a glance, but stared dazzlingly into the golden sun. Kano went to the kitchen, came back with a glass and a beer. He poured the beer into the glass, and handed it to Yukiko.

   A clumsy silence lasted for a while. Then, Tomioka, holding Chevalier’s books heavily, left his chair silently and went away from the dining room. Kano, undoubtedly, thought it decent of Tomioka to leave.

 

 

.. * 13

 

A heavy downpour of rain began.

Rain fell down noisily through gutters like a roaring waterfall. Yukiko suddenly was brought back to reality. She, being out of sorts, could not get to sleep. Gorgeous memories in Indochina were floating up and down in her mind like a revolving lantern. Getting noticeably colder as night grew, too cold to sleep in a one single set of bedding, futon. She was so exhausted, and yet, uncomfortable as in a soldier’s camp. Yukiko was irresistibly lonely with no one to support her, and, with her eyes open in the dark, was listening intently to violent downpour of rain. It was lucky that Iba was absent from this house. No dredging up the past affair, however, Yukiko felt thankful for a blank period of four years between Iba and herself. She was lying down in a place without any acquaintance. Yukiko had been accustomed to such a situation in Indochina. She did not come across with Shinoi Haruko in the detention camp in Hai Phong, nor had any opportunity to meet with women who might have known something about Haruko. Nothing was heard about Kano, who had been taken to the military police station, gendarmeries, Kempeitai, in Saigon before the end of the war. Tomioka, who was the last to leave, was fortunately repatriated to Japan by ship in May, earlier than Yukiko. She could not imagine how Tomioka had changed mentally during the period from May to now. Yukiko, however, was confident of their relationship, which would be reinstalled as before, only if they meet. She was confident, because, with which she felt easy in her mind.

The next morning, the rain had stopped. Nice clear sky in early winter blew off the moistness after raining. A kaki^[*79] tree in the narrow deserted garden wore many small fruit of mouth-puckering-astringent persimmons, the skin of which partly looked like white frost. Seeing the tree, Yukiko nodded. The kaki tree’s growth explicitly showed four elapsed years. Iba’s housemate’s wife invited Yukiko for their breakfast table, saying, “Please eat, if you don’t mind pitch-black barley. White rice is in short-supply and is still too expensive for us to buy.” Her husband seemed to have left home early. The wife talked that he went to Shinshū, Nagano Prefecture, for purchasing apples. Their hometown was Shinshū, so her husband recently began being a broker of apples. Sooner or later, apples would be excluded from a list of controlled fruit, as the news said. So, in their plan, he went to Shizuoka first to purchase salt, then, took the salt to Shinshū, and sell salt there to purchase fermented salty soybean-paste, miso, in exchange.

   “If we got along well with Iba’san, we could purchase salt in his care. My husband, however, does not have good feelings for Iba’san. Might you know somewhere who would sell us salt?”

   Yukiko did not know such a place at all. A 8-year-old boy the oldest, a girl of 7 years, a boy of 3 years, and a baby were sitting around the table. Still another housemate, her husband’s youngest brother living with the family, went together with her husband to purchase apples.

   Yukiko did not intend not to work, but wanted to put it off until after she met Tomioka, to arrange a new direction of her way of life.

The wife offered Yukiko to stay, for a time being, in the room, if she did not mind with Iba family’s goods which were stored there. Yukiko felt relieved and appreciated her kindness. ― It was not clear whether or not the previous workplace would admit her. More properly, the previous workplace was not attractive anymore for Yukiko to work again. After breakfast, Yukiko went, along a way told by the wife, to a liquor supply station nearby, where she asked to use a phone. She called Tomioka’s desk at the ministry of agriculture and forestry, and a female voice replied that he had resigned. She daringly determined to visit him in Kamiōsaki^[*82], relying on Tomioka’s address, and went on. She got off at Meguro station, and began walking, from time to time asking passersby a route, under the opencut, on the road along the Japanese Government railways line. Passing in front of the residence of the Fushimi’no’miya, the oldest of four branches of the Imperial Family of Japan, the shinnōke, and then, through noble residential quarters which remained unburnt in air raids. She kept walking relying upon house numbers. Almost all the scenery she saw from train windows were burnt-out ruins, and she felt that nothing had retained its past image. She found the concerned house number at last. While seeing Tomioka’s business card pasted at the door before her eyes, she felt awfully hesitant, and lost her mental readiness. Two other business cards were also pasted to the side suggested her that the house was shared with other housemates. The house was desolated, every window glass was patched up with thin tape. A clump of Japanese arrow bamboo yadake, Pseudosasa japonica, cleansed in the rain last night, were leaning against a broken board fence, like a broom. Yukiko did not want to meet his wife, however, no reply from him to her telegram urged her to visit him. Yukiko darely opened a glass-fitted-in lattice door, and called out that she came on an errand for the ministry of agriculture and forestry. A decent old lady around fifties of age came out and quickly went back to inside. Unexpectedly, tall Tomioka in kimono appeared stolidly at the entrance. Tomioka, seemingly not surprised, came out in clogs and began walking silently. Yukiko followed him. After turning at unknown alleys many times, on a lonesome street with debris of a fire as far as the eye could reach, he finally looked back at her, saying.

   “You look cheerful.”

   “Did you read my telegram?”

   “Ahuh.”

   “Why didn’t you send me a reply?”

   “I thought that you would come to Tokyo, anyway.”

   “You have quit your work, haven’t you?”

   “I quit it in July.”

   “What are you doing, now?”

   “I help my father with his work …… .”

   “The lady showed a little while ago, is she your mother?”

   “Yeah.”

   “So I guessed, because she resembles you very much.”

   “Where do you live, now?”

   “I’m staying in the house of my relatives in Saginomiya, Nakano Ward in Tokyo.”

   “Will you wait for me here for a while?”

   “Sure, I’m waiting.”

   Tomioka went back alone the way they came, saying that he would come back soon after changing his clothes. While gazing after him in the dark-blue kimono with a white splash pattern, Yukiko had odd feelings as if Tomioka had changed in personality. Yukiko sat down on a collapsed stone wall among burnt down debris, blown in the cold wind for a while. Her own appearance, wearing a worn-out blue jacket borrowed from the housemate’s wife and black trousers of serge with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs, especially matched the desolate landscape. Her face was flushed at this moment, realizing it was a dangerous visit.

   After waiting for 30 minutes, Tomioka appeared in a suit. Old days features remained to some extent, however, his youth that she had known about in Da Lat was gone, and he looked drab somehow, affected by the worn-out winter suits, probably. Besides, he had looked haggard after losing weight. Tomioka felt no excitement, while gazing afar at Yukiko sitting on the collapsed stone wall. In this debris as if the stage had completely transformed from the former scene, Tomioka had no intention to revive the dream of Da Lat. Tomioka, repressing his irritation, approached Yukiko, only with his final decision in mind to end their relationship. He said once more, like a parrot. “You look cheerful.”

   “Of course, I came back only for the desire to meet you, so why not be cheerful?”

   Yukiko, as if assuring herself that she really met Tomioka, looked keenly up at Tomioka like a dazzling creature, from under. Tomioka, with a smile on his lips, did not even reply. His determination of ending their relationship, lying between them, probably was invisible to Yukiko who had just repatriated after 4 years abroad. Receiving her telegram, itself, was really unpleasant to him. Despite that, he had been thinking that he had to fulfill his responsibility to her, before being regarded as a spiteful bastard. Meeting Yukiko in person now, however, he thought such a consideration was unnecessary anymore, and restored his decisive power to break up with her, one night, tonight.

   “Where shall we go?”

   He asked Yukiko, who did not know any place, of course. Tomioka remembered, as someone mentioned to him, that a ‘cozy’ inn opened in Ikebukuro, near the center of Tokyo city area, and so, went to Ikebukuro. Many inns like barracks thin as Japanese rice crakers, senbei, built with unseasoned wood, stood side by side, and still more were on going to be built. Houses stood incoherently in disorder. Markets and eating houses were crowded together in confined spaces. Such rapid congestion rather made Ikebukuro a convenient town for a man to hide with a woman. Only the signboard was conspicuous, Tomioka opened a glass door, and entered the small wooden inn. A woman with a pale face and untidily disheveled hair, was wearing shoes clackingly chewing gum, and went out bumping the door, without tying her shoelaces properly. Yukiko felt chill in mind. ―  They were led to a 4.5 tatami-mat room upstairs, from which a market was seen below. The tatami mats were dirty, and spotted with cigarette burns. No alcove. Many scratches on the green wall. A pair of dirty beddings, futon, of red plain fabric were overlaid in the corner of the room. Two pillows made of chintz, glazed calico textiles, were placed on the top of the futon, without cover, and stickily shone with grease.

   Tomioka paid first for ordering two bowls of wantan-dumpling noodle soup with sake. The room was empty, no table, no brazier, hibachi, where they sat down awkwardly. Tomioka leaned against the wall, holding his long legs at the knees in his hands. Yukiko, with her one elbow on the top of the beddings, sat with her legs flung sideways. With her other hand, she tapped on her jacket chest, and scrached her own large round breasts.

   “I did not know that the world has changed so much.”

   “We were defeated. Something is wrong if nothing has changed. ……”

   “I agree. ……  Ah, say, I was eager to see you. You are awfully cold. Have you already lost your sympathy to a repatriated woman?”

   “Don’t be silly. Me, too. I’m repatriated, you know. It’s not only you. There are many other people like us.”

   Yukiko’s rudeness, talking of herself pretentiously and self-importantly as a repatriat, as if she only was great, was unpleasant to Tomioka. Tomioka was not accustomed to Yukiko’s overfamiliar manner, such as her suddenly lying down in the mud and never budged. Yukiko, by nature, had a man’s passionate attitude. Yukiko did not understand the mentality of Tomioka, who was assuming the same cool air as he had been at their first enounter, although nobody was watching them, in this room with only two people inside.

She wondered whether their agreement for only two people in Da Lat was so transient after an interval of few months. ……  She did not waste time being particular about a trifle, as she had become strong-minded after being buffeted in splashes of high waves. Yukiko boldly sidled up to Tomioka and placed her chin on his kneecaps.

   “Why do you ignore me?”

   “Ignore?”

   “Maybe, you hate me, don’t you?”

   “Don’t talk tediously. Women are easygoing. ……”

   “I’m not easygoing. I would not come back like this, if you got rid of me. I would have come back with Kano’san. ……  Now, I found your thoughts, Tomioka’san.”

   “Don’t be silly. Kano has Kano’s fate. It’s your crime. You induced him to behave like that. You always feel like wagging your tail to anyone. Over there, such a place is the Greatest heaven for women. ……  It must be joyful for women to be loved by every man. ……”

   “Oh …… . Now, you’re starting to talk like that. Disgusting! You want to tease me by speaking suddenly like that. You don’t love me anymore! ……  OK, I’ll become a woman like that we saw a while ago at the entrance. I’ll not hesitate anymore to fall down to a muddy abyss. ……”

   “You don’t have to be so hysterical. On my part as well, I cannot live an irresponsible life in Japan, as I was in Da Lat. I simply wanted to say that we cannot be asking the impossible such as extending our life in Da Lat. I will be glad to suport you. I surely am responsible to that degree.”

   “So, what is your responsibility?”

 

 

.. * 14

 

Probably getting drunk on sake, Tomioka began feeling better little by little. While being liberated from obscure resentment, by and by, he was encouraged to be right back where he was, to the dangerous relationship. Tomioka became filled with fancies apart from such trifle reality as his home problems or affairs with Kōda Yukiko. Nevertheless, due to human loneliness inside his body, after all, getting rid of his thoughts, he felt like taking to his arms the woman who lay down shedding tears, there, before his eyes. Soon after he returned back to Japan, he rejected his own longing for Yukiko, and his memories were fading away little by little. Tomioka was being calmly unphased. Kōda Yukiko, however, emerged suddenly in front of his eyes. He felt that he was shown a sectional view of his own destiny. Now, Tomioka sidled closer toward Yukiko to fill a space until being shoulder to shoulder with her.

   “I remember many things …… .  During that time, me, and you, are like insane people. For going out to inspect reserved forests in Zhangpu, Makita’san with a lieutenant commander who came from Japan, and you, were just going into a vehicle. Suddenly, you said, ‘Why not come with us, you, too, Kōda’san!’ The lieutenant commander also said, ‘Yeah, let’s take Ms. Kōda, too!’ And we, four, went together to Zhangpu. Do you remember? What was that inn’s name? We stayed at that inn in Vietnam, and took supper  together under a lamp. We all drank liquor, and slept drunk. I had kept in mind that your room was at the farthest end of the corridor, and walked barefoot at night toward your room, didn’t I? In front of aligned rooms was a swamp, eerie cries of birds in forests. I turned the knob of the unlocked door, and, surprisingly enough, out of the window, I saw a Vietnamese guard standing in the garden. ……  Was that time the first with you?”

   Yukiko talked, taking Tomioka’s hand and tangling her fingers with his. Tomioka recalled it and said, “Oh, that happened.” His insane daily life at that time, playing with women while soldiers were dying bloodily, came back in mind like an empty dream to Tomioka. In the room was shabby, like a stable, with single-leaf weeden screens to partition rooms, and so, any sound leaked and was overheard. With his eyes closed, many memories shared only by two people came running up very soon into his mind. On the caccia tree forest floor, such plants as chigaya-Imperata cylindrica and karukaya-Miscanthus sinensis were growing forming dense clumps. Furthermore, mountain peony, botan-Paenonia suffruticosa, and mountain peach, yamamomo-morella/myrica rubra, chōji-Eugenia aromatica were also visible. Forests in Zhangpu were a land of nostalgies to Tomioka as well. Coolies in pair cut down trees, and did crosscut - pruned, by saw, branches and roots to produce same-size logs. ‘The processing capacity was four standing timbers a day, at most.’ Tomioka recalled in mind those days that he had worked in Zhangpu as a forester after transferring there as a forester. Moï tribe people and Vietnamese were employed as woodcutters. Everyone was afrait of being infected with malaria, so, applicants were not many even if a recruitment was announced. Tomioka took the initiative to recruit coolies, with whom he went to Zhangpu for many days. In the mountains, he built a sawmill for manual grainding, where timbers were pruned in small-sized squared timber and boards, and then, were dispatched by military trucks as far as Dalat. Coolies were worked hard at extremely low piastres daily. Coolies took to Tomioka, and worked hard even before the end of the war, despite that they thought in the back of their mind that Japan would be defeated.

   “Say, we won’t have an opportunity anymore to go far up on the mountain in French Indochina. We were saying that we felt like living there, as coolies, cutting down trees throughout our life.”

   “Right …… .”

   “You began speaking first of such a thing.”

   “We cannot go there anymore.”

   “I know. We cannot go there anymore. If Kano’san had not caused the incident, you and I might have been able to run away together to Zhangpu at the end of the war. Human beings can’t freely live anywhere we want, can we? Why can’t we live happily while human beings and the nature are frolicking together?”

   Tomioka, himself as well, did not intend to work hard with no rest, after Japan had lost the war. A call of the wild always came and went in his mind. Tomioka, from time to time, was induced by a nostalgiea, like a love, for great forests there, which truly was the home of his soul, he admitted, as was Nazareth being Jesus’ original homeland.

   It was evening before they knew it.

   The market, below their windows, was extremely bustling with customers and commodities, where the lights began lively shining. Yukiko went out alone from the room to purchase sushi in a pack and a full-beer bottle of cheap distilled beverage, kasutori ^[*89]. Yukiko, nowhere to go or return, wanted to keep talking with Tomioka as long as possible. They got drunk more and more, while drinking shōchū, and their worries were dissipating even if drowned muddily in love  ― Tomioka naturally touched Yukiko. They, with no feelings, lay close together on the beddings which had been kept open out from the daytime, and, like copulation of cricket, indulged in a temporary dream as they did in the old days. The setting sun in front. Tomioka decided to entrust his tragic struggle in his mind in deep anguish, such as Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane^[*46], to another himself as his alter-ego who was thrown there in reality. ‘If God is for us, who is against us?,’ - Romans 8:31. Tomioka also fancied that he should go with this woman. ‘Parents and the home are but a temporary fence,’ a voice came from somewhere to Tomioka who got drunk, ‘I have to get over the fence once more and live my life together with this woman.’ Yukiko also was drunk and was caught up to an illusion that she had to deliver such an oration that the germination period of Japanese had already passed away! Tomioka clasped tightly Yukiko in his arms. The two drunk people joined lips keenly for the first time after a long time.

   As night grew, the inn became noisier and noisier inside, and, sometimes, an insensitive lady of the night, opened, by mistake, the sliding panel door, fusuma, of the room of Yukiko. They unabashedly kept embracing each other. Probably in the wind, torrential roarings of the government railways trains reached their ears. Their trousers were thrown off messily on the futon, which looked more sensuous than real people.

   Yukiko, while being warmed by Tomioka’s body, was irritated, with her own ruffled spirit, and strove to gain something more passionate from him. She thought this act was a makeshift schemed by a man. Yukiko remembered the same feelings she had felt during her three secret years with Iba. Yukiko impatiently desired something more intense, and was eager to pull something exact out of Tomioka. On the part of Tomioka, as well, he felt loneliness as if he reduced to ashes. He, from time to time, stretched his arm to the beer bottle, poured the kasutori in his small grass, and drank it in one gulp. Yukiko also sometimes took rest and picked up a piece of sushi. Feeling that there was still a lot of time on this night, Yukiko, chewing noisily the sushi on her tougue, threw her hot legs out on the tatami-mat. They had shared extremely numerous memories of only two people, nevertheless, in reality, the more desperate they became, the more idle their conflicting feelings turned round on. They did not talk about their future, forgetting any expressions, but were striving solely to ignite their passion of the past days again. Occasionally, two people felt loneliness as if losing their strength, for which they blamed the poor environment, touching their noses softly, and felt unbearable sniffing the other person’s stinking breath.

   “You lost weight very much.”

   “Because I don’t eat delicious cuisine.”

   “I also became skinny, didn’t I?”

   “No, not so much ……”

   “Why? You should have noticed that my weight decreased more than before, when you held me. Who is fatter, your wife or me?”

   Tomioka stretched his arm again, and, by a sudden rush, poured the sake of his glass into his mouth, gulping down.

   Tomioka thought that their eruption had already extinguished. They both were estimating wrongly. Substantially, two people were sinking into the bottom of the defeat of the war, and lost their fire for eruption. They simply had forgotten the reality.

   “Well, I think I did a bad deed toward Kano’san. You treated me with excessively affectionate partiality, so, I teased Kano’san. ― Kano’san, however, would have died willingly with me. He was the very person that did not know to suspect. ……  As for the war, who on the earth believed more firmly than Kano’san that Japan would win? He was a good person. A perfect person as a companion for two of us.”

   “You are a terrinle woman.”

   “I doubt that. ……  Every woman has such an inclination, doesn’t she?”

   Tomioka did not want to remember Kano as much as possible. Yukiko sometimes referred to Kano. It could not be said that she had no bad taste, in her moral, as to always availing Kano as a companion to ignite the two people’s passion of older days. Tomioka became tired. Yukiko was not, at all, and was eating sushi. She unabashedly was talking, while eating a slice of already blackened raw tuna. Tomioka hated her primitive strength who would never meet her downfall. Her lustrous face as if just washed showed out of the red futon. Tomioka felt her face vulgar.

   “What are you thinking?”

   “Nothing.”

   “You are thinking about your wife, aren’t you?”

   “Silly!”

   “I’m silly. Almost all women are silly. All men are always great, aren’t they? I feel sorry to have heard your words that you will support a silly woman like me, and that you surely are responsible to that degree. Without thinking anything about the future, I am clinging to you being here before me, which is nothing but stupid. You know. ……  I have come back all the way, and, I am very much pleased to meet you. That’s all. ……  But, I felt bad, in Hai Phong, while imaging that you meet your wife. ……  What is your wife like? She must be beautiful. Well-educated, good-looking, and ……”

   Yukiko vaguely tried to delineate Tomioka’s wife in front of her eyes. An impeccable beauty’s graceful figure emerged before her eyes. Tomioka was drowsy, hearing Yukiko’s talk.

   “You said, ‘By the time that you come back to Japan, I will have cleared the problem and will have separated from my wife,’ but it was a lie. Men are liars. You wheedled me at the top your lips, and yet, keep safely your own boundary. You are so terrible that you took me to such a place like this, and took time leisurely until I realize what you mean. You have told me, ‘When I return back to Japan, I will liquidate whatever relating to my life so far, and live together with you. I will do work even as a day-laborer’ ……”

   Yukiko closed her tear-filled eyes, caressing Tomioka. She touched his lumpy waist bone. The man’s rough skin was pathetic, a while ago he said that he had not eaten delicious cuisine. Yukiko touched her own belly skin, and felt mysteriously the smoothness of her skin, wondering why a living woman’s skin was so soft and smooth, and that women’s skin were unchanged even if the country was defeated. ……  She once more softly touched Tomioka’s belly.

   “Tomorrow, we will separate in different directions, to right and left, and, afterwords, we will meet in a place like this again, and you fall asleep drunk. ……  Even if I came back from afar, you make nothing of me. Don’t you think it a miracle that I came back all the way from afar? I want you to worry lot about me, be affectionate to me! Say, wake up! You’re so terrible lying asleep while I talk to you. Don’t sleep!”

   Yukiko pinched tightly Tomioka’s skin.

   Dormant Tomioka opened his drunk eyes. He looked around as if he were in a strange place. But, he could hardly stay awake. He deeply closed his sunken eyes again, and said.

   “Noisy. Sleep a bit, you, too, now. You also are tired. It’s of no use forever thinking the past.”

   “Surprised! You’re awfully heartless. The past is indispensable to you and me. If we lost our past, you and I would be in no place! Listen, in the next room, they are indulging in their amatory act. …… Wake up, throw away such an old-timer’s fatigue! ― If you won’t wake up, I will go tell your wife, tomorrow. All right with you?”

 

 

.. * 15

 

It was the early afternoon of the next day that Yukiko came back to Iba’s house in Saginomiya. Yukiko was persuaded by Tomioka, that they would need enough time to work things out, say, to get married, which was not a positive promise, though. Yukiko agreed.

Tomioka told Yukiko to find a place for her to settle down, anyway, before long, and that he would prepare a certain amount of money for her promptly. Yukiko suspected Tomioka’s quibbling. In such a pressing encounter, however, she had no other choice than to trust his words.

   The two people separated at Ikebukuro station, and Tomioka quickly merged into the crowd. Yukiko felt helpless, leaning against a pole on the platform, staring at the coming and going waves of passengers. Faces of malnutrition, having engaged in labor for a long time during the war, were passing by everywhere, jostling around Yukiko.

   Yukiko had no purpose. Even if she went back directly to Saginomiya, there was no one waiting for her. She wondered, ‘Shall I go back to Shizuoka as it is?’ but, was attracted to Tomioka too strongly to leave Tokyo. Her persistance in Tomioka transformed after she met him for the first time after a long time. Yukiko, however, was pleased, for the time being, to have been able to meet him. Yukiko was aware of her being a heavier burden to Tomioka if she proceeded in the same way as it was. She thought that she had to make her way into the crowd and look for her workplace. The dancehall, to which she had looked up from the platform of Shinagawa station, suddenly came into mind. Quite accidentally, she fancied being a dancer.

   She imagined her own figure beautified with makeup, in a florid

stream of music. Considering her own real figure, however, she

perceived impossibility of such work for herself.

   Tomioka had given her some pocket money, with which Yukiko

went to Shinjuku. In the noisy surroundings, Shinjuku always

continue to be the crowd itself. No familiar faces. Yukiko felt like

walking in an exotic world. Vehicles running along city streets were

of new models. The thickly clad people walked shivering on cold

sidewalks. Yukiko, passing by the front of a huge building without

window glasses, stood still looking up wonderingly at it, and noticed

that here was Mitsukoshi^[*116]. Walking along the building, she turned

to the righ. In many alleys, street stall markets were lined up tightly

side by side, spreading their goods also on the ground. A vender

took sardines out of a used petroleum can and displayed them in a

fish stall. In small glass boxes were candies. Cold firm mandarins,

Citrus unshiu, on sale were stacked like a pyramid. Rubber boots

sellers. Another fish stall with frozen cuttlefish at 5 yen a plate.

Every alley was flooded with many such stalls. On a desolate debris

of burnt bricks, dirty children, all flocked together, smoking

cigarettes.

   Yukiko bought citrus unshiu of 20 yen a plate, then, climbed up to the debris, and sat down there to peel a mandarin. Obsolete and cumbersome things were all demolished, and as was in a sort of aftermath of revolution, a cool and refreshing air comforted her loneliness. She felt more comfortable being there than at any other places, spitting inner skins of mandarine oranges around her.

   She wondered whether the revolution in the form of war had reformed her mentaly. Faces in the crowd walking like streams looked familiar to Yukiko like kin relatives.

   She felt it funny to imagine how Tomioka, returning to that house, would give excuses to his wife for staying over somewhere else last night. Yukiko was sure that he would behave as if nothing happened, as was the usual case with Tomioka. His family would never feel anxiety. Yukiko was envious of such day-to-day family ties. Yukiko felt humiliated for her own wishful fantasies that she would be able to move to a new house together with Tomioka immediately after her arrival on Japan.

   Afternoon, Yukiko went back to Saginomiya. She gave the last two mandarines to the children, and entered the room full of Iba’s goods. The room without anyone was cold and lonesome.

A sudden idea flash into her mind. Yukiko, seeing Iba’s goods, felt like hunting for something valuable and to sell it off. She thought she would be able to get revenge on Iba by doing so. It would not be wrong to sell off things valuable and add to her living cost, for the time being. Besides, even if she untied the packages, the people of this house would not be suspicious of her deeds if she said that she was looking for her own properties entrusted to Iba. Moreover, Iba would not be able to accuse Yukiko of whatever she did, even if he knew some of his goods were arbitrarily gone.

   In the evening, the family gave Yukiko sweet potatoes, and she asked them to steam her share together in their pot.

   Yukiko, eating sweet potatoes, was looking out through a glass of a nekomashōji^[*129], and found a skinny small tricolor cat, mikeneko^[*113], intently gazing at something, in a dirty shrub of azaleas. She remembered that peony-color^[*146] flowers of azalea had been blooming early in the spring. The past affair seemed as if it had happened yesterday. The cat, after a while later, went away languitly through under a loquat tree, Eriobotrya japonica, near the hedge.

   Yukiko, sliding open the lattice window, shōji, stepped out to the engawa^[*34] porch, and called the cat back. The kitten did not come back.

 

 

.. * 16

 

Tomioka kept thinking about Yukiko for a few days, and then, almost forgot not only solving an anticipated annoyance within his family in order to reassure Yukiko, but also preparing money for her. Tomioka wished, in this way, to break off negotiations with Yukiko at an earlier date. The encounter with Yukiko had been such a strain as he would suffocate. So he eagerly prayed that Yukiko would pass on freely ahead to her own direction.

   Tomioka, these days, started a timber brokerage in mountains, working jointly with his acquaintance of lumber merchant. He scheduled a business trip to the countryside in the North Shinshū^[*169] to purchase ceder timbers. But his acquaintance’s financing was likely to be bogged down. Besides, outgoing freight of timber rafts from the mountains by flowing on a river stream was considerably difficult. So, his schedule was postponed daily. If it went well, Tomioka would get some money, moreover, he was full of willingness to venture his fortune, as it was such an era that timbers sold well like flapjacks at higher prices in black markets. After coming back to Japan, Tomioka utterly got tired of his public employee life, therefore, desired to transform his life on this occasion.

   Today as well, he went out to give a phone call to Tadokoro, the lumber merchant, and disappointedly came back hearing that it would take four or five more days for financing. As soon as Tomioka came back home, his wife Kuniko said to him that a woman had come visiting him. His wife said, the woman left a message asking him to come to Hotei^[*65] Partnership in Ikebukuro on the next day. Hearing this, Tomioka guessed it was Yukiko.

   Yukiko had suggested the inn’s name Hotei by telling his wife a false name as Hotei Partnership. Tomioka felt displeased, and his face turned glum.

   Kuniko seemed not to notice anything, and asked.

   “She asked me whether I’m your wife. What’s the matter? Does she have some business relationship with Tadokoro’san?”

   “No, she does not have any relationship with Tadokoro. As far as I know, she is a wife of Hotei Partnership, a firm which I got to know through work lately. ……”

   “I see. Even so, she has not so much a nice personality. After the end of the war, people have changed in various ways. She is not likable, I mean, a woman of that type is not my favorite. She asked me a lot of questions, such as where you went out, when you come back, and other questions, over-familiarly, which was so offensive, though.”

Tomioka feared secretly in mind, thinking that female intuitions must have immediately reflected each other.

   Kuniko must have felt, intuitionally, a certain physical feeling of skin. Tomioka felt pain. He suffered from thinking that he should confess to his wife the affair with Yukiko before it’s too late. Simultaneously, though, Tomioka felt too sorry for his wife to tell his own love affairs overseas, who spread cloths for sewing over the lap of her mompe^[*121] to repair the winter beddings. It was absolutely unbearable for Tomioka to make a confession, which would inflict a deep wound on his innocent wife. Kuniko, caring of Tomioka’s parents in their house, had to put up with a hard life of wartime shortages, waiting for her husband.

 

   The next afternoon, Tomioka went to Hotel Hotei. Yukiko had already checked in, waiting for him. She was leaning against the brasier, hibachi. Surprisingly enough, her appearance was so flashy that he almost mistook her for another. She wore a maroon colored coat with her bangs combed forward as long as possible so as to form a longer fringe over her forehead.

   “I visited your house, yesterday. ……”

   “I know. ……”

   “Your wife looked very calm.”

   “You are awfully dressed up, today.”

   “Of course. I bought this coat. Does it suit me?”

   “How could you buy it?”

   “I sold my relatives’ goods without their permission, and bought this. Because I felt extremely cold and lonely. ……”

   “Do you think it good for you to have done such a deed?”

   “Not good, but I cannot help it.”

   Tomioka keenly gazed at Yukiko’s showy appearance. He vaguely felt pity for Yukiko’s change in her weary and depressed appearance. A frenzy of Miyuki, who lamented holding a stake in the Ōigawa river^[*142] in a scene of ‘Diary of Morning Glory’ - ‘Asagao Nikki’^[*6], that he saw long time ago in the kabuki^[*77] theater, appeared in his memory. He could foresee that his blunt refusal would plunge her into depravity, at an instant. He also felt anxiety about what would happen if she abandoned herself to despair.

   “What are you thinking?”

   “Nothing, I don’t think anything, and yet, it will be tough, from here on, for both of us. ……”

   “Well. You are surely at a loss how to settle our relationship, aren’t you? On my part, I am resigned completely. Seeing your wife, I became awfully sorrowful, and, while walking, I brooded over closing our relationship. A wife free from anxiety about her husband looks pure and beautiful, doesn’t she? I’m scared to make a good person unhappy. ……”

   Tomimoka doubtfully stared at Yukiko, wondering whether she was serious. Yukiko’s figure loitering around the front of his house came to his mind. Yukiko, pulling a handkerchief out of a pocket of her coat, wiped her eyes with it. Surprisingly enough, the handkerchief was the one that Tomioka had used in Da Lat.

   “You want to get rid of me, don’t you? I really think you do. You must have lost your concern about me. I, myself, have become your source of pain. Once abandoned by you, I would fall into hell. I would only be blown off in ashes. I cannot keep myself alive seeing only your shadow, can I? You love your wife, and a leftover love to me like a beggars outstretched hands for offerings. I detest such a love. ……”

   “Why do you say that? Silly. You are strange to bring up the matter of love at this time. I don’t think it’s so much that. I am striving for a better solution. If I don’t devise a good way, you will be pushed into a corner, so I thought, and thus, I came here, today as well, although I’m busy.”

   “Detest! Don’t condescend me so much …… . You don’t understand my feelings well although I talk seriously to you. Why won’t you let me selfishly indulge in your affection? Right now, as well, you are thinking a different thing. ― Listen, I do not say what cannot be done, however, please find anyhow a place for me to live in, and meet me from time to time …… .  I want to begin working sooner than later. I, by nature, cannot become your wife, can I?”

   Tomioka, sipping the cold green tea, was shaking his knees unconsciously, as he felt cold, while listening to Yukiko’s hysterically wayward talk. Yukiko was lonely as she had been left alone for three days, and so, wanted to talk everything soon after she saw Tomioka’s face. 

   “Are you looking for a place to live for me?”

   “Sure, I am. You may think it easy to find one single room, but, people were burnt out in Tokyo, you know, and rooms are demanding. Even if a room is found, it needs to pay more than several tens of thousands of key money. I hope you kindly wait a little more …… .”

   “You live in your own house, so you can remain calm somehow. But, I’m homeless. I now stay in the house where I cannot demand as a right to live. ……  I want a place to live in, where I can be myself. My relative has evacuated, and unknown people now live in their house, where I live temporarily, in the promise of only a few days. It’s painful and uncomfortable. ……”

   “I will find somewhere for you to live in. I don’t mean that I’m dawdling. A house to live in is insufficient, at present. By the way, I wonder whether this inn doesn’t provide us with something heating the room? Extremely cold, here. ……”

   “That’s true. Shall I borrow a bottle at the inn and go buy the kasutori in it as before?”

   Yukiko seemed to have changed her mood. She drew her bag near, and began fumbling in it for a purse. She found her purse at last, and quickly stood up.

   “Buy it only a little. I don’t want to drink a lot. ……”

“Will you go back early, today?”

   “No, I don’t mean that …… .”

   “Don’t you stay overnight? I have money.”

   “I cannot stay tonight.”

   “Boring. Why? Were you scolded, the other day?”

   “No kidding! I’m not a child. No one scolds me. I wont’t stay, tonight, that’s all. ……”

   Yukiko, without persisting, went out of the room. The room was different from the other day, and awfully cold here. Besides, filthiness of coarse tatami mats looked gloomy.

   Tomioka pulled out a cigarette, and remembered, while puffing the smoke, that Kuniko commented on Yukiko as the most disgustful woman.

  Compared to a tryst with his secret woman in a room of such a desolate inn, it seemed to him to be much pleasant being with Kuniko in his living room, reading newspaper near her, while hearing the sound of water boiling in a kettle. He conjured up a horrible desire that it would have been better that Yukiko had died in Vietnam. Tomioka recalled in mind that he had read somewhere else such an epigram that two opposing desires coexist always in people’s mind, one is the mental inclination approaching Satan.

   Tomioka’s eyes, following the cigarette smoke, happened to stop at the sight of Yukiko’s swelled-out bag. He reached out his hand, and drew the bag near. Her dirty felt bag contained something solid like drapery fabrics wrapped with a purple wrapping cloth, furoshiki^[*41]. Cosmetics, a Parker brand fountain pen with a blue diamond company logo which Tomioka had bought in Saigon, a Peace brand cigarette package, a tenugui^[*197], a soap, and others, were untidily shoved in. A couple of letters addressed to her family in Shizuoka were also in her bag. A while later, Tomioka pushed the bag back toward the place where it had previously been, and then, stack his cigarette butt into the hard ash. He began feeling terribly sorry for Yukiko, who was likely to almost spill out of her own mind. On the other hand, he recalled in mind a calm appearance of Kuniko, as a virture hemisphere. Making Kuniko a sacrifice, Tomioka rambled around and got entangled in Yukiko, and, tried to remove himself from the loneliness of his present life, by way of Yukiko, by relying on a secret affair. All these self-interest ran down through his spine like cold sweat.

   Tomioka recalled his past deed, in his mind, that he carried off a married woman, Kuniko, and took her as his wife. He did a wicked deed over another, and thus, overlapped new sins, in the same way, again. Now, he felt his own selfish inconstancy even as his fate.

His maid Niu, whom he had left in Vietnam, became pregnant with Tomioka, and went back home to a countryside. He had given Niu a certain amount of money and had thought his duty was over. He, however, felt sorrow for Niu, and saw her in his dream from time to time. Niu must have already given a birth to a child. Tomioka thought that Niu might feel ashamed for her child of mixed blood, and reminisced about his life in Vietnam.

   After a while, Yukiko came back with her face reddened with cold wind.

   Yukiko showed the bottle to Tomioka, holding it up against the window. Yukiko threw away leftover cold tea wildly to the corner of the brazier, and poured sake in the teacup.

   “At first, I taste sake for poison.”

   She, saying, pressed her lips to the edge of the teacup, and drank half of it in one gulp.

   “Oh, how savory! My chest and belly are scorching.”

   She poured sake for Tomioka, who also gulped sake down without taking a breath. Yukiko again poured sake in both teacups.

   “Say, stay overnight, tonight. ……  Don’t you want to? This time, only, and, I won’t ask you anymore, afterwards. If you don’t like this inn, we can move anywhere else. If you don’t have enough money, I have something good in my bag, so, we can stay at the more pleasant place.”

   Suddenly, something hot welled up in him. Tomioka held Yukiko’s hands. A wild personality of Yukiko, who could not keep in her mind whatever feelings she had, was so lovable. He was released from the depressed mood caused by his oppressive environment bearing his family life. Tomioka, due to the force of liquor, bit Yukiko’s fingers in his lips.

   “Bite harder, much harder.”

   Tomioka bit her fingers lightly and quickly. Yukiko probably could not bear anymore. She lay down her face on Tomioka’s shaking lap, convulsively sobbing.

   “I have become such a woman as this, and lost myself. Please, do whatever you like. Whatever you like. ……”

   Yukiko spoke sobbingly, caressing Tomioka’s lap with her both hands. Inside the room began getting dark. Lively cries and shouts coming from the market with winds were clearly heard. Tomioka touched his lips to Yukiko’s hair, while thinking that his own behavior was theatrical, frivorously spending time.

The wild sentiment of the woman was clearly reflected on him, only when Tomioka drank sake, as if his face was exposed to a sudden flash of light.

“I should not have seen your wife. She is a good person. But, thinking that she is your wife, I hate her face. After my visiting your house, your wife’s face constantly flickers into my mind like a stab to my chest. ……  Your wife certainly senses me. She talked about me, didn’t she?”

   “No, she didn’t.”

   “Don’t tell a lie. I, with a fierce expression, was glaring at her. She looked at me curiously

Your wife looked at me from the tip of my toe to the top of my head, giggled disgustingly. It was an ill-concealed, creepy giggling.

Her gold tooth glittered, at that time …… . Why did she have a gold artificial tooth implanted into her front tooth? ……”

Yukiko raised her face and said, grinning. From her tearful face, her makeup was removed off as if washed, and looked more natural. Her hair in bangs became untidy on her forehead, which made her looks seductive as if he encountered her for the first time. The scenery of the room became out of perspective, and, Yukiko’s face swayed, like a velocity of a movie, in front of his tipsy eyes, and looked changeably darker or lighter.

   “Besides, she is much older than I. ……”

   “You awfully pick up a quarrel with me, don’t you?”

   “I do. She is not fair to have you only to herself. I feel an aversion to a man who kisses a woman with a gold tooth in front of her lips. ……”

   Tomioka was displeased hearing that his wife’s shortcomings were outspokenly mentioned. From cotton filled coverlets, futons, piled up at the corner, Tomioka drew one piece of futon, and covered his lap with it. It wass a filthy and sticky cold futon.

   “It seems like a kotatsu^[*99]. May I put my legs into the futon from this side?”

   Yukiko was drunk.

   “You said that you work. What work are you going to do?”

   Tomioka, after drinking three or four more teacups of sake, asked. Yukiko, with a slightly serious face, replied.

   “I want to become a dancer. Don’t you think that it’s a good idea? ……”

   She said with seductive looks, the bottom of her eyes glittering. It was her choice, Tomioka thought, but, refrained from uttering whether it was good or not.

 

   Meanwhile, it became near 10 o’clock.

   “Well, I’m going ……”

   Tomioka spoke in a low tone, pulling folded bank notes out of an inside pocket of his coat, and placed them on Yukiko’s lap, and he said to her.

   “Here you are, 1,000 yen^[*199] in total. While you have the money, look for your working place, anywhere. I will let you know as soon as I find a room for you. I will leave for Shinshū, tomorrow evening, so, we cannnot meet for ten days or so. Give some money to the family, and ask them to let you stay a little more until I find your room. ……”

Yukiko felt being pushed away with money with the amount of 1,000 yen.

   “I don’t need money. Say, can’t you stay overnight? It’s so sad to separate now. Oh, no. I don’t want to. You are going to Shinshū, for ten days! You want to escape from me. I’m sure. Absolutely, sure. ― Tell me honestly your intention. ……”

Tomioka gulped the remaining sake with one gulp, and started shaking his knees irritably again as if he remembered doing so.

   “No, not that. I feel apology to you. Well, to be honest, we have been dreaming since that we lived in such a beautiful place. You may blame me of what I would say, but, seeing the completely different world when I came back to Japan, I thought that it is too cruel to torment my family anymore. Everyone has harshly suffered from wartime hardships, and yet, has endured somehow, getting the better of the wartime shortages. In this reality, I cannot cruelly chase off people who were waiting for me. Resultantly, I have broken a promise with you, however, I will do my best for you until you become happy. I will sincerely think what I can do for you …… .  

I like you, and yet, can never marry you, I am vulnerable to that point. Tonight, as well, it’s not impossible for me to stay overnight, however, I thought it false to continue deceiving you any longer. I have been trying to persuade myself, for quite a while, that I should go back home soon. I truly travel for Shinshū. I was thinking to tell you my feelings after coming back from travel, but, suddenly, I felt like revealing my inner most thoughts, right now. If the decision is that I separate from you, I will surely feel pity for you. Notwithstanding, it is really impossible that I alone get out of my home at present. All my family depend upon only me for living. ……”

Briskly shaking her head, Yukiko held her ears by both hands. Glaring at around Tomioka’s lips with her eyes. ― Tomioka, calmly gathering aside the futon, put his both hands on Yukiko’s lap, and moaned.

   “No other choice than we separate.”

   “I hate it! Do you mean, that, on your part only, everyone will become happy, sacrificing me? I don’t want such money! I don’t feel happy even if I get money from you. I cannot be obedient according to your convenience. Me, too, I have a right to remark what I want to remark, from that standpoint, your wife and I am on the same ground level. You may think that you can cope with me in any way that you like in order to make your wife happy. ……  Why didn’t you say so first, when I visited you for the first time?”

   Yukiko was overwhelmed by drunkenness. She did not know anymore what she herself was talking about, but was surely averse to Tomioka’s selfish quibble.

   The man, who relaxed and behaved freely in Indochina, suddenly dispirited after coming back to Japan, and felt familial constraints in his house. His weakness displeased Yukiko. She held both hands of Tomioka and swayed them as hard as she could. Then, she rolled up her left sleeve to show a lengthwise long wound like a welt.

   “You remember this, don’t you? You are to be blamed for my wound. Your fault was that you had told lies to Kano’san. I also know that you had an intimate relationship with Niu. You regard other people’s serious feelings as the insane, don’t you? Everyone trust a person like you soon, but not Kano’san or I, who would be accepted as not normal. ―  At that time, however, you did not look like a fake, when I saw you. If you ask me to separate from you, I can do nothing other than. But I wonder if it is righteous. ……  You keep a sprendid appearance of your home, give delight to your family, and, resultantly, you may feel refreshing. But, it means that you have victimized a certain number of other people for your happiness. It’s terrible that you pretend not to have been aware of things like that. If your home and wife are so important to you, you should have become like a stone from the beginning. ― I particularly don’t think to send off your wife, however, I might have fancied, too much, something better. I will stay overnight here, so, you, freely go back home! ……”

   Her eyes went glassy. Yukiko released Tomioka’s hands, and, covering her head with the futon. She tossed around on the tatami mats in the room. Tomioka was soundlessly sitting there, seeing Yukiko writhing in desperation.

 

 

.. * 17

 

Four days later, suddenly, Iba came to Tokyo.

   Yukiko just went out, and while passing on the alley, was aware of Iba who was trudging along, from the other side, towards her. Yukiko first mistook him for Iba’s elder brother. Iba also seemed to be astonished.

   “Oh! Aren’t you Yuki’chan?”

   Yukiko blushed in a sudden encounter with him.

   “When did you return back? Why didn’t you come at first to Shizuoka? Either way, you are really Yuki’chan. ……”

   Iba got old utterly, and his looks also changed while she hasn’t met him for four years.

   “How did you know that I came here?”

   Iba, putting up his coat’s collar, turned backward and said.

   “We cannot have our private talk in the house. Shall we take rest somewhere else, and talk across a tea-table? ……”

   He walked on to the main street which was entirely dried, and a cold wind was blowing. Yukiko, curiously looking at a weary appearance of Iba’s back, followed him, with no word. Passing across a railroad crossing, Iba did not proceed to the station, but went straight along the main street. Then, he moved apart a fabric room dividers, noren^[*135], entered a buckwheat noodle soba restaurant which showed diagonally from the station. No heat in the somber house. Tables on a concrete floor, every surface of which looked white with dust. The two took seat on the table at the corner. It was so cold that the two drew their knees and feet up apart from the floor. A fine lattice frame was set outside the glass window, which made their corner particularly colder.

   “Can you prepare the soba, here?”

   Iba asked. A girl who had a hair in momoware and covered her mouth with a gauze mask, replied that they could not make the soba as they were still under the strict regulations. Then, Iba asked what they could serve. She stated only three items, tea, sweet red-bean soup, shiruko, and soda water. Iba, murmuring who could drink a soda water in this cold, ordered two bowls of shiruko, anyway. The soba restaurant looked indeed like an old-fashioned lunch room at a post town. Iba took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and lit one. He took a puff, putting the Hikari brand pack back in his pocket, when Yukiko shivering her shoulders asked him.

   “Let me smoke a cigarette.”

   “Do you smoke?”

   “It’s so cold that I want to try one. A cigarette smoke seems to warm my body. ……”

   Yukiko having a cigarette in her mouth let him light it. He began to ask her annoyingly about various things. After a while, two bowls of the shiruko, thick with gelatin, were placed before them. Removing the lid, the back surface of which had moisture, in the bowl, however, it was the watery shiruko of light brown in color. Two small pieces of steamed rice dumpling, dango, floated on the surface.

   “You opened our luggage, didn’t you?”

   Iba said, with his face down, picking up a piece of dango. Yukiko was silent. She put a dango in her mouth in the same way as Iba, and thought that someone in the house had tattled.

   “It can be seen by checking our luggage in the house, but, why did you do such a thing your own way? If you need money, say so, and I will do something for you. Rather than that, I wonder why you did not write to Shizuoka although you had returned back to Tokyo. ……  Someone apprised us in a letter of your selling our goods like a disposal. Is that right?”

   Iba lit the almost gone out cigarette again, and, said, smoking strongly. Yukiko did not have any emotion toward Iba, anymore.

   “It was so cold that I opened your luggage, my brother-in-law, and borrowed two or three items.”

   “Did you sell them?”

   “Ah, yes. I should not have done such a thing, but, I thought that my deed would be allowed because there are so many people who have been burnt out. I have believed you would permit that much, and bought this with that money.”

   “Why did not you come back first to Shizuoka?”

   “I did not want to. Besides, I returned back with my friends, and, moreover, had to look for somewhere to work afterwards. I have planned to go back when I would settle down. ……”

   Yukiko, saying, took out of her bag a couple of letters addressed to her hometown, and showed him. The letters were that she had written four or five days ago and forgotten to post.

   “What goods have you sold?”

   “I have sold two pieces of kimono made of gauze crêpe, ro’chirimen, and piece goods of fabrics which remained unused.”

   “Weren’t you seized with compunction for doing such extreme deeds? You changed after having been over there.”

   Yukiko kept silent.

   “After that I quit my work in the bank, I did farmer’s work in the countryside, but, people who have lived for a long time in the metropolis cannot settle down in a rural area. So, we have sent our luggage beforehand, intending to move again to Tokyo. Valuable goods sell well recently, so we intended to sell our goods to make up for a shortage while starting our business. If I remember rightly, you left your coat at your home in Shizuoka, didn’t you?”

   “You are right. So, you can sell my coat instead. I intended to get married, therefore, I came to Tokyo first, this time.”

   “Aha. When do you marry?”

   “It did not go well. The person has his wife and his parents, so, everything broke off after having returned to Japan.”

   “What is his occupation?”

   “He works for Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, in the same way as I. We worked together over there. He said that he is going to conduct lumber dealer business.”

   “How old is he?”

   “He is much younger than you.”

   “You have been deceived. ……”

   “Oh, no. He did not mean to deceive me, however, we broke off, eventually. ……”

   It was a surprise to Iba that Yukiko changed completely in personality although she once had been obedient and of few words. She became utterly an adult, and expressed clearly what she thought. It was so cold that she wore a purple square wrapping cloth, furoshiki, around her head and face. The purple color reflected like a shadow on her white skin, and suited her very well.

   “Are you going to stay here from now on, for a long time?”

   “I will stay here for three or four days to visit my friends here and there in Tokyo, and observe business ambiences before going back. You can go back with me.”

   “Don’t you have any baggage?”

   “I entrusted my baggage to a midwife who lives at the corner. The midwife informed me of you.”

   “I see. ……”

   The two people left the soba restaurant. However, Iba and Yukiko, with no place to go, stood talking in front of a broken telephone box.

   “Now, I am going to Shinjuku^[*167], so, please check your luggage until your heart’s content.”

   Yukiko pronounced this way, with calm composure.

   Iba looked cold, standing at the corner where the wind did not blow against his back, and then, said.

   “I will come with you.”

   He walked side by side with Yukiko to the station, where he bought two tickets.

   They got on the train for Shinjuku. Yukiko’s decisive behavior kept Iba uneasy. He did not have the slightest idea about what she was thinking. The weather was soft sunshine with an extremely strong wind. In every train, almost all window glasses were broken, and passenger cars were awfully cold as if icehouses were running.

   “Seriously damaged everywhere.”

   From a station to a station, desolate burnt ruins overspread all directions as far as eyes could reach. Iba was looking outside the windows curiously.

   “Say, I want to become a dancer. I wonder if I can.”

   On a sudden, Yukiko said casually. Iba seemed to be startled at her stunningly surprising plan, and did not reply quickly.

   “Don’t you like a typist’s work?”

   “I have gotten tired of such a job already. Besides, the salary is not good. I heard that the occupation army’s private hall dancers gain extremely good incomes in many ways.”

   “It might be. I wonder, however, if you can continue the work for a long time. ……”

   The two got off at Shinjuku, and were aimlessly walking for a while. They entered a movie theater named Musashino’kan to watch a film being shown, “Madame Curie.” Yukiko felt like watching a western film for the first time in a long time. They sat side by side on tattered chairs. It was terribly cold even in the theater. In the desolate movie theater with no vestige of the old days’ prosperity, she felt strangely the western movie, which she watched for the first time, far removed from a reality.

No one knew what idea Iba had, but he held Yukiko’s hand in the dark. His hand was hot. Yukiko felt repugnant but endured, and left him holding her hand. Lights on the silver screen was reflected on Iba’s face which looked like the dead when seen from the side.

Yukiko recalled parting with Tomioka of a little while ago, and thought that Tomioka was to be blamed for her feeling of loneliness. Sorrowful emotions thronged on her mind. Her eyes were brimful with tears at this moment.

   It was the twilight when they left the theater.

   Street stalls disappeared completely, and everywhere in the town was as if deserted with no soul. Street lights were dimly lit at every corner of the ruins, which affected passersby deeply the misery of defeat. Cold wind blew freezing. The two showed on the railway street. Barrack-type stores were lining up like huts in the street, but already had closed. Recently, towns were infested with burglars and robbers. That was why every store began closing quickly at dusk.

   Yukiko led Iba to a barrack-type ramen noodle shop which opened at Tsunohazu^[*206] on the railway street and she had come twice to the shop. When night fell, Yukiko was eager to drink strong liquor. If not pouring strong liquor in her utterly ravaged innermost of mind, a state of misery was unbearable to her. They ordered a couple of bowls of soba with bamboo shoots relish.

They sat down close to the burning fire of a stove, which was very rare these days. She tried to touch a glowing blue tin chimny by light strokes with her finger, wondering how many years had passed since the last time that she saw the fire burning fierily in a stove.

   “I don’t agree to your becoming a dancer.”

   Iba said, smoking a cigarette. Yukiko did not reply, because Iba’s barefaced audacity of holding Yukiko’s hand a while ago was disgusting. Iba went on talking, staring at Yukiko’s madeup face as if it was a rarity.

   “I have been worried about you all the time. Whether you can come back well was my concern. Japan is still in an extremely tough situation. The top ranking people were all arrested. It seems as if the whole society capsized. People who formerly assumed an air of importance have fallen into straitened circumstances. Japan has mercilessly transformed.”

   Iba talked pensively of such a thing.

   “Everyone was besotted awfully in wartime. No war anymore from now on, with the very thought of it, I feel relieved. By the way, how did you pass through a callup notice for active military service?”

   “That’s it. I was worrying it. I worked for an arsenal in Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture in order to avoid a military service. If I think of it now, it was like a dream. ……  Hamamatsu also was raided. Thereafter, I was working as a farmer, but, was not called up at all. I feel it strange, though. After the end of the war, I have been worrying about you, but, I did not imagine that you would return back without any incident. ……”

   The hot soba came, and they ate as if holding a bowl in arms. Bamboo shoots dyed in red was a rarity.

   “How good it tastes! ……”

   “The taste of soba in this shop is praised. The third nationals run this shop. A very large quantity with good taste, and cheap.”

   Yukiko suddenly recalled in mind the scene of the Hotei Hotel in Ikebukuro, and felt disgusted to go straight back and lie closely side by side with Iba in the narrow room in his house in Saginomiya. She could not get anything that she sought. Only such things that she did not seek clung to her as if by destiny. She felt as if her mind was drying up.

   “Do you stay tonight at your house?”

   “Sure.”

   “No room anymore.”

   “In which room, do you sleep?”

   “In the living room. Stuffed with your luggage.”

   “Don’t mind. We can sleep together.”

   “Besides, there is no food.”

   “I brought rice with me as much as 3 shō^[*175], approx. 11.94lb. Don’t worry. It’s my house. We can freely cook our food in my kitchen. You don’t need to hesitate. I have sent a set of better beddings, the futon. I will unpack my luggage when we return home.”

   “Well, then, I will go to Ikebukuro, where I have a place to stay overnight.”

   “You are awfully wary.”

   “No, not like that. I have a work meeting with my friend which I cannot fail to attend. It’s reluctant go out all the way again tomorrow. ……”

   “We have met tonight for the first time aftr a long time. We still have a lot to talk about. You must go back home together with me. I don’t know how many kimono you sold, but I will not blame you for what you have done.”

   “It does not matter how much I would be scolded for that. ……

I want to visit my friend in the matter of work.”

She was appalled even at the image of lying with Iba side by side.

 

 

.. * 18

 

Tomioka’s business trip to Shinshū was put off to an unknown time, as Tadokoro’s business still got nowhere with nothing in view.

The world would change quickly if not taken quickly. A rumour said that the monetary value would change, so, he was eager to reserve timbers galore before it’s too late. He also heard that the price of paper in the black market was volatile recently, and thus, also wanted to deal with paper. However, Tomioka had to realize his own inability when he was tossed out alone in the world, this way. Everyone looked trustworthy and talked together in a confidential tone of voice, and yet, calculate in mind his own benefits. …… Despite having lost the war, everyone seemed to decide not to give it any more thought. People avoided feeling anxiety. In this confusion, everyon tended to think easily what were somehow dependable lying around only him. ……  This revolutionary and thrilling period was much more favorable to everyone than the wartime. Human beings were such creatures that got easily bored. Any modifications were acceptable, a time of rapid change of changeable generations rotating was stimulating

   Tomioka did not have any idea than began with selling his house to make money. At first, if he could prepare 500,000 to 600,000 yen by cash, he felt like being able to advance on the basis of that money continuously afterwards. It was unbearable for him to get past this period as it was, and he could not afford a standstill.

 

   One morning, during a breakfast, Kuniko said suddenly.

   “Say, a woman of Hotei Partnership who visited us the other day, I met her near the house last night. I wonder whether she has an acquaintance nearby. ……”

Tomioka recalled on his memory of Yukiko, whom he had tried to forget. While he sipped the miso-soup silently, an irritated look of Yukiko, who might be hanging around the neighborhood, oppressed his mind.

“She asked me when your husband will come back from Shinshū. I did not know what to say to her, and I thought I should not say a word carelessly without knowing details. Besides, it’s possible that she came across with you on her way back. So, I simply said that you came back yesterday, …… and told her to leave a message if she had something to tell you. Then, she said that she came to the neighborhood, and asked me to tell you to pay her a visit in the evening as she always lives at Hotei Partnership. ……  She added that you will understand what she meant if I give you her message, ‘please, give me back my temporary payment on your husband’s behalf.’ And then, she walked away quickly. She wears terribly thick and showy makeup, doesn’t she?”

Tomioka groomily heard about Yukiko’s latest news. He thought that she, with nowhere to live in, might settle down in the hotel. At that time, she, refusing to accept money, pushed 1,000 yen back to him at the Ikebukuro station. Yukiko, spilling tears, said that he was going to abandon her only for the sake of himself to become happy, which still echoed in his ears clearly.

   Tomioka had gained Yukiko at the expense of his co-worker, Kano the pure, who earnestly loved Yukiko, and finally became like the insane. As the result, Yukiko was hurt by Kano. Tomioka, at that time, thought casually that they could marry, and that both had prepared their minds for marriage. Tomioka put his chopsticks down, abstaining from the breakfast which suddenly became tasteless. He felt sorry for Yukiko for her unhappy appearance. He reflected on his own irresponsibility during his travel overseas. He imagined that he had to give money to his wife and his parents, respectively, if he would sell this house, and that he himself should wind up broke to marry Yukiko. Such a thought, however, did not give him comfort at all.

   “Did you borrow money from the company?”

   Kuniko without even subtle madeup appearance asked anxiously.

   “Around what time last night?”

   “Around seven. It was when I came back from shopping. As you came back late, I caressly forgot to tell you.

This morning, I remembered while hearing the name Hotei on the radio program of the missing persons. What kind of business is the Hotei Partnership engaged in? ……”

   Tomioka did not reply to his wife. His breakfast was always late in the morning, so his father and mother had already retreated to their room. Kuniko, folding the newspapers, said.

   “Can’t I go there for you?”

   Tomioka, as if he was possessed, stared at the slender face of Kuniko. He wanted awfully to confide all his secrets to his wife. He felt dead tired. He wanted his wife to penetrate into his secrets. Tomioka knew very well about himself that he was not brave enough to bear this anxiety continuously for a long time, however, was too selfish to be compassionate for Yukiko’s sufferings. Everything was what he had done himself. After he returned back to Japan, his personality seemed to have been transformed. He was like wearing a hard shell mask so as not to show his own feelings outward. Kuniko felt impatiently that her husband was somewhat aloof from her, and thought that an inexplicable link to that woman of flashy makeup was not irrelevant to her husband’s attitude. Kuniko, with her keen and quick insight, sensed something dark and uneasy.

These days, Tomioka lost his composure as shown in his eyes. While holding and caressing Kuniko in his arms, he suddenly quelled his movement and sighed deeply. Before burning out his intense force as was in years ago, as if he gave up on it, Tomioka ended at an early stage and pushed Kuniko away coldly.

   “You have awfully changed after you came back from Indochina. ……”

   Kuniko once said wonderingly very soon after Tomioka had

returned back to Japan. Tomioka himself also realized his own

change. Every morning when he shaved his beard, seeing his own

face in a mirror, he could not help feeling odiousness of Stavrogin in

himself. Tomioka was not good-looking as painted in a portrait, his

lips were not like red coral, his complexion was not white nor gentle.

This oriental man of a blue spongelike swollen body was quite

different from Stavrogin, but Tomioka unpleasantly felt that his

features somehow resembled the repulsive traits of Nikolai

Vsevolodovich Stavrogin, the central character of Fyodor

Dostoyevsky’s 1872 novel ‘Demons.’

Tadokoro strangely assumed a cool air toward Tomioka these days, and Tomioka imagined that it was maybe because Tadokoro had seen into his heart. He had given Tadokoro much trouble when marrying Kuniko. Despite that, Tadokoro, who had seen much of life, gave a helping hand and offered a joint work, without showing an annoying look, to lonely Tomioka on his arrival from Indochina. So, Tomioka could not merely blame Tadokoro.

   “I dislike that woman walking around our house. Don’t you have something with her? ……  You look completely different from years ago.”

   “Don’t talk nonsense. I have not changed at all.”

   “Then, can’t I go there for you to repay your debt?”

   “Don’t worry. You should not interfere in men’s work.”

   “Somehow, however, I am not quite clear in this matter. ……”

   “Why not trust what I said as I myself said to you not to worry.”

   “You may say so. I think that you might have been indebted to that woman for something. You suddenly become irritable anytime when our talk touches her.”

   “I get irritable because you doubt me about trivial matters. As for work, I’m annoyed with an uncertainty how the joint work with Tadokoro will turn out. You should refrain from uttering your unnecessary anxiety.”

   Tomioka eagerly felt like going to the forests in Indochina once again. He thought that any enterprises other than forestry were not suitable for him, and everything, such as his parents, his wife, and his house seemed to be burdensome. He, comparing with his present life, thought it much happier to live all his life as a coolie working in the great forests there.

Suddenly, a landscape of red mangrove woodlands, growing in the intricate mesh of roots anchoring in muddy swamps, appeared vividly out of his innermost memories. Red mangroves with oily leaves shining glaringly in the intense sunlight, and octopus-like branches and roots supporting trunks, were lined up like walls at the entrances of saline coasts in Haiphong and Saigon. Woodlands like velvet belts were unforgettable to Tomioka by all means. ‘Once more, I wish I could go to the South.’

   Tomioka thought that he, cooling down the wartime insane sentiments, could concentrate on his research in silence, now this of all times. Thoughts like this exhausted his mind and body in vain. Even if he mused over memories of the past many times, he could not move as if he was bound.

If he could not cross the ocean, he wanted to go even by swimming as far as there. Family affairs were not Tomioka’s concern anymore. If he could disappear, he wanted to, passing through this suppressive life, and going on board in even a smugglers’ boat for the South.

   Kuniko, who was staring at the cold face of her husmand who sullenly fell silent, suddenly shed tears.

   “Why do you weep?”

   “I’m suffering. Very suffering. I think recently that I was rightly served. It’s a punishment on me.”

   “Did you recall Koizumi’kun?”

   “Buh, no, such a man. ……  I think, these days, that you probably want to separate from me, and I feel like being punished in many ways.”

   “Our life of poverty might have caused you irritation. I don’t have a slightest idea to separate from you. ……”

   Tomioka hardly bears himself who was telling a lie. A lump of his own lies seemed to sneer at him with a wide-split mouth like a pomegranate.

 

 

.. * 19

 

Yukiko became easily moved to tears, these days. She wondered whether she had begun to be insane. While shedding tears, she could conceive of her future ahead from now, which appeared on her eyelids in the form of disconcerted black clouds. She judged that her quick insight would be inevitably realized. Her judgement had never failed. She had no pillar which to be a powerful support on her background, therefore, she had to keep living while being kicked by someone else like a pebble.

   Her love for Tomioka, after all, was such as Tomioka thought at present, to which Yukiko herself inclined to assimilating now. She felt that their rendevous was fading to be such undue levity as being blamed by someone. They made every effort to meet, and hauled distant memories common of the two people only onto themselves. They were eagerly drunk by their memories, the scent and color of which were fading away, though. Their sentiments as such were hard to be dealt with. ……  Just it. However, Yukiko was eager to meet Tomioka once, twice, three times and furthermore. Even if they met, they were reminded that their memories were fading in color, as always. In the reality of losing the war, distant memories in their minds never did flare up at all. When they had been in Dalat, Tomioka had told that the regret would be left forever if they did not marry immediately on the spot once they loved. Now, at last, Yukiko understood what Tomioka had said came out as the true answer in the reality.

She spent all her money to pay the inn in Ikebukuro. After that, Yukiko went back to Iba’s house in Saginomiya. Iba had been back to Shizuoka, however, in two or three days, he would withdraw from Shizuoka to come back finally to Tokyo with his family. The 6-tatami-mat living room and the 4.5-tatami-mat drawing room had been emptied for them. The drawing room they called, only the roof of which was covered with red tiles, and so-called monk tatami with no clothing edge were laid inside in the room with neither a closet nor an alcove.

   Yukiko stayed overnight in the drawing room. Iba had left a letter to Yukiko. He wrote, ‘I checked our luggage. I don’t mean that I blame you. I will not claim back our goods that you have sold. However, do not trouble me any further. Our house and rooms are narrow, so I won’t let you stay here after we get back to our house. Please go out to anywhere else. If there is nowhere to go, you should go back to your home country and ask your family and relatives to talk about your future. Remember that I have a plan ready if you touch our luggage again.’

   Every luggage was fastened extremely tightly and was sealed with a sheet of paper. Yukiko felt it unbearably funny. She awfully wanted to cut the thin ropes binding the luggage with the scissors. 

   Yukiko thought that all the men inclined always to back away, and felt the worldly-minded man utterly offensive. If he had a plan ready, it also would be amusing to watch his readiness. Yukiko stayed overnight. On the next day, she ordered a mover in the neighborhood to carry a set of beddings, futon, which was of course Iba’s belongings, to Hotel Hotei. Caretakers did not interrupt her. They were not good terms with Iba. So, they kept neutral and stayed out of Yukiko’s behavior. Rather, in their look, they expressed in silence their abettal to her boldness.

   In the inn in Ikebukuro, Yukiko untied the package of beddings, where Iba’s cotton-stuffed thick winter coat of arm length in kimono style, dotera, a pretty old Inverness cape outercoat, and a package of red beans, azuki (Vigna angularis (Willd.) var. nipponensis) were wrapped inside. The azuki beans amounted to approximately 5 shō, that was 9 litres. The beddings included two thin cotton mattresses, one blanket, one comforter made of gas-meisen^[*43] silk cloth. Yukiko felt her chest warm, and quickly went to the market near the station and sold off the Inverness coat and azuki beans. She thought the stealing was quite thrilling. It was nothing serious even if these goods disappeared from Iba’s luggage. ‘I have been raped by that man for three years!’ A sudden outburst of wrath assaulted her finally at this moment. She thought that she should have stolen more, even the whole of his properties.

The next day, by a care of the master of the hotel Hotei, she could rent an old shed of the household goods store in the neighborhood. The store had their new house built next to their former one.

The shed was 110 sq.ft, 3 tsubo, wide. A roll of new tin plate was stocked in the room, where was only one skylight with no electricity or water supplies. The store staff laid a couple of old tatami for her on the shed floor, which was enough for a woman to live alone.

When she prepared a room to live alone, Yukiko suddently became eager again to meet Tomioka. Yukiko got Hotel Hotei to buy one of two matresses, and with sales proceeds, she bought a pot and a charcoal grill made of ceramic, the shichirin, then went to a black market for the first time in her life to procure the trafficking rice by 1.8 litres, 1 shō, and a few pieces of charcoal. She boiled rice in a neew metal-smell aluminum pot, and put a rest of charcoals in a brazier, kotatsu. She felt deeply thankful for self-catering while eating the hot cooked rice with a raw egg on the rice. After having fully eaten white rice, she warmed herself at leisure in the kotatsu. While enjoying time passing agreeably, however, a lonely feeling, which was not satisfied with the appetite, began falling like rain on her. Yukiko tried to count seams of the futon, or stared at the rough-planed wooden wall. A candle light flickered in the draft coming throught the board wall, and from time to time, was likely to go out. Yukiko helplessly felt lost and wondered whether she could endure a single person life this way. A bucket full of water was placed at the corner of the room, which also looked bleak. Thinking with surprise that a person could live even in merger surroundings like this, she felt small happiness, although such happiness was so undependable that she could not foresee what tomorrow would bring.

   The next day was rainy.

   Yukiko got up late. She went out to post a letter for Tomioka, then, walked to a public bathhouse. On her way back from the bath, she bought a newspaper at the station. She checked the vacancy columns. Her eyes were caught only by recruitments of typists. She wanted to begin working soon from the next day, however, wasted time drowsily all day long in the dim shed, as if she did not care for anything any more. She felt her body and heart became empty. Four or five days had passed while her feeling did not get better. Tomioka, however, did not come, although he should have already returned back from Nagano. Judging from that, she thought that it was possible that Tomioka had not yet received her letter.

   Yukiko, with no purpose, went to Shinjuku. It was late in the afternoon and a cold wild was blowing. Shinjuku, where almost all street stalls had already closed, was somewhat like a desolate desert. She walked as if she had an errand, but her mind was not satisfactory at all. It was not likely that she would not go back to Shizuoka. Yukiko, walking, thought it probably nice that her new life would begin there at the shed which she finally had rented for herself. Suddenly, she was stopped by a tall foreigner in the side of the Isatan department store. He asked her where she was going. She did not expect such an occasion, so, she only stood smiling. Soon, Yukiko became so bold as to walk together side by side with him. The foreigner was talking fast to her, but she was only walking very close to him, without a word. She felt her fate likely started going forward to somewhere else. An impulse of each other brought their minds a certain kind of lively spirits.

   The foreigner from time to time bent over touching her chin with his hand and talked fast to her. Yukiko suddenly was reminded of her life in Da Lat where she spoke with Vietnamese in a mix language of broken French and English. She began talking little by little, imperfectly.

   “I am walking with no reason.”

   “It suits me. I also am walking with no reason.”

   Before they knew, they were walking arm in arm. Yukiko always made a loud laughter as drunk to nothing amusing.

   Yukiko went to the Shinjuku station arm in arm with the foreigner, who took her on an unusual foreigner-only passenger vehicle of the Japanese government railways. Yukiko with an honored feeling humbly sat down close to her companion.

   She remembered Saigon, and felt like going back to her old days. ― Yukiko came back to her shabby shed with the foreigner. The foreigner, who was tall enough to reach to the ceiling, sat clumsily putting his long legs into the cold kotatsu-brazier without the fire, looking around with curiosity. In a pale light of a candle, Yukiko began burning charcoals in the grill, shichirin. Smoke rose like a cloudy whirlpool from burning charcoal, filled the shed. Yukiko, pointing to the ceiling, asked the foreigner.

   “Window get up.”

   The foreigner light-heartedly stood up and opened the ceiling window. Smoke was bundling smoke off to the ceiling window, which spouted smoke out quickly.

 

 

.. * 20

 

The next day, the foreigner visited her again in the afternoon.

He, with a green Boston bag, came into the low-ceiling shed. He, talking quickly, opened his bag and took out gifts one by one. He laid a large pillow, a heavy small box, rations, and confectionary. The heavy small box was a radio containing battery. When the foreigner turned on the swich, a sweet dance music came flowing out. Yukiko pressed her ear on the small radio and showed her joy. She felt intense vicissitudes of history, and thought a detached fate was flowing out with the sound of music. Their language communication was not good enough, however, each other’s humanness was confirmed by their own bodies. Owing to hominess as such, Yukiko got the confidence to step ahead to her fearless life. She wondered what the large pillow signified for the two people. …… Yukiko was moved to tears, while looking at the cleanliness of a pure white pillow cover.

   To the one who was lonely and starved, the large pillow seemed to try recovering Yukiko’s life with a special significance. Yukiko did not feel at all shameful. To her, the man’s feeling seemed to be worthy of praise. ― ‘ ……  Let’s write a song for us / And sing until we’re old and grey / Forget me not my dear, my darling / Forget me not my love / I’m coming home real soon / Please leave a light on for me / Tell me that you’ll always be true …….’ ― The foreigner called himself Joe. He, singing alone in a low voice ‘Foget Me Not Lyrics’ ^[*40] to the radio, scribed the lyrics in English on a piece of paper. Then, he handed the sheet to Yukiko and told her to memorize the song until next time when he would come. Yukiko, pointing at the spelling of words one by one, sang aloud by learning pronunciation from him. His fertile characteristic like the nature of a continent affected her deeply. Yukiko felt brightness in his national trait, which enabled him to behave freely wherever he was. The brightness as such was not pertinent to Tomioka. She did not feel painful loneliness stinging her chest every time she felt when meeting Tomioka. Her feeling was not disturbed by such ambiguity as she had been blurred out off focus. She could behave freely in every thing, probably because there was no need to pry into each other’s mind. The radio sounding by itself was an unusual toy to her. In the late afternoon, after that Joe went back, she went to the bathhouse with a soap given by Joe. The brand name of Savon Palmolive, soap of which she also had bought in Saigon, painfully pierced to her mind. Yukiko was confident to live alone in this way even if Tomioka would not come again. A life pursuing pleasure as right now seemed to be much more enjoyable to her than the life longingly waiting for the man who always rummaged in her mind. She, however, was also aware that a joy as such was fragile like light snowfall.

After 10 days or so had passed, since her moving in the shed, late in the afternoon, Tomioka visited her. Yukiko thought that Joe came, and quickly went to the door to welcome him. There, she unexpectedly found Tomioka standing in the cold. Yukiko in surprise cried loudly.

   “Oh, it’s you!”

   Tomioka, also on his part, was surprised. Yukiko, as if she had completely transformed in personality, glamorously beautified her face. Her hair was heavily greased and was worn up high on the top of her head. Eyebrows were thinly shaved, and eye lined with dark shadow. Her ears were adorned with earrings of imitation diamonds. Her bare feet, however, wore sandals with no ankle-high Japanese socks, tabi, in this cold weather.

   “You have moved to a ridiculous place.”

   “Do you think so? But, this is a palace to me.”

   The wall was covered with white paper, where a flower basket was hung on a nail stuck out of the wall. Crysanthemum were arranged in the basket. On a small short-legged table, chabudai, a candle was flickering, and from the small box, the voice of the radio was heard. In a colorful chocolate box, aluminum foil package papers of chocolates were scatterd shining in the candle light. Tomioka, without sitting down, looked around and understood the changes in her present situation.

   “You have many hi-collar^[*56] stuffs.”

   “Do you think so?”

Dance music was heard from the radio. Yukiko looked at Tomioka who still kept standing, and giggled like a child, an ill-concealed mischief of whom was disclosed, while putting her knees into the brazier, kotatsu.

   “When did you come back from Shinshū?”

   “Two days ago or so ……”

   “I see, did you read my letter?”

   “I read the letter, so I came.”

   “Why not come here to the kotatsu?”

   Tomioka slightly slanted his hat, and stuck his knees into the kotatsu. The white large pillow was oddly conspicuous, which kept the place where Joe always sat. Tomioka keenly stared at the pillow.

   “You look happy, don’t you?”

   “Do I look like that? I have not starved to death, that’s all. ……”

   Tomioka, as if he was stubbed with a nail, held his tongue and looked at Yukiko’s face. Yukiko’s face illuminated in candle light resembled Niu’s vestige. Strength of the personality of the woman seemed to have its roots fastened deep. Tomioka felt envy and jealousy toward the woman’s unique way of life which did not undergo any affects, and looked with a fixed gaze at Yukiko’s great change in appearance. Compared to her earning power and vitality with which women are naturally blessed with, Tomioka felt his present miserable status helplessly in his heart. Gazing, in wonder, at a free way of life of the woman who absolutely had a feature of a dichotomy, he could not afford not to think that there was such a way of life. Although the woman was a nuisance to him till right now, he forgot his own cowardly feeling. Tomioka rather felt a voracious appetite for an escaping fish.

   “I am envious of you. ……”

   Such words came out of his mouth.

   “Oh! What did you say? How envious are you? Where in my life like this are you envious? Are you a person whose words change each time?”

   “Well, sorry if it hurts you. I just thought so. When nothing go well, envious feelings towards others’ life arose.”

   “Don’t make a fool of me. All the men are like you. Japanese men are selfish from the bottom of their stomach. You are always thinking about things only for your convenience. ……”

   Yukiko became irritated. Tomioka, fidgetting his knees under the kotatsu, took the small box of radio by hand, and turned the dial many times. Yukiko left. Near the station, she was standing for a while to say to Joe, when he came, that she did not have time today. But, even after 30 minutes, Joe did not appear. She gave up waiting and went back to the shed after purchasing a beer bottle of illegally brewed cheap liquor, kasutori, at a market. Tomioka was dozing off lying his face downward over the kotatsu. Seeing him from behind, a male sturdiness as while living in Da Lat was gone, and his presence hardly made itself felt.

   “I bought sake. Shall we drink?”

   “Ah, yes. You give me feast, don’t you?

   She replaced the burnt-out candle with a new one that she also bought. Pouring sake into cups to the brim, Yukiko also put her lips to her cup to drink.

   “Does your work go well?”

   “Not so much as was expected. I finally managed to be going to sell my house. I will try, win or lose.”

   “How does your family live?”

   “My aunt lives in Urawa in Saitama Prefecture, so, we all will move there to her house. I will try …… . I cannot count someone else’s pocket anymore.”

   “It must be tough. ……”

   “You assume a cool air to me, don’t you? Surprisingly enough, you are doing very well with calm. I admire you. ……”

   “You are sarcastic about my way, aren’t you?”

Yukiko, stimulated by sake, became so bolder as not to care whether Joe would come. These days, not a single day was stable or reliable. Nobody knew what to do or what might happen the day after, so, a tendency to live in a makeshift became her real life. Yukiko boldly stared at Tomioka’s face. A dusty body odor of the man smelled rather miserably. Yukiko understood a wonder of flows of people’s life which fluctuated depending on the surrounding environment. With no sorrowful feeling, she became, little by little, a connoisseur as such. Yukiko, with her pride, stood in a high place, looking down on Tomioka.

   Tomioka had prepared some money for her. He groped in his inner pocket, and took a sulfate paper enverope. He threw it on the table.

   “A little, though. I thought that you are needy. ……”

   Yukiko, who glanced at the package wrapped by the sulfate paper, seemed to be impervious to the money.

   “After I came back to Japan, I have gradually become to know many different things. I really understand that Japan has lost the war. When I realized that this is the reality, I did not feel like bearing a grudge against Tomioka’san, these days. ……”

   Yukiko said, while adding charcoal to the ceramic grill, shichirin, and baking a dried cuttlefish, surume. Tearing the baked cuttlefish, surume, finely by fingers onto a dish, she felt brilliantly easygoing happiness on her finger tips. Yukiko was giggling in her mind as if the smell of surume contained some short-term happiness such as the life worked itself out somehow. She felt like this, ‘I am living well, and what on earth about you? ……  You are spouting bubbles like a pond loach, dojō, aren’t you?’

   The train rode off with a roaring sound on the Japanese government railway. Yukiko went in a hurry to lock the door. As they were drunk, they felt pathetically sadness and were depressed.

   “We talked to stay in Da Lat and live there, didn’t we?”

   Tomioka said suddenly, inspired.

   “Yes, we did. But, isn’t it also good that we returned like this? After all, I am glad to have been back. Even if we had lived in Dalat, we, both you and me, would not have been happy. We could not have lived a life of luxury as before. We, as the defeated country’s people, could not have borne the life, flat broke. After all, it is proper that we all become miserable together, this way. ……”

   ‘Is it true?’ ……  Wondering whether she herself was saying the truth, Yukiko pondered her own words which recurred to her mind, and felt something sly in her own words.

   She felt it likely that people’s words were always lack in accuracy. Only the behavior to gloss over well what is convenient to themselves is the answer of people’s thoughts. While cramming fine slices of baked cuttlefish, surume, into her mouth, in the air around full of the smell of surume, Yukiko was thinking insipidly about her own braveness since her return to Japan.

   Tomioka drew the radio close to himself and turned it on. A crisp voice of an announcer reading news was heard. The news, however, was gruesome.

   Tomioka seemed not to endure hearing the news, turned the radio off, and said as inspired.

   “It seems that Kano returned back.”

   “Oh, …… really? When?”

   “The other day, when I met with my friend in my days of Forestry Agency after a long time, he referred to Kano.”

   “Ah! Is that so? ……  Is he well?”

   “Do you want to meet him?”

   “Sure, I want to meet him. He was a honest and good person, not like you.”

“I agree. ……”

Hearing that Kano has come back, Yukiko recalled yearning Indochina, which she saw in her memory. To the extent that such memories of her youth would not recur any more in her life, a person like Kano was an inevitable character between Tomioka and her. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. She no sooner stood up than went out. Joe was there. Yukiko, pushing him back, said that her relatives from home country visited her today, and asked him to come again the next day. She sent off Joe to the station. Tomioka, hearing a foreign language they talked outside the door, felt oppressed as if he had something heavy on his shoulders. He wanted to know what chance Yukiko had to get acquainted with such a foreigner. Seeing the large pillow, Tomioka thought that Yukiko would separate from him this way. In an hour or so, Yukiko came back alone.

   “Did I disturb you?”

   “Don’t mind. He went away. ……”

   “How did you meet him?”

   “It’s not your business, is it? He is also lonely. His mind is the same that you doted upon Niu. ……”

   “Don’t say a strange thing. ……”

   “I also am going to change from now on, amn’t I? ……”

   “Might be. It won’t be bad. I don’t have right to comment on you.”

   “He is young and kind so as to teach me a song.”

“I see. ……”

   “He is a very good person. But, he said he will go back home in about two months.”

   “You can find another.”

   “Oh! You talk nastily. ……  He is the person that I came across in my life-or-death moment. You look down on women, don’t you? You do nothing satisfactorily, and how can you make me fool?　― You always consult only your own convenience. To that degree, with your poor mind, you think that you can manipulate womens’ feelings. With your ambiguous intention as such, don’t interfere with my thoughts.”

   The candle light extinguished. The ceiling window looked extraordinarily bright. Yukiko groped for a candle and struck a match on the side of its box.

   “You intend to be off with me, don’t you? That’s why you said such a thing a while ago.”

   Yukiko seemingly got angry. Tomioka gulped down the remaining kasutori liquor in his cup. He took off his hat and put it on the tatami. He did not want to go back. The drunkness was but a makeshift. The power, however, came out in him enough to break off all of his customs and habits, and to jump into an abyss of adventure. The drunkness with no purpose was comfortable. Once he was drunk, he acquired gaiety as if he was surrounded with many friends. He felt as if he became stout.

Indulgence changed at a moments notice. Having the woman sit in front, Tomioka was eager to test his own indecency in relation to the moments to come. In the momentum of the kasutori liquor, the woman’s glittering eyes like a Japanese marten, ten, began sparkling her former ether. After repatriating to Japan, their hearts waned so as not to bear sunlight. Despite that, the voice of moment coming to call them from the drunkness had their bodies filled with power which would not be discouraged for sort of pains.

   “Do you mind my staying overnight, tonight?”

   “Didn’t you come with the intention to stay?”

   “I have intended to stay. ……”

   “Don’t tell a lie. You suddenly became tempted to stay, didn’t you? I know. I got one more wisdom. After all, you are such a person. You may think that you perfectly fooled me by talking big. After all, you are a Japanese man. Stay here overnight. I am up overnight with you and bully you. ……”

“No, I did not say with such intention. If I cannot stay, I won’t stay. ―  My feeling is in confusion. I cannot control it at all. ……”

   Yukiko turned on the radio. Tomioka suddenly said as if he shuffled it off.

   “Ajust it to the foreign station. Is there any dance music on air?  A Japanese radio program hurts my heart. I cannot bear listening. Please, stop it.”

   The radio news about war criminals tried at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was broadcasted. Yukiko placed the radio nastily on the kotatsu. Tomioka suddenly flew into a rage, turned it off, and violently threw the radio to the floor.

   “What are you doing?”

   “I don’t want to hear.”

   “You should hear it well. Not about someone else. The issue is related to us. You are so spoiled. You are unrealistic. ……”

   Yukiko, however, did not pick up the small radio box, but, touching her lips on the cup, kept an eye on Tomioka. Wartime frenzies and swells had completely subsided, the servile flatness with no one single ripple looked like a comedy to Yukiko. The two comedians were sitting face to face in this small hovel. Tomioka took off his badly smelling socks, lay down with his overcoat on. Conniving at the pure white plump large pillow, he put his head on his arm pillow. Yukiko as well assumed an indifference to the pillow. Tomioka saw there the courageousness of this woman.

   “After all, you are no way able to do anything alone. As you cannot live with me, I live my life alone. Don’t forget.”

   “I don’t disturb you. No disturbance, but do you mind my visiting you from time to time?”

   “No! Even tonight, you disturb me.”

   “Business interference?”

   “Oh! It is your real thought, isn’t it? You cunningly try being a good person at any time to ridicule my weak point, don’t you?  Kano’san and I was caught with your snare as such.”

   “Then, do you say that you were deceived by me?”

   Yukiko held her tongue. She did not think that they were emotionally in an even relationship. Rather, she might have had an ardent love toward Tomioka. On her palm, Yukiko spitted out the baked surume while chewing in her mouth, and cried out.

   “It’s me. I have loved you. Isn’t it so? You mean that I’m bad anyway, don’t you?”

   She said, and spit her surume into the grill, shichirin. In the blue flame, the surume burned with a smell of smoke.

   Late at night, Tomioka did not stay but went back. He left her like a separation after a quarrel. Yukiko, holding her breath, remained still hearing Tomiokas steps going away. But, she suddenly felt painful longing for him. Pushing the door, she went outside.

Star dusts spread out all over the sky. The road was frozen cold. Yukiko ran, passing through the back of the darkened market, to the station. Tomioka could not be seen.

Tears burst suddenly. Not bearable, no where to let out her feelings, Yukiko crying went back to her shed. In the room without anyone, the third candle was burnt flickering almost close to the end. She regretted her own aggressive talking. Thorns of harsh words gushed out one after another, which were not at all to reproach merely Tomioka. Tomioka, however, said.

“My mind to stay overnight has already gone away, as you knocked me over so fiercely.”

He slowly wore his socks and stood up. Yukiko, with a startle, looked up at Tomioka’s face, but could not hold back words gushing out. Yukiko was eager to have him stay. She wanted him to stay over and share her loneliness together.

   Yukiko blew out the candle light. She creeped into the kotatu, and cried violently writhing like a beast.

 

 

.. * 21

 

Tomioka came back home late. An unpleasant parting from Yukiko did not leave his mind. It seemed that Kuniko was working to pack their belongings still, late at night. At the last moment that he was about to sell this house where they had been living for a long time,

such an idea happened to him that it might have been much better that the house was burnt out during the air raid.

All that surrounded him was going to disappear. When to start living in the subjunctive mood ‘if’ from now on, Tomioka felt stuffy as if he had a difficulty in breathing, as this large family was like a solid stone into which he was squeezed. He was prone to envy Yukiko’s way of life. Despite that, he thought Yukiko’s audacious life was miserable. He felt irritated as to his own lacking power to protect this woman. He had to meet her soon again. He would be the loser in this state if not confirm his mind with bunglingly rough fluff and make an final farewell to Yukiko. If he loosely keep meeting her in this state, no conclusion would arose between him and this woman. Tomioka, however, wondering what the conclusion would mean, fell into a self-contradiction. He reflected carefully on the reason why Yukiko’s and his own feelings had become involved in difficulty like this. He felt like that he saw the delicate feelings of this woman for the first time, after his return to Japan. Besides, Tomioka could not help but felt disillusioned secretly with transience of his inconstancy. Human spirits were transitory, which could transform variously with environmental cultures of the times. He drooped his head, facing himself in mind. He thought himself possibly not to mind even if millions of words of the oath or a purity which certainly was pinned firmly were mudded. ……  He felt like caring nothing even if this would be their final parting. On the other hand, simultaneously, his own selfish feeling was blinking in colored patterns in his mind, such as ‘No, it is not too late to say goodbye until after I would meet her once more to confirm each other’s feelings.’

 

   At dawn, Yukiko had a dream of the official residence in Da Lat. The dream was strangely fishy smelling and painful such as she sat on a porch, hugging with Kano.

Even after she awakened, one fine day in Ontre tea plantation floated in her mind. It was the day when she was with Kano and Tomioka visiting Arupru Ploy tea plantation. On the New Year, people of the upper class in Vietnam showed white silk trousers under their black jackets prayed to the church located on the hill in the center of Ontre. Ontre village surrounded by massive forests was beautiful like an oil painting scenery.

1,750 yard above sea level, temperatures up to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, a minimum of 42.8 degrees F., and Basaltic red soil zone. Tomioka explained to her that the ideal terrain for growing tea plants, Camellia sinensis, more than offset the unfavorable climatic conditions. He said that tea plants were not dry resistive, maybe because of which tea plants grew spreading scraggily out on the plateau in low humidity, and Yukiko in her white one-piece bordered with lace, leant on Tomioka’s arm while walking on a path in the tea plantation, where tea plants were planted in a grid pattern on the extent land. Kano stopped, from time to time, with his face unpleasant. Finally, he said.

   “I feel stifled, almost have a bloddy nose.”

   As he began talking strangely, Tomioka and Yukiko stopped, and looked at Kano.

   “What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?”

   “Yukiko’san, you are awful. Do you get me away to such a place like this to make me the laughing stock?

“Oh, why? I did not, particularly ……”

   Yukiko blushed, and was going to say something, but Kano said with a strange smile.

   “I want you not to link your arm through Tomioka’s.”

   Tomioka thought that Kano became mentally deranged. Yukiko in a hurry released her arm from Tomioka’s.

   Tomioka suddenly laughed, ha! ha! ha! A Vietnamese guide looked uneasy, thinking that he had done something wrong.

   The three people began walking again, apart from each other separately.

   “18 month old strong seedlings are planted. We weed the field sporadically, and intertillage five to six times a year. The standard annual fertilization per 100 acres is 60 pounds of Nitrogen, 88 pounds of Phosphoric acid, and 110 pounds of Potassium, which we fertilize every other year. We can pick leaves when two years has passed after planting the seedlings. In six to seven years, a harvest of the tea makes up the management cost. In ten years, tea plants attain their full-grown period. ……”

While hearing the explanation of the guide, Yukiko began to be frightened at French people’s continental soul as they put their heart in the tea plantations for such a long time patiently. Although she did not understand precisely the explanation and theory, she could never have imagined that the tea plantations had such a long history of cultivating tea plants. She felt awfully ashamed of the Japanese way of thinking to do things for a time and their scheme even to handle these extensive tea plantations arbitrarily in a short period of time. She repented after a stray cat’s vulgarity of the narrow-minded Japanese who were nastily walking on the other people’s land full of sweat of their constant labor. Yukiko’s mind strangely got caught in Kano’s pleading to release their arms while walking. The guide still continued his long explanation. Yukiko, however, could not believe that the Japanese would inhabit this land in Indochina for a long time as many as decades years ahead. She felt like horrified that vengeance might assault Japan in one way or another.

“Even if Japanese soldiers surged forth in a massive quantity here, Japanese would not be capable to take over these extensive tea plantations and quina chinchona business in a day. It would be all that we steal and spit in need nastily around there. ……”

Tomioka said like giving a brush-off. Kano, without saying anything, torn off an ivory official medal from the Vietnamese chest and hung it on his chest. Yukiko saw him in disgust. That night, Yukiko’s arm was injured by the drunk Kano.

It all became memories. And, Japanese who had scatterd around like trush on that beautiful land were repelled to Japan.

“It’s natural.”

Yukiko with her clear eyes wide open, stared steadily at the threatening sky over the ceiling window at daybreak.

The plump pillow only seriously comforted Yukiko. The fact that Tomioka visited this shed last night also seemed like a dream.

   Yukiko took the radio by hand, and switched it on. At the same time, suddenly, a knock sounded at the door. Yukiko, with no idea of a person to give her a visit early in the morning, thought that some one possibly came from Hotel Hotei. She casually stood up and opened the door. Unexpectedly, Iba stood there with a scarly face. A maid of Hotel Hotei accompanied behind him, who went back on the alley with no word.

   “I knew how it would be.”

   Iba, taking off his shoes, rudely entered the room. Yukiko could not say even a word, quaking with the sight of him.

   “You did not expect that I would come looking for you as far as here, did you? Your personality has changed a lot. ……”

   “Don’t speak in a loud voice.”

   “None of your cheek!”

   “What are you angry with?”

   “Naurally, I am angry! I scored trucking companies for the mover that you hired. You committed robbery, besides, sold my beddings to the hotel. Is it not enough to be a reason to be angry? I have heard that you do a whore business. ……”

   Yukiko in furious anger could not speak. Iba’s ferocious attitude was offensive. She felt ready to disappear, if possible.

   “I have no other resource to live. What about your beddings?”

   “Can’t you make money if not beddings?”

   “Then, what should I do? What’s wrong with my taking away your beddings? You deprived me by force even three years. How can you accuse me now of trifles? If you want it, take it.”

   “Beddings become filthy, but I’ll take those back, which can be used after washing. Beddings are valuable, you know.”

   Iba, railing at her, had a cigarette in his mouth. While groping for a box of matches, he smiled a cynical smile seeing the radio and the large pillow in the room. Yukiko saw Iba’s countenance, and felt a rage flaring up in her chest. He could think whatever he wanted to think. She did not want him to stay there anymore even for a minute. Iba said, inspired.

   “You look prosperous. Did you get into a profitable venture? If you let me take part in it, it’s quite all right with me to lend you my beddings for a time being.”

   Yukiko kept silent. She felt sorrowfulness that she, in her girlhood, had been deprived freely by a man like him. She wondered why men around her had fallen on hard times and debased vulgarly in character.

   “Is there, by any chance, any good connection? Aren’t you given cigarettes, clothes, or some other things?”

   “Don’t talk nonsense! Go out with your beddings! I don’t need anything. ……”

   Yukiko shed tears disregarding her appearance. Painfully, she felt displeased even to see Iba’s face. Iba reached the radio by hand and switched it on. The shamisen’s melody tone flew out refreshingly.

   “Aha, this works with a battery. How practical ……”

Removing a cover from the back of the small box, many vacuum tubes were aligned like small toys. Yukiko stood looking down at what Iba was doing. She, as if it suddenly occurred to her mind, drew in force the wooden table frame of brazier from underneath the futon, and began folding the futon with a whizzing sound like cutting through air.

   “You don’t need to fold the futon so quickly. ……”

   This small radio seemed to curse since last night, thus Yukiko became lonely in the tone of the shamisen.

   “By the way, I brought dried sweet potatoes 56 or 64 pounds. Don’t you know any market for these goods?”

   He said placing the cover back to the radio. Yukiko did not reply thinking in mind who knew that.

   “This radio might be expensive.”

   “It’s not mine.”

   “I wonder if it is possible in Japan to copy this and apply for the registration for a utility model. ……  It’s well made, indeed. ……”

   Iba was impressed by the radio, which he held in his hand listening to the tone of the shamisen.

 

 

.. * 22

 

Tomioka intended to meet Yukiko once more again and sent her a letter. But, he did not want to go there to the shed. Tomioka, so as not to be sitting frightened in the shed, planned to meet her at Yotsuya’mitsuke station^[*222], and wrote the meeting time and date in his letter.

   Unfortunately, it was a rainy day. Christmas had past, and days were progressing toward the end of the year, so, all the busyness was confined to the town, maybe because of which, no one minded the raining. After all, it was such a rainy day as forgotten by people and seemed dejected.

   Tomioka waited about 10 minutes at the station.

The number of passengers getting on and off was not a lot, despite that, people of a wide variety of social classes busily went in and out the ticket barrier across Tomioka’s field of vision. Tomioka had a desperate feeling without any reason. He had felt the same despair with anxiety from time to time in Indochina. He was bogged down by his thoughts that he could not do anything anymore, which began, like a slasher, filling Tomioka’s chest.

   Tomioka, shaking the top of his shoes nervously, looked up at the sloping road. On the slope of a bright lead color, a mongrel dog which got soaked to the skin, walked staggering as if it was looking for someone.

   Looking at the watch, Tomioka thought that Yukiko would not come. He determined to wait a little more, then go back. He would understand even if she would not come. While thinking, he whistled to the staggering dog. The dog glanced back at the direction of the whistle, and looked intently at Tomioka. A piteous look on its face, as if it thought in mind that this person was not the one it was looking for. The dog walked quickly away into the shrub of fatsia japonica.

   “Did you wait a long time?”

   Yukiko hit her shoulder against Tomioka who was standing under the eaves of the station.

   “I was late more than 30 minutes, and thought to turn back home, because you might have already gone away. I am sorry. ……”

   Yukiko,wearing a red scarf on her head, the ends of which was tied under her chin tightly, looked up with a lively look at the face of tall Tomioka. Tomioka was displeased with Yukiko’s words that she was late more than 30 minutes and thought to turn back home. He felt being treated trivially by this woman. The woman’s calm and composed mentality was unpleasant to Tomioka. He thought that time had come to break up.

   Tomioka began to walk, and Yukiko followed him out to the rainwater on the road. ― Tomioka felt unbearably lonely. While walking quickly alone, he saw in mind the facial expression of Yukiko who came behind him splashing her way on the watery road. He wanted Yukiko to be a companion of his loneliness. Nevertheless, he somehow felt like remaining with a sense of guilt while walking with Yukiko.

While considering his own solitude thoroughly, Tomioka felt frightened as if he was trembling at the solitude. Even at this time, the solitude was so lonely that Tomioka could not keep bearing the lineliness, the state of owning nothing. If he did not own even his innermost gods to comfort himself, empty desperation distinctively began to move up and thrust into his chest.

He wanted to commit suicide in his present feelings with Yukiko. ― Tomioka remembered the incident when a Japanese young man ran away with a foreign woman. They, in revolt against pursuers, swallowed poison at a suburban station.

It seemed to him that sorrow of human beings consisted in transiency like a floating cloud. He did not have any conficence in his own spirits to keep living. The two people, going nowhere, strolled as far as a tramcar station.

“Say, I feel cold. ……  Shall we enter somewhere to drink tea?”

“Sure.”

“Awfully gloomy you are. ……”

“Gloomy?”

“Yes.”

“Your speak simply is what I hate. ……”

“You see. I live alone, and so, have learnt many vocabularies. …… I myself am scared to be dissipated from now on.”

“I see …… . I wonder if you really think so. You look effortlessly happy.”

“Oh, no. Do you think me like that? My life might look effortless but it is an effort. ― It’s annoyance if you see me gaining in my life effortlessly. ……  You also have totally changed from those days. …… Say, oh, I don’t know anymore what happens to us from now on. ……”

   Tomioka stood in the rain, looking toward the crown prince’s palace with the beautiful line of trees. He did not know how the palace was used at present. Over the iron fence, however, the grayish white palace in the rain showed dimly, with the dark mass of lined trees, looking fresh like in a foreign picture.

   While staring at the palace, he was seized again by the sense of emptiness and elusive despair.

   Tomioka began walking on the road along the palace. Yukiko in silence walked as well side by side with Tomioka.

  “We were happy in Indochina, weren’t we? ……”

   “Ah, do you think so, too? …… Me, too. I am thinking right now about Indochina. How I miss it! ……  Such a place is like a dream. We had a good dream. Yes, it was a dream. ……  We were in a dream. ― Even if it was a dream, it’s a wonder that I could meet you. ……”

   “We just recall, from time to time, that there was also such a thing. ……”

   “At that time, you and I also were good people. We made a full expose of the natural character of human beings. ……”

   “Yes, however, it might have not been a true happiness. Was it so? Right now, while looking at the palace, I thought suddenly that I am happier at present than. ― Losers’ patheticness is beautiful. Don’t you think so? Although I don’t know for what this building is used at present, it was the palace years ago. The legacy remains here and there, which touches me deeply, somehow.”

   Yukiko looked up blankly at the wattle and daub wall fence. The scent of the wattle and daub wall slightly smelled. Tomioka became sentimental, although Yukiko could not follow his mental feeling that much. Yukiko, of course, could feel a pensive mood, though.

Maybe because it was rainy and cold, the scenery around was so impressive. On the broad street beside the palace, a stylish vehicle of cobalt color was driving away with high speed.

   Tomioka felt like biting his own loneliness. He wanted this woman, without forcing, to be in the company of going naturally to their death.

   He had lived to this day, and lost everything simultaneously as the nation lost the war. Considering this, he felt a chill down his spine, and felt a sorrow like this winter rain. ‘In this lonely country, everyone was as if fastened with nails on there,’ he thought, ‘Any war evokes affections and pities only when defeated. The defeated losers’ soul has something inward to call back on the fantasies of old days, and the fantasies from time to time press them for a reflection.’ ― Tomioka was envious of her fight for the life of a simple woman who seemed to think nothing, however, felt dissatisfaction to her quick change of mentality. He thought that this woman herself was lacking nothing, and suddenly, looked down to Yukiko who walked snuggling him. Horribly enough, he discovered that not only this woman but also every other woman did not bear any traces that they had passed through sufferings of the long war.

   “Where are we going to?”

   “Are you tired?”

   “It is unbearable to walk in the rain. I will catch a cold. ……”

   “How about walking as far as Akasaka. Then, we get on a street car to Shibuya.”

   “Okay. ― By the way, what do you want to talk about?”

   “What I want to talk about is …… . Nothing particular.”

   “You are egocentric. ……”

   “Am I? I wrote to you beause I wanted to meet you.”

   “What a lie! Don’t tell me a lie. It is the first time that I heard such affectionate words from you that you wanted to meet me, isn’t it?”

   “Do women want to hear affectionate words so much?”

   “Of course, we do. ……”

   Tomioka satiated the communication concept like that. No harvest, even if he met her this way. And yet, the defeated losers’ mental disturbances and drudgeries to make a bare living, as black clouds, weighed on the people’s soul. He was aware that he was he. Tomioka himself, however, could not render the meaning of his own shallow desire to seek favor of others, who knew nothing, to be his companion, by dragging them into his egocentricity. He thought himself deceitful, because he was merely such a person as lived only in his own illusion that there was a harvest

 

 

.. * 23

 

In Shibuya, the two entered a Chinese food shop in the underpass. They sat face to face on chairs beside a briquette stove. Blue flames were rising from holes of the lotus-like briquette. Around the corner of the shop without any other customers, three serving women in shabby white jacket were standing.

   Yukiko held up her hands to the stove, while placing her muffler wet with rain upon a wire mesh.

   A serving woman came to take an order from Tomioka, who ordered pan-fried noodles, yakisoba. He added.

   “And one bottle of sake.”

   Yukiko, grinning, took a foreign cigarette pack out of her green bag of plastic, and held it out to Tomioka, who picked up a cigarette.

   “It seems that we have nowhere to go. ……”

   “Ah ……”

   Smoking a cigarette with relish, Tomioka felt terribly tired after a long stroll in the rain. He had sent her a letter by special delivery post, but, forgot his reason that he had to talk with her at this moment.

   “When are you going to move?”

   “My family members have already moved. I will spend New Year days of this year in my deserted house. ……”

   “Oh, you alone?”

   “My wife will stay. ……”

   “I see. You boast of your wife. ……”

   Yukiko showed her disappointment like a child. Before long, a serving woman brought them sake.

   “I have found Kano’s address. Will you meet him?”

   “Ah, did you get his address? Where does he live?”

   Tomioka took out his notepad, and flipped through the pages looking for Kano’s address. He wrote it down in pencil on the back of his visiting card, and handed it to Yukiko.

   “Oh, he lives in Odawara^[*141].”

   “He lives with his mother. He seems to be still single.”

   Yukiko glared at him with her glitteringly shining eyes to express her repulsiveness against Tomioka’s nastiness. Despite that, at the innermost of her chest, her longing for Kano flared up. Yukiko had heard nothing of him since their separation in Indochina.

   Sake penetrated into the belly and warmed up his chilled body. Yukiko also drank two or three cups of sake.

   “Only two or three days left.”

“For what?”

“The New Year will come. ……”

   “Well, I have never thought of the New Year.”

   “Shall we go out now, as it is, either to Ikaho^[*69] or to Nikkō^[*131]?”

   “Oh, I have not been to Ikano, but, it sounds nice ……. I want to slosh my body in hot water. Can we go, really?”

   “I can afford to take you there for one night or two. Do you want to go there?”

   ‘As we are floating in the eternal sea, it would be better to do things self-indulgently depending on our emotional preference.’ Tomioka felt like dying with Yukiko, when it came, in obscurity in a mountain of dead trees.

   ‘You are smiling radiantly without noticing that you will be killed tactfully by me. ……’ Tomioka thought in mind, while looking at Yukiko who was eating hungrily the fried noodle, yakisoba. On her small earlobes, gold-plated earrings were swinging. Her black hair was cut short around her neck.

   “Isn’t Ikaho cold?”

   “Whether cold or not, it doesn’t matter.”

   “Right.”

   Yukiko, with a cheerful look as if a newly-married couple were discussing travel plan, put Kano’s visiting card in her handbag, and in exchange, took out her compact and opened the mirror in front of her nose.

   Tomioka fancied a scene murdering a woman. Like a silent drama, Yukiko’s bloody figure was moving in a slow motion in a scenery of his imagination. A dangerous feeling it was, however, a boldness that he could enter such the dangerous feeling was even exhilarating him. ‘I will kill her.’ And ‘I myself will die bending over on her. That’s it. Not a person would complain against us.’ Tomioka, thinking in mind, kept staring blankly at Yukiko’s flat face. She, powdering her face, ordered the second sake. He felt strange that foreigners were fond of this face. A lowly face. A flat face with a jaw like swelled gills was mediocre with nothing to recommend. Taking a close look, however, her face was closely akin to a primitive caveman. Otherwise, her forehead, eyebrows, and her eyes looked like a buddha statue.

   “No problem even if you leave your house vacant?”

   “I locked the door. Even someone comes, he will think no one inside.”

   “Iba came to pick up the futon beddings, didn’t he?”

   “Oh, did my letter reach you? Yes, he came. So, I have only one single blanket to lie with at night.”

   Yukiko, who seemed not to worry anything, took up a ceramic bottle of sake, tokkuri, to pour sake into Tomioka’s ceramic cup, hai. Tomioka sipped sake picking up, as a relish, pieces of leftover green onion and bamboo shoot scattered on the dish of yakisoba. How shitty and pitiful everyday life was! It seemed to Tomioka that everything that he was doing was like a comedy. Everyone seriously had believed that tragedies repeated on people. Tomioka, however, began doubting that nothing had been tragic from the old days of thousands of years, although the tragedy should have added a great value to the hearts of mankind. ‘All that people have done are repetition of comedies. People timidly live a furtive life in comedy. Brandishing justice also is comedy. People’s good and evil is nothing more than comedy. People, feeling so funny as to shed tears, are living on a pretext most suitable for themselves. On the eve of death, people probably feel relieved for the first time, and may truly sigh with relief.’

 

Tomioka took his fling to travel to Ikaho together with Yukiko. They arrived at Ikaho late at night. A local guide took them to the inn named ‘Kin’dayū.’ Ikaho was a spa town full of slopes, which were narrow like alleys. Sulphur, called as a ‘flower of hot spring,’ yuno’hana, smelled offensively. Yukiko, while walking, looked curiously at houses on both sides of the slope. Ikaho, which was famous with a novel ‘Lesser Cuckoo, Hototogisu^[*66],’ was unexpectedly rustic and really romantic. Maybe because they arrived late at night, the sounds of flowing water from a stream and the sharp winds of mountains freezingly pierced theirr skin. They entered a secluded room of the inn, where a large heating device, kotatsu, was prepared. A large panel was placed on the kotatsu. Yukiko put her cold knees into a cotton filled coverlet, futon. It was so warm and comfortable.

   “Such a nice place, isn’t it? Why do you know such a place like this? Have you ever been here?”

   Yukiko asked leniently.

   “I came here during my school days. ……”

   “It’s so nice place. Such as Da Lat. I wish we could live at a place like this leisurely, if we had money. ……”

   “Indeed, but, a long stay will make us bored. Two days at the most. ……”

   “So, staying for few days may fit us. ……”

   The room was narrow, however, beneath the window a mountain stream distinguishably sounded. A maid with a red face came into the room bringing dried persimmon and tea. On the alcove, a small chrysanthemum was arranged in a basket-shaped flower tube, and a scroll of a landscape lithograph was hung. The room appeared ordinary, but, they were on travel, besides, were content that they came to the spa town, so they took off lightly the loneliness which was felt this morning. Even if you despaire of something or another, the mood in front of you would change quickly when you know how to change your mood, and you feel delighted and a temporary makeshift can be achieved. Tomioka felt mellow. He thought mental waves strange, which struck him as curious. He troubled himself to look for a theatrical stage to die with a woman. An incident as such was only a tiny bubble in a vast universe. Tomioka with his overcoat on, flopped down on the kotatsu and stared at the sooty ceiling with his head on his arm.

   “Please, change int0 the dotera^[*32].”

   The maid brought a pair of dotera of male and female size, each. Yukiko quickly changed clothes in the anteroom, and asked the maid to give her a washing cloth, tenugui. Tomioka felt even taking a bath wearisome. Moving his body was unbearably irksome as well. He wished to disappear blankly underground into the abyss.

   “Hei don’t you change clothes?”

   “Yeah ……”

   “Well, when you change into the dotera, let’s ask them to prepare our supper quickly. I am very hungry.”

   “You are talkative. Leave me to relax. Why not go bathing at the hot spring?”

   Yukiko left her clothes, which were taken off messily, at the corner of the room, and came to the kotatsu. She smelled her sleeve of the dotera and said irritably.

   “Uhh, it’s the offensive smell of other customer, offensive smell ……”

 

 

.. * 24

 

Tomioka was quite drunk. He felt his heart had been lightly lifted for the first time in a long time, and was singing a Vietnamese song, leaning against the alcove post.

 

Your love, and my love, only on the first day,

was true. Those eyes were sincere.

My eyes also, on that day, at that time, were sincere. Now,

You, and I, have a suspicious look ……

 

The popular song in Vietnam had such a meaning. Yukiko also was very drunk and sang a lyrics of faint memory together with him. She missed the life in Da Lat dreadfully.

It was of no use to recall it now, however, they indulged in nostalgia for dreams of distant past. Yukiko stretched her leg groping for his leg. Her sole touched his hot leg.

“Tomioka’san, I wish you good health forever. Please call Yukiko when sometimes you may remember Da Lat. ……  I have given up. It will be nice if you meet me this way, from time to time. It may be better. ― I understood that our relationship is like the song we sang a while ago. ……”

   Tomioka, with his eyes shut, was singing calmly the Vietnamese song. Yukiko stood up and came nearer to him, and then, slid into the kotatsu side by side with Tomioka. Despite that, Tomioka did not open his eyes, and just kept singing.

   “Why are you lost in thought? Please, divide your thoughts to me! Say, give me a half of it. ……”

   Tomioka opened his eyes suddenly at the moment that he was asked to give her a half of his thoughts.

   Yukiko was his sweetheart. A spontaneous utterance of the woman, like a momentary rainbow, allured Tomioka, who took Yukiko’s finger to his lips.

   “I am lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely ……”

   Yukiko clinging to his chest cried, in a low voice, “lonely, lonely.” Tomioka while keenly gazing at her insaneness could not be moved at all by Yukiko’s insaneness as such. He could think no more than that her emotions were flowing just for the moment, in the same way as the water flowed in the stream beneath their window. ― Tomioka was only ruminating how to die.

He wondered whether or not he could put an end to her life with a resolute attitude. Tomioka tried to determine by calculation like mathematics wondering if he could kill the woman first, thereafter, kill himself without fail. After their death, no one would know that they died but not in love. ……  ‘Even so, I do not mind,’ he thought.

   In this case, Tomioka needed the ‘death’ itself. But, ‘how should I interpret his dying with the woman? This is just a tool of death.

What a selfish fellow! I am such a kind of person. ……’ Tomioka, asking himself in mind, held firmly Yukiko’s fingers from time to time. ‘Other people might freely name his death as scary, pretentious, or odious taste, which are their way of thinking though. As a possibility, people who are going to die may feel like playing a tragedy.’

The electric light reflected in a large red board on the kotatsu, where messy leftovers remained. The board was painted red, and a tiny pine was illustrated in gold. ‘This also is the last sight, now. ……’ Tomioka looked around everywhere in the room. ‘The two will walk into a mountain and die very soon.’ He said these words secretly in mind.

As he thought that it was the last moment of his life, everything seemed lonely and beautiful to him. Whatever he saw was affectionately beautiful. A light yellow tint of the whitish chrysanthemum …… . The wind blowing up from the landscape drawn on the dirty scroll. The rain in the prince’s palace which he saw this morning in Tokyo grazed his heart.

In Ikaho, the rain had let up.

“How well is your business going?”

“My business?”

“Yes, your timber dealer business.”

“Oh, how is my business going? It may work itself out somehow. ……”

“Is your house still unsold?”

“The house sold, and I got half of the payment.We will register the record matters early in the new year, and render the house late in January ……”

“Hou much was your house sold for?”

“None of your business.”

“Well, so …… . But, why can’t I ask?”

Yukiko, while getting away her temporary insaneness, lay the staring eyes on Tomioka. She felt funny wondering why she was attracted to the man like this. They were just like a passing chance couple on the spot. Yukiko stood up, and, taking her tenugui by hand, went to the hot spring again.

She went down the narrow stairs toward the midnight bathroom, where two young women, dishevelling long permanent hair, were talking noisily.

Turbid red hot water was overflowing to the tile’s edge.

Yukiko with no word put her leg in front of the two women in the bathtub. She was drunk, and so, stumbled and fell into the water as if she jumped in there with enormous splashes. The two women jumped backward quickly frowning their displeasure.

The women, really nasty facial expressions, clicked their tongue and stood up with a rushing sound.

“I am sorry ……”

Yukiko apologized. The two women did not smile even a slight smile, which vexed Yukiko. She stretched out her legs at ease in the red hot water. The two were absolutely urban women, but, had stout waists like large-boned peasant women.

Yukiko was proud of her slender body and her belly as flat as a pancake, and was swayed by impulse to stand side by side with the two women. The women sat down on the tile floor, and began continuing their previous conversation.

   “At parting, Tami’chan said, ‘come again.’ She knew nothing to say other than ‘come again.’ Then, her man, imitating to swim, said, ‘stop swimming among men and work in an office.’　― Nevertheless, soon after that as well, she is swimming around among men. She doesn’t care for any advice. ……  She hates to see Japanese men, even a glance. She said so.”

   The two women bursted into laughter.

   Yukiko could guess the women’s a social class as such, and at the same time, recalled her own shed in Ikebukuro. Joe might visit her about this time, knocking her door. The two women used a fragrant savon, and arranged their hair each other with a large plastic comb.

   To Yukiko’s drunk eyes, their attitude seemed provocative. They showed off their stylish large bottles of water cream and extra-large-size towels as if they wanted to say that they were different in race from her. On the other hand, Yukiko used a fishy smelling soap and a dirty Japanese tenugui as if boiled in a brown soup stock, which she borrowed from the maid of this inn.

   “Say, tomorrow, when we get back, I am going to a tailor shop. Will you come with me? ……  I ordered a bright red suit with gold buttons.”

   “Marvellous. Did your darling let you order clothes?”

   “Of course. He is very free with his money.”

   Yukiko giggled. The woman with red lips casted a glance at Yukiko who was giggling. The woman angrily said.

   “What are you laughing at?”

   “Oh, I laugh at my affair that I recalled. Don’t pick a fight with me.”

   “Drat, do you mock us. You drunkard splashed badly hot water over us!”

   “I apologized, didn’t I?”

   Another bony woman advised her mate.

   “Don’t get involved with the drunkards.”

   The two women quickly went to the dressing room in a threatening air like splashing.

   “That woman wearing earrings uses the dirty tenugui. What’s that? I wonder what that is? ……”

   “You know. ……”

    A snickering laugh of the two women was heard. Yukiko soaking splashingly in a hot water began to sing loudly.

 

Your love, and

my love,

only on the first day,

was true. ……

 

She sang in Vietnamese. Unexpectedly sensuous and in a sweet voice. The snickering laugh stopped.

 

Those eyes

were sincere.

My eyes also,

on that day,

at that time,

were sincere.

Now, You, and I,

have a suspicious look ……

 

   Yukiko, while singing, felt herself dissolute as if it was the result of a prodigal life.

 

 

.. * 25

 

Tomioka and Yukiko meaninglessly spent two days in Ikaho. It still rained on the second day. The large inn was quietly scanty of customers, as was expected, on the New Year’s eve.

   Tomioka was incapable of grasping anything concretely during two days. He strived to think seriously about situations, on which he could notconcentrate, though.

He was trapped by self-contradiction. He did not know how to deal with himself. He thought that every person who had come back from afar after the war might lack confidence in his own ability more or less in the same way as he.

Some people were aware of their own losing heart, and others were not. In any case, the Japanese race was nailed to this narrow world, and each one would have no other choice than moving apart in different directions alone.

   It was an extremely difficult and vain ideal to pursue the overall truth in the narrow land of a defeated country like this. There also could be obstacles, which would unexpectedly reject, at every instant, a possibility to live a life. ……  Tomioka was tired in the restricted narrowness of the world, and also exhausted himself supporting his family peacefully with his skill.

   Everyone became fastidious. Each family member separately shut in each one’s solitude in reality.

   “Don’t you have a cigarette?”

   “No.”

“What are you thinking about? You must be irritated. ― Shall we spend the New Year days here? If money is not sufficient, it’s quite all right with me to leave my overcoat here, or this watch of mine, to add to the payment for the accommodation fee. If you think it undignified, I will go to town to sell my watch. ……”

Yukiko, saying, picked up a cigarette end from the ashtray, sticked it to her pipe, and lit.

Tomioka lay on his stomach in the kotatsu reading again newspapers of the day before. He suddenly turned over resting his elbow on the tatami and looked up at Yukiko’s face from underneath.

   “Hey …… .”

   “What?”

   “Aah, nothing particular. However, I thoroughly got tired of the world. ……”

   “What do you mean?”

When he was asked what he meant, he felt his own cheeks numb. He opened his dry eyes blankly, looking at Yukiko’s worn-out madeup face. He said cold-heartedly as if he abandoned her.

   “It’s tedious to keep living, isn’t it? ……”

   Yukiko did not understand what his words signified. Tomioka continued his words pulling by fingers a button almost coming off Yukiko’s breast of her clothes.

   “I meant that we cannot do anything anymore.”

   “We can do something else. ……  Your state of mind was bogged down, wasn’t it? ……”

   “Hmm, your witty remark. ……  That’s right. ―  Then, you are not bogged down, are you? Maybe you have a fun. I bet you are full of fun in the world. ……”

   “What do you mean by fun?”

   “A prevailing tendency in the world like now. ……”

   Yukiko began understanding little by little what Tomioka had in mind. Sweet tears were full to the brim of her throat.

   “May I tell you what you think?”

   “No. You don’t have to. ……”

   “A talk about breaking up?”

   “That’s wrong!”

   The button came off. Tomioka holding the button by hand laid down in the heatless kotatsu as if he stooped his body.

   “May I go to sell my watch? ―  Say, I want to spend the New Year days here. ……”

   White turbid rain water passed in across the window pane. Birds flew swiftly through, under the eaves. Yukiko went to open the window. The mountains and the sky in front of her looked milky cloudy as in smoke, which reminded Yukiko of the landscape in Indochina, where mountains were cloudy like smoke in rain. Tomioka fingering the button put it on the tatami, and flipped it with his finger like playing tiddlywinks.

   “The New Year days will be rainy. ……”

   Yukiko closed the window, and entered the kotatasu again. Tomioka sat up abruptly, and put the button on the kotatsu. Then, he murmured whether to Yukiko or to himself.

   “I want to die. ……”

Ignoring his word, Yukiko picked up her button and tried to put it on her breast, then irritatingly pulled out waste thread of her clothes from where the button came off. She said simply.

   “I also want to die.”

   “You cannot die so soon. You should be active from now and enjoy your life greatly. ……”

   “Oh! What should I be active in? Don’t utter your ridiculous idea.”

   “Well, then, have you ever thought seriously to die? If you have never thought impartially and in earnest to die, don’t say easily that you want to die.”

   “Oh, yes. I have seriously thought to die. I always thought about it. I intended to die in Haiphong as well. Also, in Da Lat, I thought it when Kano’san caused an incident. ― So, I am not afraid to die at all.”

   “Hmm …… . In your mental situation as such, you cannot die yet. While you boast of your being not afraid of death, you are still optimistic about death. Death is something scary, indeed. ― You will not be able to die unless you wait until your fury is unleashed so that you may be vacuum. What kind of means do you take if you die?”

   “Potassium cyanide is the easiest, isn’t it?”

   “What do you do if you become vacuum when potassium cyanide is not available?”

   “I don’t know until I come face to face with such a situation, do I? When you are in a vacuum state, you surely cannot think about a style you will die with, can you?”

   “Then, suppose that those who love are going to die together. If either one does not attain a vacuum state, their mood will not fit themselves for dying together, will it?”

   “It seems wrong. It should be like this; beyond unleashing their fury, their innermost hearts become rather cold, and the two people calmly go to die. ……  If they are afraid to die, they must be afraid even to choose the means of death. Therefore, in case of the death of the two people, they have to firmly make a plan for dying. ……”

   “I have had a fancy of climbing Mount Haruna^[*54] with you to die together. ……”

   “What a coincidence! I also thought a thing like that, the other day.”

   In exchanges of their minds, the consciousness of death framed a dim shadow little by little, which cast on the innermost part of the eyeball. Tomioka realized the utter nonsense, but the lonely feelings assailed his nose when he remembered the reality again after his return to Tokyo. He had stocked a power possible to live while he was suffering from hardships and agonies, which disappeared at present like smoke drawing a flimsy stream.

 

 

.. * 26

 

Tomioka, while lighting a cigarette, felt something cast on his mind. ‘Even if I died together with this woman, no change in the world would happen yesterday and tomorrow. I often say that I am disappointed in the world. I might explain my cause for death distorting the fact. The world, however, does not care of my death. That is all, after all. For the reason of austerities of living while being tossed in the world, a human who travels from one place to another in search of his/her own place of death is also quite a strange existance.’ Tomioka, laying on his stomach in bed, blankly stared at a fire of his cigarette glowing in the darkness.

   After all, when it came to a tradeoff of dying either in an intense pleasure or in despair, the despair seemed to Tomioka to be pretentious toward the world. Even if someone chose to die by some chance, he/she would die with no idea of despair. Tomioka smiled a sour smile. This deep darkness would not last forever. All travellers’ traces of journey, however, wriggled rustling along in darkness in the room after turning off the lights.

   In this room was surely a man who pledged his love to a woman. Tomioka felt the futon as if pushed onto him. Yukiko, who slept in the next futon, was groaning terribly in a dream of anguish. Tomioka was listening for a while to her groans. When he could not stand it anymore, he felt about with his hand to rub his cigarette in an ashtray, and turned on a bedside lamp of a paper lantern shape stand.

   Suddenly four corners became bright, and the deep darkness dissipated.

   “Hey, hey, what’s happened?”

   Tomioka pulled Yukiko’s pillow. Yukiko, who slept on the other direction, awakened, and rolled over toward the stand.

   “Aah, I saw a hideous dream. A strange and scary dream it was. ……”

   “You were groaning terribly. ……”

   “Yes, it was a hideous dream. I was being chased by a bloody skinned horse. However far I fled, it caught up with me very soon. …… On the horseback was a human with no face in blue clothes. I was suffocated, and could not utter a sound although I said ‘Help!’ ……”

   Tomioka stretched his legs into the kotatsu, where warmth emitted from buried charcoals were nicely felt. Yukiko dazzlingly looked at the stand light, and said.

   “It’s New Year’s Day, today. ……”

   They felt as if they were living in this inn for a long time in this way. Despite only three night stay, they felt as if they had been living here from old days. Tomioka felt a deep affinity. If not the war, he would not have met this woman, or did not need to go to the far-off place like French Indochina. By now, he surely would have lived a life as an honest official.

This war helped Japanese to visit colorful worlds. ― Tomioka while looking up at the sooty ceiling found a smear like a map, which suddenly reminded him of Hue. Along the street from a station to the center of the town, shoots of camphor trees looked gold like springing up. On an esplanade along the banks of the Hue River, otherwise called the Perfume River, flowers such as canna and clematis florida gorgeously bloomed like yūzen^[*226]. Palm trees, betel palm trees (Areca catechu), and Japanese tree lilac (Syringa reticulata) grew abundant everywhere. Tomioka remembered that the Moi native men in red loincloth were selling two or three parakeets in a cage on the esplanade.

   He felt nostalgic about the time of living in Da Lat, which was printed in his memory as one single pattern of sparkling white water, kasuri^[*88], on fabrics. Mr. Marcon, the chief of the forestry bureau in Hue, probably returned back to Hue by now and was leisurely smoking a cigar on the terrace. The Japanese army must have given him an unpleasant memory, whose good-natured old face remained to be a good old memory of Tomioka. Mr. Marcon came by sea over to French Indochina as a forester in 1930. He graduated the French National School of Forestry, École Nationale du Génie Rural, des Eaux et des Forêts, ENGREF, established in Nancy in 1824. The chief Marcon behaved in an honorable manner when he yielded his ‘palace’ to impolite and unsophisticated rude Japanese foresters including Tomioka, about whom he must have felt in his mind something ridiculous, though. Mr. Marcon especially favored Tomioka, and told him in detail about forestry in French Indochina.

   Mr. Marcon, while advising Tomioka of a mental attitude of work there, often compared working in forests in Indochina to tackling a tiger. Japanese foresters with no preliminary information expedited in military orders. Seeing a map, they simply imagined an open forest such as pine woods on a plain land.

   When he was invited to Mr. Marcon’s private residence, Tomioka was asked if he could recite all the names of garden trees, and could not guess even a name of betel palm. Pointing at plants one by one, Mr. Marcon taught him the plant’s producing areas, growth and characteristics, such as a medicine tree ‘Senna siamea,’ a tree with spiky-shaped cluster of blossoms ‘simplex,’ a persimmon-like fruit tree ‘sawo’ (Manilkara Kauki Dub), a light purple canna-like flower tree ‘banran,’ ‘lim,’ ‘kyenkyen,’ a ‘willow,’ ‘benben,’ and others.

   “It rains a lot in the mountainous forest areas in French Indochina, thus the forests are enormous. I have been here for a long time, but researches and studies over mountainous forests are still on the first step. Please, do not log forests randomly, but look into materials of trees before logging.” He desired. “Especially, indigenous people in mountains use a slash-and-burn method of agriculture, which considerably has encroached on the state of virgin forests. So, please, take it into consideration as well.” Mr. Marcon advised Tomioka furthermore. “I heard that Thanh Hoa and Vinh in North Vietnam in particular are overdevelopped by the Japanese military. In the middle of Vietnam, foothills immediately falls into sea, and terrains are steep in lack of rivers suitable for raft transportation. Even if trees are logged, it was far from the development, because there was not any accessible rivers for transporting logs on rafts. Terrains in the North and South are gentle so the use of rafts seems to be convenient, however, the transportation of rafts only should be reconsidered.” Mr. Marcon added anxiously. “Afforestation business, in a sense, is separate from the war.”

 

   “Hey, do you remember? We went to pray in the Japanese cemetery in Turon, didn’t we?”

   Tomioka felt as if he was taken back from wandering over the memory, and looked away from the soot of the ceiling to looked at Yukiko’s face.

   “Do you remember the name of the town? ……”

   “Do you mean the town called Fai-Fo^[*35]?”

   “You are right. The town called Fai-Fo. Kano’san, you and me, we three went to the town in Fai-Fo. I think it was a three-day journey. Kano’san was irritating, and kept his watch always over us, didn’t he? We turned aside from his eye of surveillence, and met at night. We two were like crazy people. Do you remember?”

   “Sure, I remember.”

   “Street trees were Garcinia subelliptica, weren’t they?” While we stopped the car to take rest under the dense old tree, children came close to us, saying ‘tombo japonais.’ - dragonfly japanese. At that time, I, while looking at my face on my compact mirror, felt sorry that I was not born beautiful. Because children were not interested in a woman, but were talking earnestly to you only. ……  On the road leading the cemetery, a huge cactus grew, which I remember still now very well. I thought that the journey must have been much more amusing if I were as beautiful as the actress Yamada Isuzu.”

   Yukiko said a strange thing.

 

 

.. * 27

 

In the town of Fai Fo, three hundreds and fifty or sixty years ago, many Japanese lived. They frequently came and went on armed ships with red-sealed letter patents, shuin’sen^[*174] to transport red sandalwood, ebony, agarwood, cinnamon, among others, from Southeast Asian ports to Japan. Thereafter, Japanese who could not come back to Japan because of Japan’s seclusion policy, sakoku, seemed to assimilate themselves to this land. On the surface of tombstones, Japanese names were engraved such as the tomb of Tanaka Tarobē.

Like a floating coconut, Japanese in the old days were continuously drifting away everywhere. Yukiko was aware of their brave passion. When she found the female name Hanako on a grave mound, Yukiko felt it pitiful and touching.

   “Fai Fo was a pleasant town. Roads were so narrow, on the width of which only one car carried somehow. Houses with white coated walls which looked like a pair of match boxes piled up were lined along the streets. Hey, there was a small bridge with a roof, called Nippon’bashi^[*133], where Kano’san took photographs. We could not bring the photos as well. We lived in luxury, those days. We will need enormous amount of money to make a luxurious travel as such, now. ……”

“We were punished for it.”   

   “Well, you are right. Thinking that way must be the best of all. ― I wonder what time it is, now.”

   Yukiko lay on her stomach to take her watch from a small desk at her bedside, and looked at the time. It was a little past 4. Yukiko did not have anything to think about death whilst two people had talked earnestly about the death last night. She felt it foolish to die at such a place as this. It seemed to her that Tomioka did not mean what he had said. Today, she wanted to sell her watch to pay for the room charge and travelling expenses to go back to her shed in Ikebukuro. Their memory of French Indochina was only a link to recall their hearts and minds. It was possible for the two people who slept here to be dreaming, unexpectedly, of different directions.

   Yukiko was disturbed by the payment for the accommodation fee, thus, her feelings remained far-off to romantic mood even if they would stay long in Ikaho. She wanted to express her feelings well to Tomioka, who seemed to be depressed and did not mention checkout from the inn.

   “Today is the New Year’s Day.”

   “Yeah.”

   “Shall we leave, today?”

   “You wanted to stay for three or four days here. Did you change your mind?”

   “I did not mean that I changed my mind. Somehow I thing that our talk about French Indochina seemed to be exhausted, and that you got tired of me. ……”

   “It’s you that got tired of me, isn’t it?”

   “Don’t say that silly ……”

  Yukiko said in a loud voice so as to show that she did not get tired of him, although she surely missed Ikebukuro. Yukiko felt like groping for an answer to her own doubt whether she was a caprice and a fickle woman. The sound of water flowing from a ravine sounded deeply in her ears.

“Without suffering more, we cannot gain headway away from this life. It would mean nothing to you, though. ……  Although we meet and long for the old days, years have already rolled by. Having such a conversation of the end of time is a bad habit. Such an old tale will not send our relationship back to ardency as in the past anymore. ……  Nonetheless, I do not have the same affection as before toward my wife as well. The war got us to have a terrible dream. ……  As a result, we have become futile and soulless people. ……  We became mediocre, and have fallen so unsound and indecisive in characteristic as human beings. ……  Say, we have become mediocre and indecisive people. As time goes by, the old tales also will fade. Life is but the same as this. Craving feelings only intensify. On the other hand, people, on the sly, dare not tackle this reality. We are in an era that many Urashima Tarōs overflow into everywhere. If we cannot sharply sense the reality, we have no place to go. We should not have made a strange distant travel. ……”

   “Might be so. I understand. As far as we live a life, however, we cannot remain fallen on our buttocks like Urashima Tarō. After all, we have to close the lid of the Tamate’bako jewery box lid, and start walking ahead from there. No one feeds us. ……  Well, don’t you think it strange that we would want to see each other suddenly if we don’t meet for two or three days after our parting? At the time as such, I am always thinking of you, either hatred or attraction. ……  As human beings, my feelings are unbearable. I think that I will feel much easier when a little more time will have passed. ……”

   The two people began dozing off again. Trusting to luck, they might have nothing to do but get past a lapse of time.

Since they fell fast asleep, considerable time had passed until they woke up.

A sound of a Japanese hand drum, tsuzumi, was heard afar, which got Yukiko to wake up. Tomioka was not in his futon-beddings. The sound of the tsuzumi was a music on radio. Yukiko got up and saw her watch, while folding in front her cotton wool lined kimono-like garment, dotera. It was a little after ten o’clock. The maid entered the room to add charcoals to the brazier, hibachi. She said, “Your husband is taking a bath.” Yukiko went to the bathroom, holding in her hand the wash cloth, tenugui, which she borrowed from the inn last night.

   Tomioka bathed in the smaller bathroom. Yukiko slided a glass door a little open and looked into the bath, and asked.

   “May I come in?”

   “Yeah.”

   Yukiko took off her dotera, and roughly opened the glass door into such a coldness that goose bumps appeared. She came down to the bath. Red hot water overflowed to the brim of a cypress bathtub. The narrow bathroom was filled with hot vapors.

   “A happy new year, Omedetō’gozaimasu! ……”

   Yukiko greeted smiling. Tomioka also greeted, “Omedetō.” Affinity immersed faintly two people’s bare skin. It was New Year’s Day during their trip, but they were not such visitors as staying for the hot spring cure with more than enough money. While exchanging greetings saying “Omedetō” to each other, in the innermost of their hearts, lonely and modest feelings moved unsteadily. Yukiko entered the hot water, which flowed over onto the tile floor.

   “Ah, this hot water is comfortable! ……”

   “We are only visitors here, they said.”

   Tomioka, saying, got out of the bathtub with a rushing sound. His skin was red. It was bright in the bathtub. Yukiko took her eyes away from his bare body to the surface of red clay which showed very closely to the window

   “Say ……”

   “What?”

   “We have somehow settled into this inn. The maid, however, must have regarded us as a strange man and woman. We don’t go out. We are not likely to have money, and yet, spend time leisurely, but not unpreasantly spiritless. ……  This inn, however, is extremely friendly with us. ……”

   “That’s true. ……”

   “That’s true? What are you thinking? To die? I want to keep you alive longer.”

   “No, I don’t think anything. After taking bath, when we feel refreshed, let’s drink sake. Then, we shall go back tonight. ……”

   He said and then began washing his body with soap.

   “Is that so? Did you cancel your plan to climb to Mount Haruna and jump into the lake?”

   “Well, I cannot die with you. I need a ‘beauty’ to die with. ……”

   “Oh, I hate you. It suits me, I don’t mind.”

   Yukiko laughed skittishly, and made a gesture to swim gripping by both hands the brim of the bathtub. Her arms somewhat fatted and her skin became smooth. Yukiko stared at her own rosy arms with content, thinking that a life of doing nothing more than eating and sleeping had such an immediate effect on her body.

   A while later, they left the hot spring, and sat down to the brazier, kotatsu, upon which their breakfast was prepared. It was almost at noon, though. Unlike the feelings which they had while taking a bath, their thoughts returned to the break state as previous, which irritated their minds, each other. A couple of ceramic bottles of sake, tokkuri, were ready also on the kotatsu. But, they did not feel like drinking sake this time. A larger bowl contained the zōni^[*229], which had already cooled off. They did not have an appetite for the zōni as well.

   After breakfast, Tomioka went out alone to the town, leaving Yukiko in the room. He was about to sell his watch. It was an old Omega, repaired once before. He supposed, if he sold his watch only, it would be enough for their payment to the inn. Therefore, he did not have Yukiko’s watch with him, and went out, simply wearing the dotera. A fine snow was falling lightly outside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 28

 

Tomioka went down the stone stairs toward a narrow downtown, where air-gun shooting huts, coffee bars, and the like stood in row on each side of the street. A woman in fur coat was browsing in the souvenir shop. Tomioka only in dotera felt cold, but patiently looked for a watch shop. He found a bar near a bus terminal, and a woman with rouged cheeks called out to him. “Hey, Brother, drop in on us.”

Tomioka quickly approached her while thinking that it might be advisable to ask such a woman, and entered the narrow bar after the woman. The bar was a painted barrack^[*11], which seemed like a hen house inside. Tomioka felt cold, so he ordered sake. The woman came out from the back, holding a pottery brazier, hibachi. She advised Tomioka to warm himself by sitting on the stool with his knees apart and bringing the hibachi close to his crotch.

   “Say, are you a native of this town?”

   “My hometown is close to Ikaho. ……”

   “I thought that Ikaho is an old town, but unexpectedly it’s a new town. ……”

   “I heard there was a big fire. After that, Ikaho became a town like this, didn’t it? Ikaho was good in old days, they say. ……”

   Crows were crying awfully. Tomioka poured the hot sake into a glass, drank it in one gulp. Paying for the sake, Tomioka asked the woman if any watch shop was around here. The woman was about to retreat to the back room, saying “I will go and ask.” Tomioka took his watch off and handed it to her. “Take this and ask.” A little later, a bald small-sized man, seemingly a master of the bar, came out from the back.

   “Mister, how much to part with your watch? ……”

   As the master himself came out, Tomioka embarrassedly told him that a few days ago he took a woman to Ikaho, which pleased them. “We intended to stay overnight, but heedlessly stayed longer until today. Consequently, we ran short of money, and decided to sell the watch.”

   “To tell you the truth, I do not want to sell my watch. ……  

I wonder if someone keeps a watch to a debt until after I come back to pay the debt and get it back. ……”

   “it’s a good watch.”

   “Certainly. I bought it in the south. ……”

   “Aha ……  The south. Where in the south did you go?”

   “I was assigned to the French Indochina. ……”

   “Is that so? I was in the navy. I also have been in Banjarmasin in Kalimantan Selatan, Borneo Island. I repatriated last year. ……”

   “Aha. Kalimantan Selatan. ……  That was very tough. Did the navy control that region?”

   “Right. ……  A lonesome region it was. But, the disposition of local people was pleasant. I have once seen this type of watch there. So, I thought it was a good watch. ―　At what price on the earth do you intend to part with this watch?”

   “Do you have any shop in mind to sell the watch?”

   “Instead, I want it. I wanted to have such a watch once in my life. I thought either Cyma or Elgin would also suit me. I have never had such a watch. The other day, I had a chance to see Vulcain. An old type, and I was not pleased with it. ― It was not smart like this one. If we agree on the terms of price, I would like you to sell it to me.”

   “If you really want it, I have nothing to oppose to hand it over to you. Please, offer the price from your part. I’m not good at pricing. ……”

   “Well, I’m not a merchant as well. ……  How about one finger?”

   “One finger? You mean 10,000 yen?^[*196]”

   “Right, how about it? Even if you take it to a watch shop, I think, they will take an unfair advantage of a person in need, and offer 5,000 yen or so. ……”

   Tomioka thought that the master’s view might be right. Anyway, Tomioka had been doubtful whether he could get 5,000 yen or even less if he took the watch to a unknown shop around here. The master told the woman to bring sake. Then he came near to Tomioka’s stool and turned on a light. He wore the watch around his wrist, scrutinized it for a long time, and took the watch to his ear hearing a slight sound of the watch for a while.

   “Good sound. Firm and good clicking sound.”

   “It will look better if you change the leather strap of the watch.”

   “Not yet, it still looks good, and I am pleased with the strap. A strap, if made in Japan, will not be finished so softly and nicely.”

   The woman came carrying sake. The master went to the backroom, and did not show up for a while. Then, he came back dragging wooden clogs. He said with a smile.

   “Here is my entire fortune. I have scraped up together all my money.”

He began making a cross shape with 10 sets of 10 banknotes of 100 yen on the table.

   “I have heard that Indochina is a good place, unlike Borneo. Are you a soldier?”

   “Aah, no. I went there as a government official. I worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. ……”

   “I see. A government official.”

The master laughed, saying that he thought at first that the Omega was a stolen good when the maid brought it to him, and that he, therefore, peeked Tomioka from the pay desk to evaluate his personality.

   “I meet many people due to my business, so, my judgement is accurate, in all likelihood. ……  I thought that you are a painter, though. I did not think you as an official. ……”

   The master also drank a bit of sake. The shed-like house shook whenever buses arrived and departed. Tomioka put away a bundle of banknotes in an inside pocket of his dotera, and took off his visiting card. He handed it to the master.

“Oh ho, you deal with timber.”

   “I resigned from the ministry, and work jointly for my friend’s business. The business, however, gets stalled now because of funds and goods control. We cannot do anything at the moment.”

   “Indeed, control, and control, besides, tax, and tax. Under these situations, somehow, our business cannot slide out well ahead. We miss good generous customers from under our own very nose, because we cannot serve even a dish of rice with curry ― Snitchers are unwieldy everywhere. It is so risky that we cannot get out of a stalemate. Officials are the same as the magistrate, daikan^[*24], indeed, and act in the same way as the cock of the flock of children. ……  They bully us willingly by preventing us from doing our business. As the result, black markets grow like weeds. ……  How is the inn where you stay, do they have rice?”

   “We are told that the inn cannot accept any visitors without rice. Thus, it seems that my wife procured 1.8 litres of rice from somewhere, before leaving on a trip. ……”

   “I see. Things are like that. In black markets, the rice are sold in lots. Inns behave as if they woud drive back visitors who take bother to come as far as Ikaho. No favorable advertisement. Truly, merchants want customers to come, however, trite controls overly concerned with minute details. A terrible recession seems to be coming.”

   “I guess the times of the money, not of the thing, will come.”

   “Mister, do you stay always in Tokyo?”

   “Yes. My house was not burnt fortunately. But, I sold it as I had no other way to do.”

   “I lived in Honjo’Narihira^[*62] from my parents’ generation. On the firebombing of Tokyo^[*15] on March 9, my house was burnt down and one of my childred died. After that I came back to Japan, I divorced my wife. Afterwards, I came here to Ikaho with my present wife. I wanted eagerly to return to Tokyo. A fishmonger was my profession. ……  But my present wife hates working as a fishmonger. So I began this business. ……”

   “Your present wife. Do you mean the one who came a while ago?”

   “Right. Shamefully enough, she is young like my daughter. I regard everything as my fate, and also our marriage as a result from our previous life. ― we have to cherish our encounter. There is no way that we would go against our encounters. My belief is not to defy my fate. ……”

   Tomioka felt it ridiculous that the woman who overly rouged her cheeks was his wife. His remark that we have to treat our encounters as cherished hit Tomioka to the chest. He thought his relationship with Yukiko also no less than the encounter.

   “When we arrived at Ōtake Port^[*145] in Hiroshima, I saw a Camel package deserted on the pier, and thought that the package collar was so beautiful. Simultaneously, seeing that tobacco package, I realized defeat. The defeat in the war also is the encounter.”

   “You bought my watch, which may be also an encounter.”

   Tomioka was drunk, so, he felt free from anxiety. Cracking jokes, Tomioka lit a cigarette given by the owner. Crows were noisily crying. The owner, while chewing peanuts with buckteeth, feddled with the zipper of his jacket, and said, “The tendency of everything in the world has been decided beforehand. If Japan won in the war, we woud suffer much more. ― It is splendid just to have known that wars are stupid. ……  I myself as well went to the south end, as far as Borneo, so, I cannot but believe that this also is the fate.”

 

 

.. * 29

 

Tomioka went back to the inn. Yukiko was polishing her nails with her handkerchief in the kotatsu. Seeing her from behind, Tomioka suddenly felt it a pathetic sight. Tomioka heard, a while ago, the bar owner saying that everything was an encounter. The word ‘encounter’ hit him acutely to the chest. He had imagined, till the day before, to die with this woman, which seemed absurd. He also felt it impossible to die readily. He parted with his watch, which also was the fate. Simultaneously, his gloomy feelings like a stray dog till the day before gained slightly liveliness owing to the alchool.

   “Oh, are you drunk?”

   “I drank a little sake. ……”

   Yukiko worriedly stared at Tomioka into his eyes, as if she sought an answer to her question in mind, ‘Are you sure?’ So far, they incessantly disguised their intentions to each other, just that much, Yukiko felt something good was bestowed upon Tomioka who just returned, as hie eyes looked soft in color. She aksed.

“Did it sell?”

   “Sold. The watch sold for 10,000 yen. ……”

   Tomioka spoke about the details how his watch sold. Yukiko with tears in her eyes sighed.

   “The encounter. He said a good thing.”

The two people were pushed out by the owner’s remarks, because they pretended to eath other that their passion was not fake, in spite of their withered passion. Yukiko looked heartily at a bunch of banknotes amounting to 10,000 yen, which Tomioka placed upon the kotatsu.

   “There is a way out. ……”

   Yukiko said, who had seen a lot of heartless people with no soul after she repatriated to Japan.

   “The man is so brave that he returned from the south and got a young wife. You are useless, and always fancy dying.”

   Tomioka did not discard all his dreams of death. He remembered Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin’s readiness and preparations for death in the Russian novel “Demons^[*27],” which he had once read in Indochina. Tomioka could feel Stavrogin’s hateful cool-headness in a phrase that Stavrogin was so attentive as to calmly cover a strong silk rope thickly with soap paste beforehand in order not to feel ache and pain when he would hang himself to death. Tomioka felt an aversion to Stavrogin at that time. But his impression changed in a different way at present. The thick soap paste of a silk rope was most practical to evade pain while dying. Tomioka, himself as well, desired to devise an easy way to meet his death. After traveling everywhere abroad, Stavrogin, without getting mental food, returned home only to behave aggressively in town, which reflected his insanity. On the other hand, Tomioka, who repatriated from distant Indochina, intended to kill himself as a person who cooled down in life. For Tomioka, this world was not amusing nor interesting.

   “He said to me that we should not stay in an inn but check out quickly, and come to stay at his house for two or three days if we like. What do you think of his offer?”

   Tomioka took out a foreign cigarette given by the bar owner and puffed it while speaking. Yukiko also took a cigarette, lit it, and puffed it with curiosity.

   “Well, it sounds interesting. I want to meet such a man.”

   “He is affable. He is a so-called a good person, like Kano, whom you are likely to treat with scorn. ……”

   “You talk nastily. ……”

   In the evening, they checked out the inn and stopped by the bar before going back to Tokyo. In the bar, the two driver-like customers were drinking sake. The master took Tomioka and Yukiko upstairs to a narrow room and said to make themselves at home. A woman different from the one Tomioka saw this afternoon brought the tea for them upstairs. The room was furnished with a hori’gotatsu^[*63]. Ladies overcoats and kimonos were hung on the wall. Before long, the same redden-cheek woman as appeared this afternoon came upstairs. She looked like still 18 or 19 years old, larger than Yukiko, and was quiet as sleeping. She had a habit to sometimes stare wide-eyes, and at such time, her eyes looked extremely large and glittering. Not beautiful, however, her young and fresh body line, by some chance or other, looked like showingly reflecting light and spreading through all four corners.

It was the New Year Day, today, and thus, customers downstairs left soon. Finally, the woman who worked in a commute to the bar also went back home saying goodbye. The master got his wife to close the bar, and came upstairs with a bottle of whiskey.

   The short stout master in his 50s took out apples one after another from his jacket onto the kotatsu, and said to Yukiko to eat them. The men had a long talk earnestly about the Southern lands while drinking whiskey.

   In the six-tatami mat room with a suspended paper ceiling, a world map was pasted on the wall. The woman placed her hands to warm on a rid of a Dharma-shape brazier, the dharma hibachi^[*23], and seemed to think of something else expressionlessly. She took her seat next to Tomioka, and he from time to time saw her face from the side. Yukiko peeled an apple. She, while munching it, intruded on their conversation, and spoke lively.

   Outside the window, she felt fine snow falling. The wind blew roaring loudly like the rumblings of mountains. The woman rested her left elbow on the hibachi and her chin in her hand. She was sitting with legs flung sideways, and her right hand set in the kotatsu. Tomioka, who was sitting cross-legged, tried casually to press his toe hard to her knee. The woman, with an unconcerned air, pretended not to notice it. Tomioka touched his left hand to the woman’s hand in the futon. And then, he looked at her face calmly from the side, and gripped her hand firmly. Suddenly, countless sparks scattered in his chest. The woman drooped her head quietly and closed her eyes. However, her hand was sticky, and reacted many times to his hand.

Tomioka was surprised at such a beastly wild power of this rustic woman with redden cheeks. He lost his head, gripped his glass with one hand, and drank the whole glass of whisky in one gulp. Yukiko began to peel another apple.

Tomioka from time to time gave a wary look to Yukiko who turned up her poisonous red color lips while munching on the apple. She talked with the master of the bar, whom Tomioka had described as the good person like Kano. The master wore the watch around his wrist. The gold watch with pride shone dully on his short wrist.

In the kotatsu, hands of the two people still did not separate. The woman also boldly pushed her knee on to his toe. Tomioka decisively separated from the woman’s hand, and began talking with an excitedly unsteady voice.

   “Oh, this also is an encounter. There is no such a memorable New Year Day as this. A beautiful night. Mister, let’s empty this bottle of whiskey. Tonight’s feast is my treat. ……”

Tomioka, while talking, poured whiskey in the master’s glass. And then, he streched out Yukiko’s glass aimfully to her lips saying, “You, too. Drink it.” On the other hand, while coldly thinking ‘People’s feelings easily change,’ Tomioka got Yukiko to have her glass many times. Yukiko became quite drunk. She had not eaten supper, which made her drun quickly. Yukiko thought the woman a stupid country woman, who rested her chin in her hand and drooped her head with her eyes closed like sleeping. She also looked pitifully at the woman of clumsily large body who lived with a man of unimposing stature in the countryside without any springtime of life. The reason for being, raison d’être, of the woman immediately in this place was ambiguous as she remained silent all the time. Yukiko while getting drunk began confessing humorously her story of ardent love with Tomioka in the southern country.

Tomioka was not drunk. Three people drank till the bottle emptied. ―  Suddenly, Tomioka stood up saying he was going bathing to the hot spring. The master with eyes dimmed with drink said to the woman.

“Ho, Osei, you guide the mister, take the master to the bath of the rice shop. Ma’am, how about going together with him?”

“Enough already. I took a bath twice this morning at the Kindayū. ……  Besides, I am drunk and feel dizzy. ……”

Yukiko picked up a slice of ham from a dish of relish for sake, and took her whishky glass again to her mouth crammed with ham. Tomioka said that he wanted to borrow a washing cloth, tenugui. The woman took her pink towel off the wall and went down the staircase after Tomioka.

The downstairs was dark and cold. Tomioka waited under the stairs for the woman who came down. Under tables with chairs put on the top, mice moved quickly like flickering on the floor.

The woman reached the floor. The two people stood closely face to face. They stared at each other with their radiant eyes as if had starved.

 

 

 

 

.. * 30

 

Under the stairs, two people were standing on the dim floor like a valley which was shut up in the mountain walls. Tomioka suddenly hugged Osei. She, holding her breath, leaned toward Tomioka, and let him do as he wanted. Passionately kissing. Yukiko’s loud laughter was heard from the second floor, and then, Tomioka quickly released from Osei. Osei said nothing, and went out of the back door. Then she said to Tomioka, “Watch your step. It’s dark.”

   Tomioka, half drunk, felt that his instinct was suddenly awakened by her words ‘Watch your step.’ He held strongly the waist of Osei, who shook his hand loose and descended the narrow stone stairs. It was dark all around, and a small light was lit at a utility pole set beside the stairs. Steam was rising densely in the air around at the light. Near the pole was seen a bright glass door. Osei slided it open, and waited at the open door for his coming down. Tomioka approached the door, and saw a young woman inside the glass door. She wore a kimono of showy flower patters and a shiny obi sash around her waist, and was about to put on her wooden clogs.

   “Quite cold.”

   The woman said this not to anyone in particular. She spread her white shawl lightly and put it on her shoulder in kimono without wearing a haori^[*52] coat. Then, she left in a hurry, saying “Good-bye, Sayōnara.” Tomioka got past her, and entered the dooway, where Osei said, “She is a geisha^[*44].”

   Tomioka closed the door, and walked down a winding cold hallway, which turned many times downwards. At the end of the hallway, he faced with a large bathroom, seemingly a mixed bathing. In a dressing room, male and female clothing were thrown off in round baskets. A middle aged woman, who was putting her kimono on in front of a mirror, said, “Osei’san, please remember me kindly to your husband, as I did not go for the New Year’s greetings. Tell him that I will visit tomorrow. ……”

   Tomioka began to take off his clothes. Osei spread out a square wrapping cotton cloth, furoshiki before he knew that she had such a thing, in which she put his clothes one by one.

Tomioka, while undressing, saw many baskets arbitrarily placed around on the floor, and noticed two or three baskets with wrapped clothes in. He felt funny that travelers’ clothes were wrapped in furoshiki as a precaution against theft.

   Osei also began undressing.

   Tomioka quickly walked in the bathroom full of steam. Six or seven people bathed together irrespective of age or sex in a tiled large bathtub, in a gaiety of which he felt easy. Osei also entered the bathroom. Near the door, she went down on her knees on the floor, and poured hot water over herself.

   Tomioka jumped into the bathtub. The hot water struck through his skin, and then, wrapped over his cold body. Osei was talking with someone in the steam. A little later, she entered the bathtub, and slowly approached Tomioka. Her thick shoulder with white skin looked like it was floating in the hot water of red clay color. Osei came beside and grinned to him. Tomioka stretched his leg in the water and touched her thigh by his foot. Osei touched his knee as if she was groping around blindly for her washcloth in the hot water. No one noticed their amourous toying under the red clay color hot water, where only their heads appeared on the surface. Tomioka with a bizarre smile looked at Osei’s eyes, but she did not smile at all. As if her beast-like instinct fell down from her head onto the bottom of the bathtub, Osei’s head, keeping a constant distance away from Tomioka’s head, was floating simply like a watermelon in the hot water. Tomioka had the impression that this reality had been played sometime, somewhere in the past, although he could not decipher his already known feelings. He soaked himself up to his chin and stayed still in the hot water. Only his smiling face floated on the surface. Two men noisily came into the bathroom. Tomioka indulged in an extremely primitive fancy about his object in front. Someone began singing ‘Song of Apples,’ Ringo’no Uta^[*154], in the bathtub.

   While hearing someone unintentionally singing Ringo’no Uta, the theme song featured in a love romance film, ‘Soft Breeze,’ Soyokaze, Tomioka perceived intuitively a mental state of the master who moved to this hot spring town, Ikaho, to live together with the young Osei. She went away in a swimming like movement to the other side, and quickly got out of the bathtub. Tomioka appreciated a splendid appearance of har large back figure as if it were the nude of a beautiful woman he had never seen. He was impatiently longing for Osei’s naked body. He also swam quickly toward Osei, and got up to where she was. The rough night mountain wind blew down roaringly through the eaves of the bathhouse.

“Shall I wash your back?” Osei said.

The large body sat on the floor tile, with her fat thighs closed firmly, which reminded him of the naked body of Niu in bathing. Her feature flashed suddenly into his mind. He yearned for Niu’s dark stout body and the cinnamon breath of Niu who always chewed it. His life in Indochina provoked sourly his memories after all this time, with no foreshadowing. ― Níu sometimes brought a cup of hot cinnamon drink to Tomioka who felt tired and languidly took rest in bed, saying that cinnamon was used from a long time ago, habitually, for its medicinal virtues to rejuvenate males. She herself rapsed cassia bark and poured the hot water in a cup with powdery pieces of cinnamon. Among species of cinnamon, elixirs of rejuvenation, cinnamomum verum, also referred to as cassia, is highly valued as true cinnamon and King Cinnamon. Tomioka and his fellow workers conducted a field research to look for the King Cinnamon, as far as Son in Nghe An province, Xuan, Quy, Chau, and other places in uninhabited mountains. King Cinnamon was called quế in Vietnam, and grew exceptionally in mountains in North Vietnam. Cinnamon is arbor, large evergreen shrubs, and was formerly used for the Palace in Vietnam, and thus unofficial logging was prohibited. The chief of the mountaneous indigenous people, the Muong^[*118], therefore, got a logging permit from the authorities to collect the cinnamon from older days. The French forest director Mr. Marcon had said to Tomioka, “They believed a discovery of cinnamon trees depends especially upon the divine protection, so, grand religious rites are carried out before they enter deep the mountains.” Once the Muong went out to explore the mountains, it was not uncommon that they did not come back for two or three years. Besides, it was only a veteran of the Muong that could find the cinnamon. They searched the mountains for the fragrance of the cinnamon. Once they found cinnamon shrubs, they had to report their discovry first to the authorities. Then, they peeled the highly aromatic inner bark of the logged cinnamon arbors, and applied for a govermental seal and stamps on the barks. In mountains in Thanh Hoa, Tomioka smelled the aromatic fragrance of cinnamon from time to time.

While the bare Osei washing his back, Tomioka recalled cinnamon aroma in his memory. His child, whom Niu gave birth to, probably began toddling and understood words by now. He wondered about how Niu made her living with a child born out of wedlock. Tomioka imagined the life of his former mistress whom he would never meet again and his child.

The light in the bathroom flickered dimly from time to time. Tomioka asked.

   “How long have you been in Ikaho?”

   “For two years or more. Say, I want to go to Tokyo. I am already bored of such a lonesome place like this. ……  First of all, business is slow. And, no customers in the coldest period in winter. ……”

   “Don’t customers come?”

   “All up with our business. He often says to me that we cannot live on this, so, go to Tokyo, and begin his former business. But, I hate the fish shop. ……  I want to go alone to Tokyo, and become a dancer. Do you remember the geisha with whom we met at the doorway? I take dancing lessons from her. ……  She says, ‘You can live on dancing in Tokyo.’ I want to try it. ……  Business doesn’t pay here if it is not summertime.”

   “A dance. It may be not bad. Even if you dance, however, it won’t make you enough money to live. After all, you may live on your body. ……”

   “Even if you say so, I want to go to Tokyo. He is terribly particular about me, and I cannot go to Tokyo easily. ……”

   After pouring hot water on his back, she went back into the bathtub noisily.

   When the two people left the bathhouse and went back upstairs, Yukiko was talking to the master who was still drinking sake. A funny story of her memories in French Indochina.

   “Oh. You two took your time leisurely. ……  I thought you ran away together.”

   Yukiko was joking, but Tomioka was horrified by Yukiko’s intuition. Osei was not affected at all. She hung the cold wash clothes on wall nails, and then, entered the kotatsu.

   He thought that Osei rouged her cheeks, but it was not. Her cheeks were red by nature, and so, she looked like a rustic woman in mountains, indeed.

   Osei’s naturally-made face looked bright and sleek. Tomioka looked, with his empty eyes of which the soul was gone out, at her large and heavy-looking chest. He did not feel like clinging to Yukiko to find solace in her any more. Seeing Osei’s stout and plump body, he began thinking about his life from tomorrow. He had no intention of dying. No apology from Yukiko for his betrayal. Osei, from time to time, saw Tomioka with her glowing eyes, as if she touched him lightly in passing. Tomioka felt, in his feelings, such an adolescent wantonness sprouting as while traveling in Indochina. He suspended a sense of ethics, just in case, from his forehead. He, deep in his chest, however, despised Osei’s husband and Yukiko. He expected Osei’s seduction to revive himself, and felt even a kind of scorching excitement. ―　He was eager to erase her husband and Yukiko out of his sight who were in front of his eyes at present. If not for the two people, Tomioka could have advanced freely his second life with Osei. He was confident of cutting off flatly the ties of his immediate family. He imagined to be jailed together with Osei for murdering the two people in front of his eyes. ―　The master and Yukiko were quite drunk. He was sleeping drunk in the kotatsu. Yukiko lift her eyes dimmed with drink. Osei brought a bottle of japanese distilled beverage, shōchū, poured it in Yukiko’s glass and mixed it with water. Yukiko was thirsty and gulped tastily down the water from her glass while speaking senseless words.

   Osei dragged her husband to the next room, their bedroom. Tomioka did not care Yukiko, on the contrary, poured shōchū gurglingly in Yukiko’s glass. Yukiko blew out her laughs and sprayed the water from her glass everywhere around, and drank the water mixed with shōchū in her glass. Her face was red like a burning fire.

   “Coconut water tastes good. Well, say, it was so cool and smelled something crude. ……  I want to drink coconut water.”

   “Here you are, the coconut water. ……”

   Tomioka poured shōchū in her glass again. All of her body was numbed, and her consciousness faded. Tomioka lit a cigarette and listened to the wind blowing outside. Osei warmed her hands over the brazier, the daruma-hibachi, and suddenly gripped Tomioka’s foot creeping close to her knee. She stared wide-eyed at him as if the blue ether spilled glittering from her wide-opened eyes. Tomioka moved close to the hibachi, and drew Osei’s neck near his own face.

   “No!”

   “She is drunk and not notice anything.”

   “I don’t want to. Your wife is still saying something.”

   Tomioka with revenging eyes gazed hatefully at ugly Yukiko, drunk and her make-up rubbed off. He felt like the stage curtain fell alrealy and ended his relationship with this woman. Tomioka disregarded Yukiko who layed down while still talking, drew Osei’s shoulder close, and pressed his lips intensely on her lips. Yukiko sang laughing. She sang that song, “Your love, and my love, only on the first day, was true. Those eyes were sincere.” ‘Silly woman,’ he thought, and removed the hibachi which Osei’s knees held fast.

  Yukiko woke up from time to time, but it was dark in the room. She heard hoarse sounds of a male snoring close to her ears. With the sound of snoring, she also heard another sound, through a window curtain on which reflected by the streetlamp a man and woman snuggled and speaking in a whisper on the street. Yukiko felt a scorch on her throat. She wanted to crawl toward where coconut water gushed. The room shook like a hammock. Her shoulder and waist lost power to hold her body. She was dying to drink water, but her dry throat was firmly stuck and she could not utter a voice. She forcibly turned over and could crawl at last. Suddenly someone stepped over her pillow and approached the sliding paper panels, fusuma. She casually opened her heavy eyes in a daze. A tall figure of a woman slided the fusuma to open, through which she was about to pass to the next room. Yukiko called out the figure.

   “Give me water.”

   The fusuma was closed. No response. Yukiko got angry, and cried out again.

   “I want a drink of water.”

   No one woke up. Yukiko crawled groping around the kotatsu.

 

 

.. * 31

 

For three days, Tomioka and Yukiko stayed on the second floor of the bar.

Yukiko began preparing impatiently for their return to Tokyo.

Yukiko, with a woman’s sensitivity to love rivals, somehow felt aversion against Osei. On the eve of leaving from Ikaho, they held a farewell feast, where the master, incited by Osei, again treated them with sake. Yukiko did not drink much. Heavy drinking at the first night affected her badly, her headache lasted all the time during her stay, besides she had a heavy stomach feeling. Osei often poured sake in Yuiko’s glass, who secretly drew near an ashtray and poured sake into it. Nevertheless, she pretended to be drunk. Tomioka with his eyes close sometimes sang a vietnamese song in a low voice. Yukiko granced at Osei’s face at times. A vague figure of a woman Yukiko saw at the first night seemed to be Osei. It was also an enigma to Yukiko why Osei was standing near the sliding paper panels, the fusuma. The master was comfortably drunk already, and talked with sniffles that he wanted to go to Tokyo where he would make a name in the world.

   “I want to build a pub on the ruin of the firebombing in Honjo^[*61]. Calculating the present land price in Tokyo, in 20,000 yen per 35.5 square feet^[*21], as we need at least 355 square feet for building our pub, so, the price, even if simply calculated, becomes 200,000 yen. It is a considerable amount of money. As a whole, we have to prepare, at least, 300,000 yen including the money for the suppliers. I cannot afford that much so easily. I heard that living in Tokyo is not easy today. ……  However, we cannot continue this way for a long time.

I put up this bar for sale inclusive with furniture and all. Aftr all, Ikaho is a summertime resort, and we have no patience to manage to survive till summer. I even speak with Osei to temporarily stay at the house of my sworn brother who lives in Tsukiji^[*205].”

   Tomioka sometimes opened his eyes and gave him responses smoothly, although other people’s matter was of no importance to him. He took his small porcelain cup, sakazuki, to his lips and sipped sake with gloomy and dull feelings. The master liked Tomioka, quiet and modest. He felt like consulting Tomioka for everything. He said that he and Osei got bored with their bar business.

   There was no wind outside, but the night was so cold that they felt chilled to the bone. Not usual, a blind masseur strolled passed beneath the window while blowing a whistle.

   Tomioka said, as if suddenly occurred to his mind.

“Well, I will go to take a bath.”

Osei stood up at once, and took a soap box and washcloths by hand, and said.

“I will warm myself in the bath, too.”

   “Oh, then, I will go together.”

   Yukiko casually stood up behind Tomioka. Osei showed her discontentment on her face, and said.

   “I see. Then, you two only go together.”

   It was like a stone sharply hit Yukiko’s forehead, which made her upset. She looked at Osei’s roughness, and then, went down the stairs after Tomioka.

   She put on the clogs, and went out to the back door. The air was piercingly cold.

   “Osei’san is a strange woman. Does she like you? Somehow ridiculous. ……”

   Yukiko jestingly gave him a leading question from behind, and got a jocular response from Tomioka, “Heh. Is that so?” while going down the stone stairs.

   “That monkey is quite a flirt. ……”

   “Is that so? ……”

   “Is that so? You always look aloof at a woman, and yet, grab the woman’s heart firmly …… .”

   “Not particularly, I didn’t grab the monkey. Don’t be silly.”

   “However, you don’t mean that you are not interested in her, do you?”

   “No, I do not. ……”

   “I wonder. When I said to go together to the bath, her complexion suddenly changed as if she got angry. She is in love with you. ―　she did a good service only for you. ……”

   “Aah, that’s news to me. Shall we stay for some more days?”

   “Good idea.”

   The two people giggling entered the large bathtub of the rice shop. Seven or eight people in the bathtub were talking loudly about rates in the black rice-market. They seemed to be tourists. Among them were also two women, apparently the geisha, one of whom washed the back of a tourist. The tourist who got the geisha to wash his back was teased by other members of the tour. The bathroom was so bustling.

   Tomioka casually looked at Yukiko’s naked body, and felt pity as her body was not thickset like Osei. Near the side of two young geishas, Yukiko’s body aging was apparent. Nevertheless, her legs were sleek and well-proportioned with her upper body. Yukiko washed her body freely. Washing a man’s back, like the geisha, was not her concern. ―  Yukiko got out of the bath and went into the dressing room. Tomioka’s bathroom basket, with his clothes, should have placed side by side with Yukiko’s basket, but, was replaced with a basket which contained a baggage wrapped in a blue cloth, furoshiki. She thought that it was the basket of a different person, and looked around in the room. She felt bewildered. Then, she secretly looked in at an opening of the furoshiki, and saw Tomioka’s clothes inside the furoshiki. Soon after, Tomioka seemingly got out of the bathtub. Before he opened the door to the dressing room, Yukiko quickly got dressed and went to comb her hair in front of the mirror. Tomioka, who reflected in the mirror, looked at the blue furoshiki in his basket, and looked puzzled for an instant. But, he feigned ignorance and began untying the furoshiki. Somehow, he seemed to look for something carefully. After a while, he glanced at Yukiko, and, to her surprise, he quickly wore brand-new white underpants. Tomioka put on his clothes in a hurry, and folded compactly the furoshiki, which he put into his pocket. This chain of events was a mystery for Yukiko.

   “Say, it is strange. Why were your clothes wrapped in the furoshiki?”

   Yukiko left the mirror while teasing him.

   “It seems that someone wrapped them up. ……”

   “With new underpants. Where is your old pants?”

   Tomioka with no response went back quickly to the bathroom, and squeezed his washcloth. It offended Yukiko. Tomioka came back. She did not complain, and went out to the cold hallway ahead of him.

　　― She saw wrongly from time to time the heart of the man who, in fact, was going to get away from her. In such a situation like this, Yukiko tried to persuade herself definitely not to be dragged anymore by her past memories with Tomioka. Unbearable loneliness. Yukiko, however, decided to live alone for the time being. She tried to remind herself in her mind, ‘Do not be dragged by the past in the overly relaxed mentality.’

   The two people went up quietly the stone stairs. Stardusts twinkled like lights of a ship. Yukiko blew hoarsely a whistle with her lips as a pastime. She wiped, in the sleeve of her cloak, something hot rising up her eyelids. The thirst of her heart at the time when she came back from Hai Phong suddenly flowed on to her cheek in the form of tears, by now, incessantly. ‘Since we were back to Japan, what made us such lazy and lonely people like this? ……’ Yukiko groaned and choked on her falling tears, while mounting the stone stairs.

   “What’s the matter?”

   “Nothing ……”

   “Are you suspicious of me?”

   “For what?”

   A vehement anger assaulted her, but, dissolved in her chest before boiling over her mouth. Her excitement sank gradually. At the top of the stone stairs, an alley along the house led to the main street.

   “Shall we walk for a while?”

   “We shall not be off. We need not catch a cold.”

   Tomioka stopped and said in an indistinct voice, “You are nervous.” Very soon, however, he spoke quickly.

   “It’s not you, it’s me that is nervous. It’s me that is restless. I feel easily like drowning. A life in solitude is unbearable. ……  I can’t stand it, so I am sinking as it is. ―  I eagerly begin walking in any directions at hand. ……  Right now as well, I feel like going my own way.”

While speaking, he bore his frozen washcloth on his shoulder like a stick.

   “We will freeze. Let’s enter the house anyway, and go to bed quickly. ……  I want to leave here early tomorrow morning. ……”

“Don’t talk like that only you will go. ……  I will go with you as we came here together. We must go back together.”

“Well, it may be so, but …… you are an annoyance. ……  Now, it doesn’t matter. Let’s stop talking. My legs are shivering with cold. ……”

   Two people passsed through the back door, and mounted upstairs. In the next room, the master was asleep with a snore. Osei was not seen. Tomioka took a porcelain sake bottle, tokkuri, from the table, and lightly swayed it near his ear. Seemingly the sake remained a little in it. He poured the cold sake in his cup, and drank noisily. No presence of Osei in the master’s bed had some effect upon Tomioka and Yukiko who came back from hot spring. Each of two people minded Osei’s absence, in each way. Yukiko put her extremely cold legs in the kotatsu, and began thinking of her life after her separation from Tomioka tomorrow in Tokyo. She felt that her one-week absence had cleared her life in Ikebukuro once and for all.

 

 

.. * 32

 

They returned to Tokyo in the afternoon on January 15.

   Yukiko returned to her own secure retreat, and Tomioka was together with her. Her depression was worse than the time when she left Tokyo. She went to the hardware store, the house owner, for greetings of her return home, and was given back her key. The wife looked offensive. When she saw her face, Yukiko realized that she was displeased with her unexpectedly long absence, and opened her hut while feeling uneasy as if she was going to enter some other person’s house. She put on an electric light, which was installed recently on her request to the house owner. Then, she screwed a plug of a code of an electric stove into the other outlet of a double plug socket^[*181], and switched it on. She felt that the room was somewhat in disorder. On the top of the kotatsu, a letter was placed, left by Iba. The letter told her that he stayed two nights in her room and waited for her. He urged her visit once to her hometown. Iba’s family planned to get together in his house in Sagino’miya, on the day of seven herbs, nanakusa’no’hi^[*127], and Iba eagerly invited Yukiko to come and stay on a visit on that day. Yukiko ripped up his letter soon and threw the pieces into the charcoal grill, shichirin, where charcoals were ablaze. She put the burning charcoal in the kotatsu. Then, she began brewing coffee.

   Tomioka smoked with his legs in the kotatsu, and asked her while scratching his hair with a hand.

   “Don’t you have sake, here?”

   Yukiko looked through two or three bottles at the corner, and said. “No.” Tomioka became dependent on sake, and could not pass even a single night without drinking sake. He had to stir his mind with sake, otherwise, could not bear a solitude which he was sliding down rapidly. He left Osei behind although she asked him to run away with her, which Tomioka recalled like an old tale. He missed her, simultaneously, she meant little to him. She asked his address and he gave her a false address. He came back to Tokyo, wearing a new underpants that Osei wholeheartedly prepared for him. He felt it was like other people’s affair.

   “Do you want to drink?”

   “Sure ……”

   “Well, then. I will get you dead drunk tonight. ……”

   Yukiko told a joke while brewing coffee. Nevertheless, she did not have any intention to go out for buying sake.

   “Do you still mind?”

   “Me? Mind what?”

   “Nothing. Shall we have a feast for celebrating each other our narrow escape from death? ……”

   “We were rescued virtually by Osei’san by a hair’s breath, weren’t we?”

   “By a monkey?”

   “She has a nice body, hasn’t she? Tears shone in Osei’s eyes at the bus stop.”

   “Aha.”

   Yukiko poured coffee in a cup and pushed it toward him. She, while drinking hot coffee, saw Tomioka’s face now for the first time. Tomioka stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray, and put the cup to his lips. With no reason, Yukiko was eager to fall asleep alone tonight. She felt like abstaining from even a drop of sake since Ikaho. ― After drinking coffee, Tomioka went out, saying that he was going to buy sake. Yukiko let Tomioka do as he wanted. Tomioka’s habit of drinking sake seemed to her to be his fate. Tokyo as well was unexpctedly cold.

   Yukiko went to the back door of the house owner’s residence for drawing water to wash rice. She wondered if Joe had come, although she did not care about him anymore. She drew the water into her bucket, and returned to her hut. Tomioka already came back after shopping for a 0.5 gal bottle of sake. He poured sake into a kettle, and put it on the electric stove.

   “You wallow in sake.”

   “Yes. For the time being, this is my best lover. ……”

   “Tomioka’san is horrible. You indulge only in yourself, don’t you?”

   Tomioka poured hot sake into his coffee cup, sipped it, and then, glared at Yukiko.

   “I indulge in myself, therefore, I have a lingering affection over my life. Dying is a pain. A momentary pain before dying frightens me. This is not a pain like an injury. The pain of losing a life. I cannot die so easily. That is not because of my indulgence in myself, but because of my lingering affection over my life. ……  Why not drink?”

   “I don’t want to. I will have a sore stomach if I drink.”

   “Don’t say like that. Drink a cup of sake. A drink of sake will make you feel better.”

   “No thanks. I will cook rice and eat it. I can’t drink even a drop of sake. ……”

   Yukiko washed the rice in a pan and put it on the stove. Tomioka poured sake in his cup again, and then, took a pair of small dice out of his pocket. He shook the dice and threw them onto the flat top board of the kotatsu. Osei gave him the dice secretly on their separation. The upward faces showed 2 pips and 5 pips, each. ‘Oops,’ he cried out in mind, ‘Stupid of me!’ Tomioka detested those numbers. He quickly shook and threw the dice again. 4 and 5 pips. Tomioka with vexation shook again the dice. He sipped the third cup of sake, while feeling like that a somewhat somber melancholy vehicle began sliding out. He remembered Kirillov’s words in the novel “Demon,” where Alexei Nilych Kirillov said, »However, do you think that there is no way to die without pain?» The first reason of a fear in suicide is the pain. The second reason of it is the afterlife.

»A perfect freedom can be obtained for the first time, when alive or not alive becomes the same. This is absolutely the purpose.»

   Tomioka sighed, and threw again the dice with a big wave of his hand. Strangely enough, he rolled a 2 and 5, again. The numbers were back to square one.

   “Is the rice boiled?”

   “Very soon.”

   “Ikaho was amusing, wasn’t it?”

   “Well. Owing to the monkey girl, wasn’t it? …… .”

   “Uh huh. ……”

   “Do you miss her?”

   “Uh huh. ……”

   “You can visit her, again. ……”

   “Don’t bother me. I will visit!”

   “Why do you get angry? So much, you like her. ……”

   “Yes, I like her. She is such a woman who expresses through her body without saying anything. I want to see her. ……”

   “You should go to meet her.”

   “It’s too late. I left her completely. ……”

   Yukiko began to say something, at the same time, an earth tremors of a freight train passing through Ikebukuro station shook the hut like an earthquake.

   The sparkle of Osei’s eyes occurred to his mind. Her glittering beautiful eyes were like a wild animal. Her white naked body was large and heavy, which was distortingly refracted in the air. He yearned for her hot sweaty skin. Gripping fingers each other in silence, and breaths in the dark, which suddenly came back to his memory. Tomioka was agreeably drunk, and so, his lust for Osei was stirred. A touch of her stiffly permed hair was just like the horse hair. Tomioka desperately continued shaking and throwing the pair of dice onto the kotatsu. The freight train went far away. The earth tremors also stopped. Tomioka brought the fourth cup of sake to his mouth. Yukiko took down the pan. A hot coil of electric wire of the stove offered gaiety in the cold room. Not until this time did Yukiko feel strong hate against Osei. Tomioka’s words referring to Osei as ‘a woman who expresses by her body without saying anything’ pierced her heart like a needle. An obscure outline of a phantom figure, the tall figure of a woman, which Yukiko saw with her eyes dimmed with drink, must have been Osei, after all.

   “You are horrible. ……”

   Tomioka, with no reply, was shaking and throwing the dice. Just boredom. Even so, he did not feel like going back to his wife, Kuniko. It was annoying to see Kuniko sitting in the desolate house no better than a nobody’s house. It did not mean, however, that he had somewhat special affection toward Yukiko. He recently became to know each other’s slyness that they were going to purify their relationship in a kind of friendship. The days when he had won Yukiko as his lover were long since past.

 

 

.. * 33

 

Tomioka drank almost 0.5 gal of sake, the whole bottle.

“In Da Lat, we drank sherry very often, didn’t we?”

   Yukiko finished eating rice, and poured the coffee in her cup again. Yukiko, with amazement, looked at the almost empty bottle, while observing Tomioka who was drinking and talking alone arbitrarily. Sake probably was something like a drug to Tomioka. Whatever business he may be engaged in, low income will not catch up with his consumption of sake if he drink everyday. Irritation, rather than pity for him, rose in her mind. He indulged in sake, and, resultantly, his power for thinking seriously or consulting other people fell out.

His oily face reflected light, his youth as shown back in Indochina had disappeared. His face looked tired and thin.

   “Why are you staring at my face? Do you intend to drive me away? ……  Because this is your residence. My existence will interfere with your business, when your customer arrives, by any chance. ……”

   “Come on! ……”   

   “To tell the truth, the most important is the time of separation and that of payment. ……  Once you have learned that, you will come across no grave disaster in your life. ……  Even if I say so, many a life are hard to part. A wretched state at the time of the defeat in war resulted from our clumsy payment. This way or the alternative of doing upside down or the other way round. ……  

After all, the ‘going my way’ has become everyone’s creed.”

   “You are talkative. Stop drinking, and sleep now. How come? You are doodling despite that you talked the importance of the time of separation and that of payment. ……”

   “Don’t get so angry. We will part left and right, tomorrow. Let’s ‘going my way.’ Nothing suspicious in Ikaho, so, please do not sulk, ma chérie Yuki. ……”

Tomioka was speaking garrulously with antics. He even called her ma chérie, my darling, in French. The purple lips of Tomioka were impressive to Yukiko. Tomioka took out a cigarette, and held it in his mouth, while always speaking as if he licked the cigarette stickily. His eyes were dull. His hair hung down to his forehead.

   “You are hopeless. Even so, you are lucky as you reflect nicely in other people’s eyes. Pretentious, fickle, however, timid, and you become bold only if you drink sake, …… and a poseur.”

   “Aha, a poseur. ……  Any other else? My bad qualities and habits ……”

   “Sure. You are totally sly, and yet conceal it from sight. You might as well give up everything and keep yourself depressed, but you can’t. You are a good tactician, and yet, your head doesn’t work in the field of business, with your air of an official as a cause, isn’t it? If you overcame this rough world skillfully, Tomioka’san would be really a great man. ……”

   “Ahem, I have a future ahead of me. Don’t hold me up like a bimbo …… .  Although I’m seemingly scared, even I have a desire more than ordinarily to get a great wealth. ……”

“Then, why did you wish your own death?”

“Have you never wished your death? I want to live, thus, I think also to die. At the time when we went to Ikaho, my mind was ready to die. Therefore I went. ……  When I returned to Tokyo, I somehow thought that I can manage to live if I survive. Therefore I returned. ― I drink sake in this way, because I thought it’s lonesome to die. I found out that I am not brave, so I gave up dying. There must be no one who does not think of death in his or her lifetime. ……  At least, even if we want to die, we cannot easily overcome our obstructive consciences hanging in front. People are like millet grains if seen from the heaven, but, are equipped with full-fledged theories and have self-conceits and vanities. ……  People never have a method to become sennin^[*165], the spritually and physcally immortal. People absorb wastes which are full of contradictions and inconsistencies, and anyhow created by ourselves diversion in life. Among wastes of contradictions, there certainly are business, women, politics, laws, and sports! ―  Parting of the ways for lucky and unlucky people depends upon how to absorb wastes of contradictions. ―  In Hai Phong, there certainly were odious people at the time of embarkation, weren’t there? They wanted to quickly return to Japan, and pushed away their associates for boarding, even though they prevented the entrance of their coworkers. Someone began to utter that everyone but him was a war criminal. ……  Human beings are like that. Don’t you think that we need to watch out for people especially those who tell justice? For such people deceiving a woman like you is easy. ……  The man, Kano, however, was a good fellow. Honest, and yet, always unlucky. But he did not think himself unlucky. ……”

   “You and I have to offer an apology to Kano’san. ― It’s us that piqued him, fooled him, and finally let him commit a crime. …… When he was arrested by the military police and taken to custody in Saigon, he did not bear a grudge against us, even a little. ……  I was cut and hurt by Kano’san. It’s you, however, that gained an advantage on and after the affair. You are sly. ……”

   “I was lucky. That’s all.”

   “He always said that Japan will win! Win! He must have been surprised when he repatriated to Japan. ……  At that time, I also thought that Kano’san was stupid.”

   Tomioka became quite drunk. He layed flat on his elbow warming himself at the kotatsu. Something like dark forests appeared in his eyelids. Kano had completed surveys on forests in Africa and charcoal gasification experiments, thus, had contributed to make charcoal-gas driven automobiles widely available in Indochina. He had said that he would study with Mr. Harold at Institute of Agriculture and Forestry in Saigon, and give his life to research and development of the carbonization method for gasification and interim work for planting firewood forests. Once he concentrated on something, he could be absorbed headlong in his work beyond any doubt. Tomioka finally understood that Kano’s pure self-sacrificing devotion had been of great value. In the hearsay, Kano, after coming back, began working freely as a day laborer, contrary to his way of life so far. The reason was unknown to anyone. Whether true or false, the story about Kano, however, was not confirmed until after meeting him. Such a man as Kano might have frankly done what he had in mind. Tomioka decided to visit Kano once.

   After a certain peace treaty would be concluded, and such days would come again that everyone can go freely anywhere, Tomioka wanted to set sail for Saigon once more, even if he would work in a position of a mere servant.

   “Are you sleepy?”

   “No, not at all. I am wide awake. I think in various ways of living, with no conclusion. From now on …… women are always women, but men will meet many hardships.”

   “A woman as well have to endure hardship. Besides, you are not reliable. I am thinking to go back once to my hometown. What do you think of this?”

   “That’s a good idea. Go back to your hometown, and be a healthy bride. If you enter a peaceful life, it would be the best for you.”

   “Oh, you’re hateful. I will not become a bride. I said to return home, but it’s not what you might think. I have my way of life, so, I go home to say good-bye. ……”

   “Aha, your way of life. That’s true. Anyone has his or her own way of life. ……  Even so, do not push yourself. You won’t remain single all your life.”

   Yukiko added charcoal in the brazier under the kotatsu. While blowing up the fire, she said angrily.

   “You talk about me like other people’s affairs.”

From time to time, the ground shook when the government railways’ trains passed. It seemed like a lie to her that they stayed in Ikaho till yesterday. She did not have anxiety now that Tomioka lay in front of her. After her parting from him in reality, her single life in this hut might be lonely. She wanted, a while ago, to fall fast asleep alone, but her mind changed at this moment. It was a comfort for her to get together in one place with people who had known each other’s identities.

“Any cigarettes?”

Tomioka pushed his hand to her. Yukiko took a cigarette package of Hikari^[*58] brand out of her handbag, and put it into his hand. Then, she picked up the two dice from the kotatsu, and lost in her own thought while shaking and throwing the dice for a while. Her problem was what work she should do, which weighed heavily over her. She was not competent to do office work anymore. Moreover, she could not become a maid servant. She hated to be a wife. She would starve if she did not work. What work should she choose? Yukiko wavered in her thoughts while shaking the dice. She secretly imagined herself to be a whore in the cold wind in town.

 

 

.. * 34

 

On the Seven Herbs’ Day, the nanakusa’no’hi^[*127], Yukiko did not visit the Iba. She shut herself up in her hut for 4 or 5 days since Tomioka went away. She did not feel like going out or doing anything. No sign that her mental wound would heal. She wrote to Osei in Ikaho, and to Kano, who lived in Minosawa town in Yokohama, according to Tomioka.

   To Osei, Yukiko wrote with purpose, ‘My husband asked to be remembered to you.’ It was a gratuitous mischief Yukiko did, looking forward to Osei’s reaction in her possible reply. To Kano, she wrote, ‘I would like to call on you one of these days,’ and asked a suitable date and time for her visit. Unexpectedly enough, very soon after she sent letters, Osei’s husband came to see Yukiko on a snowy day. He said that Osei went away from home alone with no luggage the next morning when Yukiko and Tomioka left for Tokyo, and had still not returned.

   Yukiko soon brought back Tomioka from her memory. He stayed overnight in her room, and went away next morning. She suspected him of having promised with Osei to meet somewhere else. She had not seen their love scene, but noticed that Osei was shedding tears when she came to see them off at the bus station. Yukiko perceived that it was not ordinary tears of a woman. Tomioka said to have given a false address to Osei, however, now that Osei’s husband gave her a visit this way, it was likely that Tomioka told a lie to Yukiko. It might be possible to suspect that there must have been a certain promise between them. Yukiko desired to part from Tomioka always while she was with him. Nevertheless, no sooner Tomioka went back to his wife than Yukiko regretted that they had not committed suicide in Ikaho. Now she thought that they had taken the death so easy. She felt that her own secret despair took a shape of a bamboo enclosure which was set up around herself. Yukiko told Tomioka’s address intentionally to Osei’s husband. Around this time of the day, that man must have met Osei somewhere else. ……

   Early in the next morning, again, Osei’s husband came back to Yukiko’s hut.

   “Tomioka’san was at home. He seemed to know nothing about Osei, and was very much surprised. ……  I have no idea about any likely places for her to drop in, so, I’m thinking to ask the police to search for her. Tomioka’san let me stay overnight in his house. They did not have any extra futon beddings, and so, I layed down at the kotatsu the whole night. I gave a lot of trouble to his wife as well.”

   Osei’s husband seemed to notice Yukiko’s status for the first time while talking, and then, came into the dark hut unreservedly and with little courtesy.

   Yukiko wondered whether Osei’s tears was merely her imagination after all. Tomioka, however, got used to becoming very cold-blooded, depending upon how he felt. Considering this, perhaps, it might have been true that Tomioka, as he said, told his address to neither Osei nor her husband. If Tomioka did not meet Osei, Tomioka’s cruelty seemed to Yukiko to be still more ominous. Yukiko, with a woman’s intuition, pierced an unusual relationship between Tomioka and Osei. It was impossible that Yukiko had not perceived what signified Osei’s assiduity to bring him a brand-new underpants in the public bath at the hot spring. If Tomioka avoided Osei’s womanly feelings and did not meet her, Yukiko wondered whether that was egocentric gratification of his casual desire while he was on the road touring. ……  Yukiko thought that it was his cruelty to have renounced the relationship with Osei half-heartedly on the spot, without any thoughts lingering of her. An hour later, Osei’s husband forlornly went away.

Yukiko felt like having seen Tomioka’s innermost feelings. She was somewhat in sympathy with young Osei who ran away from home after having been trifled with Tomioka. Later on the same day, Yukiko got a reply from Kano, who wrote; »I feel a longing to see an old friend, although I am sick in bed in a squalid room. Please come to see me if your intention in your letter is your true feeling.» At the end of his letter, a postscript was added in small characters. »I would like to meet also Tomioka’kun, so please come together with him if okay.» Yukiko unbearably yearned for Kano, who seemed to have seen much of life and become so affable. She was relieved, judging from his letter’s wording, that Kano seemed not to feel ill against Tomioka and her.

 

Yukiko boldly visited Kano in Minosawa town in Yokohama. She walked looking deliberately at house numbers on dug-up roads where bearing plants, printing houses, and the like were lined tightly in disorder. She finally located Kano’s tenement house.

Hut-like plain barracks, nagaya^[*125], were built in line along the road. On the outskirts of the nagayas, there was the two-story house where Angora rabbits were kept inside and Kano rented a room. In the same way as Osei’s house in Ikaho, the house easily swayed because of its simplistic fixture. A child downstairs told Yukiko that Kano lay on the second floor. Yukiko without permission went upstairs. Toward a low ceiling one single room, she passed from a doorway of a ladder, through the place where charcoal grills, the shichirin, and charcoal sacks were laid in a pile. She stood beside a sliding paper door, the fusuma, where the paper was torn off everywhere. She recalled Kano’s high-pitched voice, which spoke now again to her.

   “Sorry for my squalid room, however, come in, please.”

   Yukiko opened the fusuma. Kano lay on the futon, drawing a blanket over him, and wearing a dirty washcloth, tenugui, around his head. Over his head, a naked electric bulb with no shade was swinging slowly, as if it were a ice bag. His face looked swollen and livid. His appearance had changed, with no old vestige. Yukiko walked to his bedside in a mess with no place to step on, and said, looking at Kano into his face.

   “Oh, what’s going on? Did you catch a cold?”

   Kano blushed and wistfully smiled. His white teeth showed.

   “I was down. I was infected with pulmonary tuberculosis, and coughed up blood a bit again last night. ……”

   He said like other peoples’ affair. He looked at a cushon like a cotton rag near the window, and showed it to her with his eyes, while saying.

“Please, sit on it.”

The room smelled of phenol, a disinfectant.

   “My body fell flat. I worked as a cargo handling laborer for a while. I have lay on bed for more than 40 days, as a result that I had my body cooled in the rain. I feel like a still live corpse. ― I thought that you would come together with Tomioka’kun.”

   “Oh, no. I came alone. I have not seen Tomioka’san for a long time.”

   “Ahaa, aren’t you married?”

   “To whom?”

   “I have thought that you live happily with Tomioka’kun. ……”

   “I live alone. Tomioka’san is Tomioka’san. ― Who on the earth is in the care of Kano’san?”

   “I live with my mother and younger brother. My brother works as a typesetter at the printing plant called Bunju’dō near here. During the war, he was a member of the airborne unit of the super stormtroopers, the tokkōtai. He became a typesetter after the war and lived with our mother, while the two people kept waiting for my repatriation. They were burnt out in the air raid, and we don’t have a house anymore. Therefore, we live together in this one single room. However, this is like a golden palace for us.”

   Through the glass window, cracks of which were repaired by pasting pieces of paper, the afternoon sun shone in vulnerably casting stripes of the light onto the dirty military blanket. Yukiko thought that she saw violent changes in people’s circumstances. Kano’s face, unshaven and pale, looked meager. A soft and round face like a child he looked like had gotten old quickly by 10 years.

The current appearance of Kano lying down in bed hindered her from remembering his life in the South. He lay down there with an entirely different face. She could not imagine more than a relationship of utter strangers as if there had been no inconvenient past between the two people.

   “You have changed. ……”

   “I suppose that you are surprised.”

   “Yes.”

   “Let’s talk of the past, today. I was very happy when I received your letter. ……  I thought that you are not likely to give me a letter. ……”

   “Why not? Tomioka’san informed me of your address, and I eagerly wanted to meet you. ……”

   “Ahh, it’s kind of you. ……”

   Suddenly, awkward feelings passed through their minds, and momentary silence prevailed in the room.

 

 

.. * 35

 

   “Mother also went out for work, so, I cannot serve you even tea. ……  Rather, it may be better that you are free from infection with disease.”

   Kano coldly flashed a brief smile while talking ironically.

   Yukiko felt a thousand thorns in his words, but kept silent. She did not oppose him. Kano coughed hard from time to time, and shook his head in habit.

   “Don’t you need to cool off?”

   “It’s good to cool the chest, but I have no patience to do so. Living so as not to disturb my mother and brother is my very least appreciation to them. ……  I was enlightened recently not to disturb other people. I became confident to die anytime. Nevertheless, my life as well is given by God with much effort, so, it may be a bit better to live even a day longer than being dead and reduced to ashes. ……”

   “Don’t despair. Please get well soon. ……”

   “I won’t get well, absolutely not. ……”

   “Why do you despair so much? ……  It depends upon how you think. I hope you will be back to an energetic Kano’san as before.”

   “The former Kano’san has died in the war, I think this way. My body and soul were shattered in the war. I had a painful experience. Howevr, I gave it up, as I cannot do anything about it. From time to time, I recall my days in Indochina, and think it the most impressive days in my life. ……  How about you? Thereafter, does the wound still hurt you? I’m sure that it was your left arm.”

   Yukiko was moved to tears by Kano’s pure heart that he still remembered her wound.

   “I truly apologize for it to you.”

   “Don’t say like that. I always feel sorry for my selfish behavior to you. At that time, there was something not normal with everyone. We comported ourselves with insanity.”

   “Indeed. Everyone was in a state of insanity. I felt like you, on purpose, leaned onto my knife. I went to Tomiokas’ room to stab him, and I saw you there, which made me fiercely furious. Now I feel painful regret for my wrongdoing.”

   “Stop saying that story. ……”

   “I am sorry. When I met you, it unintentionally was recalled in my mind like an affair of yesterday. ……”

   The smell of medicine in the air of the room overwhelmed Yukiko, who stood to open slightly the glass window. The cool air pleasantly flew into the room.

   “How is Tomioka’kun?”

   “Yes, he seems to be fine.”

   “He is a lucky person. He seems to understand other people’s ruins and poverty, and look knowing such fates of other people,  while he sits down in a comfotable chair and does not begin to readily work. I don’t mean to speak against him. These day, I began to recognize that his luck consists on his characteristic attitude as I described, and that I should have emulated him earlier.”

   “However, he seems not to do very well.”

   “Is that so? ……  You see him in a favorable light, don’t you? His house was not burnt out. I heard that he found a good business partner, and everything goes well with him.”

   Yukiko reconsidered that Tomioka took her to Ikaho to die together, which he did not carry out. These circumstances were unknown to Kano, so he talked that way.

   “He seems to be very unfortunate, now. He said to me this way. He sold his house, sent his family back to his hometown so that he could work alone free from his family.”

   “Even if he says to work, he has no intention to work as a seaside cargo handling laborer with a 200 yen daily wage such as me, like a truger. It would look like a comedy to him to do damage to a body like me by shouldering the luggage of dozens of 10 pounds in weight. ……”

   “You speak nonsense. Kano’san intentionally seek to talk like that. In what state of mind did you feel like becoming a laborer?“

   “To work for a living, of course. Proper jobs are hard to come and the job available for workers is cargo handling, so I promptly began the job, thinking it better than becoming a thief. ― It was unbearably hard for previous office workers like me who have had no heavier things than a pen. ……”  

   “I can imagine that. ……”

   Yukiko opened a package of five or six apples, which she brought as a present for Kano. She looked for a kitchen knife and peeled the apples. She nearly reached her tearful threshold and deep from with her nose became hot while peeling the apple. She was eager to be nice to Kano, who seemed may not live much longer. She cut the peeled apple in pieces and put one by one into Kano’s mouth. He devoured apples with his teeth clattering.

   “We, in fact, felt annoyances toward each other, sometimes. We have survived, after all, and we can attend the new age. And now, we are able to meet again, aren’t we? So, you must take in nutriment, and get healthy.”

   “Nutriment. ……  That’s right. When the money is available, my life will last for two or three years more.”

   “Your mother and brother must be worried about you. ……”

   “I want to say to them that I feel very sorry for them. Recently, both my mother and brother seem to get tired of me.”

   “It’s your prejudice.”

   “My prejudice. ……”

   Kano, in fact, thought that he could not share Tomioka’s luck in life which he substantively headed off a crisis by the hair’s breadth. Kano felt violent anger everytime when he thought about Tomioka. Tomioka was always evaded by trickery and never pried into a crucial aspect which possibly drowned himself. Kano in gloomy silence recalled the past affairs. Yukiko was wrapping apple parings in newspapers. She began talking about something and checked herself. Kano thought it was mysterious that Yukiko was not passionate as in the old days, but looked leisurely sedate. He wondered about her boldness. She talked at his bedside about her circumstances since her repatriation that she roamed alone in Tokyo without going back to her hometown even once. While hearing her, the woman’s innermost feelings seemed to him to be as cold as fish.

   “Tomioka will stir again before long, such a knack he has. He knows a clever way of doing things. He …… . When I have heard that he shipped at Hai Phong, I thought that he is really a man of luck. By hearsay, Tomioka assumed that intellectuals had no chance to repatriate soon, and so, he identified himself as a civilian in military employ assigned to a Forestry Bureau in Indochina who was used as an errand boy to do trivial work such as serving tea and the like. When he was investigated by many officers in front of a check station on wharf, he acted in a style of a naive person lacking knowledge. The officers were fluently speaking in English or in French among themselves, but he did not look at them even at a glance. Because people who were judged to have language skills were separated from others and left behind. At the time when he was told to point out Shikoku in a Japanese map, he quickly pointed to Kyūshū as if his academic achievement was an elementary school graduation level. How do you like his performance? He gave a good performance, didn’t he? In this way, he successfully got through the check station. He got on board using someone else’s name and arrived at Japan earlier than anyone else. He is a totally heroic person. ……”

   This was news to Yukiko.

   She thought that Tomioka could have done such a thing. Osei’s issue as well. He enjoyed favors bestowed by Osei simply as her goodwill to him. Osei might have been treated as his plaything at that time. ……

   “I thought that Tomioka and Yukiko’san hurried back to Japan to marry. But you went on board a different ship, as I heard, didn’t you?”

   “No. The ships were different. ……”

   Kano’s crime was the crime in the midst of the war, and was the first scandal there. Besides he was a man of a civil service. Therefore, Kano was treated roughly by the military police in Saigon.

   In an hour, Yukiko felt a gasp, and so, went out saying Goodbye to Kano. In the open air, she was relieved as she breathed the fresh air. She thought in mind Kano was a miserable man. Such a radical change as this seemed pitiful for Kano, a good family’s son.

   When it came to Kano, he came across Yukiko in Japan for the first time after a long time. Her real face was almost the same as those days. It was certain, however, that he felt strange why he had been eager to win this woman even by fighting with Tomioka in a duel. He accidentally had wounded the woman’s arm, and paid the penalty for his crime. When he saw Yukiko with his eyes, he felt a self-mockery while thinking what this woman was he attracted to and eventually caused the bloody affair. In those days, the lives of the Japanese had possibly come under a certain evil influence at places where they were dispatched. It seemed to Kano that everyone had lived while getting drunk to something like a rainbow.

   When Yukiko said to return, Kano however wanted her to keep sitting there a little more. Until after he met her, he had adored Yukiko such as a goddess. And they met again at last. It was not sour grapes but Kano woke from a dream in the face of reality of Yukiko.

   It was the same with Yukiko, who regretted meeting Kano. She felt like she should not have come to meet him. Kano’san should have remained, in her memory, always unchangeable since their days of Indochina. ……  Tomioka said to Yukiko who was eager to meet Kano that she was naively unrealistic and too much curious. Yukiko felt like she understood, after all, innermost feelings of Tomioka who had given a false address to Osei. The power of the man who solved circumstances on the spur of temporary feelings became hatefully attractive to Yukiko.

‘Those eyes, only on the first day, were true,’ Tomioka’s natural tweet of the tropical popular song lyrics, was befalling not only to Osei but also to Yukiko at present.

Yukiko got off the train on the cold platform of Shinbashi Station at twilight. The cold wind blew. She began walking to a car stand.

“Hey!” A woman in a showy green overcoat shouted, and came running to her. The woman tapped Yukiko’s shoulder.

   “Ah!”

   Yukiko stared wide-eyed. Shinoi Haruko with whom she went together to Saigon ran to her. She was very nostalgic to Yukiko.

   “What are you doing, now? When did you come back to Japan?”

   Yukiko spoke quickly and was eager to know her news when Shinoi repatriated.

   “I wondered if it was you, and kept watching you exit the ticket gate. － How are you? I came back last June. We have evacuated to Urawa in Saitama Prefecture, and so, our house was not burnt. Soon after I repatriated, I went to learn English typewriting, and got a job in Maruno’uchi^[*110]. ……  What are you doing, now?”

   Shinoi Haruko was too flashily and beautifully dressed for a typist.

 

 

.. * 36

 

Once born as a human,

Do not preview what tomorrow will bring

While seeing people in glory

Do not be desirous becoming like them someday.

The world transits so quickly

Odonata opens transparent wings and flies, but

Not so quickly as the transition of the world

 

One week later, Kano sent her a letter of appreciation saying that he was delighted with Yukiko’s visit, with a poetic description at the end of his letter. A passage of his poetry such as ‘The world transits so quickly’ stayed in her mind. Yukiko could not help being sympathetic of Kano, and thought that self-sneering words he wrote in the abyss of despair by disease were pathetic and the whole of him at present. After that she met him in reality, however, he was not attractive to her anymore. Did he mean that all affairs occurred in Intochina were already ‘transience of the world, so temporary’? Yukiko did not send him a reply.

   Thereafter, Yukiko did not hear from Tomioka. Their journey to Ikaho to die seemed to her to be deep in the past already. If she had died at that time, she would not have today. She was alive, which she did not care anymore. She wondered why she had become so timid when Tomioka pleaded with her to die together.

   The chance meeting with Shinoi Haruko as well did not stimulate her feelings. She felt emptiness as if she had eaten up herself, and did not feel like doing anything. She, however, could not hang around without work any longer. Besides, the house owner urged her to move out soon from this hut. Suddenly, again, she had a presentiment of death. Tomioka’s feeling at that time might not have been a lie. She wondered why she had not died together with him at that place. ……  She felt like death possessed her. She lay down and put a leather belt on her neck. Her arms were too feeble to strangle her neck with the belt. She strangled her neck, but her arm power could not go beyond a threshold of her death. Yukiko took off her belt from her neck and wore it around her waist. How nice it would have been if Tomioka were here with her. She extremely missed Tomioka. She wondered what on earth the death signified if only that she passed away from this world …… . No one would care about her death as time went on. Tomioka also would forget her someday. She was regretful to have missed the opportunity to die in Ikaho. Tomioka concentrated his mind on the death in the inn in Ikaho, in the same way as lyrics of the song of Indochina, ‘Only on the first day, was true.’ She, now, became vexed at her own sentiment that she could not have reacted to his feelings at that time. Nevertheless, she had lost her self-confidence to trust men and the world. Even if they had committed double suicide, they could not have died just in the time when their feelings had accorded. Even on the brink of the death, they must have kept thinking in mind different things irrevantly to each other. Yukiko had hated that. Even if she had not thought anything, she suspected, Tomioka might have begun to groan, ‘Forgive me, my wife,’ with his last breath. No one could manipulate other ones’ inner thoughts and feelings. A remembrance of a joyous life was inevitable for the two people since they had passed over a temporary darkness. Tomioka, with no where to dump his feelings, might have caused Osei to shed tears. This way, Yukiko suspiciously reflected on the occurrence in Ikaho.

   A relationship with Tomioka was over for the time being. She had no more of Tomioka, in fact, since they had come back from Ikaho. In the real world, it might be difficult for the living people to understand each other even if they were in a passion of intense love. It was like a delicate rainbow which came visibly in sight and faded away repeatedly in the innermost feelings of human beings. People are impatient at each other’s incomprehensibleness, therefore, pass time only with laughing and with crying. Human beings might be such creatures. Yukiko earnestly desired to meet Tomioka. She knew her tie with Tomioka, after all, their memories in Indochina were major events in their lifetime. She would not forget this war for the rest of her life. She was truly happy at that time. ……  During the time when everyone of soldiers were fighting over life and death, Yukiko only was obsessed by a mysterious love with Tomioka.

A quirk of fate in the train of an express railway from the Tourane Station for Saigon might have bestowed on her a luck to meet Tomioka. In the direct train of 26 miles per hour, Yukiko thought her own loneliness to part from other members in her group. Shinoi Haruko was merrily singing songs. Yukiko had never imagined getting on a train together with Tomioka afterwards. ‘Which time of the year was it?’ Spring or summer. Seasonally monotonous transition in Indochina caused seasons in her memory to be indistinct. In the train car, Tomioka held her hand secretly so that no one noticed, and leaned out of the window, while pointing out trees in woodland running off behind. He said to her the names of trees one after another, such as Benben, Sawo, Yau, Konrai, Bambara. The trees on woodlands had shed their leaves. On the ground, traces of wildfire could be seen, which spread near to the railway. She also recalled threatening forests and fields, where thickset forestlands showed from time to time. Hamp palm bamboos, Rhapis humilis, and the grasses beneath were densely overgrown, which, as a whole, assumed the appearance of jungle in some places. Around jungle, coconut trees spread palmate leaves, which was impressive to Yukiko.

‘Ah, already, all those landscapes have disappeared in the dark past. …… in the abyss of the world beyond from which no one can call them back any more. The luxuries in the background of my life in Indochina was truly magnificent to me, Japanese, who did not know more than austerities of ordinary people in wartime.’ Yukiko indulged in nostalgia languishingly dreaming of troubles with love which had been played between Tomioka and herself in front of the luxurious background. A grand theater as the war also was one of the contents of the leisurely scenery. French people lived secretly their life of leisurely dilettantism like a light colored ornament of lace intermingled with the scenery. Vietnamese called out “Bonsoir!” in town at night. The sound of “bonsoir” did not leave her ears. The nature and human beings could not do without frolicking. The lake, the church, the voluptuous beauty of cherry blossoms higan’zakura, the sound of firecrackers, suffocating the odors of the highland. Yukiko, while recalling landscapes of Indochina in mind, sobbed and shed tears due to a bittersweet longing for yesteryear. Once more, she yearned for going back to that place. She felt suffocation in her destitute life like this. She knew the life in Da Lat would not come back to her anymore, and had a strong desire for feeling Tomioka’s skin. She had understood that luxury is beautiful. Her memory of the sounds of French people’s voices and musics, colors, and fragrances, which were floating from their homes in Lang Biang Heights, rubbed lightly her heart like perfume. A reek of poverty such as Song of Apples^[*183], Ringo’no Uta of 1945, or Rainy Blues, Ame’no Brūse^[*151] of 1938, did not smell anywhere in the environment there. The racial strength of French people who leisurely settled down in a flow of the history seemed to be deep-rooted. Yukiko knew nothing about the war, but thought that a poor race of the uncultured was belligerent and aggressive. The Japanese should have known that there is such a paradise properly on the Earth. ……  She remembered the wartime slogan “Opulence is the enemy.” If luxuries are the enemy, life would be unbearable. French people came over to towns on Lang Biang Heights one after another to avoid the rainy season from May to October. Their way of enjoying life, at present, after the end of war, must have been developed more beautifully and splendidly. Lang Biang Heights located 155 miles away from Saigon was so beautiful as it were like oil paintings. People who could not afford for a long-term stay in marvelous hotels or villas in Lang Biang came as well one after another to Tam Dao in the suburbs of Hanoi, Vinh, or Nabe highland. They were not interested in war, but enjoyed intently their own lives. The Lang Biang mountain was a perfect hunting site for them. Yukiko often came across French huntsmen vehicles when she was taking a walk with Tomioka.

   When she lived in the paradise like Lang Biang, Japanese seemed to Yukiko to be a strange race due to such a gloominess of the daily life that Japanese were trained to be looked at keenly by other people’s sharp eyes. She intended to spend the rest of her life in Lang Biang. So, owing to the long distance away from Japan, she felt herself seeing Japanese as outsiders.

 

 

.. * 37

 

Throughout history, countless human beings were born. Politics consist in repetitions of the same things. Wars as well are waged and concluded at repetitions of the same things. ……  Before they realilze what’s what, human beings repeat life and death while jostling each other within a social framework.

 

   Time went by all too soon. It was summer.

   At the end of February, Yukiko had returned once to Shizuoka and met her immediate family, then returned to Tokyo very soon. She moved from the shed in Ikebukuro to a rental room on the second floor of a hardware stop’s barrack in Takadano’baba^[*189], which was introduced to her by Shinoi Haruko. She had not met with Tomioka for a long time. The room was located near to the station, and underwent the trains’ noisy rumbering. Nevertheless, no deposit and a room charge of 1,000 yen pleased Yukiko. She felt like settled down in a human life only after carrying her wicker trunks and the futon-beddings in her room. She, however, did not have a job. She was pregnant. She wrote to Tomioka three times, and his reply came once, saying “I will come one of these days,” along with a money order for 5,000 yen. Yukiko paid for her living by selling off her clothes that she brought back from her home in Shizuoka. Almost all her clothes were sold. Her life became difficult little by little. She was in robust health, and nausea was unexpectedly not bad. Yukiko worried every day about whether she should give a birth to a child or not. On one hand, she wanted a baby, on the other hand, however, felt like burying the trouble. She shut herself in her room all day long every day and went to nowhere except that she went out for a public bathhouse or for shopping. She knew that her life would be financially difficult before long. When the worst would come to the worst, she thought to put into practice Tomioka’s idea in Ikaho, although she was not sure whether she could really do it. Iba very often visited her, and not blamed her anymore for her so-called unthankfulness. He seemingly got a good job, and was nicely turned out. She did not meet Joe since parting last year. Joe’s memory remained in a form of only one pillow. She sold the radio gifted by Joe for purchasing a round-trip ticket to Shizuoka.

   Iba did not know of Yukiko’s pregnancy. Yukiko did not consult a midwife, but wrapped a long white cotton cloth, sarashi, of 13 inches wide and 7 feet long, around her belly tightly in her way. Yukiko had never known that her own body and her way of life were so bearable this way. She secretly felt capable of doing anything. She did not notice her own strength. She remembered that she might have had this patience also when her arm was injured by Kano. She thought that a woman like herself who had such patience was obstinate. She was at a loss for a good solution to her present circumstances, but, knew of no way to share her feelings with someone else.

   One evening after continuous rain for three days, Haruko came to see Yukiko. She said to be working as a typist in a business center in Marunouchi. It seemed to be just her boast. Haruko worked at a bar in reality, according to the hardware shop’s wife. No wonder that her clothes were too beautiful for a low wage typist. Yukiko had suspected Haruko’s remark since the first time when she met her.

   “Say, we became like scums because of this war. ……”

   As soon as she sat down, she sighed while taking off her stocking. For her, the most important item seemed to be her stocking. She took a bamboo sheath package, saying that she bought 13 ounces of beef as a gift. So, Yukiko felt languidness but began preparing for sukiyaki^[*185]. She even went to a market in the rain to buy long onions, negi. As Haruko gave her money, Yukiko bought a loaf of bread and 6 ounces of sugar of the sale by measure. When she entered her room, unexpectedly Iba was there talking with Haruko.

   Iba was talking about religion with Haruko. Yukiko felt strange as she did not expect to hear the subject of religion from Iba. He said that every human being has a possibility of stumbling, and explained that human beings are animals born to walk facing down, who always try the gravity of stumbling. He began working at the accounting office of a certain religious organization called the Great Sunny Faith, Ōhinata’kyō, which bestowed him with a rushing flow of money.

   “People who stumble are now a dime a dozen. At first, they stumble, and look up at the heaven for the first time, and pray to the god. Our religion, the Ōhinata’kyō, is not long after we established it. However, it is the God of powerful sunlight to light up people’s feet which easily stumble. Therefore, many worshippers come to pray. I believe our God’s influence will expand more than the Kannon in Atami^[*85], someday. ……”

   “Well, then, what will happen to me? I always stumble.”

   “Clearly, the God will help you to your feet and let you walk. Epistole to the Romans, Christian love Chapter 14, v.23 tells you ‘everything that does not come from faith is sin.’ Even Christianity says such an obvious thing. There is no way that Japan’s Ōhinata’kyō, the Great Sunny Faith, does not penetrate into sinful people’s souls, all the more. Now, we are looking for a suitable site to build our main shrine building in Den’en’chōfu^[*28]. ……”

   “Is that something like Jikō’son^[*75]?”

   “No, not like that. We do not need Celebrities’ influence. We only worship the God of the Great Sunny Faith. Our believers are ordinary people of the Commoner class. We intend to grandly proceed with our religion. If we have celebrities enter our religion, they would become unnecessarily conspicuous on the way, and obstruct our advancement. Such advertisement using celebrities is rather obtrusive.”

   “I wonder if the God exists truly. ……”

   “Sure, it exists, therefore, people have many hesitation and get lost before they attain their belief in the God. First of all, look at our mysterious whole body. Even if the science and technology develops, it will be impossible to produce the human body. The God exists. The God certainly exists. ……”

   The sukiyaki was ready. Iba akso shoved his chopsticks to pick up the beef into the cauldron. Yukiko had no appetite. She ate willingly the white slices of long onions, negi. Haruko took out a pocket-bottle of whiskey and poured it into Iba’s glass, too. Iba, with two women in his front, became drunk and urged them to come to pray together, while eating the beef voraciously.  

   “In the old days, every village and town had temples, which were accessible to ordinary people. The temple was their meeting place where people got together. These days, temples have been specialized in funerals, and have lost its vigor. As a result, people have an impression that Buddhism is gloom. ……  Contrary to this, Christianity undertakes wedding ceremonies as well, which is a bustling religion. Department stores and restaurants are not the only sites which are granted the right to carry out tens of wedding ceremonies single-handed. Isn’t that so? We intend to go along on that line in the Ōhinata’kyō. Cheerful and bright religion is attractive to those who stumbled. Wedding ceremonies will be performed in the main shrine building of the Ōhinata’kyō before long. We will decide not to accept any requests of funeral services. ―  A certain temple in Tokyo has devised an idea that people will get rich if they go to the temple for praying on the day of Tiger of the zodiac^[*228], and then buy a pen at the temple, and keep household accounts using the pen. Thereafter, visitors to the temple has extremely increased. A monk who devised the idea is merely clever. Everything must be cheerful and bright. Such an idea like a god to pray for arranging good marriages is meagre. Every religion that you have to pray in secret is no good. Religions such as money making and targetting human greed seemingly become prosperous.”

   A God hid away from his talk to somewhere else, and his subject moved to techniques for using a god and taking advantage of people. Iba insisted that all people stumble and have an agony of despair. For people, agony is a prolonged pain, and a joy is an instant. The instant joy corresponds to a kind of ecstasy in five desires of human beings, which are, in the Buddhist concept, caused by love for the five senses of a color, voice, incense, taste, and feel. Grasp the very short space of time of joy, and then, abet people in piety, which is the urgent business of religion today. Iba explained. Men and women use the money for lust. If you get a knack of using the religious ecstasy, there is no better way than religion to make money. His lecture on clever business continued.

   Iba took Haruko’s hand and touched his ear to it.

   “Your hand is warm. The ear is sensible enough to measure the body temperature, so we do not need a medical thermometer. Hands emit ether of the human soul, so a warm hand like yours is genuine. A person with cold hands store heat in the body, and has a disease somewhere. ……”

   Iba kept holding Haruko’s hand, treated it as a plaything, and did not let go.

   “However, I’m disappointed in love, and s0, am quite depressed now. Do you practise divination?”

   Hearing that she was disappointed in love, Iba took her hand to his ear, and concentrated his mind on something as if pressing her hand on his cheek. Haruko, while giggling, drew her hand back quickly from his ear.

   “The vows of Amida, a celestial buddha, in previous lives will save all beings despite old, young, good, or evil. Owing to the vows of Amida, which will rid you of your deep and grave sins, intense earthly desires, and carnal desires, you will heal. See how well I have done it. Faith comes from believing in your prayers. From the beginning, you make a fool of religion, but such an attitude will not do. If you make a fool of Ōhinata’kyō, you should once become a fool yourself, and try to perform faith of Ōhinata’kyō. I am your opposite sex, even in a slight degree. Exactly the part of your hand which touches the ear of the opposite sex perceives delicate Holy Spirit. You need faith. ……”

   Iba drank a half bottle of whisky, and his eyes looked drowsy.

 

 

.. * 38

 

The second floor was laid out with 2 rooms, the room size^[*155] of which was a 3 tatami mat room or 6 square yards, and a 4.5 tatami mat room or 9 square yards. The 3 tatami mat room was used as a bedroom for the hardware shop’s three children. The 4.5 tatami mat room had only a 3 feet wide closet. A wall was coated with plaster of pressed sawdust. The room had no kitchen. As a substitute, a charcoal grill, shichirin, and ration charcoals were placed on a bay window for cooking there. Ourside, on a vacant lot under the bay window, corn grew.

Her life became financially tight at last. She thought to do a shoe shine job, however, a daylong sitting on the ground might be hard to her body. She sent a telegram to Tomioka twice, but nothing was heard from him. She took a plunge and visited him to his former house in Gotanda. A plate at the gate was changed to that of an unknown name. A person came to answer the door said that they bought this house in May and moved in. “Tomioka’san sent us a postcard. You can have it if you like.” Tomioka’s new address was in Mishuku in Setagaya Ward. Seemingly, he rented a bed-sitting room, as his address was written as ‘care of Takase.’

She mustered up all her courage and went to look for Tomioka’s new address despite that her body was sluggish. The house was unexpectedly large with a car parking lot beside a stone gate. She entered the gate and pressed a doorbell. To her surprise, Osei opened the door, wearing a loose-fit homewear, appa’pā^[*4]. Yukiko momentarily gasped with a startle. Osei also seemed to be surprised, as she blushed and cried out, “Ah!”

   “Oh, are you in Tokyo?”

   “Yes. ……”

   “Why are you here?”

   “This is my acquintance’s house.”

   “Is Tomioka here now?”

   “He is not here now. ……”

   “Don’t lie. A strange woman. ……  Quite a strange affair. Then, I will wait for him in his room till he come back. ……”

   Osei was silent. Yukiko felt her whole body quivering. Her words were said but she did not even know what she herself was talking.

   “He went back to his wife’s home. He went away yesterday, so he will not come back soon. Because his wife is sick. ……”

   “Is that so? Then, it’s much better. I also am sick. I will take a break relaxing in Tomioka’s room.”

Osei seemed to be bewildered. Yukiko looked in Osei’s back at the entrance, where a child’s scooter and a baby carriage were placed. Many families seem to live in this house. Osei stubbornly stood there without moving. Yukiko also stubbornly stood there.

   “At the entrance, it is quite alright with me. I will explain the circumstances to the owner of this house and ask to let me wait at the entrance.”

   Osei seemed to lose her power to resist, and took her upstairs. The room was at the end of a large hallway, and 8 tatami mat size, 15.6 square yards wide. A thin bordered rush mat was spread on a thin wooden floor with no tatami. A coarse bed near the window. Two small pillows on it. Osei’s summer daily-wear kimono of purple silk fabric, meisen^[*112], her chemises, and Tomioka’s sleepwear of yukata^[*224] were hung over the wall. A small red mirror stand was placed on a pedestal of a bay window of diamond-cut glass with hinged double doors. Then, a new table and a small but new tea cabinet on the floor. Yukiko saw the whole story. Her chest was imflamed with rage. After all, the situation was obviously as she doubted. It was true that Tomioka was absent. What seemed to belong to Tomioka was the man’s yukata only.

   “How long have you been living with him?”

   “How long? This is my room. Tomioka’san lives in the countryside. He has no foothold in Tokyo, and so, stays overnight here when he comes from the countryside. On such an occasion, I sleep in a room downstairs. ……”

   “Did you say a foothold? I see, the foothold. ……  How is your husband doing in Ikaho?”

   “I divorced him. ……”

   “Well. Then, all went well to you.”

   It was evening already. Children were playing downstairs noisily. Osei sat on the edge of the bed without saying anything. Yukiko also sat on the floor near the bay window. Suddenly, Osei went out to the hallway as if something came into her mind. Yukiko looked around in the room. She wondered what opportunity Osei grabbed to be together with Tomioka. Two tea cups on the table. A man’s umbrella in the corner of the room. While she looked, Tomioka’s personal belongings emerged like a playback of 3D image contents. Osei did not return to the room for a long time. Yukiko went to the hallway and called to a child of about 7 years of age who was playing around there.

   “Is the uncle of this room working?”

   “Uh huh.”

   “Does he come back at night?”

   “Uh huh.”

   “What time does he come back?”

   “He will come back soon. ……”

   “Where does he work?”

   “I don’t know.”

   “There are many families live here, aren’t there?”

   “Uh huh.”

   Yukiko thought this house was a kind of a tenement house. She went back to the room again, and checked one item after another with cold eyes of a bailiff. A wicker trunk and luggage were squeezed into under the bed. Two washcloths, tenugui, were hung from the plaster ceiling in the corner of the room. On the other side of the bed, approximately 20 books of forestry were placed in a heap, on the top of which was a brochure familiar to her. The brochure in French describing the premeval forest land was published by the Lang Biang agriculture and forestry directorial department. She was sure that the forester Mr. Dabiyau had written all content. She felt nostalgia painfully enough and took the brochure. Tears ran naturally down her cheeks while looking at the beautiful pictures of forests in Indochina. She remembered seeing every scenery. Her eyes fixated particularly on a picture of villas on Lang Bian Heights surrounded by bougainvillea and mimoza flowers. Yukiko now felt an extreme comfort in the majestic scenery with a lake in front. When she had breathed here, she had never thought the present misery. ……  It was getting dark. Osei did not return back. Presumably, she went to give a phone call to Tomioka. Yukiko looked up at the oppressively hot and humid sky which was inflamed in sunset, and wiped her tears running down her cheeks. She thought to keep Mr. Dabiyau’s brochure as a memory and put it in her handbag. She went into the hallway. She did not feel like meeting Osei and Tomioka anymore.

   She decided into her mind.

   She bore no grudge to anyone if she thought that the two people had died in Ikaho. She put her shoes on and walked towards the gate, where she saw a man coming towards her.

   It was Tomioka. He looked surprised for an instant. He saw Yukiko with red-rimmed eyes standing in silence before him, and seemed to be resigned to the present reality. He calmly asked.

   “When did you come?”

   “I met Osei’san. ……”

   Yukiko saying passed absent-mindedly Tomioka, and went out of the gate. Tomioka walked after her.

   “Hey!”

   Yukiko did not look back.

   “Hey, I have something to talk to you.”

   It was all the same to Yukiko. She could not do anything even if Tomioka talked about the affair with Osei. She felt like being punished by Kano. Kano was a man, however, those days, he also must have had the same feelings like today’s Yukiko. Kano confessed his intense love to her, and she indecisively let him kiss her. On the other hand, she had secret dates with Tomioka.

After all this time she understood her own slyness. Kano with rage raised a knife, clearly because of the similar reason to today’s her own.

   “I think of you everyday. I have thought to do something for you. Osei induced me forcibly to live together in her room, in fact. ……”

   “Do not worry about me. ……”

   “I worry. I was wrong. I’m prepared to take responsibility.”

   “I see. ……”

   Yukiko walked in the direction opposite to the Meguro station. Fine rain insects, Prociphilus oriens, were flying off in a swarm over a dark meadow of weeds in the ruins burnt down at air raids. It was dusk but seemed like dawn. In the middle of the ruins was a broad street, on the both sides of which new houses were built here and there.

   “Is it October?”

   “What in October?”

   “A child’s birth. ……”

   “Yes, if I give birth properly. I intend to go to an obstetrics and gynecology hispital to get an abortion, tomorrow.”

   Tomioka did not say anything. Yukiko understood, after all, that earthly desires cause a storm in mind as far as people live. Even if Great Sunny Faith, Ōhinata’kyō, was specialized in money-making, nevertheless, Yukiko felt like shutting in the dōjō^[*29] studio, and prostrating to pray to the God. Tomioka did not know what Osei said to Yukiko, but, could imagine Osei’s stubborn personality must have oppressively resisted Yukiko.

   “Did you think me nasty?”

   “Yes.”

   Yukiko clearly said, ‘Yes.’

   “Please give birth to the baby. Immediately on the birthday, I will adopt the baby. ……  I am going to confess honestly the affair with Osei, to you.”

   “Osei’san said that she has divorced her husband.”

   “To tell you the truth, that room is Osei’s. I eventually entered her room as a temporary stay, but Osei has rented the room much earlier. This May, we ran into each other by chance at Shinjuku station. She eagerly took me to her room, and as if it were natural, I kept myself there. ― I have known that you wrote to me from Shizuoka, and so, that you found another room after coming back to Tokyo. If we meet again, both you and I could not break away from the past situation. Therefore, I only sent you money. I sold my house, sent my family to their hometown in the countryside, then, my wife has been hospitalized. I finally got a job, but my feeling was devoid in those days. So, I could not shake off Osei’s allurement. ……”

   Nothing could be done with it even if she heard Tomioka’s excuses. There was no reason that these two people could find a way out of the situation even if they met.

   On the street, there was a coffee shop in the barrack. Tomioka took Yukiko there. A large ice-candy box painted in blue was put in the shopfront. A women was standing with her child near the blue box and stared at them. Yukiko sat down on a rickety chair, and felt very tired. She was physically and mentally exhausted, and felt her legs numb like sticks.

 

 

.. * 39

 

While looking steadily at Yukiko’s pale face, Tomioka took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He ordered a couple of soda. Yukiko closed her eyes wearily leaning against the board wall.

   Yukiko, mentally with no leeway, despite that, stood on the diving board of the lake. One day in Lang Biang came back to her mind. Tomioka also, in his swimming pants, was swimming in the lake at twilight. Loud cheers of a rugby match were heard from a studiam nearby. Yukiko, while being still, felt the same after-swim exhaustion as that time.

   Tomioka puffed leisurely and said.

   “Say, you may think a variety of things, now. We have become like this. I will make amends to you for my conduct. I believe you will understand.”

   “In Ikaho, you had an affair with Osei’san, after all.”

   Tomioka kept silence.

   “You are evil, aren’t you?”

   While saying that he was evil, Yukiko asked herself about how herself. It was temporary but she had had a relationship with Joe. ……  She had been lonely, lonely enough to have an affair with Joe. Tomioka had not blamed her. Emptiness in people’s mind at a certain time might induce them to ask for help from other people, after all. Her old fatal bond with Iba was also induced by a kind of emptiness.

   She herself had done the same affair as Tomioka. Notwithstanding, she had not realized the cause of her own behavior and had rode it out.

“I don’t mean that I don’t understand, but, I was surprised at her presence. ……  I did not forget that Osei wept tears at the bus stop in Ikaho. But I trusted in you, in your affection for me …… . I fancied myself, didn’t I? ― But, I cannot help it. That is something that cannot be helped. I don’t mean that I have decided to get an abortion because I was angry with you. ……  I was thinking, for some time, that ‘I shall have an abortion someday, someday.’ I made up my mind today. I want to be strong. ……  Considering that I live in enduring many sufferings everyday, it is easier to get abortion. I want to be relieved of the burden and begin working. ……  Don’t you think it would be unfortunate if I give birth to our child? Even if you adopt, we cannot do anything for the baby. I also would feel worried and unable to work at all. I was going to talk to you once, and fully discuss this matter with you until we can get assent to abortion.  ―　I don’t mind even if you are together with Osei’san …… if the life with her is convenient for you. That woman seems to be deeply fond of you. ……  What is wrong with your wife?”

   “Her chest. ……”

   “Is it severe?”

   “She will be cured for disease if she gets medical treatment for a long period. ……”

   “You will have to face a hardship from now on. You got a new job, didn’t you?”

   “My friend runs a soapmaking company. I was employed there. Not a great job. He kindly looks after me, so I rely on him at present.”

   He sipped red soda water in a straw, looking at her beautiful hands. Yukiko had soft and beautiful hands. Tomioka took pity on her, and simultaneously, pitied Osei helplessly.

   “I don’t have any children so for. Therefore, I want you to give birth to a child. The affair with Osei won’t last long. I want to move quickly if I find a house to live in. Osei as well, she does not break completely off her relation with her husband. That room is like Osei’s hideout. ― Her husband does not have any news of Osei even now. It is disagreeable also to me. In that house, neighbors look ambiguously at me.”

   “Does Osei’san do some work?”

   “She is a barmaid in Shinjuku. She took off for a few days because of toothache.”

   “And yet, Osei’san loves you very much. Unexpectedly, you are going to live together with her throughout your life, aren’t you? A person being together will win. There is even a proverb such as ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ ……  Say, we do not recall very often our memories of Indochina as we did some time ago. We don’t see our memories anymore in a dream, do we? Things are like that.”

   “I sometime see in my dream. Everytime that I think of you, I remember the life in Da Lat and feel unbearably nostalgic for the days there. ……”

   “The other day, in January, I visited Kano’san. Did I refer to it in my letter?”

   “Yes, I know. Kano also lives a life of hardship. A poor fellow. ……”

   “He seemed to realize his days are numbered. He lost weight and was cheerless. ……”

   “He was an ardent patriot and steadfastly honest.”

   “I agree. He was not sly like us. ……”

   They went out of the coffee shop, and aimlessly strolled again. It was completely dark. A cool night breeze was blowing. Tomioka did not seem to go back, but came with Yukiko.

   He took off his jacket, and slung it over his shoulder. He was dragging his shoes slowly.

   “You must be tired.”

   “No. My feet got ringworm and aching.”

   “Don’t you think that we are somewhat an immediate family when we walk together? Your mind possibly is filled with Osei’san but not with my affairs. I may be free to imagine you are like my immediate family. Do you think it odd? Do you laugh at me?”

   “I don’t laugh. ……  I feel sorry to Osei’s husband, not to Osei. I live a life of unease like a criminal everyday. I am a coward and yet am drawn into Osei’s power.”

   “Someday, you are going to commit a double suicide with Osei’san, aren’t you? If something happens, that woman would gulp down the poison. ……”

   Tomioka also thought in the same way. He felt like Yukiko hit it. He knew his life was aggravated by Osei as the days went by.

   “We quarrel everyday. ……”

   “For what reason?”

   “She complains that I do not follow her snugly. She is an uneducated woman ignorant of knowledge, but her intuition is awfully sharp. Once she determines a certain conclusion, it is hard to release her feelings of the stress overload.”

   “Well, then, you have to face a hardship tonight as well.”

   “Let’s quit the story. I will visit you, maybe, this Sunday. I want you to hold off on your decision until then. You understand my feelings in anyway, which somehow gets me to feel easier. My mind is refreshed now. I do not mean to be persistent in talking of Osei, but I am going to solve this problem certainly before long.”

   “You do not need to talk like a good boy suddenly. I leave all to chance. To tell the truth, I am desperate to be busy with my private matter. I’m not bluffing. ……  You understand, don’t you?.”

   The two people reached an overpass, and stood there for a while, leaning to the parapet. The trains roared away under the bridge.

 

 

.. * 4o

 

Ten days had passed since her parting from Tomioka.

   Yukiko decisively consulted a small obstetrician office in the neighborhood. Abortion seemed to cost five or six thousands yen. She had been gradually angry with Tomioka as the days went on since she parted from him. If he wanted her to give birth to a child, he had to support her financially, otherwise, she could not do anything at present. Their psychology of confession, where the two people deceived each other, was limited only to the time when they met. They did not want to speak to each other about its internal cause, nor scoop out its core, but wanted only to indulge in their sweet memories.

   Yukiko was thinking about Tomioka’s real intentions.

   The further the days continued, the more her hatred darkened. As a result of her feelings of resentment, she decided not to give birth to a child for such a heartless man. Yukiko told everything to Iba at last. She absolutely intended to pay money back by working after she would end a pregnancy. Iba listened to her confession, and said that he would give her money if she was ready to do so, and asked her to come to help with work at his religious community. Iba said that he was halfway through his work, so that he wanted a reliable and congenial secretary.

   Two or three days later, Iba visited Yukiko and gave her 10,000 yen. She was truly determined to assist him only if she could end her pregnancy. She wished to forget Tomioka and start afresh her own life.

   Yukiko was hospitalized for a week. Two or three women a day, who had the same secrets as Yukiko, came to consult the doctor. Two women as such shared a narrow patient’s room with her. After the removal of the fetus by scraping the uterus, she felt like her body fell into an abyss. She felt suffocated at a flashback of a bloody lump of crashed flesh.

   On the second day of her hospitalization, Iba came to visit her. What he asked her was the dates that she could get about and come to help him. Yukiko wasted away physically. Iba became a very person who fitted in into Ōhinata’kyō. Along with the accounting work, he now held another post such as the construction material procurement and supply section. He boasted that the money was hailing down on his religious community.

   Women, who lay on their futon spread side by side on the tatami floor, strained their ears for Iba’s story before noticing it.

   Ōtsu Shimo, in her 40s, who lay on her futon close to the window, said suddenly.

   “Can I join Ōhinata’kyō as a believer?”

   She aborted a child of a married old man, and was ready to leave hospital next day. She did not talk of herself. According to a nurse, Makita’san, however, she seemed to be a primary school teacher in Chiba Prefecture.

   She was a big-boned square-body woman with dark skin, of whom probably not so many men were willing to take care of.

   “Is the founder of Ōhinata’kyō a male?”

   Iba said, grinning.

   “Of course, a male. He is magnificent. He trained in India in his younger days, and fully has a judgement and lofty ideas. Until now, he passed through a variety of hardships, and finally arrived at Japan to light on the wilderness. ―　For a long time, a reputation of his bravery as a staff officer of the Army was well known as far as Malaysia and Burma. If times had not changed, we could not have come near him. Please come once to visit him. He will give you a great idea to solve your problem.”

   “Ah, then, the founder was a soldier, wasn’t he?”

   “That’s right. His stories are interesting as he was a staff officer purged after the war. A former soldier like him is good at yelling. After all, there is nothing like taking the high hand with the undisciplined crowd.”

   Iba added in a low voice.

   “Soon, I will purchase a car with my name. I am absolutely entrusted with everything, which means that I seize the founder by the neck. ……”

   “How old is he?”

   “Sixty-two or three. ……  He boasts of his prowess having had sex with more than a hundred women. Plants and weeds, wherever these may grow, extend toward the sun. Thus, he named such vital energy as Great Sunny Faith, Ōhinata’kyō. Our believers are more than 100,000 now. This number will increase furthermore with high potential in the future. ‘Stand out conspicuously while keeping a low profile,’ this seems to be his philosophy.”

   Yukiko felt apprehensive that Iba had completely changed in personality and weirdly became like a fanatic. Her affair with Tomioka seemed not to bother him. Presumably, he merely wanted to employ his former mistress as a reliable secretary.

   Ōtsu Shimo seemed to think for a while, and then, wore a haorion her shoulder and sat straight up on her futon, and said to Iba.

   “I came from Chiba Prefecture. However, I, under no circumstances can go back to my hometown as it was. I would like to become a believer of the Ōhinata’kyō, and have a certificate to be approved as a missionary, once the training is complete. How much does it cost for all of these?”

   Iba pretended to be formal, while smoking a foreign cigarette, and said gravely.

   “Let me see. At the beginning, admission fee to be a regular believer is 300 yen. A believer who wants to be a missionary needs to deposit 1,000 yen initially. In half a year, the believer will be approved as a missionary. Offerings for spending a certain period of time at the temple is up to the believer. We tell the believer of the fee for a certificate conferment when the time comes. This is customary in our religious community.”

   Ōtsu Shimo asked Iba to write down the address, saying that she certinly would come to the temple of the Ōhinata’kyō. Iba, while speciously talking that he does not have his business card for a time being, seemed not to have any interest in her.

   “After all, a missionary is different from a regular believer, and becoming a missionary promises a fund of life. Therefore, in fact, it requires a considerable amount of money to be a missionary ……”

   “I have a plan. A certain acquiantance would supply me with any amount of money if I can hide myself somewhere else for around one year. He is a man of rank, and made me a promise of supplying me with full allowance until after I would be secure and have means for livelihood.”

   “I see. A man of rank ……”

   Iba suddenly became polite.

   “Social standing? If you have the support of a man of good social standing, you will be greatly welcomed in to the Ōhinata’kyō. This religion is absolutely not a heresy of these days. We won’t speak for collecting people that our religion heals diseases. Besides, you know, it is impossible to think that a religion heals physical diseases in the world with science in rapid progress. The Ōhinata’kyō emerged in accordance with our heart’s desire for healing people’s soul. Many doctors heal our physical health, but rarely cure our mental diseases. In addition, our religion treats people with art of optimism to brighten at the end of the world, while leading people to become rich. ― If you have the support of a person of good social standing, I will take care of you better than ordinary believers and will intercede with the founder on your behalf. ……  The founder is not willing to meet people, so I am entrusted with providing every service on behalf of him. ……”

 

 

.. * 41

 

On the day of leaving hospital, Yukiko paid the bill to the medical office, and looked casually at news papers in the waiting room. A small article caught her eyes very soon.

 

»On 12th, at 10:40 in the evening, Mukai Sēkichi, age 48, c/o Īkura, the house no. xxx Kita’Shinagawa, Shinagawa Ward, invited his common-law wife, Tani Seiko, age 21, to his room, and strangled her to death with his washcloth, tenugui. He gave himselt up to the Shinagawa’Daiba police box. Accoring to the investigation by Shinagawa Police Station, Mukai cohabited with Seiko when he ran a bar in Ikaho Spa Town. Seiko came up to Tokyo counting on her secret lover, certain Tomioka. Mukai afterwards went to take her back. Seiko rejected a reconciliation with him. Thereupon, on 12th, he threatened Seiko on her way to a public bathhouse, and brought her to his room to ask her again for a reconciliation. During their squabble, he became raged and strangled her to death with his tenugui. Then, he came up to the police station. Photos in the article are of an assailant Mukai and a victim Seiko.»

 

   Even if she read the article over and over again, it referred, with no mistake, to Seiko whom she knew. In the photo, a murdered Seiko did her hair in a Japanese coiffure. The assailant Mukai showed on the photo with his head drooping.

   Yukiko stayed for a while on the hard chair, and repeatedly read the same news article. She thought about Osei’s mysterious fate. Seiko of an intractable disposition was strangled by her own husband after all.

   It seemed to be a good warning for Tomioka. Yukiko finally understood Tomioka’s perplexity on his face when she visited his dwelling as far as Mishuku in Setagaya Ward. What is he doing now? If she had conceived a murderous design against Tomioka at that time, she also might have jumped to her death after him into a train from the overpass.

   Tomioka would not be able to break away from Osei’s illusion. He might not have been the only person that had completely broken down after returning to Japan. Kano also was such a person who had utterly broken down.

   That evening, she slept in her room after a long absence. She was exhausted, and felt herself today at which she arrived finally after having continued a long trip up to the present. Yukiko was thinking of Tomioka’s room in Mishuku, while hearing the sounds of rustling corn leaves outside under the window and cicada’s chirping.

   She fell asleep, while various memories of Ikaho came up like her dream and into reality. At times, she felt stifled and had an uneasy sleep. That abhorrently viscid blood of the flesh lump, however, was her casting off of all her past. With no one to depend on, with no one to meet with, she wanted to do a job only for herself.

   Yukiko was never sympathetic to the deceased Osei. She hated Osei’s obstinate way of life, and hated Tomioka who was drowned by such a woman. ―  As days went by, and since she read the news that Osei was killed by her husband, Yukiko conceived hatred for  Tomioka and the murdered Osei as if she spit on them.

   Four or five days passed, but Yukiko did not get well. Iba could not wait and came for her. But he could not press her when he saw her pale complexion, and hesitated to ask her to come soon to his religious community.

   “How is your condition? You look seriously ill. ……  Cheer up, only your spiritual strength will heal you. To die or to live is also up to the spiritual strength. For some reason or other, you seem like a different person after coming back from Indochina. Be a joyful person and dress yourself up. You need to cheer up. ―  By the way, Ōtsu Shimo’san, that madam came. Today is the third day since she stayed at the temple to pledge herself to the Ōhinata’kyō. She is very promising. She is eloquent and has a sizable fortune. These days, she is thickly powdered, and is very enthusiastic. She is an elementary school teacher and her parents’ house is a soy bean paste, miso, shop, according to her. A woman, when she aged, seems to consider her fate to come, and so, it’s convenient for us. The founder also says that she is a real find.”

   Iba wore black suits with a sunflower badge on his chest.

   “I cannot say in a loud voice, but the most profitable business in the world today is the religion. Rescue people through religion. Amusingly enough, so many lost people are inspired by hearsay and visit us. Shops opened on each side of our religious community and a guide map to our facilities is posted at the station. It’s interesting. Many people are ready to give us money. It is the religious power that no one is hesiant to give us money. We sold the house at Sagino’miya. We have bought an ex-banker’s residence at Ikegami^[*70], and the founder lives together with me and my family. This residence is awesome. I bought it at 3,500,000 yen. The house is old but the floor space is 316 yd2, and the site is 1,977 yd2, including a pond and a mountain.”

   “God will punish you some day”

   “God won’t. God will never throw lucky people away. God is not interested in such people who fail to grip a rope of the fate tightly. ―  It seems that I love Yukiko. I will purchase a cozy little house for you, someday. After all, I am the first man of yours. I cannot forget that, especially. ……”

   Yukiko felt disgusted.

   “Please, stop talking like that. Even if you try to sweeten me up with such a talk, I won’t be deceived anymore by a man. Even a woman brushes up on her discerning taste, when she gets old. Don’t bring up the old story. I’ve had enough of it. I think nothing of you.”

   Iba grinned. Yukiko’s face with no make-up looked pale, but womanly. She was captivativating unlike a modest maiden in the past.

   “I do not talk like this with perverted interest. Simply for the sake of Yukiko’s happiness, I talk like a sissy. You should not think of chasing only your ideal. You learnt from experience to taste the sweet and bitter in the world. You probably have uderstood either love or fancy is not trustworthy for men and women. In this world, money opens a door either to the heaven or to the hell. I utterly realized the value of the money. Immediately after the war I was at my worst. I was extremely depressed, and it took me time to get over the loss mentally. Today’s Iba is different. I strongly sensed the necessity to amass a fortune as much as possible as far as I live. The founder also says the same thing.”

   After talking, he put a parcel of money, and went away in a hasty manner. Yukiko opened the parcel, where was a bundle of 100 yen wrinkleless banknotes. She had never had other banknotes than the wrinkled ones. Funny enough, she felt herself piteous while looking at crisp 100 yen banknotes for 10,000 yen. The new banknotes just withdrawn from a bank were awfully attractive, which made her think of Iba’s vigorousness in life.

   She felt like getting Iba to buy a cozy little house, and meeting with Tomioka there. Her momentary sweet dream torn apart at once, and it was succeeded by an intense jealousy against Tomioka.

   Yukiko did not feel like relying upon Iba, nor praying to the Ōhinata’kyō.

   One day, she got a female handwritten letter from Kano, which told her of Kano’s death.

Just as she worried about it. Yukiko read the letter from Kano’s mother over again. His mother wrote that his funeral was going to be held in a Catholic service for Kano’s own will. Kano, who had been an ardent patriot and had believed that Japan would never lose the war, was dead and was mourned in a small Catholic style funeral, which perplexed Yukiko. After all, it seemed to her that the last years of Kano’s life was like a victim of the war. Yukiko wanted to send a letter of gentle condolences to his mother. But she felt languor and refrained from writing to her.

   She did not hear from Tomioka since she read the news. She worried about where on earth Tomioka disappeared. He might not be in Mishuku anymore.

   She thought of Tomioka more than one time a day. Tomioka persistently stayed in her thoughts. She wondered if it meant her love for Tomioka. Iba talked groundlessly that there was no true love in the world. Iba might have been able to say such a thing because he had no pillar to rely on other than money. To Yukiko, it seemed to be impossible that Tomioka had forgotten her suddenly at the time of Osei’s miserable death. He said that he was working at a soapmaking company. Yukiko, however, wanted him to get back to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and to be appointed to the post in anywhere else, say, a district forestry office in some local mountain area. And, at that time, finally, the two people would do modest marriage, Yukiko fancied. While looking at Tomioka’s brochure of Indochina which she had taken from Osei’s room, Yukiko could not believe that Tomioka would vanish from sight like a pebble on the roadside as it was.

   Yukiko decisively wrote to Tomioka.

 

»I read the news about the death of Osei’san. We cannot help but think that everything has been handled to a mysterious thread of the fate. You must have had a difficult time.

   How have you been getting along?

   Once, I have hated you and have gotten angry with you. I believe, however, that you do not have any other woman than Yukiko to comfort you.

   Kano’san died on the 22nd. His mother wrote to me that his funeral was done in Cathoric style. I think you were not aware of this matter, so I told you. His last years were pitiable, if I might say.

   Ten days have passed since that time, and I think your pain might have calmed down. I truly suffered. Why did we not die in Ikaho? ……  If we two have died in Ikaho, nothing regrettable would not have happened. I wonder why we could not have adamantly casted off the world. If we had died in the mountain in Da Lat, it would have been much more beautiful.

   I did an abortion. I felt hatred against you, and so, if I had relied upon you, I would have been mentally cornered and would have committed suicide around this time. You are such a person as getting other people to die. Because of you, Osei’san and I, and Kano’san, besides, your wife, everyone has become unhappy. I do not mean to blame you, but this is just my thought. Why won’t you be courageous once more in the same way as old days?

   I am still hanging around without working. When I get well, this time, surely, I surely will find my working place, and will work. How have you been getting along? After all, I want to see you. It might be a woman’s regret, but I am still attached to you. Yukiko has never talked of parting from you, have I? Please, give me a visit. And tell me about your thought which hopefully is not ambiguous.»

 

   After five days since she had mailed a letter, she received a reply from Tomioka. A 5,000 yen postal check was enclosed in an envelope, and he wrote in a letter, »I need still 2 weeks more before meeting you. I do not want to meet anyone at this time; this is the most painful moment to me. However, a letter from you, at least, was a good comfort to me. Abortion might have been unavoidable. I gave up on it. This should be all my fault. I am certain to visit you. You wrote that you have not parted from me, and if it is the truth, upon which I will rely, and I surely come to meet you.»

 

 

.. * 42

 

Tomioka wrote to Yukiko that he would visit her in 2 weeks. Two weeks had passed but he still could not visit her.

   He did not feel like visiting Yukiko, with whom he felt most at home. It was not because he was a lazybones. He was busy supporting Mukai Sēkichi for his trial, for whom Tomioka had to take care of a lawyer as well. Tomioka was not bound simply to the fact that the murdered Osei was Mukai Sēkichi’s unmarried wife, but that Sēkichi had no relatives. Tomioka’s sense of responsbility urged him to do the best for Sēkichi. While caring for Sēkichi who was held in prison, he was touched by the seriousness of Sēkichi who had killed the woman. Tomioka nauseatingly hated his own deceitful spirit. He thought that he could make up for his own sin at least by caring for Sēkichi. He clung to the woman called Osei, desiring to try his own viability and to recover his whithered feelings. Osei, however, was other man’s wife. Tomioka had not minded at all the man, Mukai Sēkichi, who existed behind Osei, and had completely forgotten that Sēkichi had helped him previously in Ikaho by buying his Omega watch. Tomioka happened to realize, for the first time, the presence of Mukai Sēkichi when he heard that Osei was killed by Mukai Sēkichi. And he was surprised that lust of the man and woman was so furious.

   Tomioka thought that Sēkichi fiercely got his vengeance on Tomioka by killing Osei for living together with her. Sēkichi’s presence disappeared like illusion from Tomioka’s mind after having left Ikaho.

Tomioka did not forget the phrase that Stavrogin in Dostoyevsky’s “Demons” who, during a preparation for his death, calmly covered a strong silk rope thickly with soap paste beforehand in order not to feel excessive ache and pain when he would hang himself to death.

   He took Yukiko to a double suicide trip in Ikaho. He, however, had held regret all the time and persistent on this world even on the brink of committing a double suicide. Sordidly enough, he relied on Osei, whom he met by chance, for restoring his life. His egocentric attempt resultantly induced innocent Osei’s death, and Sēkichi’s crime and imprisonment. Tomioka felt a cold shiver in his own slyness. Tomioka was not moved anymore by Yukiko’s letter expressing her desire to meet him, or felt no pain for her abortion. He could not help but think that he had lost all his heart at the time of his return to Japan.

   Sēkichi said, when Tomioka met him in Shinagawa Police Station. “It was all the same even if I live in wherever. Capital punishment or life imprisonment, whichever it may be, the sooner rendition of judgment is better. I would like to console Osei’s soul in prison.” And he declined Tomioka’s offer to hire a lawyer.

   Tomioka ruminated Sēkichi’s word, and agreed, of course, it was all the same even if people lived anywhere. Even if he dreamed to go abroad, the former life would never bring back to him. The world had changed. It was better to forget the former dreams and illusions as soon as possible.

   It seemed that Kano died of lung tuberculosis. People are overwhelmed rapidly from behind to the final destination. Tomioka, however, did not want to hurry to the unfortunate terminal. If he had lost all his heart already, he thought there was no way other than to live an easy life without worry, if possible.

   He did not want to meet Yukiko.

   He scraped up some money and sent her 5,000 yen, which was his parting gift and modest celebration for the woman who had erased a child from this world. Because, to tell the truth, he did not want a child.

   An awful rain storm lasted from the morning.

   Tomioka lay in bed without Osei, abstractedly listening to the rain. The window looked smoking in rain, and droplets washed away the dirt of the window glass. He was languid and motionless, crossing his hands on his chest with his eyes wide open. 

For a while ago, large Osei lay beside him. Osei, when she awoke, sang a song at first, putting her legs on his legs. Only that moment brought two people close heartily. Tomioka, with his eyes close, had been listening to her song. At present, Osei was nowhere. Tomioka, however, did not feel loving nor yearning for the deceased Osei. He rather felt relieved. He’s fed up with women. He felt having learned for the first time that lying alone in bed was so easy and healthy. Today, for the first time, he had a good opportunity to transform his life. He was eager to return to the jaunty and spirited self after smashing all the things such as politics, social ethics, and all others, into pieces by a mill powder grinding device. How refreshing it is to be alone! Tomioka turned his faraway look to the downpour outside which was blowing leaves and branches outside the window.

   Being tense in his solitary life was his recourse for salvation.

   At first, he had to leave this room, simultaneously with which, he needed to rid himself of his wife and parents. He wanted to change even his name, if permissible. He wanted to quit the current company and find a new job. He did not want to admit that Osei’s death affected his feelings for a sudden change.

   However, a man known to him was imprisoned, which was not pleasant to Tomioka. A vision that Mukai Sēkichi dejectedly sat down in prison passed flickeringly through Tomioka’s mind. He felt the vision deranging. If a sentence was determined soon as Sēkichi himself expected, Tomioka also might calm down. ……

   Tomioka was looking out through the window glass at the rain. The green plants outside looked like blowing the fog. Certain mysterious green rays overwhelmingly penetrated into the room. Death seemed to touch his skin easily. He, however, though that people could not die easily. He was absent from the company since that incident. Tomioka began writing sporadically these few days about southern forestry for a magazine of agriculture published by some newspaper company. His manuscript would be 100 sheets in volume. When he would finish writing, he intended to send his manuscript to the magazine to get some money.

   Previously, he whimsically had tried to send his manuscript of about 30 sheets referring to his memory of southern fruits to the same agriculture magazine. It was around the time when that incident happened. His writing appeared in the magazine, and he got 10,000 yen as payment for his manuscript. It was more than he expected, and thus, he noticed his own talent, which encouraged him.

   His writing was like this.

»I was a government official who worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and was assigned as a civilian personnel to French Indochina, where I lived for 4 years. During my 4-year stay in the Tropics, I had memories of various fruit there.

   In the tropical regions, a variety of fruit plants grow, and the fruits’ mellow tastes, above all, are intensely attractive to people who live in the region. When it comes to the most impressive fruit to me, banana, the king of tropical fruits, comes first. Bananas have begun to be imported from Taiwan these days. Not so many people, however, know that bananas have hundreds of varieties. Slender, short and thick-set, remarkable dihedral angle, brownish white or reddish in color, strong or weak in aroma, not to mention shape and tastes.

   I preferred eating king bananas, and sanjaku bananas, in other words, bananas ripened in low-height trees. Sometimes I was given cooking bananas, which were not good in taste. Tillers, which are new shoots from the root or around the bottom the original stalk, are used for reproducing. In approximately 15 months after planting, tillers become 10 to 20 feet high. From the trunk with leaves grown, flower stalks of 40 to 50 feet long appeare and begin bearing flowers. The flower stalks naturally bend below while bearing fruit, and the trunk begins to wither. Meanwhile, new tillers grow from the root and replace the withered plant. In one year, the new flower stalks bear fruit. This propagation method is suitable to everywhere in the hot and wet climate, with a sticky soil and good drainage, however, is not adopted for a strongly windy area and alluvial soils. The banana is the gift of the Heavens. The poor people feel grateful to banana which they eat as a part of their meal. If a banana is the King of fruit, a mangosteen might be the queen. The scentific name of a tree bearing mangosteens is Garsinia mangostana. I saw mangosteens for the first time at a fruit shop near Pura Tic in Ha Noi. The mangosteen was the size of a small percimmon kaki, with the flat top. The rind is smooth and reddish-purple colored. When the mangosteen is cut in round slices, inside is an inner layer of a seed coat surrended by a creamy white edible flesh. The rind contains tannic acid and pigment. Once its juice drops on a cloth, the stain is not readily removed. The high season of mangostieens is said to be from May to July, however, it was February that I bought and ate a mangosteen for the first time in Ha Noi. In Hue, during two weeks of my stay in the Moulin Hotel, mangosteens were served at every breakfast. A mangosteen has a flavor of Japanese mandarin.

   This tropical tree, mangosteen, is conically-shaped. Its leathery leaves are large and oblong, and opposite-leaved. The mangosteen originally grew in Malaysia. The mangosteen grows extremely slowly, and takes nine to ten years to bear fruits. The cultivation area should be in the hot and wet climate. The trees prefer deep, well drained fertile soil with high moisture content. If mangosteens are the refined fruit, a rare fruit durian with an intense disgust evoking smell should also be referred to, on the other hand.»

   Tomioka wrote, moreover, about cultivation of various other fruits like cardamom, jack fruit, papaya, adding his memories of eating those fruits, and tropical travelogues. Tomioka, groping under the bed to pick up the magazine, turned the pages and looked at the pages where his article was printed. Naturally, southern sceneries of Da Lat appeared in his mind. A rapid and violent change in his life stunned him.

   He sent to Yukiko a half of 10,000 yen of payment for his manuscript. He felt it ironic that his money was applied for aborting his child. He suddenly remembered his child with nostalgia whom a Vietnamese maid gave birth to, after that he had left her in Indochina. He thought that he would never meet the child. In his dissipated mind, the memory aroused his nostalgia for the child.

   When he threw the magazine and stood up, someone knocked at the door. Tomioka was appalled, and said, “Who?”

   “I’m Yukiko. Yukiko ……”  A voice was heard outside the door.

   Tomioka opend the door, and saw a woman standing with her umbrella dripping with rain. Yukiko looked very emaciated and haggard.

   It might be heartless, but Tomioka thought her visit extremely annoying.

 

 

.. * 43

 

For three weeks, she had been waiting for his coming. She got to fretting. It was rainy, but she could not restrain from visiting him. Yukiko saw Tomioka’s face when he opened the door, and understood her love affair with him would end this day despite her desperate efforts. She did not have a rain coat or rain shoes. Yukiko, in a light blue blouse and a dark blue skirt with her hairy bare legs, entered the room silently.

“Did I disturb you?”

Tomioka, while quickly adjusting the front of his rumpled yukata, sat near the window, and tried to turn a smile to her.

   “You had a hard time. ……”

   “Things were tough for you, too. Are you alright getting out of bed, now?

   “Sure. I cannot be hospitalized any longer. ……  At last, I got well.”

   Yukiko felt their dreary reality sorrowful, and remembered their days in Indochine where the two people came close to each other hand in hand quickly whenever no one was there.

   “I have read it in the newspaper. Say, I cannot wait any more. In your reply, you wrote that ‘I am certain to visit you. You wrote that you have not parted from me, and if it is your truth, upon which I will rely, and I surely come to meet you.’ Clinging to your letter, I have lived somehow so far. ……”

   Yukiko sat down as if collapsing there, and spoke to Tomioka. He did not change his bored countenance and said.

   “Ahuh, I was wrong in every way. I did not forget you, but had to meet with Osei’s husband. I became involved in the issue, so I did not have time to visit you. ……”

   “You would not come even if I died groaningly in the hospital.”

   “That’s not true. I did not worry you because I believed that you are alright.”

You don’t have any affection for me, and yet, cowardly tell a lie to please me. It doesn’t work. － You are so longing for Osei’san. What on earth would such a woman be good for you?”

Yukiko began shivering with jealousy about Osei. Immobility of his mind like a stone reflected scorchingly on Yukiko, who felt painful. She knew that their relationship would end in failure if she spoke on impulse, however, spat out at him.

   “In truth, you did not worry about a child at all, and yet, it was you that asked me to give birth to a child. ……  And yet, you did not visit me, never came to see me to the hospital. Once you went away from me, you were always separated from me. － Only when we meet like this, you flatter me. You might have given empty compliments to Osei’san, so, she was infatuated with you, wasn’t she? You are a person who intend to commit double suicide, notwithstanding that, are slowly leaving the premises when you oversee a woman dying. You pretend not to notice it although you let other people sacrifice their life. － I hate Osei’san. I hate also Osei’san’s husband. Thinking back now, I wonder why we went to Ikaho. ……  I can’t help but feel mortified at you. ……  I must come to see you notwithstanding my intention to clear my mind of you. I am stung by my feelings like this. My innermost feelings don’t change, and cling to my thought, and cannot break away from there. …… I cannot explain it clearly, but I am angry with you, despite that, love you, therefore, I feel myself extremely pitiable. ……”

   Yukiko, who was sitting on the tatami floors, leaned on the bed while shedding tears. The bed creaked. Tomioka stared at the driving rain while hearing the crys of Yukiko. ‘What does she want me to do? ……  How long does this woman blame me for the past memories lika a moneylender? ……  For the sake of our past memories, she still strives to get back the old days of memories like a moneylender collecting money.’ While hearing her crying, all of sudden, Tomioka felt rage.

   “Please, leave me alone! I have nothing to do. A person like me is empty. I cannot pay you back even if you press me fiercely. － Haven’t we, each other, cleared a nuisance from ourselves in Ikaho?”

   “I hate it. Don’t say like that …… . As if I lost to Osei’san. Be nice to me as before. ……  I hate parting from you. ……”

“You will be injured if you keep it up with me. From the time when we returned to Japan, we should have begun to walk in different directions. The world has changed from the older days. You should step forward in your life. ……”

   “Oh! What a scary thing you say! ……  It’s as if you are telling me to die here. ……  If I had begun to walk in my life, I would not have met you long before. － What you said, however, is your true feeling, I suppose. You got tired of me, and so, you can say the truth. ……  I am not surprised at whatever you may say. I am not. The air in the room where you lived together with Osei’san may be disturbing us. ……  If Osei’s ghost appeared here, I would tell her that I will never part from Tomioka’san all my life. ……”

   “Don’t talk so loud! Restrain yourself in the tenement house as this. Osei does not matter. I feel relieved that she died. I feel sorry to Mukai’san, though. I can walk freely anywhere. On the other hand, Mukai is imprisoned still without freedom of travel. Can’t you sense my irritation even a little?”

   “Don’t you think that it’s strange that I have to worry Osei’san’s husband. ……  I hate it. Do they have anything to do with the relationship between you and me? ……  It’s something that you caused yourself. It has nothing to do with me. What a strange thing you are saying! ……”

   Yukiko was mortified with Tomioka’s shamelessness as he still deeply loved Osei and could not forget her. She was so mortified as to get excited emotionally, and then, had glazed eyes. Suddenly she felt dizzy and flopped down. She felt a strong pain in her lower belly, and the strength was being lost from her shoulder.

   Tomioka was upset and shook her shoulder.

   “What happened? Do you feel sick?”

   The rain became harder, and the wind blew intensely. Tomioka held Yukiko and laid her in the bed. The blue veins stood out on her forehead, her dry lips whitened. Her forehead twitched painfully. Tomioka understood that he said something extremely merciless to her. Her whole body looked like that of a sick person. The ten fingers of her both hands curled as if a cicada moved its six legs to seize something. Her nails had black dirt in them.

   He drew water in a metal pail, and put a wet towel to cool her forehead. He got utterly disgusted with himself. He suddenly wanted to earn money. Yukiko fell fast asleep. Then, he went to his desk to write his manuscript about his memories of forestry and plants in Indochina.

   ―　In reference to betel palm, Areca catechu, and betel plant, Piper betle, there is a beautiful myth in ancient Vietnam. It was during the period of King Hùng Vương IV dynasty in Vietnam. A courtier, Khan had two sons Tang and Khan. Their father Khan died when brothers were very young, because of which the brothers especially got along with each other. They depended by chance on the Luu’s house. The Luu had a daughter. The elder brother Tang fell in love with the daughter and married her.

   While writing, the scenery of Da Lat came into his mind, where he met Yukiko for the first time. A red striped gingham skirt which Yukiko wore when they had visited Ontre tea plantation flickered in his mind as if it was yesterday. He could not believe at all that the wreck of the former Yukiko, who was young and beautiful like a girl, lay in his bed. However, his mind became calm and collected, and his pen moved more quickly than he expected. He felt hungry, soon. He took bread from the tea-cabinet, and put on the electric stove to make coffee.

He looked at the clock on the tea-cabinet. It was almost one o’clock. He stuffed his mouth with the bread, and casually turned back at the bed, where under the towel was the opened eyes of Yukiko.

   “Why not eat, too?”

   Tomioka made another coffee for her. Yukiko with her eyes open looked up at the ceiling.

   “Get up, and drink coffee.”

   Yukiko got up obediently and took a cup of coffee from Tomioka.

 

 

 

.. * 44

 

In the late afternoon, the rain became still harder. Tomioka was constantly writing. ―　Within the surveillance area of Da Lat Forestry Office where I was assigned, the shipment of cassia pines was 15,700 cubic meters. We, foresters, in military orders, engaged in prompt development and quite reckless deforestation.

   Every officer’s face at that time had begun to recede in his memory.

   “We went from Da Lat to Duran, and then what was the name of the terminal?”

   Suddenly, Tomioka asked Yukiko.

   She learned for the first time what he was writing. She cheerfully got out of the bed, and said.

   “I’m sure it was called Trucham. ……”

“Oh, yes. It was Trucham.”

Yukiko stared at the back of Tomioka who sat facing the desk.

“Hey, I wonder if you remember a hamlet called Manrin. ……”

“Manrin?”

“Have you forgotten it already?”

“The hamlet where the royal tomb existed.”

“Right. It was 2.5 miles from Da Lat. There was the Forestry Bureau’s residential station. We walked together in the shadowy grove  for the first time.”

She went near Tomioka, and looked at his manuscript on the desk.

“What do you intend to do with your writing?”

“I want to earn money. ……”

“Will it convert into money?”

Tomioka went to the bedside to take the agriculture magazine, and handed it to Yukiko.

“Read this. ……”

Yukiko took it and saw the contents. Her eyes caught the name Tomioka Kengo. She turned the pages of his article and began to read it.

“I got money with it, and so, became enthusiastic about writing. The money I sent you was a part of the payment from this manuscript. ……”

“Ah! Did you write this?”

Memories and cultivations of banana, mangosteen, and durian are described in a casual format.

   At night, the rain and wind were still blowing hard. Out of the window, the trees swayed like a roaring tsunami. Yukiko began to say that she would stay overnight in his room. Tomioka gave up on whatever was happening. While they were eating the bread and drinking coffee, the electric light was suddenly extinguished.

   With a candle light on the desk, the two people were talking about memories of Indochina in a familiar manner like close friends. Their recollections disagreed from time to time. They, both, somewhat strived to recall their intense affection of old days by the help of their reminiscences. The electricity did not return. The candle light also went out. They did not have anything to do other than to lie in bed. It thundered with lightning bolts at times, instantly shining through the curtainless window. The rain blowing against wooden shutters and glasses sounded like torrent.

   Tomioka was not inclined to go throught the same thing again, and stubbornly lay without moving. Yukiko irritatingly expected something and talked in a hasty manner again and again about their walk in Manrin forest. The taste of the intense kiss in her memory got her chest as if entranced. Tomioka lay on the bed, however, did not remain in the scenery of the memory of Manrin. Even if Yukiko pronounced many times in a soft voice, Manrin, Manrin, to his ear, he could not recall anything but Osei who had laid her large body beside him. Osei’s final face clearly came up in his mind, Osei who put her thick legs heavily on his legs, and hummed a tune as usual.

   Her eyes were half-opened and her tongue appeared slovenly out of her mouth. Someone of the multiple dwelling house told him about the on-site scene immediately after the murder. Tomioka, however, did not see her dead body which had been carried out already for a judicial autopsy. He suddenly longed for her large responsive body. That woman died and was no longer of this world. ……  In the darkness, Tomioka felt something hot welling up in his throat.

   “Do you remember that garden in the villa owned by some Chinese, under the tennis court in Da Lat?”

   “Ahuh.”

   Tomioka became disinterested in all that sort of things like Da Lat and some Chinese’s villa. He loathed Yukiko’s fawningness over him as if she suggested that it’s his turn to talk if he remebered the garden. He did not care about such past dreams anymore, and did not have any intention to cling to the dream at all. ……  Instead, he felt a strong desire for Osei’s stout large body. Tomioka sighed.

   He thought to have discovered the true woman through his experience with Osei, and felt tears falling from the corners of his eyes

   He turned back Yukiko’s hand which came creeping to his chest.

   “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?”

   “No. I am tired tonight. I want to sleep tight. ……”

   Yukiko pulled her hand back, gasped, and fell silent for a while. She seemed to sense his change in mind, however, never even dreamed that he was obsessed by his own yearning for Osei.

   “Well, let’s talk of the South. ……  Somehow, I cannot sleep tonight.”

   “I am sleepy.”

   “We met after a long time, and why are you so cold towards me? ……  You have been more affable to me. ……”

   Yukiko tried once more to implore him clinging to his chest. Tomioka recalled in his mind an Irish writer and poet of the late 1800s, Oscar Wilde’s saying, ‘One barrel does not have to be over to know the brewing quantity and quality of the wine.’ He disliked rehashing the past affairs. At present, he did not feel a desire for any female bodies other than Osei’s. He did not have a thirst. Tomioka then fell in asleep without knowing it.

   In an ominous dream like going below the dark water, Tomioka met Osei. It was a weird face with her half-opened eyes and her tongue slovenly appearing out of her mouth, however, was extremely attractive. In the water, he quickly caught her in his arms. She wound her long legs around his waist, and her hands around his neck. Osei’s cold tongue touched his cheek. At the instant, he screamed, “Ooh!”

   Tomioka woke to his own scream.

   Yukiko’s body heavily covered him. She was awake and was attaching her wet cheek closely to his cheek.

 

 

.. * 45

 

Next morning, when Tomioka woke up, Yukiko was in front of Osei’s small mirror stand, making up her face. The sky cleared, and was blue crystal as seen very often in autumn.

   Tomioka, on the bed, was looking at Yukiko while she was putting on her makeup. A feeling like repentance weighed heavily on his mind, and he felt as if he had been dragged into a bog.

   Yukiko did not hesitate to use Osei’s white face powder and her powder puff. He felt displeasure at Yukiko’s recklessness, while thinking that an animal, called a woman is insensitive and shameless. He thought such an insensitivity might be pertinent to women that the woman could recklessly use the departed Osei’s cosmetics. He, however, wondered whether he himself might have been more insensitive, and was deeply regret for that he impurely spent overnight on Osei’s bed. It was he that was hideous. Yukiko in front of the mirror appeared exceedingly gaunt. Her knees became thin, which made her look much older. Her bosom also became thinner. Her dry hair faded into a reddish tinge. Her forehead became wider, and her skin around eyes broke out like a skin rash.

   Tomioka sprang to his feet, and went to wash his face downstairs with stealthy steps as if he was diffident to others. Tears overflowed from the eyes of Yukiko while making up. Yukiko could not oppose Tomioka who called Osei even in his sleep. She understood that no memories of Indochina remained anymore in his mind.

   Around 10 o’clock in the morning, Yukiko left there with discomfort. Tomioka did not see her off, saying that he was tired. She also was tired. So tired as if the air of her body fell out. She unconsciously carried her deflated body at a slow pace toward the station. She was thinking how to live from now on, and tasted loneliness as if she was falling into an abyss. She could not do anything at present, and so, thought to dare go to Iba’s place to do office work for the Ōhinata’kyō for a time being.

   Five days passed in vain.

   Iba’s demand came to her by mail. He asked her to come a day sooner. Yukiko inclined to go to see what the Ōhinata’kyō was. No letter from Tomioka. He should have kept his promise to visit her if his love for her was still there even just a little. Yukiko thought to try her fortune at the Ōhinata’kyō and to conjecture a future relationship with Tomioka.

   It was a scorching hot day.

   Yukiko walked to the Ōhinata’kyō, counting on the street number of 3-xx on Ikegamichō. No wonder Iba said that he had purchased some banker’s residence. Granite gateposts had doors made with iron bars, and gravel stones were spread all to the entrance. Plants were well pruned in the garden and tended with great care. There was even a new garage made of corrugated galvanised iron. She entered the premises through a side door. An emaciated middle-aged woman, seemingly a believer, with a big straw hat on was weeding the garden. Under the eaves of the entrance, a board of Japanese cypress, hinoki, was hung. On the board, two kanji characters were written in green as Tensei^[*195], which signified a finishing touch. A glass door was wide open, and many clogs, geta^[*45], were placed in rows on the tile floor.

   In the entrance, a new large screen with a drawing of a dragon was set in front. Behind the screen, someone was at a table. Yukiko recognized the person as Ōtsu Shimo with whom she had shared a patient room at a maternity hospital. She painted her face thick with white powder, wearing an indigo blue hakama^[*51] over the indigo blue separate kimono of arm length. She was writing something. It was a deep and cold windblown entrance. Somewhere far behind, prayer seemed to begin. Mingled voices with a note of anxiety were praying in unison.

 

 

.. * 46

 

If not a droning sound of mingled voices of prayer, as if it was gloan of wild beasts in deep mountains, this entrance would have caused her such an illusion that she was in a rural hospital. Ōtsu Shimo noticed Yukiko, and quickly came near to her.

   “You are welcome. Yukiko’sama has come, Professor!”

   Yukiko felt it to be absurd. In the room, Iba replied, “Oh.” When Shimo opened the wooden sliding door, a man of his sixties lay on a military blanket, and Iba was holding his hands over him. Shimo went to the corner of the room to take a brown plain cushion, zabuton^[*227], placed it near the sliding door. She sat on the floor and pushed the zabuton toward Yukiko and invited her to sit down there. Then, she silently went out closing the sliding door. It was entirely a wonder world for Yukiko. An old man, lying with his eyes close, repeatedly opened and closed his mouth like fish breathe air. His face was dark pale, and his hair like dry grass was disheveled. A big black mole on his forehead. He wore a white outing shirt and gray trousers, with bare feet.

   Iba wore a black loose-fitting outer garments in the same way as Shimo. He also shut his eyes.

   “Please understand ……  the Original Vow of the Ōhinata’kyō is to have deep affection for believers who have the ardent faith, disregarding age and youth, right and wrong. Its heartful generosity is only to relieve burning earthly desires of all beings. The earthly good and evil is not serving any purpose. Advocate the prayer earnestly to the Ōhinata’kyō, nothing is better than the divine worship. And this is ‘the good.’ You should not be afraid of the evil. The virulence of illness, in particular, is the most minimal of all human evils. The virulence of illness is conspicuous, as if we see a milestone in our life. The virulence in mind is inconspicuous, hardly caught by hand, therefore, this is the evil of the hell. This is the karma, our present deeds to be the cause of our future. Illness is minimal. When you pray to the Ōhinata’kyō day and night, the heavenly and earthly powers will well up, which are stronger than any other deeds. The Original Vow of the Ōhinata’kyō lies truly and simply on this deity. The illness is minimal, and the deity will extend a healing hand to you. ……”

   Iba spoke fluently without pausing. He put his trembling hands on the old man’s shoulder to vibrate it furiously. The old man inhaled the air through his lips.

   “Inhale the atmospheric medium, the ether, fully through your mouth. Now, a large quantity of ether of the Ōhinata’kyō is sent forth for you from my hands. ……”

   Yukiko, while staring at them, worried that Iba became demented. Iba opened his eyes from time to time, and leaned over the old man’s eyelids.

   “All beings possessing worldly desires and passions are not be able to free from the life and death. May the deity feel pity. Feel pity. Wipe off an original cause of the virulence of illness. May the Ōhinata’kyō have mercy on him.”

   Iba, repeating such phrases for a while, placed his trembling hand on the old man’s forehead. Then, he said, “Please, purify.” Iba tapped the old man’s shoulder to come to his senses. The old man, with his face bright, sat up slowly on the blanket. Iba was wiping his hands with a white cloth which covered the Precious Triad, Sanpō^[*149], in an alcove, tokonoma.

   The old man dressed himself, and then, sat properly on the same place, and made a polite bow to Iba.

   “How do you feel? Do you feel your body lighter?”

   “Yes. I am refreshed. I feel pleasingly freshed.”

   “You will get completely well with four or five more prayers and incantations. Your illness is quite grave, so, you need more than one day to restore to health. The Ōhinata’kyō absolutely never says prayers have immediate effects or instant healings as frauds in the world do. The Ōhinata’kyō is observing the concerned people’s perseverance in prayer, and let him keep out from the virulence of illness.”

   “Yes. I intend to come for prayer again and again.”

   “That will be good for you. ……”

   “How much shall I pay for today’s treatment?”

“We are not a hospital. Free of charge is our mercy. This is the fundamental concept of the Ōhinata’kyō. …… We receive no money from the poor, and receive whatever amount of money that the rich people would dedicate. Whereupon we perform incantations and prayers to expel their evils.”

   Iba said, and then, leisurely went back to the desk. The old man appeared embarrassed. Then, in an instant, Iba extended a file of votive offerings in front of the old man.

   “Here you are, for your reference, the amount dedicated by worshippers so far. ……”

   The old man respectfully took the file and opened it on his lap. A sickly girl wearing a black hakama brought them tea.

   On the first page of the file, the former Minister’s name appeared with his dedicated amount as much as 50,000 yen. The signature was suspicious whether really written by the former Minister himself, who had died as a war criminal sentensed to death. The old man looked from page to page for a while, and put it on the blanket before long. He took a writing brush in the writing box which was set on a table nearby. He wrote 500 yen as the amount of money that he intended to dedicate.

   He paid 500 yen, and respectfully appointed the next date and time for prayer to Iba. The old man went out to the hallway.

   Yukiko was relieved, while hearing the old man’s footsteps fade away to the distance.

   “What a good business!”

   Yukiko said giggling. In actuality, no one knew what kind of a stroke of good fortune it was, but an idle man who could not get any job until recently got 500 yen only by vibrating his hands for a while with doubtful prayers. No one could refrain from saying that it was a good business.

   If it was the former Yukiko, she would have flung away in a rage. While sitting cross-legged, Iba took a foreign cigarette and lit it. His method of sitting cross-legged was called the ‘Kōchi’yama’^[*96], and was regarded as indecent.

   “Now, you know. The world is interesting, isn’t it? Nothing is difficult. The only thing that you should do is to cheat people into trusting you. It’s a simple magic. When you tactfully spray ether of the Ōhinata’kyō, a sick person comes back to life. No one would like to work anymore as a salaried employee. People cannot have the mercy of the gods and Buddha, so they come to purchase it by devoting some money. We understand people’s mentality, and so, produce the Ōhinata’kyō and sell it. Everyone is willing to buy it. ……”

   Yukiko was amazed. A change of Iba’s state of mind after the war was common to her. Yukiko took his cigarette and lit it. In the large alcove, tokonoma, a calligraphic scroll with characters of a doubtful writing style was hung also here in the same way as other alcoves. In a metalwork vase decorated by cloisonné, shippō’yaki, a female pine^[*37] was arranged. In the center of the 10-tatami room, a military blanket was spread. Iba’s table was placed near the sliding latticed windows pasted with white paper, shōji, which held a commanding view of the garden. And a small Chinese-style table. The room was restful maybe because the ceiling was high and well ventilated. In a small courtyard, the washings were hung out to dry.

   “If a newspaper doubted and come to pry into the personal affairs of the religious community, what will you do?”

   “Don’t worry. We easily sense it. It is our credo not to get any money from a doubtful person.”

“Are you capable of discerning the true from the false?”

“I do business like this, and so, can quickly discern people.”

Yukiko thought that such trick like a night-time entertainment business would not last long. After the war, however, many people were stretched out with no hope of doing things. So, people with the abnormal psychology possibly appeared in the world.

“How is your physical condition?”

“Maybe I also have to pay an incantation fee.”

Yukiko puffed at her cigarette with a smile. Her relation with Tomioka had not yet been settled. She thought it not bad to help Iba’s business, as a makeshift. She had lost self-confidence to do a proper work anymore. To find the basis of her livelihood, she felt like helping his ridiculous business made her feel easy rather than being a maid in a bar or a coffee ship, although the Great Shunny Faith, the Ōhinata’kyō, was still doubtful to her.

   Yukiko had an aversive feeling against all the society, and also felt like placing a curse on Tomioka. It was that regrettable for her to be defeated by Osei, as she herself still survived. If she had been dead, Tomioka, on the contrary, would have yearned for the deceased Yukiko.

   “You look haggard. ……”

   “Yes. When I eat delicious food even a little, and relax, I will get fat like you. ……  A woman will not become beautiful if not a person who spends money on her.”

   Iba grinned, picking earwax. It seemed that the prayer was over. A large drum began to sound. Soon, Ōtsu Shimo came and called Iba.

   Yukiko went after Iba to the hall. Approximately 30 male and female believers were standing in the hall with their backs against the wall. They were waiting for the founder and the professor to enter the hall. The hall seemed to be extended, and the board floor of 20-tatami wide had a nice smell of new wood. A purple curtain was gathered on the three-sided alter. Behind the curtain, a crescent-shaped mirror was shining.

   In the front, the founder, Narimune Senzō, took his seat on a tall Chinese-style chair. He wore a gown-like black clothes. A gold badge impressed with a crest of a combine pattern of a crescent and a sunflower was worn on his chest.

   Iba, standing beside the founder, bowed to believers, and said.

   “Please, take a rest. ……”

   Believers sat down on the floor. Yukiko also sat down on the lowest seat. Iba sat on a rattan chair. It looked like a manners room in an old elementary school. The founder sounded a gong, murmuring something from his mouth. After a while, he spread a sheet of paper on the desk.

   “Today, I will talk to you about the divine will, described in Chapter 3 of the the Ōhinata’sama. Everybody, please wear clothes of God.”

   Every believer picked up a purple garment without sleeves from the lap, spread it out and wore upon their shoulder. The cloth was something like a shawl with the collar of happi where a crest was dyed as Ōhinata’kyō. The decree in Chapter 3 says ……  The world’s boundaries incline toward each other, and the human beings reach an understanding. This is a true discipline. Poeple in the world have a lack of disciplines, only being at a loss, only loitering around. The Ōhinata’sama wishes to rescue such people out of the Hell, and so, gives people the worldly karma bringing upon themselves inevitable results. If people depend upon others, and forget to requite favors for their favors, they fall into the Hell. ……

   A soft breeze was blowing in through the open glass window. A quiet sound was heard while a gardener leisurely used his scissors.

“Everyone has 50 years to earn a living, by which people discipline sacrifices. ……”

Yukiko felt pain sitting on the board floor, so, she secretly changed the position of her legs to sit in an easy posture.

 

 

.. * 47

 

Tomioka employed a lawyer for the sake of Sēkichi. At least, it was the best and sole effort that he could do for Osei’s consolation.

   He got a letter from Yukiko who persistently urged that they

both should get together to restore their lives. Tomioka was not

more attentive to Yukiko than a stranger. He knew that Yukiko

seemed to be obsessed with a new religion, and thought it might be

good for her. There was no sign that Tomioka would move from the

room full of Osei’s memory. He laid on the same bed everyday, and

wrote a manuscript for the agricultural magazine. When he sent it,

the magazine publishing company sent him a certain amount of 

payment for return. He was content with this work for now as he did

not need to meet anyone. He thought that it was unbearable

anymore for him to be bound to his workplace for a certain hours a

day. He had already ceased from going to his friend’s company

without any contact. He had fallen into the mental states of

vagrants. He never went to his home in Urawa in Saitama

Prefecture, and left letters from his wife, Kuniko, unsealed on the tea

cabinet. He did not have any emotion also for his wife in her sickbed

for a long time. He was in the know that his parents were living on a

small remnent of their property. However, his perseverance gave out,

and he did not know what to do for them anymore. The majority of

his money that he got after selling his house was gone when he had

failed in timber business. Nevertheless, he had given the money

with which his family might be able to live for half a year or one year

more if they lived meagerly.

While lying, he opened manuscript straw paper and was writing

an essay on urushi.

   The urushi, poison oak, otherwise called cattle lacquer tree (Rhus verniciflua), is native only to Japan, China, Indochina, Burma, and Thai. Tomioka started writing from this, however, felt his head being strangely numb. He, from time to time, felt dizzy, recently. He realized a decline of his body more and more, maybe because he had not eaten meals at a fixed time. He got impatient to earn money as much as 10,000 yen around by writing up the manuscript about the urushi. His body, however, did not catch up with his impatience. He slovenly thought that the production areas of the urushi did not matter to him.

   He suddenly changed his storyline. He started writing his momories:  During the war, I was assigned to Hanoi, capital of Tonkin, in the nothern Indochina. Once, I had a business trip to a small town called Phuc Tho.

    Phuc Tho is located in the northwest of Hanoi and 80 miles away from Hanoi. This place can be said to be the world-class urushi garden.

   The urushi’s scientific name is Rhus succedanea, and is called

the hazenoki in Japan, and called sơn in Tonkin. In Phuc Tho town,

the sơn trees were cultivated as a side business in farmhouses, in the

same way as silkworm-raising districts in Japan. In older times,

Vietnamese urushi was called pot lacquer, and was low in quality

and also in price. Japanense urushi merchants tended to avoid

dealing with it, if possible. Due to the wartime shortages of goods,

however, they strived with one another in importing it. Although I

had only a few days experience inspecting sơn cultivation gardens in

Phuc Tho, I have at present an opinion that the cultivation of

hazenoki is worthy of notice in Japan. If Japanese farmhouses

cultivate Japanese Rhus succedanea, hazenoki, as their side business,

Japan will be able to export Japanese urushi of higher quality to

western countries. Drying is important for urushi, but Vietnamese

urushi is incomplete in drying. If their skill of urushi production is

not improved, the world’s best town of cultivating urushi will be

deserted. Their urushi lacquer is extremely cheap, so, Japan cannot

compete in price. In Phuc Tho, farmers scrape off the sap from

trees, and go to sell crude urushi to brokers in the town market. In

the urushi market in Phc Tho, all their daily necessaries are

available. Women and children of farmhouses dress up and go to

the market. The rustic gaiety on the market day is as if a toy box is

toppled over.

   Tomioka stopped writing. He felt his daily life in Japan was dull

and tedious as if he was taken back to one century obsolete world.

His desire to go overseas is merely a fancy world for him for the time

being. There seemed to be nowhere to go away in this situation. He

thought that this was the proper place for him to be. While

sharpening his pencil with a knife, however, he happened to stare

at a pointed blade of the knife, and lost his interest in writing the

essey of urushi. It had nothing to do with him even if Japanese

urushi was exported to overseas. Besides, the amount of production

of urushi in Japan was poor in comparison with Vietnam and China.

He flopped down and stared at the pointed blade of the knife. Osei’s

death gave his heart a pain. When she was alive, they always had

quarreled with eath other. A hunting dog named Sēkichi came

dashing against a raving hare and bit it to death. Tomioka regarded

his own slyness as someone like a hunter who hid himself behind a

rock and whimsically aimed at Osei. Sēkichi committed murder as if

seduced. Tomioka put the blade on the artery of his wrist, but, did

not feel like stabbing it into his artery on the spot.

Tomioka felt like vomitting because he did not eat anything

since the morning. His writing also was stagnating. He rose up and wore a dirty Y-shirt and black serge trausers, then, went downstairs. He took out Osei’s clog, wore them, and went outside. It was twilight

time, but the town was still bright like a midday. He walked leisurely

near to the station, and passed through the nawa’noren^[*135] of a

small tavern. He wanted to yield himself to drunkenness. He ordered a glass of shōchū, alcoholic liquors made by distilling of sake lees. He took it off at a draught, and ordered the next glass. No other customers. A smell of grilling dried foods was coming from the backyard. Behind the counter, a middle-aged man, seemingly a master of the tavern, scolded a fifteen or sixteen year old girl in a low voice. She from time to time raked up her bobbed hair in her ears, and turned towards the wall with her profile in a miff.

   “Why’s your sulky look? Despite you don’t know the world at all, you fooled around with a man. ……  Where did you stay, last night?”

   Tomioka, drinking shōchū, silently listened to the master’s scolding the girl.

   “Where did you stay overnight?”

   The girl stood facedown. Tomioka ordered the third glass. He got drunk intensely, which cleared his mind a little. He wanted to forget his woes by watching a movie for diversion for a first time in a while. The girl brought him the third glass. The girl of a dark face with no makeup had large bright eyes, and quite good looks. Her thick and black eyebrows were not shaved as if a straight line was drawn horizontally. The girl put a glass on the table, looked at him and grinned. He saw her clear eyes.

    He was drunk as if three glasses of shōchū changed his views of life. He left the tavern. The drunkness enabled him to forget all his distress. He loitered unsteadily around the town. ‘Tonight, when I

get back home, I will write up my urushi esssay and bring it to the

Agriculture Magazine.’

Tomioka walked to Sangen’jaya^[*162] and went into a movie theater. It was showing the film entitled “Ginza Sanshirō^[*47].” In the film, a

main character is a doctor, who could not forget his former mistress and drink sake very often. Tomioka thought the doctor was very

much like a yakuza^[*217]. Tomioka was drowsy, taking a corner seat. The hero doctor fought against many opponent yakuza in the luxury

town, Ginza, and threw them into the river one after another. A daughter of a restaurant seemed to love the yakuza doctor, but she

always began quarreling against him whenever she met him. She

reminded Tomioka of Osei. She had nothing similar to Osei in

appearance, but her character resembled Osei. The storyline was

lack of consistensy and had no sense at all to Tomioka who was

drunk. He was bored with the movie and left the theater. The town

still took time before fading into twilight.

He wondered what time it was. He had no sense of time after he

had sold his omega watch to Osei’s husband, Sēkichi, in Ikaho. He

looked in a shop at the clock, the hands pointed close to 8. He thought that it was that time already, and aimlessly walked again. He was enticed a little more to such drunkness as grasping at sand. He turned back towards the theater, and entered the bar in a small barrack in the market near the station.

   He went staggering inside to a narrow bar. A middle-aged woman with heavy makeup for her age made herself agreeable and put her cushion on a chair for the sake of Tomioka.

   “Aunt, a glass of chū.”

   “Oh, you’re in a good mood. You have already drunk somewhere else, haven’t you?”

   She poured shōchū in his glass to the brim. Tomioka slowly touched his lips to the brim of his glass. ‘Liquor shop Jiamusi’ could be read on a paper lantern swinging in a wind under the eaves.

   “Aunt, did you come back from Manchuria?”

   “Yes. Why do you know that?”

   “The lantern says Jiamusi, a prefectural city in eastern Heilongjiang province. ……”

Under her small eyes there was dark circles. She had a receding hairline on her forehead, and her nose also was small. She powdered her nape heavily with white powder. She wore a yukata with a collar lace apron. On the table, the hard-boiled fish, ham slices, boiled eggs were served. Tomioka picked up a ham slice from a large dish and crammed his mouth with it.

   “Yes, I did. I came back alone without any of my belongings. I’m flat broke. You may not believe it, but I worked as a teacher for ten years in Jiamusi. ……  We don’t know what human beings are like. Doing business is quite new to me, and everyone warns me of the “samurai in business,” which possibly ends up in failure.”

   “Aunt, how old are you?”

   “What do you guess? I am young however I may look. I had a hard time, and so, I look older. ……”

   “The female age is difficult to guess. 40, maybe?”

   “Ah, how sorrowful! Do I look like an old woman? I am 35. I intend to bloom once more. ……”

   Hearing that she was 35, Tomioka was amazed indeed at her lie. He inwardly thought that she was 50, nevertheless, he pronounced her age 10 years younger.

   “Oh, I am terribly sorry to hear that. 35 …… .  Extremely young. You have enough time to live your life over again from now on. Then, you must have parted from your husband. No choice, because you are so fresh and young, and beautiful. ……”

   The woman was pleased with a light laugh. She served two slices of ham on a small plate and put it on the table.

   “I outlived my husband. I parted from my husband in Jiamusi. He worked for the Concordia Association, the Kyōwakai^[*102] in Baoquing County, Hōsei^[*64]. And we ended up getting a divorce. I think nothing of my former husband at all.”

   The second glass was served.

   Tomioka was getting dead drunk. He knew that life is like a revolving stage everywhere in the world, however, such a world was plaintive that he met a woman who worked as a teacher in a distant place like Jiamusi. From time to time, he extended his hand to her, and said the same thing over and over, “Hei, Aunt, let’s shake hands.”

   “Did your husband truly die?”

   “Truly. He got together with a woman of the same Kyōwakai, in Korea. I heard about it exactly. ……  He committed suicide by a shotgun.”

   “Aha. ……”

A story became interesting when it was complicated. The third glass of shōchū went him off his feet. He layed his face on the table.

 

 

.. * 48

 

Yukiko constantly earned her livelihood by accounting work in the Ōhinata’kyō as far as the autumn. The internal affairs of the Ōhinata’kyō were utterly in disorder beyond description. The founder, Senzō, was rather a stingy and avaricious person, and always began an angry dispute with Iba over money. Yukiko understood well the disposition of the two men, besides, did not forget to put money away for herself by filching it from the community’s accountancy.

Senzō, as well as Iba, always said that all the life is money. “The Ōhinata’kyō is not the Great Shunny Faith, but the Great Money Faith, isn’t it?” Yukiko sometimes spoke ironically. She fully recovered her health, and her skin glistened. She appeared much younger than before. As was Ōtsu Shimo who became Senzō’s secret mistress, Yukiko returned to her old days of love with Iba. Iba sent his wife and children back to their birth home in Shizuoka. Now, he bought a small house for Yukiko near the church of the Ōhinata’kyō. Yukiko did not love Iba at all. She hated him instead. Yukiko lived alone in a small house of 6 yards on one side, with a beliver aunt as a live-in maid, and commuted to work at the church. She had 100,000 yen as her savings. She also learned that ‘it is only money to rely on in life,’ and so, became dexterous to deal with money. Believers increased more and more, and thus, the Ōhinata’kyō had quite a prominent power, and was becoming an institution in town.

Yukiko did not mean not to think about Tomioka. She wrote many times to him, however, did not get any reply from him. The more she thought that she could not get back his love as before, the more she noticed not being rescued by her present life.

She lacked for nothing in her present life, however, always felt starvation in mind.

   One rainy night, Yukiko came back home from the church, change clothes from her black uniform to her lined kimono, awase, and took supper with the believer aunt in the living room. Meanwhile, she saw an evening newspaper, where an advertisement of the Agriculture Magazine caught her eyes. The name, Tomioka Kengo, showed as a writer of “Essay of Urushi.” Yukiko recalled in mind the Agriculture Magazine which Tomioka showed her in Osei’s room. Soon she asked the aunt maid to buy the magazine at the bookstore nearby.

   Tomioka’s writing was merely an amateur, but his writing style was easy to read. Her memory of Vietnam which only the two people knew ignited her mind. While reading “Essay of Urushi,” she felt running immediately to meet him. Yukiko, however, was stubborn to Osei’s departed soul, and thus, refrained from visiting him. Her mental starvation was felt everyday, however, it seemed not to heal without meeting Tomioka. Yukiko reflected on her behavior. ‘I have attacked too much his ruin and reduced circumstances. However rare Osei was for Tomioka, I cannot be defeated by that woman. I wonder why Tomioka collapsed and I also am collapsing. ……  We, two people dreamed too much of the irrevocable past dreams, and after all, we might have become to hate each other. If Osei’s issue was the center of us two people, it would have been impossible for us to resolve to die together. Two months have passed since the incident. By now, probably, Tomioka has been released from Osei’s apparition.’

   “Look at this name, aunt. ……  This is the name of my former lover.”

   The aunt, who was putting away the dishes from the table, took the magazine in hands and looked at the contents at which Yukiko pointed. The aunt was called O’Shige’san. Her two sons died in the war, and she made a living by peddling fish. Her husband died this past spring. Too many miseries came one after another to her, and so, she began to worship the Ōhinata’kyō. Iba found that she was tight-lipped, and employed her as a live-in maid for Yukiko.

   “The essay of something. How do you read this kanji character?”

   “The essey of Urushi. It is read Urushi. The tray and the wooden bowls on our table are lacquered by urushi. The kanji character means it.”

   “Did he do business dealing with the urushi?”

   “No, he did not. He was a public employee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, a person of rank. ……  During the wartime, I worked for the same ministry as a typist, and went to Indochina as an army civilian employee. I met him over there, and we loved each other.”

   While talking about her past, she became sentimental, and was moved to tears.

   “The war ended. We returned to Japan separately through the many postwar hardships. I don’t know why, but our relationship turned cold and distant rapidly after blown by wind of Japan, although we two people had loved ardently each other in the southern country. We once talked about mutual suicide, and went to Ikaho looking for the place of death. ……”

   Oshige listened to Yukiko while wiping slowly the table.

   “We were stuck in Ikaho without money. He went to sell his watch in town, and the master of a bar bought it. Tomioka must have come under some evil influence and had an affair with the master’s wife. It was my surprise that the man, who intended to commit a mutual suicide, still went astray into such an absurdity. ……  My trust upon him utterly fell apart. ……  Well, since then, I have gotten so desperate as not to be able to even breathe. I never did love Iba. Anyone in starvation become desperate, whose mind also starves. After all, he or she becomes like a hungry wolf. I think that people in love eventually hate each other when they starve. …… If I compare it to sailing, people who board a ship sailing a peaceful sea will not vomit. While sailing on a stormy day, however, people vomit even if they may try to feel good. ……  Things are like that. ……  I came back again to Iba, because I have nothing to vomit any more. ……  Iba is a person I dislike. He is worse than I. I have become considerably evil, however, that man is utterly evil, more evil than I. ……  The founder also is an evil person. You are deceived, aunt. ……”

   “I know that very well. Despite that, I cannot live if not believing the Ōhinata’sama. I don’t mean that I believe the founder and Iba’sama. They are trivial people. ……”

   Hearing that Oshige believed the Ōhinata’kyō but not the founder or Iba, Yukiko felt as if her mind was suddenly burned by Oshige’s words. She felt her own sense of superiority was knocked down.

   “That’s true. I only believe the invisible Ōhinata’sama.”

   “Such a god as Ōhinata’sama is nowhere in the world, is it?”

   “In fact, one day, I looked at my nail. However magnifiscent and convenient things are invented, nevertheless, I thought even my nail is miraculous. Human beings’ nails are more fearful than atomic bombs. I utterly thought so. I thought this means that gods live in human beings. However hard scholars might strive to invent even a nail of human beings, they would not be able to invent it. No, they absolutely cannot. ……  This nail is created naturally from one’s parents. Without gods, human beings would not be born. …… Human beings have possessed worldly desires, and I cannot live without believing something. How about, O’Yuki’sama, going straight to the man whom you love, and speak a story well in simple words? ……  Men are not shackled by superstition, so, may not be so easy to deal with. If you, a woman, remain patient and speak to him of your affections carefully, he will understand you and your devotion. Speaking does not mean to chat, but you have only to sit beside him, and protect him tenderly. ……”

   Yukiko began to giggle. She felt for the first time that she could laugh cheerfully.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 49

 

Tomioka earned money with the “Essey of Urushi,” and could keep alive. He partly paid for his unpaid room charge, and could

live on the remaining money somehow for two months. He also got used to the loneliness, and began to write about the memory of

some agriculture and forestry engineer about whom he had wanted for a long time to write about in the Agriculture Magasine.

He aimed mainly to describe his nostalgia for the forestry in the southern country. He had written down a lot in his study notebooks in Indochina, none of which he could bring back on the occasion of repatriating. He retraced his memories and thought in mind that he would send his future book to the deceased Kano for his memorial if he successfully wrote up the manuscript and the magazine company published it as a book. Furthermore, he had a secret wish in his heart to dedicate his future book to all those who died in combats in Indochina.

 

Vietnamese, regardless of their social classes, have a fervent faith for nature, and are inclined to interpret natural and social phenomena through their natural spirits. Their lives during their lifetime depend upon the activities of natural spirits and all the vicissitudes are notices made by spirits, which is the vietnamese philosopy.

   On the day of his arrival in Da Lat, Tomioka was introduced by the chief of the bureau to Kano. He recalled in mind that Kano displayed a wooden piece on his desk.

   “Tomioka’san, have you ever seen the first grade aloeswood for incense, kyara?”

   Kano held up that small wooden piece to Tomioka’s nose, and said with a smile.

   “After I have come to the was zone, I don’t have any opportunity to touch a woman. So, I began to study the aloeswood for incense. It’s smart, isn’t it? ……”

   Tomioka wanted to start writing it from this memory that he had been shown aloeswood by Kano for the first time. At that time, Kano also told him that the same wood is called Kyara in Japan and shĕn xiāng in China using different kanji characters. When he went to the Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute in Saigon, he saw an excellent aloeswood for incense, kyara, at the size of a dried bonito, katsuobushi^[*90] in the Forestry manager room on Liu Song Street near the botanical garden. The manager, Mr. Moran, told him its French name as bois d’agar. The aloeswood was used since the days of the 7th emperor Wu of the Han dynasty of China, during 141 to 87 BC. It seemed to be used from much earlier in India, Egypt, and Arabia. A good example of spirit worship of Vietnamese can be referred to by many temples existing everywhere in Vietnam, and the aloeswood incense is often burnt there. The aloeswood is said to be as valuable as gold of the same weight, and is produced in southern Vietnam. Furthermore, the quality of the Vietnam aloeswood is the best in the world. Hearing this, Tomioka put a pinky finger size piece of aloeswood under Yukiko’s pillow in her bed when he first got acquinted with her. He went to a Vietnamese temple and offered a bribe to a monk, who gave him a small piece of aloeswood. Tomioka thought there was a mysterious linkage between the Vietnamese religion and aloeswood incense

   He wrote his manuscript as many as 200 sheets. While writing, Tomioka was aware that Yukiko’s concern was utterly irrelevant to various things in Indochina. The nostalgic memory of the Vietnamese maid and his child flashed into his mind instead. He thought that after all he could not forget the sceneries in Indochina only because of his nostalgia for scents pertinent to the land there.

   These days, his visits to Sēkichi in prison was reduced. Particularly, for the past month, he had not been there at all. Tomioka felt himself as if such pale sparks that spilled over outside a gear of this huge society, while his interests transferred from one focus to another with nothing burning up. There was no difference between Sēkichi imprisoned and Tomioka himself unprisoned. Presumably, prisoners were good people itself and people released in the society were real prisoners. Tomioka secretly felt conscience of the Penal Code doubtful. A perpetrator who murdered Osei was Tomioka. Sēkichi worked merely like a hunting dog of the hunter, and was arrested. The man took the absurd way and chose capital punishment. Tomioka began to feel irritation as if he could not sustain his own conscience while thinking about Sēkichi from time to time. Sēkichi’s crime related to his behavior, on the contrary, the crime committed by Tomioka was no other than something not done.

   Sēkichi unexpectedly assumed being bright anytime when Tomioka visited him in prison. He could not believe when the lawyer remarked that Sēkichi was gloomy and lonely by character. ―　Tomioka, even while writing, recalled Sēkichi’s beaming face despite he wanted not to think of it. The hunting dog was imprisoned. When the hunter visited the dog, it looked quite unconcerned. …… Such an image appeared in his mind and he felt something weird in Sēkichi. The cause that Kano was arrested by the military police in Saigon was the same. Kano already entered the netherworld. Even when he had been alive in bed, however, Tomioka did not visit him at all. Kano had been dying lonely without reconciling with each other.

   Only Yukiko visited him in Yokohama. She talked to Tomioka that Kano apologized to Yukiko for hurting her. Tomioka thought that his own cowardice was a lasting psychological injury marked with a scar.

   At night, Tomioka was eager to drink a strong sake. The Southern forestry would not make him money at his writing speed of five or six sheets a day. Everytime that he became eager to drink sake, he sold Osei’s furniture and clothes. He sold her tea-cabinet, her trunk, and Osei’s clothes were already gone. To the tavern where the young girl with beautiful eyes worked, he went there seven or eight times and got along with her to chat.

   The girl came twice to collect money for reckoning. ― Tomioka got bored writing, and took a towel hung on the wall to go for taking a bath after a long time. A laughter of a semiwhispered tone was heard through the wall, which became Osei’s voice as caused by an instant associative imagination. Such a laughter as if swelled out, when Tomioka went hand in hand with Osei downwards on the narrow stone stairway in Ikaho at night. He pricked up his ears towards a female laughter sounded through the wall.

   He looked back over his shoulder towards a voice, hearing it saying “Uncle!” The tavern girl with large eyes looked into his room from the hallway, with two or three magazines in her arms and her clogs hung on a hand.

   “Oh, it’s you. ……”

   “Are you alone?”

   “I’m alone. May I help you? Did you come to collect my debt?”

   “I came here to play with you.”

   “Ahaa ……”

   Tomioka thought what a bold child she was. The girl rushed into the room at once, and shoved her dirty clogs under the bed. She sat on the hem of the bed without fear, and giggled meaninglessly. Tomioka noticed the laughter which he had heard was hers, and sat alongside her on the bed. He put his arm on her shoulder and drew her close. The girl looked up at him with her mouth open innocently. He stared at her face, which had a Southern feature. He kept staring at her lightly swarthy face, thinking in mind that he saw many faces like this in Indochina.

   “Dad scolded me a lot, so I ran away from home to make him scared. ……”

   “Your dad scolds you for your naughty deeds, doesn’t he?”

   “He has a nervous breakdown. Mom talks to dad of a divorce, and so, he is irritated everyday. The other day, as well, I stayed overnight at a police box. The police box at night is extremely amusing. ……”

   “Which police box did you stay at?”

   “It’s far from here. The policeman was very gentle and a good person.”

   Tomioka did not understand at all the girl’s psychology.

 

 

.. * 50

 

It was winter.

   Tomioka wrote up his manuscript about his memory of some forestry engineer as many as 500 sheets in poverty. This was unsuccessful. He was disappointedly turned down as it was difficult to publish his manuscript at present due to a recession in the publishing industry. As if he stood on a steep slope, as if he was likely to roll down, he could not support his own unstable life anymore. He tried to find a job, thus, went to an employment security office and visited his friends of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Ministry days.

   All these efforts deceived him. He, lying coldly in the unheated room, did not always think about Yukiko. For him to think about Yukiko, in itself, was an indication of his vulgarness. He had not paid for the room since the summer, and thus, was forced to leave it by the owner. In addition, his old mother came from Urawa to visit his room, and appealed for help referring to Kuniko’s disease and their tight plait.

   One snowy morning during the New Year Days, a telegram informed him of the death of Kuniko. Tomioka sold off the bed in a hurry to a secondhand dealer, and went back to Urawa. She lived a wretched life and unrecognizably worn out. Her death was utterly like a suicide.

   A long-term weakening drained her. Besides, she was affected with tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, which needed a surgical operation. Her doctor seemed to be anxious about the operation of this thin, worn out woman, and so, his medical advice for her was only to breathe fresh air and take a pill of cod-liver oil. Soon, a pus wound appeared at the upper part of the groin, so an operation was inevitable to insert a pus rubber pipe. She was in the emergent condition. But Kuniko endured her disease patiently until she drew her last breath in a miserable appearance.

   His home lacked of money even to buy a coffin. Tomioka did not feel such the sorrow of parting as he felt for Osei at her death, but had feelings of guilt and remorse at not having treated her like his wife. So he hated their reduced circumstances.

   It was snowing in the morning.

He did not have money to invite a Buddhist monk to read the sutra near her death pillow nor to ask an undertaker to carry her body to a crematory. He decided to borrow the money from Yukiko in an emergency. He wore his father’s old wornout overcoat, and left for Tokyo early in the same morning. He visited her relying on the address from her envelope. Iba’s nameplate appeared. A modest two-story house. On the other side of the painted gate, a shrub of the aoki, Aucuba japonica, bearing red berries, was covered with snow. When he was about to open the lattice door, a dog barked noisily in the house. Tomioka dared to open the lattice door with the frosted glass fitted in.

   Unexpectedly, Yukiko carrying a white dog in her arms came downstairs into the corridor. Yukiko wearing a yellow jacket and black trousers looked at Tomioka’s miserable appearance. At first, she stood as if she was completely overwhelmed, and seemed not to be able to speak.

   Her looks had utterly changed since this past summer. She became chubby but younger. Her body had flesh in the right places. She recovered her appearance to the days of Indochina. The dog was long haired and white, which still was barking nervously with its red tongue out at Tomioka. Yukiko beat the dog’s head severely, and said.

   “Ah! I wondered who has come. ……”

   Tomioka also appeared surprised looking at the dramatic change of this woman. Yukiko carried the dog upstairs, and noisily shut the paper panel door, fusuma. Before long, she came downstairs and invited Tomioka to the living room. Yukiko, facing behind, secretly stuck out her tongue. She felt so exhilarating as to feel pain on her chest while thinking that, at last, Tomioka broke down and visited her.

   Yukiko realized at once that this man came to borrow money. She turned the soft futon up over the heating devise, kotatsu, and turned on the switch of the brazier. She said in a sweet voice without looking at Tomioka.

   “It’s cold. Warm yourself in the kotatsu.”

   “You have utterly changed.”

   “How have I changed?”

   “You became younger.”

   “Is that so? I’m not easy going, though. ……”

   Yukiko sat face to face with him. She seemed to just have bathed as her hand skin looked ruddy. An iron kettle was steaming on a large porcelain brazier, hibachi. Near the paper lattice window, shoji, a three-sided mirror was placed, next to which a small shelf, a doll carrying seawater barrels showed in a glass case.

   “You’re already aware of my purpose to visit you, aren’t you?”

   Tomioka intended to talk from the entrance that he wanted to borrow money. However, when he entered the kotatsu, he somehow failed to begin talking. So, he only looked around the room at her life style. The dog barked noisily on the second floor.

   “Where is Iba’kun?”

   “He is in the church, now.”

   “Are you alone?”

   “Yes. An aunt works as a live-in servant. She went shopping.”

   “Yours is an enviable life. ……”

   “Oh, do you think so? ……”

   Yukiko, with an impassive face, snorted in her mind, wondering whether even this was an enviable life.

   “After the war, women became stronger.”

   Yukiko assumed a composed look and said, “Do you think so?” while serving tea. Tomioka utterly changed in appearance, and seemed two or three years older. She thought, “Is this the Tomioka that I have been yearning until today?” She felt strange with her own coldheartedness, while watching him from the corner of her eyes.

   “Kuniko died yesterday.”

   “Ah! Your wife died?”

   Yukiko stared wide-eyed at him. She recalled Tomioka’s wife whom she met twice. She could not forget her impression when she met his wife near his house in Gotanda, while she was hanging around Tomioka. Suddenly, tears overflew from her eyes. Tomioka, who came to his former woman only to ask for money like a rascal, appeared surprised seeing her flowing tears. Suddenly, various past memories of his undergoing hardships with this woman shaked his desolate heart. He could not say anything but absent-mindedly looked at her sobbing.

   Yukiko did not sob for Tomioka with her sentiment of pity. She shed tears remembering her own misery at that time like an ownerless dog. However, when she noticed her tears had an unexpected effect on him, Yukiko pressed her face on a wet towel which was put on the mirror, as if she could not abstain from crying.

   Tomioka, in the silent astonishment, kept staring at her sobbing. His heart began throbbing gradually. Fragrance which soaked into the towel assailed his nose seductively. Tomioka came close to Yukiko who was weeping loudly, held her shoulder, and pulled off her towel. He was delighted to understand that Yukiko loved him so deeply. He held her soft neck with his hands, and kissed her intensely. She had fresh scent as if he touched a new woman. He restlessly held her large waist. Yukiko like a patient undergoing medical examination let him do as he wanted. Soon, a secret memory of two people only, unexpectedly, was passing through a common course to the highest of all, where they finally shared a pain in their hearts.

 

 

.. * 51

 

The clock struck 12. Tomioka took a morning bath.

He felt emancipated from his life in such poverty that he had to give up taking a bath even for 6 or 7 days. The cobalt tiled bathtub was filled with hot water to the brim. He felt pity for his wife who died with a gaunt appearance, while washing his body with a white soap made in France. Looking at snowing on the small window, Tomioka felt like glimpsed at the cross-sectional view of the vast and menacing human society. Nowhere was his mind. He felt like desolate feelings stuck to his soles, as if he was loitering in the vast snowfield. The gas heater of the bath was burning with the sound of steam.

   In the soft steamy atmosphere, he shaved looking at his face into the mirror. Iba’s safety razor was chilly in his heart. He put it on his cheek, while recalling an epigram, ‘I will eat the whole dish once I took the poison,’ which simply signified ‘I will do till the last once I did it. Tomioka bitterly thought vulgarity of a person, who passed through a variety of the elusive world and reached here. A human being is a simple creature. The reality quickly changes with trifles. Unexpectedly, nobody is hurt, who quickly gets up and smiles. ― Yukiko looked up at the wall clock, and was relieved as the aunt did not come back soon. Her errands were always slow, and her return home was much slower today. Yukiko had to reach the Church by one o’clock and switch with Ōtsu Shimo for the work in the office. Yukiko decided to steal all the money today from the small coffer at the reception.

   The founder Narimune Senzō had a large coffer in his bedroom. All the property of the Church was hidden there. Apart from that,  money in the amount of 200,000 to 300,000 yen was laid up all the time in the small coffer in the reception. These days, the Ōhinata’kyō was more and more prosperous. Donations flew in, and the money dedicated by worshippers for consultation and prayer requests extremely increased. Season’s fruits, vegetables, and rolls of textiles were piled up in the worshippers’ attendance room.

   Yukiko prepared for lunch, and put a bottle of Suntory whiskey of Iba’s favorite on the table. Tomioka in the lively florid came back from the bathroom. He surprisingly saw Yukiko working lively. He thought that two people secretly expandeded their joy here, and kept watching the room through a thief’s perception. The dog was barking noisily upstairs. Tomioka entered the kotatsu, and felt the dizziness. He gulped drunk two or three glasses of whiskey in a gulp each. The taste of wishkey stimulated his body, and brightened his gloomy mind.

   The aunt came back at last. She looked perplexed seeing an unknown guest. Seeing Yukiko’s attitude toward him, however, the aunt seemed to guess that he was the writer of the story of urushi. Yukiko took 20,000 yen out of a drawer of the chest. She felt a little pity to give him that amount, but wrapped the money in a newspaper and pushed it under the cushion, zabuton, of Tomioka. Tomioka showed his appreciation with his eyes.

   Yukiko left for the church before one o’clock, and Tomioka went out with her. She walked slowly and asked him.

   “What are you going to do from now?”

   “As you can see, I cannot do anything. This money as well, I don’t know when I can pay it back to you. Are you all right with it?”

   “Sure. Do you stay at that room in Meguro after all?”

   “Yes.”

   “Say, I want to see you again. ……”

   Yukiko felt it hard to part from him. Now that Kuniko had died, Yukiko thought that they could marry without worrying about anyone. However, she restrained herself from talking about marriage to Tomioka, who was going to buy a coffin. Although she said so, Tomioka, who understood well what she had in mind, somehow felt it troublesome to talk further about their next meeting. Furthermore, he did not have ability for life at the present, and so, could not require her anything.

   The two people separated at the Den’en’chōfu station, while feeling something equivocal.

   Yukiko in Iba’s rubber boots went to the church on the snow road. She took over the work from Ōtsu Shimo, who was going to Atami together with the Founder today. Yukiko, sitting on the heating pad, stared at the scenery in the garden for a while. It did not snow. The sky was seen like cold petroleum through the leaden clouds. Tomioka in poverty was pitiful, but she felt that the attractiveness was fading from the man who had a lack of ability to make a living. A while ago, she was eager to steal all the money from the safe behind her and run away with Tomioka. But now she strangely calmed down, and thought that she had still a few hours to form an idea. An electric light was lit in the reception. It seemed that Iba drank sake with believers of the closed circle in the Founder’s room. In the lecture hall, approximately 20 naive believers secluded themselves, and sat on the cold floor to say their prayer.

   While her waist warming up on the heating pad, she with a smile remembered Tomioka’s vigorous strength at that time. That time was memorized in one point of her body to be a vestige also in her mind. While thinking this way, she could not retain her composure towards Tomioka. Her love entirely attracted to Tomioka seemed to her like the woman’s last struggling for creating her blood. She thought she could seek love with Tomioka peacefully. Boiling up waves in her mind went again toward the safe behind her. Yukiko extended her hands like an eable towards the safe. The money flooded into the coffer like hot water, whilst everyday was alike and tedious to Yukiko. She wanted to retire from such a strange life that anxieties could not thoroughly be wiped off. She was too lonely to keep striving in a corner as this.

   Yukiko pretended to be casual and looked at today’s donations in the donation book. She noticed the unexpectedly large amount of money was donated today, and opened the coffer. The banknotes of almost 600,000 yen were stored there.

   Nothing surprising that the money of this amount was stored for four to five days in the coffer, however, the money at which Yukiko looked today was challenging. Ōtsu Shimo correctly calculated the entire sum of money and reported it to the Founder and Iba, so Yukiko cannot do anything with the money. However, she did not feel like bringing it to the Founder’s room in the evening. The large coffer hidden in Narimasa’s bedroom was not opened every day but regularly on Sunday night. It was Sunday, today. It was the day when Iba and the Founder secretly calculated a whole income of the week. Tonight, however, the Founder was going to be absent. Therefore, the large coffer possibly might be opened on Monday. If so, Yukiko had still two days.

   Yukiko imagined various pretexts. After her running away, the aunt would inform Iba of a strange visitor. Yukiko got tired thinking of these many different things, and went to the lecture hall. Electric candles lit richly in the alter. Believers who shut themselves in the church were saying their prayer loudly.

   “People put boundaries into one and our true minds associated with each other. People in the world lack every training, only go astray, and loiter around in vain. ……  The Ōhinata’sama is tormenting people with secular agonies for salvation of these people from the hell. Without salvation of faith, without believing that the true faith is rewarded, these people die to fall into the hell. Hō’ren gē’kyō (refrain prayer) ……  So be it. Wherever the place the Ōhinata’kyō may rule over, the darkness disappears and the Sun shines, and people are emancipated from loitering in the darkness. ……”

   Yukiko sat on the floor while listening to the prayer. She closed her eyes and joined her hands in prayer. However, her irritating mind got entangled like threads and could not calm down. Bulky banknotes flickered in front of her eyes, and she could not remove it from her thoughts. The God did not show over her head or before her eyes. She could not worship even the Ōhinata’kyō’s ether to which Iba always referred. The God was nowhere. Only the people’s gathering like Noah’s ark was a gloomy view on the large floor. Iba with his red face entered the lecture hall. His complexion was significantly good and his body was of a discernibly dignified build. He looked around all over the hall, and at the believers saying prayer. He opened the glass window facing to the engawa-porch, spit into the garden, and violently shut the window again. He found Yukiko sitting near the entrance of the hall. He, with a satisfied look, went away with a heavy stride towards the founder’s room. Iba’s receding figure looked full of self-confidence. He was thinking that the believers were like infants with no need of constant care. Yukiko looked at the alter with electric candles shining. The round mirror was shining in the other side of the purple curtains. Yukiko kept gazing at the mirror while anticipating a possibility that the God might appear around it. Despite her anticipation, even a mystic shadow was not reflected on it. The snow on the garden glass was melting in the form of a circle as if in the pictures painted by Kōrin^[*98]. The wind blew, and the glass windows sounded with squeaking.

   When she thought about Tomioka, Yukiko extremely missed the fleshly pleasures of this morning as if her chest was compressed.

 

 

.. * 52

 

Kuniko’s funeral was over. Tomioka still stayed in Urawa for 5 additional days. He felt relieved after the funeral as if he unloaded a heavy burden off his shoulder. He sold off Kuniko’s beddings, her clothes, and all her belongings for a mere song, and blew off the memory of the decesed, warts and all. For Tomioka, his wife Kuniko was like another person for a long time. Osei’s memory still stifled him, however, as for Kuniko, he felt somewhat released. At the same time to bury her, everything about Kuniko was off his mind quickly. It could be said that Kuniko, as a wife had a lonesome life. She was completely meaningless as a wife since Tomioka came back from Indochina. He had stolen Kuniko, who was his friend’s wife, and had lived a happy life together. But it was the ephemeral happiness. Two years later, Tomioka left for Indochina as a civilian employee. If not the war, both Kuniko and Tomioka must have stably settled in an ordinary official’s life. Tomioka had been away from Japan and left Kuniko for five years, which was a distance too far away for two people to get along together again. A large encumbrance as the war was falling on them heavily. The married couple standing on the steril barren land had lost their passion to walk closer to each other and to reclaim the land. After all, their marriage life was over fleetingly. Tomioka felt much freer after Kuniko’s bruial.

   His elder parents desired to spend the reminder of their life helping the farmer in their home country, Matsuida town in Gunma Prefecture, Jōshū. Upon their request, Tomioka sold their hut-like house in Urawa for 140,000 yen net to a man who worked for Japanese National Railways. He gave the money to his parents and sent them out to the home country. In Matsuida, the younger brother of his father was a farmer. He had a storage which was previously lent to evacuees, and let the old couple settle there.

   It was a sunny day when Tomioka returned to Tokyo. When he entered his room, the daughter of the tavern was there, who wrapped herself in his futon and reading magazines.

   She laid down freely and easy as if she was in her own house. Seeing Tomioka enter the room, she grinned at him. She did not show at all since she dropped in at the end of the last year. Before he knew it, she was made up and had her hair permed. Once he had kissed her playfully when he was drunk. This girl came again, relying only on that connection.

   “A while ago, a beautiful woman came here. I drove her away. ……”

   Hearing this, momentarily, Tomioka could not guess who the beautiful woman was, then noticed that Yukiko had come.

   “What was the woman like?”

   “Very beautiful. She wore the high-coller stripe overcoat and nylon stockings. Besides, she hung a shiny black bag on her arm. And then, she smoked here.”

   “Did you talk with her about something?”

   “Sure. She aksed me how I became acquinted with you, and I said I am a good friend with Tomioka’san. Hearing that, she wrinkled her nose and grinned like snorting. I was stung, so I spread out the futon and lay down in it.”

   “Didn’t she leave any message to me?”

   “She said she will come again. She insistently asked me if I stay here always. I said, yes, of course. ……  She looked perplexed. But, I do not like such a woman. She seemed to be cold-hearted. She looked around the room. Maybe, she won’t come anymore. Am I wrong?”

   “You are terrible. ……”

   “Well. Do you love her, Tomioka’san?”

   “She’s Tomioka’san’s wife.”

   “Oh, no. ……  Don’t lie. Rumors spread that Tomioka’san’s wife was murdered. I know everything.”

   The girl stood up with a nasty smile. She wore her jacket but not her skirt. Her thick knees were exposed from under her dirty short chemise. Tomioka looked away, and turned on the electric grill. There was no bed in the bleak room, without a suitable place to settle. He sat in front of the table, the surface of which was thinly covered with powder dust from the girl’s powder compact. A cheap and stiffened lipstick and a red comb with a few teeth chipped off were also lying beside it. Tomioka bitterly smiled, thinking that Yukiko might have taken him as a fickle man as ever.

   “Listen. Uncle will work from now on. So, go back home.”

   “How come? Right now, I do not have a house to return. I was committed in Yōseien in Saginomiya until yesterday. I ran away from there. Because there was nothing interesting there. I always pasted pattern paper to make air mail envelopes, therefore, my hands are chilblained. Look. ― I remembered you, uncle, and ran away. If I go back home, I will be driven away again. ……  There is no place other than this room for me to go to.”

   “What is Yōseien?”

   “It’s a youth detention center for juvenile delinquents like me. We paste envelopes, on each side of which blue and red stripes are printed. The envelopes were pretty, and the job was interesting at first. But I grew tired of it. The afterimages of blue and red stripe pattern such as a barber shop’s long and thin candy remained like dust in the eyes. We worried, saying to each other that we all well became color-blind.”

   Tomioka felt his brain becoming tired. It might be said that he was exhausted all his life. He yearned for tranquillity of his former official’s life, of which he had made light as a simple life at that time. He could not help thinking that it had been the most beautiful days in his life. He had many worries also during the days of his simple official life. But those were not grimy worries like today. He screamed at times and/or suffered bitterly in other occasions. ― Around ten years had passed since then. At present, however, he felt, in pleats of his heart, that his power ran out, and so he did not have any energy to scream anymore. His life became flat like mold. Simultaneously, he merely looked, with other people’s cold eyes, at people’s mold-like way of living, which came about with mold. Seeing the poorly madeup young girl’s recalcitrant figure lying down, Tomioka thought as if he saw a color of a corner of society after the defeat. This girl was also tired.

   However, now, this girl’s presence was an annoyance to Tomioka.

   “Listen, I will send you home. Why not go back home?”

   “No thanks. I want to be here.”

   “Why don’t you leave here?”

   “Don’t be hard on me. It’s very cold outside, today. It’s much better to sleep here than in the station. I will not disturb you, so, let me stay here. May I?”

   “No, you may not. Uncle will send you home, so you’d better go home.”

   Tomioka said curtly. The girl, lying, held her tongue for a while. She got up abruptly and wore her skirt which was left untidily near the pillow. She held a parcel wrapped in furoshiki, and went to the corridor. She shut the door so wildly that Tomioka looked back. After she went away, he stood still for a while, feeling as if she left dismal behind. He felt helplessness. He felt like her youth was good for nothing for herself. She was lonely, ignorant, nervous, hysterical, and a pixie which Tomioka did not understand at all what she thought or why she wanted to loiter in the town. After all, the girl would go to prison or commit suicide. ……  He felt so disgusted as to vomit. He kicked the futon spread on the floor.

   Tomioka suddenly recalled Kuniko’s corpse as thin as a rice cracker, senbē, at the time of placing her in coffin. While kicking the futon, his eyes became sore in the back, with recollection for her. That woman also died. She did not have any happiness, but died as rags. He had placed her in coffin, and pounded the nails. That parting hurt deeply with sympathy for her, for the first time, now.

 

 

.. * 53

 

Yukiko, having only her single belongings, left home without saying anything to the aunt. She decided not to come back to this house anymore. With strong intention, as if she would wrench her own life off, Yukiko at first took a taxi and visited Tomioka in the tenement house. She had the taxi waiting outside and entered his room, where she met a strange girl who seemed insane. So, she changed her mind. She went out of the tenement house, and went by taxi to Shinagawa station, from which she got on a train for Shizuoka. She had not thought about her destination, and so, casually, bought a ticket for Shizuoka.

   Yukiko absentmindedly looked out of the window at the wintry scene in the twilight, as if she was on a trip of the whim. She momentarily had an idea to go back to her parent’s home in Shizuoka, but that was thought of as boring. Besides, it was troublesome to come across someone she knew.

   The train arrived at Mishima around at eight in the evening, where she felt like going to Shuzenji and changed trains. At each station, she looked out at the inns’ advertising boards, and felt like getting off at Nagaoka station. She quickly unloaded her suitcase from the luggage rack, and got off the train. It was an ordinary town as if she walked in the suburbs of Tokyo, maybe because it was late at night. An old male touter took her to a small inn called Yamabuki’sō^[*218]. The inn was comparatively new and built of timber of low quality. Yukiko did not mind whichever inn it was. Yukiko without taking off her overcoat wrote a message quickly and had it sent to Tomioka by telegram.

   The inn was tranqille. There seemed only a few guests. She put away her locked suitcase on a storage space above the closet. She changed clothes to the inn’s dotera and went to the bathroom. She was fidgety. She had a guilty conscience for having absconded with the money 600,000 yen, however, no more feared Iba or Narimune. She got the happiness of 600,000 yen, however, now she could not procure the happiness which she wanted, with the money of that much. She thought everything was too late.

   After taking a bath, she took her place at the table where dinner was served. Her mental starvation was not satisfied. She went to the town, and took a walk in the cold wind. Street after street, there was nothing more than darkness everywhere. She bought mandarine oranges, mikan, and went back to the inn. She wanted Tomioka to come by all means, so she wrote another message and had a maid send it to Tomioka by telegram again. She did not care however what the inn’s staff might wonder. Rather, she spoke jokingly to the maid that she was waiting for her lover to come. Yukiko felt as if she had gotten a great wealth, and could immediately start a joyful life joining hands together with Tomioka. At present, however, the happiness that she had money drove her into a solitude with which she was afflicted furthermore.

   She could not sleep even if the night fell. She lay on the starch-smelled sheet, and while hearing the cold wintry wind roaring, her yearning for Tomioka began intensely burning like fire. She got up two or three times in the middle of the night, and opened the storage over the closet by sliding the paper door, fusuma, to confirm the presence of her small suitcase.

   Brief and irritative sleeps were intermittent till the daybreak.

   It was after her sending him the fourth telegram that Tomioka came to Yamabuki’sō. She was eating dinner. The manager announced, “A guest for you,” and at the same time, Tomioka in a worn-out overcoat without a hat appeared from behind the manager, and entered her room. He looked angry. Immediately after sitting, he said. “Your telegram is senseless, which says, I will die if you won’t come.”

   Yukiko was pleased at that his meek coming. She wanted Tomioka to share her anxiety of these last two days. Soon, she ordered sake. She was in high spirit and could not wait for his coming back from the bathroom. The maid teased her, and Yukiko was giggling and laughing although there was nothing funny.

   Tomioka returned from the bath and took his place at the dinner table while asking her, “When did you arrive?”

   “Last night. You must be surprised getting my telegram!”

   “Yes. The neighbor’s wife surprised when a telegram was delivered to me.”

   “I eagerly wanted you to come. I have many things to talk to you. I left Iba.”

   Her news seemed not to be a surprise to him.

   “What are you intending to do?”

   “I left because the life there was unbearable to me. I committed a bad thing before leaving it. ……”

   Yukiko, like a child who did mischief, innocently talked of her crime that she stole 600,000 yen from the Church and fled from there.

   “Iba’san must have given a robbery report to the police at this time.”

   “No, he cannot. Everyone is doing dubious things there. It’s a money-making religion. If he turns in me to the police, the church’s dark business will be exposed. ― He knows how to avoid danger which will only backfire. Only 600,000 yen means to them no more than a breaking down of one single car. ……  It is dirty money they have made without capital. ……”

   “God will punish you for it someday. ……”

   “I don’t care, if you mean a punishment of the Ōhinata’kyō, because it is godless. Besides, this amount of money is cheaper for Iba than giving me that house. ……”

   “A certain money in a certain place, isn’t it? I see, the religion is profitable if it succeeds.”

   Tomioka became tipsy with two or three small ceramic cups of sake, and gradually felt relaxed. Yukiko might have wanted to alleviate her own feelings of guilt by speaking ill of Narimune and Iba. Tomioka thought such a longterm negotiation with Yukiko was his fate. Osei and Kuniko have died. Only this woman survives. Besides, she lives with a stout fight. Considering this, he felt as if he was driven in a desperate situation by this woman this time.

   Yukiko remembered the prayer of the Ōhinata’kyō such as ‘People in the world lack of discipline, only being at a loss, only loitering around.’ She began to get desperate and thought that loitering around the today’s delusion is far more fun even if she would be caught by Iba tomorrow. After dinner, the maid cleared the table, and got another order to bring them a few more ceramic bottles of sake.

   “Thinking back of Ikaho, we have survived well.”

   “After that, our life was not necessary to add. ……”

   “I wonder if it’s true. ……  Your life, however, was full of changes, wasn’t it? Such as the fact that a woman like Osei’san appeared in front of you. ……”

   No reply from Tomioka.

   “I would have been much happier, if Osei’san did not die in that way. I am mortified seeing your face as if it is possessed by Osei’san’s departed soul. I do not mean to say this because I am drunk, but we have not had even a day that we can talk over anything like this together, have we? I hate Osei’san. I still hate her very much. How disgustful she was! ……”

   “Did you call me here to this inn to talk of Osei?”

   “No. Not that. I did not think of that at all. ……  But, when I saw you, I thought that woman’s departed soul still possesses you, somewhere in your body. ― Why could not we die agreeably in Ikaho?”

   “Can you die, now?”

   “How about you?”

   “I can’t die. ……”

   “Well …… . I don’t feel like dying either.”

   “We no longer need to die. Time has passed while transforming our mentality.”

   “What do you mean?”

   “I mean nothing. Not any particular reason.”

   “Do you mean that I can be together with you from now on?”

   “Together? Well. It may be impossible. I came here but intended to leave tomorrow. ……”

   Maybe Yukiko was drunk. She felt her eyes blurred with tears. Then, the tears fell to her chest. He said that it was impossible to be with her, and she asked “why?” with her wry lips while sobbing convulsively.

   “As a result, I have always caused troubles to you. Even if you ask me why we cannot be together, I don’t have any explanation to give you. We are in such a world as this. Somehow, I feel sorry hearing that you stole the money from the church, however, I do not need a wife or a woman for a time being. I feel like doing my work a little more seriously. I got used to the hard life, and will move from that apartment house soon. Can’t we part amicably as it is?”

Suddenly, she had an intense pain in her chest as if a wad of 600,000 yen banknotes fell down on her head like a heavy anchor.

 

 

 

 

.. * 54

 

Yukiko stared at Tomioka’s face when he said, ‘Can’t we part amicably as it is?’ She kept silent for a while, thinking whatever thoughts he might have, he could not have uttered before her such faithless words like he did not need a wife or a woman.

   Tomioka was drunk strangely not like usual.

He looked blankly at Yukiko, while bringing a cup of sake to his lips. They were the coldest eyes she had ever seen. She wondered whether this was his natural facial expression. Scrawny cheeks. His habit to rip off his hair with his hand whenever he smoothed his hair upward from his forehead. His eye rims were swollen. He tapped his dark-red chest exposed of the dotera. Yukiko felt that she saw in Tomioka what was unknown to her before. She stared at him as if this was the first time seeing him, and then, sensed a choking odor of the male body to fascinate a woman. Yukiko picked up a bottle and poured sake into his cup, while thinking that this body scent might entice a woman. She also got drunk.

Yukiko wanted to get drunk badly.

Was her thought of this morning merely a shallow idea, in case Tomioka did not understand her passion although she had stolen money and fled? ……  Anyway, she did not think two people would go well even if she got together with him. However, she did not feel like part with him.

She got drunk more heavily and her whole skin became numb as if she had eaten poisonous globefish. She wanted drunk more, and to call down whatever thoughts she had in mind upon him. Yukiko, from time to time, at a lucid moment in her drunkness, began talking about her memories of Indochina.

“I am never disappointed like you. I will survive. You have it your own way and find another mistress. I read a novel “Bel Ami^[*14]” in the camp in Hanoi. You are the very personage of the hero of this novel. …… The novel’s hero is a homeless vagabond, and climbs up the ladder of women to reach the top of the social pyramid in Paris. But you merely step over women one after another. ……”

   Tomioka did not read that novel, but got disgruntled when he was told that he stepped over women. He grabbed her arm and dragged her towards him.

   “Did you call me here to say such a thing? I’m not such a man who relies on other people’s money even if you came to me with 10,000,000 yen. ……  You stole the money from the church, and boasted of it as if it was a trump. ……  Why did you go to Iba if you yearn for me?”

   “How can you say things like that, despite that you always do as you please? ……”

   Tomioka let go of her hand.

   “You also use men as your ladder.”

   Tomioka laid down with his eyes closed. He did not know what his memory associated with, but remembered the day of his arrival in Hue and that he was accommodated at Grand Hotel near Clemanseau Bridge. He spent a few days in Hue to visit Mr. Marcon at the Forestry Bureau in Hue. He went to ask Mr. Marcon to provide him with the wood seeds. He assumed an overbearing attitude at Grand Hotel, and now, has no trace left, but inwardly looking forward to 600,000 yen that this woman boosted. ……  Tomioka grinned at himself in mind. Yukiko said to him that he stepped on women, and it may be so.

   Recently, Tomioka got a job proposal to go to Yakushima^[*215] Island of the south end of Japan, by the care of his friend and former co-worker in the Agriculture and Forestry Ministery. Tomioka was unwilling to go back to the same work as an public service personnel again. Nevertheless, he did not have any other means to live on, so, he had no choice but going back to the former office.

   Besides, there were two other possible jobs for him, one of which was to work as an engineer at the Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute which was located in Takaike’chō in Wakayama Prefecture.

   Tomioka preferred the job in a local forestry office on a solitary island of the south, Yakushima, to going to the Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute in Takaike’chō. His friend encouraged him if the Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute in Takaike’chō did not please him, there was another post for him in the Kōya forestry office in Kudo’san’chō in Ito’gun in Wakayama Prefecture as well. Tomioka departed from him saying, “I will come to see you when I have nothing more to do.” He thought, however, it would be better to go into mountains once more than blunder around Tokyo. Even so, he needed to make considerable preparations before his leaving his sick wife and parents behind. However, Kuniko had died and his parents had moved to Matsuida. Finally, he became free from any burden in his life. Even from tomorrow, his friend would issue a written appointment of his work in Yakushima Island.

   As for Yakushima Island, Tomioka knew nothing other than the ancient forests of Yakusugi, Cryptomeria, of more than 1,000 years old.

   Yakushima seemed to him to be an uninhabited island. His friend explained to him that Yakushima consisted of the forestry office only, and it rains constantly even for a whole month, however, islanders were naive. His friend laughed saying, “Are you ready?”

   Tomioka thought, if he returned again to the former job as public service personnel, it might be better to go to Yakushima Island, than to the mount Kōyasan^[*100] in Wakayama. He saw a map, and found a round island Yakushima close to Tanegashima^[*192] Island.

   He closed his eyes thinking of going to Yakushima. Yukiko creeped close towards his flank, and said something garrulously, although he went off into a doze.

   She creeped closer to him, pressed her face to his chest.

   “Why does your mind part from me? Why did you suddenly become so callous toward me? Did you get angry at my having been at Iba’s place?”

   “Not being like that. Whether getting angry or not is not an issue anymore. After the end of the war, everyone’s mood has changed like this. ……  We lost the power to judge things on the basis of ourselves. It’s not ourselves but someone else around us to determine our purpose. The reins of government began to make us. Even if we both chase our old dream and live a merry life with your money for a time being, nothing will come of this. We are precarious like a rootless floating plant, which, nevertheless, will not work itself out, after all. …… ”

   “We will die. We should have died in Ikaho, but could not. We will die when we run out of money. You aksed me to die together, didn’t you?”

   “It’s painful to die.”

   Tomioka suddenly recalled the method of suicide described in “Demons.” Whether it causes you a pain or not if a boulder as large as a large house falls upon your head. ……  He delineated a boulder in mind, and was frightened with its possible pain imaging if he stood under the boulder of about 3,000 tons in weight, hyaku’man’gan. The boulder itself was not painful, but a fear for the boulder caused him a pain when he was seized with fear for it. Tomioka felt a fear for death regardless of the means, which was similar to a fear of the boulder.

   “Dying is painful.”

   “If we died, there is no pain.”

   “If we can die well, it would be good. But when we fail to die well, it will cause us a pain. ……”

   “I can bear pain. But, it is unbearable that you hate me.”

   Yukiko grasped the collar of his dotera, and shook him as if lifting him.

   “I don’t hate you. As I love you, I say to you that we shall change the way of life each other now. ……  Either is possible for you, going back to Iba or starting a new job with that money. O’Yuki’san, the world changed in this way. Our romance disappeared simultaneously with the end of the war. You are old enough, so, you should stop having a dream like a girl of juvenile years. In my case as well, when I am away from you, I see you in my dream and feel the ecstasy sometimes. Human beings are like that. ―  Now, look at me. Let’s talk without reserve, tonight. We do not want an awkward parting, each other, do we? It’s not that I want to break up because I hate you. If I hated you, I would not have come over here. ……”

   Tomioka got up wearily, and picked up the bottle of sake, tokkuri. The sake had already gotten cold, which he poured into his cup.

   The maid suddenly entered the room to make the bed.

   Tomioka ordered her to bring another bottle of hot sake. While the maid spread the futon, two people sat on chairs on the engawa-porch. The passageway was cold.

   Until the bed making finished, they sat face to face in silence. Soon, a pair of the futon was put side by side, which filled the whole room. The charcoal brazier, hibachi, and the low table, chabudai, were set aside to the alcove, tokonoma.The hot sake was served there.

More charcoal was put in the hibachi, which burnt with blue flames.

   Two people sat down across each other at hibachi.

   “Tell anything to me.”

   “Not the great story even if you edge up to me. ……  We may be a graduate from a life and death dialogue.”

   “You are selfish.”

   “Why?”

   “I mean only that. I fled in a desperate feeling.”

   “In a desperate feeling. That’s no good. I won’t do it for anything. ……  I’m sure it’s Matthew 7: 13-14. ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’ ……  After all, we have already passed without stopping in front of the gate which leads to destruction. Anything is welcome but the fear for the boulder, as I said before.”

   “Then, I will die alone.”

   Tomioka grinned with a cold look and said in low voice.

   “Do as you please.”

 

 

.. * 55

 

The next morning, they got up around noon. Tomioka was reading a newspaper in the futon. Articles reported the strike of Japanese National Railways to be carried out in February. Tomioka was not interested in a labor dispute. He threw the paper to the bedside, and gave a big yawn. Yukiko was staring at a stain on the white curtain.  

   She felt wretched while thinking, ‘Tomioka can go back to the same room as before, however, I have no where to return.’ She removed her hands from the futon, and looked at them in the yellow sunshine of the late morning.

   Tomioka lay on his belly holding his pillow, picked up a cigarette and smoked. Yukiko spoke to him.

   “Around what time do you leave?”

   “Let me see. I will take on the train around 2 o’clock.”

   “Will you return by all means?”

   “How about you?”

   “Where can I return to? I do not have any place to go.”

   Tomioka puffed a smoke and stared at it. Yukiko hated to go back to Iba’s house. If she could return there any time, she would not have needed to cling to Tomioka. On the pretext of her flirtation, she would have returned to Iba quickly. Although she did not have any intention to die, she did not feel like going back to Iba, the fact of which was serious indeed to her. She did not feel like talking anymore. Another one day at least, she wanted him to stay here. However, she had secretly given up on Tomioka. Tears naturally filled her eyes, when she thought that today’s parting would be the last parting.

   Tomioka was aware that she was sobbing, but pretended not to notice it. Her innermost feeling reflected on him as well. He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. He came closer to Yukiko and clasped her tightly in his arms.

   Last night, they were drunken in a strange way. They talked too much to each other, and then slept. After all, however, they could not carry out their last parting from each other with purity.

   “Right now, we are hugging each other, but in a few hours, we will part from each other, more badly than complete strangers.”

   Yukiko lonesomely said in Tomioka’s chest. The two lonely people felt as if afflicted with seasickness.

   “Cheer up, you too.”

   “Okay.”

   “I intended to hold my tongue, but I start to work again.”

   “Oh!”

   “So, I am going to leave for the post in one week.”

   “Where is your post?”

   “It needs to go on board ship at Kagoshima as far as an island of the border. Yakushima Island.”

   “Yakushima? Does such a place exist?”

   “My post is there in the local forestry office. I will go there, and for five or six years, or for my whole life, I am going to live there. ……”

   Yukiko cried holding his shoulder tightly by her arms.

   “I hate it! You are going to such a far-off place. ……  Then, take me there!”

   “I can’t. It is a lonely island. First of all, you are not the woman who can live in such a place for five or six years. Once or twice a year, I can come up to Tokyo, so, let’s meet again in that time. For a time being, I want to enter the mountains, although I am not sure whether I can do or not.”

   Yukiko wore a blank look. And yet, she was imaging herself chasing Tomioka to Yakushima.

   “Say. Aren’t you going to be with that girl whom I saw in your room? ……”

   Suddenly she asked.

   “That girl?”

   “Yes, in your room, I saw a pretty girl lying in your futon.”

   “Ah, she is a daughter of the bar nearby. A delinquent girl.”

   “Where you intimate with her? In the same way with Osei’san.”

   “Stupid!”

   “I cannot believe that you are going alone to such a far-off place. ……”

   “Alone. I will go alone.”

   “I see, you go alone. How envious! Men can find any place to settle. On the contrary, women have no home for peaceful living anywhere in the past, at present, and in future.”

   “You can go back to Iba’s place.”

   “Do you think that is the best for me?”

   “Do you have any other way?”

   “I will never go back to Iba’s place. If I go back there, what I did this time resultantly will be just a play, won’t it? Don’t fool me. ― You finally became alone, so I resolved to marry you now, and fled. Truly, we had a lot hesitation after our return to Japan. We got desperate, and, sometimes, things were not favorable to us. However, we were both equally guilty. At great pains, we have already passed without stopping in front of the broad gate which leads to destruction. Then, we should not part from each other, but should strive together for looking for the narrow gate which leads to life. ― You say to me to stop yearning for bygones, however, you said that you see me in your dream when you are away from you. After all, it’s you that are a romanticist who does not forget bygones, isn’t it? I do not understand why you want to part from me after that you became alone. If you hate me, say frankly that you hate me. ……  And then, I may go back to Iba as you insist, or I may not. ―  It’s quite a mystery why you cannot marry me.”

   Tomioka kept silence. He could not say clearly that Osei’s affair was yet to be solved in his mind. If he determined to go to Yakushima, he could pay from his salary to retain a lawyer for Osei’s husband. Come to think of it, Osei was a victim caught in his and Yukiko’s problem. If he clearly voiced this, it was clear that Yukiko would get angry. He did not have any other choice but ambiguously brushed away his thought.

   Later, the two people took bath, and sat down at the late breakfast table. Exactly one year had passed since their trip in Ikaho. Tomioka met the grim stare of Yukiko. She was staring at him on the depth of the mirror while combing her hair in front of a mirror stand.

   “You look happy.”

   “Is that so?”

   “You feel released as you broke off with me, don’t you?”

   “It might be so.”

   “You were coldhearted, from the beginning. ……”

   “Me?”

   “Yes, you. Nothing can be done now, but I utterly feel sorry for Kano’san for the first time after a long time.

   “You yearn for him. ……”

   “Yes, I yearn for him. Why did he die? The dead suffers a loss.”

   “So, we should live however hard we perseveres.

   “It’s too late to find the narrow gate.”

   “Not late.”

   “Well. Do you take 100,000 yen with you?”

   “Do you mean that you give me 100,000 yen?”

   “Not enough for you?”

   “Not bad.”

   “If you need banknotes as much as 200,000 yen, it’s quite all right with me.”

   “You are too generous because it is someone else’s money.”

   “Originally, it is their easily gained money. ……  Religion racks up amusingly great profits. ……”

   “Because it is the entrance fee to the narrow gate. ……”

   “Indeed. ……”

   When Yukiko pulled out her Boston bag from the storage space above the closet, Tomioka put the comb on the mirror stand and said.

   “I do not need money. As I begin to work, I don’t need any money. The money is important for you.”

   “Why is it important? I don’t care about money. ……”

   “That’s not true. Money is the best friend for people. ……”

   “Say, I know your feelings, about why you intend to go alone to Yakushima. I don’t know if my guess proves right, probably it must be so. ……  Osei’san still remains in your mind, doesn’t she? Otherwise, I wonder whether it’s your wife.”

   Tomioka sat down against the alcove. The maid brought them hot tea. Tomioka had the maid go to the reception to ask the time for train.

 

 

.. * 56

 

If Tomioka was going back to Tokyo, Yukiko as well did not feel like staying indefinitely at the inn. The two people checked out, got on the same train as far as Mishima, where they changed trains for Tokyo.

   Tomioka could not leave Yukiko alone who had no place to go. He thought that he had to take her to his room at last. The two got off the train at Shinagawa Station.

   On the platform of Yamanote Line, they began laughing, and thus, she went with him to his room.

   Unlike Izu, the cold pierced them to the bone in Tokyo. The storm of the life roaringly raged, which made them feel dark and gloomy again.

   They entered the room, and found a postcard from Agriculture Magazine. The publisher advised him about their intention to publish his manuscript of Agriculture engineer’s memory separately in the series. Tomioka felt light-hearted.

As the electric grill was not usable, Yukiko put her luggage and went to the charcoal distribution center nearby and got the expensive charcoal. Tomioka flipped the pages of his manuscript and began to read it. The neighbor’s wife brought him Iba’s visiting card, and said that certain Iba visited him a while ago.

   Tomioka put the visiting card into his pocket. He did not want Yukiko to see it. Before long, Yukiko, reddening her face, came back with charcoal and other shopping items. She also hung a 0.4-gallon bottle of sake by hand. Tomioka pitied her.

   He was as if daunted by the feelings of this woman who continuously had a fantasy like a child. He came across many contradictions. He did not understand his own path to the betrayal which he naturally had committed against this woman. He regarded with fear her habits. Thinking that this fear is a fear to himself which exists in his innermost feelings, Tomioka felt guilty like a criminal.

   In general, women won’t look back at whatever may happen. They with a simple heart like a child tempt men

   This room was also not safe once Iba had come. He had to carry out a quick going to Yakushima. Prior to that, his point of issue was how to clear the matter of Yukiko.

   “Won’t you work at the former government office? I will ask for employment for you. You can rent a room and live alone leisurely, can’t you? You will be able to study, besides, find someone to marry. ……”

   Yukiko glared at Tomioka.

She seemingly wanted to say to not refer to this topic anymore.

Her feeling was as if overtaken by darkness, and did not need the day before or the day after. She had no more than the present. Besides, the 600,000 yen money made her bold. Because she could circumvent the difficulties anyhow with this amount of money. At the worst, she intended to go to Yakushima, even alone. She now could not part from this man’s body scent anymore.

   Yukiko, like an insane woman,wanted to keep clinging to his manly scent which even Iba and Kano had not. She whould rather have gone straight to Iba’s place from Shinagawa Station than that she part from him now.

Yukiko, as if she had lived in this room for a long time, began freely preparing for supper. Tomioka had no choice but to take Iba’s card out of his pocket, and show it to her. She was surprised.

“Oh, did Iba come here? I wonder when he came. How did he know the address of your dwelling?” She was surprised. “Strange. ……”

“God might know this place. ……”

“No kidding. How did he find this place? I did not tell your address to anyone.”

“When Osei’s incident happened, he found out about this place, didn’t he?”

“No way. He might have known the incident itself, however, would have not known this place.”

Iba’s appearance throughly puzzled her. Tomioka felt like was being chased by an unidentified anxiety.

“Well, I am in an exemptible position. So, please take me with you to Yakushima. When I get bored, I will come back alone. Please take me to stay with you there for a month or so. Then, I will be convinced.”

Tomioka had no intention to take her as far as the southern end of Japan, however, his mind changed by Iba’s appearance. He felt like embarking on an adventure.

Early the next morning, he visited his friend, and applied for the post in Yakushima, and asked him to go forward for a quick proceedings for Tomioka. On his way back home, he dropped in the Agriculture Magazine company’s editorial desk in Marunouchi to hand over his manuscript.

At the editorial desk, a journalist who was acquinted with him had not yet arrived at the company. So, Tomioka waited for an hour for him to arrive. The journalist said a strange thing when he met Tomioka in the office. He said, “Yesterday morning, someone came to ask the address of the writer of The essey of Urushi.” His remark cleared Tomioka’s doubt. Yukiko had talked to him that she bought the Agriculture Magazine where his Essey of Urushi was printed, and she read it. So, presumably, Iba visited the publishing company to find out about Tomioka’s address.

The next day, Yukiko went out all day. She, with her luggage, went to a movie theater one after another, and watched two or three movies. If Iba came to the room again while Tomioka was absent, she was sure that Iba would forcibly take her back.

Now that she was going to Yakushima together with Tomioka, she had nothing to worry about, and nothing of greed. She gave him money to hire a lawyer for the Osei’s case.

She returned late at night to Tomioka’s room. And the next day, she again went away with her luggage.

She spent a week this way. On the seventh day, Tomioka got a special delivery letter from Iba who wanted to meet Tomioka and asked him to determine a time, date and a place to meet. On the same day, Tomioka was assigned to Yakushima forest office.

Tomioka tore the letter up. On the other hand, Yukiko seemed to worry about it, but decided not to care about Iba’s threatening special delivery letter since Tomioka’s leaving for new post in Yakushima became definite.

Tomioka went to many places for greeting, corrected his manuscript, and finally cleared the room and delivered his luggages for Yakushima. Two weeks had passed since coming back from Izu.

Until the very day that he left Tokyo, he was thinking somehow of leaving Yukiko. However, she paid for a lawyer of Osei’s husband and so, he could not go alone any longer. He had no way other than to leave things to chance.

When he lived in camp with Malaysian timber transporters in the southern mountains, he acquired this habit to leave things to chance. When Malaysian came across some unlucky things, they always said, ‘Apa boleh buat,’ which meant ‘what can I do?’ Nothing more than this expression was comfort to Tomioka’s present feelings.

   Utterly nothing he could do. He himself did not touch Yukiko’s money, and yet, kept her discharging her money for all things, although it made him feel like choking. The February labor strike, which made a lot of noise in the papers, was forbidden. Even so, the social situations became turblent more and more. Tomioka thought that it was difficult to live in Tokyo only with ideological feelings. Much misunderstanding occurred in his life, which certainly were caused by this modern life in Tokyo.

A variety of discrepancies in his life caused Tomioka to be bewildered at how to deal with himself. He had to change his places once more for restarting his life as another person. He always felt a gap between the society and himself while worrying passively. In the west and in the east, the society was swept away past his ears at a speed of rotating belts. Even uneasy signs of the World War III were smoulding. Tomioka felt it unendurable to maintain an old connection with Yukiko in this mentally inferior social situation. Nevertheless, the old connection was never ripped up although it was likely to fade away, and ate at his life like mold.

   In the mid-February, they left Tokyo by night train.

 

 

.. * 57

 

“Il a le diable au corps. ―  The devil has possessed me.” Kano often said the phrase in Da Lat. When Tomioka asked him who the devil was, he jerked his chin up towards Yukiko.

   The train trip was too long and boring. Tomioka was amazed at Yukiko who tirelesssly devoured various food all the time.

   The train reached Kyoto in the morning. If not Yukiko, Tomioka would have spent one day or so in Kyoto.

Yukiko got down onto the platform at Kyoto and went again to buy food, maybe because she was not used to having a large sum of money. He leaned out the car window looking at her. Her back wrapped up in her overcoat showed shabbiness of the woman who was past her prime. She seemed to have bought him a pack of cigarettes. When Yukiko casted a brief look at him, her face was dry and badly pale.

The train passed Ōsaka and Kōbe, and ran along the coastline of Maiko. The sea shone dully in a lead color, which reflected white onto the car window.

Yukiko, with the collar of her overcoat pulled up was fast asleep. The third-class train for Hakata was comparatively crowded. People even sat on the passageway.

Due to many food wastes and a stuffy atmosphere, the crowded train car was hot and muggy although the steam was turned off during daytime. Tomioka was looking stolidly at Yukiko’s face. In four or five days of their cohabitation, dark pale triangular rings appeared under her eyes, and the rouge remained in wrinkles of her lips, the skin of which was torn. Her eyebrows rose roughly and oil blots appeared on her small nosehead. Her eyelids, from time to time moved tinglingly with nerves

The devil was sleeping. The devil, however, pretended to sleep, and was well aware of Tomioka’s eye movements. Yukiko smiled while sleeping. Tomioka quickly turned away his eyes.

“You again begin to say something about me, don’t you?”

Yukiko saying, opened her eyes and took a mandarine orange from her lap, and began peeling it. Rustily desolate winter fields and chimneys dominated the landscape. The debris of factory zone, mountains, rivers, and the sea were notched by the train wheels while running backwards.

They arrived at Hakata late at night.

The two people were extremely tired but quickly changed trains for Kagoshima. They wanted to be tired out to the degree that they

were anesthetized thoroughly by weariness. Yukiko gradually began to feel lost. The night rain was glittering while falling on the dirty car windows. Yukiko saw fragments of dreams many times. She felt vibrations of a running military vehicle towards Da Lat. The vehicle drove from Saigon, through DiLinh of Lam Dong Province in central highlands, straight to Lang Biang Highland towards Da Lat.

Each time she awakened, the reality of the night train running through the rain made her feel lost. She thought Japan is unexpectedly large. Tomioka was fast asleep like a sick person.

It also was a long journey. Once that she was far from Tokyo, her memory of the life with Iba was torn to shreds. In Kumamoto, the rain stopped for a while. Passengers changed quickly from a station to another. People spoke in slangs and accents of Kyūshū dialect. Nothing around them had a relationship with them. Yukiko stretched out her tired feet in between Tomioka’s legs, and closed

her eyes.

   She was sure that no danger would attack her from anywhere, and felt funny while imaging the rageful face of Iba. ‘Once I come up here, he cannot bring me back anymore. ……’  She sarcastically wanted to say to Iba, ‘I will pray for the further prosperity of the Ōhinata’kyō.’

Ōtsu Shimo would make up heavily as usual and sit down in front of that cashbox, from now on as well. Yukiko from time to time paid attention to her Boston bag on the rack. This was the only thing for her to rely on.

 

   They reached Kagoshima in the morning. The rain poured down. They got on a cycle rickshaw^[*22] to go somewhere to stay overnight. They were taken to a small inn in the Sengoku’chō town near to the port.

   On the second floor, the window commanded an enormous view of Sakurajima^[*160] as if a thick stage curtain was stretched. Sakurajima could be seen dimly in purple in the rain.

   Yukiko was extremely tired, and stretched her limbs on the salty smelling tatami.

   Tomioka asked a maid the departure time of a liner for Yakushima Island. She replied that a liner would not leave port for many days in the rain or storm. He asked again to let him know the possible departure time of it, and lay on the tatami with his overcoat on.

   He could see Sakurajima while lying down. The sea was blue as if coated with urushi-lacquer. Small boats disorderedly pressed closely each other in the port. The maid bought tea, to whom Tomioka ordered beer.

   “We came extremely far. It is unbelievable that we go on board a boat from here overnight. We are like being banished to the island. If I am alone, it’s impossible for me to come.”

   “We are going to live on the farthest island for four or five years from now on.”

   “That’s true. ……”

   “How about going back now? From here, you can go back easily.”

   “Are you still talking like that?”

   “Because you said that you cannot come alone.”

   “I came here because I am together with you. ……  Don’t you think that I am a miserable woman?”

   “It is unbearable if you expect me to be grateful.”

   A radio was playing noisily as if being scorched, somewhere in the neighborhood. Yukiko took off her overcoat, and put on a padded kimono of half-length, doreta, on her shoulder. She looked outside at the corridor, in which the rain was driving.

   “I do not expect you to be grateful. I do not have such a cheap feeling. However, isn’t it better for you to be together with me than with no one? If Yakushima is not suitable for me to live in, I feel like coming here and work as a waitress in a restaurant. A woman is only like that. If you get rid of me, that is another story to be put aside, and my intention is to survive in a place like this. ……”

   “I did not say that I get rid of you.”

   The maid brought them beer.

   Tomioka gulped it, and felt it like it fetched his breath finally.

   The maid informed him that the boat would not set sail for a couple of days. It was boring for him to stay for two more days in a place like this. But he cannot do anything with it if the boat did not set sail. He also went to the corridor and looked at the sea with the rain falling hard on.

   “Did you say to the publisher that you are going to Yakushima?”

   “Sure.”

   “Iba will get angry.”

   “Will he come chasing you?”

   “I don’t think so. The stolen money won’t mean so much to him, will it?”

   “No small sum of money. ……  It’s possible that he is going to have this case reported to the police.”

   “Do not worry about it.”

   Yukiko, saying it, left the window and came back inside the room. She also drank beer. Cold beer got in her belly. She somehow felt sick.

   “A bath is ready, madam.”

   The maid came to tell that a bath was prepared.

   When she was called madam, Yukiko stared wide-eyed at Tomioka as she had never been called madam.

   “Madam, you take a bath first.”

   Tomioka said mockingly. He was extremely tired. He did not feel like taking a bath. He said to be going to buy passage tickets and confirm the departure date of a ship, and went out with a coarse oilpaper umbrella borrowed from the inn. He walked, as he was told, on a broad desolate road leading to the steamship company toward the sea. He felt refreshed as he finally was alone. He wanted to depart aboard the ship alone if the ship was leaving just now. He entered a blue painted barrack of the company. As he was told in the inn, the ship did not sail until this storm blew itself up. Anyway, the company staff said that the ship would sail the day after tomorrow. Tomioka bought a couple of second-class passage tickets and wrote in the embarkation list Yukiko’s name and her relationship as wife.

   On his way back to the inn, he went on a busy street and bought a bottle of whisky. In the room, Yukiko laid on the futon. She looked pale and shivered with cold.

   “How do you feel?”

   “It’s so cold and I cannot stop shivering. Will you call a doctor? ……”

   She grasped his arm, slightly and rapidly trembling. Her condition seemed to be different from symptoms of the cold. Her lips bled. He tested her forehead with his hand. She seemed to have no fever. If she laid up in this inn, however, it would be an annoyance to him. He asked the inn to call a doctor. He wrapped her with three pieces of futons, but her trembling of cold did not stop. A doctor did not come soon. As Tomioka went to buy a cold medicine, he had an ominous feeling.

   He had Yukiko take a medicine with a hot tea. She was still trembling. In one hour, a young doctor came. With a help of the maid, Tomioka unclothed Yukiko’s clothes and shemise to get her examined. The doctor injected her a medicine of camphor and vitamins. Tomioka felt relieved when the doctor said that she would get well in two days or so. He remembered the symptoms of the deceased Kuniko, to which Yukiko’s symptom seemed to him to be somehow similar. Tomioka sensed a similar sign in Yukiko’s face.

   Yukiko was fast asleep after taking a sedative. Tomioka thought every occurrence that he came across was a hard door against which he was pushed as if fate decreed. At the time when Kuniko had been sick in bed, a doctor also said to him that she would get well in two or three days. The result showed that the doctor’s diagnosis was wrong. This inn seemed to be built after air raids, which consisted of 5 rooms or so. The inn was unexpectedly crowded with occupants. In the room on the other side of a thin wall, joyous laughter could be heard. Tomioka’s room only was gloomy.

   Tomioka, without changing into the dotera, turned on the bottle and drank whiskey at the bedside of Yukiko. The storm became increasingly badly. The inn shaked in the wind from time to time. The light did not come on in the room, so the darkness in the room caused dismality toward evening. Sakurajima Island spread over the window. Maybe because of it, he had a feeling of being oppressed as if Sakurajima was about to fall down to the room.

 

 

.. * 58

 

He travelled up to this place, so far in his vague feelings, therefore, Yukiko’s disease was a considerable shock to him.

   The second day was clear.

   The rain let up nicely, but it was a very windy day. Towards daylight, the maid came to set charcoal to fire in the hibachi, and noticed them that a ship named Shōkokumaru is sailing at nine in the morning. Yukiko’s symptom was not yet relieved. She was fast asleep and coughed while sleeping. Hearing her cough, Tomioka felt pain as if his skin was chafed, and the pain began resembling a toothache little by little.

   He looked out of the window on the corridor at the sky of the wintry daybreak. Sakurajima melted into the petroleum color of the sky. Poor wooden warehouses were lined along the coast, over the roofs of which masts of ships could be seen like a lattice. Street lights were lit in town. The moon at dawn shone white above the distorted shadow of the town. Tomioka stared at the daybreak of the port town, where all the places were still asleep in silence. He thought it difficult to depart in this state. He dare postpone their departure until the next ship. He went back to the hibachi at the bedside, and closed his face to charcoal fire and lit a cigarette in kneeling position. Yukiko’s eyes were open.

   “How are you! Your feeling ……”

   Yukiko tried to smile, but seemingly could not. She, with her eyes wide open, only looked up from beneath at his face. He touched her forehead. It was unexpectedly cold. Her widely opened eyes in indescribable loneliness gave him an unfamiliar impression. He suddenly felt affection for her. He kneeled and closed his face over her face.

   “I postponed our departure, so, do not worry. I am going to the steamship company to renew our tickets. So, you stay sleeping in peace. Getting irritated means nothing. ……  You know, the fatigue of the travel made you sick. Or maybe because we got wet in the rain.”

   Tomioka spoke slowly dividing words one by one. Yukiko nodded with her eyes open. He took her hand and touched it to his cheek. He remembered that he attended the surgery of her injury at a French surgical hospital in Da Lat when she was stabbed by Kano. Yukiko’s eyes were exactly the same as at that time. Memories of Indochina ached in his chest. He remembered his nauseating fear of their fateful sentiment of a traveler while looking out of the hospital window at the sky over the lake at daybreak. He reflected on his liaison with this woman, which might have occurred because he came across her in the course of his journey. However, when he asked himself about a passing chance affair with Vietnamese maid, he sneered at himself thinking this also might have been a sentiment of a traveler. Niu’s innocent feature with her light-brown skin was impressed in his memory. He felt nostalgic about her, along with the deceased Osei, whom he could not meet anymore. Looking back now, however, the life in Indochina seemed to him not to have been simple as described with the word ‘nostalgic.’ In the same way as a person who became gentle to anyone after he was sentended to death, Tomioka who felt a keen loneliness yearned for someone’s heart, whoever it might be. Enjoying freely a solitude was not permitted under Japanese military dictatorial regime. He, therefore, quenched his thirst in his mind with Yukiko’s body. Now, his egocentricity yielded this result. Thinking like this, Tomioka clasped her hand firmly in his hands with his feeling of compensation. Yukiko said weakly.

   “Aren’t you going alone onboard?”

   “Stupid! Did you think that I’m going onboard alone?”

   Yukiko nodded like a child. Tomioka, in a kinship-like feeling, flipped teardrops off the corner of her eyes with his finger. He gave her a few more firm clasps as if he said, ‘No matter.’ He released Yukiko’s hand, and asked what time it was as the maid brought them tea.

   “It is around seven.”

   The maid said looking at her wristwatch and touched it to her ear.

   Tomioka went downstairs. The wall clock pointed at a little past seven. ―  He went to the steam company, and delayed their departure until four days later, when the same ship, Shōkokumaru, would leave this port again. He took a leisurely walk towards the port. The Shōkokumaru had a white hull, whose funnel was puffing a cloud of smoke, and a crane on the ship was lifting timbers. On the wharf, fruits booths were open for passengers. Apples were piled in booths. Seeing these nothern fruit in the southern end of Kyūshū, Tomioka felt strange. He purchased 8 pounds of apples for Yukiko. Apples were packed in a basket painted in green. He, holding the basket approached the ship closely. Passengers were waiting in lines. Every passenger held a small fishbowl of glass. The Shōkokumaru looked like a liner going for Indochina. Under the illusion as such, he imagined how pleasant the journey would be if he could go onboard ship with Yukiko this morning. However, the sea voyage of his dream was no more than a route as far as Yakushima. No route beyond it. The boundary was strictly limited after this war. This ship could not go farther than to the other side of Yakushima Island. This ship had no route towards that yellow waters of the southern country. The crowd of passengers and porters jostled each other on the wharf. Waste straws, pieces of wood, and apple peels were scattered about the pier.

   While looking blankly up at the crane hoisting timbers, Tomioka thought this defeat in war was, so-to-speak, a Japanese revolution carried out over a term of the war period. The ship blew a whistle, and a departing signal sounded. Passing throught the crowd who came to see off passengers, children and women were vending paper tape rolls. Tomioka also bought a roll of red tape. The office manager who wore the same prewar uniform stepped down the ladder onto the wharf. The embarkation began. Staff in white uniform and policemen were standing beside the ladder.

Passengers with their large baggage were pushed into the ship.

Before long, the second whistle sounded a little past nine o’clock, and the ship was slowly leaving the quay. The clamor of people seeing off passengers sounded on the pier. Passengers who unloaded their baggage appeared on the deck. The tape rolls, like many birds, flew from the pier to the deck. Narrow strips of red, white, cobalt, yellow, green rainbows were swaying in the wind. Tomioka threw his red tape roll towards a boy who was waving his hand to the pier, but his tape hit the forehead of a clerk-style woman, who received his tape with both her hands. With dark skin and shabby clothes, however, she had a cute face. She wore a faded blue jacket. She was holding the tape high so as not to be cut. Tomioka lost his patience with the slow movement of the ship, and let go of his tape on the way. He left the wharf towards the steamship company. He felt like he had no purpose and no accessible road. When he looked back over his shoulder at the sea, unexpectedly the ship looked small and so far away. On the pier with waste of tape scattered, people of the seeing-off were still waving their hands, hats, and handkerchiefs. In the turbid sea, eye-stinging red and yellow tapes were floating.

   Tomioka asking a person for the direction, went to a post office.

   He sent a telegram to the forestry office in Yakushima. He bought a post card and wrote to his parents in Matsuida that he arrived at Kagoshima and was waiting for the ship. There were only a few visitors in the large post office. He took a post office’s pen and was writing the letter on a hexagonal pyramid-shaped desk. He suddenly noticed a young woman next to him wrote ‘Tokyo’ in her telegram form, and felt nostalgic. This woman also sent a telegram to Tokyo, which gave him a feeling that a big city called ‘Tokyo’ exists far in the world’s end.

   For Tomioka, Tokyo was an old country. If not Osei’s incident, he would not have fallen into the border of desparate hermetic living similar to a suicide. Light rays in the perfectly clean morning post office were as quiet and peaceful as the seabed. The woman next to him went to a lattice-furnished counter for sending her telegram. Her shoe heels were damaged badly. Her black overcoat also was worn out. Tomioka posted his card and left the post office.

 

 

.. * 59

 

There was a small clock shop near the inn. Tomioka approached the show window and looked at watches for a while. All items were imitation Swiss watches with a price tag of 3,600 yen, which he liked. He went into the shop to buy one as a token of Yakushima. He asked to show him some watches from a display shelf. The Omega watch he bought in Indochina was sold to Osei’s husband in Ikaho. Thereafter, he felt inconvenienced without a watch. So, he wanted to have a watch. He picked up one watch and took it near to his ear. It made a clear ticking sound. That watch had a round shape and was thin. He bought it to his heart’s content.

   When he entered the room, Yukiko seemed to have gotten tired of waiting and was close to tears. She, as if felt relieved, pushed out her hand from the futon towards the apple basket which Tomioka hung. He sat by her pillow soon and began peeling an apple with a knife.

   “I went to see the ship on the way. It was a very good ship. I think it is the best ship on Yakushima route. Every passenger carryed goldfish in a glass fishbowl. I wonder if there are no goldfish in Yakushima. ……”

Tomioka, peeling the apple, talked about the ship which he saw a while ago.

“A white ship. As you are sick, I had our tickets changed to the first-class, which may be a little excessive outlay of money, though. No meals are ready in ships, and they advised me to prepare our meals twice. They said that there are many doctors at the way-port, in Tanegashima, but no doctor in Yakushima. ……”

   “Is it such a place?”

   “Yes. I worry it a little. ……”

   “If I get sick while sailing, please drop me off the ship in Tanegashima.”

   “If you think so, you should rather stay in Kagoshima than get off in Tanegashima. Kagoshima is much convenient. If you do not get better enough to get onboard the next ship, you can be hospitalized here or find an inexpensive lodging place, and come later. You can take your time. Whatever things you may do, Kagoshima is a city and convenient.”

   Yukiko was looking up at his hand which was peeling an apple, and then, noticed the new watch on his wrist.

   “Did you buy that watch?”

   “I bought it now near the inn.”

   “Let’me see it. ……”

   Tomioka moved his left hand close to Yukiko, who stared at the dial face of the watch. It was somewhat similar to the watch he sold in Ikaho. She said, “A good watch.” She did not ask him the price, so he did not say it. He bought it with the reminder of the money paid by the publisher, so, was not servile. Her facial expression, however, showed that she was somewhat abashed. She might have thought it very expensive.

   “If we got onboard the ship, we would be on the sea around this time now. ……  Is the sea rough?”

   “The wind is strong, but the sea looks calm. All the people on the pier are throwing tapes to passengers on ship as if an outward-bound ship sets on sail.”

   “Oh! It must be beautiful.”

   “Rather, I felt it unrefined. It also is nostalgia of people who cannot go overseas. ……”

Ornamental tapes, which adorned so-called loneliness and sweetness of people, were flickering in his mind. Yukiko was strangely particular about his watch. Tomioka who bought an expensive watch seemed to be faithless to her. Tomioka peeled another apple and gave her a half of it.

Yukiko bit it. The apple was disappointedly not succulent, and its flaky flesh tasted bad. Tomioka also ate half of the apple of no appetizing flavor.

“This apple is not tasty. ……”

He, saying, spattered the apple core. Fowls began noisily crowing, which the inn might grow. Rain showers began falling, again.

Before noon, the doctor came for injection. The youg doctor said to Tomioka while investigating her chest and back.

“She should take X-rays. ……”

Yukiko felt a chill. It was unbearable for her to be sick in bed while on journey. It had been better to stay in Tokyo than part now from Tomioka after coming together as far as here. Yukiko felt somewhat suffocated thinking that she might have been affected with a fatal illness. Scabies which she was transmitted after she repatriated had been far better than being affected with such a disease which made her feel anxious. Yukiko prayed in her heart that the yound doctor would not say to Tomioka unnecessary things anymore.

   Four days had passed which were unbearable to Tomioka as well as Yukiko while on journey. During the four days, the young doctor with great intimacy became a good acquintance. He was formerly an army surgeon, who worked in a field army hospital in Central China all through the Second Sino-Japanese War from July 7, 1937 to September 8, 1945. His age was unexpectedly not so different from Tomioka. He was still single, and helped with his father’s hospital. He looked very young probably because he was single. He graduated from Fukuoka medical college. The maid talked them about the doctor that he was fond of music, and assembled an electric phonograph by himself, and that his hobby was collecting music records. His family name was Hika, and his father was born in Okinawa^[*143]. One day, Hika listened intently to the music played from the radio in the neighborhood, and said with a happy smile, “I like this music.” Tomioka strained his ears while recalling in memory that he heard it somewhere in the past. Yukiko was listening attentively to the music while lightly rubbing, over her kimono sleeve, her skin after being injected with medicine. Tomioka and Yukiko did not know the name of that music.

   “Whose work is it?” She asked frankly.

    “Symphony No.9 composed by a Czech composer, Dvorak, and named ‘From the New World’.”

   Doctor, saying, slowly put the syringe away, and then, washed his hands in the washbowl water.

   Tomioka was envious of the doctor’s music taste, and felt happy to encounter a good doctor at such an end of Kyūshū like this. His appearance was short and thick body build was not suggestive of a doctor. His gentle narrowed eyes and white regular teeth were impressive to him. Tomioka said to the doctor that he was on the way to go for his new post to the Yakushima Forestry Office, and told that he had been assigned as an Army civilian employee to the Forestry Bureau in Indochina for a while

The doctor appeared to get interested as soon as he heard that Tomioka was going to work for the Forestry Office, and began to talk of his juvenile ideals that he also intended to go to Hokkaidō Imperial University^[*60]. ―  Tomioka told him that he felt helpless without a doctor in Yakushima, and asked the doctor whether he would come to the island when Tomioka would send him a telegram at the time of emergency. The doctor assured him to come there whatever might happen.

“I have heard that Yakushima has no doctor. Nevertheless, I think that a doctor relevant to the Forestry Office resides in the mountains. I also had an idea to open a hospital in Yakushima, however, no electricity and much rain all the year round urged me to gave it up. It’s pity if I cannot listen to music records, so I soon removed this idea. It seems that the Forestry Office supplies electricity every few days, recently. ……  It appears that people are egocentric. We say that medicine is a benevolent art. However, I cannot endure such a life in exile that I cannot listen to even a music record, after all. ―  This time, however, I will visit you there by some chance ―. By the way, frankly speaking, a moisture-laden land is not recommended for your wife’s physical condition. ……  You may not be able to be inconsistent with your duty. So, I would advise you to choose a house in a higher place in the mountain and have a routine lifestyle. ……  As the time is pressing, I cannot examine your wife thoroughly. I would like you to keep me informed on your wife’s daily condition in the Island, even by a postcard.”

Hika, with a thoughtful tone so as not to give uneasiness to the patient, gave his advice this way. Yukiko already forgot the tune of Dvorak’s ‘From the New World,’ but the word of ‘New World’ resounded in her ears. She felt that this word foretold of their new departure, and had a good feeling and respect for Hika’s innocent attitude. ― Tomioka felt a Russian-like personality before the Revolution in this doctor, while remembering Dostoevsky’s words in his novel “Crime and Punishment” that human beings won’t be able to live without compassion. He kindly prepared emergency medicine and necessities for injection for them. In the morning on the fourth day, Tomioka and Yukiko rode up by car to Shōkoku’maru. Unexpectedly, Hiki, without his hat and overcoat, came running to see them off. It was truly a surprise for them, who were under way and did not have anyone to throw them a tape at the time of their departure. Tomioka and Yukiko did not expect at all to be seen off by the young doctor.

   The first-class cabin was furnished with bunk beds, where new white blankets were ready. The 891-square-yard cabin was comfortably wide. A table and chairs were placed in the center and a bench close to the wall, on an alcove of which a mirror and a water jug were prepared. When Yukiko lay on the lower bed, Hiki who entered the room after them took out an injection needle from his bag, wiped it with alcohol, and injected a nutritional supplement in to Yukiko’s arm. Yukiko did not forget the cold touch of the doctor’s hand forever. She felt a-first-love-like emotional wormth.

   Yukiko could not go on deck, but Tomioka went out of the cabin together with Hiki to the deck. Even after the ship left the pier, Tomioka did not come back to the cabin.

On the first-class deck, Tomioka kept holding the green tape Hiki threw to him for a long time.

Tomioka was waving the broken-off tape high over his head until the pier seemed to move further away, which was squalid as if a toy box was turned over. Hiki stood at the end of the pier, waving his white handkerchief, then left the pier by long strides, bending his upper body slilghtly forwards. The back figure of the doctor, who was walking away waving his medical bag, looked reliable to Tomioka.

The ship was sailing out on the sea, and Sakurajima Island shining in the morning soft light appeared smaller than expected, purple and healthy. When he saw Sakurajima from the window of the inn, it appeared large as if a tapestry was streched outside the window, but it looked like a small ornament on the sea. The Third-class passengers came crawling out of their cellar-like cabin, were basking in the sunshine on wooden chairs across the large deck. Their souvenirs of fishbowls were put here and there on the deck. Goldfish shined gold in every fishbowl.

   The sea was calm.

   The wind on the shady side was piercingly cold, while the sunshine was nicely warm in the sunny side. The large chimney looked up above, from which the dirty smoke streamed towards the west. Tomioka tore off the green tape in his hand, and its pieces scattered to the  white sea reflecting in the sunshine. These few-month occurrences wore his heart down, which had him feel emotional pains in his heart. The large sea refreshed him as if a chain of his fate, which clung to his feet and shoulder, was blown off. While looking at the silent sea water, Tomioka was made to think about the saying that loquacity has ten regrets while silence has one, comparing the land and sea, respectively.

   Yukiko felt comfortable in the ship’s resonating with her back. The feeling that she leaned all on the ship which moved forward was very much similar to her feeling at the time of returning from Indochina. Strangely enough, the doctor’s gentle behavior and medicine-like body oder were unforgettable to Yukiko. Besides, his face resembled Kano. Yukiko could not understand herself who had incoherent feelings, but, round and round while meditatively, as a cow chewing the cud, she delineated for pleasure the imagination of dangerous encounter with Hika.

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 60

 

It was around two o’clock that the ship arrived at Tanegashima Island.

   In the sea shining white, the yellow and flat island was seen out of the window. Tomioka, while smoking, was looking at the lonely island stretching out on the sea. Yukiko was sound asleep. For some reason, Tomioka thought how far he came.

   Fog veiled in a small port seen far away, which was crowded with innumerable small boats. Roofs of houses along the coast looked like white and black paper cutouts, which was a rare view for him. The ship slowed down and took its time entering the Nishino’Omote’kō port located to the north of Tanegashima Island. The liner was scheduled to be at anchor in the harbor till nine o’clock at night. A sailor said to Tomioka that the liner did not leave this harbor until after nine at night. Tomioka thought it tedious to shut in the ship. He was anxious to arrive at the terminal, in Yakushima, as soon as possible.

Tanegashima, however, looked like an uninhabited island from afar. He felt somewhat like he was in the battle position but met no enemy for a long time. The desert island had no interest for him. But he was told that Tanegashima is the only island of civilization among many islands with which the sea of Ōsumi was studded, towards the south from Ōsumi Peninsula projecting south from Kyūshū. He was gazing absently at the harbor of the island which was approaching near and near, while thinking that he was going to less inhabited island than this. The island was like a bald mountain. The very long and wide island with no high mountain seemed to be ready to sink in the sea at any moment.

   “Say. Did we reach somewhere?”

   Yukiko asked while making sounds of her pillow. Tomioka replied with his cheeks on his hands at the window.

   “We arrived at Tanegashima.”

   “Is it a good port?”

   “Sure. It’s a modest port. Do you want to wake up and look at the outside?”

   “No, no need to look. ……  After all, every port looks like another everywhere, doesn’t it?

   “Quite a lively port. There are many small boats. Somewhere in Indochina, there was a village very much resembling this.”

   “Is it resembling Indochina?”

   “No, it is not. But I felt like I had seen a village like this. Wherever we may go, the ports built by Japanese are gloomy and lonesome. ……”

An anchor was noisily dropped to the bottom of the sea. The ship moved little by little, closer to the wharf.

   Many people, like clumps of ants, waited for the liner’s arrival on the bright pier.

   As the liner approached, each person became clearly seen. Clothes were not different either in Tokyo or in Kagoshima. Some young women wore red jackets of a recent trend. Every woman seemed to perm the hair. Young men combed their hair in the greasy Regent^[*153] hairstyle.

   Soon, the steps were set up and passengers with fishbowls and packages of apples began to descend in droves to the pier. The narrow pier swayed in waves, which looked like flyaway clumps of ants. Tomioka with his overcoat on his shoulder went out to the first-class deck.

   While he was looking, the crowd disappeared in droves towards a hill-shaped town. A white sandy road reflected dimly in the light of the sunset. A wooden townhall, forwarding agents, an old and slanting three-storied inn, pubs and taverns looked like a mess along the quay.

   Tomioka wondered why the ship rode at anchor until nine at night in the island like that. Not so many cargos to stow in the ship were piled in the pier.

   The two people did not go on shore but spent their time in the ship until night. In the evening, illuminations were lit glitteringly over the deck, and a popular song flew noisily from the loudspeaker.

   Sounds of clogs running around on the deck or corridors were heard, and also merry voices of women from taverns reached his ears. The door of their cabin was opened very often, and someone rudely looked inside. Tomioka and Yukiko got surprised during these rudeness.

   “I wonder if Yakushima is the place like this. ……”

   Yukiko said helplessly after lying on her bed and covering herself with her blanket. The unknown ‘blues’ was roaringly heard many times repeatedly from the deck, which made people’s minds neglectful of their duties.

   The next morning, Yakushima Island came into sight.

   They were going to go ashore from the Anbō harbor. The liner reached the Miyanoura sea, which curved inwards, off Nagasaki. The sea was running high along the coast line, and there was no harbor accessible for the liner. Therefore, the liner rode at anchor offshore. Small boats came in sequence to pick up passengers. When he saw an isolated and slightly elevated mole-like land located at the south end of Ōsumi islands, Tomioka was overwhelmed with emotion thinking that he finally arrived home.

Over the stingingly blue ocean, shadowy darkgreen mountains stood high toward the clear sky.

It is located 32 nautical miles in the southwest of Tanega’shima island, 193 square miles in width. The shape of the island is round and almost flat horizontally. In the center of the island, the highest mountain in the Kyūshū district, Mt. Miyanoura’take, of 6,351 ft high peak rises far upward. Mt. Nagata’take and Mt. Kuromi’take form the mountain ranges of Mt. Yae’take, which gives vertical variety to landscape. Yakushima ceders^[*216] grow thick on the mountainside of 3,281 ft to 4921 ft above sea level.

   A memo pad in Tomioka’s pocket contained a simple explanation about Yakushima. It was a jet black, round island incomparable in its figure to Tanegashima. For the first time in a long time, he felt refreshed looking at the darkgreen color of the island. He did not feel like drifted to the isolate island; rather, he felt being welcomed by trees as if his soul and body were washed. Tomioka was on the deck in a cold sea wind, and was looking tirelessly at the island standing far ahead. Tanegashima was an island like lying in the sea, on the other hand, Yakushima was standing on the sea. He thought it would certainly look scaring if he came across such an island in the dim twilight at dawn.

   Even only the fact that a grove island was floating on the bright and azure sea showed a wonder of the nature.

When the barges left the liner, the engine of the liner was actuated noisily. Waves were quite rough in the sea.

   The small barges were tossed like leaves by rough waves, but strived to sail toward the lonesome quay of Miyano’ura port.

   Yukiko got up slowly and combed her hair. She, in an unresisting mood, put her compact mirror between wrinkles of the blanket and tried to fix her untidy hair. She, in a troublesome air, tied her unoiled hair in a bundle with her handkerchief. She rubbed a creme on her face with effort. The light reflected from the sea through the window-pane, and swayed like heat haze on the wood siding wall painted in white.

   Yukiko stubbornly did not bother to look out of the window. She did not look at Tanegashima, and was not going to look even at Yakushima which rose upwards immediately in front. Probably the landing did not matter for her. She only behaved in such a lazy manner that she began preparing herself just because the ship seemed to reach the port. Tomioka regarded her lazy manner as being caused by her sickness.

   Around 10 o’clock, the ship arrived offshore at Ambō.

   Many small barges rowed their way over high waves to the ship. It was drizzling before no one knew it.

   Tomioka descended the steep steps, holding the shoulder of Yukiko in sickness. A boy in a white uniform waited to receive her from under the steps. The steps were constantly swaying upwards and downwards as if it would be sucked into the waves, so it was utterly risky. Yukiko holding onto the boy’s arm somehow came down into a small barge. Yukiko crouched beside luggage wrapped in straw. Far in the sea, a small island shadowy like a tall demon came into her sight from between the luggage. Yukiko stared wide-eyed at the island for a while. It looked uninhabited. ‘There is nothing there,’ she murmured in mind and felt like was oppressed by that tall and black island.

   Soon, the barge riding on surges left the ship quickly. The barge badly swayed, which affected the passengers. The rainshower turned into a pelting rain. Passengers in the barge got soaked. Yukiko wrapped the whole head and body in Tomioka’s overcoat. She felt bitterly cold in her lower legs under her knees. She coughed badly in the darkness under the overcoat.

   When the barge entered a tiny bay like a cat’s forehead, the sway stopped finally. A white sandbar was damp as if washed in the rain. The seawater in the bay was greenly transparent, so that the rocks and seaweeds on the seabed, also empty cans, were seen clearly.

   There seemed to be an upstream river away from the white sandbar. An unusual mechanic suspension bridge was hung like an arch over the high embankment.

   On the sand beach, four or five people were waiting for the barge, the two of whom were a staff of the district forestry office to pick up Tomioka.

   One person opened a coarse oil-paper umbrella, bangasa^[*10], and another wore a raincoat. Tomioka paid the barge fare and jumped onto the white sand. Then, he embraced Yukiko with his moist overcoat on, and took her down to the sand. The staff ran creaking the sand towards Tomioka.

   “You must have been tired. We feel sorry to hear that your wife is sick. ……”

   A middle aged man with rustic eyes, completely different from urbanites, held his bangasa over Yukiko.

The sand stretched up to the other side of the embankment. Yukiko was extremely exhausted and ceased walking many times on the sand with a sigh. She became stifled and felt feverish all over her body as if it burst into flame.

Steep rugged mountains rising over the suspension bridge disappeared in the milky mist before they realized it.

   They climbed the embankment and passed through the long supension bridg. They finally arrived at Inn Anbō with a signboard of a restaurant Miharu’tē. The inn was located on a pretty good hill; in close proximity, many thick metal wires supporting the suspension bridge were connected with steel frames on a narrow slope paved with concrete.

   The inn served as a rice-rationing pantry and a forwarding agent. Its style of construction was gloomy and did not resemble an inn.

They took off their shoes at a dark earthen floor, and went up the stairs sticky due to the rain, then, entered a room upstairs.

Everywhere in the rustic inn, walls were not covered with plaster, but wood sidings.

Tomioka asked a young maid who wore a jacket to lay out the futon for Yukiko. The rain became harder like hempen cords were flowing. The sea and mountains should have been seen from the corridor, but the scenery was entirely hidden in the mist. The white mist wall obstructed their vision.

Through the white mist, yellow smoke was streaming from a bathroom in the garden.

The futon was laid out in the room. In the other brighter room, Tomioka exchanged visiting cards with people who came to pick them up. A maid brought them warm tea and brown-suger flavored teacakes.

“I’ve heard that this island rains a lot.”

Tomioka asked while drawing near a light box brasier and lit a cigarette.

“Yes, it is rainy almost for a month. Yakushima is such an island that rains for 35 days a month. ……”

The man who wore a raincoat said. He was young unexpectedly when he took off his raincoat. He looked lika a scholar.

 

 

.. * 61

 

The man in the raincoat was named Tatsuke. The man with the bangasa umbrella was Noborito. Both were clerks and did not seem to work in the forest. They said to Tomioka that a minecart, torokko, ran regularly twice a day to and from the mountain.

   A small official residence was ready for Tomioka. Nevertheless, it was inconvenient for him with a sickly person for the time being. So, they offered him to stay in this inn for a few days. Tomioka accepted the offer. However, it was a lonesome place, indeed.

   It was raining sultrily all the time. The rain looked like thick wires in milky color.

   After they went away, Tomioka took bath entering the dirty hot water in the Goemon’ cauldron^[*49], and then, he also layed in the futon for a while. Yukiko seemed to be unable to stop coughing. She flushed her face and coughing. She took a cough medicine, and then, kept her eyes open in the dark.

   Yukiko felt like both people received punishment for some kind of crime which they might have committed and were thrown away here. She had a sense of foreboding that she would die here. She wanted to die with one effort if she was going to die. They said this rain continues to fall everyday. It seemed to her that she could not put up the coming life in this island. When she strained her ears, the rain caught her ears.

   The room was furnished with paper lattice windows, shōji, without glass, in every grid of which the paper got loose heavily like a bag. They were given one single futon each. The sheet smelled of the laver, and the pillow was hard like a tree’s root.

   The hot water boiled over the brim of a distorted alminium kettle onto ashes in the hibachi. Nevertheless, the flyaway of ashes did not rise as the ashes was as hard as a shell. Yukiko kept watching the exhalation of a vapor for a long time as if she gazed fixedly the loneliness of the room. On the alcove in board walls, flowers like chrysanthemum were arranged, and three lamps were hanging from the ceiling over the flower arrangement. There was nothing other than that. The room was insipid, which reminded her of the old life.

Tomioka was snoring and sleeping well. She was envious that his mind was peaceful enough to snore.

   She sighed audibly as the sound of rain was so noisy as no one came or went. She thought that she could not do anything here even if she would become healthy. Nevertheless, even if she would go back to Tokyo, she had no hope there.

The lamps were lit in the evening.

The supper was ready. A boiled red crab was served as a side dish but there was no vegetables. Yukiko was drenched with sweat for her heat of a little less than 104 degrees F. She did not have extra clothes, so, she changed into a laver smelling yukata of the inn.

   Tomioka awkwardly injected medicine into her arm. He drank sake leisurely at her bedside for the first time after these past days. On the tray, there seemed to be nothing edible as relish. Only the urushi-laquered^[*210] small wooden container was heaping full of cooked rice, which protruded from beneath the lid. While thinking that it looked strange because this island was the place lacking rice, Tomioka smiled grimly.

The sake was the spirit distilled from sweet potatoes, imo’shōchū. When he brought his nose close to it, an odor assailed his nose.

A couple of porcelain bottle were soaked in the hot water in the kettle, so, he did not imagine the content was the imo’shōchū. He asked the maid whether they had the Japanese sake, and got her reply that there was no sake in this island.

If the sake was not available, he seemed to be able to endure anything if it could be drunk. He got drunk drowsily. He was drunk and completely forgot all the things that had happened till yeaterday. He was seized with an illusion such that he had lived here already for a long time. The rain turned into a storm. A turbulent flow of the rainwater along the drainpipe sounded like the percussion instrument. Ideology was not needed here. He thought that he was here only to live, and gulped down the sake without thinking anything. Gods rule over every ground. The rain falls and the wind blows on the will of gods. People struggle for living naively in this severe rain. They cannot live if defeated by the rain. By the way, it rains altogether very hard. The hostile noisiness of the rain pierced Tomioka’s chest. The woman had a high fever and was frothing at her mouth in her sick bed. This was the coldhearted world of gods, however, he could not be defeated. Having been drifted this far, he thought that this had to become the best place for him.

There was no miracle anymore after he had crawled out as far as here. Or, it’s possible that this woman also would die here. Tomioka reflected on the two people’s hardships for a long time, and tears blurred the outer corners of his drunk eyes.

Where in the world was there any other person like her who felt enthusiastic about a man like me? Osei died on her own way, Niu did not come following me. Kuniko yielded to poverty. Only Yukiko came together with me as far as here while fighting against her disease. When people came from the forest service station to pick them up at the wharf and called her “your wife,” Tomioka suddenly recalled in his mind a healthy family living a public employee life for a long time. He could not but felt pity and yearned for his child whom Yukiko aborted without his permission, as if he blamed himself for it.

   Yukiko was delirious with fever and called the doctor’s name from time to time. Tomioka felt painful and sometimes turned over the moist washtowel on her forehead. He thought to wait until tomorrow, and to send a telegram to Hika if her illness would become worse.

   The tacky tatami mats and the board wall as if the fog was blown to it, all these seemed to be an ill omen to Tomioka.

   The next day, the rain let up. It was a dim morning like a rainy season. Tomioka went to the forest service station for the greeting of his starting for the new post. The director was away on a business trip for Miyazaki Prefecture. Noborit guided him and showed him stratum maps and documents. On the way, Tomioka went to look at an official residence which was located neat the station and close to an elementary school. This also was the barrack-type accomodations without proper plaster walls like a temporary shelter. The house was a small single story built in the tanoji-style^[*193]. In the garden, the gajumaru, i.e. curtain fig, or Ficus microcarpa, which several people could encircle with their arms, hung down branches like teats. The bashō bore small fuit and its leaves grew thick. The beauty of mid-green leaves was hard to think of as a winter scenery. A fine misty drizzle began to fall again. Tomioka planned to enter the mountain on the following day, and asked Noborito to send his telegram to Kagoshima. He returned to the inn around noon.

   Yukiko’s fever had not subsided, so Tomioka tried togive her a penicilline injection as taught by Hika. She seemed to be in her senses and said a joke.

“It’s my long-standing desire to die by your side.”

“It’s easy to die, you can die anytime later. Never say die now that you came a long way as far as here!”

“The rain is a noisy thing. ……”

“The rain lit up, now.”

“I want to look at the bright sky just one more time.”

In the next room, there seemed to be a meeting, and 4 or 5 people’s talking voices could be heard from behind the paper panel partitions, fusuma.

   In the drizzle, mountain ranges could be seen clearly. The figures of mountains looked like vertically implanted inkstones. The washtowel put on the sick person’s forehead was unexpectedly hot like boiled, and he was startled at its heat and kept holding it for a while. Out of kindness, the maid advised him to dissolve mustard powder in water and paste it on the breast of the patient. So, Tomioka asked her to go to buy the mustard powder, and dissolved it in water. Then, he stretched the mustard paste on a sheet of paper and fastened it to Yukiko’s breast. After a while, he torn off the fastened paper, and saw her skin reddened.

   Tomioka closed his face to her skin, and prayed to the gods and buddha. Please bring us back into life.

 

 

.. * 62

 

Each time that Yukiko painfully inhaled and exhaled, Tomioka, with his forehead touching the tatami, counted her breathing while holding her hand which sweated hot like boiled.

   ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?’ Tomioka remembered this phrase of Luke Chapter 12 – 20, while praying to the gods. He felt an ill omen. He forgot where he read this phrase, but it suddenly appeared in his mind. He held her hand firmly, on the other hand, there was a portion in his mind where he was desiring the death of this woman. He impatiently tried to brush his thought off his mind, and called in a low voice her name, “Yukiko! Yukiko!” at the ears of the sick person. Yukiko in a fever opened her eyes slightly and weakly looked around. Tomioka closed his ear to Yukiko’s heart, which throbbed at a steady pace relatively. He tried the pulse of her wrist. Tomioka was about to go crazy while doing these deeds. The sound of rain overflowed and filled his ears. This night induced him to feel as if he was brought back to a certain day in Lang Biang Highlands. It was a strange linkage that these two people had. Tomioka felt like having lost his humane feelings somewhere else while fighting left and right in these unstable years. He began to take himself for a human being who had a hollow heart. He was like a monster with a hollow heart who walked hiding behind the real flesh-and-blood gesture and tone. He felt himself weird.

   Before pitying Yukiko, Tomioka found himself unmanageable at first. It was raining still in the evening.

   Around evening, Yukiko fell in a profound sleep. She seemed to be less feverish. Penicilin injections done every four hours might have worked for her. Tomioka was pleased at the fact that this medicine had a good effect, even a little, for Yukiko’s life. He was extremely tired. At night, again, he drank shōchū by her bedside. While gradually getting drunk, he felt loathsomeness against the sludgy person in sickness who was sleeping with her mouth open. If he was reflected onto this woman’s fate, it was only their past memories. He thought of themselves like loony ones who were cornered in such a place like this as if they secretly ran off.

A women is such a being who sticks to her memories forever. A woman always mistakes her memory for her destiny. ------ Tomioka was sharp-tongued in oder days and said to Yukiko that she must have been born, if in Tokyo, in Nerima Ward, which was the well-known production area of Japanese white raddish, Nerima’daikon, comparing it with her white legs. Her sleeping face was slack and looked like a woman of easy virtue. Kano had once said that she resembled an actress, Miyake Kuniko. When Tomioka carefully stared at her, her facial structure appeared horsy like a homely daughter born in a Kabuki actor’s family.

   Tomioka drank smelly shōchū a lot, but he became vivacious more than usual. The maid worried about him and asked, “Are you all right?” He replied in a blank stare, “I’m all right.” The drunkness let him forget all the vague things such as memories and fates.

A stormy wind like produced by blowing the bellows pierced his whole body, and he was observing himself like a relish for drinking sake.

   ‘I do not need to come to such a place like this, but I am not willing to go begging for a living in Tokyo. ……  Art brings bread as a proverb says, but the issue is whether I can endure the work of entering the deep mountain like the hermit.’ Taking Yukiko as his companion, he mercilessly pretended to act like an accompaniment of her memory up to now; partly because he was rapaciously attracted to the money with which Yukiko had absconded. ‘Anyhow, it is the God’s money, which must be wonderworking. After all, Gods are as  fair as cruel. ……’ Tomioka felt like drinking all the night while listening to the sound of rain like overflowing from the eaves trough.

‘I lost the power to love a woman.’ He brought seven or eight porcelain bottles of sake, tokkuri, into line on the alcove. He felt limpidity as if he had thoroughly understood the triviality of women, and fell down on the hem of Yukiko’s futon. Late at night, he awoke feeling thirst like his throat was burnt. He thought a nosebleed was about to blow, and groped for the kettle on the hibachi brazier, and put his lips on the spout of the kettle. The rain seemed to let up. The sound of raindrops were heard like from afar.

   He looked at his wrist watch. It was almost four o’clock. Tomioka lit the alcohol lamp, and took out an injection needle.

   His head felt giddy.

   It became a kind of his routine work. The psychology of nurses in the world might be the same as his. He was quite indifferent to the patient, however, became roused from sleep even late at night. That was all. However, the patient deservedly frowned to show her pain.

   “How do you feel?”

   “Much better.”

   “The rain let up.”

   “How heavily it rains here! I was amazed with a heavy rain in this island. ……”

   “Yes. ……”

   “It’s really a persistent rain.”

   “It resembles you, who are gadabout from one memory to another eternally, doesn’t it?”

   “Probably …… . You’re right.”

   “Are we both skinned hares?”

   Yukiko smiled.

   Tomioka tidied up the injection needle, and then, lit a wet cigarette. While puffing unsavorily, he stretched his arm to the alcove for a porcelain bottle of sake.

   An illusion of Osei was present to his senses. Tomioka licked the empty bottles one by one.

“Do you want to drink sake so much?”

   “Yes, I want.”

   “I also want to drink sake, if I was not sick. Say, why did we feel like coming here?”

   “We could not help but come because I got a job here.”

   “Why did you have to get a job at such a far-off place like this?”

   “You know, we cannot live in Tokyo. You, go back to Tokyo when you get a little better. …… You understand?”

   “What shall I do when I get back to Tokyo?”

   “I don’t know. What you are going to do …… .”

   Yukiko closed her eyes. She felt her disease was something special. Hika insistently said to her to get an x-ray, but Yukiko did not agree. He offered her to bring a portable x-ray machine, but Yukiko hated to be examined in her chest.

   “Do you have time?”

   “It is already dawn. It’s five o’clock. Is this the island where it rains all year round?”

   “Who knows?”

   “In this island, there seems nothing to do than entering the mountain to work. I also went to see the official residence, yesterday. I wonder whether you can stay there alone. ……  When I enter the mountain, I will be absent from home for a week. ……”

   “Can’t I enter the mountain?”

   “It must be difficult.”

   “It must be. If not for rains, this island seems to me to be pleasant. I hope it won’t rain everyday like this. ……  In such a situation like this, it would be nice if Kano’san is with us. ……”

   “Do you go and call him back from the other world?”

   “Even if I go over there to bring him back, if he won’t come back, you will be relieved, won’t you?”

   “Of course, I will. Becasue there are women everywhere.”

   “I see. Women are things like that. However superb a woman may be, she also is a thing of that extent when she is looked at from the standpoint of men. ……  Men and women are radically different. I feel resentment hearing that there are women everywhere.”

   “If you feel resentment, you should get well soon. Get well soon and fight against men. Fight with the most effective weapon of a woman. ……”

   “How provoking you are! You had a sharp tongue from the older days. If women such as the parliament women hear how you talk, they must come in anger to plead against your statement.”

   “Parliament women. ……  I don’t think they are women. I have forgotten the existence of such women.”

   Amen, Yukiko said in mind to mean ‘indeed.’ She in anger moved her own hand off her chest and groped for his hand.

 

 

 

 

.. * 63

 

They could not afford to stay at the inn forever. On the fourth day, during a lull in a rain, Yukiko was carried in a stretcher to their official residence. The islanders in surprise looked into the stretcher while came carried on the road.

   The blue sky was seen after a long time. The sun also was shining. Trees which approached from both sides were glittering in sunshine. He was blinded by the radiant colors of the sky. The color was so blue and warm enough to be incompatible with the winter sky.

   Along the winding road, the stretcher was brought as if in waves. She opened her eyes when people’s voice halted. Hens and roosters noisily ran into someone’s house. There was no town which deserved to be called as a town. Houses in the village thoroughly closed their shutters, otherwise, opened it only slightly, which resembled Vietnamese villages in Indochina. Yukiko turned her head to the left and right, and curiously looked around. Immediately after going under a tunnel of huge trees like the banyan, Tomioka’s voice was heard.

   “Thank you for bringing the patient. ……”

   The door of the house creakingly opened. People carrying the tunker stumbled on into the house. The ceiling boards were full of stains and the news paper was pasted on the wall boards. Yukiko stared eye-opened wondering whether this truly was the official residence.

   In the afternoon, Tomioka is going to the mountain riding on a minecart, torokko^[*202].

   He is to stay overnight in the mountain, and will come back the next evening. He hired a war widow who has children as a househelper, and so, the woman will come to take care of Yukiko during his absence from home.

   No one knew where they obtained it from, but a comparatively clean set of the futon of striped cotton was spread.

A blanket which they bought in Kagoshima was used as a bed sheet. The rimless monk tatami, bōzu tatami, was laid in the room. A new aluminium kettle was steaming on the box-type brazier, hako’hibachi.

   After eating the lunch which was delivered from the inn, Tomioka did up his puttees and wore his outfit for entering the mountain, and then, went away. He wore a rainhat and a dirty raincoat, and carried a shriveled rucksack on his shoulder, which was exactly the figure of an expert forester who was accustomed to preparing his body. Noborito in his skiwear came to pick him up. Tomioka asked the house helper again the necessary care for Yukiko, and left the home. It was exceptionally a fine weather.

   “The fine weather like today is truly rare. ……  I feel cheerful. The rice porridge, okayu, is ready, madam. Would you like to eat it?”

   Her complexion looked bad. Her black eyes were bluish as if she had pinworm or ascaridida in her belly. She was named Tsuwai Nobu. Her husband was killed in the battlefield 9 years ago.

   Yukiko had no appetite.

   She only opened her eyes and looked out of the slightly opened shutters. She sticked to what Tomioka jokingly said the other day,

»There are women everywhere.» She was sure that he would survive boldly as he was. Yukiko, unlike him, thought inwardly of herself not to be able to live more than a few years. A turtledove was croaking in the mountain nearby. The face of the mountain appeared purple as if it was sharpened, which could be seen from the opening of the shutters. It resembled the surface of an inkstone.

“Is Kosugidani valley very much far from here? ……”

Yukiko asked Nobu. Nobu who was squeezing a honey orange ponkan, Citrus poonensis, looked up and said.

“Let me see, it takes two hours and a half. On the way to Kosugidani, there is Mt. Tatchūdake, to which it takes approximately one hour. ……  Even so, they say that it snows heavily and snow lies thick in Kosugidani. Your husband would be cold.”

The felling place^[*36] in Kosugidani was located at the mountain altitudes of 2296.6 ft. The average air temperature is 60.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Snow piles up from December to March in Spring.

Because of steep lofty mountain ranges, the weather changes from fine weather, cloudy weather, to rainy weather in a day. Besides, the track of typhoons covers Yakushima Island. So, heavy rains hit the island all year round. As a result, the income of the village was strained, which delayed the implementation of the water management.

The main income sources of the Island are the fishing of flying fish Exocoetidae in May, sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas, sugarcane Saccharum officinarum, and forestry.

   Yakushima Island was well known by Yaku’sugi cedar. Cedar wood could not be pushed out through the river to the estuary as were done in Indochina, so they had to rely upon the torokko-minecart to transport the cedar.

   The cedar which are surrounded in rain and fog all year round, and due to aging, do not float on the water. When the cedar raw woods are loaded and stacked on board a ship, once that one single wood is dropped in the sea, the Yakushima cedar would not float but sink to the bottom of the sea because of its weight.

   “Does it snow so much in the subtropical area like this?”

   “Yes, it does. You can ski until around March in Kosugidani.”

   “Have you ever climbed it?”

   “No. I went to Tachū’dake, halfway to Kosugidani.”

   Suddenly, the sky darkened.

   The fog emerged covering the inkstone-like precipitous mountain peak. Yukiko felt undescribable sorrowfulness while seeing the fog moving around the mountain peak. She thought that people like her would not grow in the landscape like this. Yukiko who had once tasted the luxury could not endure stains on the ceiling and the newspaper-pasted wall boards. If she goes back to Tokyo, various civilizations are actively moving. She wondered how her life in her shed in Ikebukuro would proceed. The memory of Joe appeared in her mind with nostalgia now. Joe had come bringing the large pillow to her shed. He sang for her the song ‘Forget me Not Lyrics’ to the radio. ‘Let’s write a song for us / And sing until we’re old and grey / Forget me not my dear, my darling / Forget me not my love / I’m coming home real soon / Please leave a light on for me / Tell me that you’ll always be true …… .’

   Tomioka looked at the small radio, and asked her to let him listen to a dance music. Yukiko intentionally adjusted the dial to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. “What did you think of at that time?” An excessively polite inquiry in Japanese came from the radio, which was apparently the pronunciation of a second generation of Japanese American, Nisei. Tomioka pestered Yukiko with an American dance music, saying that his heart ached when he heard such a broadcast. Yukiko huffily said. “You as well as I am involved in this tribune. ― I do not mean that I am eager to hear such a tribune, however, I think that I need to hear the truth and reality in the war as there actually are people on trial.” Yukiko felt it was 10 years ago that she first met Joe. By now, that foreigner might have left for home. Their language was not enough for them to know well each other, but they understood each other’s feelings through their bodies. When Tomioka said irony to her, she refuted him, “It’s the same as you loved Niu in Indochina.”

   While recalling her memories, Yukiko felt nostalgia for all her past. The relationship with Joe was pleasant as they did not need to pry into each other’s mind, and it was comfortable without seriousness as they did not need to talk about each other’s responsibility.

 

 

.. * 64

 

Tomioka got into the first carriage, the torokko-locomotive engine, and took a seat next to the driver. His body was roaring up on the narrow rail, and he felt as if his body hung in midair. Below his eyes, the clear and blue Anbō’gawa river was shining, which meandered through the steep valley deep into the jungle. His visiting card in his pocket bore the title of the technical officer of agriculture and forestry, which somewhat was embarassing to him.

   “How about smoking?”

   The driver surprisingly looked at Tomioka. Below their eyes was a precipitous cliff. The fern, hego^[*55], was new to Tomioka. This tree fern grew up everywhere in the outback of Da Lat as well. It resembled the Cyrtomium falcatum, Oni’shida, which literally means ‘ogre fern,’ growing in the main island of Japan. Tomioka lit a cigarette, and thrusted it into the driver’s hand which clenched the steering wheel.

   The village of Ambō which was seen on the right side of the tram as if it was on the bottom of the river was gradually disappearing among ceders. The torokko-tram ran as if flying in the air. Behind the locomotive engine, four open vehicles like minecarts were connected in train. The all four carts were loaded with rice in large straw bags, vegetables, postal matters, and salt in bags of two-fold straw mat. On the rice bags, five or six woodcutters of the district forestry office sat freezingly. Noborito also sat on the rice bag, and was talking loudly with them. The land of 78.6 square miles was the jurisdiction of the district forestry office and was government-

owned. The land, however, was narrow, and not comparable in width even to a private land in French Indochina. Seeking a land in the landless small island was no avail, certainly. There was no doubt that even this narrow 78.6 square miles had to be a rich natural repository in Japan, today. With the defeat in the war, Japan lost all its limbs such as Korea, Taiwan, Ryukyu islands, Sakhalin, and Manchuria, and became the main body only. Under these circumstances at present, Japan had to dig up every corner in the kitchen to feed its big family.

   “It must be cold in the mountain.”

   “They say that there is much snow nationwide this year. We have a heavy show also in the mountain here. Everyone says it’s unusual.”

   “I should have worn the winter clothes and equipments.”

   “When we reach the mountain, winter clothes are available in the office.”

   “How long is the east-west distance of this island?”

   “Well, approximately, the east-west distance is 14.6 mile, and north-south distance is 7.5 miles. ……  It is said that Yakushima Island is 97 miles away from Kagoshima. The Ambō is the warm town, but it is extremely cold at the top of the mountain.”

   The driver explained in an army dialect. Somewhere on the sides of the mountain range, seen on the left hand, bared red soil which sharply affected the eyes. The torokko-carts climbed up considerably close to the peak of the mountain. Plumes of their breaths looked white.

   A raincloud appeared like black eaves, which began covering up the mountain peak. Very soon, it started raining with big raindrops. Tomioka looked back and saw everyone on the cart behind began in a hurry wearing their raincoats and opening their oil paper umbrellas, bangasa.

   When the torokko-carts approached Tatchū’dake mountain, the rain turned into a downpour with wind. They had to halt a little while in order to cover the carts with canopies. The coldness was severe. ―  It was late afternoon that they reached Kosugidani. The mountain darkened and sleet were falling. Large cedar trees rising straight high grew thick, and there was a cluster of sheds at the tree felling and transportation work place.

   Tomioka made a dash for the district forestry office and warmed up near the stove. Noborito introduced him the staff. Because of the power plant failure today, unfortunately, a large lamp was suspended on the ceiling.

A gray haired old official called Sakai talked to him with a smile.

   “Almost all workers here were Korean in the older days. All workers now are Japanese repatriates from Manchuria and Korea. Five copies of Shimbun Akahata, the daily organ of the Japanese Communist Party in the form of a national newspaper, are sent by surface mail. Even the island like this has become somewhat democratized and complicated. ―  The world changed very much. ……  People with high-pitched voice are high-spirited. Old men like me are not demanded on the mountain anymore. Technical officer Tomioka also must be an orator at first, rather than felling trees.”

Old Sakai finished his talk and took a cigarette from Tomioka and lit it with a blaze in the stove. Glass pans darkened. Pendent icicles were formed from the low eaves here and there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. * 65

 

Away from the city of Saigon, the road naturally entered the town of Qua Dein, where many Japanese soldiers were stationed. While on a journey from here to Bien Hoa, their vehicle passed through sugar cane fields, orchards, and several small villages where palm trees and areca catechu binlō were lush. The vehicle crossed a couple of long iron bridges built over the Dong Nai River. And then, beautiful Bien Hoa town. Yukiko, together with Tomioka and Kano, stayed overnight in a small hotel. It was the hotel for French people, the name of which was Maison Poisson. Poisson meant fish in French, and only the tail of a fish was largely illustrated on the hotel billboard.

   It was just after the air raid, and the power station was destroyed. So, they took supper outside in the garden in twilight, where orange color blossoms of Hoa Phượng were in full bloom. An unfamiliar bird chirped in a shrubbery somewhere nearby. The fragrance of blossoms smelled like choking. Lawn in the garden appeared greenly moisture as if it got wet on the bottom of the light of the dusk. Under their wooden table, Yukiko’s white shoe tops were playing with Tomioka’s legs.

The night was so sultry that Yukiko was unable to fall asleep. Edible flogs were weirdly crowing afar. While staring at the dark, she felt smothered with recalling Tomioka’s weight over her chest.

A deafening silence outside the room. A clicking sound of secretly turning the key. Soon the door opened and Tomioka’s high silhouette raised in the light outside disappeared into the darkness behind the door. Yukiko on purpose moved her fan violently inside her mosquito net. Their mouths smelled of sherry which they drank on the lawn a little while ago. Two groups of soldiers stayed in this hotel. So, Yukiko and Tomioka kept staring quietly at each other’ eyes in the dark without making any voice. On the bottom of their glittering beastly eyes, a secret love only of their own, which was far from the war, was keenly talking about their feelings.

   Outside the window, a big fruit fell on the ground from a tree with a thud, at which the two people were terrified. That silent night at the hotel on the plateau of Bien Hoa as if they were on the bottom of a well appeared in her dream afterwards as well. Her hand always recalled a fragrant touch of Tomioka’s thick hair whenever she thought about that night.

   The next day, they with an innocent look were riding on the rumbling vehicle from Gau Giay through a junction at Gi Lin and farther on the ribbonlike state road for 24 miles. Yukiko and Kano took the rear seat and a Vietnamese driver and Tomioka were side by side in front on the driver’s seat. Kano was strangely in a bad temper. The vehicle drove through a green tunnel with strong sunbeams shining through branches of trees in the orderly rubber forest.

The vehicle stopped at Trang Bom. Tomioka and Kano went away for a while to do their work in the forestry experiment station. Then, the vehicle drove again with sizzling sounds over the somber, leaden, and winding state road. The Vietnamese driver said that wild elephants sometimes came out around here. It was a weird woodland where big trees of Hoa Bằng Lăng grew in colonies in deep-black.

In the dream, Yukiko with a smile was chasing her dream. That springtime of her life would never come back again. ……  Nothing of that time remained the same. Things of that time did never remain the same nor come back. Tomioka and Yukiko came drifting to the southern end, Yakushima, in this way at present, however, both grew older by some years since that time. ―  Yukiko was listening to the rainy sound rustling in her ears as if it was the stirring sound of the sea of tree. However, she got disappointed when she noticed it was the sound of rain spraying against the windowpane, and felt like fell into an abyss.

The whole house seemed to be thoroughly drowned in the water like the Noachian deluge. She closed her eyes, when her heart’s throbbing sound was awfully clearly heard through her skin and muscles. The sound of her heart halted sometimes and began throbbing again. When she pressed her ears onto the pillow, the throb of her heart sounded loudly like someone’s footsteps.

   The rain was so irritating that she wanted to sharply slash the circumambient air of with a sword. She stretched out her four limbs. She imagined how big her coffin would be. She was eagerly awaiting Tomioka who went to the mountain the day before, and concentrated her whole body into waiting.

   The doctor, Hika, also did not readily come. Yukiko did not know the reason but wanted to send a letter to Shizuoka. She wanted to write to her mother-in-law, but changed her mind while thinking. The househelper Tsuwai Nobu seemed not to have any intention at all to devise cooking for Yukiko. She served her a piece of dried pickled salt plum, umeboshi, on tastless pasty porridge. From time to time, a raw egg with shell was put on a plate. Yukiko somehow was caught by illusion that Tsuwai Nobu and Tomioka arranged these things beforehand. She thought that she had to be emancipated from this woman. If not, she would be murdered.

   Yukiko from time to time looked up at Tsuwai Nobu who was painstakingly reading a book near her bed. She seemingly had a strong will suitable for a woman who kept solitude for 9 years away from her husband killed in action. Despite that, her fatty female skin around her chest and chin appeared appetizing.

Yukiko wondered what book she was reading and wanted to ask her about the book, but felt too languid to speak out. She put out her sweaty arm on the blanket and looked at it, while thinking that she could sense the end of her life.

   Tsuwai put the book there and went away to the entrance. The old book was entitled Home Medicine, which Tomioka borrowed from the inn Ambō. Today, the sharply cliffy inkstone-like Yae’dake Mountain could not be seen in the haze of drizzling rain. White soles of Tsuwai who went away to the entrance caught Yukiko’s attention. Women here walked always barefoot. Their soles were unexpectedly clean, maybe because they stepped on sand, and they entered the room without washing their feet.

   Yukiko thought that Tomioka would marry Tsuwai Nobu and settle down in this island if Yukiko died here. ……  Yukiko could predict such possible future. While imaging the process that the two people would be united in marriage, she felt something slimy blew up in her chest with fierce rapidity. Yukiko writhed in anguish such that she could not breathe. She pressed her nose and mouth with her both hands, but could not prevent the viscous slimy thing from spouting. She could not breathe. She could not utter a voice. Clots of spouting blood contaminated her futon, blanket, and pillow.

   Yukiko thought that she would die as it was. Her cold self sat beside her other self, and clung to Death. Death existed in front of her other self. ……  Death remarked that everything is leaving from the body of this woman, and seemingly was dancing the dance of victory. Among the things which recurred to her mind, Yukiko felt like she heard Kano’s faint voice inviting her, and slightly nodded her head. She did not have anything to think of with a sense of loss in her life so far. Even if Tomioka was beside her, a train which she alone was riding was already about to go away to the other world. Yukiko wanted to know the beginning of her death. The quick breaking down of her body flew in sequence through her last life. From which part of her body begins to collapse noisily? She breathed with short breaths. She wanted to drink water. Memories of her long journeys in the days that she had been recklessly healthy were ramblingly floating in her eyes. Her anxiety, estrangement, and confusion to pass away into the unknown world were expressed in her ten fingers as if those were depressing keys on the piano keyboard. She felt badly as if the muddy blood were full of her lung which had become a cavity.

   Someone’s shadow was flickering near her pillow. The shadow was her annoyance, so Yukiko tried to avoid it by lifting up her bloody face. However, the shadow with a dark light like a lightning to ruin mankind moved flickering upon her forehead.

Yukiko saw her own lonesome figure in the sounds of rain as if judgement of Noah and Lot were roaringly surging against her. An empty feeling of a woman who was not loved by anyone came back reflectedly like an echoe from the other side of the cave of resonance. She as a disqualified self did not have any means to get back anything at this present. Where had she gone, herself of those days? ……  It was really languid even to remember various memories of Indochina. While covering her mouth with both hands to push back towards her throat the slimy blood which gushed out from her lungs, Yukiko was groaning as if she was being buried alive, ‘Ah, I want to live.’ She did not want to die. Her brain was clear and cold like ice but her body did not move freely regardless of her will.

 

 

.. * 66

 

On the mountain, it rained unusually in torrents. Tomioka postponed his return to the town until the next day. He was drinking spirits distilled from yams, imo’shōchū, with five or six fellow workers while warming themselves near the stove. He was lacking in courage to go down the mountain and return to his official dwelling. He thought that Yukiko’s symptom might not be so serious, and became more heartless while he was getting drunk.

   Tomioka thought the appearance of Yae’dake Mountain resembled Khmer temple, the Bayon at Angkor Thom in Indochina, and was talking piecemeal of stories at that time.

   “Towers of mansonry rise high on the mountain, and the many towers are richly decorated with stone faces. In chambers, stone pillars slant and stone beams are about to fall. In the vestibule of the garden of stone ruins, a huge tree supports the retaining wall which was about to fall down. Those are not different from ceders which had died standing like mummies. Inside the royal palace, the statue of joining sexual organs of the man and woman was enshrined as a symbol of Shiva. I’m sure that they called it the lingam. …… Civilizations have developed in various ways. I think this Mahesvara, Shiva in the Buddhist pantheon, is man’s greatest civilization.

Atomic bombs also must have been created from secrets of Shiva, the Mahesvara. ……”

   People in the mountain were talkative. They listened to recollections of Tomioka who had inspected mountains of far-off foreign land, while frequently pulling up ceramics bottles of sake, tokkuri, from the kettle’s boiling water on the stove.

   Tomioka was accustomed to the smell of yam shōchū. It was different from shōchū that he drank in Tokyo, and did not affect badly his head, and the taste was unexpectedly good. Before no one knew it, they were talking of women. An old female cook and girl waitresses, while guffawing, tore dried cattlefish or poured soy souce to dried mackerel. Tomioka got extremely drunk. He was so drunk as not to be able to hear even a sound of the second hand when he pressed his wrist watch to his ear. If he was not drunk, his mind was not endurable anymore. It might not have been his mind but presumably his body that was not endurable. The dark bluish skin of a fleshy wrist of a small girl was flickering in his eyes. Tomioka had not touched the female skin recently. ……  He felt throbs in his belly while looking at the girl’s thick neck, her plump waist, and even dark purplish skin of her foot insteps. The girl wore a green jacket and blue loose trousers, mompe^[*121] with white splash water pattern kasuri^[*88]. Lingering snow piled up on mountains. Outside the shed, the sleet rain was ache to cheeks. In their life on such cold mountains, the girl ran errands from shed to shed without wearing socks-like footwear, tabi.

   If not for anyone around, he probably would push her down. Her soft and elastic body was awfully eyesore to Tomioka. He felt like got this kind of feelings after a long time. The girl’s face somewhere resembled Osei. However, he had burnt his old days entirely to ashes, and came over here all the way. He went up to his bed on the top of the triple layered berth like shelves to raise silkworms, took off his leather jacket, and lay down on the blanket. The girl’s guffaw sounded playfully in his ears for a long time.

   Tomioka slept a seductive afternoon sleep a little while and awoke at around five o’clock. The lamp was lit. Someone downstairs was calling him. Tomioka looked down from the handrail. He cried to him, “A phone call to you from town. Your wife is in critical condition.” Tomioka wore his leather jacket, went downstairs, and took on his mountain shoes beside the stove.

   “No torokko leave now, does it?”

“I will have it leave. The outbound torokko is only to go flowing down the rail. I will ask someone to accompany you.”

   The elderly in charge of General affairs undertook. The night was going to fall. The lamplight was flickering in every mountain hut. The rain unnoticeably turned to snow. Tomioka wore a shawl, which the girl lent him, around his cheeks and neck, and sat on the torokko-cart of one tatami size, where he groveled with a yound woodcutter who steered the torokko and a student who was going to return to Kagoshima by ship to be put into port the next day. Tomioka and the student held a hand lantern in turns, in the light of which the woodcutter pressed the steer.

   The torokko drifted down the steep mountain road roaring noisily like thunder. The torokko from time to time jumped into the air. The young woodcutter skilfully save the speed, but did not forget to scare the other two people saying, “Oops, we nearly fell headlong ……” The light of the hand lantern floated smoothly down the rail through blinding darkness in the valley. The rain pelted the town of Ambō.

   It was nearly ten o’clock that Tomioka just barely arrived at his official dwelling. Yukiko had been dead. In the room, there were seven or eight people unknown to Tomioka and also to Yukiko. They were in worry, and came to be present at her final moments. Tomioka greeted the people around and sat close to Yukiko’s pillow. In the light of the lamp, he stared at the bloated face of dead Yukiko for a while. Someone stripped Tomioka of his dripping wet jacket.

   Yukiko’s hands were not crossed on her chest yet. Tomioka, in the same way as he did for his wife Kuniko, gently crossed Yukiko’s hands on her chest which were not yet stiffened. Her cold hands were stained with dry blood. The househelper must have wiped her face clean. When he saw blood on her hands, hot tears pushed up suddenly on his eyelids. He began sobbing. The death of Osei, the death of Kuniko, and again the death of Yukiko now. Tomioka shook intensely Yukiko’s body. Her body had no reaction. People there went away one after another. The sound of their steps, putting up their oil paper umbrella, bangasa, went along the road by the window.

“Around what time did her condition change?”

   Tsuwai Nobu did not know clearly when her condition had changed. At that time, she was reading the book of Home Medicine. The sick person stared at her with weird eyes as if those eyes saw through all that Nobu was reading. Tsuwai Nobu was pregnant. She did not want to give birth to a child. She happened to pick up the book which was left by chance near the sick person’s pillow. Legal abortion methods were written in the book. Nobu concentrated into her thought calculating in her mind the cost of abortion in Kagoshima. She casually looked down at the bloated face of the sick person, who looked frighteningly dreadful with her eyes slightly open. She could not bear staying alone close to the sick person with whom she did not have any relationship. So, Tsuwai Nobu quickly returned to her home with bare foot in the rain.

   Tsuwai Nobu fabricated a story to tell Tomioka. He, on his part as well, knew that she fabricated her story, but abode by the inevitable now that the thing had come up to this. Yukiko virtually had come to this island to die. Tomioka politely dismissed people who were present at Yukiko’s final moments. He expected Tsuwai Nobu to stay here, but let her go because Nobu also seemed to have fear.

 

   Yukiko appeared to considerably suffer. Blood stains around her caught his attention.

   Tomioka lost his energy to do something. He took up the kettle on the brasier, hibachi, in the next room, and poured the boiling water into a metal basin. He soaked a towel in the hot water, and wiped Yukiko’s face with it. He took out a lipstick from her handbag which she always kept close to her pillow. He put lipstick on her lips, but its growth was not good. He wiped her around her eyebrows, when he lifted her eyelids up to open her eyes. He felt like her lips moved as if she said, “Please, leave me alone, now. ……” The rain was drumming on the shingled roof so stuffily. Tomioka wondered what those raindrops wanted him to do. He felt like he was driven away by such a noisy drumming sound as to pass throught the ceiling. Yukiko’s eyes were glittering like those of an animal. He became anxious and looked into her eyes once more. He drew the lamp near and kept staring at her eyes. It was a look of entreaty. Tomioka felt like he heard infinite protests from the eyes of the dead person. He took out her comb from her handbag, combed her thick hair and bundled it up. The dead person did not demand attentiveness from the living person anymore. She left herself only to be done.

   His wrist watch showed twelve.

   It was pouring noisily outside all the night. Late at night, Tomioka had bitter diarrhea. He sufferingly crouched on the toiled, buried his face in his both hands, and convulsively wept tears like a child. What on earth are the human beings? Whom will they be going to become? ……  Human beings disappear casually from this world after passing through various processes. Human beings are uniformily children of God, and also uniformily Devil’s fellow.

The rain was splashing into from the glassless wire mesh window of the toilet. The candle light was wavering near his foot. A lower abdominal pain like a hell on earth, along with the bad smelling of the toilet, tore up his skin tinglingly.

He thought that he deserved such the impossibility as he could not get out of this narrow frame. The impossibility led to a kind of Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. The death of Yukiko itself appeared something casual like a mishap. Therefore, Tomioka unexpectedly felt pity and compassion for the purpose of her death. It was nothing different from being in an automobile accident in Tokyo. If she had passed away after a long days of fight against her illness, he could have given her death a significance of a passion-like dream. ……  Tomioka holding his lower abdomen came back to his room as if crawling. He wrapped the blanket around his waist. He did not know even which direction the north was, despite the customary position for a dead body who lay with the head to the north. Tomioka moved her pillow to the wall, where the deceased lay flat. On the new futon beddings, scissors made of Tanega’shima Island was laid, in place of a sword, for self-protection during a travel to the world beyond.

The two people did not have any acquaintances in the island. However, some people with whom they got acquainted after their arrival in the island came to be present at her final moments while he was absent. Tomioka felt amazement. No one knows where he would encounter such a mishap. To attend her final moments must have been a mishap for them, which simultaneously was the tastefulness in people’s world as well. Thinking this way, Tomioka went to the kitchen to take a bottle of shōchū which he had asked to Tsuwai Nobu to buy. He warmed it and drank it. The dead woman lay in the next room. A scene of the lonely feast without anyone in his company, like a religious pureness, filled his inntermost feelings with gaiety.

Tomioka thought that someday in the future he also would attain that bodily form, however, did not have any intention to die with Yukiko. The more he drank, the more he became frustrated. He felt deeply in his innermost feelings that this human frustration was his salvation. The drankness thoroughly filled his whole body, and he felt excitement as if his life was a benefit that he gained gratefully. He felt like ether of the dead shone sometimes in space in the room. He stared intently at the flat bed. The dead quietly remained in the same still state.

He thought that Yukiko among the three women, who had been with him, was the best and stayed with him for the longest time. However, this cold body of Yukiko had no reaction any more.

The past memories of two people were back in a flash in his drunk brain, and he moved to tears. His drunkenness became fierce little by little. He gulped down shōchū as much as felt his stomach heated. He did not eat anything, so his drunkenness went over to his whole body with an incredible speed. He continued talking to himself and drinking in turn.

The wind blew and the candle burnt out at Yukiko’s bedside.

Tomioka staggeringly lit a new candle, and went to the next room to put it at her bedside.

An expressionless face of the dead like a mask looked like being thrown out in lonelines, which meant the feelings only of people who look at the dead and think that the dead seems to be lonely. Tomioka thought like this and touched her forehead. Ruthlessness of the dead, not of a living body, blushed his hand away soon. Either a new washcloth or a gauze was not available, so Tomioka opened his rice paper sheet pad and put it over Yukiko’s face like a roof.

 

 

.. * 67

 

One month had passed. Tomioka took one-week off and went to Kagoshima.

Kagoshima in early spring was comfortably dry like another world. He arrived at the inn where he had previously stayed. After a short period of time, however, maids had been completely replaced. He was led to the same room where he previously stayed with Yukiko, which was located to the front side of the inn. Tomioka felt amazement as it was a mere coincidence.

His wrist watch had been soaked in the rain, so he brought it for repair to the store he bought it. They said that the owner who was to repair it was injured in bed. Tomioka did not have another choice but took it to another watch store. On his return trip, he visited Hika, the medical doctor. Hika was at home in his hospital, and remembered him. Tomioka was led to the medicine smell room, and talked to Hika about the death of Yukiko. Hika also said that he had wanted to take the X-ray because he felt worry about her symptom.

Tomioka felt somewhat stifled in the situation being together with Hika despite the sick person had passed away. Tomioka’s face  had utterly changed like a different person by heavy drinking for a month. He lit cigarettes one after another. The room became terribly smokey. Coffee was served. Tomioka felt like he met a civilization for the first time after a long time. He drank the bitter coffee. Hika said, “Let’s listen to Dvořák’s From the New World which your wife liked.” He played the record on his hand-made phonograph.

While listening to the music, Hika said to Tomioka that she might have not realized her own physical condition although she had been sick for a long time. He added with a smile.

“Shall I examine your body? A quantity of your drinking sake is considerably large, isn’t it?”

Tomioka felt relaxed while listening to the music. In the late afternoon, Tomioka left the hospital promising a reencounter with Hika, who was going to have a gathering afterwards. Tomioka had nowhere to go. Each life has its own arabesque which refuses other people’s intervention, he thought. His nostalgic feeling for the doctor Hika whom he had had in the remote island a little cooled off. He was a normal doctor who regulates his lifestyle. On ne se soigné jamais trop ……, which meant that you cannot be careful too much. Tomioka wanted to drop by in a secondhand bookseller to buy a novel. Books that he wanted to read were those of Émile François Zola. He remembered the half-breed typist who worked for the Forestry Bureau in Da Lat lent him Zola’s L'assommoir 1899. He walked to the lively Tenmonkan^[*194] street in twilight. He went around looking at movie theaters one by one. Along the narrow street, the clamor of half-breed races flowed like icebergs. The civilization like this was depressing to Tomioka at present. He went in the backstreet, and enter the folksy Japanese restaurant where women were seen. Women wore oily shining makeups. Tomioka liked a woman in red evening dress. He drank beer by her serving. The beer was so delicious that he had never experienced. The rain lit up. The night air was dryly fragrant, and was refreshing for him after a long time. Her eyes were thin like a thread, and sometimes seductively glittered from the bottom of her thick eyelids. The backs of her hands looked opaque in color. Under the color lamp, however, her red dress was considerably contaminated. A guitar player with a red neckerchief around his neck came into the narrow earthen floor.

   The woman gabbled with her strong dialect and drove away the guitar player. Her dialect somewhat resembled Yukiko’s. Yukiko’s figure at the time that she was buried under the ground in which the rain soaked was fixed firmly on his mind. At any rate, that strong single life had fallen. And here, again, barley grains of delusive allure were going to germinate. Adam appeared not to have learned his lesson, and began to be allured by emotions. ……  Gods sowed countless seeds over lands everywhere. Seeds were growing only by their “own natural aptitude” to a crop. Tomioka emptied half-dozen bottles of beer in a twinkling, and was dragged upstairs by the woman.

   Late at night, Tomioka was sent back by the woman to the inn. The woman seemed to be honest, unexpectedly. A considerable amount of bank notes, other than he entrusted to the inn, were still left in his purse. All the money in his possession was those that Yukiko left. Tomioka entered the dried futon without changing his clothes, and was chasing his own thought which was going to become heavier like a stone.

   He lost his energy to return to Yakushima Island. However, it was unbearable for him to leave Yukiko’s body alone under the ground of that island. Besides, what was left for him even if he would return to Tokyo?

   Tomioka in thoughts likened his own figure to floating clouds. That was such floating clouds as insidiously disappear sometime somewhere.

 

 

- End -  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Postscript　　　by Mei Yumi

 

 

..。 *    <Hayashi Fumiko’s personal history>

 

Fumiko Hayashi is a Japanese poet and novelist. Fumiko was born on December 31, 1903, 36 Meiji in Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture. She was born on the second floor of a tin-smith shop, which reflected in “Floating clouds”, where Yukiko tentatively lived alone in the same circumstances. Fumiko said that she was born on May 5 in 1904, 37 Meiji, the year of Dragon, however, her registered birth date was as the above. Hayashi Fumiko is the author’s real name, and her mother, Kiku, registered her name simply in katakana, such asフミ子. Later, upon her acquaintance Kobayashi Masao’s advice, she applied beautiful kanji characters for her name, Fumiko芙美子. She died on June 28, 1951, 26 Shōwa.

   Her mother, Kiku, delivered a baby out of wedlock at the age of 36 in Shimonoseki. Her father was Miyata Asatarō, 22 years old. The family of three traveled around Kyūshū as peddlers. Later, her father was successful as a kimono fabric dealer, and took his favorite geisha, Sakai Hama, into their home. Probably because of it or others, the 43-year-old mother Kiku secretly took 7-year-old Fumiko, and went out with a manager of her husband’s store and her bedfellow, Sawai Kisaburō, who was younger than Kiku by 20 years.

Sakurajima island in Kyūshū erupted on January 12, 1914, 3 Taishō. The lava flowed out and formed a land bridge to Ōsumi peninsula. At that time, Fumiko’s family was rock bottom poor. Details on their living were unknown until they settled in Onomichi in 1916, 5 Taishō. She possibly with her mother worked as housemaids in the wealthy house of Itō Den’emon, called the Kopper Palace of Itō Den’emon and Byakuren Akiko^[*74], and then, in a Turkish merchant’s house in Kōbe.

*     *     *     *     *

 

Fumiko graduated from a girls’ high school in 1922 at the age of 19. After the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake on September 1, 1923, 12 Taishō, she came to Tokyo in 1924 at the age of 21. While working as a transcriber, a cafe maid, and the like, she began writing poems and posted them to literary magazines, and sold her original nursery stories in the streets. During this period, she got to know literary people, and some of them estimated her literary talent highly. She began writing novels in 1926, 1 Shōwa, at the age of 23. Her novel, A Wanderer’s Notebook or Diary of a Vagabond, Hōrōki, became a long-run best seller and it was made into a movie. She started writing as a full-scale novelist.

In 1926, 15 Taishō, at her age of 23, Fumiko began to live with Tezuka Rokubin^[*198] a painter and the son of a wealthy farmer.

From January to February 25, 1932, 7 Shōwa, she traveled to Paris at the age of 29. On the way back from France, she stopped in Napoli, and then, in Shanghai, she met Lojin or Lǔ Xùn in Chinese. Lojin, born on September 25, 1881 and died on October 19, 1936, was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. He was educated in the early 1900s in Japan. He is the most popular novelist still in 2013 among students in the People’s Republic of China.

In January 1939, 14 Shōwa, her nonfiction, “Unit Kitagishi, Kitagishi Butai” was published.

   In March 1944, 19 Shōwa, Fumiko, at her age of 41, legally married to Ryokubin. Hayashi Fumiko had many extramarital lovers. She was so careless as to leave her affairs open to her husband Ryokubin. He, however, took care of the after settlements of her affairs without any complaints. No doubt that her affairs were reflected in her novels.

In the next year after the end of the war in 1945, 20 Shōwa, many publishers began their business again in Japan. And Fumiko’s superb works like “Late Chrysanthemum – Ban’giku,” “Floating Clouds – Uki’gumo,” “Downtown – Shita’machi,” and others were published successively. “A Wanderer’s Notebook – Hōrōki,” had originally the subtitle of “The autumn has come,” which was first published in a female literary magazine called “Nyonin Geijutsu^[*138]” on October 1928, 3 Shōwa, at the age of 25. Afterwards, “Hōrōki” was published as a book in July 1930, 5 Shōwa, and became the best seller. “A Wanderer’s Notebook – Hōrōki” was regarded as Hayashi Fumiko’s masterpiece, and was translated into English by Ericson in 1997.

In November 1948, 23 Shōwa, at her age of 45, ‘Late Chrysanthemum, Ban’giku” appeared in an extra issue of the literary magazine, Bungei’shunjū.

From 1949 to 1951, 9 novelettes and novels appeared serially in newspapers and magazines. Simultaneously, she was invited to many seminars and lectures.

In April 1949, 24 Shōwa, “Downtown, Shita’machi” appeared in an extra issue of the literary magazine, Shōsetu’Shinchō.

In 1950, 25 Shōwa, she made a coverage trip for her serial novel “Floating Clouds, Uki’gumo” to Yakushima Island.

   In June 1951, 26 Shōwa, “Floating Clouds” was compiled into a book and published.

On June 28, 1951, 26 Shōwa, Hayashi Fumiko attended meetings in 2 restaurants one after the other, then she died suddenly of a heart attack at home around 23:00 at the age of 48. Ishikawa Tatsuzō, a journalist and novelist, said, “She was killed by journalism.”

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

..。 *    <Writing Style of Hayashi Fumiko>

 

<The third-person pronouns>

Originally, the third-person pronouns such as he, she, they, are not available in Japanese language concept. Very often, without any subjects either the third-person pronouns or proper nouns, what/who the subject is easily understood due to the wording, or the context before and after sentences in a Japanese text. Hayashi Fujiko, who wrote actively during the mid- Shōwa period, also did not use the third-person pronouns but used proper nouns such as Kin, Tabe, Riyo, Tsuruishi, Yukiko, Tomioka and the like. Otherwise she used ordinary nous like ‘the man, the master, women,’ and so on. However, it seems cumbersome to the non-Japanese readers that proper nouns should frequently appear. Besides, the author from time to time disregarded even the subject itself in her sentence. Her Japanese readers, however, understand well what/who the subject of the concerned sentence was. Japanese have no sense of incongruity to it. In the English version, however, the subject of the third-person pronoun or proper noun was added to such a sentence.

 

<Undescribed description>

Other characteristics in Japanese novels need to be referred to, as follows:  The author wrote in Chapter 12.  »Tomioka moved her face away from his chest and watched her plump lips. He found her lips far different from Niw’s kiss of last night, and felt grateful for a value of woman closely akin who understood every fragment of words that he uttered. No need to be attentive, Tomioka felt easy, and absentmindedly gazed at Yukiko’s face showing a flash of excitement.»

   She wrote that »he felt grateful for a value of woman closely akin who understood every fragment of words that he uttered» , which exactly shows a traditional reality in the Japanese way of communication. People understand the other people closely akin who understand every fragment of words through the nuance their words contain. It means that the translation of Japanese novels is not easy. The translator have to read the unwritten nuance from between sentences. In Hayashi Fumiko’s novels, this type of unwritten nuance is scattered in many places, which is not exceptional but a typical writing style of authors during the early 1900s in Japan. Even today, unspoken nuances need to be heard very often in our daily conversation, which does not mean that Japanese keep things secret but are accustomed for a long time to read thoughts of each other without uttering in words. This customary attitude amplifies on the considerations for other people, “omoi’yari.” Today, we have learnt to pronounce clearly in voice what we think about in our innermost mind, owing to the Western especially American way of communications. Despite whether it suits for Japanese traditional aesthetics or not, therefore, the translators’ works became much easier.

 

<Hayashi Fumiko’s method of describing local names>

The author, Hayashi Fumiko, tried to describe local place names in the local language as precisely as possible in katakana, which is one of three writing styles in Japanese language such as kanji, hiragana, and katakana. In her nonfiction, “Unit Kitagawa,” 1938, she, as a female war correspondent at the fronts in Nanjing and Wuhan in 1937 – 38, wrote in her text Chinese town names in katakana, either in local pronunciation or in Japanese pronunciation. She collected the names of things by showing it to her housemaid, amah, and let her pronounce in local language. This is the basic method in sociological and folkloristic field works to collect data indigenous to concerned regions from local people. In Vietnam, she must have collected data in the same way as above mentioned, although it is not easy now to find the specific places from her descriptions in katakana. One confusion lies upon Vietnamese social situations at that time, while Vietnam was a French colony, and French pronunciation fairly intervened in local languages. The author wrote Hue in katakana as ユエ, which cannot be found in maps of Vietnam in Japanese, because the place is referred to as フエ in katakana at present. In actuality, in French, ‘h’ is a ‘muet’ and is not pronounced, therefore, ‘Hué’ is pronounced like ‘yue,’ which is the reason that the author wrote Hue as ユエ in katakana. In Da Lat, the author referred to the mountain Nui Ba, as ランヴィアンin katakana, but notランビアン, Lang Biang, as shown on the present map. Her description, ランヴィアン, came from Lam Vien, which was often used at that time. There are other examples like that in her novel, “Floating clouds,” 1951. Once that the author’s tendency in description is known, however, the problem solving became easier.

 

During the translation of Hayashi Fumiko’s novels, Mei Yumi went to Vietnam along with Yakushima Island and Sakurajima, as well as the author’s resident in Shinjuku Ward in Tokyo, besides, to Nanjing, in order to reflect the author’s feelings, the trend of times, and atmosphere peculiar to the areas as accurately as possible upon her translation. Yumi did field work in Vietnam to locate some streets and towns which are not found on the present map. The author described the local place names precisely in katakana by hearing the French sounds prevalently used in Vietnam at that time. The translator tried to find the present place names through the author’s descriptions in katakana, and most of them were located. The names, however, must have changed during 70 years, besides, there were Vietnam War and possibly many other domestic conflicts during that time. Otherwise, names of towns and streets must have disappeared by land reassignment, in the same way as in Japan. So, Vietnamese themselves sometimes could not even imagine where those towns and streets in question are. To those unknown names of towns and places written in katakana in the novel, a combination of alphabets of similar sounds was applied like Ontre (Chapter 43, p. 291), Duran (Chapter 44, p. 292), Trucham and Manrin (p. 293).

*     *     *     *     *

 

 

..。 *    <The early postwar novels of Hayashi Fumiko>

Three novels of Hayashi Fumiko translated here are related to the early postwar period in Japan.

 

Late Chrysanthemum – Ban’giku

“Late Chrysanthemum” is an ex-geisha’s one night story after the war. The main character Kin had a strongwill to survive.

In November 1948, 23 Shōwa, “Late Chrysanthemum” appeared in an extra issue of a literary magazine, the Bungei’Shunjū. This is the most important work of Hayashi Fumiko, which is praised for its highly qualified perfection and elaborate description.

   Kin is the name of the novel’s main character, Aizawa Kin. In the novel, Kin worked as a professional geisha, and was named Kinya. There are lots of kanji characters suitable for the pronunciation of “kin.” In the novel, the kanji 欣 is used for the female name of Kin, which signifies “feel the joy, excited, nice and happy.” The name Kin might not be irrelevant to Egi Kinkin欣々, who was one of Taishō three beauties^[*188]. Egi Kinkin was born on January 30 in 1877, 10 Meiji, otherwise said, born in 1879, 12 Meiji, and died on February 20 in 1930, 5 Shōwa. Her real name was Eiko, who was the wife of a scholar of law, Egi Makoto. Kinkin or Kinkin Ei was her art name. Her younger brother of a different father, Hayakawa Tokuji, was the founder of the Sharp Corporation.

Fumiko’s lawful husband, Ryokubin, said that the model of Kin was Tsuge Soyo, who offered the theme to Fumiko. Tsuge Soyo was the geisha and was a lover of Tokuda Shūsei^[*201]. When Shūsei first met her, Soyo ran an introductory teahouse named “Shin’Nuno’bukuro” in a courtesan and geisha district in Nakasu, which is located between the sandbank of the Naka River and the Hakata River in Fukuoka city, Fukuoka prefecture in Kyūshū. Shūsei wrote many novels about Soyo, such as “House of the water’s edge,” “Treasury Anectdote,” among others. Fumiko was a friend of the couple.

Hirabayashi Taiko^[*59] said that the model of Tabe was a newspaper journalist Takamatsu Tōichirō^[*190]. Kirino Natsuo^[*95] wrote her fictional novel, “Nanika’aru,” in reference to the relevant history of this period in Fumiko’s life, where Kirino wrote that Fumiko gave a birth to a boy for the journalist, although both Fumiko and the journalist had their own married partners, respectively.

*     *     *     *     *

 

Downtown – Shita’machi

“Downtown” is a two week story of a female peddler and an ex-soldier after the war. Their relationship finished all of sudden.

“Downtown” appeared in April 1949, 24 Shōwa in an extra issue of a literary magazine, Shōsetsu’Shinchō. The literary magazine has been published monthly since September 1947 from The Shinchōsha Publishing Co, Ltd. which was founded in 1896.

*     *     *     *     *

 

Floating Clouds – Uki’gumo

“Floating Clouds” is mainly a five year story. The storyline, however, covers approximately ten years from 1939 in Japan through to 1943 in French Indochina, and then, back to Japan after the war, 1945 to 1949.

“Floating clouds” is compiled in a book and published in April 1951, 26 Shōwa, which is considered to be the last novel of Hayashi Fumiko. She died suddenly of heart attack at home at about 11:00 pm, June 28 in 1951, 26 Shōwa, at the age of 48.

In critical social situations in Japan, during the years after Japan’s surrender through to her sudden death, Fumiko exerted her abundant talents in writing. Along with “Floating Clouds,” “Kawahaze^[*93],” “Downtown,” and “Bone” are among her fruition.

“Floating clouds” can be seen as Hayashi Fumiko’s compilation. Japan, which changed into towns of ruins and debris finally after the firebombing and bombardments, made her bring up something insoluble which was built up inward in her body. The real journalist Takamatsu is said to work as a catalyst to act upon the fictional Tomioka in this novel.

 

<Some contradictions in “Floating Clouds”>

1)  Kano in Chapter 23 lived in Odawara with his mother, according to Tomioka. In Chapter 34, however, he lived in Minosawa in

Yokohama, with his mother and his younger brother.

2)  The “Ginza Sanshirō” is a movie produced by a Japanese film director Ichikawa Kon, born on November 20, 1915, 4 Taishō and

died on February 13, 2008, 20 Heisē. The movie was released on

April 9, 1950, 25 Shōwa. The author Hayashi Fumiko died at the age

of 48 on June 28, 1951, 26 Shōwa. The novel “Floating Clouds” was

published serially on the novel magazine “Fūsetsu (Wind and

Snow)” in November 1949, Shōwa 24 through to August 1950, 25

Shōwa, then, continuously on another novel magazine,

“Bungaku’kai (Literary World)” from September 1950, Shōwa 25 to

April, 1951, 26 Shōwa, and the novel concluded at that time.

The most popular female author must have watched the newly

released movie, “Ginza Sanshirō,” on the premiere show in 1950. However, it is diachronically impossible that Tomioka watched it on a movie theater on the outskirts of the town as described in Chapter 47, because the possible time setting of the chapter was 1947.

 

<Character’s ages>

The characters’ age is one of the important factors to understand their background chronically in conformity with the actual historical facts. In older periods in Japan, people’s age was reckoned customarily one year older, which is the East Asian way of reckoning age, where the age of the new-born child was reckoned as one year old immediately at the time of a birth. On the first birthday next year, therefore, the same child is two years old. Considering this, in 1943, 18 Shōwa, when Yukiko was assigned and arrived to Da Lat, she said to her co-workers that she was 22 years old, which means that she was actually 21 years old if reckoned today.

A main character, Yukiko’s age would be predicted as mentioned above, whilst another main character, Tomioka’s age was not referred to in the novel, however, his age might be able to be guessed by the storyline, and was presumably more than 7 years older than Yukiko, so he must have been in his middle thirties at the end of the novel.

For details, in the Meiji and Taishō and early Shōwa periods, a girl entered a local elementary school at the age of 6, after 6 years of education, they entered a local girls’ high school for 5 years of study. Girls who wanted to continue their studies had a choice to go to a Girls school for applied studies.

A main character, Yukiko, after her graduation from a Girl’s School in Shizuoka Prefecture at the age of 17 by old reckoning way of age, came to Tokyo to attend a typist school of Japanese letters for 3 years. [Chapter 3]  Thereafter, she got a job as a typist in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry at the age of 20. Yukiko said to her coworkers that she was 22 years old when she was first assigned in 1943 to the Forestry Bureau in Da Lat in French Indochina. [Chapter 7]  She was 21 years old by today’s way of reckoning age (Her age is hereinafter reckoned in the new way). Japan was defeated in the Great East Asia War, which ended in 1945. Another main character, Tomioka, possibly repatriated to Japan in 1945, and Yukiko in 1946 at the age of 24. The two people spent the New Year days in Ikaho in 1947, when Yukiko was 25 years old. [Chapters 23 - 31]  They lived in Tokyo in the winter of 1948, when Yukiko was 26 years old. [Chapter 32 -]  At the end of 1948, Tomioka and Yukiko went to Yakushima Island [Chapter 56 -], and stayed there through to the year of 1949. Yukiko died at the age of 27 in the Island. [Chapter 67]

 

<Some change in people’s feelings after the war>

In the late 1900s, the world did not have the concept of PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Someone may say that the Japanese might have suffered less from PTSD in comparison to Americans or Europeans after the WWII. In actuality, a great part of Japanese began actively to reconstruct the country from ruins and debris. The characters in Hayashi Fumiko’s novels, however, would be able to be analyzed from the perspective of PTSD in reference to their feelings, their emotions entangled, their behaviors, a kind of “survivor’s guilt” which sometimes causes apathetic attitudes towards work and daily routines and lives, as well as their desire for death. The author seemed to have sensed the discomfort in an unexplicable change in people’s feelings after the war. She wrote in Ch. 41, in the form of Yukiko’s thought.  »Tomioka would not be able to break away from Osei’s illusion. He might not have been the only person that had completely broken down after returning to Japan. Kano also was such a person who had utterly broken down. »

*     *     *     *     *