Pathway to Japanese Literature

Gears

I. Raincoat

Carrying a suitcase, I drove hurriedly by car from a mountain retreat deep in the hinterland to a station along the Tōkaidō line to attend an acquaintance’s wedding reception. The road raced past by the car had both sides densely lined with pine trees. Whether I would make the inbound train seemed highly uncertain. In the car rode only myself and a barber shop owner sharing the ride. He was as round and plump as a jujube fruit, with a short beard growing from his chin. Anxiously checking the time, I exchanged occasional words with him.

“Strange things do happen, you know. They say a ghost appears at Mr. X’s estate even in broad daylight.”

“Even in broad daylight, huh?”

I gazed at the pine-covered hills bathed in the winter sunset and humored him half-heartedly.

“Though they say it doesn’t appear on days with fine weather.
“They say it appears most often on rainy days.”

“Doesn’t it come to get wet on rainy days?”

“That’s an old joke. ...But they say it’s a ghost wearing a Raincoat.”

The car blared its horn as it pulled up to a certain station.
I parted with the barber shop owner and entered the station.
Sure enough, the up train had departed just two or three minutes earlier.
On a bench in the waiting room, a man in a Raincoat sat alone, gazing vacantly outside.
I recalled the ghost story I had just heard.
But after giving a slight bitter smile, I decided to enter the café in front of the station to wait for the next train regardless.

It was a café that made one question whether it even deserved the name.
I sat at a corner table and ordered a cup of cocoa.
The oilcloth covering the table had a white background with thin blue lines forming a rough grid.
However, by now it was exposing a slightly soiled canvas in every corner.
While drinking the gluey cocoa, I looked around the deserted café.
The walls of the dusty café were plastered with numerous paper labels bearing words like “parent-and-child rice bowl” and “cutlet.”

“Local Eggs, Omelet”

In these paper slips, I sensed the countryside near the Tōkaidō Line.
It was a countryside where electric locomotives ran between wheat fields and cabbage fields.…

I boarded the next up train as dusk was approaching.
I had always ridden second class.
But due to some circumstance, I decided to ride third class that time.

The train car was rather crowded. Moreover, both in front of and behind me were nothing but elementary schoolgirls who seemed to be on an excursion to Oiso or some such place. As I lit a cigarette, I gazed at this flock of schoolgirls. They were all cheerful. What's more, they kept up an almost constant chatter.

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

The "photographer" sitting before me—who likewise appeared to have accompanied the excursion—was fobbing them off with vague answers. Yet one fourteen- or fifteen-year-old schoolgirl persisted in asking all manner of questions. I suddenly noticed she had sinusitis and couldn't help smirking wryly. Then again, one of the twelve- or thirteen-year-old girls beside me had perched herself on the young female teacher's lap, one arm around the teacher's neck while stroking her cheek with the other hand. Moreover, between conversations with others, she would occasionally address the teacher thus:

“You’re so pretty, Miss.
You have such pretty eyes.”

They gave me the impression of being full-fledged women rather than schoolgirls.
Except for biting into apples with their skins still on and unwrapping caramels.
...However, one of the older-seeming schoolgirls, as she passed by my side, apparently stepped on someone’s foot and said, “Excuse me.”
Precisely because she alone was more precocious than them, to me she seemed all the more like a schoolgirl.
With a cigarette between my lips, I couldn’t help but sneer at myself for feeling this contradiction.

The train with its lights lit had at last arrived at a certain suburban station.
I stepped down onto the wind-chilled platform, crossed the bridge once, and decided to wait for the government railway electric train to arrive.

The person I happened to meet there was T-kun from a certain company. While waiting for the train, we talked about the economic depression and such. T-kun was of course more knowledgeable about such matters than someone like me. Yet on his sturdy fingers was also a Turkish stone ring that had little to do with economic depression.

“That’s quite something you’re wearing there.”

“This? This is a ring I was forced to buy by a friend who went to Harbin on business. That guy’s dead now. Because he couldn’t do business with the cooperative anymore.”

The government railway electric car we boarded was fortunately not as crowded as the train.
We sat down side by side and talked about various things.
T-kun had just returned to Tokyo from his workplace in Paris this spring.
Therefore, conversations about Paris naturally dominated our exchange.
Stories about Madame Caillaux, stories about crab dishes, stories about a certain prince on his overseas tour...

“France isn’t as troubled as you’d think,” he said. “The French are fundamentally a tax-averse people—that’s why their cabinets keep collapsing...”

“But the franc is plummeting.”

“That’s if you’re reading the newspapers,” he said. “But see for yourself over there. The Japan in newspapers might as well be all earthquakes and floods.”

Then a man in a raincoat came over and sat across from us. I felt an eerie chill and wanted to tell T-kun about that ghost story I’d heard earlier. But he swung his cane handle sharply leftward first—still facing forward—and whispered to me:

“There’s a woman sitting over there, isn’t there? The one in the mouse-gray woolen shawl…”

“That woman with the Western-style hairdo?”

“Yeah, the one carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. That woman was in Karuizawa this summer. She was dressed in stylish clothes and all.”

However, there was no mistaking that she appeared shabby to everyone’s eyes. While talking with T-kun, I stealthily observed her. She had a face that somehow gave off a deranged impression around her eyebrows. Moreover, she had a leopard-like sponge protruding from that cloth-wrapped bundle.

“When she was in Karuizawa, she used to dance with young Americans and all.”
“Modern… What a piece of work she is, huh?”

By the time I parted with T-kun, the man in the Raincoat had already vanished from there.
From a government railway station, still carrying my suitcase, I walked to a hotel.
The buildings lining both sides of the street were mostly large.
As I walked there, I suddenly recalled a pine forest.
Not only that, but I also discovered something strange within my field of vision.
Something strange?
It was semi-transparent gears ceaselessly spinning.
I had experienced this several times before.
The gears would gradually multiply in number, half-blocking my field of vision—but this never lasted long. After a while, instead of disappearing, they would give way to a headache beginning to take hold. It was always the same.
The ophthalmologist had often ordered me to cut back on smoking because of this illusion(?).
But such gears had not been unseen even before I turned twenty, when I was not yet accustomed to cigarettes.
I thought, “Here we go again,” and covered my right eye with one hand to test my left eye’s vision.
The left eye was indeed unaffected.
However, behind my right eyelid, several gears were spinning.
I walked briskly down the street, watching the buildings on my right gradually disappear.

By the time I entered the hotel entrance, the gears had already vanished. However, the headache still remained. I decided to have a room arranged after checking my coat and hat. Then I called a certain magazine company to discuss money matters.

The wedding reception dinner had apparently already begun. I took a seat at the corner of the table and began moving my knife and fork. The over fifty people seated at the white U-shaped table—starting with the bridegroom and bride at the head—were of course all cheerful. But under the bright electric light, my mood only grew increasingly gloomy. To escape this feeling, I spoke to the guest sitting next to me. He was an old man who had grown a white beard like a lion’s. Not only that—he was also a renowned Chinese classics scholar whose name I knew. Therefore, our conversation had inevitably drifted toward classical topics.

“The kirin is essentially a unicorn, right? And the Fenghuang is the bird called Phoenix,...”

This renowned Chinese classics scholar seemed interested even in my talk of this sort. As I mechanically chattered on, I gradually began to feel a morbid destructive impulse, declaring Yao and Shun to be fictional figures while asserting that the Spring and Autumn Annals’ author was actually from the much later Han dynasty. Then this scholar showed blatant displeasure and, without looking at me, cut off my speech almost like a tiger’s growl.

“If even Yao and Shun had never existed, Confucius would have been deceived.”
“A sage cannot be deceived.”

I naturally fell silent.
Then I tried once more to bring my knife and fork to the meat on my plate.
There, a small maggot was quietly wriggling at the edge of the meat.
The maggot conjured the English word “Worm” in my mind.
This was no different from terms denoting legendary beasts like qilin or phoenixes.
I set down my knife and fork, watching absently as champagne was poured into my glass.

After finally finishing dinner, I walked down the deserted corridor to retreat to my previously reserved room.
The corridor gave me a more prison-like feeling than the hotel.
However, fortunately, the headache alone had gradually subsided without my noticing.

In my room were my suitcase, along with my hat and coat.
I perceived my own figure standing in the coat hung on the wall and hurriedly threw it into the wardrobe in the corner.
Then I went to the dressing table and stared at my face reflected in the mirror.
My face in the mirror revealed the skeletal structure beneath the skin.
The maggot suddenly surfaced vividly in my memory like this.

I opened the door and stepped into the corridor, walking without particular direction.
There in the corner leading to the lobby stood a tall lamp with a green shade, its form vividly reflected in the glass door.
This somehow imparted a sense of peace to my heart.
I sat down in the chair before it and pondered various matters.
Yet I could not remain seated there even five minutes.
The raincoat lay draped once more over the back of the sofa beside me.

"And yet it's midwinter."

Thinking such thoughts, I once again retraced my steps down the corridor. In the bellboy station at the corridor's corner, not a single attendant was to be seen. However, their voices grazed my ear faintly. It was the English word "All right," spoken in response to something said. "All right?" ――I was frantically trying to grasp the precise meaning of this exchange. "All right?" "All right?" What in the world did "All right" mean?

Of course, my room was deserted.
However, opening the door and entering felt eerily unsettling to me.
I hesitated for a moment, then resolutely entered the room.
Then, avoiding looking at the mirror, I settled into the chair before the desk.
The chair was a blue Morocco leather armchair, its texture resembling lizard skin.
I opened my suitcase, took out manuscript paper, and attempted to continue a certain short story.
However, the pen dipped in ink wouldn’t move no matter how long I waited.
Not only that, but when I thought it had finally moved, I found myself writing the same words over and over.
All right……All right…… All right, sir……All right……

Suddenly, the telephone beside the bed began to ring.
I started up in surprise, put the receiver to my ear, and responded.

“Who is this?”

“It’s me.”
“I…”

The caller was my sister’s daughter.

“What’s wrong?
Is something wrong?”

“Yes, that terrible thing has happened.”
“So… because something terrible has happened, I’ve just called Aunt too.”

“Something terrible?”

“Yes, so please come right away.”
“Right away!”

The telephone went dead at that.
I hung up the receiver as before and reflexively pressed the bell button.
However, I myself was clearly aware that my hands were trembling.
The bellboy did not come readily.
I felt more anguish than irritation and pressed the bell button many times, all while coming to understand the words “All right” that fate had taught me.

My sister’s husband had been run over and killed that afternoon in a countryside not too far from Tokyo.
Moreover, he was wearing a Raincoat out of season.
I am still in that hotel room, continuing to write the previous short story.
No one walks through the midnight corridor.
But sometimes, the sound of wings can be heard outside the door.
Perhaps they keep birds somewhere.

II. Revenge

I woke up in this hotel room around eight in the morning.
But when I tried to get out of bed, only one slipper remained—a phenomenon that had filled me with terror and anxiety these past two years.
Not only that, it was a phenomenon reminiscent of that prince from Greek mythology who wore but a single sandal.
I pressed the bell to summon an attendant and resolved to have him search for the missing slipper.
The bellboy wore a puzzled expression as he combed through the cramped room.

“Here it was. In the bathroom here.”

_Why had it gone there again?_

“Well, it might be a mouse.”

After the bellboy withdrew, I drank coffee without milk and set about finishing the previous novel.
The window framed in square blocks of tuff faced a garden where snow lay.
Whenever I rested my pen, I would vacantly gaze at this snow.
The snow lay soiled by the city’s soot beneath daphne bushes bearing buds.
That was a sight that gave my heart a pang of sorrow.
I smoked a cigarette and, before I knew it, found myself not moving my pen as I pondered various matters.
Thinking about my wife, about the children, and above all, about my sister’s husband.…

My sister’s husband had been under suspicion of arson before his suicide.
That too was actually unavoidable.
He had taken out fire insurance for twice the value of the house before it burned down.
Moreover, he had been on probation for committing perjury.
But what made me uneasy was not so much his suicide as the fact that every time I returned to Tokyo, I had seen fires burning.
I had sometimes seen a fire burning in the mountains from a train, or other times seen a fire in the Tokiwa Bridge area from an automobile (at that time, I was with my wife and children).
Even before his house burned down, that naturally couldn’t help but give me a premonition of a fire.

“The house might burn down this year.”

“Don’t say such ominous things... But still, if there were a fire, it would be disastrous.”
“The insurance isn’t properly in place, and...”

We talked about such things.
But my house did not burn down—I tried to push away the delusions and move the pen once more.
But no matter what, the pen refused to move even a single line with ease.
I finally left my desk, flopped onto the bed, and began reading Tolstoy’s Polikouchka.
The protagonist of this novel was a man of complex character, intermingled with vanity, morbid tendencies, and ambition.
Moreover, his life’s tragicomedy was, with some slight modifications, a caricature of my own life.
Above all, sensing fate’s sneer within his tragicomedy gradually began to unnerve me.
No sooner had I jumped up from the bed within less than an hour than I hurled the book with all my might into the corner of the room with the drawn window curtains.

“Drop dead!”

Then a large rat ran diagonally across the floor from under the window curtain toward the bathroom. I dashed to the bathroom, opened the door, and searched inside. But even behind the white tub, I could see nothing resembling a rat. I suddenly felt an eerie dread and, in a panic, changed from slippers into shoes before walking down the deserted corridor.

The corridor remained as gloomy as a prison. With my head still bowed, while going up and down the stairs, I found myself having entered the cookroom. The cookroom was surprisingly bright. However, the stoves lined along one side had flames flickering in many of them. As I passed through, I felt the white-capped cooks watching me coldly. At the same time, I also felt the hell I had fallen into. God, punish me. Do not be angry. Perhaps I shall perish—such a prayer naturally rose to my lips in that moment.

When I stepped out of the hotel, I walked briskly along the snow-melt path reflecting the blue sky toward my sister’s house. The trees in the park along the road all had their branches and leaves darkened. Not only that, each and every one of them had fronts and backs exactly like us humans. That too brought me something closer to terror than discomfort. I recalled the souls transformed into trees in Dante’s Hell and decided to walk across the train tracks lined with bildings. However, even there, I couldn’t walk safely for even a block.

“Excuse me for stopping you like this, but…”

He was a twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old youth wearing a gold-buttoned uniform.
I silently stared at this youth and discovered a mole on the left side of his nose.
He spoke to me timidly, his hat still off.

“You are Mr. A, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“I just had that feeling, so…”

“Is there something you need?”

“No, I just wanted to meet you.”
“I too am a reader of Mr. A’s works...”

By that time, I merely took off my hat and started walking away, leaving him behind.

Sensei, Mr. A—those had become the most distasteful words to me of late.
I believed I had committed every sin.
Yet they persisted in calling me Mr. A at every opportunity.
I could not help sensing something there that mocked me.
Something?
—But my materialism could not help rejecting mysticism.
Just two or three months prior, I had published these words in a certain small coterie magazine: —"I possess no conscience whatsoever—beginning with artistic conscience.
What I have are nerves alone."...

My sister took refuge with three children in a shack at the back of the garden alleyway.
The inside of the shack with brown paper pasted on it was even colder than outside.
While we held our hands over the brazier, we talked about various things.
My brother-in-law, physically robust, instinctively despised me, emaciated beyond compare.
Not only that, he publicly declared the immorality of my works.
I always coldly looked down on him like this and never once spoke openly.
However, as I spoke with my sister, I gradually came to realize that he too had fallen into hell just as I had.
He had actually seen a ghost in the sleeping car, or so it was said.
But I lit a cigarette and continued talking earnestly about nothing but money matters.

“Given how things have come to such a pass, I think I’ll just sell everything off.”

“That’s right.”
“How much do you think we’d get for the typewriter?”

“Yes, and there are the paintings too.”

“Next, should we sell Mr. N’s portrait? But that…”

When I looked at the unframed conte drawing hanging on the shack’s wall, I found myself unable to make even perfunctory small talk.
He had been run over by a train, they said – his face reduced entirely to a mass of flesh, with only his mustache remaining.
This story was of course no exception in its eeriness.
Yet his portrait was perfectly rendered in every part except for that mustache, which remained inexplicably blurred.
Thinking it might be a trick of the light, I examined this single conte drawing from various angles.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s nothing… It’s just that portrait—around the mouth…”

My sister turned slightly and replied as if she had noticed nothing.

“The mustache alone seems strangely faint, doesn’t it?”

What I had seen was no illusion.
But if it wasn’t an illusion—then I decided to leave my sister’s house before imposing on them for lunch.

“Well, that’s probably for the best.”

“I can come again tomorrow... After all, today I have to go to Aoyama.”

“Ah, that place?
“And your health still isn’t good?”

“I’m still just taking medicines.
“Hypnotics alone are tough enough.”
“Veronal, Neurotal, Trional, Numal…”

About thirty minutes later, I entered a certain building, rode the elevator up to the third floor.
Then I tried pushing open the glass door of a restaurant.
But the door wouldn’t budge.
Not only that—a lacquered sign hung there reading “Regular Holiday.”
Growing increasingly irritated at seeing apples and bananas piled on a table beyond the glass, I turned back toward the street.
Just then two men who looked like company employees brushed past my shoulder as they entered the building, chatting cheerfully.
One of them seemed to mutter “It’s irritating” in that moment.

I stood motionless on the street, waiting for a taxi to pass by.
Taxis did not come easily.
Moreover, those that occasionally passed were invariably yellow cars.
(These yellow taxis had an uncanny tendency to involve me in traffic accidents.) Eventually spotting an auspicious green car, I resolved to head after all to the mental hospital near Aoyama Cemetery.

"Irritating—tantalizing—Tantalus—Inferno…"

Tantalus was none other than myself—the one who had gazed at fruit through the glass door. While cursing Dante’s Hell that had twice risen before my eyes, I stared fixedly at the driver’s back. In time, I began to feel that everything was a lie. Politics, business, art, science—all were nothing but variegated enamel hiding this terrifying life from one such as myself. I gradually grew suffocated and opened the taxi window. Yet the sensation of my heart being constricted did not abate.

The green taxi finally began heading toward Jingumae. There was supposed to be a side street turning off to a certain mental hospital there. However, even that—for some reason—I could not locate today. After having the taxi go back and forth along the train tracks many times, I finally decided to give up and get out.

I finally found the side street and turned down the muddy road. Before I knew it, I took a wrong turn and found myself in front of Aoyama Funeral Hall. It was a building whose gate I had not passed even once since Mr. Natsume’s farewell ceremony about ten years prior. Ten years ago, I was not happy. But at least I was at peace. I gazed into the gravel-lined gate and, recalling the bashō at Sōseki Sansō, could not help but feel that my life too had reached some kind of turning point. Moreover, I could not help but feel the presence of something that had brought me before this cemetery on the tenth year.

After leaving the gate of the mental hospital, I once again took a car and decided to return to the previous hotel.
However, when I got off at the hotel entrance, a man in a raincoat was arguing with one of the bellboys.
A bellboy?—No, that wasn’t a bellboy; it was a man in green livery, one of the chauffeurs.
I felt something ominous about entering this hotel and promptly turned back down the original road.

When I emerged onto Ginza Street, dusk was already nearing.
I could not help but grow even more depressed by the shops lining both sides of the street and the bustling stream of people.
What was especially unpleasant was how the people on the street walked so briskly, as if utterly unaware of their sins.
I walked endlessly northward through the dim twilight mingled with electric light.
What caught my eye was a bookstore piled with magazines and such.
I entered this bookstore and vacantly looked up at the several tiers of bookshelves.
Then I decided to look through a book titled *Greek Mythology*.
The *Greek Mythology* bound in a yellow cover seemed to have been written for children.
But the single line I happened to read instantly overwhelmed me.

“Even the mightiest of Zeus’s gods cannot rival the god of revenge.……”

I left the bookstore behind and walked into the crowd.
While sensing the god of revenge, who was constantly targeting me, upon my back that had begun to bend.
……

III. Night

I found Strindberg’s *Legend* on the second-floor bookshelves of Maruzen and leafed through it two or three pages at a time. It described matters not so different from my own experiences. Moreover, it had a yellow cover. I returned *Legend* to the shelf and then, almost at random, dragged out one thick book. However, this book too had an illustration lined with nothing but gears with eyes and noses—no different from us humans. (It was a collection of paintings by mental patients compiled by some German.) I felt a rebellious spirit rising within my melancholy and began opening various books like a desperate gambler gone bankrupt. But for some reason, every book invariably had needles hidden somewhere in either the text or the illustrations. Every book?—Even when I picked up Madame Bovary, which I had read over and over, I could not help but feel that I myself was after all nothing more than a middle-class Monsieur Bovary.……

The Maruzen second floor near dusk seemed to have no customers besides me.
I wandered through the bookshelves in the electric light.
Then I paused before a shelf labeled "Religion" and leafed through a green-bound book.
This book had listed in one chapter of its contents: "Four Terrible Enemies—Doubt, Fear, Arrogance, Sensual Desire."
No sooner had I read these words than I felt an even stronger rebellious spirit rising within me.
These so-called enemies were nothing but other names for sensitivity and reason—at least to me.
Yet I found it utterly unbearable how this traditional spirit, no less than modern thought, made me unhappy.
Holding the book, I suddenly recalled the term "Shouling yuzi" I had once used in Pen Neem.
It referred to the youth from *Han Feizi* who, before mastering Handan's gait, forgot Shouling's own and crawled home serpentine.
The me of today was undoubtedly a "Shouling yuzi" in everyone's eyes.
But even I—not yet fallen into hell—had employed this Pen Neem: I turned my back on the tall shelves, striving to shake off delusions as I entered the poster exhibition room ahead.
Yet there too, in one poster, a Saint George-like knight was slaying a winged dragon.
What's more, beneath his helmet, the knight half-revealed a scowling face uncannily resembling one of my enemies.
Remembering *Han Feizi*'s tale of dragon-slaying arts, I bypassed the exhibition room and descended the broad staircase.

As I walked along Nihonbashi Street now fallen into night, I kept pondering the phrase "dragon-slaying."
It was no different from the inscription on the inkstone I owned.
The one who had given me this inkstone was a certain young entrepreneur.
After failing in various enterprises, he had ultimately gone bankrupt at last year's end.
I looked up at the lofty sky and tried to contemplate how small this Earth was amid countless starlights—and consequently how small I myself was.
But even the daytime-clear sky had before long grown completely clouded.
I suddenly sensed something harboring hostility toward me and resolved to take refuge in a café beyond the streetcar tracks.

That was indeed “refuge.” I sensed something akin to peace in this café’s rose-colored walls and finally settled comfortably into a seat at the table farthest back. There were fortunately only two or three other customers besides me. I sipped a cup of cocoa and lit a cigarette as usual. The cigarette smoke drifted up in faintly blue wisps toward the rose-colored wall. This gentle harmony of colors remained pleasant for me. But after a while, I noticed a portrait of Napoleon hanging on the wall to my left and gradually began to feel uneasy again. When Napoleon was still a student, he had written “Saint Helena—a small island” at the end of his geography notebook. This might not have been mere coincidence, as we say. But it was certain that even Napoleon himself had been struck with terror……

While staring at Napoleon, I began thinking about my own work.
The first thing that rose to mind was an aphorism from *A Fool’s Life*.
(Particularly the phrase “Life is more hellish than hell itself.”) Then came the fate of *Hell Screen*’s protagonist—the painter Yoshihide.
Then... while drawing on my cigarette, I surveyed the café to flee these memories.
Less than five minutes had passed since I’d taken refuge here.
Yet in this brief span, the café had utterly transformed its aspect.
What grated most was how the mahogany chairs and tables clashed discordantly with the rose-colored walls surrounding them.
Fearing another plunge into invisible torment, I flung down a silver coin and made to rush from the café.

“Um, excuse me... That’ll be twenty sen...”

What I had thrown out was a copper coin.

While feeling humiliated, as I walked alone along the road, I suddenly recalled my house in the distant pine grove.
That was not my adoptive parents' house in some suburb.
It was merely a house rented for the family centered around me.
I had lived in such a house about ten years prior.
However, due to certain circumstances, I rashly began living with my parents.
At the same time, I began transforming into a slave, a tyrant, a powerless egoist.……

It was already around ten o'clock when I returned to the previous hotel. Having walked such a long way, I lost the strength to return to my room and sat down in a chair before a stove where thick logs burned. Then I began thinking about the long novel I had planned. It was to feature people from each era spanning Suiko to Meiji—a work comprising roughly thirty short stories arranged chronologically. While watching sparks dance upward, I suddenly recalled a certain statue before Miyagi. This statue wore armor and sat astride its horse as proudly as loyalty incarnate. But his enemy was—

“Lie!”

I slipped once more from the distant past into the immediate present.
Fortunately arriving then was a certain senior sculptor.
He wore his usual velvet suit and kept his short goatee curled upward.
I rose from the chair and gripped his outstretched hand.
(This wasn’t my custom—I’d simply followed his, he who had spent half his life in Paris and Berlin.) Yet his hand felt strangely moist, like reptilian skin.

“Are you staying here?”

“Yes,……”

“Are you here for work?”
“Yes, I’m also working.”
He stared fixedly at my face.
I detected in his eyes an expression akin to that of a detective.

“How about coming to my room to talk?”

I addressed him challengingly.
(This was one of my bad habits—lacking courage yet immediately adopting a confrontational attitude.) Then, smiling, he asked in return, “Where is your room?”

We walked side by side like close friends and returned to my room through the crowd of quietly conversing foreigners.
When he came to my room, he sat down with the mirror behind him.
He then began talking about various things.
Various things?
—But mostly they were stories about women.
I was no different from one who had fallen into hell for committing sins.
Yet for that very reason, the stories of vice plunged me all the deeper into gloom.
I became a temporary Puritan and began mocking those women.

“Look at Miss S’s lips.”
“Those lips have been kissed by so many men, …”

I abruptly fell silent and stared at his back in the mirror.
He had just stuck a yellowish plaster below his ear.

“For the sake of so many kisses?”

“That’s how such people seem to me, I suppose.”

He smiled and nodded.
I sensed that deep within him, he was constantly observing me to uncover my secret.
However, our conversation still did not stray from the subject of women.
Rather than hating him, I was ashamed of my own weakness of spirit and could not help but grow increasingly despondent.

After he finally left, I lay down on the bed and began reading Dark Night’s Passing.
The protagonist’s spiritual struggles each struck me with painful intensity.
When I compared myself to this protagonist, I felt how foolish I had been, and found myself shedding tears.
At the same time, the tears somehow brought peace to my state of mind.
But even that did not last long.
My right eye once again began to perceive semi-transparent gears.
The gears continued spinning as before, gradually increasing in number.
Fearing the onset of a headache, I left the book by my pillow, swallowed 0.8 grams of Veronal, and decided to at least get a sound sleep.

But in my dream, I was gazing at a certain pool.
There, several boys and girls were swimming and diving.
I walked toward the pine forest behind this pool.
Then someone called out "Dad" to me from behind.
I turned around slightly and found my wife standing before the pool.
At the same time, I felt intense regret.

“Dad, where’s the towel?”
“The towel isn’t here.”
“Watch the children.”

I resumed walking.
But before I knew it, where I walked had transformed into a platform.
It appeared to be a rural train station—a platform bordered by a long hedge.
There stood a university student called H and an elderly woman.
When they saw my face, they approached and all began speaking to me at once.

“It was a terrible fire, wasn’t it?”

“I barely managed to escape too.”

I felt something familiar about this elderly woman. Not only that, but I also felt a certain pleasant excitement in conversing with her. Then, emitting smoke, the steam train quietly pulled up alongside the platform. I boarded this steam train alone and walked through the berths with white cloths hanging on both sides. Then, on one berth, a nude woman resembling a mummy lay facing this way. That was again my god of revenge—no different from the daughter of a certain madman.…

No sooner did I open my eyes than I leapt from the bed.
My room remained bright with electric light.
Yet somewhere I could hear both wingbeats and mice gnawing.
I opened the door to the hallway and hastened toward the front hearth.
Then sitting in a chair, I began watching the faltering flames.
At that moment, a white-clad waiter approached to add firewood.

“What time is it?”
“It’s about three-thirty.”

However, in the corner of the lobby across the way, a woman who appeared to be American continued reading a book.
Even from a distance, what she wore was unmistakably a green dress.
I felt somehow saved and resolved to wait motionlessly for night to end.
Like an old man who, after enduring long years of illness, now quietly awaited death.…

IV. Still?

I finally finished writing the previous short story in this hotel room and decided to send it to a certain magazine.
Of course, my manuscript fee wasn’t even enough to cover a week’s stay.
However, satisfied with having finished my work, I decided to go to a certain bookstore in Ginza to seek some mental stimulant.

On the asphalt struck by winter sunlight, many paper scraps lay scattered.
Those paper scraps looked exactly like roses, whether from tricks of light.
I sensed some form of benevolence and entered that bookstore.
The place was cleaner than usual too.
Nor could I remain unconcerned by the bespectacled girl conversing with a clerk.
But recalling the rose-like scraps fallen on the street, I resolved to buy *Anatole France's Dialogues* and *Mérimée's Letters*.

I carried two books and entered a certain café. Then I decided to wait in front of the farthest table for the coffee to arrive. Across from me sat two people—a man and woman who appeared to be parent and child. The son was younger than I, yet looked almost exactly like me. Not only that, but they were talking with their faces close together like lovers. As I watched them, I began to realize that at least the son was aware he was providing the mother with sexual comfort. That was no different from an example of affinity I too had experienced. At the same time, it was also no different from an example of a certain will that turns this world into hell. However—I, fearing to fall into suffering again and seizing the moment when the coffee arrived—began reading Mérimée’s Letters. He had sparked sharp aphorisms in this collection of letters as well, just as in his novels. Those aphorisms had gradually turned my mood steely and rock-hard. (This susceptibility to influence was another of my weaknesses.) After finishing a cup of coffee, I felt ready to take on anything and briskly left the café behind.

I walked along the street, peering into various display windows as I went. A frame shop’s display window held up a portrait of Beethoven. It was a portrait that looked exactly like a genius himself, hair standing on end. I could not help but find this Beethoven comical.……

Amidst this, who should I suddenly run into but an old friend from my high school days.
This professor of applied chemistry was carrying a large briefcase, one eye streaming with bright red blood.

"What happened to your eye?"

“This?”
“It’s just conjunctivitis.”

I suddenly remembered that every time I felt an affinity over the past fourteen or fifteen years, my eyes too would develop conjunctivitis like his.
But I said nothing.
He tapped my shoulder and began talking about our friends.
Then, keeping up the conversation all the while, he took me to a café.

“It’s been a while.”
“Probably since Zhu Shunshui’s monument unveiling ceremony.”

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

“Oh right—that Zhu Shunshui…”

For some reason, I couldn’t accurately pronounce the words “Zhu Shunshui.”
That it was in Japanese of all things made me feel slightly uneasy.
However, he continued talking nonchalantly about various things—
about a novelist named K,
about the Bull Terrier he had bought,
about a poison gas called Lewisite.
…

“You don’t seem to be writing at all. I’ve read Tenkibo, but… Is that your autobiography?”

“Yeah, it’s my autobiography.”

“That was a bit morbid, you know.”
“How’s your health these days?”

“I still wind up swallowing nothing but medicine.”

“I’ve been having insomnia myself lately.”

“Me too?—Why do you say ‘me too’?”

“But you’re the one who said you’ve got insomnia too, aren’t you?”
“Insomnia’s dangerous, I tell you.……”

He wore something akin to a smile in his left eye, which alone was bloodshot.
Before replying, I became aware that I couldn’t accurately pronounce the “shō” in “insomnia.”

“It’s only natural for a mad son.”

Before ten minutes had passed, I was walking alone down the street again. The scraps of paper fallen on the asphalt at times did not fail to resemble human faces. Then from the opposite direction came a woman with bobbed hair passing by. She was beautiful from afar. But when seen up close, her face bore fine wrinkles and was ugly. What's more, she appeared pregnant. I involuntarily averted my face and turned into a broad side street. Yet after walking awhile, I began feeling hemorrhoid pain—a pain I could cure by nothing but a sitz bath.

“Sitz baths—Beethoven too had taken sitz baths.……”

The smell of sulfur used in sitz baths suddenly assailed my nose.
However, of course, nowhere in the street was sulfur visible.
While once again recalling the paper scrap rose, I made an effort to walk resolutely onward.

About an hour later, having shut myself in my room, I sat before the desk by the window and began working on a new novel.
The pen raced across the manuscript paper as if by some miracle even to me.
But even that came to a halt after two or three hours, as if pressed down by something unseen by my eyes.
I had no choice but to leave my desk and began pacing around the room.
My delusions of grandeur were most pronounced at times like these.
In the midst of barbaric joy, I felt as though I had neither parents nor wife and children—only the life flowing from my pen existed.

However, four or five minutes later, I had to answer the telephone.
No matter how many times I responded, it kept conveying nothing but some vague words.
But in any case, it had undoubtedly sounded like Mōru.
I finally stepped away from the telephone and began pacing around the room once more.
Yet I found myself strangely fixated on the word “Mōru” alone.

“Mōru”—Mole……

Mōru was the English word for "mole".
This association too brought me no pleasure.
But after two or three seconds, I respelled "Mole" as "lamort".
La Mōru was—the French word for death suddenly filled me with unease.
Death, which had been closing in on my sister’s husband, now seemed to be closing in on me as well.
But even amidst the anxiety, I felt a certain absurdity.
Not only that—I had unconsciously begun to smile.
What causes this absurdity?
—That was something even I myself couldn’t understand.
I stood before a mirror for the first time in ages and squarely faced my own reflection.
My reflection, of course, was also smiling.
As I stared at this reflection, I remembered the second me.
The second me—the so-called Doppelgänger of the Germans had never once appeared to me myself.
However, the wife of K-kun—who had become an American film actor—had caught sight of the second me in the corridor of the Teikoku Gekijō.
(I suddenly found myself being told by K-kun’s wife, “I failed to greet you properly the other day,” and remember feeling flustered.) Then there was also a now-deceased one-legged translator who had likewise spotted the second me at a certain tobacco shop in Ginza.
Perhaps death might have come not for me, but for the second me.
Even if it were to come for me—I turned my back on the mirror and returned to the desk by the window.

The square window framed with tuff stones offered a view of a withered lawn and a pond.
As I gazed at this garden, I recalled several notebooks I had burned in the distant pine grove and an unfinished play.
Then, taking up the pen, I once again began writing a new novel.

V. Red Light

The sunlight began to torment me.
I truly lowered the curtains before the window like a mole and, keeping the electric light on even during daytime, diligently continued writing the previous novel.
When I grew tired from work, I would open Taine's History of English Literature and peruse the lives of the poets.
They were all unfortunate.
Even the giants of the Elizabethan age—even Ben Jonson, that peerless scholar—had fallen into such nervous exhaustion that he could watch the armies of Rome and Carthage begin their battle upon his thumb.
I could not help but feel a cruel joy saturated with malice at their misfortune.

On a night when the east wind blew fiercely—to me, this was a good omen—I emerged from the basement into the street and decided to visit a certain old man.
He worked alone as a janitor in the attic of a Bible society while devoting himself to prayer and reading.
We discussed various things under the cross hung on the wall while warming our hands over the brazier.
Why did my mother go mad?
Why did my father’s business fail?
Why was I punished again?
He, who knew all these secrets, wore a strangely solemn smile and continued humoring me indefinitely.
Not only that, but he would occasionally sketch caricatures of life in brief phrases.
I could not help but feel respect for this attic-dwelling hermit.
However, while talking with him, I discovered that he too was moved by affinity.—

“The gardener’s daughter is quite pretty and has a kind disposition—and she’s been very kind to me.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s eighteen this year.”

It might have been something like fatherly love for him. However, I could not help but sense passion in his eyes. Not only that—the apple he had recommended had at some point developed a unicorn’s form upon its yellowed peel. (I had often discovered mythical creatures in wood grain and cracks of coffee cups.) The unicorn was indistinguishable from a qilin. I recalled how a hostile critic had dubbed me “the Prodigy of the 1910s,” and felt that even this attic bearing a cross offered no sanctuary.

“How have you been lately?”

“Still just my nerves fraying away.”

“That won’t work with medicine.”
“Don’t you have any intention of becoming a believer?”

"If even I could become one..."

"There’s nothing difficult about it."
"Just believe in God, believe in Christ His Son, believe in the miracles Christ performed—that’s all you need..."

“I can believe in the devil, but—”

“Then why don’t you believe in God? If you believe in shadows, surely you can’t help but believe in the light?”

“But there is also darkness without light.”

“What do you mean by ‘darkness without light’?”

I had no choice but to remain silent.
He too was walking in darkness like me.
But he believed that where there was darkness, there must also be light.
The only point where our logic differed was this single one.
But to me, at least, it was nothing less than an unbridgeable chasm…

“But there must be light. Because there are miracles to prove it. …Miracles like that still occur frequently even now, you know.”

“That is a miracle performed by the devil.……”

“Why must you speak of the devil again?”

Over the past year or two, I had felt tempted to tell him about what I myself had experienced.
But if it were to reach his wife and children through him, I too could not go without fearing entering a mental hospital like my mother.

“What’s that over there?”

This robust old man turned to face the old bookshelf, his expression taking on something faun-like.

“The Complete Works of Dostoevsky.”
“Have you read Crime and Punishment?”

Of course, even ten years ago, I had been familiar with four or five volumes of Dostoevsky.
However, moved (by coincidence?) by his mention of Crime and Punishment, I borrowed the book from him and decided to return to my previous hotel.

The crowded thoroughfare, illuminated by electric lights, still felt unpleasant to me. Above all, encountering acquaintances was utterly unbearable—and this proved no exception. I made a point of choosing dark streets and walked on like a thief.

However, after some time, I began to feel a pain in my stomach. The only thing that would stop this pain was a glass of whiskey. I found a certain bar and tried to push open its door. But inside the narrow bar, within the haze of cigarette smoke, several young men who appeared to be artists were gathered together drinking. Moreover, in their midst, a single woman with her hair tied back to cover her ears was earnestly playing a mandolin. I suddenly felt perplexed and, without entering through the door, turned back. Then, at some point, I discovered my shadow swaying from side to side. Moreover, the light illuminating me was an eerily red one. I stopped in the street. But my shadow continued swaying from side to side as before. I timidly looked back and finally discovered the stained-glass lantern hanging under the eaves of this bar. The lantern was swaying slowly in the air due to the fierce wind.……

The next place I entered was an underground restaurant.
I stood at the bar there and ordered a glass of whiskey.

“Whiskey?”
“We only have Black and White, but…”

I put whiskey into soda water and began drinking it silently, sip by sip.
Next to me were two men around thirty who seemed to be journalists, whispering something to each other.
Not only that, but they were also speaking French.
I kept my back turned to them yet felt their gaze upon my entire body.
That truly resonated through my body like radio waves.
They undoubtedly knew my name and seemed to be gossiping about me.

“Bien……très mauvais……pourquoi ?……”

“Pourquoi ?……le diable est mort !……”

“Oui, oui……d'enfer……”

I tossed out a silver coin (it was the last one I had) and resolved to flee from this underground room. The night wind sweeping through the street somewhat fortified my nerves, now that the stomach pain had subsided. I recalled Raskolnikov and felt a desire to confess everything. But that was sure to produce tragedy not only outside myself—no, even outside my family. Not only that, but even whether this desire was genuine had become doubtful. If only my nerves were as strong as a normal person’s—but for that, I had to go somewhere. To Madrid, to Rio, to Samarkand,……

Before long, a small white sign hanging under the eaves of a certain shop suddenly made me uneasy.
It was a sign depicting a winged emblem on car tires.
I recalled ancient Greeks with artificial wings fastened to their hands when seeing this emblem.
He had soared into the sky only for his wings to be burned by the sun’s rays, ultimately drowning in the sea.
To Madrid, to Rio, to Samarkand—I could not help but mock such dreams of mine.
At the same time, I could not help but think of Orestes pursued by the god of vengeance.

I walked along the canal through the dark thoroughfare.
In time I recalled my foster parents' house in some suburb.
My foster parents were undoubtedly waiting for my return—this proved no exception.
My children likely were too—yet I could not help fearing some force that would bind me if I returned there.
The canal had moored a single Daruma-style boat upon its choppy waters.
This Daruma-style boat was leaking faint light from its bottom.
Even there, several families of men and women were undoubtedly living.
Still hating each other even as they loved.
But summoning a combative spirit once more while feeling whiskey's intoxication, I resolved to return to my former hotel.

I once again sat at my desk and continued reading Letters of Mérimée.
It had once again imparted vitality to my life before I knew it.
However, when I learned that Mérimée had become a Protestant in his later years, I suddenly sensed Mérimée's face lurking behind a mask.
He too was one walking through darkness like us.
In darkness?
Dark Night’s Passing had begun transforming into a terrifying book for someone like me.
I began reading Dialogues of Anatole France to forget my melancholy.
But this modern Pan too bore a cross......

About an hour later, the bellboy appeared to hand me a bundle of mail. One of them was a request from a Leipzig bookstore for me to write a short essay titled "Modern Japanese Women." Why would they specifically have me write such an essay? Moreover, this English letter had included a handwritten P.S.: "We would be satisfied even with a portrait of a woman devoid of color beyond black and white, much like in Japanese paintings." I recalled the name of the whiskey, Black and White, in this line and tore the letter to shreds. Then, this time, I randomly cut open one of the letters and looked over the yellow stationery. The one who had written this letter was a young man I didn’t know. However, before I had even read two or three lines, the phrase "your Hell Screen..." inevitably irritated me. The third letter I opened was from my nephew. I finally caught my breath and began reading through domestic matters and such. But even that, when it reached the end, suddenly struck me down.

“I’ll send you a reprint of the poetry collection Red Light...”

Red Light!
I sensed something’s sneer and resolved to take refuge outside my room.
The hallway held no trace of human presence.
Bracing one hand against the wall, I somehow made my way to the lobby.
Then I sank into a chair and determined to light a cigarette regardless.
The cigarette turned out inexplicably to be an Air Ship.
(I’d sworn to smoke only Stars since taking up residence here.) Artificial wings materialized before my eyes anew.
I summoned the bellboy across the room and resolved to procure two packs of Stars.
Yet according to his account, Stars alone were regrettably out of stock.

“We do have Air Ship, but...”

While shaking my head, I gazed around the spacious lobby. In front of me, four or five foreigners sat around a table talking. Moreover, one of them—a woman in a red one-piece dress—seemed to glance at me intermittently as she spoke quietly with the others.

“Mrs. Townshead…”

Something invisible whispered this to me.
Mrs. Townshead—of course, that was a name unknown to me.
Even had it been the name of that woman across the way—I rose from my chair and, fearing madness creeping upon me, resolved to return to my room.

When I returned to my room, I immediately intended to call a mental hospital.
But entering there was no different from dying for me.
After much hesitation, I began reading Crime and Punishment to distract myself from this terror.
However, the page I had chanced to open contained a passage from The Brothers Karamazov.
I wondered if I had picked up the wrong book and lowered my eyes to the cover.
"Crime and Punishment"—the book was none other than Crime and Punishment.
In the bookbinder’s misbinding—no, in my having opened that very misbound page—I sensed the movement of fate’s finger and had no choice but to continue reading there.
However, before I had read even a single page, I began to feel my entire body trembling.
That passage depicted Ivan being tormented by the devil.
Ivan, Strindberg, Maupassant—or myself in this room.……

The only thing that could save me was sleep.
However, the hypnotic drugs had all disappeared without a single packet remaining.
I couldn’t bear to keep suffering without sleep.
But mustering desperate courage, I had someone bring coffee and resolved to drive my pen with frenzied desperation.
Two sheets, five sheets, seven sheets, ten sheets—the manuscript rapidly took shape.
I filled this novel’s world with supernatural animals.
Not only that—I’d drawn my own portrait into one of those creatures.
Yet fatigue gradually began clouding my mind.
I finally left the desk and lay supine on the bed.
Then I must have slept forty or fifty minutes.
But feeling someone whisper words into my ear again, I instantly opened my eyes and stood up.

“Le diable est mort”

Outside the tuff window, dawn had broken with a bone-chilling coldness.
I stood precisely before the door and surveyed the vacant room.
Then across from me, the windowpane—mottled by condensation from frigid air—revealed a miniature vista.
It differed not at all from a seascape glimpsed through yellowing pines.
Timidly approaching the glass, I discovered this panorama was wrought from nothing but withered lawn and garden pond.
Yet this delusion had insidiously summoned something resembling homesickness.

As soon as it turned nine, I resolved to call a certain magazine company, arrange the money situation somehow, and then return to my home.
While stuffing books and manuscripts into the bag I had placed on the desk.

VI. Airplane

I sped by car from a certain station on the Tokaido Line to a summer resort further inland.
The driver was for some reason wearing an old Raincoat against this cold.
I found this coincidence eerie and resolved to avert my gaze out the window so as not to look at him.
Then, beyond the low-growing pines—on what was likely an old highway—I spotted a funeral procession passing in a line.
The white-paper lanterns and dragon lanterns did not seem to be among them.
However, the gold and silver artificial lotus flowers swayed quietly before and behind the palanquin as it moved on.…

After finally returning home, I lived in considerable peace for two or three days through the power of my wife and children and hypnotic drugs.

My second floor offered a faint glimpse of the sea above the pine forest.
I settled at this second-floor desk and, while hearing doves’ calls, resolved to work only in the mornings.
Birds—not just pigeons and crows but sparrows too—would flutter onto the veranda.
This too felt pleasant to me.
“Entering the Hall of Joyous Sparrows”—each time I held my pen, these words would come to mind.

One cloyingly warm cloudy afternoon, I went out to buy ink at a sundries shop.
All that lined the shelves of that shop was sepia-colored ink.
Sepia-colored ink had always been more displeasing to me than any other ink.
I had no choice but to leave the store and wandered aimlessly down the sparsely populated street alone.
At that moment, a single foreigner who appeared nearsighted, around forty years old, passed by from the opposite direction with hunched shoulders.
He was a Swedish man with a persecution complex living here.
Moreover, his name was Strindberg.
As I passed him, I felt something physically react within me.

This street was only two or three blocks long.
But in passing through those two or three blocks, a black dog passed by my side exactly four times—each time only half its body visible.
While turning the corner into the side street, I remembered Black & White whisky.
Not only that, but I now recalled that Strindberg’s tie had also been black and white.
I simply could not regard that as a coincidence.
If it wasn’t a coincidence—I felt as if only my head was walking and stopped for a moment in the street.
By the roadside, within a wire fence, there lay discarded a single glass bowl faintly tinged with rainbow colors.
This bowl also bore wing-like patterns around its base.
From the pine treetops, several sparrows fluttered down.
But when they came near this bowl, all the sparrows, as if by prior agreement, would flee back into the air at once.…

I went to my wife’s family home and sat down in a rattan chair in the garden. Inside a wire netting in the corner of the garden, several white Leghorn chickens were quietly walking. Then, at my feet, a black dog was also lying down. While hurrying to solve a question no one could answer, I made small talk with my wife’s mother and brother, maintaining at least a cool exterior.

“It’s quiet here, isn’t it?”

“That’s still more than Tokyo, isn’t it?”

“Are there ever any disturbances here?”

“But this is still part of ‘the world,’ you know.”

The wife’s mother said this and laughed.
Indeed, this summer resort too was no different from being part of “the world.”
I knew all too well how much crime and tragedy had unfolded here in barely a year.
The doctor who had tried to slowly poison his patients, the old woman who had set fire to her adopted son and his wife’s house, the lawyer who had attempted to seize his sister’s assets—to me, seeing these people’s homes was always no different from glimpsing hell within life itself.

“There’s one madman in this town, isn’t there?”

“It must be H-chan.”
“That isn’t a madman, you know.”
“He’s just become a fool, you know.”

“That’s what they call dementia praecox, isn’t it?”
“Every time I see that guy, I feel so creeped out I can’t stand it.”
“That guy—just the other day, he was bowing in front of Batō Kannon for some reason.”

“Getting creeped out... You must become stronger.”

“My older brother is stronger than someone like me, but—”

My wife’s brother, who had grown a scruffy beard, sat up in bed and, as usual, hesitantly joined our conversation.

“Because even strength has its vulnerabilities…”

“Oh dear, that is troubling.”

I looked at my wife’s mother who had said this and could not help but give a bitter smile.
Then,the brother also smiled while gazing at the distant pine forest beyond the fence and continued murmuring something dreamily.
(To me，this young brother recovering from illness sometimes appeared as spirit that had shed its very flesh.)

“Just when one seems strangely detached from humanity，their human desires flare up intensely…”

“Just when you think they’re saints，they’re also villains.”

“No—rather than calling it good and evil, something more diametrically opposed…”
“Then there must be children within adults too, right?”

“Not necessarily.”
“I can’t say for certain, but… it might resemble the two poles of electricity.”
“After all, they hold opposing things together.”

What startled us then was the fierce roar of an airplane.
I instinctively looked up and spotted an aircraft that had climbed just shy of grazing the pine branches.
It was a rare monoplane with wings painted yellow.
The chickens and dogs panicked at the noise, scattering in every direction.
The dog especially kept up its barking as it tucked its tail and scrambled beneath the veranda.

“Won’t that airplane crash?”

“It’s fine.… Brother, do you know about airplane sickness?”

While lighting a cigarette, I shook my head instead of saying “No.”

“People who ride those airplanes only breathe high-altitude air, so they gradually become unable to endure the air here on the ground.…”

After leaving my wife’s mother’s house behind, I walked through a pine forest where not a single branch stirred, growing more and more depressed bit by bit.
Why did that airplane pass over my head instead of going elsewhere? And why did that hotel sell nothing but Air-Ship cigarettes?
I suffered from various doubts and chose to walk along a deserted path.

The sea lay gray and overcast beyond the low sandhills. Upon those same sandhills stood a solitary swing set stripped of swings. I gazed at this structure and abruptly recalled a gallows. Indeed, two or three crows had settled atop the swing frame. Though all saw me, these crows displayed not the faintest inclination to take wing. Moreover, the central crow lifted its massive beak skyward and unmistakably cawed four times.

I decided to follow the sandy embankment with withered grass and turn onto the path lined with villas.
On the right side of this path should have stood a single two-story wooden Western-style house gleaming white among tall pines.
(My close friend had called this house “The House Where Spring Dwells.”) But when I passed its front, there remained only a bathtub atop a concrete foundation.
Fire—I immediately thought this and walked on without looking.
Then a man on a bicycle began approaching straight ahead.
He wore a burnt-umber hunting cap, eyes fixed unnervingly forward as he hunched over handlebars.
Suddenly seeing my sister’s husband in his face, I veered into a side path before meeting him directly.
Yet there too lay a rotten mole carcass belly-up at the path’s center.

The awareness of something targeting me filled me with unease at every step.
Then semi-transparent gears began blocking my vision one by one.
I walked with neck rigidly straight, terrified of death’s approach.
As their numbers multiplied, the gears started spinning faster.
Simultaneously, the pine forest on my right—branches silently tangled—began resembling shapes seen through finely faceted glass.
I felt my pulse quicken and repeatedly tried halting by the roadside.
Yet even stopping—as if pressed by invisible hands—proved impossible.…

About thirty minutes later, I lay on my back in my second-floor room, eyes tightly shut, enduring a severe headache.
Then within the hollows of my eyes appeared a single wing with silver feathers folded like scales.
It was indeed clearly projected onto my retina.
I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Having confirmed there was nothing of the sort there, I resolved to close them again.
Yet still the silver wing remained distinctly visible in the darkness.
I suddenly recalled that the radiator cap of the car I had ridden in recently also bore wings...

Just then, someone hurriedly climbed up the ladder stairs only to immediately clatter back down.
I realized it was someone’s wife and, startled, started to rise—no sooner had I begun than I thrust my face into the dim tea room before the ladder stairs.
There my wife remained face down, seemingly suppressing her breathlessness, shoulders trembling without cease.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing…”

My wife finally raised her face, forced a smile, and continued speaking.

“It’s not that anything happened, really… I just had this feeling Father might have died.……”

That was the most terrifying experience of my life.

――I no longer have the strength to keep writing beyond this point. Living in this state of mind is an indescribable pain. Is there no one who will quietly strangle me in my sleep?

(1927, Posthumous Manuscript)