Pathway to Japanese Literature

Initially, the Latin Quarter had been their den; next, they moved to Montmartre, and now Montparnasse had become their central hub.

“Leaving Paris before June 30th is foolish; staying in Paris after June 30th is foolish.” This was the proverb that had been passed from mouth to mouth among the exiles. In other words—with one thing after another—annual events continued until June’s end, and Paris still retained its substance. Afterward, when the season shifted to coastal resorts, Paris became an empty shell. They had gone through the trouble of donning this year’s fashionable summer hats only for it to prove pointless. They admonished one another about how even their finery brought no effect.

Shinkichi Yodoshima was among the resident Japanese as one of the exiles. But he had become so immersed in Parisian waters that even calling himself an exile now felt like trite sarcasm. The so-called "across-the-river" district—that fashionable bustling area—had grown irritating to his very skin, so he loaded his meager household goods into a car himself, crossed Grenelle Bridge, and moved to Mozart Street in Passy district, known as the mistress town. That too had been about four years prior. Over his rented house's wall spilled the tall woody vines of laburnum from Madame Bessechere's neighboring atelier, splitting and blooming yellow year after year.

“This summer, I intend to be a fool for thirteen days.” Shinkichi would answer that way whenever someone asked. The exile comrades who knew the proverb readily concluded that he indeed intended to stay unusually late in town until the July 14th Quatorze Juillet festival. To his fellow compatriot students who did not yet know the proverb, he himself gave a simple explanation.

“This year, I intend to see the Paris Festival.” He did not tell anyone about his dreamlike, tenuous plan—that after hearing rumors that Catherine, whom he had loved fifteen years prior without ever meeting her, was now somewhere in Paris, he would try to find her amidst the crowds of the Paris Festival where nearly all remaining Parisians took to the streets in summer revelry.

Shinkichi Yodoshima had left his young wife in Japan and come to this city sixteen years prior. When he asked which was the horse chestnut flower, someone pointed out white dimly luminous blossoms among the dark dense foliage of street trees—clusters resembling upright bundles of candles. The famed Champs-Élysées stretched so desolately vast that he grew vexed trying to discern where any picturesque quarter’s charm might lie. During the month he had boarded at a family pension—meals included for a hundred francs—Shinkichi wandered daily with map in hand to visit scattered landmarks, until his first Paris Festival arrived unbidden. The town became a thoroughfare of flags strung with lanterns. At every intersection bandstands rose where people grabbed whatever partners they found to dance madly. Pedestrians and carriages alike halted until each musical piece concluded. Shinkichi marveled at this feverish Parisian revelry yet skirted each whirling crowd, heart pounding at the thought he too might someday be drawn into its vortex.

Within less than a year, Shinkichi had completely settled into Paris. Paris had finally seized Shinkichi, making him forget his hometown, Tokyo, and turning him into the exile he now was. Leaving behind the student-tinged life of family boarding houses, he briefly tasted freedom in budget hotels; in quiet apartments where the Eiffel Tower's shadow fell upon rooftops, he mimicked respectable householders by keeping a single maid—thus Shinkichi began sinking his teeth into Paris from every angle. In Paris, if one truly immersed oneself in living, life itself consumed each day's existence. On top of that, there remained no spare energy for work or studies. Shinkichi had burrowed completely into Paris's marrow and become Montmartre's drifter. Even by the next year's Paris Festival, he hadn't touched the storefront decoration research that had been his original purpose for studying abroad.

Instead, two women had intricately woven themselves into his heart alongside his life. One was Catherine, the daughter of an architecture school professor. The other was Lisa, the sex worker. Moreover, during that time, the young wife he had left behind in Tokyo had etched a clear afterimage in Shinkichi’s heart. In fact, it could be said that precisely because this remained in Shinkichi’s heart, the groundwork had been laid for the two French women to seep into his life.

On July 1st at 4 PM, Shinkichi had been invited to tea in the small garden of his neighbor, Madame Bessechere—a top Parisian fashion designer. “Your first day of foolishness has arrived, hasn’t it?” Madame Bessechere said as she poured tea into Shinkichi’s cup. She was a woman past middle age who no longer seemed to think anything of her own beauty. Because Madame Bessechere possessed such an unaffected quality, even when Shinkichi occasionally encountered her eccentric antics or persistent attentions, he found himself surprisingly unbothered.

“Truly, staying in Paris after July begins makes even the blue sky feel hollow, don’t you think?” She looked up briefly at the vaguely bright yet lonely Paris sky and took a deep breath. Shinkichi pressed his head with a pastry fork and, toying with the Spanish mackerel from which liqueur seeped into silver paper with a sweet aroma, said. “Perhaps partly because the horse racing has ended?” The Longchamp Grand Prix and the Auteuil steeplechase both came to a halt last week.

Madame Bessechere adjusted the bent rubber butterfly drip catcher beneath the teapot spout she had placed on the wicker table, wiped her wet fingers on the handkerchief tucked at her wrist, then stretched that hand out to cradle Shinkichi’s jaw and turn his face squarely toward hers.

“Come now—enough about trivial matters. Out with it.” “Why you’re staying in Paris for the festival this year.” “I’ve a suspicion this isn’t just an ordinary stay.” “Even your manner isn’t its usual self, you know.”

When Shinkichi noticed—indeed, though twenty minutes had passed since coming to this table—he had kept his face down the entire time. Now flustered, he blinked two or three times and looked around at the sky and garden. On the trimmed lawn, red and white summer flowers bloomed profusely like embroidery. “You’re just like a child, aren’t you? You’re trying to sugarcoat it.”

Madame Bessechere smiled slyly and gazed at Shinkichi’s face for a while. It wasn’t that she was in love with this young man. However, should he fall for another woman, it was unclear how her feelings might change from jealousy. The misfortunes of this aging beauty—who had endured nothing but distorted marriages until they too collapsed—had begun to meddle strangely even in others’ romantic lives. Shinkichi was thoroughly accustomed to having his chin grabbed by Parisian women. He calmly took a cigarette from his case and casually put it between his lips. He offered Madame one too, then lit both their cigarettes with a lighter. Because the rhythm of their first exhales matched perfectly, they found it amusing. They laughed. Carried by the relaxed mood, Madame Bessechere spoke up.

“If you absolutely refuse to tell me, I’ll have to say something cutting.” “You’re not staying in Paris for my sake, are you?” Shinkichi felt his carefully prepared explanation—so clearly formed moments earlier—seal itself off at these words. Were he to describe his intentions in a tone matching Madame’s teasing banter, the logical thread of his feelings might be swallowed whole, leaving their substance precarious at best. This newfound resolve was a thing of such emotional delicacy, its texture as fine as skin’s innermost grain. If this were fiction, he thought, merely stating its title would be the kindest way to repay this woman’s familiarity. And so Shinkichi drained his cup of weakly sweetened tea—he’d forgotten to add more sugar—and spoke.

“Madame.” “Well...” “When it comes to food—Parisian haute cuisine—I’ve gorged myself beyond measure.” “And so...” “I find myself craving simple set meals.”

Madame’s tone had indeed taken on that characteristic leap of hers, stirred by the offhand remark he’d just uttered. “So,” she said. “You mean to tell me you want to snag some festival-going maid and turn into a regular young buck?”

“Hardly,” he said. “But I want to somehow return to that ordinary life you mentioned. As things stand, I’m just an eccentric misfit through and through.” Shinkichi’s wistful melancholy felt so unforced that Madame Bessechere’s theatrical cadence faltered mid-leap, cresting into a wave both keen and blunt. “After four years of sharing my laburnums with you,” she pressed, “the least you could do is open up everything in return for my goodwill. Anytime will suffice.”

Even as she spoke with such bluntness, Madame Bessechere grew suddenly tense, and when Shinkichi began to rise to leave, upon seeing the letter from Japan that the concierge had deliberately delivered all the way there, she persistently inquired who the sender was. Shinkichi clearly answered that it was from his wife back home.

Upon returning to his room, Shinkichi rolled up the bedding and plopped down onto his back in the Arabian-patterned coverlet of the corner bed that served as a sofa by day. With his left hand clamping the second cigarette he had lit at Madame Bessechere’s, he had his right hand assist in cutting open the envelope of the letter from his wife. As usual, only practical matters were written. It concerned the election of city council members, and the selection of candidates included Shinkichi’s family home among them, affecting the interests of the entire fish market.

For Omichi—his wife who had taken over the shop alone after his parents passed away during his absence and continued its operations—even Shinkichi, from whom she had been separated so long that their emotional connection now seemed tenuous, remained someone she couldn’t help but rely on. She, aware that she could not obtain clear instructions from her husband who had grown unfamiliar with their homeland’s circumstances, had persisted in reporting only practical matters. There was also the fear that if she carelessly wrote something emotional, her husband—who had gone to the West and had become Westernized—might scorn her. She strove to make the style of her letters increasingly resemble Shinkichi’s replies—cold and businesslike. Shinkichi, pleased with this approach, at least made sure to skim through her letters.

However, in this letter, there was something Shinkichi could not overlook. It was written toward the end of the letter in the same detached tone as the rest.

Lately, when I comb the front locks of my hair with a comb, two or three white strands glisten in the mirror where the part lies. I do not think anything of it. But it’s not something I go out of my way to show others, so I do my best to conceal them with a comb.

Shinkichi kept reading and rereading just this part of the letter obsessively, unable to stop. Omichi had always been a girl whose facial features never fully shed their childlike quality. That was precisely why she had been a wife his parents had chosen for him, but during his time in Japan, Shinkichi had loved Omichi deeply. Since Shinkichi was an only son, he had long since resigned himself to never knowing a sister’s affection. However, by marrying Omichi, he had unexpectedly gained not just a wife but also a sister. Before his trip abroad, Shinkichi had sent for a kimono with shoulder tucks from Omichi’s family home and made her wear it constantly. The sight of her carrying iris dumplings arranged on a black-lacquered tray at the Inari festival in Tokyo’s downtown district truly seemed like a sister to Shinkichi.

As Shinkichi grew accustomed to Paris, he began to recall his wife back home’s ordinary, childlike face as increasingly insufficient.

Paris, ravenous for distinction. From dawn till dusk she glared with bloodshot eyes—*Uniqueness!* *Uniqueness!*—the cry never ceasing. Enchantress, venomous woman, coquette, fury-driven harridan—she lashed every feminine archetype, whipping their evolution to grotesque extremes. Mistinguett—Damia—Josephine Baker—Rachel Meller. “Had the Virgin Mary been born in our age,” declared the Casino de Paris impresario, “I’d have lured her onto my stage without compunction.”

At first, whenever Shinkichi saw a woman, he would find some resemblance to Omichi in every one of them—partly to soothe his homesickness, and partly to steel himself against the potent allure of French women. But before long, there came an incident where Shinkichi, without putting up a fight, shed his shell and sent a Parisian woman into raptures. Shinkichi met Catherine, the daughter of the architecture school professor.

It was mid-autumn. The professor’s room contained an electric stove with its pink square-shaped mouth agape. Yet the glass-paned window stood thrown wide open. A thin mist, laden with moonlight, drifted into the room through the window only to vanish.

Professor Fabres of the architecture school—which Shinkichi had been attending—invited only the new students to a dinner at his home, on the grounds that he had grown quite familiar with them. To the professor’s house in the Latin Quarter—a place so old-fashioned that one might wonder if such homes still existed in Paris—Shinkichi went for the first time, carrying a bolt of white silk as a gift. Although he did not devote himself to his studies, during this period Shinkichi still dutifully attended the classrooms of the school where he was enrolled, if only superficially.

It seemed the housewife had passed away or something of the sort, for during the meal her daughter Catherine was doing all the cooking. Shinkichi tried to find Omichi within this Catherine too but found himself transfixed by an entirely contrary charm. Catherine’s childlike innocence differed from Omichi’s ordinary simplicity—it bore a distinctive allure that pressed upon those around her. Her voice pierced through with crystalline clarity like that of a harp’s strings. With her poised bearing and refined demeanor, Shinkichi—seated diagonally across from her—could only sense a dazzling aura as if reflected in a mirror, utterly unable to keep gazing at Catherine’s face for long.

When the meal ended, the guests moved to the salon. Seeing Shinkichi—still unaccustomed to Western customs—struggle to properly raise his after-dinner brandy glass, the professor kept trying to draw him into conversation. The talk briefly touched upon Japanese architecture. But as the alcohol took deeper hold, the professor began extolling his daughter. Given how much younger the professor looked than his presumed age, it seemed absurd for him to refer to Catherine—a full-grown woman of twenty-three or twenty-four—as his daughter. What’s more, even accounting for drunkenness, his manner of boasting unsettled Shinkichi precisely because he was Japanese.

“It’s said there’s no one who can see this daughter and not be charmed.” “Everyone says so, I tell you.” “Don’t you think so too?” “And this daughter often receives love letters.” “They’re all sincere.” “Just recently, a graduate of the school who went to Egypt for research sent a letter saying he was unbearably lonely when he realized he wouldn’t be able to see this daughter for two years.”

Was the professor saying all this in an attempt to palm off his daughter? Or was this an extreme example of what he had long been told—that Westerners brazenly boasted about their wives and daughters? Shinkichi struggled to formulate a reply while simultaneously attempting to discreetly gauge the professor’s demeanor. The professor cast a gaze dripping with fatherly affection toward his daughter, but then turned a duelist’s glare—the kind artists adopt when enraptured in praising beauty—upon Shinkichi.

“You still seem to doubt my words.” “Exactly.” “This daughter’s charm becomes clearest when held on one’s knee.” “As her father, I know this well.” “Go on—try holding her.” Catherine—who had been listening to her father and Shinkichi’s exchange with cheeks flushed in equal parts bewilderment and curiosity—half-rose at her father’s demanding gaze. Drawing her neck into her left shoulder with visible discomfort, she began to shrink back before her father’s unrelenting command forced a sudden resolve. Her left heel—poised like a dancer’s after a leap—skidded across the floor as her right heel closed the distance. In an instant, she fluttered onto Shinkichi’s lap. He felt softness bearing infinite weight; his body stiffened into board-like rigidity beneath its vivid pressure.

She said with a natural abruptness that emanated from her bewilderment. “I hear Japanese young ladies meet gentlemen with such sadness in their eyes.” In such situations, the attitude of the Westerners present also struck Shinkichi as unusual. There were a Romanian man, a Canadian man, and five young Frenchmen present, and they all gazed at the pair together with blissful expressions as if beholding something delightful.

That night, the soft weight of Catherine pressing down on Shinkichi’s lap had seeped deep into his melancholy, and as he resentfully dwelled on this, he found himself recalling—phantom-like—the lamplit shadows of Saint-Michel Street glimpsed through mist-laden moonlight from the professor’s window that night. Wandering through Paris’s autumnal streets deepening toward winter, he drifted in turmoil between bliss and torment. And so, while waiting for another chance to meet Catherine, Shinkichi unexpectedly ended up encountering Lisa the streetwalker.

Shinkichi put away Omichi’s letter into the letter case while lying on the chaise longue. Then he reached out and tucked it behind the frame containing a photograph of André the jeweler’s storefront display. Why was it that Omichi, whom he had ignored for over ten years, had suddenly resurfaced now? Why was it that the mere two or three lines of a letter had ignited this burning desire to return to Japan? Omichi’s childlike face remained just as it was, yet white hairs had begun to sprout sporadically at her forehead. This account evoked considerable loneliness in Shinkichi’s heart, which had been worn down by Parisian life into a state of numb acuity. The mere fact that Omichi was growing old did not strike him as pitiable. Those eyes and mouth—each feature formed merely by scooping clay from flat roundness with a spatula—composed a face as eternally smooth as a doll’s. And Time had begun to sink its claws into her. Serves her right. How absurd. The emotions of a cruel sophisticate. It was only when he came to discover traits in his wife worthy of insult and ridicule that heartfelt pity and love finally revived. He had come to feel a lonely, seeping desire to embrace his wife. What utter heartlessness. What perversity. Even if he bought new pottery, Samuel—that Jewish collector—would not feel it had become his own until he broke it, realigned the seams, and made golden rivets shine like centipede legs along the cracks. Discovering this same trait within himself, Shinkichi grew frightened. Those large, protruding eyes—drowsy in their sockets as if their moorings had slackened, twitching irregularly—their pale blue irises, now faded in pigment, spilling into yellowish whites from which snaked several threadlike blood vessels resembling earthworms. Those eyes of Samuel’s will undoubtedly become my own eyes.

The varnish on the furniture in the room took on a damp sheen, and the silver fittings grew cold and cloudy. It was already twilight.

Shinkichi rose from the chaise longue, pressing a hand to his stomach as his customary physiological unease assailed him. I need an apéritif soon. The lip plant flowers on the octagonal table caught his attention—he pinched their fleshy petals between his fingers and paced irregular circles around the table. Beyond the window, laburnum vines clawed at the twilight sky like disheveled hair, their shadowy gaps revealing glimpses of yellowish grass in Madame Bessechere’s garden below, where they’d taken tea earlier. She must be having another hysterical episode by now—pressing those gleaming sewing shears to her cheek as usual, dredging up memories of ex-husbands while sorting through love and loathing. Georges still held some sway over her heart. No wonder she clung so desperately to Shinkichi whenever Georges’ name came up.

Shinkichi moved closer to the window. The black iron skeleton of the Eiffel Tower piercing the cloudless darkening sky felt unbearably aloof. Shinkichi turned sharply and surveyed the room. The modernist interior fixtures his friend Fernando had designed appeared utterly cold—their plain mahogany’s rough-hewn wood and nickel silver’s sharp angles maintaining an indifferent silence in the drifting shadows. Fernando had been a young Alsatian who died prematurely. In the works of such short-lived geniuses flickered a solitary self-absorption born of loneliness.

Shinkichi had grown intensely eager to meet Lisa, who was due to arrive at his room any moment now. He checked the wallet in his inner pocket, put on his hat, opened the door wide, then sat down on a chair to wait for her. A restless leg jiggling came over him. Even as he did so, Shinkichi—aware of his own cruelty—kept imagining Omichi’s childlike face now sprouting white hairs. After having a leisurely dinner of duck cuisine at Tour d’Argent, Shinkichi and Lisa set off walking downstream along the bank of the Seine right before them. Lisa was caring for the drunken Shinkichi as if he were a child.

Lisa was a woman as healthy as an ox. Even though nearly ten years had passed since Shinkichi met her, she still worked as a sex worker. According to Lisa, being a sex worker was the profession best suited to her maternal disposition. She molded countless foreign men newly arrived in Paris into Parisians. The men would leave her once they were under her care. And then they would move on to more witty and interesting women. But she unapologetically let them go and sought out the next naive foreigners. As time passed, even those who had left would eventually feel nostalgia for her and return. At that point, they all called her “Auntie.” She too would then assume the role of “Auntie” and kindly look after them in various ways.

The secondhand bookseller’s stalls on the riverbank had tightly closed their black lids, while behind them, the linden trees lining the shore—their leaves finely etched against the twilight—revealed white undersides like distant birds taking flight when the wind came from upstream, their rustling following the wind’s path all the way downstream. The shadows of buildings on the opposite bank—their shoulders rising and falling around the Louvre Museum—resembled a woman’s profile, their outlines sharply defined against the sky as they faintly tinged the ascending river mist with pale evening hues. The sky was once again deepening as it cast up flames of purple-rose hue across its entire expanse. It was trying to stir up the darkness. Yellow, red, and blue neon signs spelled out “L’été, c’est à Deauville” in alphabet letters across the city’s midsky.

——…………

“Well, listen…” “So you see.” “As I’ve been saying all along.” “At the Paris Festival, you must take that girl I found for you out for a walk.” Lisa said, clamping Shinkichi’s arm firmly against her side with her sturdy arm. Shinkichi had taken charge of carrying both the cane and summer gloves. ——………… “Even if you pine for some virginal heart, trying to stroll through the festival while searching for traces of Catherine from the past—that’s just too childish a fancy.” “With that, do you think fresh buds of innocence could ever sprout again in a jaded soul like yours?”

The imposing decorations of the Alexandre III Bridge and the thick, splayed legs of the Eiffel Tower ponderously oppressed Shinkichi’s drunken, unpleasantly clear head. Shinkichi tried not to look at them, lowering his eyes as he spoke.

“Hey, for pity’s sake, can’t you lower your voice a key? With that tone, even if I wanted to nod in agreement, I’d just end up resenting it first.”

“Oh.” “Are your nerves really that frayed?” “You’re exactly like Fernando before he died, you are.”

Lisa said, bringing her face close and peering into the darkness. As if overwhelmed with pity, the thick lips of the middle-aged woman—faint facial hair visible—drew near to Shinkichi’s cheek, causing him to turn his face away. “I wholeheartedly recommend making that girl I found your own. In Paris, where everything is nurtured by women, even those who become addicted to them must still turn to women for a cure. If I were seven or eight years younger, I wouldn’t make you go through all this trouble, you know.”

Lisa unperturbedly said something completely contrary to what she had just counseled Shinkichi. The two crossed the Alexandre III Bridge. The entrance to the Grand Palais—where exhibitions were held in spring and autumn—stood tightly shut in pitch-black darkness, while on the Petit Palais side, posters for the Polish Craft Exhibition depicting snow-capped mountains were pasted at precise intervals like white windows. The rustling street trees cast a faint mist of dew overhead, and beneath them men and women on rendezvous flashed past each other like swallows. Shinkichi recalled Lisa from seven or eight years before—adorned in five-colored Fauvist makeup when she had been Montmartre's darling. That had suited her strong-boned features perfectly. Back then at a café, when she heard Shinkichi's troubles about Catherine, she had pinched his nose and said.

“That kind of love is so commonplace. The new era’s romance lies in crafting love through artifice between two people who share not an ounce of affection.”

It was on the night of Shinkichi’s second Paris Festival that she had danced wildly at the Lapin Agile bar, her naked body smeared with gold paint. She had gradually shed her eccentric airs and begun revealing her inherent maternal qualities, but after losing the young Fernando—with whom she’d finally settled into cohabitation—she became a woman who showed men nothing but pity. “You were so full of life back then.”

When he said that, even Lisa fell silent for a time, maintaining what seemed a disheartened air. The two reached the tree-lined Champs-Élysées, but upon gazing at the fountain in Place de la Concorde—its electric lights bathing it in a sparkle like a crystal flower vase—and turning to see the evening crowd layered like scales along Avenue des Champs-Élysées, she spoke in a lighter tone. “It might seem impossible, but if that’s how it is, you should just decide.” “The outcome will be good, I promise.” “Then I’ll make sure that girl meets you on the day of the Paris Festival in a completely natural way.” “You just need to become a young man of the town enjoying the festival that day and merely leave your house in the morning.”

After thrusting the cane and gloves onto Shinkichi, Lisa simply, “—Bonsoir.” With that, she started to walk away. Shinkichi,

“Wait a moment, if you would. I’d like to talk a bit about my wife back home.”

When he hastily said this, Lisa swung her powerful arm into the darkness and snapped her fingers. "I’ve already handed all your affairs over to that girl." Lisa walked away, swinging her body with masculine vigor.

As Shinkichi too hung Chinese lanterns from his main street window frame and arranged decorative patterns with ornamental cords in preparation for tomorrow's festival, Madame Bessechere called out from the flagstones below. “Splendid!” “Splendid! Splendid!” “Vive la Fête de Paris!”

Shinkichi raised his hand in greeting. “You have such a beautiful national flag there. If you didn’t have one—”

Having said that much, Madame Bessechere disappeared through the gate, but soon came up the stairs and knocked on the room’s door. When Shinkichi opened it, she entered gracefully, and— “I have a spare one, so I’ll lend it to you.” Then, with an air of discontent, she twisted her body into a chair, leaning one elbow on the octagonal table while fumbling through the copperplate prints of Shinkichi’s draft storefront decorations. She looked at the subdued glaze of the Dutch-style plates in the wall’s built-in shelf. She examined the curtain of banana fiber cloth with gold foil embossing. But in shifting her gaze, she steadily—leaning over the window—kept a vigilant watch on Shinkichi’s uncertain movements as he worked. She seemed impatiently eager to seize an opportunity to broach some intimate conversation. Shinkichi jumped down from the window with a thud and thrust the chirping thing he held in his palm right before Madame’s nose.

“Little sparrow chick.” Madame Bessechere grasped a pinch of feathers from the sparrow chick that had opened its triangular beak like a nuisance and threw them into the ashtray urn. She carelessly covered it with a copperplate print. “Calm down, won’t you sit there for a while?”

Shinkichi twisted his left shoulder slightly and made a displeased expression, but mimicked the rapid-fire lines of the renowned actor Sacha Guitry’s operetta: “If it be Madame’s command, what objection could I possibly raise? Even if it be a chair of thorns.” Having said that, he blankly sat down there.

“Since tomorrow’s finally the Paris Festival, you’re awfully worked up, aren’t you? You must be looking forward to it so much.” Shinkichi flinched.

Though she herself had utterly abandoned romantic affairs, her interest in others' remained relentlessly keen. Moreover, since Lisa and Madame were old acquaintances, perhaps she had sensed Lisa's scheme against him for tomorrow. Without letting his guard down, Shinkichi feigned ignorance. "Tomorrow I intend to become an ordinary young man and dance my way haphazardly through all of Paris." "That sounds delightful. While thinking of your wife back home, you wish to forget those worries of yours."

Like a parrot repeating words, Madame said this. Shinkichi thought she had missed the mark. When he probed his current heart, there could be no doubt: since the letter from his wife back home had arrived, the image of her childlike face now streaked with disheveled white hair had begun to stir pity within him. But at the same time, he now found himself stirred by pity for the unknown girl—the maiden Lisa was arranging for him—whom he would meet for the first time tomorrow. The innocent girl who, by becoming the companion of an eccentric aesthete like himself, tried to make the buds of healthy love bloom again from within him. But more than anything, what Shinkichi most anticipated about tomorrow was still the chance of encountering Catherine in some crowded place. Lisa had dismissed it as a childish poem, but for his current self, he absolutely wanted—amid the Paris Festival crowds—to encounter Catherine after over a decade (likely fallen into ruin by now) and voice his hatred for Paris, which had once tamed him into slavery. What turned me into the nihilist I am now was not so much alcohol or women—though one might belatedly blame those—as it was this entire city.

If he could speak his hatred for this city’s allure until she shed even a single tear for his sake, he felt this decadence gnawing into his very marrow might be cleanly wiped away. Then he could settle this inexplicable Paris sojourn and return decisively to his Japanese wife with disheveled white hair at her temples. But that relied entirely on sheer luck, seeming as devoid of inevitability as the plot of an old tale. Yet lately, he had found no other method of revival than clinging to this stroke of fortune. In this state—where the architecture school professor had died instantly from an accidental injury at the construction site, where his daughter had vanished after rumors of her going to Egypt and perhaps marrying that graduate, where he could uncover nothing beyond recent whispers that she might be in Paris again—it still felt like an extension of his misfortune. Yet this very ignorance seemed a blessing, preserving the one beautiful dream he still clung to from shattering.

Seeing Shinkichi fiddling with a hammer while lost in thought, Madame Bessechere spoke in a spitefully twisted voice. “Since I struck a nerve, you’re staying silent.” “I’m an odd woman—do bear that in mind as you listen.” “Had you merely taken up with some common streetwalker, I wouldn’t care a whit.” “But when a man living right next door grows tender-hearted over his provincial wife—” “I am a widow, you see.” “To confess honestly—the jealousy gnaws at me unbearably.” “Ever since your wife’s letter came, your manner’s changed.” “Forgive me—does this seem deranged?” “But there’s no remedy for it.” “If I don’t speak plainly, this jealousy might consume me whole.” “In short—you remained in Paris this year to savor one final festival before crawling back to your wife.” “I simply must thwart this.” “I shall contrive to make tomorrow’s Paris Festival so enthralling you’ll abandon all thought of returning.” “Therefore I intend to accompany you to the festivities.” “A pity you’ll be saddled with this crone—” “But given these circumstances, absurdity reigns.” “So kindly adjust your expectations accordingly.”

Though Madame Bessechere spoke in jest, this joke was laced with her morbid fascination toward Shinkichi. “In any case, you’re spending tomorrow with me. I’ll grant you freedom to play. Should you find a woman who catches your fancy, I’ll even permit you to walk with her.”

Madame Bessechere said this too as a joke containing her genuine intent. “Well… I entrust it to you, then.” Shinkichi inadvertently spoke in a timid voice.

“I’ll come to pick you up in the morning.” Madame Bessechere, having at last brought her joke to its conclusion with apparent satisfaction, had begun to take her leave when—surely moved by the pitiful, muffled chirps of the young sparrow trapped within the lidded ash-streaked urn—she turned back. “You’ve done something pitiful, haven’t you? I’ll take this with me, you know.” Holding the urn with the sparrow still inside, Madame left. After seeing off Madame’s retreating figure, Shinkichi muttered to himself in a low voice, “What a noisy old woman.” Yet now, Shinkichi found himself recognizing in Madame the subtle loneliness and dignity common to beautiful Parisian women; and he could also profoundly feel this type of Parisian woman who could never help loving someone in some form.

Shinkichi had fallen into a leadenly oppressive sleep with eyes half-open when he awoke to an Italian pastoral song. The maid Louise had turned on the gramophone and left it playing as breakfast was ready. Beyond stretched a field of wild heat haze. While vividly sensing in his mind the scene where fragrant dry hay suffused the Alpine range—its peaks arrayed like fingertips along the horizon around Jungfrau—with saffron hues, Shinkichi gradually regained consciousness. As the pastoral song faded, thick coffee’s aroma—now embodying the morning’s reality within the room—seeped sharply into his nostrils. Gagging against the sour champagne rising from his inflamed stomach lining to his throat after last night’s excesses at Restaurant Maxim, Shinkichi dragged himself to the table. Fighting nausea, he gulped down two or three cups of poisonously thick, stone-gray coffee from a teacup in quick succession. When the nausea finally subsided, an excitement verging on dizziness radiated through his limbs. The sky stood clear. Through yesterday’s lattice-patterned window hangings, the lover’s quarter’s furtive decorations—along with blue sky and tricolor flags’ vivid hues—seemed thrust through both windows by fierce morning light, violently assaulting his eyes to the point of pain. Though indistinct unless one stood up, the Eiffel Tower beyond Madame Bessechere’s roof likely bore decorations too.

Shinkichi first envisioned his role searching for Catherine amid the bustling crowd beneath these decorations, then pondered what contrivance Lisa might use to deliver some new girl to him in today's festival streets. How would this entanglement with Madame Bessechere—clinging to him like a shadow—complicate matters? Contemplating this, a faint gloom seeped into his mind.

Last night at Maxim’s, Shinkichi had encountered Georges, Madame Bessechere’s last husband, by chance. Georges had moved out after a falling-out with Madame Bessechere not long after Shinkichi took up residence next door, so he and Shinkichi had never become particularly close; yet upon spotting Shinkichi, he approached him with apparent fondness and pressed drink after drink on him. Compared to when he had been at Madame’s house, he seemed to have grown much younger. He introduced a young woman as his new wife. The woman was merely young, of average looks, and seemed rather bubbly. Her nature also seemed somewhat lacking in substance. So the two of them openly talked about Madame Bessechere. Georges’ scheme to get Shinkichi drunk and make him speak ill of Madame was apparent. Shinkichi did not fall for that trick. Then at last, he confessed to still harboring lingering feelings for Madame Bessechere,

“There’s no woman as sophisticated as her.” “Living with her felt like truly living with Paris itself.” “For six whole days at the velodrome stands, acting so nonchalant while peeling crayfish for a drinking snack—being there together thrilled me to the core.”

He had begun firing off such remarks one after another. But in the end, he began unbidden to say such things. “It’s just her scissors, you know. Those scissors gleaming with a shark-belly sheen, you know. If you’re her neighbor too, you’d better be quite careful. Of course, that sharpness of her scissors is the very light of her genius in sartorial art… but whatever the case, she’s a pitiable woman—tormenting men only to have them flee.”

He ended his words in a soliloquy, sighed, and took his leave. Because of such events, last night Shinkichi—fearing Madame would disrupt his hard-won Paris Festival—lay in bed mulling over how he might outmaneuver her. If he simply didn’t return home, that would be that—but the thought felt somewhat cowardly, and he dreaded the repercussions should Madame notice. If possible, he wanted to refuse her resolutely and decisively, and leave his house alone the next morning—so he resolved, even as he eventually fell asleep. But as he gazed at the sunlight gradually illuminating the entire room in splendor, Catherine, the girl Lisa would send, Madame Bessechere—all of it began to matter less and less. Only the desire to plant the heels of his sturdy English-made boots upon the town’s cobblestone pavement and wander east and west surged up within him.

As he washed his face and changed clothes, an antiquated yet gaudy waltz came surging through the becalmed air like the lingering swell of distant waves, arriving from nowhere in particular. From behind, thrusting through it, jazz sent out the clamorous blast of a whirling vortex. The festival had begun. The chatter of adults along the main thoroughfare. The scuffling footsteps of children dashing past.

Taking the white hat in hand and standing before the full-length mirror to cheerfully greet his own reflection, Shinkichi—despite this habitual gesture—left the room still trailing inner melancholy. At the entrance concierge’s window stood no one; within the festival decorations, a caged bullfinch bathed briskly opposite geranium flowers. He took a step onto the cobblestone pavement. Then, precisely where laburnum’s drooping new shoots from the front wall brushed his shoulder, the concierge’s wife and maid Louise—who had been playfully wrestling—halted abruptly upon seeing Shinkichi and greeted him with laughter. Then they turned toward Madame Bessechere’s neighboring house,

“Madame.” “Our Monsieur is going out now.”

they shouted in unison.

Evidently having coordinated perfectly, Madame Bessechere—now fully adorned—opened the small garden gate carved into the wall with leisurely grandeur, as though it were a stage curtain rising, and made her appearance. She wore a black-and-yellow striped outing suit, the lines flowing from chest to waist into the skirt exuding a provocative beauty. Madame tilted her head adorned with a Panama hat from which a bird feather peeked at the back, assuming a pose as though surveying the sky. She seemed intent on flaunting her confidence in today’s ensemble to Shinkichi, but soon snapped open a small silk parasol matching her outfit’s pattern, revealing half her back as she lifted her full chin toward him over her left shoulder. Her eyes held a clear hue that harbored no doubts about the day’s schedule. Finally caught— While thinking this, Shinkichi approached Madame and, involuntarily as per his usual courtesy, offered his left arm. Madame pulled her chin back and laughed for the first time.

“What a pity it’s not a young wife you’re with.” Having said this, she placed her right hand on Shinkichi’s proffered left arm and resumed her nonchalant air, thrusting out her chest as she began to walk. Shinkichi gazed at the faint scent of face powder dusted over Madame’s cheeks and the miniature Légion d’honneur medal dangling pertly from her breast, feeling dread toward the fathomless depths of this aging beauty’s allure. When they emerged onto Passy Avenue from Mozart Lane, a bandstand already stood at the café corner where seven or eight groups of dancers had halted horse-drawn carriages and automobiles in the road. The sullen café’s tobacco girl—notorious for her brusqueness—was being held aloft by a patron. Since noon still lingered beyond reach, more neighborhood acquaintances than distant visitors populated the dancing throngs. Among them swirled maids in leather aprons clutching shopping parcels as they danced. The dancers nodded greetings to Shinkichi and Madame mid-step. Café chairs sprawled across the thoroughfare in numbers far exceeding ordinary days. When the dance subsided, vehicles bottled up on both sides began crawling through the throat-narrowed avenue. Dappled shadows from plane tree thickets rippled across the pavement.

“The festival’s in full swing, isn’t it.” The aging beauty even displayed a childlike excitement, repeatedly urging Shinkichi toward the city center where the vortex of clamor, with its anxious allure, drew people in. As Shinkichi grew accustomed to the stimuli—the clear day, the vivid tricolor flags, and the aging beauty on his arm—he began to feel a faint weariness. Then even the loose sound of their footsteps walking in unison began to strike Shinkichi’s ears as unbearably mundane.

“Stuck with this persistent old hag, I’m going to waste the whole day walking around.” Even in Shinkichi’s heart, which had lost its resilience, this indignation reared its head. In Shinkichi’s pale eyes, from which the café’s excitement had faded, several alleyways curving in lightning shapes came into view. An antique shop where armor with snapped crimson laces leaned against Saint Augustine’s niche. A small market where water was being sluiced and the shutters closed. A tailor peering at a working girl through the glass window. The middle-class’s prim walls. Such things passed meaninglessly by Shinkichi’s sides as he walked. Shinkichi remembered the Tokyo festival from his childhood, when he was stirred with excitement. Having closed up their shops for the day and spread out crimson carpets, the elderly townsfolk gathered there in haori jackets and hakama trousers, joking as they played shogi. The sound of drums that would soon approach and the chanting voices of young men carrying the portable shrine. Young Shinkichi could no longer contain himself and jumped down to the main road, still wearing his new white tabi socks. The small elbow exposed to sunlight from the sleeve opening of his matching crepe-silk yukata struck the toy bell dangling from the hemp sleeve-tie, making it ring.

Moods are strange things that sometimes coincide. Madame Bessechere also recalled her childhood. “You know... “When I was nine during the Paris Festival, my mother took me through Rue La Boétie. “A blue-faced man wearing a beret—with that shaven beard stubble—forced me to dance. “It was from that terror I first began to understand love. “Even now when I see a beret-wearing man with that bluish shaven face, I feel... frightened yet nostalgic.”

In the central avenue running between the side streets could be seen the figures of numerous pedestrians—likely remnants from the crowd that had watched the military review at Bois de Boulogne. Over their heads passed five or six guardsmen, their silver-glinting helmets towering above, behind which streamed lustrous black hair of striking beauty.

“Surely you’re not carrying your wife’s letter in your breast pocket, are you?” Because Shinkichi’s responses to Madame’s reminiscences were lackluster, she abruptly broached this new topic. Shinkichi, thinking it dangerous, “You’re the one who might have Mr. Georges’ handkerchief tucked in your bag, aren’t you?” he counterattacked. Then Madame withdrew her hand from Shinkichi’s arm and seized his shoulder, “I simply adore such sentimental stories.”

With that, Madame once again lightly kissed Shinkichi’s cheek. Shinkichi was dumbfounded by Madame’s foolishly innocent antics, yet found himself thinking she remained a woman he ultimately couldn’t bring himself to despise. Aimlessly exposed to the nearing midday sun, obstructed here and there by crowds spilling into the streets to dance, or pausing out of curiosity to watch them, the two felt they were beginning to climb a slope that seemed to lead back the way they had come. By the roadside stood a fence; beyond it, a flowerbed garden sloped gently and methodically toward the Seine, its gradient forming beneath the cliff’s edge where green treetops rose to graze the muted, rounded walls of the Trocadéro Palace—all viewed in vivid clarity. The garden’s slope ended, becoming a tranquil single-span bridge, and the Eiffel Tower—appearing in its giant-like form astride the bridge—loomed beyond the veil of river mist, rendering it somewhat hazy to the eye. When he looked up, it was indeed enormous. The stripes of thick iron framework straightened into a flat surface, while high above at the needle-like spire piercing sharply into the sky, a bean-sized tricolor flag fluttered as if mocking humanity. When he lowered his gaze back to the ground and traced the gradations of green trees marking the river’s course, his head grew dizzy. Shinkichi said.

“We’ve barely made it this far, haven’t we? Let’s rest a bit, then set at least a rough schedule for sightseeing, don’t you think?”

“Let’s be childish and have some ice cream.”

The Italian ice cream seller had set up a stall cart with white and lemon-yellow patterns and was watching swallows fluttering. As Shinkichi and Madame Bessechere stood squarely facing each other in the street, playfully teasing while gnawing at their ice cream’s wafer cups from the side, a young girl ascended the slope they had climbed earlier, casting a deep shadow on the cobblestones as she approached. The girl came up to them and asked without a trace of hesitation.

“How should I go to get to Bastille Square?” The girl’s speech carried a Loire region accent. She was carrying a small, masculine-style bag in her hand. Madame Bessechere first fixed her eyes on the curly locks peeking out from beneath the girl’s hat, then took in her attire with a single sweeping glance. A wave of ruthless curiosity rippled across Madame’s face.

“Ah-ha! So our little missy’s come to see the Paris Festival?” “Bastille’s completely in the opposite direction from here.” “When exactly did you descend upon our fair city?” “About six months ago.” “And still no one decent to squire you about?” “Oh, how dreadful!” “Dreadful? Nonsense, dear.” “Not with that pretty face of yours.”

When it came to the Paris Festival, it was a day when anyone could say whatever they pleased to anyone else—indeed, such behavior rather constituted the traditional elegance befitting this day.

The girl possessed a beauty so passive it might be mistaken for simple-mindedness, yet carried an air of urban sophistication. Shinkichi had concluded this must be the girl sent by Lisa. He began growing wary this might be some collusive act with Madame, yet she clearly appeared to be meeting the girl for the first time. And she was completely engrossed, driven by curiosity. “How much pocket money are you carrying today, missy?” “About eighty francs.”

“For a young lady like you walking alone, that’s just the right amount, missy.” Madame Bessechere crossed her arms with an air of affected prudence and looked down at the girl. Shinkichi took the initiative before Madame could notice him and said to the girl: “If you’d like, why don’t you spend the day with us? Of course I’ll cover all expenses.” While the girl looked down in thought, Madame Bessechere shot Shinkichi a glance laden with hidden depths. Shinkichi steeled his nerves and maintained an unaffected demeanor.

“Madame, I’m taking this girl with me. With just the two of us, we might end up starting a fight or something, you see.” Madame was overwhelmed by Shinkichi’s quintessentially Japanese resoluteness. Moreover, her vanity—wanting to display generosity before the girl—also played its part, and she consented with unexpected readiness. Shinkichi felt a petty satisfaction akin to revenge against Madame’s persistence, yet pitied how the young girl’s radiating luster—the tautness of her supple body—made Madame’s charm appear to wrinkle away before his eyes.

After taking a taxi to Opera no Tsuji and stopping by Italy Street—while showing the girl the bustling festival along the capital’s main thoroughfares over a light lunch at some café—various thoughts welled up in Shinkichi’s mind alongside the scene before his eyes. Could it be that Lisa had been lurking near the base of that Trocadéro slope and sent the girl to trail after them? Even so—how on earth had she managed to find a girl who fit the bill so perfectly? He didn’t know how Lisa had persuaded her—but she performed this act with such naturalness that it didn’t seem like acting at all. While performing—her technique never obscured her essence—possessing an instinctive quality so emblematic of French girls themselves. The girl—spearing a piece of sausage and some sauerkraut’s vinegar-pickled cabbage on her fork tine—spoke cheerfully over Shinkichi at the table’s center directly to Madame Bessechere. As Shinkichi kept watching Madame and the girl interact—it even began occurring to him that Madame might have shared some prior tacit understanding regarding this girl’s appearance.

Could it be that Lisa and this Madame friend had plotted this girl’s appearance with Lisa yesterday or last night? Even so, the girl spoke to Madame as if they were meeting for the first time. Her name was Janet, and it was said she worked at one of the many face powder factories in Paris’s suburbs. Her hometown lay along the banks of the Loire, where she had been raised on domestic rabbit dishes and homemade wine. The girl spoke in a voice loud enough for Shinkichi to hear. The girl’s slightly round face seemed too perfectly arranged like a mannequin’s beauty, but the plumpness of her cheeks and jaw still glistened with youth’s dew. During the meal, she coolly ordered Shinkichi to fetch the mustard pot, bring water when thirsty, and attend to her needs—then resumed talking over him to Madame Bessechere once more. Shinkichi gave a wry smile.

She was large in build but still a child. Where in this child did any emotional foothold exist? Lisa had been too fixated on choosing someone excessively young. Shinkichi lightly tugged at Janet’s simple necklace, “This suits you well. ”—on you.”

“But this is just a cheap thing. When I look at this Madame, it just makes me so sad.” Shinkichi was astonished that this girl—not yet seventeen—was already so thoroughly accustomed to keeping others in good humor. Madame Bessechere, also in good humor, said to the girl: “You should properly set things up to please this Monsieur and get him to buy you a necklace like mine.” That Madame Bessechere—who even grew jealous of Shinkichi’s Japanese wife—could remain so indifferent to the appearance of this girl before her eyes… Both the girl and Madame—the duplicity and authenticity of Parisian women—Shinkichi marveled at them now as though discovering it for the first time. Within playfulness there was sincerity; just when one thought it sincere, it would immediately take on a playful air. Even so, amidst the crowds of Paris left behind by the departed upper and middle classes, Shinkichi’s party—accompanied by an elegant Madame and a girl whose rustic air still carried an undercurrent of refinement—stood out conspicuously to onlookers.

The lunch hour seemed to have passed, and customers in the café began to rise from their seats one by one. The figures of couples getting up to leave showed their backs to the wall mirror. The waiter rearranged the brioches—sweet bread pastries—in their basket before lying down on the table to wipe its surface. The stream of pedestrians on the street grew denser, and laughter loosened by alcohol erupted in the afternoon sunlight. Through gaps in the crowd stood Café de la Paix at Opera no Tsuji’s corner, where foreign tourists with binoculars slung over shoulders or cameras clutched in hands lined up—jutting so far into the road they nearly collided with passersby—gazing about with strained faces as if overwhelmed by Paris’s fabled festive bloom. Peanut sellers and wallpaper vendors went back and forth, persistently pestering. The recessed road between Café de la Paix’s corner and this bend of Italy Street widened slightly, its far end terminating at the unseen Grand Opera. From the subway station’s stairway entrance ahead, a human mass swirled like water through a sluice gate, steadily pouring forth.

The clouds momentarily parted, it seemed, and the summer sun came blazing down upon these streets. The café’s extended awning—its bright fabric sharply accentuating vivid red and black stripes—made the patrons beneath appear delightfully cool and cheerful. The yellow or reddish-brown awnings of other shops began making vivid visual impacts alongside fluttering flags. Amidst clamor resembling encircling battle cries came music from all directions. Shinkichi stood engulfed in shadows beneath a jewelry store’s awning across the street—through flickering crowds he absently gazed at conspicuous displays: mica-skinned mannequins cascading pearl lace; artificial chin dogs gnawing platinum and diamonds—even here at Paris’s heart he sensed its pandering Americanization. An American woman swaggered by in gaudy tiger-skin. Early lunch. A diner’s placard proclaimed “Payment accepted in dollars.” Ford’s Paris branch opposite advertised discounted new models—100k units available.

Whether it was the lethargy in his stomach after the meal that caused it, Shinkichi’s unbalanced emotions grew increasingly agitated, irrationally yearning to despise Paris’s frivolity. At that moment, Janet turned to him and, leaning in as if to signal a conversation with Madame, spoke. “Well?” “That’s not it.” “Monsieur.” The scent of the young girl’s body—like a sprig of lemon blossoms tossed into freshly squeezed milk—grazed his nostrils. Then the lump of gloom that had begun to congeal in Shinkichi’s blood vanished at once, and a Paris steeped in an impossibly fresh scent began to unfurl once more before his eyes. Shinkichi replied in a voice oddly earnest, ill-suited to the moment.

“Truly.” “That’s right, Mademoiselle.” And once again, Catherine’s memory surfaced in his heart now filled with longing. Yes—he wanted to meet her. Wasn’t today precisely the day he’d been burning for? As he thought this, his hand came to rest on Janet’s rounded shoulder. When had it been? Which woman was it? He recalled soft hands resting on his shoulders and speaking of the Paris Festival.

“Truly, for the young, that day was a Paris of first encounters.” “A Paris of love.”

The lingering softness of that woman’s palms resting on both his shoulders, and that luminous pressure when Shinkichi had once held Catherine. The old memory seared into his tactile senses—now jarringly revived by the plump, dewy flesh of the young girl’s shoulder beneath his hand—suddenly clawed at Shinkichi’s heart, driving him into frantic agitation. His breath hitched involuntarily. In his pupils, which had snapped wide open, blazed the dazzling spectacle of Italy Street’s jostling crowds—men and women surging with raw vitality. Blonde hair swelling under solar heat. The stench of face powder dissolving into sweat; voices trading raucous banter. The muscular arms of men twisting up the silk sleeves of women’s festival attire. Yet in the end, Shinkichi’s distant memories refused to align with the reality before him. His mind wearied, craving to be swept away by some human tide where he might discover—and impulsively embrace—the living Catherine. The two women beside him had merely been travel companions until now. All were women who’d trailed after him unbidden. None of it concerned him. I shouldn’t fixate on these women.

He exhaled his agitated breath entirely into a sigh, and Madame Bessechere remarked jokingly.

“To indulge in memories of your wife back home while keeping two ladies by your side—how rude of you to us, Mademoiselle. Let’s be off now, shall we?” Madame Bessechere swiftly paid the bill from her handbag, its pattern matching her parasol.

Forceful music burst forth as if to beat down the surrounding bustle from overhead. As if refusing to be outdone, the merry-go-round’s platform surged in waves as it spun. Centered around this Pigalle corner, various stall shops lined their eaves along the middle of the street. Shinkichi and the two women, bumping shoulders and laughing gaily with one another, plunged into the bustling crowds of Montmartre’s entertainment district. At one stall, young men leaned halfway out, showing the soles of their shoes as they lifted their legs back, competing to hook champagne bottles with fishing rods and lines. At another stall, a man peered into a frame covered with white paper while letting a woman lean on his shoulder. The gun fired, and in the instant the woman flinched, the white paper on the frame tore open, capturing a photograph of the two. A fortune-telling woman stood rigid as a pole with a melancholic face on the verge of tears. Roulette balls rolled. Amidst these, structures resembling glutton’s dens—their walls painted in gaudy colors with sensual nude women and trampled Black men, their suggestive dark entrances perched atop five or six steps—jostled for space.

When people came here, they bared their wildness and recklessness, jostling to hunt for even more excitement. Four or five artisan-like men, having thrown a ball to knock down a coconut, cracked it open on the spot and gulped noisily at the thin soap-colored water inside as they pushed their way through the jostling crowd.

“Hey, watch out!” “It’s splashing all over!” “It’s not like you’re going to turn into some nice guy and buy me new dirty socks or anything—.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll be careful.” “Quite the spirited young lady—.” Swept along by the crowd, Janet bared her rustic wildness completely and, without a trace of shame in her Loire accent, bantered back with the jokes of passing men. With her pale, bare arms pressed to her hips, she exaggerated the sway of her waist and laughed, sometimes even making gestures that felt brazen depending on who she faced. From under the bent hat’s brim, she pulled down the curled tips of her wig and stuck them with saliva right above her right eyebrow. Even the formidable Madame Bessechere could no longer bear to watch and fell silent with a disgusted expression. However, Janet showed no sign of paying attention to such trivialities and only grew more unrestrained in her display.

“HEY!” Using American slang for calling out to lowlifes—where had she learned that?—Janet blew a shrill whistle. No amount of clamor or jostling could divert Shinkichi’s heart from its pursuit of Catherine. As afternoon deepened and time grew more pressing, his agitation mounted; the surrounding colors and sounds blurred into a haze as if he walked through a dream—yet Catherine’s visage flickered before his eyes with startling vividness, her whereabouts unknown within Paris’s vastness. Her face was oval—a pure white countenance with pupils smoldering beneath lashes neither black nor blue that gazed intently—and an indescribably heady languor seeped into the very tips of Shinkichi’s nerves, mingling the shame trembling in his heart’s depths into an uncanny harmony until he slipped into a trance-like state of surrender. Even Catherine’s weight—light as a petal yet bearing infinite heaviness—now felt vividly real against his sun-warmed knees beneath his trousers. And bit by bit, Shinkichi grew weary.

Shinkichi couldn’t take it anymore. To escape from that visage which unconsciously wearied him, either the real Catherine had to appear quickly or a different, more powerful fascination had to seize his attention completely. Shinkichi was driven by an impulse to part with these two women immediately and race through the bustle of today’s Paris Festival in search of Catherine. At the same time, disgusted with himself for nursing such vague desires across Paris’s vastness, he abruptly stopped and invited his two companions out for a drink.

“You old geezer!” With her still-naive voice deliberately made coquettish, Janet shouted at a man. She snatched the balloon from his hand. Pretending to reclaim it, the man grabbed her wrist, then pulled her toward himself with brute force—spinning her swiftly before tucking her under his left arm. “Cut it out—I’m with someone!” Even Janet, typically bold in crowds, screamed beneath the man’s restraining hold. As she wailed, she reached toward Shinkichi like a plea for rescue; tracking that gesture, the man spotted Shinkichi and—

“You’re just a greenhorn.” With that, he released the woman. Then he came to Shinkichi’s side and peered briefly into his face, “You a Spaniard? Quit moping around.” With a sturdy hand, he struck Shinkichi’s shoulder hard enough to hurt and moved on. A man past middle age with blue beard stubble, his cheeks and the roots of his eyebrows bearing deposits of fat, his face like clustered lumps—yet there was something stylish about him, an earthy charm that brimmed forth. Shinkichi watched him go, utterly absorbed. He envied the man who, despite his years, remained brimming with youthful interest in women. For someone like Shinkichi—who had already lost the teeth of all emotion save for dreams—merely passing by a man like that made him feel his own pallid desolation.

When Janet looked, she kept watching the man’s figure vanish into the crowd for what felt like ages; jostled by the mass of people, she wound up at Shinkichi’s side.

“Today, I got hit on by Montmartre’s top gigolo.” As she said this, she pulled out a mirror while being jostled by the crowd and checked her appearance. “If you hadn’t been here, I might’ve gotten to spend the whole day with him.” Her voice carried a genuinely petty, resentful tone. Then Shinkichi—who had remained detached from her—suddenly felt rebelliousness surge within him. He roughly grabbed Janet’s exposed arm and shook it several times.

“You’re going to get along with me.” “And if you dare look at another man again, I won’t stand for it.” Then, strangely obedient, Janet—still holding the balloon—let herself be pulled into Shinkichi’s arm, looked up at his face with a grin, and laughed.

There, Madame Bessechere—who had gone too far ahead alone and gotten separated—returned.

“Oh, you were still here in this spot.” “Getting along is fine, but I won’t stand for scheming behind my back.” Shinkichi stared wide-eyed at Madame Bessechere’s sudden appearance before him. Amidst today’s festival uproar that smothered Paris’s usual elegance, she walked beside him embodying the city’s true grace. He found himself growing tender toward her essential nature. Unnoticed by the crowd, clouds had massed heavily overhead—a soft rain began falling like the trailing hems of those very clouds. In Bastille Square, a flustered commotion erupted. Stalls lining the streets hurriedly began closing shop while others wavered indecisively. The carnival strongman couple—their plump wife in a tracksuit leading—lumbered toward shelter beneath a café’s eaves. Children kicked an iron dumbbell left roadside behind them.

At the bandstands that had formed in the center of the square and on one distant side of the town, the musicians instead began blaring out a fierce tune. The crowd dancing before them had ultimately taken the rain as a fine stimulant—throwing back their heads in idiotic laughter, playfully ducking their necks—and now, riled up, they jostled against one another. To a group dancing calmly under umbrellas, passersby sporadically sent applause.

The train's creaking groan, the shadows of crowds stumbling past each other. The town's houses encircling the square—now tinged with twilight and coalescing into a dark mass—began to blaze with brilliant lights.

Exhausted and sinking into a pallid mood tinged even with paranoia, Shinkichi came this far. At Shinkichi’s apparent state of having lost all capacity to think of anything or be drawn to anything, Madame Bessechere’s cruel interest only grew. The old woman’s perverse love, though itself thoroughly exhausted, could no longer rest unless it exhausted Shinkichi into something as lifeless as spent hemp fibers stripped of vitality. To achieve this, she thought it necessary to more strongly incite Shinkichi by demonstrating Janet’s youth—a vigor that had grown ever more vibrant, physically enough to play about—and thus drive him to agitation.

“How about it?! Let’s head into that poor district up ahead for one last drink and dance?! We’ll go full commoner.” For Janet too, this final stage at the mission’s end—having followed Shinkichi all day on Lisa’s orders—was necessary. She replied without hesitation. “How avant-garde!” “That’s truly delightful!”

She pulled Shinkichi by the arm and, pushing through the crowd, entered the side alley of Rue de la Rappe.

Small, dark houses—sooty, their openings twisted shut as if having fallen stubbornly silent—lined the street. On the plaster walls, stains had corroded into spiderweb patterns. From every alleyway, filthy water trickled out, following depressions in the cobblestones to carve its own channels. To this merged the gathering raindrops, their gurgle creating a riverbed murmur through the street. Madame Bessechere hitched her kimono hem with jaunty precision, matching her umbrella’s sway as she strode ahead at an angle from the pair. Her gaudy silhouette dispersed some of the stagnant stench—muddy water and garlic stewing in gutters. Wedged between these grime-crumbled houses crouched dance halls—Bar des Trois Colonnes, Bar des Familles, Maison Bar—like gilded dentures in rotten gums. Their varnished facades glowed wine-dark beneath entranceway florals thick as stage makeup. Across windows coiled with garish neon, “Dancing Free” slanted in white chalk—a Bastille Festival courtesy for regular patrons. Their profit came through liquor instead. Before each hall spilled young men hunched against raucous tunes, hands jammed in pockets, alongside girls bedizened in cheap frippery—all churning in vulgar disarray.

Upon closer inspection, they were playfully roughhousing with each other, teasing one another, and hesitating about where to go. As Madame Bessechere—far too elegant for such a place—briskly closed her umbrella and entered one of the dance hall’s Bouzouka Bars, they fell silent and turned to look. Then, as the eye-catching beauty Janet pulled Shinkichi along with practiced ease and entered next, two or three from their group trailed after them out of curiosity.

The interior wasn’t very spacious. Facing the counter stood about two rows of bare tables and chairs arranged as seating. Passing through that space revealed a dance floor measuring thirteen tsubo at the far end. Around it too ran a single row of customer tables. The three musicians, crowded out by the narrow space, had been forced up into a jutting recess high on the wall where they sat crammed together, desperately trying to enliven the atmosphere. Their cramped state looked as if someone had stuffed a human into a swallow’s nest. Even Shinkichi, long accustomed to Paris, had never encountered such a place before.

“Do those musicians have to set up a ladder each time they climb up and down?” “You’re still making such carefree remarks. Rather than that…” While replying with visible frustration, Janet’s breathing grew conspicuously rapid in the dance hall’s air. The three of them sat down at a table in the corner leading from the entrance passage to the dance floor. The stench of cheap liquor, sweat, cooking grease—all trapped by the rain—mingled with dust kicked up from shoe soles and tobacco smoke, thickening the room’s air into a murky haze. The light from the chandelier struck the motes floating near the ceiling, making them appear like streaks of pink and purple clouds. Upon closer inspection, those clouds quivered in perfect sync with the dance’s tempo, then as a whole began drifting slowly in the same direction as the swirling dancers. New small national flags, their cloth edges stiffened and curled, were strung up like a child’s craft. In comparison, the colored cords and braid were gaudy and disproportionately large.

Even Madame Bessechere—who had been pressing a white handkerchief to her nose as if her chest were growing queasy while sipping harshly acidic wine—seemed to have grown somewhat accustomed, for she resolutely removed the handkerchief. Then she immediately sniffed sharply and said, "Oh, I smell fennel."

She brought her mouth close to Shinkichi’s ear and whispered.

“They say these kinds of places secretly keep absinthe. Why don’t you have the *garçon* pour you a little?”

Just as Madame had said, the waiter brought small cups with an air of secrecy. Madame divided it with practiced hands into three large cups, then added sugar and water. From the forbidden moonstone-colored liquid emanated a pungent odor that numbed the motor nerves, driving away the surrounding air. "Forgetting is nothing but learning new things." "Getting drunk is nothing but regaining lost seriousness." "Young people don't know such things, you know."

Madame Bessechere drank with evident pleasure while beginning to say such incomprehensible things to Janet, licked her cup fastidiously, and closed her eyes. “If I get drunk, I might not hand over this Monsieur to you.” Such words from Madame—neither fully earnest nor quite a morbid joke—failed to unsettle Janet. Her youthful sensitivity seemed to have wholly absorbed the older woman’s peculiar charm. Rather than dwell on it, as if unable to endure the surging energy, Janet seized Shinkichi and took to the floor each time the music changed. Shinkichi held Janet and for a while treated her like a bouncing rubber ball. For Shinkichi, the entire day had now passed emptily, leaving only the fact that what remained was him letting the young girl before his eyes play by herself. The Parisian monster that made me a nihilist blows away this nihilist’s pallid, wavering last hope like a cloud dream without a moment’s resistance. Paris—the Paris that had ultimately refused to let him meet Catherine at today’s festival. Resentfully closing his eyes, Shinkichi fended off the girl’s frivolous attempts to draw him in, gradually losing his grip until his dancing became mere courtesy—nothing but keeping time. Disillusioned beyond measure—so thoroughly hollowed out—visions flickered behind his eyes: fish bladders, rice cakes crusted blue with mold, clusters of insect eggs clinging to leaf undersides. A shudder pierced him from shoulder to nape, as if a thin spiral wire had been driven into his spine. He tilted his head back, suppressing his pain in the hollow at the base of his skull, and sad tears—instead of overflowing from the corners of his eyes—silently trickled into his nasal cavity. A lament steeped in sentiment—something like “My days are done”—escaped his lips with a faint sigh; this time, the phantoms behind his eyes showed a natural hand-washing stone soaked in clear water, daphne flowers blooming beneath the delicate leaf-shadows of nandina. A quiet Japanese morning.

In his home's small garden, at the base of the hand-washing basin's drain where five or six strands of white hair had fallen, he saw Omichi—her face still childlike—adjusting her appearance. Had old age's time come not just for Omichi but for me too? Should I decisively bury my youth tonight and be done with it?

Unconcerned by Shinkichi wandering through his hallucinations, Janet kept chasing him around with her spirited yet unpolished dance steps. When Shinkichi finally noticed and tried to match her rhythm, she unexpectedly quieted the tempo with sly precision, then began slipping whispers of startling maturity into his ear between dance steps.

“You.” “You plan to say goodbye to me right here today.” “It can’t be helped.”

“So it seems you still can’t forget Catherine, after all.”

“Oh—how would you know that?” “That I’m the girl Lisa sent—you must’ve realized from the beginning.”

“Ah, yes—exactly.”

“I actually know Catherine’s secret, you know.”

“A secret?! How?” “What kind?” “I’m Catherine’s illegitimate child.” “And Catherine… she died a long time ago.” “Is that true?” “Are you telling the truth?”

Janet did not reply and sniffled faintly. Shinkichi grabbed the girl as if seizing her and returned to their seat without a word. He simply sat staring fixedly at the girl seated before him. Madame Bessechere lay thoroughly drunk amid the faint aniseed scent. But when she noticed Shinkichi’s pallid face tightening as he stared at Janet—just as she was about to badger him again—she fell silent.

Catherine—Shinkichi’s sole tender memory of Paris—had already given birth to a three-year-old daughter by the time he met her at the professor’s house. The child came into being not through anything resembling love but from a passing impulse among workers at her father’s construction site. Immediately after giving birth,Catherine sent her off to a rural village along the Loire River as a fosterling—a near-complete severing of ties. By the time Janet grew old enough to understand things and yearn for her mother,Catherine had married a young architect who went off to Egypt and died of illness soon after. Her father remained just one laborer among many—his identity unknown. Janet grew up entirely as an orphaned country girl in the Loire region until she neared adulthood.

Lisa had told Shinkichi all of this the day after the festival. The weather, washed by the previous night’s rain, had cleared even more beautifully—a summer day when any thought would evaporate immediately. Shinkichi was fishing on the Seine’s Île de la Cité among the crowd. Lisa sat on a bench behind him, unraveling mending work. “The reason I found such a girl traces back to my own roots in rural Loire country,” she said. “This spring when I returned home, her guardian happened to ask me to bring her to Paris.” “After hearing you pine over Catherine all these years, can you blame me for wanting to stage this little drama when the chance came?” “That’s why I kept her secret from you until yesterday.” “But see? Just as I planned—you’ve found new vigor for that girl’s sake.” “Your face even looks alive now, like you’ve conceived some hope.”

“I promised that girl I’d look after her from now on.” “After all, a girl with firm breasts holds charm for men, doesn’t she.” “That’s not it.” “Watch your language a bit.” “So you intend to nurture the lingering memory of your old lover as if you’ve become her father or something.” “It’s not like that.”

Shinkichi pulled up his fishing rod and replaced the bait that had been taken by fish in the water. "Anyway, the true circumstances of Catherine—my first love whom I met in Paris—were quite different from what I had imagined. That woman was neither as cherished nor as sacred as all that. In other words, she was just an ordinary young lady. So for over ten-odd years, I’d actually been fed my own dreams through her, you see. Though I call it my own ignorance, it’s infuriating, you see. So taking advantage of finding that girl, I intend to mold her into the Catherine I had imagined, you see."

Lisa asked with a somewhat sly expression.

“So even after molding her, do you intend to proceed with loving her as a replacement for Catherine?”

“No.” “I’ll shape that girl into the Catherine I imagined.” “Isn’t that revenge enough?” “Against Catherine—dead yet betraying my imagination—and against my own ignorance. After that, she can take up with any man she fancies.” “But that girl’s so thoroughly country-worn—she’ll be a pain to refine.” “Country-worn means not yet Paris-worn.” “The core remains raw.” “Still… That’s why I’ll hone her on Paris’s whetstone.” “She’ll likely become a fresh, refined young woman.”

Under the fully matured sun, the Seine River’s water—pale reddish with an earthen hue—flowed. The current came into the shadow of a box-shaped swimming barge and created numerous small eddies among the cool reeds. Eddies embraced eddies with plip-plopping splashes. The bronze Statue of Liberty standing on the protruding edge of the Pont de Grenelle bridge—the base point of Île de la Cité—appeared to simmer under the blazing sky, heat waves rising from every angular contour of its form into the blue expanse. Five or six parasols dashed across the bridge. Between the linden trees along the stone-walled road on the opposite shore, the colors of a procession flickered. The female clerks’ walking race, whose schedule had been extended to today, passed through. The sound of drums beating one after another could be heard intermittently. A freight train crossed the upper tier of Pont de Passy’s two-tiered bridge spanning Île de la Cité, exhaled a refreshing breath as it steadily made its way toward Passy Street. White clouds floated here and there in Paris’s sky, which had driven away yesterday’s coarse festival bustle and now revealed its true form, returned to elegance. A small, toy-like fish was caught on Shinkichi’s fishing line, yet it still flopped about like a proper fish.

“You’ve grown quite reserved yourself. “You’ve completely graduated from Paris.”

Lisa said as if overcome with emotion. “Why? What?” “The Paris you’ve experienced until now has still been that of exiles.” “It’s the Paris that molds any foreigner who stays here awhile.” “But the real Paris lies beyond that.” “A Paris so tenacious you can chew and chew but never bite through.” “You’ve begun to sink your teeth into it now.” “Dead Fernando used to call that Paris’s yamagawa-sei.”

Lisa briefly pressed her knitting against Shinkichi’s back to check the size,

“Perfect fit. This was Fernando’s—I’ll knit it down into your jacket for you.”

Shinkichi looked at the knitting in Lisa’s hands. Fernando—Lisa’s lover and a genius architect who had resisted dying to the bitter end only to perish—had also been a close friend of Shinkichi’s. “If that guy were still alive,” he thought, “he’d be clamoring to renovate the Eiffel Tower with Purism by now.”

While muttering this like a soliloquy, Shinkichi felt as though he had now become something like Lisa’s son.

Just as the clear blue sky unfurling from far above the river approached the city’s rooftops and began to tinge with an egg-yolk yellow, a small passenger plane leisurely revealed its small figure.

“By the way, what will you do about your wife back in Japan?”

“I decided to take Madame Bessechere’s advice and have her come over here.” “Madame says she can’t rest until she sees the real thing in person.” “What a persistent mad old woman.” “That’s why I never told that old woman about you searching for Catherine.” “She’s reassured that when that girl spent time with you during the Paris Festival, it was just a one-time thing.” “Right now that old woman can’t help being obsessed with whether you’re truly remembering your wife back home.” “If it becomes known that you’ve really taken a liking to Janet and will keep looking after her from now on, that old woman will make a huge fuss.”

Having said her piece, Lisa reverted to her honest posture and busily set about mending the jacket.

Tears welled up from Shinkichi’s eyes as he silently faced the river, streaming down his cheeks. Shinkichi felt as though those tears were falling all the way to the bottom of the Seine and seeping into its depths. Shinkichi realized some time later that those tears had been shed for Madame Bessechere—that ailing genius couturier, that aged beauty. But when the tears had dried from Shinkichi’s cheeks and the Seine’s river wind swept coolly through for a time, his heart settled into a profound stillness, its depths suffused with a quiet clarity. Shinkichi slowly began to think to himself—Paris employs every manner of stimulus to momentarily detach one’s mind from the real world. It renders them extreme nihilists. However, the place where Paris guides people after that process is likely none other than a reality world thoroughly to the bottom of life, or perhaps a true essence of living environment. So that’s what Fernando meant by “Parisian mountain-river nature”—it seems I too will finally settle in Paris from now on and come to taste life’s true essence—