Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Lodging House of Drifters

The scorching midday sun seared the windless town like a dried-out frying pan.
The Platanus trees lining the street hung their broad palm-like leaves in limp wilt, utterly sapped by dust and the sun’s pitiless glare.

Not a single moving shadow remained on the streets.
Under the sun’s rays fiercely beating down on the asphalt pavement, only faint dust swirled up; the ground below writhed in agony like the skin of an earthworker whose sweat glands had dried up beneath the scorching heat!

Beneath the sun’s relentlessly scorching persistence, naked coolies had snatched what scant shade they could steal—under trees, against earthen walls—and lay collapsed here and there as though dead.
And to their skin—tossing restlessly in sleepless torment—clung heedless scattered seeds of watermelons and muskmelons.

The shops with their shutters fully lowered fell utterly silent like a mute—not even the clamorous clatter of abacuses or the jingling of copper coins, which should have resounded in that garish tone peculiar to Chinatown, could be heard anymore.
Through gaps in the shop curtains could be seen the figures of shop employees slumped in sleep, drooling and disheveled.
Only flies filled the deserted shop’s dirt floor, droning faintly as they swarmed about.……

Then, before long, a lone shadow appeared on these scorching streets.
The shadow first materialized as a solitary black dot at the end of the broad, gently sloping avenue—precisely beneath the imposing orange Bank of China building. When this dot had swum through the solar glare and fully expanded upon drawing near, it revealed itself as a sunburned, dust-caked young man staggering forward in utter surrender to the July sun.
He had tied a small bundle to a cane with a frayed tip resembling a chewed pencil end, slinging it over his shoulder.
His high-collared black school uniform, drenched in sweat and grime, clung awkwardly to his slight frame as if dragging him down, while his worn-out lace-up boots kicked up dust with each faltering step.
As he reeled forward, the asphalt avenue ahead soon split into two diverging paths.
The expanded space at the fork—stretched thin as a simpleton’s broad forehead—had been skillfully mounded into an elliptical shape planted with Platanus stumps and even furnished with several advertisement benches. This design contrivance had barely salvaged the ill-proportioned avenue’s fatal flaw.
The design engineer’s painstaking efforts too were being heedlessly trampled underfoot by filthy coolies and brazen street vendors who had abandoned their trades to sprawl snoring across the benches.

The young man staggered that far and came to a brief halt.
He appeared to be weighing his path yet also seemed to be hunting for an empty bench.
But it was neither.
His eyes had been suctioned to the Free Lodging’s fresh wooden sign like a sea anemone!
Faint though it was, a flush of vitality returned to the exhausted youth’s face—no sooner had he deciphered the placard’s message than he veered down the right-hand path tracing the hospital fence.

When the hospital fence ended, it became a dusty crossroads, and across from it lay a corner shrouded in a deep grove of acacia trees—Shonenji Temple, enclosed by Chinese-style earthen walls. Ahead, a black gate stood open. On one of the gateposts hung a sign that read "Free Lodging," complete with a considerate note: "Those without shelter or employment are welcome without hesitation."

The corner where this temple met the diagonal crossroads was a Russian tavern. To call it a tavern was generous—it was an inferior eatery where lowly carters, ranked beneath horse dung, and even worse lower-class laborers chewed on unprocessed kalbas and raw cucumbers, gulped cheap liquor, and slurped soup boiled from cow offal. At the storefront, a little girl with hair like frayed cotton bursting from a quilt’s seams had flung her mud-caked bare feet out from a skirt more tattered than a rag and was peeling potatoes, then slumped over the basket in a doze. The greedy-looking Jewish owner with a flushed face had thrown himself across the dim counter at the back of the windless shop, his sleeping visage like a boiled potato about to emit steam.

While carefully stealing glances at the Russian tavern, the young man was drawn into Shonenji Temple’s black gate without a moment’s hesitation. Inside the gate, acacia and elm groves had grown wild and natural, their spaces between trees buried in undergrowth so thick it cast a dim gloom. Only the path leading to the main hall remained white and swept clean.

The young man staggered forward a few steps but suddenly came to an abrupt halt. For even here, naked coolies had intruded, their mackerel-like bellies—terrifying human abdomens—innumerable amidst the weeds beneath the trees. He gazed at the squalid scene with a contemplative expression. And then, while sensing even a nationalistic suffocation in Amida Buddha’s boundless teachings regarding this free lodging—a benefit granted exclusively to their fellow countrymen—he walked toward the entrance beside the main hall.

“Excuse me,” he called out twice while gazing at the hairy shins splayed at the edge of the sliding door.
Then, as foam flecked his lips, the hairy shins twitched back, and a monk wearing nothing but a white loincloth crawled out headfirst.

“I would like to request your assistance...”

The monk with an unkempt beard looked the young man up and down from head to toe with a lethargic gaze.

“Where did you come from?”

The monk barked like a snapping tree.

“Uh... Fengtian.”

“Did you walk here?”

“Uh…”

“There’s a ledger and inkstone there. Write down your registered domicile and full name, then go rest in the tenement.”

The Monk dismissed him with half-spoken words and scurried back into the inner rooms.

He thought, _I’m starving… Could I have just a bite…_ but could no longer catch up.
The young man dazedly felt his concentration wane.

Even though it was called a lodging house, it was one in name only—a tenement fashioned from a rental property, consisting of just a single eight-tatami room.
For what purpose had this rental house been converted into a lodging? The monk’s scheme was all too clear!
The windowpanes were shattered haphazardly, and the tatami mats had come apart in clumps.
Save for the path leading to the paint-peeled door—somehow trampled into a semblance of a proper path—weeds ran rampant everywhere else.
It resembled a ruined house buried in weeds—every window and wall shrouded by nameless vines—and to deepen the shadows over this lodging’s gloomy outcasts, a grove of thick-leaved acacia trees hung their branches low.

The young man opened the door with the broken handle and entered the dirt floor covered in thin moss.
Instantly，a swarm of flies assaulted him with a low drone.

“Excuse me.”

The completely naked man silently raised his face.
A forty-year-old man with a thick beard yet gentle features—apparently suffering from severe trachoma—crushed pubic lice between his thighs with red, ulcerated eyes glistening greasily.

“Where’d you come from,” he said flatly, “Brother?”

The man spoke expressionlessly.

“Fengtian...”

“Walked here?”

“Yeah...”

The man resumed crushing lice with mechanical motions.
Then abruptly jerked his chin: “Brother here walked from Dalian day before yesterday too.”
“Slept two days three nights straight—just like a corpse.”

Having said that, he resumed his impassive expression.
Beyond the man’s elbow lay the young man exactly as described—face down and fallen asleep, his body drenched in night sweat.
The deeply tanned face had taken on a pale, sallow cast.
I really need to shake him awake now!

The young man flopped down.
He felt his eyes sink into their sockets.

“Did you eat?”
The man asked again.

“No, not since yesterday…”
The young man made a pathetic expression.

“I see.
“Look under that newspaper there.
“There’s cucumbers and black bread here.”

The young man wanted to pounce on it with every fiber of his being but couldn’t stop fidgeting.
To put it more precisely—he had wanted to repay this man’s kindness with at least some words overflowing with heartfelt gratitude.

“Don’t hold back.”
“We’re all in this together!”

He continued killing lice with the same impassive expression as ever.

“Thanks a lot!”

The young man, overwhelmed by an inexplicable surge of emotion, ended up blurting out artless words charged with simple gratitude.
He turned over the newspaper and took the black bread.
A savory smell wafted over.
Though rough, it had a blessed stickiness that felt somehow comforting—how many days had it been since he last experienced such pleasantness in that sensation!
The young man, wary of tears welling up in eyes, tore the lump of black bread in two and audibly gulped down saliva deep in throat.
And in the next instant, he was devouring it ravenously—like a starving demon.

The young man awoke in the evening of the following day.
He had slept straight through a full day and night and now rose in a listless manner, like a person who had left a soul behind.
It seemed as though he had heard a scream—or perhaps not.

The door kept swinging open and shut.
Four men—the Chinese-Clad Man whom the Young Man hadn’t yet encountered; the sturdy Black Glasses; yesterday’s louse-crusher; and the youth rumored to have walked from Dalian—hauled water, honed daggers, shouted and roared to scatter children.

"What’s going on?" the Young Man wondered suspiciously.
As he stifled a half-yawn and stepped down into the dirt-floored entryway, a dog’s corpse thudded down at his feet.
It was thrown in from outside the door by the Chinese-Clad Man.
He recoiled in shock.

The dog seemed to have just been beaten to death, its snout dripping with fresh blood.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Don’t get spooked—this here’s your feast!”

The Chinese-Clad Man laughed, his angular face gleaming.
"Hey kid!
"You slept well.
"Red dog.
"It'll tear your damn cheeks off it's so good!"

“Hey, it’s ready.
Who’s gonna cook this?
Chinese-Clad Man! Show us your damn skills!”

Black Glasses—his burly frame carrying a wet board and a honed dagger—entered.
He stabbed the dagger into the discarded wet board.

“Idiot! You’re the one!” the Chinese-Clad Man retorted. But given how they seemed to be on familiar terms,

“Scared now?”

“Cut the crap!”

After exchanging a few heated words, the Chinese-Clad Man dragged the dog onto the wet board. Suddenly, Black Glasses noticed the Young Man,

“Hey, you’re up.”
“Where’d you drift in from?” he asked with a friendly smile.

“Uh, Fengtian.”
“Please, I beg of you.”
He bowed his head meekly.

“Hey, you must be starving. I’ll fill you up soon enough!”

“Oh... please.”

“Until it’s ready, go on up and rest.”

By now, the dog on the wet board—its artery slit open by the Chinese-Clad Man’s gleaming dagger—had its midsection wrung out like laundry. Bright red fresh blood gushed forth with a brisk rush from the incision, staining the wet board before flowing into a hole roughly five sun square (about 15 cm) that had been dug out. What a well-drilled routine it was!

“How’s that? See how smooth it flows out, huh? Bright red fresh blood’s a damn fine sight, ain’t it?”

The Chinese-Clad Man wrung out the dog’s torso with entranced eyes, his hands growing matted with fur and blood.

“Yeah. Fresh blood! With that guts, go on and gulp it all down!”

When the blood had been fully wrung out, the dog lay limp on the wet board, its coat seeming to take on a bluish tinge. White eyes rolled back; from lips as coarse as the hem of darkened kelp hung a blood-soaked tongue—likely torn by its own teeth when beaten—dangling limply without dignity.

After washing his hands and dagger clean with water and rolling up his drooping sleeves, the Chinese-Clad Man thrust the dagger’s sharp blade deep into the dog’s jaw. Gripping the hilt with all his strength, he slashed it down toward the hindquarters in one masterful motion, then reversed the blade with deft precision to work it between skin and flesh. In moments, he had torn the stray dog apart into blood-soaked meat and a single crumpled pelt.

The dagger sliced through the congealed blood and flashed once more; the single gash across the abdomen swelled and burst open from within, unleashing a violent surge of entrails＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊ that overflowed to spill between the dog’s splayed limbs.
Then the Chinese-Clad Man’s hands parted the spilling viscera, slid between the breastbone, and after digging into the chest wall two or three times with his fingertips, cleanly detached both lungs before scraping them onto the wet board alongside the liver, stomach, and other organs.
Gathering the large intestine, he drove his blade into its final section—a clean severance from the anus sent the mass of entrails slithering across the wet board to drop unresisting into the same hole where the blood had drained.
When he kicked sand over it with his heel, nothing remained but a hunk of meat ripe to stir hunger.

The dagger's blade bit into the thigh joint, and as bone grated against metal with a grinding shriek, the limb came clean away without resistance.
Having demonstrated such masterful precision with the dagger's edge in one continuous motion through his butchering work, the Chinese-Clad Man hurled the limb at Black Glasses—

“Hey! Get those bones out!” he shouted for the first time.

“Alright, I’ll help.”
With this shout, Black Glasses finally averted his eyes from the blade wielded by the Chinese-Clad Man.
And with a “Haaah,” he let out an admiring sigh.
The man who had been crushing lice and the young man from Dalian were drawing water and gathering firewood.

Once again, children from the entire neighborhood clung to tree branches, dangled from windows, or crowded the doorway, their eyes wide with burning curiosity as they watched these savages’ ferocious cooking with bated breath.

“Shut up!”

Without warning, the Chinese-Clad Man barked this and hurled the severed dog’s head at the cluster of children with full force.

“Agh!”

The children scattered in panic, then timidly formed a wide circle around the scene from afar.

“Dog killer! Dog killer!”

They kept up their chorus of curses—but gradually their angry shouts transformed into hushed whispers: “It’s the monk! It’s the monk!” Reassured now, the swarm of children flooded back through the doorway alongside the monk.
Before the monk himself even appeared—as if his fury had arrived ahead of him—before his unshaven face could peer through the door,

“Madness! Madness! This is the animal realm incarnate!” he bellowed, storming in.

“Get out! Get out! We’ll have you get out! We can’t let you beasts stay here another moment!”

The Monk, in a violent fit of rage, sucked in a ragged breath through eyes, nose, and mouth all at once as if gasping uncontrollably.

“H-hmph…”

The Chinese-Clad Man stifled a chuckle beneath the Monk’s sleeve.

“This is the realm of hungry ghosts and beasts!”
“You kill a pet dog and, of all things, defile this sacred Buddhist ground to boil and eat it!”
“This is an audacious act of the animal realm incarnate!”
“You hell-bound scum—I can’t let you stay here another moment!”

Black Glasses, who had been silently removing the bones,

“Too damn loud! Shit-stained monk!” he bellowed abruptly, slamming the bones in his grip onto the earthen floor. “You shove us into this pigsty of an empty house while swindling donations and fooling everyone—ain’t that right? Got some smartass mouth on you!”

“Fine! You bastard, remember this! If this humble monk can’t handle you myself, there’s always the police. They’ll drive you out for sure. How could I endure letting you stay?!”

“Oh! Go ahead and try!”
“Instead of the stray dog, now it’s your turn!”
“Don’t go crawling on wet planks and regret it later.”

The blood-soaked dagger flashed from the Chinese-Clad Man’s hand and pierced through the wall’s paneling.
The Monk gave a quick bow of his head and fled on the spot.
Without looking back!

The Monk never showed his unkempt beard there again.

It was utterly impossible to tell whether the tavern owner was "Red" or "White."
As long as it was business, even for a customer who paid five copper coins—each barely worth half a rin—for a bowl of soup and drank only a single sip, he narrowed his shrewd eyes and smiled.

The man who had come from Dalian would let a flicker of yearning gleam in his melancholic eyes whenever he glimpsed Russians, as though entranced by a woman's buttocks.

He had marched nonstop from Dalian without food or drink, undaunted by those wretched hardships, still clinging to the resolve to push onward—following railway tracks toward Russia, a country that even on maps stretched as vast and featureless as tanned cowhide, its bearings impossible to discern.
Over the past few days he had raced through the city like something parched under the blazing sky, yet somehow—through means unknown—begun peddling "kalbas," only to squander every last copper of his earnings at this ruddy-faced, rapacious tavern.

Where or when he had learned it was anyone’s guess, but he now wielded Russian terms like “Bolsheviks,” “Kalinin,” “Bukharin,” or “Ilyich Lenin,” alongside “khorosho” and “spasibo,” mixing them haphazardly with Chinese as he spewed his inexplicable wild fervor indiscriminately—at the rapacious tavern owner, at drivers who’d never escaped the stench of horse stalls since birth, at barefoot Russians whose daily survival defied comprehension. He’d grab them and confront them—“I love Bolsheviks!” or “Down with Imperialists!”—with the frenzied excitement of someone yanking entrails from a chicken’s hindquarters.

The Russians, with their hulking unrestrained bodies, clutched between their thighs the flimsy handmade tables that looked ready to collapse under the slightest pressure—all while staring at their teardrop-sized vodka cups and smirking with catlike slyness at this buffoon’s deranged fervor.
And to him, nothing brought greater joy than these monstrous Russo—with not a word of opposition—smiling at his fervor. This alone was enough to send him into ecstasy, driving him into unhinged excitement he could not contain.

Dalian seemed to harbor the resolve of a stallion in rut—kicking over carts and charging headlong across the Siberian wilderness.
It was an utterly outlandish resolve!

The Young Man had never dreamed that this “Dalian” harbored such outlandish resolve and deranged passion.

When the Young Man first arrived at the pigsty-like lodging, Dalian—who’d been crushing lice—had reportedly slept like a dementia patient for two days and three nights straight. Moreover, when the Chinese-Clad Man butchered the stray dog, he sank into gloomy silence; though he was bossed around to fetch water, he couldn’t even muster a resentful expression.
Moreover, whenever he had free time, he wouldn’t try to butt into anyone’s conversations, instead just lying around with a silent expression.

That he could harbor such deranged passion!
The Young Man had never even dreamed of it.

According to the “performance” Black Glasses would invariably put on when collapsing drunk, he was an irredeemable yakuza—a branded “Kinsuji” who’d cuckolded a man, smashed the husband’s skull with a metal pry bar, and swallowed a life sentence, only to waltz back into this society he should’ve never escaped, all thanks to the Imperial Accession Ceremony’s pardon.
And still unrepentant, that bastard took pride in his yakuza ways, charging through life with reckless abandon as if to smash it apart with a metal pry bar!

The day was scorching.
The sun blazed down on the street with such intensity that it seemed as though tossing a woman’s hair out there would make it sizzle and burst into flames.

The Young Man wandered everywhere but found no work.
And so, with the anguish of one resolved to starve to death, he flung himself back into the lodging house, clutching a fit of rage, and collapsed.
Then the Watchmaker—who, having failed to find any watches to repair, now nursed a bellyful of indignation with his bleary, greasy eyes—likewise stretched out shins as solid as oak logs and lay sprawled out.

That’s right.
When the Young Man had first rushed in, the man who had been crushing lice was the Watchmaker.

This man picked up watch repairs while harboring the absurd ambition of wandering the world by that means.
According to the Watchmaker’s account, from the day his dear wife—limp as overboiled noodles—had kicked the bucket in the afterlife, he had closed up shop and stuffed that outlandish ambition into his student satchel alongside screwdrivers and doll-shoe-like hammers, wandering ever since for five years now—so he claimed.
The feelings of this man were utterly incomprehensible.
The Chinese-Clad Man blithely concluded ("Nah, his wife’s vengeful spirit had his soul snatched away to the afterlife.
‘That’s why he’s gone dull-witched,’") he dismissed simply, but perhaps that was indeed the case.

The Young Man flung his body down like a burdensome old trunk, and the Watchmaker—jerking up like a bent nail—sat up and reached out his hand.

“Kid!
“Do you have three coins?
“I’m so hungry I can’t stand it.”
He let out a voice as wispy as a plucked hair strand.

“Three coins? Far from it.
“See for yourself.”
The Young Man clapped his hands demonstratively.

“Is that so.”

The Rusty Nail collapsed again where he lay.

And just as they began to doze off, a scream—soul-shredding as a half-strangled chicken’s death flap—tore through the air, detonating at their eardrums.
At the same instant, the Young Man and the Watchmaker jerked upright.

Then—what do you know!
Her red waist cord torn from her short undergarments, the Repairwoman—soft and pale as a *habutae* rice cake—thrashed and screamed, scattering spools, needles, and scissors everywhere as Black Glasses ***——the violence erupting with the ferocity of a single second’s ***.

“No—!” Even the Watchmaker—his soul snatched away, gone as flaccid as tofu dregs—crammed his grease-smeared, indistinguishable eyes and pumpkin-like head into the gnarled oak of his groin.

The Young Man flared up like a spark. He sprang up as if he'd sat on a red-hot poker, let out a fighting dog's growl, and lunged wildly at Black Glasses. Things might have ended there—but as his opponent barked "Ugh!", he went flying straight through the door from right to left, tumbling into the weeds where he curled into a wretched ball. When he regained his senses, he fled with movements swifter than when he'd sat on that burning iron rod, resolved to escape as if flung beyond Earth's bounds. What in hell had just happened?!

Before the gates of Shonenji Temple, the Russian tavern remained unchanged.

But today of all days, Dalian was dead drunk—utterly plastered on vodka after being cleaned out of every last coin from his kalbas vending.

“Comrade!”
With this roar, he kicked over the greasy pinewood chair and intercepted the youth—who’d been fleeing like a bullet—with the decisive grip of a nail puller.

“Drink! Comrade! Drink!”

He shoved the Young Man—stunned stiff as pickled greens—into a crowd of filthy Russians who laughed with cow-tongue lips, their bodies slumped like pigs’ haunches in a chorus of *Wah-hah-hah! Wah-hah-hah!*

“The Japanese are just fine!”

“Bolsheviks, bravo!”

The filthy Russians all reached out their hands at once.
The Young Man was utterly overwhelmed by the encirclement of countless hairy palms—grotesquely enormous and coarse like horsehide sandals.

Dalian was already drunk beyond reckoning.

“Drink.
“Damn you!”
“Drink.”
“I love freedom.”
“I love Soviet Russia—land of freedom—more than anyone!”
“Shit!”
“Listen.”
“Listen well—I—”
“I—”
“I want to live stretching free in a Russia that’s like a goddamn suffocating furoshiki bundle!”
“Listen.”
“Come on, kid—drink!”

The Young Man was utterly confounded. Yet he—behaving like some spineless petty thief—had clean forgotten both his near-ruptured testicles, kicked to bursting mere moments ago, and his bullet-like flight. He began gulping down the vodka offered by the drunken Dalian.

And immediately, he caught up to Dalian in drunkenness.

"That's right!"
The Young Man suddenly shouted.
Despite understanding nothing, he staggered forward—unsteady legs knocking against Russian boots and torn trousers all around him—

“That’s right! Comrade. Hmph—like duckweed, it doesn’t matter where we drift. Listen! We’re not rootless weeds—gotta keep a firm grip on that resolve to put down roots in a land that’ll treat us right, eh comrade?! Don’t fuckin’ underestimate me! Dumbass! What country’s land, huh, has ever kept this mouth of mine fed? Hmph! I’m no damn layabout—I’ve got real skills! Don’t you know my skills? Don’t you know Fujikichi the plasterer? You idiot Ruskie bastards!”

He was drunk.
Even he himself didn’t understand the meaning of the threats he was shouting as he bared his face, red like a clam, and weaved around the table of Russians laughing themselves to pieces.

The Young Man was a plasterer.
The furoshiki he had tied to his stick contained his trowel and hawk—the tools of his trade.
That plasterer wandered about in a black-stained high-collared Western jacket and torn shoes—a sight not worth a second glance!

Why must colonial customs insist on reducing such vigorous craftsmen’s bearing—once vibrant as their trade—to something as lifeless as a dead crucian carp dredged from a mud ditch?!

That is precisely why the labor power of mainlanders inevitably gets shoved into corners like troublesome stone blocks by the Chinese.
Western clothes could never become a source of national pride.
Beware!

After shouting themselves hoarse, both the plasterer and Dalian—like boiled spiny lobsters—bent their heads as far as they could into their crotches and collapsed onto the dirt floor slick with slimy regurgitated meat chunks and soup spilled from plates.

Looking at these drunken louts collapsed like corpses, the red-faced tavern owner revealed his cruel nature and began shouting in a surly voice. With a filthiness akin to chasing a rabid stray dog, he bellowed in Chinese and Russian. When divorced from his business persona, could his expression turn so cruel? It was utterly baffling.

“Get out!”

He bellowed like a bull. A young girl with hair like old cotton dragged them out by the collars of their Western clothes with both hands so forcefully it nearly tore the fabric—hauling them from the nape of the drunkard who kept twisting repulsively, as though if she loosened her grip even slightly, he might try to lick her anus.

“Welcome back.”

The young girl must have been saying that.
A girl wouldn’t spew abuse like some wicked old man or a beast.

If the girl let her guard down even slightly, the drunkard would try to lick her anus.
By all means, those bastards were as spineless as sea sludge.

The tavern owner slammed the vodka-drenched counter with his fan-like hand hard enough to warp it, let out a wolfish growl like a beast whose tail had been stomped on, and burst forth with his hulking frame riddled with rage-engorged veins—hurling the kicked-over wooden chair away with both legs as he charged out.
Then he snatched the drunkard’s collar from the young girl’s hands, dragged him out into the street like a rickshaw, and hurled both of them away simultaneously like wood shavings.

“Get out!”

Forgetting the hefty profit he’d made, he roared in Chinese with a fierce demeanor that looked ready to kick the drunkards.

Dalian would undoubtedly have stamped the ground in bitter frustration—as if he could shovel Russia’s very soil out of the Earth—had he learned his beloved Russians had repaid him with such treatment.

(He’s a White spy, no doubt about it!)

When the two drunks awoke, the blazing midday sun hung in the sky—just as it had been before they began drinking.
The sun was scorching.
There was no wind at all.
Their heads just swayed slightly—from this point onward, things had shifted somewhat since yesterday.
Sweaty skin hurt as if scraped with gravel.
Their throats were parched.

The two had to feel, in their hungover heads, a strange sensation as if the world’s angle had gone askew.

They had no memory of their surroundings whatsoever. —No wonder.
They had woken up on the tatami mats of the lodging house!

They had completely forgotten the passage of time and a part of life’s flow.
The two of them had no idea that they had been carried into this lodging house by coachmen who had exchanged handshakes and Russians resembling beggars to fulfill the tovarishchi’s courtesy.
Had Dalian known the fact that his beloved Russians had given him such kind care, he would have resolved to become a skeleton crawling along the East China Railway tracks if need be, dashing headlong toward his beloved Russia.

The plasterer had woken once but fallen back asleep.
It was evening when he truly and clearly awoke.

Dalian was gone.
But there was nothing strange about that at all.
When hunger became unbearable, anyone would have to go out like night hawks to scavenge for food.
But—to his astonishment—instead of Dalian, Black Glasses sat cross-legged right beside him, clutching a massive chunk of black bread in one arm. He tore into it like a rag, stuffing his cheeks greedily.
The plasterer turned so pale from his cheeks that it seemed his bones might protrude, and then he shrank into himself.

“Hey!
“Kid.”
“Awake now?”
“…By the way, you’re an idiot.”
“Why’d you come at me yesterday?”

“Hey!”
The plasterer quivered like a hedgehog.
Black Glasses, from his parched mouth that lacked saliva, spilled breadcrumbs in a shower—perhaps intending to slowly torment him.

“The Watchmaker, huh. You.
“Instead of your soul, this time I’ll raise a voice that sounds ready to strip even the bones clean… If you’d just waited quietly like a good boy, even you could’ve gotten some!”
“What an idiot.”

The plasterer was shocked.
This can’t be happening!
He cautiously craned his neck.

Black Glasses wasn’t bothered in the least.
Instead, he seemed to be mockingly pitying that maddened, spur-of-the-moment sentiment of his.
But the plasterer thought that he couldn’t understand Black Glasses’ feelings at all—those feelings that mocked him without bearing any grudge.

“Here, eat!”

With a heavy thud，he tore off a chunk of black bread and hurled it straight at his head.

"This man doesn’t even consider us worth his attention.
"It’s like he’s got Pacific-sized guts.""

The simple, sensitive plasterer suppressed tears of emotion as he reached for the chunk of black bread.

“No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t understand Black Glasses’ feelings.”

Compared to his own mustard seed-sized courage, the plasterer couldn’t help but agonize over such thoughts.

A feeling of respect welled up spontaneously within him.

The Chinese-Clad Man had not shown his face since the morning after he’d hosted a lavish feast of roasted stray dog and about one shō of sorghum wine for his fellow lodgers, collapsing into drunken oblivion.

"How on earth do Chinese-Clad Man and Black Glasses get by?"

He wondered in bewilderment. However, the existence of those two men could not be imagined by the plasterer’s meager imagination as effortlessly as calculating wall dimensions. While he was pondering this, the Chinese-Clad Man himself lumbered back in. When he unfurled the oil-stained newspaper, freshly roasted roast beef tumbled out like a Go board. The aroma was so intense it seemed to rush from his nostrils straight out his asshole.

“Hey!
“Ain’t this fuckin’ splendid?”

It seemed these two men never went anywhere without their daggers—Black Glasses discarded the half-eaten fragment of black bread, positioned himself opposite Chinese-Clad Man, and used his dagger’s edge to slice off a corner of the roast beef before cramming it into his mouth.
He smeared his mouth with grease and rolled his eyes in apparent relish.

“Black bread and raw cucumber, huh?
“Quit that pathetic act!
“You’re not some fuckin’ sewer rat, are ya…?”

Chinese-Clad Man laughed mockingly at Black Glasses.

“Shit!”
“Don’t talk shit!”

Black Glasses, rather than retorting to such sarcasm, was too busy wrestling with beef crammed into his throat like a rag.

Abruptly, Chinese-Clad Man spotted the plasterer and spoke as if remembering something.

“Hey! You got soused yesterday at that Russian joint out front, didn’tcha?”
“Dalian just got hauled off by the consular cops!”
“Every ‘White’ round here’s a spy.”
“They don’t flap their gums over trifles.”
“Not keepin’ an eye out while struttin’ like some greenhorn brat—that’s how you bungle it.”
“No way for a grown man to carry on.”
“Like a fish floppin’ in a net!”
“Idiot!”

But the plasterer didn’t understand a single thing the Chinese-Clad Man had meant.

“Huh. Was he a socialist?” “That bastard…”

Black Glasses asked back with interest.

“Socialists? They ain’t worth shit in the end!”

Chinese-Clad Man and Black Glasses dropped the subject then and there. And once they’d eaten their fill, the two men left together, heading out into the dusk-cloaked streets.

“It’s like there’s a world of difference between us and them—mud turtles and snapping turtles. Bold bastards, ain’t they?” “Bold bastards.”

In the darkened room, the plasterer muttered while picking at the leftover beef.

As they passed each other, the Watchmaker returned, his eyes sunken like decayed caverns.

“They’ll strip you to the bone and haul you off, you rotten bastards!”

The plasterer recalled Black Glasses' words and couldn't suppress the laughter rising in his throat.

Their sinking teeth into the leftover roast beef marked their final feast.

Chinese-Clad Man and Black Glasses never returned again.
Of course, Dalian too was never seen again—

Over the Watchmaker and the plasterer, life had completely shifted direction.
Over the two men, that lively life would never return again.
The despair of ruin and wandering began spreading its invisible hands.

The plasterer lacked Dalian’s passion-filled dreams.

The Watchmaker lacked the Chinese-Clad Man’s boldness.

The monk had been cowed; with Black Glasses and Chinese-Clad Man gone, he seized upon the nearly desiccated Watchmaker and plasterer, barging in daily to roar at them.

“Get out and vanish!
“You commit rape!
“You beat dogs to death and devour them!
“You let socialists waltz right in!
“What beasts you are!
“You defiled subhuman scum!
“Get out!
“Try dying there!
“In an instant, under this main hall lies the very cauldron of Avici Hell!
“If you’re scared, get out and vanish this instant!”

The monk stood raging like an azure demon before the half-dead men.

“Once you’re dead, you’ve got no choice but to come crawling to the temple! You’re just a step ahead of the rest, aren’t you!”

The Watchmaker mustered his final shred of voice and shouted back.

The Monk shuddered violently, quaking as though his flesh might slough off like a skull’s, and erupted in fury.—Yet he couldn’t just haul these two men, still clinging to life, straight to the graveyard.

Suddenly, a murder incident erupted.

The first-rate Japanese trading house in this city was attacked by a pair of robbers.
The victim was a drug merchant.
That he had been widely engaged in smuggling had been an open secret throughout this city.

The proprietor who resisted the robbers had his chest gouged by a single dagger strike and died instantly while clinging to the safe.
The employees were bound; before their very eyes, his wife was raped and nearly five thousand yen was stolen.

According to the testimonies of the employees and the wife, there was no mistake that the perpetrator was Japanese.
The perpetrator vanished without a trace and had yet to be arrested.

The plasterer—dried out and so weakened his life hung by a thread within days—and the Watchmaker, bedridden as he was, could not have known about the incident.

The consular police detectives had disguised themselves and staked out cautiously for nearly half a day. What they finally nabbed were these two men—now so weakened they couldn’t even hold up their own bodies!
That this plasterer and Watchmaker were the perpetrators of robbery, murder, and rape—what a splendid achievement!

The Monk ripped the Free Lodging sign from the black gatepost.
And then, like a laborer, he stomped it to pieces.

The very act of trying to extort money with this hypocritical charity sign had been the fundamental mistake from the start.

Spit at heaven if you dare!
It’ll come right back to this monk face of mine, exactly as it is.

――September 3, 1927――