Pathway to Japanese Literature

Resign yourself, my heart; may you sleep the sleep of beasts.
(C·B)

Mr. Kasai Hajime was a writer.
He was extremely poor.
Lately, he had been making considerable efforts to write popular fiction.
But he hadn’t become wealthy in the least.
Agonizing.
He thrashed and flailed until he finally went numb.
Now, he understood nothing.
No—to say that Mr. Kasai understood nothing would be a lie.
One thing, he understood.
He understood only that what lay an inch ahead was darkness.
Beyond that, he understood nothing more.

When he suddenly came to his senses, he found himself in that impenetrable fog—unable to discern whether it shrouded mountains, fields, or city streets—with everything beyond comprehension. Only an unpleasant menace pressed against him from all sides. Regardless, he had to move forward.
Only an inch ahead remained legible.
He advanced warily, maintaining constant vigilance—yet grasped nothing.
Unyielding, he strained forward and cautiously gained another inch.
Nothing became clear.
Repelling terror again and again, compelling himself through jagged motions, he advanced another inch. Where exactly was this place? Not a single sound stirred.
There, within that boundless silent void of absolute darkness, Mr. Kasai existed.

He had to advance.
Even if he understood nothing, he had to constantly move his body—an inch, five minutes’ worth—and advance.
If he were to cross his arms, hang his head, and stand there vacantly—if he were to surrender himself to doubt and weariness even for an instant—then in an instant, a gennou hammer would come thudding down on his head, the surrounding hostility would surge in all at once, and Mr. Kasai’s body would be riddled like a beehive.
Mr. Kasai couldn’t help but think so.
Therefore, Mr. Kasai did not let down his guard. Pushing through, cautiously, ever so cautiously, he advanced inch by inch through the true darkness, sweating greasy sweat.
Ten days, three months, a year, two years—just like that, Mr. Kasai pressed on.
He existed in pitch darkness.
He had to advance.
If he didn’t want to die, he had to press on.
It was akin to nonsense.
Mr. Kasai, too, had finally had enough.
To say he was at a dead end would also be a lie.
He advanced.
He could live.
Even in pitch darkness, only an inch ahead was visible.
He advanced just an inch.
There was no danger.
As long as he advanced inch by inch, there was no mistake.
This seemed absolutely certain.
But—no matter what—this unchanging, boundless landscape of uniform blackness—what could be the matter?

Absolutely—alas—not even a speck of change.
Of course there was no light—not even a storm.
In the darkness Mr. Kasai groped blindly forward inch by inch like a grub when he quietly became aware of his madness.
This would not do.
Could this be a single path leading straight to the guillotine?
Might this creeping advance through endless darkness end only in some gruesome valley of self-destruction?
Ah—should I cry out?
But tragically Mr.Kasai had forgotten his own words through years of servility.
The scream refused to come.
Should I run?
Let them kill me.
Why must one keep living?
Even this simple question now overwhelmed him as he trudged through darkness.At May's beginning he scraped together his coins and fled.
If this escape was wrong then kill me.
I'll die smiling.
Now I'll break these chains of endurance—plunge into hell itself without regret.
No use.
I can't degrade myself further.
Freedom!

And so, Mr. Kasai set out on his journey.

Why had he chosen Shinano Province? Because he knew no other places. In Shinano Province there was one woman he knew, in Yugawara another—both maids at inns. To say he knew them didn't mean he'd slept with them. He merely knew their names. Both the Shinano woman and the Izu woman had been reserved yet attentive—qualities the tongue-tied Mr. Kasai found endlessly comforting. He hadn't visited Yugawara in three years now. That woman might no longer be at that inn. If she were gone, nothing would remain there for him. Last autumn too, to finish some slipshod work, he'd gone to Kamisuwa Hot Springs in Shinano and stayed five or six days. She must still be working at that inn.

I want to do something reckless.
I want to throw caution to the wind and do something reckless.
Even in me, there should still be romanticism left.
Mr. Kasai was thirty-five years old that year.
Though his hair was thinning and his teeth were missing, he looked every bit like someone over forty.
For the sake of his wife and child—and somewhat for maintaining appearances in society—though understanding nothing, he wrote desperately, received money, and aged without realizing when.
Mr. Kasai was a man of upright conduct, his writer colleagues had decided.
In fact, Mr. Kasai was a good husband and a good father.
Innate timidity and an excessive sense of responsibility had compelled Mr. Kasai to strictly uphold what might be called a husband’s chastity.
He was taciturn and extremely sluggish in action—even Mr. Kasai had resigned himself to that.
But now, having become utterly fed up with his own grub-like self, he exploded into setting out on a journey with quite a reckless resolution.
Some light.

He bought a ticket to Shimosuwa.
He left home, went straight to Kamisuwa, rushed into that inn without glancing elsewhere, and—breathlessly—would have caused a commotion asking, “Is she here? Is she here?” But disliking the thought of such a scene, he deliberately bought a ticket one stop past Kamisuwa to Shimosuwa.
Mr. Kasai had never once been to Shimosuwa.
Yet this was an affected, shallow pretense—that if he got off there and things seemed favorable, he would stay one night, then after some meandering, make his way to that inn in Kamisuwa.
It was also out of bashfulness.

He boarded the train.
The fields and farmlands emitted a sour stench like overripe bananas as spring rotted luxuriantly across the land, squalid and slimy, a thick green ooze melting and flooding everywhere.
Generally during this season there exists a clammy, suffocating bodily stench.

In the train car, Mr. Kasai felt strangely sorrowful.
Let there be salvation for me.
So completely devoid of jest was he that he had murmured these grandiose words while staring upward.
In his pocket lay fifty yen and some small change.

“Andrea del Sarto’s…”

Someone had suddenly uttered such words in an absurdly loud voice, making Mr. Kasai turn around.
Two young men in mountaineering gear and three girls dressed identically.
The one who had shouted was their apparent leader—a handsome youth in a beret.
Slightly tanned and rather stylish, yet vulgar.

Andrea del Sarto.
Reciting that name silently in his chest, Mr. Kasai grew flustered.
Nothing came to mind.
He had forgotten.
Once—when was it?—he had spent a whole night debating that very name with companions. It seemed part of some distant past now, yet he felt certain this had been a figure of significance—someone problematic—though now he understood nothing.
The memory refused to revive.
It’s terrible, he thought.
Could one really forget so completely?
He was appalled.
Andrea del Sarto.
He couldn’t recall.
What sort of person was this?
He didn’t know.
Mr. Kasai had indeed once written an essay about him—sometime long ago.
He’d forgotten.
He couldn’t remember.
Browning.—Musset.
——He writhed desperately through memory’s tendrils trying to reach that portrait—to make “Ah! That’s it!” sink into his gut—but no use.
Where this man was from or when he lived—such details didn’t need recalling now.
That empathy he’d once felt long ago—just that—he wanted to seize again as tangible reality.

But no matter how he tried, that proved impossible.
Urashima Taro.

When he suddenly noticed, he had become a white-haired old man.
Distant.
Andrea del Sarto—he would never meet him again.
He had already vanished beyond the horizon.
It was all haze and mist.

“Henri Becque’s…”
The youth behind spoke again.
Mr. Kasai heard that and blushed again.
He did not understand.
Henri Becque.
Who was that again?
Indeed, Mr. Kasai had a sense that he had once uttered that name and even committed it to paper.
He couldn’t grasp it.
Porto Riche.
Gherardi.
No, no.
Henri Becque...... What kind of man was he again?
A novelist?
Wasn’t he a painter?
Velázquez.

No.
Velázquez? What's that about.
This makes no sense.
Does such a person even exist?
A painter?
Was that really it?
Somehow, everything felt uncertain.
Henri Becque.
Hmm?
He didn't understand.
Wasn't it Ehrenburg?
This is no joke.
Alekseev.
He's not Russian.
Absurd.
Nerval.
Heh.
Sturm.
Meredith.
What was he saying?

Ah! That was it—Dürfe.
No, that wasn't right.
Who the hell was Dürfe?

He understood nothing.

Chaotically—no, torn asunder into seven blossoms and eight fragments.
Various names surfaced haphazardly in his chest without any connection, swirling and swimming chaotically, yet Mr. Kasai could not vividly recall a single entity among those many names—now it was no longer just the clamor of Andrea del Sarto and Henri Becque.
He understood nothing.
The names of old teachers that spilled from his lips—all of them devoid of scent, taste, or hue—left Mr. Kasai vacantly repeating phrases like “That name sounds familiar,” and “Who was that again?”—such was the state he’d been reduced to.

Just what had you been doing these past two or three years?
I was alive.
I knew that.
No—that alone had been all I could manage.
I had learned a little about managing daily life.
The effort of each day's existence resembled precisely the struggle to straighten a bent nail.
Being such a small nail, there was no proper place to apply force—yet straightening that warped piece required such tremendous pressure that to any observer, though it appeared utterly unremarkable, he would fumble clumsily, face flushed crimson from exertion.
And so Mr. Kasai wrote novel after novel that even he considered thoroughly unsatisfactory, until he had completely forgotten literature itself.
He had grown senile.
At times he secretly read nothing but Chekhov.
When that sharply bent iron nail had finally begun—little by little—to straighten somewhat, when his debts had at last started dwindling—to hell with it all!
With tears streaking his face, Mr. Kasai abandoned those years of dogged, unglamorous effort; fled his home in near madness; and embarked on a journey staking his very life.
I can't bear this anymore.
Endurance has its limits.
He could endure no longer.
Mr. Kasai was a hopeless man.

“Hey, that’s Yatsugatake!”
“That’s Yatsugatake!”

A loud voice arose from the group behind—

“Whoa, that’s insane!”

“Majestic!” the youths and girls in the group exclaimed in unison, praising Komagatake’s grandeur.

It was not Yatsugatake.
It was Komagatake.
Mr. Kasai felt slightly redeemed.
Even if he didn't know Henri Becque, even if he couldn't recall Andrea del Sarto, Mr. Kasai knew the name of that triangular silver peak now glowing rose-pink in the sunset - that mountain alone.
That was Komagatake.
It was decidedly not Yatsugatake.
Though it was a wretchedly ignorant pride, Mr. Kasai nevertheless felt a faint sense of superiority and breathed slightly easier.
He half-rose as if to correct them, then sank back muttering "No, no" to himself.
Perhaps they were magazine editors or newspaper reporters.
Their conversation clearly wasn't that of people indifferent to literature.
They might be theater people.
Or perhaps discerning readers.
At any rate, they likely knew Mr. Kasai's name.
Approaching them now would feel like peddling his worthless reputation - distasteful.
They'd surely scorn him.
Mustn't overreach.
Mr. Kasai sighed and gazed again at Komagatake beyond the window.
Still infuriating somehow.
Tch. Serves them right.
All their pretentious chatter about Henri Becque and Andrea del Sarto, yet they mistake Komagatake for Yatsugatake - "How majestic!" they proclaim.

Yatsugatake, you know, becomes visible on the opposite side once you go further into Shinano.
You’ll be laughed at.
This is Komagatake.
Also known as Kai-Koma.
Altitude: 2,966 meters.
How’s that? he muttered deep in his chest, attempting something akin to a tanka in secret, but even to himself, it felt utterly devoid of grandeur.
Vulgar, crude, not a shred of literary refinement.
“I’ve changed…” Mr. Kasai smiled bitterly from the depths of his being.
After all, even Mr. Kasai—up until five or six years ago—had been supported by two or three senior writers as an author with a new style, and readers too had once acclaimed him as a rebellious, avant-garde writer. But now, he had utterly fallen from grace.
Those adventurous, avant-garde styles of his—he had grown so ashamed of them that he came to loathe it all.
His creative spirit simply refused to stir.
And so he had dragged himself along, churning out highly unconscientious, ephemeral works and living solely by haggling over page counts.
What they call artistic conscience is ultimately just another name for vanity.
Shallow, cold, cruel egoism.
Only in work for survival is there affection.
There exists a modest, nostalgic affection in these back alleys.
While muttering such excuses, Mr. Kasai would shut his eyes, violently scribble out reckless works, and publish them.
It was martyrdom for the sake of living, he told himself.
But lately—no, that wasn’t it.
You have ultimately become debased, you know.

"That's underhanded," he muttered to himself.
Whispers of that nature furtively stole into his ears, and Mr. Kasai stiffened into solemnity.
The dignity of art, loyalty to self—the severity of such concepts resurfaced fragment by fragment within him. What did this mean?
Couldn't it all be condensed into a single phrase?
Mr. Kasai had lately reached an impasse even within popular fiction's domain.

The train crawled laboriously upward.
It had begun ascending the mountain slope.
Disembarking and running might prove faster, he thought.
Truly sluggish.
Soon Yatsugatake's full silhouette materialized north of the tracks, eight peaks arrayed in procession.
Mr. Kasai gazed upward with glittering eyes.
An admirable mountain indeed.
Nearing sunset now, its ridges glowed faintly with lingering light—contours flowing in unhurried undulations that felt humanely tender compared to Fuji's aloof magnificence—surpassing it manifold in grace, he concluded.
2,899 meters.
Lately Mr.Kasai had developed peculiar fixations—mountain elevations,city populations,sea bream market prices—memorizing such figures with unnatural zeal.
There was a time he'd scorned such empirical data as vulgarities,dismissing even flower and bird names as pedestrian distractions—maintaining Platonic indifference while secretly treasuring his cultivated ignorance as noble affectation.But now he'd transformed completely.
He badgered his wife about fish costs at dinner,gorged on newspaper politics,pored over Chinese maps with counterfeit gravitas,nodded sagely over tomato plants and morning glories,browsed botanical albums and geography texts—compiling useless knowledge about roadside weeds,garden sparrows,famous landmarks—all with smug self-congratulation.
All recklessness abandoned.
No courage remained.
Was this not senility's very portrait?

A retired old man in seclusion—there was no difference from that.

And now, Mr. Kasai was gazing spellbound at the majestic Yatsugatake.
"Ah, what a splendid mountain," he murmured, hunched his back, thrust out his chin, furrowed his brows in apparent sorrow, and gazed spellbound.
A pitiable figure he was.
There he was, fervently praying to the mediocre scenery before his eyes: “Bestow your blessing upon me.”
He resembled a crab.
Until four or five years ago, Mr. Kasai had never been this kind of person.
He had once intercepted and filtered all natural scenery through reason, never drowning in it—smirked wryly and kept his distance from so-called “preconceived” emotions: roses, violets, insects’ chirping, wind—and instead devoted himself solely to plumbing the depths of human hearts. “I am human,” he would declare. “Hearing of human affairs, whether good or ill, I cannot deem them another’s concern; my own heart stirs unbidden.” With this creed, he had struggled fiercely, albeit with a blunt blade, against those psychological depths alone. But now, it was utterly futile.
He stood vacantly.

——Other than mountains……

Indulging in what could only be called an antiquated, foolish sentiment, he even teared up a bit—utterly disheveled. After staring open-mouthed at Yatsugatake for a while, Mr. Kasai—apparently becoming aware of his own disheveled state—burst into a painful laugh alone. Scratching the back of his head vigorously—what a mess—he had set out on this journey gasping to dispel the oppressive weight of daily life in one fell swoop, yearning for some transgression, for a romanticism so intense it could kill him. It’s not as though he came to see the mountains. Absurd. What a fine romance this turned out to be.

With a clamor, the group of young men and women behind him stood up and began preparing to disembark, getting off at Fujimi Station.
Mr. Kasai felt slightly relieved.
After all, he had somehow been putting on airs.
Mr. Kasai was not such a famous writer, but even so—someone was watching; somewhere was watching.
When he entered the crowd with that feeling, even the way he smoked his cigarette seemed slightly different.
Particularly when people who showed even passing interest in novels were near Mr. Kasai—though none paid him any mind—he would still stiffen as if frozen, barely managing to turn his head.
It used to be much worse.
He had even suffered suffocation and dizziness from his excessive affectation.
Rather a pitiable vice.
Mr. Kasai was, by nature, a deeply fidgety and timid man.
It might have been a condition called mental deficiency.
With the Andrea del Sartos behind him having disembarked, Mr. Kasai too seemed to shrug off a burden with a sigh of relief—slipped off his geta, stretched out both legs, propped his feet on the passenger seat ahead, and pulled out a book from his kimono sleeve.
Mr. Kasai—strangely enough for a literary man—rarely read works of literature.
In the past this had not been the case, but regarding his neglect of study over the past two or three years—there was something unforgivable.
He read the likes of rakugo anthologies.
He sneaked looks at his wife’s women’s magazines.
The book he had just taken from his sleeve was La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims.
At least this was a step up.
To his credit, even Mr. Kasai seemed to abstain from rakugo during his travels, carrying slightly more refined books instead.
It bore an uncanny resemblance to a schoolgirl carrying around a French poetry collection she couldn’t possibly read.

A pitiable figure he was. Flipping through the pages, he suddenly came across a maxim: “If thou canst not find peace within thine own heart, seeking it elsewhere is but futile effort.” He felt a pang of discomfort. It seemed like a bad omen. This trip—this might be a failure.

By the time the train approached Kamisuwa, it had grown completely dark. Soon, to the south, a lake spread out—pale and cold like an ancient mirror, as if it had just thawed from ice, glowing dully with a chill. The clumps of reeds along the shore stood blackened and withered, motionless—a desolate and miserable landscape.
It was Lake Suwa.
When he had come last autumn, he had received a somewhat brighter impression, but now he felt anxious—was Shinano Province no good in spring?

Shimosuwa.
He trudged off the train.
He exited the station ticket gate, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and walked toward the town.
In front of the station stood seven or eight inn clerks, yet not a single one attempted to call out to Mr. Kasai.
It was only natural.
He wore no hat, was dressed in an everyday cotton kimono, and even his geta were worn down.
He had no luggage.
He hardly looked like a traveler who had secretly resolved to stay one night and splurge extravagantly.
He must look like a local.
Even Mr. Kasai felt a pang of desolation—and as the rain began to patter down, he quickened his pace through the town—but what a bleak, squalid place this Shimosuwa was.
A town suited for a worn-out horse to stagger through, clinking the bell on its neck as it trembles.
The town was narrow in width; the eaves of the houses black, stubbornly low; the electric lights inside dim, as if lit by lamps or paper lanterns.
The ground was bitterly cold, the road strewn with large stones and littered with horse droppings.
Occasionally, a soot-stained old-model bus would pass by, its bulky frame shaking and rattling.

Ah, so this was Kiso Road, he thought.
The warmth one expects of a hot spring town was nowhere to be found.
No matter how far he walked, everything remained unchanged.
Mr. Kasai sighed and came to a halt in the middle of the roadway.
The rain intensified gradually, incrementally.
Lonely—so lonely it brought tears—Mr. Kasai at last resolved to abandon this town.
Retracing his steps through the rain to the station entrance, he found a car and pleaded in a voice verging on tears—"Kamisuwa, Takinoya—quickly please"—before boarding. Failure—this journey might have been an utter failure—he felt such regret he could neither sit still nor remain standing.

I wonder if that person is there.
The car was driving along the shore of Lake Suwa.
The dark lake water lay motionless like lead, giving the impression that no fish or shellfish could survive there. Mr. Kasai strained to avert his eyes from the lake, yet that desolate misery had taken root somewhere in his vision—an unsalvageable feeling that made him want to slit his throat or jam a pistol into his mouth with one explosive shot, leaving nowhere to turn.
I wonder if that person is there.
I wonder if that person is there.
Would it feel like this when rushing to my mother's deathbed?
I am obtuse.
I am foolish.
I am blind.
Laugh, laugh.
I am—I am ruin.
I don't—I don't understand anything.
I am a mass of chaos.
It's lukewarm water.
I lost, I lost.
I am inferior to all.
Even my suffering—even my suffering—I can't comprehend.
If you pursue it to the end, there's no such thing as suffering.
Cut your jokes!
The car kept gliding along the lakeshore until the lights of Kamisuwa came into view, scattered sparsely.

The rain had cleared.

Takinoya was, in Kamisuwa, the oldest and also the finest inn.
After getting out of the car and standing at the entrance,

“Welcome.”
The proprietress—a woman around forty who always fastened her collar so tightly it looked painful—emerged with a pale face and offered a cold greeting.
“Will you be staying?”

The proprietress did not seem to remember Mr. Kasai.

“Please.”
Mr. Kasai managed a timid social smile and gave a slight bow.

“Room 28.”
The proprietress, without so much as a smile, ordered the maid in a low voice.

“Yes.”
A small, fifteen- or sixteen-year-old maid stood up.

At that moment, that person appeared unexpectedly.

“No.
Annex Three.”
Having said this in that brusque tone，she briskly stepped ahead of Mr. Kasai to lead the way.
Her name was Yuki-san.

“You came after all.
“You came after all.”
After repeating it twice, she stopped and said, “You’ve put on a little weight.”
Yuki-san always treated Mr. Kasai like a younger brother or something.
She was twenty-six.
She should have been nine years younger than Mr. Kasai, yet there was a composure about her reminiscent of someone who had endured great hardship.
Her face was one from the Tenpyō era.
Her face was round and puffy, with narrow, elongated eyes and a pale complexion.
She was wearing a dark, subdued striped kimono.
She was the head maid of this inn.
She had completed up to the third year of girls’ school, it was said.
She was from Tokyo.

Mr.Kasai was being guided down the long corridor by Yuki-san，walking with his usual habit of unnaturally raising his right shoulder，all the while subtly searching for Room 28 that the proprietress had mentioned earlier.He never did find it，but it was probably that squalid triangular room right beneath the staircase.That must be it.In this inn，it must be the lowest-class room.It must be because of my shabby clothes.My geta are dirty.That’s right—it’s because of my clothes，Mr.Kasai concluded，utterly dejected.

They climbed the stairs to the second floor.

“You liked it here, didn’t you.”
Yuki-san slid open the room’s fusuma door and settled into a self-satisfied pose.

Mr. Kasai smiled bitterly. This was a separate building, properly equipped with a preparation room—above all, it was the finest room in the inn. There was a veranda too, and in the inn’s garden last autumn, bellflowers had bloomed in near-miraculous profusion. Beyond the garden, the lake showed blue. It was a good room. Mr. Kasai had worked here for five or six days last autumn.

“I came here today, you know—just to have fun,” he said. “I want to drink myself to death.” He gave a slight shrug. “So the room or whatever—it doesn’t matter.” Mr. Kasai’s mood had lifted somewhat after all; he declared this in a tone of forced cheer.

Having changed into the inn’s padded robe, with a table between them, sitting properly facing Yuki-san, Mr. Kasai smiled a heartfelt smile for the first time.

“Finally—”
He started to say, then involuntarily let out a deep sigh.

“Finally?” Yuki-san countered with a calm smile.

“Ah, finally…
“Finally… What should I say?”
“Japanese is so inconvenient.”
“It’s hard.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve really stayed by me, haven’t you.”
“It helps me.
“I feel like crying.”

“I don’t know. It’s not about me, is it?”

“That might be the case.”
Hot spring.
Lake Suwa.
Japan.
No—being alive.
Everything feels nostalgic.
There’s no reason.
I thank everyone.
"No—it might be a feeling lasting only an instant."
Because he had said nothing but pretentious things, Mr. Kasai felt slightly embarrassed.

“And then you’ll forget right away?”
“Please have some tea.”

“I’ve never forgotten anything, ever.”
“It seems you still don’t understand.”
“Anyway, let’s take a bath.”
“Get me some alcohol.”

Despite all his earlier bravado, he couldn’t drink much alcohol.
Yuki-san also seemed busy that night; even when she brought alcohol, she would immediately leave elsewhere, and no other maids came either. Mr. Kasai gulped it down alone, and by the third bottle, he was already hopelessly drunk. Using the room’s installed telephone, he—

“Hello? Hello?”
“You seem busy tonight.”
“Nobody’s coming.”
“Let’s get a geisha.”
“Call one geisha over thirty.”

After some time had passed, he made another call.

“Hello? Hello?”
“Hasn’t the geisha arrived yet?”
“Being drunk alone in this detached guest room isn’t satisfying, you know.”
“Please bring me beer.”
“Not sake; this time, I’ll drink beer.”
“Hello? Hello?”
“You have a lovely voice.”

It was a lovely voice.
The voice of that unfamiliar woman—who responded obediently with “Yes, yes,” her tone slightly tinged with laughter—resonated very refreshingly indeed in the ears of the intoxicated Mr. Kasai.

Yuki-san brought over the beer.

“You’re calling geishas?”
“Stop that.”
“It’s pointless.”

“No one’s coming.”

“It’s been busy today for some reason.”
“Haven’t you had enough to drink by now?”
“You should get some sleep now.”

Mr. Kasai made another call.

“Hello? Hello?
“Yuki-san said geishas are pointless, you know.”
“Since she told me to stop, I did.”
“Oh, also—cigarettes.”
“Three Castles.”
“I want to indulge in luxury.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have a lovely voice.”
He praised her again.

He had Yuki-san prepare his bedding and went to sleep.
When he lay down, he immediately vomited.
Yuki-san briskly changed the soiled sheets.
He slept.

The next morning was filled with groans.
Upon waking, Mr. Kasai felt mortally ashamed of his own ineptitude and listlessness from the previous night.
This was terrible—this was romanticism!
I'd even vomited bile.
Feeling actual rage now, I kicked off the futon and rose, went to the bathhouse where I thrashed violently about the wide tub—not caring how graceless I looked—even attempting a backstroke, yet the gloom in my heart refused to lift.
Scowling fiercely, his footsteps pounding, when he returned to his room he found an unfamiliar seventeen- or eighteen-year-old maid with a slender frame cleaning the floor, her white apron tied neatly in place.

Looking at Mr. Kasai and smiling warmly, she said, “I heard you got drunk last night.”
“How are you feeling now?”

He suddenly remembered.

“Ah—your voice. I recognize it.”
“I recognize it.”
It was the voice from the telephone.

The woman, giggling and hunching her shoulders, continued wiping the alcove.
Mr. Kasai, his mood now cleared, stood at the room’s entrance and leisurely puffed on his cigarette.

The woman turned around,

“Oh, what a lovely smell.”
“That foreign cigarette from last night, right?”
“I love that smell.”
“Don’t let that smell escape.”
Discarding the rag, she stood up and briskly snapped shut the corridor’s shoji, the veranda door, and even the room’s sliding doors—all of them sealed tight.
After sealing and shutting everything, the two of them were thrown into disarray.
Things took a strange turn.
Mr. Kasai was not being conceited.
No—perhaps there had indeed been reason enough for conceit.
A prank.
Mr. Kasai had never imagined that wrongdoing could be carried out so innocently.
Mr. Kasai thought it was lovely.
He sensed a rustic simplicity, the direct scent of fields, and thought he saw white hollyhocks.

The sliding door opened smoothly,

“Um,”
Yuki-san began to say without hesitation, then abruptly swallowed her words.
Indeed, for five or six seconds, Yuki-san had been unable to speak.

They had been seen.
He had plunged with a thud into a pitch-black stable at the world’s edge—filthy and reeking—in an instant.
Yet it was all a swirling mass of black smoke—shame and regret felt too lukewarm to describe it.
Mr. Kasai had wanted to keep pretending to be dead like this.

“What time will you be departing by train?”
True to form, Yuki-san regained her composure and immediately continued speaking as if nothing had happened.

“Well...”
The woman was strangely composed.
Mr. Kasai even found her reliable.
And thus, he found the woman to be quite an enigma.

“I’ll leave right away.”
“I don’t need a meal either.”
“Please check me out.”
Mr. Kasai kept his eyes closed.
Dazzling and terrifying, he couldn’t open his eyes.
He wished he could turn into stone right then.

“Understood.”
Yuki-san gave a greeting without a hint of unpleasantness and left the room.

“We’ve been seen.”
“There’s no mistaking it.”

“It’s fine.” The woman was completely unperturbed, her eyes even clear.
“Are you really leaving right away?”

“I’m leaving.”
Mr. Kasai took off his padded robe and began preparing to leave.
Rather than clumsily trying to preserve appearances by putting on a brave front and stubbornly muddling through, he reasoned that since his disgrace had already been exposed, making a swift escape would be not only wise but even honest.

He felt utterly defeated.
Now, with this, I too have become a man of inexcusable disgrace.
Not a speck of cleanliness remained.
Thick and greasy, muddy, clumsy—ah, now I am no longer Werther forever!
I felt like stamping my feet in frustration.
It wasn’t self-reproach for the act.
My luck is rotten.
Clumsy.
It’s over.
In that single moment just now, I have been completely expelled from the romantic.
Truly, a terrifying moment.
They had been seen.
Of all people, it had to be Yuki-san who saw me.
Mr. Kasai wore a grotesque, strange expression, harboring a fireball of turmoil within as he mechanically settled the bill, left a five-yen tip, and impatiently fumbled with his geta,

“Oh, goodbye.”
“Next time I’ll take my time and come again.”
It was mortifying; I wanted to cry.

At the inn’s entrance, led by the pale-faced proprietress along with Yuki-san and then the young maid from earlier, they stood lined up bowing politely, uniformly wearing calm, gentle smiles as they saw Mr. Kasai off.

Mr. Kasai was in no state for that. By now, all I wanted was to howl at the top of my lungs at every turn, rant and rave, and dash about like a thunder god. I’m done for. Shelley, Kleist—ah, even Pushkin—farewell. I am not your friend. You were noble. They don’t make spectacles of themselves like me. I was seen, and now I’ve been reduced to utter shitty realism. This is no laughing matter. I have fallen to the depths of hell, through a hundred million worlds. Wash as I might, wash as I might, I am absolutely not my former self. In a single instant, I had fallen so mercilessly. It feels like a dream. Ah, if only it were a dream. No—no, it’s not a dream. Yuki-san had indeed gasped and fallen silent at that moment. She had been startled. I want to bite my tongue and die. Thirty-five years—must a person fall this far? What remains afterward?

I am no longer even a gentleman—not now, not ever.
I’m worse than a dog.
Liar.
"I’m 'the same' as a dog."

Unable to bear it any longer, Mr. Kasai went to the station and bought a second-class ticket.
He felt slightly relieved.
It had been nearly ten years since he last rode a second-class car.
A work.
--I suddenly thought of that.
Only the work.--Kicked to the edge of the world, this time at last, I seemed to have been made clearly aware of what might be called the gravity of my task.
I desperately wanted to carve out a path for myself.
Dark King.
Compose yourself.

He returned straight home.
More than half of the money still remained.
In short, it was a good trip.
It was not ironic.
Mr. Kasai might write a good work.