Pathway to Japanese Literature

Those Who Drown

I. A Certain Librarian’s Story

At the base of the canal bridge, he always abandoned the car.

As far as the eye could see stretched a straight canal, roads running along both banks, bridges here and there with their darkened wooden railings overlapping on the water’s surface.
On the right stood large, gloomy factories; on the left, a row of small, shabby houses….
Beyond that row of houses, in the hazy depths of brightness, deep within the tangled alleys, there was a single point emitting phosphorescence—she was there.

Phosphorescence… that was how I perceived her.

Her eyesight was poor. She had a slight squint, and moreover, her vision was dull. It was said her eyesight had suddenly worsened when she was sixteen or seventeen. Her brother was said to be blind. I wondered if it wasn’t amaurosis caused by hereditary syphilis. But she said it was keratitis. And myopia and astigmatism, she said… Putting on my -1.5 diopter myopia glasses, she was delighted that she could see clearly.

"I had one pair of glasses, but I fell and broke them… That was the end of it."
"If I go to an eye doctor, I’d have to keep going for a long time…"

Those eyes—both pupils and whites—were beautiful.
Beneath thin long eyebrows penciled with ink, pupils drawn toward distinct double eyelids as she peered upward into the mirror—brushing up disheveled sideburns with that slight squint and vision-impoverished gaze, a pale slender face—I liked watching these reflections in the mirror from the side.

“Again… No.”
“I was going to say something mean…”

She pushed aside the vanity and laughed.

She had a lonely, quiet laugh.
Leaving her thin eyebrows, double eyelids, and slender high nose as they were—that lonely, quiet laugh floating across the lower half of her gently sloping narrow face centered around slightly protruding thin lips—gained a sorrowful fragility when no intimacy was shared, and when exchanged after perfunctory greetings like “Welcome” during their first meetings, took on a certain single-minded strength.

Later, when that smile had spread to her eyes, I somehow felt unable to return it with a smile of my own.

While visiting her frequently, I would often sink into reveries by the edge of the canal.

The canal water was always murky.
Muddy and oil-slicked all the way to the surface, it lay thickly stagnant.
It was less murky water than a kind of dissolving liquid.
All things were not merely mixed in but dissolved, having advanced one step beyond decay and fermentation.
Its imposing surface lay motionless, absorbing sunlight by day and repelling streetlamp glow by night.

Here and there, a few cargo boats lay moored. But I had never seen those boats move, nor had I ever glimpsed a human figure within them. Amidships lay something loaded and mat-covered, abandoned tied low along the gunwales on stagnant, polluted water. Even so, their positions would sometimes shift.

Several rough-hewn factories of red brick and zinc sheets cast long shadows over the canal. Smoke rose from their smokestacks, yet the buildings themselves stood deathly quiet. The sounds of machinery and traces of workers seemed suffocated within—as if these were factories forever shuttered and left to crumble, or perhaps something like factories of death.

Along the factory walls bordering the canal, I walked deep in thought. Then when I reached where the bridge crossed over and bent toward her house, my steps quickened on their own.

As I drew closer to her, this new life settled firmly into my chest.

Indeed, that canal and those factories held something resembling my life over the past seven years.

When the time finally came to bid farewell to my life as a librarian, I leaned on the desk I had grown accustomed to sitting at and sank into deep reflection. The pale February sunlight fell diagonally from window to floor. Except for that bright rectangular pillar of light, the room stood filled with desolate shadows. In those shadows, several colleagues continued working silently like clockwork automatons. Even when needing to speak about work matters, they all kept their voices hushed. Just as books would become buried in dust over time, so too would their voices become buried in silence. I had noticed my own voice gradually growing quieter and been startled by it. Beyond the door lay an even dimmer room where books stood densely arrayed. They would inspect covers and tables of contents to organize catalog cards. In the weave of my suit, book dust had settled; within my mechanically laboring mind, white dandruff had accumulated. From nine each morning until four each afternoon, a monthly salary of ¥100... And at home: mother, wife, daughter; then after dinner, translation work to sustain our livelihood... How many times had I thought—if only I could have approached that translation with some measure of passion or interest, or performed the library work with even a shred of academic curiosity... But a low-ranking librarian’s duties remained forever mechanical, and the translations I passively accepted were equally mechanical. That too was for survival’s sake. Yet because of this, life itself had gradually turned mechanical and now teetered on the brink of running dry. The rectangular pillar of light from window to floor—I gazed at it with eyes that shone uncharacteristically bright.

The stagnant canal of polluted water and the desolate factories evoked in me the lonely atmosphere of the library.
And there, at the edge of the canal bank, the figure of her that materialized before my eyes was the rectangular pillar of light falling within the library.
Not sunlight, but a kind of phosphorescence...

Through a senior’s goodwill, I obtained a position as an English teacher at a municipal university and was able to quit my job as a librarian—at that time, I rejoiced as if reborn. Four days a week—attending only during my assigned hours—a monthly salary of over 150 yen, plus the fifty yen sent each month by my uncle managing a small field back home. With just that, my livelihood was secure. From now on, I’ll study freely. I’ll do free translations as well. I’ll write things… I was still reluctant to give up writing.—The fact that my wife had taken our daughter and returned to her hometown to care for her ailing mother had made me feel even freer.

I was like a small bird released from its cage. I wandered around the city almost every day. And I tried to shake off the mood of my old stagnant life. The shell of seven years' habit, the scurf accumulated in my head and body, the shadows of dim libraries and gloomy living—I tried to cast them all off at once. Of the six hundred yen I received as a retirement allowance, I sent a hundred yen to my wife and tried to scatter the remaining five hundred yen into the air along with the shadows of my seven years of life. Old shells, scurf, and shadows were not things to be utilized. I did not want to spend that five hundred yen usefully, either for myself or for others. Moreover, whether due to my library life or perhaps my impoverished life, I felt a severe decline in sexual desire, and this became a source of anxiety regarding my new life ahead. With five hundred yen in my pocket, I wandered through the most humanly vibrant yet grim quarters of the red-light districts I had come to know fairly well during my student days. And by chance, I found her.

In her body—breathed upon by various men—and in her life lived by making her own flesh into capital, viewing her abstractly in this way, within her there existed both the most convenient place to cast off that unpleasant 500 yen and the most powerful threshold for stepping into life’s reality.

Narrow, tangled alleys; countless women’s faces peering from small glass windows; shadows of men drifting like phantoms possessed—and among them, her eyes—slightly squinting… myopic… astigmatic… held a singular beauty.

“The future is pitch-dark.”
“After I finish working here… I have no prospects for what to do after that.”
“Sometimes, when the customers are asleep, I get up in the middle of the night, close my eyes, and stay still like that… for an hour or more…”
“I just keep staring into the pitch-black void… there’s absolutely nothing there.”

Leaning lightly against the wall and exhaling cigarette smoke from the tip of her lips as she spoke such things, her face held a stubborn, prickly air about it, and in her eyes, a light hovered over their dull gaze.

She was twenty-three this year, born in the year of Hinoeuma (Fire Horse).

“You were born in a terrible year.”
“They say it wipes out nine generations of your family.”

“Nine generations…?”

“Parents, siblings—the entire household—it wipes them all out.”

“Right.”
“It really does have some terrible power, doesn’t it?”

She spoke as if it were someone else’s affair and gave a lonely laugh.

I kept drinking.

I would order premium sake—two or three bottles—with only nori and dried flounder as snacks; when already intoxicated from the start, sugar water instead; and with her, I would talk for an hour or two without any real focus.

That alone sufficed for me.
I was neither there to exploit her body nor out of love for her.
By lingering in that district of carnal desire, I sought to discover a first step toward a new existence—a vigorous step grounded in actual life.
She was no more than a provisional companion.—At times, the flow of shinnai-bushi narrative music would drift by outside.
A violin’s folk tune reverberated.
At nightfall, women’s voices calling for customers could sometimes be heard.
There were moments when the plaintive chime of a bell would sound from a pilgrim-garbed girl singing hymns and begging alms at every eaves.

Since it was a small room of three or four-and-a-half tatami mats, at night it became quite bright from the electric light.
But during daytime hours, heavy curtains usually covered the window.
I always threw them wide open.
Sunlight filtered through frosted glass turned the room greenhouse-like.
When I opened the window, though only a sliver remained unobstructed by neighboring eaves, blue sky became visible.

“It’s a nice day.”
“Look—the sky’s clear.”
“The sunlight’s blazing bright.”

She gazed outside, squinting as if dazzled, and nodded at my words.

Early spring sky and early spring light…
The only blue thing in the room was a single potted omoto plant.

Above the omoto plant, on the wall hung a tawdry print of the Seven Lucky Gods.
While vaguely watching it, she was singing in a clumsy melodic phrasing, her voice low—

*Not love.*

*Not even a lover.*

*Oh, how…*

When I looked back, she abruptly stopped singing and clung to my gaze.

“Hey, you always get your way, so today you have to listen to my whims.”

“What is it?”

“You must, okay?”

“Before you even say it—such nonsense….”

“But you see…”

In the bright, greenhouse-like air, her face became like a flower. Her gaze was as sightless as flower petals. Her skin—unexpectedly delicate and beautiful for such a place.

About once every four or five times, I would indulge her whims. But it felt hollow. Afterwards, I was left desolate.

In just her underrobe, sitting before the mirror stand, her face became strangely engraved in my mind. Viewed from behind, only the red-splashed Futen-sama chignon, sideburns swept up like wings above her ears, and pale nape were visible—yet with a slight shift in position, her face emerged clearly in the mirror's crystalline depths. Those slightly crossed black eyes drew near, fixed in an upward gaze toward double eyelids; from forehead down the gentle curve of cheeks and chin hung a flawless white face—utterly unlined—suspended like a Noh mask in empty air. When that visage found my eyes at the mirror's bottom, suddenly yet naturally, a desolate smile bloomed on its cheeks... And when I looked back directly, her face already pulsed with living blood.

“This feels strange.”
“I... I don’t know why, but I feel so awkward...”
“Let’s drink.”

Once again, this time alternating with her, I picked up the cup.
She couldn’t drink much.

My mind wouldn’t settle.

“If a regular customer comes, I’ll leave anytime, so tell them that.”

I repeated such things.

“I just want to keep drinking like this with you.”
“That’s all there is to it.”
“But you mustn’t mess up your important customers.”
“Please—really tell them that if a regular comes, I’ll leave.”

Before I knew it, my tone had grown serious.

“Who’re you saying that to, huh—Mr. Kataoka?”
“I don’t care—I’ll send ’em all away.”
“The other day too…you didn’t know…a regular came when you were drinking here…”
“Showed ’em to the other room—was just ’bout to leave when someone came waitin’…said I was goin’ to my aunt’s in Honjo…don’t matter anyway.”
“You get it…”

“But…”

“No—I won’t listen, I won’t listen.”
“Who are you saying such things to, Mr. Kataoka?”

“Kiyo-chan!”

She did not respond.

“Kiyo-chan!”

Should I pretend to be angry? Stay silent? Tickle her? What should I do…? After pausing only to think such things, she suddenly turned her face—smooth as white wax, without a wrinkle or line—toward me.

“Oh, Mr. Kataoka….”

I listened with a strange feeling to my own name coming from her mouth.

What lingered in my mind was a man vaguely seeking renewal and a woman gasping for life.
Moreover, it was one who yearned for a new, vigorous world and one who shouldered the world of carnal desire.
The two of them huddled small before my eyes, calling each other "Mr. Kataoka" and "Kiyo-chan."

Kataoka Masao, Ogata Kiyoko….
I repeated those proper nouns in my mouth, as though recalling someone long forgotten from the past.

When she was drunk, she saw my business card. Then she wrote her own name too, dipping the tip of a chopstick in sake to trace it on the serving tray. Kiyoko was her real name, but she wrote only the surname Ogata. The characters written in sake on the rosewood grain stayed deeply etched in my eyes. —She was from Takasaki, her parents already gone, her blind brother working as a masseur, her sister in the Salvation Army apparently…

But such things—matters of each other’s circumstances—didn’t matter at all. Just aimless small talk alone was sufficient.

“I like being with you like this more than anything.”
“I’m sorry.”

And she would now lean her head on my shoulder, now stretch out her legs, and say all sorts of things.

When I hadn’t shown my face for about a week, she had worried terribly and secretly rushed to a fortune teller.
In the evening, someone who looked like me smiled and passed by, so she slipped out the back and chased after them, only to be embarrassed by the mistaken identity.
For some reason, she became irrationally irritated, gulped down a glass of sake and went to sleep, then muttered in her sleep over and over—"A day apart feels like a thousand years…"—and was thoroughly teased by elderly customers.
And then….

They were tales like cigarette smoke—neither quite lies nor truths.
And whenever I left, she would slip a bag of Shikishima cigarettes into my sleeve.

That single bag of Shikishima caught my attention.
At the same time, I began noticing tears in her eyes.

Her dull-eyed face—with its air of indifference, like a white wax mask—seemed ill-suited to tears.
Yet whenever her words trailed off into prolonged silence, she would gaze vacantly at the sky as if losing herself.
Almost unconsciously, she would blink her eyes and give a small shudder of her shoulders.
—She was crying.

“Hey, Kiyo-chan!”

She floated a vague smile across her cheeks in her dazed state……. But by then, my eyes already brimmed with tears.

“You’re such a fool.”
“Who’d be crying?”

And both of them shed tears.
Then they kissed.

She occasionally had a light cough.
The lips were always thickly painted with rouge at the center.
I surrendered my lips freely to those lips.

“You shouldn’t kiss me so recklessly. With sickness and all, kissing’s the most dangerous thing there is.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m all alone.”

And once again, we shared another long, unbroken embrace.

Her body lay carelessly sprawled across my lap and within my arms—like a cartilaginous jellyfish, if such a thing existed. Beneath the red brocade kimono moved soft, rounded swirls reminiscent of involuntary muscle contractions. Before my eyes, where my eyelashes nearly brushed against it, the pure white skin of her neck spread out flat and wide—endlessly—like earth blanketed by warm snow, had such a thing existed—and began undulating silently without bounds. It was drowning me... I grew breathless and rolled my eyes with great effort. The edge of a perfectly shaped earlobe peeked plumply from beneath black hair. I seized it—her ear was impossibly soft.

When I started to stand up, she clung to me desperately. With a firm expression that could even be called dignified, she shook her head repeatedly.

“No—no, I won’t!”
“I won’t let you go.”

“But this is troublesome, you know.”
“I have matters to attend to too…”

“I just… don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to let you go.”
“Even if we keep meeting like this… what will come of it?”
“Money too….”
“With that much money, even renting a room, I could manage splendidly.”
“I know you have a wife and children, and I’m just a woman from a place like this… but Mr. Kataoka, what am I supposed to do?”

“So, I’ve been thinking about it too.”
“It’s not just the present—I’m thinking about your whole life, even when you become an old lady.”
“If it’s just two or three months, half a year or a year—I could manage that right now.”
“But if after that we were to say goodbye, wouldn’t that be pointless? I’m thinking about your entire life.”
“Do you understand, Kiyo-chan?”

My tone had become utterly serious.
In truth, I had been thinking about her entire life.

She had once been found just as she was about to throw herself into the sea at Yokohama’s coast and was taken back home. Then she snatched the money from her father’s stone monument and ran away. After that, she had become isolated from the world. She would return the money from the stone monument at all costs—that had been her sole purpose.

“Beyond that lies true darkness.”

Whether her story was a lie or the truth, at that moment, an eerie light had settled in her eyes.

“Aren’t I a hopeless woman?”

And she laughed brightly.

It was around that time.
In my dream, I crafted a wonderful poem.
My heart leapt.
However, when I awoke, the splendid phrases of that poem had scattered in all directions like autumn leaves blown by the wind, leaving only two lines remaining.

I shouldn’t call her beautiful—

Let me call her beauty.

In truth, she could not be called a beautiful woman. Her facial features suited my preferences, but around her slightly protruding mouth lay a baseness lacking in cleverness. The eyes that had captivated my heart would likely have been seen as a defect by ordinary people. Only the double eyelids and the shape of her ears were splendid—her entire being, to me, was a beauty cast into mud and shadow.

I wanted to move that into the bright light of day; I wanted to return her to a cheerful life—that’s what I thought.

Once, I took her out.
But it was night.
There was no sunlight.
We watched a short play and returned.
Once, we went out to eat.
She wore a long coat and sandals, walking with a childlike gait.

Through such things, my five hundred yen easily disappeared.
At first, that money—which I had intended to cast into the ditch all at once along with the shadow of my old life—was sorely regretted.
To lose the money was to part with her.
I no longer felt any lingering carnal attachment, but I was thinking about her—about her entire life.

My new life and the prostitute bearing the world of carnal desire—before I knew it, we had become a man and woman addressing each other as “Mr. Kataoka” and “Kiyo-chan.”
—Her face in the mirror, like a Noh mask, would always float before my eyes.

One day, she had been staring at my face when she suddenly clung to me.
At that moment, I was fiddling with her water-chapped fingertips and delicate nails.
Silently, she took my index finger into her mouth.
Next to the lower incisor in her jaw gaped a terrifying hole.
I felt it like a deep abyss.

“What’s wrong?”

“I yanked it out by force.”

I was struck by a kind of vertigo emanating from that deep abyss…

II. The Story of a Certain Prostitute

Somehow feeling suffocated, as if a hammer were pounding deep inside my skull, I woke up. I’d been sleeping at the edge of the futon; half my body was numb with cold. I turned over and groped closer… but it wasn’t him. I must have been dreaming about that man. The touch felt nothing like his.—That man would only ever drink, never do anything more. Out of some mood or other, I’d managed to take things that far four or five times at most. He never seemed interested in such matters. There were moments I’d burned with shame over it. Yet precisely because of that, his presence stayed vivid in my heart.—This was entirely different. I came fully awake. My teeth throbbed.

I quietly got up. Pulling the kimono around myself, I sat down there and lit an Asahi. The man appeared to be sleeping deeply. Before I knew it, I’d forgotten about the cigarette and was fixated on the throbbing in my tooth. I kept thinking about him—about that man. I couldn’t quite distinguish which version of him occupied my mind. A restless irritation began churning inside me. The irritation erupted into full-blown vexation. The man’s head protruding from the futon collar resembled an iron sphere.

I shook the aching tooth—the one next to my lower incisor—with frantic force.
I edged toward the dressing table and peered into the mirror... My own face stared back, mouth agape with a finger stuck inside, horribly ugly.
That man used to look at my mirror reflection from behind me in those moments; he always said that was when my face looked most appealing.
...I wonder how he's doing now.

"Idiot, idiot," I told myself.
And yet, I kept shaking the tooth.
It hurt.
From a pain like pinching an itch, it had surpassed that and become a pain that resonated deep in my head.
"Forget it, forget it," I told myself from the bottom of my heart.
And then I shook the tooth.
Somehow, I was irrationally angry.
And finally, I yanked out the tooth with all my strength.

I was startled.
A cold wind blew in through the gap left by the extracted tooth and swirled through my entire body.
And yet, a hot, piercing pain rose to the area around my temples.
I wrapped the upper flat-rooted long tooth in tissue paper and put it away in the dressing table drawer.
When I noticed, my mouth was bright red with blood.
I clamped the tissue paper between my teeth.
The space where the tooth had been had become a large cavity.
It was as if the central pillar of strength had vanished from both my body and my mind.
I started crying.

A man’s voice was heard.
I couldn’t make out the words but clearly heard his voice.
I was startled.
When I turned to look, the man was staring at me with a sleepy face, looking puzzled.
I tried to smile.
But it came out badly and looked pathetic.
I pressed a hand to my cheek and lowered my face.

The man sat up heavily and started smoking a cigarette.

“What are you doing there…?”

“My tooth hurts.”

“Your tooth hurts…?”

“Because it hurt so much, I pulled it out.”
“It was so aggravating…”

I started to say something but burst into tears again.
I wanted to lash out at everything around me.
I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“If it’s just a toothache…,” the man was saying, “if you just go see a doctor, it’ll heal right away. …It’s already morning.”

It was truly already morning.
When I opened the window curtains, a hazy whiteness filled the room, and the electric light grew dim.

“Well then, I’ll step out for a moment.”
“In return, I’ll be back soon—wait for me.”
“Stay asleep and wait.”
“I swear.”

And then I hurriedly put on a kimono and rushed out through the back door.

It was a hazy, leaden day.
The morning light felt like something out of a dream.
It was cold.
I felt lonely.
I wanted to keep walking forever, endlessly, just like that.
The surroundings were still quiet in slumber, and here and there, the shadows of men returning home in the morning appeared like phantoms.
Just with that feeling of "him...", I forgot everything and sat there dazed.

Even so, I went to the hospital, asked a nurse, and had her apply medicine to where the tooth had been extracted.

When I returned, the man had already left.
Ignoring my sister’s nagging, I went upstairs.
With that, that client was done for—thinking such things about the man who had come three or four times with grim satisfaction, I burrowed into the futon still in my kimono.
The toothache had completely subsided.
My thoughts of that person had grown hazy.
I slept soundly.

I didn’t wake up until someone roused me.
After getting up, I lingered groggily.
Even when I went to the bathhouse or hairdresser, I was somehow dazed and killed more time than usual.

I thought about taking the day off, but feeling that he might come, I made myself go to work.

I was pricked by Mother’s sarcastic jabs, prick after prick. Lately, she’d been hinting in roundabout ways—that I was acting strange, that my regular customers had plummeted, that I’d grown lazy. “It’s nothing,” I answered, but when she shot back, “Then why don’t you speak your mind?” I could only clamp my mouth shut. At the brothel, my older sister accompanied me like some wide-eyed newcomer.

“Hey, Kiyo-chan,” sis said in a low voice, “you need to get a grip.”
“That person… It’s fine to keep him close… But getting deluded like that doesn’t suit you.”
“They come to a place like this, drink nothing but alcohol, don’t even amuse themselves properly—no matter what, it’s out of place.”
“Out-of-place customers like that won’t last long, you know.”

I knew that already.
Nor was I deluding myself about him.
But when I was with him was when I felt most at ease.
I didn’t need to put on airs or tell lies.
Or rather, before him, I couldn’t put on airs or tell lies.
I did nothing but abandon myself to my whims.
Even so, I never thought he loved me.
He always seemed to be vaguely thinking less about me than about us in this line of work.
He was strangely elusive.
He always preferred brightness.
He liked throwing open the curtains completely so sunlight streamed through the window.
He complained the electric light was too dim at night.

For women in our trade like me, love and familiarity were mostly the same thing.
If we met three times, we could have three measures of love; if ten times, ten.
So as that person kept coming around more and more often, I might have gained that much love.
But... it might not have been just that.
At first, I’d even made that person material for fond boasting, but later I stopped mentioning them altogether.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

There was something different from ordinary romantic love. In him too, there were somehow both parts that fell short and parts that overflowed. His disposition seemed terribly timid and cowardly, yet his way of thinking was utterly bold and audacious. He appeared oblivious to worldly matters and vacant, yet somehow perceptive of human emotions' deepest depths. There were times when he smiled in good humor, and times when he talked incessantly to the point of annoyance. His appearance wasn't particularly refined, but he remained utterly indifferent to money matters. Though generally quiet, he would occasionally affect clever sarcasm or jokes. He never sang aloud, but often hummed tunes under his breath. His complexion looked sickly, yet his core seemed unexpectedly sturdy. He always drank, but never seemed to truly get drunk. He engaged with me while watching something beyond, as if he'd come just to breathe the air here. To me it was suffocating air, yet he kept visiting compulsively—saying he wouldn't come for a while only to return immediately. And I too became unable to resist breathing his air. When beside him, I felt free and relaxed, my heart growing brighter. When he disappeared for days, I felt myself sinking into darkness. At our partings, I learned to cry.

“Women don’t tell the truth when they cry.”
“Men never lie when they shed tears, but women are the opposite.”
“Women only tell the truth when they’re angry.”

He said such things.
And he himself was tearing up.

At the shop, while giving half-hearted replies to sis who was by my side, I was still vaguely thinking about that person.

The first time was at night.
As I stood at my usual spot by the shop entrance, a tall man in a black mantle passed by.
When I called out to him, he shot me a sharp glance before stepping inside.
After leading him upstairs to the room, I found myself greeting him more formally than I usually would.
He kept his mantle on as he sat there, eyes and face flushed with drink yet grinning cheerfully as he mentioned having enjoyed visits to three or four other places already.
Then he produced two fifty-sen silver coins.
When I suggested adding tea money, he laughed and shook his head.
Said some kind woman had taught him tea alone sufficed without... other services...
And he carried her business card.
A woman I recognized.
I snatched the card.
Later when I brought tea, he suddenly turned serious and demanded its return.
No chance I'd give it back, I thought.
Tear it up before my eyes—that notion pleased me.
When I handed over the card, he ripped it apart and fed it to the brazier's flames.
My chest felt unclenched.

The next day during daytime hours, while I was at the shop as usual, that person passed by slowly—head bowed toward his feet as if pondering something deeply.
I called out to him.
He stopped and stared fixedly in my direction before suddenly exclaiming in a booming voice, “Ah, it’s you.”
Then he entered.
His demeanor seemed oddly subdued.
“This place is truly dreary by daylight. You being here helps—it’s last night’s promised drink,” he muttered...

And then... various things came back to me.
This isn't working today, I thought.
It was no wonder sis stayed with me.
I have poor eyesight.
In the evenings, everything outside looks blurry.
Desperately peering out the window to see if that person would come, I couldn't bring myself to care about anything else.
Sometimes I'd call out to hopeless people, other times I'd only notice promising ones after they'd already passed by.
That day was truly slow.
There were still regular customers who kept coming, but no one new seemed likely to appear.

And late that night, I quietly got up alone and, smoking a cigarette, was doing mental calculations again.
There probably wasn’t much debt left here at this house anymore.
And then there was just the fifty yen for father’s stone monument.
That much—he’d probably figure something out.
There was no use continuing like this forever.
I’d had enough.
Assuming he were to spend twenty yen at once—what came to me was eight yen out of that quarter—and from that amount again various things got deducted.
If I could receive that entire twenty yen, even just three or four times a month would be enough—then I wouldn’t have to do this work, and I could spend whole days peacefully by that person’s side…….

At that moment, I suddenly remembered that person’s words. “I’m thinking about your entire lifetime—not just the present, but even when you become an old woman….” I closed my eyes. Something pitch-black appeared… Repaying the stone monument debt to my blind brother—then a lifetime… It seemed as if the pitch-black darkness stretched on endlessly, boundlessly. I wanted to laugh at him, but couldn’t. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. A cold wind blew into the gap where the tooth had been.

After a long time had passed, I quietly went down to the kitchen downstairs.
I searched inside the cupboard and drank two or three cups of cold sake.

Then, somehow, I shook the sleeping man awake.

“How dare you sleep while I’m awake.”
“Burrowing headfirst into the futon like a mole…”
“Wake up, I said.”
“Get up, I’m telling you.”

He was a young client pretending to be something he wasn’t. Soft hair hung down over his deathly pale forehead. Brushing it back, he sat up abruptly and stared at me with wild eyes.

“Let’s do something fun.”
“Oh right—there’s nothing here to use.”
“A doll…”
“And when I do this, I stop looking like a doll…”
“You’ll come see me sometimes from now on.”
“And please deceive me.”
“I’ve tricked men before, but never once been tricked by a man.”
“That’s why it’s so lonely.”
“It’s not like I want to be your wife or anything.”
“Just deceive me completely—right down to my heart…”

In that manner—and then with various other things I can’t recall now—I rambled on incessantly.
The drink had taken hold; my head swam unsteadily.
And there before the young man shrinking back timidly, I broke apart completely.

The next afternoon, that person came.

I had been frowning with a sullen expression, but when I stood before that person, the wrinkles on my face smoothed away. The face he had told me had strangely few creases or lines—I tried with all my might to twist it into a scowl, but couldn't manage it. As I watched his rough, elusive expression—unsure how to act or speak—I suddenly clung to him and guided his finger to the hollow left by my extracted tooth.

That person's eyes changed their expression.
I spoke about my tooth in a coaxing tone, as if casually mentioning it.

At that moment, unexpectedly, a childlike heart returned within me, and it filled my chest completely.
“Mr. Kataoka… hey, Mr. Kataoka… Kataoka Masao,” I called out that person’s name.
Even that still wasn’t enough.
I cried, I laughed.
And I continued to call out that person’s name.

That person’s manner was strange. His pale, sallow complexion turned even paler as he inserted the hand propped on the desk into his curly, disheveled long hair, smiling with his mouth and cheeks while maintaining an intense gaze. That hand, head, smiling mouth, and sharp eyes appeared fragmented in my vision like scattered pieces of a broken doll. And then another voice spoke.

“Kiyo-chan, let’s stop with all this crying and laughing over trivial things.”
“We aren’t even in that kind of relationship.”
“I’ll just let everything take its course.”
“And then there’s sake.”
“Let’s drink sake.”

I came back to myself.
My heart settled.
A vague smile met me for no reason.
That person was smiling too.

“Someday, I’ll take you somewhere for a whole day, just the two of us.”

“Yes, please take me.”

While drinking sake, we engaged in aimless conversation. That person talked about things like what had happened on his way over, what interesting men were among his acquaintances, and what experiences he’d had when traveling to various places. He drank more sake than usual. But I only let him have two or three cups. On top of that, while speaking in a superficially lively manner, he somehow seemed different from usual—watching me intently with his gaze. He remained sitting properly without even shifting his knees. Even when I snuggled up to him, he appeared to want to avoid it. I felt something oddly cold, then something lonely. The reality of my situation abruptly crossed my mind—even if I suddenly wanted to see that person, though knowing his address, I couldn’t visit him or send him letters.

“There are all sorts of jobs, but those that become more interesting and enjoyable the more you work are good ones.”
“Jobs that make you feel worse the more you work—those are no good.”

The words that person had casually uttered lingered strangely in my heart.
I felt like I had mountains of things to say, yet couldn't voice a single one.
And with a colder manner than usual, I sent that person home.

That left me unbearably lonely afterward.
That person didn’t come for about a week.
During that time, I kept my mouth shut as much as I could, closed my eyes, and held myself rigid.
The hollow from my extracted tooth kept nagging at me.
But I didn’t give in to despair.

And the next time I met that person, I held back my tears and clung to his shoulder.

“Today, I won’t leave your side for a moment—I don’t want to leave.”

“Really?” that person said.

That tone was too forceful, so I hesitated in replying.
Then that person started to laugh.

“Kiyo-chan, let’s go somewhere to drink now.
“I want to get you drunk.”

Somehow unsettled, I gazed at that person’s face.
That person’s eyes were truly clear.

III. A Delinquent Youth’s Account

It was around the end of March.

I hurried from Ushitenjin in Mukojima, crossed Kototoi Bridge, and headed toward Asakusa Rokku.
It was already around nine at night.
And I had to get there before the movie ended.
I had business to attend to.

Due to Kototoi Bridge having been recently completed, passing beneath the elevated structure before the bridge and along the wide Ōkawa riverside road, only sparse electric lights mounted on tall poles shone here and there, with almost no passersby. Yet the lights from Mochi Hill across the water reflected on the river’s surface made a splendid sight. It felt like hiding in a utility pole’s shadow to peer into a café.

I was hurrying.
Then, from the opposite direction, a pair of silhouettes emerged within the dimness.
A tall man wearing a mantle and a short woman wearing a coat.
She might not have been what you’d call short, but because the man was tall, she appeared shorter.

They were walking slowly ahead, but since I was hurrying, I soon caught up. She was a rather beautiful woman. Her oval face—with its long, delicately arched eyebrows and sharply defined eyelids—wasn’t that of some amateur. And then…

Huh? I thought. The face of the man in near-sighted glasses, his hat pulled low over his eyes, looked familiar.

Tsk… I clicked my tongue, pretended to trip over nothing, staggered to the roadside, grabbed onto a streetlamp post that stood there, and crouched down as if adjusting my geta’s frayed thong.

Just like a lighthouse, the streetlamp cast dim light below.
From that shadow, I caught clear sight of the man’s face fully illuminated through my sidelong glance.
It was Mr. Kataoka.
Kataoka Masao.

It had been about ten days since I'd last seen him, but I remembered his face and name well. Remembering people's faces and names is an important talent.

When I went into a café in Asakusa with two or three companions, Mr. Jip—a hack writer—was drinking with a man who had a head like a bird's nest. This "Mr. Jip" was a private nickname; he'd dash off essays, critiques, novels, plays—anything he could get published somewhere. A bachelor over thirty, he constantly wandered around the city, associating with anyone—licensed prostitutes, unlicensed ones, café girls—but never sticking with one person. In every respect, he called himself "the gypsy of the world"—that's where the name came from.

I gave a brief greeting, but Mr. Jip was arguing with his companion and didn’t pay much attention.
Since the neighboring table was free, we sat there, behind Mr. Jip.

As I drank my coffee, snippets of Mr. Jip’s conversation drifted into my ears.
The man they called Bird’s Nest had a low voice but spoke in a harsh tone, fervently arguing and seemingly cornering Mr. Jip.—Primitive people’s nomadic lives were undoubtedly not happy ones.
They must have been lonely and sad.—A man should always be in love with someone.
Being loved doesn’t matter, but loving does.
That is where the vigor of life arises.
There are women who make a living by selling only their bodies without souls.
That is the most miserable life.—Being attached to things is bad, but being attached to nothing is even worse.
There are times when things shift from the concrete to the abstract—but when one truly senses something, it shifts from the abstract to the concrete.
“Thinking of a woman while indoors is a form of lust—but when you start thinking of her even while walking outside, that’s true love. It’s necessary to see an individual within their environment—but even more necessary to see them apart from it.” I picked up all sorts of other things.
Names like Schopenhauer, Bergson, and Tolstoy also came up.
In response, Mr. Jip merely offered feeble retorts laced with jokes from time to time.
Why Mr. Jip was so disheartened by those textbook-like moralizing words was both frustrating and amusing to me.

But Bird’s Nest’s demeanor was also strange. His tanned face glowing, eyes gleaming, he spoke vehemently in a strong tone, yet beneath it all, there was something that seemed on the verge of tears. He seemed to be writhing, having lost his peace of mind. It was still both exasperating and amusing to me.

Before long, for some reason, Bird’s Nest hurriedly stood up and left. He must have had urgent business. Mr. Jip remained alone.

I thought I’d get him to treat me to a drink and stood up to approach Mr. Jip.

“It looked like you were being thoroughly cornered, didn’t it?”

“Hmm,” Mr. Jip replied, more lost in thought than usual.
“There’s something off about him lately.”
“Today he was again fervently rambling on.”
“Hostility… Not toward me—he seemed constantly irritated, as if harboring hostility toward something.”
“He’s usually a gentle man, but…”

“What kind of person is he?”

“He’s a great scholar.
I’ll introduce you to him next time.
He works at a library but knows everything about Eastern and Western scholarship through the ages.
Kataoka... His name is Kataoka Masao.”

Hmm... I thought.

That Bird’s Nest was Kataoka Masao.
He was walking along nighttime Okawabata with a woman…

I passed by the two and watched them from behind.

The woman wore a thick long coat out of season, plodding along in thin felt sandals with a heavy gait. Her hair was done up in a Tenjin topknot. Though the nape of her neck shone startlingly white, her face—where she seemed to have wiped away thick makeup with oil—appeared smooth and bare. Beside her walked a sturdy tall man who looked profoundly mismatched. His way of planting each geta-clad foot firmly on the ground felt half-hearted—his body sober while drunkenness lingered in his mind.

Night—the new wide road, Okawabata, bright lights from the opposite shore reflected in the water, a woman who looked like she belonged to a brothel disguised as a sake house, Mr. Kataoka with his bird’s nest hair... The whole incongruous scene caught my attention.

From a distance, hidden in the shadow of a lamppost, I kept watching their movements.

The two walked side by side at an extremely slow pace, occasionally exchanging short words.
They didn’t seem headed anywhere particular, nor did it quite feel like a stroll.
When they appeared so far off that they might as well have stopped walking altogether, the space between the man and woman widened.
The woman came to a halt at the water’s edge along the embankment.
The man seemed to be observing this from behind.
And then... one minute... two minutes... the man gradually closed in on the woman.

I was startled.
The man took his hand out from under his mantle toward the woman's back...
With one push, the woman would fall into the river...
It was not.
When the man's hand reached the woman's shoulder, the two clung tightly and became a single shadow.
It was not the woman throwing herself in, nor the man pushing her down, nor the two of them leaping in together.
Clung tightly together, they crouched down there and did not move again.

Strangely, my mind was unsettled.
Even though I thought, "What a letdown," it still nagged at me.
I kept watching their direction for a long time.
The two figures, crouched and merged into one, remained motionless no matter how much time passed.

In the end, I lost patience and stepped out from the pillar's shadow to start walking. I glanced back occasionally, but the solitary black figure in the distance remained unchanged—it no longer even seemed like two people.

When he came out onto Kototoi Bridge，it suddenly turned cold.
I wish I had a mantle.
But I like that bridge.
With only railings on both sides；the bridge deck was spacious，devoid of any crude steel framework；and one could immediately sense the vast open sky above.

I stood on the bridge and gazed at the river water, the lights reflected in it, and the bright city to the left.
Then, tracing with my eyes the new road along the riverbank to the right—low-lying and darkened—where only a few electric lights sparsely dotted the scene.
A night haze intermingled with river fog hung in the air, leaving the distance blurred.
The figures of the man and woman who should still have been crouching at the water’s edge had grown faint in the haze and could no longer be discerned.

Because of all that, I completely missed my errand in Rokku—not that it was anything important—.
I’d gotten lost in thought—uncharacteristically so.