Pathway to Japanese Literature

The two became acquainted at a Go parlor in Ginza—a place where friendships rarely blossom beyond a shared interest in the game—but Shōkichi Ikuta approached Taihei Ochiai with an uninhibited directness that bordered on audacity.
Shōkichi was a distinguished gentleman over fifty—the chest of his expensive Western suit revealing a gold chain, his hair meticulously styled in an all-back sweep that was half-gray, yet his face, harmoniously chiseled by reason and decisiveness, retained a youthful elegance, his orderly figure containing an unadorned dignity.

That Shōkichi Ikuta would approach Taihei Ochiai—a bedraggled third-rate writer—was strange enough, but the brazen directness of his approach could hardly be considered normal.
After their very first match, he presented his business card and introduced himself; from then on, he would search for Taihei at the entrance (since Taihei came nearly every day) and plop down beside him.
Despite his busy schedule making rare appearances, Shōkichi would leap across intervening days—whether returning after ten or twenty—and settle beside Taihei as though resuming yesterday’s game.
Since this Go parlor teemed with worthy opponents, Taihei viewed their peculiar bond with suspicion—yet Shōkichi formed no true friendships beyond exchanging cursory glances with others.
Taihei accepted it as an eccentric man’s instinctual quirk, but any notion that Shōkichi harbored some profound solitude contemplating human suffering seemed a retrospective imposition—an afterthought grafted onto memory.

One day, the two met by chance on a street in an outlying factory district.
Though Taihei’s apartment stood in this factory district, Shōkichi was a machinery broker—he himself also being a small factory owner—who had come to sell machines.
They played Go at an outlying parlor and drank into the night.
Muttering phrases like “It’s nearly last train time” and “Guess I won’t make it home,” Shōkichi remained perfectly composed, evidently anticipating he’d be stranded.

The next morning, Shōkichi awoke in Taihei’s shabby room with a youthful vigor reminiscent of his student days. Narrowing his eyes, he surveyed every corner of the drab space as though committing each detail to memory—yet his demeanor was steeped in nostalgia.
“Today’s your turn to come visit my place,” Shōkichi said, urging Taihei along as he took him to his home—though the genesis of their connection amounted to nothing more than what had been described thus far.
“I’d been meaning to invite you over sometime,” Shōkichi had remarked that day too, but even setting aside their chance encounter on the street, their bond would have inevitably been fated to converge sooner or later.

A few days later, a call came from Kimiko (Mrs. Shōkichi) inviting him to a gathering, insisting he must come.
At that gathering, he became acquainted with the naniwa-bushi performer Seiseiken, Captain Hanamura, Engineer Mase, actor Sayotarō, factory owner Tominaga, the proprietor of the Hishagoya restaurant, and others.
The musician Saburō Funaki was the most inconspicuous one of them all.

From then on, he was summoned by Kimiko’s phone every two or three days.
The usual crowd had mostly assembled—those playing mahjong, those playing Go, those shuffling hanafuda cards, those engaged in fist games, those drinking sake.
Shōkichi Ikuta’s booming country dialect was the loudest noise in the room, yet anyone paying even slight attention would have realized he alone was the sole foreign traveler here—a man jarringly out of step with the gathering’s atmosphere.
The center of the gathering was Kimiko.
She was a former geisha, and it was only later that he realized about half of this group had been acquaintances from those days.

One evening, Taihei encountered Saburō Funaki in Ginza.
When he invited him to drink there, Saburō Funaki—usually quiet and seemingly timid—began speaking with unexpected provocation. Through roundabout yet skillful expressions laced with refined sarcasm, he suggested that someone as out of place as “you” ought to find a more suitable playground elsewhere.

“You may be a good person, and perhaps an artist beyond the reach of someone like me.”
“However, my art is nothing more than a means to keep body and soul together—my passion burns solely for crafting real-life dramas.”
“The costume for my life’s stage is that of a dandy—when I returned from France, the only things I bought were cosmetics.”
“Back then, I used to walk through Ginza with greasepaint on my face.”
“You’d laugh at a man like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yet I both despise and hate a world devoid of any cosmetics.”
“Even a single small word—I desperately want it to be spoken with cosmetics applied, I tell you.”

It was a condemnation and sarcasm directed at how Taihei’s character lacked cosmetic refinement more in spirit than appearance. Yet beneath his words lingered an emotional haze swirling around Kimiko—a mist of jealousy. With no conceit on his part deserving such envy, not even through rose-tinted lenses, Taihei could only conclude in disgust that this man must be a deviant wrestling phantom neural impulses in the pulverized depths of his will.

However, one night thereafter, Engineer Mase confronted Taihei—his heavy silences sometimes plunging the gathering into gloom, his coarse laughter and grandiose proclamations at other times reducing it to frivolity.
He forced his crude self upon others without a second thought for the group’s sensibilities.
"Don’t play the artist," he snapped angrily.
Though the words echoed Funaki’s criticisms—suggesting the two men likely vented their daily grievances about Taihei—Taihei recognized that beneath Mase’s sailor-like fury lay jealousy mirroring Funaki’s own.

Indeed, Taihei was summoned by Kimiko’s calls, but this was the household’s custom—it was likely the same for the others. Kimiko did not show Taihei any special favor. She did always seat him in the place of honor, but this was nothing more than consideration for his newcomer status and the natural consequence of Shōkichi consistently calling Taihei his foremost friend. Kimiko would call the others “You rabble,” while occasionally singling out Taihei with remarks like “this one here is pure”—words devoid of either malice or goodwill. Taken at face value, “pure” was little more than sarcasm for “spirit” or “refinement,” merely confirming Taihei’s boorishness and coarseness, and thus only elicited sardonic smirks from the others.

As for Taihei, there were few aspects of Kimiko’s charm that attracted him.
She was more beautiful than average, but hers was not a beauty that particularly caught the eye.
As one would expect of a former geisha, her demeanor and grooming were impeccable, but her intellect was crude and her nature coarse—a woman diametrically opposed to what Funaki called a “cosmeticized spirit.”
Her twenty-seven-year-old petite, agile body brimmed with a sensuality that provoked carnal desire, but by and large, she was a woman who could be summed up in a single word: ordinary.
Both internally and externally, Taihei found himself subjected to jealousy from Funaki and Mase without any justifiable reason, yet he neither dwelled deeply on it nor harbored much lingering resentment.

One evening, summoned by the usual telephone call, he went to find that Shōkichi had departed on a business trip of about ten days, leaving only Seiseiken and the Hishagoya proprietor in attendance.
Even in such a seemingly informal gathering, faction-like divisions had arisen, and if anything, Seiseiken and the Hishagoya proprietor had shown goodwill toward Taihei.
As the men grew pleasantly tipsy while saying things like “Since the others probably won’t come tonight, let’s have drinks just with those who get along,” and as Seiseiken growled through naniwa-bushi ballads and kiyomoto tunes, Funaki, Mase, and Hanamura came clattering in with disordered footsteps, tumbling tumultuously into the room.
They were heavily drunk.
The gathering descended into utter chaos—a disjointed revelry where singing voices clashed—when some minor provocation sent Mase storming up to Taihei as he bellowed, “Get out of here!”
The Hishagoya Proprietor, who had long detested Mase’s character, rose to his feet driven more by personal fury than sympathy for Taihei. “You’re one hell of a bore!” he roared with drunken bravado while swaying unsteadily. “What I can’t stand more than anything is your swaggering around!”
Hanamura restrained the similarly swaying Mase like an elder brother would. “Mr. Ochiai,” he said, “I like you.”
“I’ve lived as a sailor gazing at the sea—but you resemble the sea.”
“You’re good.”
“The sun rises from beside you and sinks away.”
“I do not know—it’s just vast and boundless.”
Just when it seemed a fight would erupt as Mase lunged at Hanamura, he instead clung to his shoulder and burst into tears.
Hanamura hoisted Mase up and declared they should perform the Mon Brave Homme sailor dance.
“In Hamburg or Marseille,” he proclaimed while supporting Mase’s weight, “wherever our feet trod cobblestones, liquor and women and dance revolved alongside the sun!” But when Mase slid back down, Hanamura began a solo dance with deft gestures and hip movements.
The banquet had disintegrated—each person clung to their own focal points while losing sight of others.
When Seiseiken came calling with a meaningful glance, Taihei followed him out to find Kimiko and the Hishagoya Proprietor in the entranceway. “Wait at Seiseiken’s place,” Kimiko whispered urgently. “I’ll come later.”
An intense force that had flung everything open surged across Kimiko’s eyes and faint whisper.
Dazed, Taihei lost his words in that instant and responded with his eyes—but already Kimiko’s figure had vanished.

Seiseiken brought out a large sake bottle, offering drinks in teacups while cooking okonomiyaki on the long hibachi and chanting gidayū ballads, but Taihei remained unsettled, his thoughts lingering on their exchanged glances.
When he recalled how his own eyes had responded instantly without a moment’s hesitation, the shallowness of his heart—which he hadn’t betrayed by even a gesture—being laid bare pained him, yet now he realized his heart had become single-mindedly waiting for Kimiko.
When he considered that Seiseiken couldn’t possibly be unaware of everything, he wanted to utter some pithy remark related to it to demonstrate his composure, but in reality, his mind merely spun idly in place.

He didn’t have to wait long.
Kimiko came up without waiting to be shown in.
She had changed into Western clothes, but with the same ease as if in her own home, she removed her overcoat and held her hands out to the hibachi.
“This is a remarkable overcoat,” Seiseiken exclaimed, but Kimiko pressed down on the okonomiyaki grilling over the hibachi with her finger and said, “Give this to me.”

The Hishagoya Proprietor’s departing figure was indifferent.
That had given Taihei a sense of composure, but when Seiseiken’s wife laid out their bedding and withdrew, and Kimiko began putting on her overcoat, Taihei became confused once more.
It happened at the same time.
Kimiko threw herself into his chest.
“I knew.”
“I knew!” she shouted.
It was likely taken to mean that she had known Taihei harbored feelings for her, but rather than questioning it, Taihei found himself possessed by a passion that felt undeniably real.
He was aware that bedding had been laid out beside him, but Kimiko paid it no heed.
Taihei remained conscious of Seiseiken’s remark about the remarkable overcoat, but Kimiko did not remove it, nor did she make even the slightest stiff movement that might betray awareness of it.
They considered nothing but love.

The next morning, the matter of Kimiko’s unremoved overcoat had become entwined in Taihei’s mind.
Yet the overcoat bore not a single blemish—no small wrinkles, nor had even a speck of dust settled upon it.
Taihei realized he had become possessed by Kimiko’s body.
And he realized that Kimiko’s body, enveloped in that overcoat, had become entwined in his mind.
More than seeing Kimiko’s face as though nothing had happened, discovering the overcoat similarly untouched felt uncanny—stirring within him a dark regret of carnal desire and love’s piercing fragility.

In that single night’s revelation, everything became clear to Taihei.
Funaki, Mase, Hanamura, Sayotarō, and Tominaga—all were men who had maintained relations with Kimiko in the past (or perhaps still did).
Only Seiseiken and the Hishagoya Proprietor were likely exceptions.
Taihei remembered how that night of carnal passion had remained nearly undisturbed by Shōkichi’s shadow, yet even now no profound remorse surfaced for betraying Shōkichi’s friendship.
More than anything, he felt a searing hostility toward the carnal appetites of Funaki, Mase, Sayotarō, and the rest.

“They all knew.”

“They all knew,” said Taihei.
It was not meant as reproach but rather to convey affection born from knowing everything—his face should have borne a gentle smile.
But Kimiko’s face clouded over and she averted her eyes.
When Kimiko raised her face again and fixed her gaze on Taihei, her eyes brimmed with a dull greasy luster that seemed single-mindedly intent on drawing everything into itself.
Taihei recalled how young children resolved on some course would sometimes fix others with precisely such a gaze.

“Shall we die?”

Her complexion turned deathly white, and her eyes opened ever wider, fixed upon Taihei’s face.

“Let us die.”

Taihei was perplexed. He wanted to explain in calm words that love must strive not for death but for life; that viewing death as purity was a mistake; that the very complexity and impurity of survival could themselves be pure—but Kimiko’s heart had become a single-minded thing that lost sight of anything beyond the whispered words, and since at least the tide of her emotions ran higher than Taihei’s, he suffered from feeling the futility of trying to spout water upward from his lower depths. While he thought the tide of emotions that toyed with death—betraying long reflection—was trivial, he still felt inferior for its shallowness and found himself growing angry. Kimiko suddenly averted her eyes.

When the two of them returned to Taihei’s apartment after wandering about for over a month, a letter from Shōkichi awaited them.
The letter asked Kimiko to return and requested Taihei to visit again as if nothing had happened.

“Die with me…”

Kimiko shouted again.
Her pure white face and the earnest eyes of a young child were once more fixed straight upon Taihei’s face.
Yet within that passion, somewhere, the unrestrained vitality had been lost.
In that month, the very passion binding them had become nothing more than a tattered emblem.

“Is it because you feel bad for Mr. Ikuta?”

“Ikuta is a truly good person.”
“Down to every last scrap of his innards, he’s pure through and through!”

Then Taihei’s complexion changed,

“There’s no such person!”

he shouted.
Hatred gleamed in those eyes.
Then Kimiko’s eyes too were directed at Taihei, filled with hatred.
Taihei felt a total rebellion against the measurement of human value arising from the depths of this animalistic woman’s carnal exhaustion, yet he couldn’t help but be aware that this fundamentally negated his love for Kimiko.
Even during caresses, they could now only meet each other’s gaze with the eyes of demons.

“I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“Go somewhere my eyes can’t reach—Manchuria or wherever—and just disappear.”

Eventually, Kimiko left those words behind and returned to Shōkichi.

★

From that day onward, Taihei's anguish began. How could he not have foreseen that losing Kimiko's body would bring such futile agony? When he remembered the late-night overcoat, his remorse turned into suffocating torment. Why had Kimiko started wearing that overcoat in the dead of night? Why hadn't she taken it off? The Kimiko who'd thrown herself at him had been like a raving madwoman—hollow and weeping. Each time he recalled her pure white flesh, it morphed into that overcoat; each time he pictured the overcoat, it became her pale body. Night after night found him sleepless, darkness thick with regret and anguish.

About ten days passed, and a letter arrived from Shōkichi, written without pretense to state that Kimiko was also waiting and he should come visit.
Taihei was moved by this magnanimous friendship, yet remained barely conscious of how profoundly abnormal such friendship was—how bizarre both Shōkichi’s lifestyle and character truly were.
He might conjure the faces of Funaki, Sayotarō, Hanamura, Mase, and Tominaga with chillingly-cold hatred, yet had scarcely ever lamented—with even a fraction of that intensity—the anguish of betraying Shōkichi’s friendship.
Not only did Taihei’s heart quite naturally dismiss Shōkichi, but he even found himself entertaining the thought that Shōkichi—knowing full well Kimiko’s temperament made her incapable of existing without a lover—had likely chosen Taihei in hopes that she would play with a man he preferred rather than become a plaything for undesirable men.
That thought felt too analytical and distasteful, but he had forgotten Shōkichi to such an extent that there was no need to dwell on such matters.
And when he read Shōkichi’s heartfelt letter—moved to tears by its generosity—he became absorbed in the thought of openly asking Shōkichi to formally take Kimiko as his own, yet never once considered Shōkichi’s anguished human suffering.

The thought of wanting to receive Kimiko from Shōkichi grew increasingly intense.
But when he thought about Kimiko’s own response rather than Shōkichi’s circumstances, it became despairing.
Taihei’s naive notions froze over each time he thought of Kimiko herself, and he despaired at the feeling of being eternally cast aside.

Taihei wandered like an invalid and visited Seiseiken.

Seiseiken didn’t breathe a word about past matters, merely saying, “Ms. Kimiko came yesterday too—around noon, wasn’t it? And she’d dropped by two or three times about a week ago as well.” Hearing this, he felt a thread of light streaming swiftly into his field of vision. She’s come to check on me, he thought, but affecting nonchalance,

“Did she have some business?”
“Who knows?”

From Seiseiken’s complexion, he could discern none of the faint emotions he had anticipated. He turned toward the kitchen lady and asked, “What business did that person have coming here again?” but upon realizing some ill-timed noise had blocked it from reaching the ma’am’s ears, he made no attempt to inquire again.

Snow began to fall. Since there was only one umbrella at Seiseiken’s house, he escorted him to the station with that umbrella, but Seiseiken’s bizarre figure—carrying two children on his back and wearing rain boots—drew the eyes of passersby. For an instant, a fleeting shadow of pity crossed his face, but Seiseiken wore an utterly troubled expression,

“That person is a good sort, but… she’s not someone you should get deeply involved with.”
“You’ve gotten haggard, haven’t you?”

Taihei could not answer.
Everything returned to darkness, and only empty spinning was felt.
He had at some point strayed from the umbrella and was walking through the snow, getting wet.

“Do you want to get soaked? Ah-ha-ha!”

In Seiseiken’s pupils too shone a small, damp-seeming kindness of virtuous affection, but those very things now abruptly seemed nothing but distant, unrelated matters from some far-off place.

One morning, Taihei visited Shōkichi under some compulsion as if pushed by an unseen force.
He could comprehend nothing but his deranged resolve—to meet Shōkichi and demand Kimiko—but when Shōkichi appeared with a booming student-like shout of “Oh! You actually came!”, those festering emotions dissipated like mist, and a placid smile surfaced on his face.

“How about a match? It’s been a while.”

They carried the Go board to the sunlit second-floor corridor and faced each other, but when Taihei saw the board, his heart dug in stubbornly, and a heavy stagnation spread again.
Shōkichi, not forgetting he was two moves behind, lined up two black stones, but Taihei stared at them awhile before picking them up and tossing them into Shōkichi’s stone container.
He was about to turn his resolved face toward Shōkichi when—at that very instant—Shōkichi’s arms shot across the board and both hands clamped down on his throat.

“You bastard!”

Shōkichi’s eyes were sanpaku—the whites visible above and below the iris.
And they were narrow eyes.
Those eyes, even then, still appeared small and pure white.
Taihei thought he had heard a stern voice commanding him not to resist, but in reality, he had remained conscious of the fact that Shōkichi’s hands were missing his vital points.
Shōkichi, in a completely inept manner, frantically thrust upward at Taihei’s throat.

“You bastard!
“You bastard!”
“You bastard!”

Taihei had fallen onto his back with Shōkichi lying atop him, and as something wet and hot streamed down his face, he thought it was Shōkichi's tears falling onto him—yet in truth, he himself was crying.
Shōkichi's eyes seemed moistened, but he did not weep.

After a while, the two of them faced each other across the Go board in their original positions.

“Shall we play Go?”

When Taihei spoke this time, a soft light came into Shōkichi’s eyes,

“Mr. Ochiai, I can’t bring myself to hate you.
I like you.
You’re the only one I still trust.
That’s what karma is.”

“Karma?”

“Heh heh heh.”

It was then that a single tear streamed from Shōkichi’s narrow eyes.
Taihei suppressed the urge to wail, his body trembling faintly.

When Taihei was leaving that day, Shōkichi kept repeating that he should visit again like they used to—Kimiko would be waiting.
Whenever he recalled those words (no, those words had ceaselessly echoed in his ears), two utterly opposing impulses stirred within him at once.
One was a resolve never to go again; the other was an inexorable force driving him to go.

Then, that very evening, Kimiko’s call came.
Taihei went out with the frantic haste of a bird taking wing toward happiness.

The malicious glances of those who had braced themselves were scarcely cast his way; Kimiko, just as before, offered him the seat in the alcove, and Mase—who had been occupying that spot—rose without the slightest reservation to personally urge Taihei to take it.
That morning when Taihei had come visiting, Kimiko—who vanished after one glance at his somber expression and did not reappear—now chattered and laughed with a carefree air as though nothing had transpired.
Taihei could not help but detest that single impertinent animalistic instinct nesting within that mediocre soul.
When it occurred to him that those calmly welcoming his return might have seen through how Kimiko’s heart would never again turn toward him, Taihei’s own heart seized—and the memory of Mase amiably yielding his seat surged back like the keenest blade slicing through him.

As Taihei rose to go to the toilet, stepped out onto the veranda, and sucked the dark coldness of the winter garden into his entire body, Hanamura—who had come down to the toilet—noticed him and,

“Mr. Ochiai.”
“You’re such a pure man.”
“I like you.”

Hanamura grasped his hand with bold frankness,

“Mr. Ochiai, that woman isn’t at all a proper match worthy of your pure soul.
“Don’t get hung up on that kind of thing.”
“It’s just a fling.”
“Right, Mr. Ochiai.”
“Life is like morning dew.”
“Right? There’s only play.”
“Isn’t that right?”
“We die as we play.”
“Come now, everyone! Oh—shall we bid farewell to Aisan? Or shall we sing? That’s all there is.”

Whispering such things, he started to leave but turned back, pretended to embrace Taihei with an arm gesture while making kissing sounds, then climbed the stairs laughing “Ha ha ha!” When Taihei returned to his seat, Hanamura—who had greeted him—said:

“Mr. Ochiai is pure-hearted.”
“He’s standing all forlorn on the veranda.”
“Moping on the veranda like that—you’d expect it from some old-fashioned geisha. But since it doesn’t feel out of place on Taihei Ochiai, I’ve fallen for him again—that’s how it goes.”

Then, in the corner, Funaki defiantly straightened up,

“He has an old-fashioned quality about him, you see.”
“But that isn’t what you’d call purity.”
“In other words, he’s a country bumpkin.”
“Wearing some stiff cotton kimono or what have you—there’s something there that contrasts with a geisha’s appearance, you see.”
“Isn’t it just that his countrified sincerity—burdened with a veneer of cultural refinement—creates this bizarre effect to hoodwink everyone?”

The animosity was decisive.
There was jealousy there too—not jealousy rising from below, but hatred from those positioned above, looking down with contempt.
And from that moment on, his attitude became the most proactive within the group.
He never spoke much, just as he had before.
Yet his wordless demeanor ceaselessly pursued Kimiko and whispered toward her.

One day, there were only Taihei, Funaki, and Kimiko in that room.

“Let’s go to Atami tomorrow.”

Funaki pressed Kimiko, his tone insistent.
He made no secret of disregarding Taihei’s presence.
But this proved too abrupt even for Kimiko—a flicker of confusion and anger crossed her features.

“What of your piano student?”
“Why not go with her instead?”

“Can’t stand that little chit.”
“Tell her ‘look right,’ she looks right.”
“Took her to a play once.”
“Try talking during the performance? She’d just stare at her lap and mumble replies.”
“With that mop of hair blocking her view anyway.”
“Young girls revolt me.”

Those words were brazen to a venomous degree.
Taihei wanted to turn his face away.

A few days later, there was again a strange opportunity for just the three of them.

“Let’s go to Atami tomorrow.”

Funaki said exactly the same thing.
It wasn’t the persistence of someone repeating the same thing for days—it was the persistence of someone who would keep repeating it even if it killed him, until they went to Atami.

Not long after that, Funaki and Kimiko actually disappeared.
It was several days later that he came across a newspaper article stating that the two had attempted suicide by poisoning and both survived.

★

Taihei slept every day.
He was awake, but he slept with his eyes open.
And he only went out for meals.
When it became too much, he would only go out for meals once a day.

One day, when he went out, he realized spring was nearly over. He had still believed it was winter’s continuation. All the trees overflowed with new greenery so dazzling it hurt the eyes.

“Well I’ll be...”

He inhaled the scent of new greenery as though choking.
His room still had the deep winter’s permanent futon laid out.

Then, in the same way as the abrupt early summer, Kimiko suddenly came to visit.
She was carrying one small trunk.

“Let me stay with you for a while.”

Kimiko knew what made men lose their minds in ecstasy.
The demonic eyes that coldly looked down on that man remained hidden.
Not a single spiritual thread connected them anymore; Taihei ravaged Kimiko’s body with desperate caresses, seeing himself as a male dog chasing after a bitch in heat.
Even Kimiko’s flesh felt alien now, yet Taihei dug through this estrangement like a stray dog scavenging through trash heaps—indifferent to her foreignness or those hidden demonic eyes.
There existed only this murky madness of carnal hunger.

Fearing Shōkichi might come calling, Kimiko brought a mover and moved to a different apartment.
From there, the Tama River was close.
Kimiko urged Taihei onward, and the two went fishing every day.

Kimiko's arms were bared.
Kimiko's skirt was short.
She wasn’t wearing stockings.
Kimiko’s fishing rod drew an arc against the blue sky—the pure white arm sharply slicing through the air, the pure white legs dangling over the water’s surface shifting languidly.
The two rode a boat every day.
Kimiko lay on her back and made Taihei row upstream, ever upstream.
Rowing upstream required extraordinary energy.
Taihei’s entire body ached from thirst and fatigue.
From the midst of pain and fatigue, the only thing that revived with striking vigor was carnal desire.
Kimiko folded her hands atop her hair and closed her eyes.
The pure white legs occasionally shifted direction dully.
Taihei’s eyes, gazing intently at that, turned the color of hatred from the suffocating intensity of carnal desire.
The disordered breath turned into moans with each bend of his upper body, leaking through teeth; sweat on his forehead stung his eyes.
The river wind was refreshing.

Taihei searched for small spots on Kimiko’s pure white legs and arms. Because Taihei had been plagued by lice for over a month. Unable to endure the nightly itching, he applied ointment thinking it was likely a skin disease. One day he found a louse. It was the first time he had ever seen a louse. When he inspected his shirts and underpants in direct sunlight, there were countless small lice that had been imperceptible in the shade. Eggs had also been laid. Crushing them became Taihei’s daily task. Taihei was cursing the lice. However, on Kimiko’s legs and arms, there were none of the spots Taihei had been searching for.

“Weren’t you bitten by lice? There are lice in my bed.”

“Lice don’t bother me.”

Kimiko opened her eyes slightly and answered calmly.

“I grew up in a house teeming with lice.”
“Both my body and my hair were teeming with lice.”
“When you pour hot water on them, they die right away.”
“I’ll do the laundry for you someday.”

Taihei saw “the cute woman.”
That evoked even more of her fruit-like carnal desire.

After mooring the boat to the bank, the two settled themselves in an upstream thicket.
Exhausted from rowing, Taihei’s entire body felt leaden and ached.
His palms had burst into blisters, blood and mud clumping together in blackened masses.
As he peeled off the skin of those blisters, wiped away the mud, and assessed the pain, the carnal desire masquerading as hatred and rage had already become unbearable.
He had come to feel no fear of being exposed under broad daylight, nor of the open riverbank.
When he looked around, he realized the broad riverbank was devoid of human figures, and the small thicket had formed a hedge shielding them from prying eyes.
Taihei pulled Kimiko close.
He was aware only of a fluttering lightness, like that of a scrap of cloth.
Kimiko seemed to have been waiting.
She was like another woman composed solely of tenderness and boundless passion.
Kimiko embraced Taihei with fierce strength, lay down without reservation on the black earth, bathed in the blue sky’s light, and closed her eyes.

Taihei fought with anxiety once again possessed by Kimiko’s sorcery. Just as with the overcoat she hadn’t removed on that winter midnight, under the Blue Sky Kimiko embraced Taihei with all her strength, then lay her body down upon the bare earth with a ferocity as though they were sinking together to the depths of the earth. The force of those strong arms remained on Taihei’s back like living handprints.

When had it been? There was a time when Hanamura spoke of carnal desire and Blue Skies. It was a reminiscence about frolicking with sixteen prostitutes on a field outside an Indian port—a reflection that nothing under a Blue Sky was as pure as carnal desire. Then Funaki interjected—carnal desire and Blue Sky? It’s just like electric lights and tempura—isn’t that rather commonplace? he said. Hanamura, Funaki, Mase, Sayotarō—even Shōkichi among them—would frequently take trips with Kimiko to places like Izu, Fuji Five Lakes, Kamikōchi, and Akakura, so it was told. Kimiko stood at their forefront, her short skirt fluttering in the wind, pure white arms and legs exposed as they walked clustered together under the Blue Sky. Then Hanamura, Funaki, Mase, and Sayotarō—each of them was violating Kimiko in broad daylight. The view of the Izu mountains stood out in sharp clarity under sunlight, while the lurid tableau of carnal desire in those shaded valleys burned into his eyes with vivid, violent hues. He could not wipe away that lurid tableau. Regret, fear, and hatred spread through him as he came to know that carnal desire’s price was nothing but eternal anguish.

By the next day, Taihei had already noticed himself hastening toward the Tama River, acutely conscious of carnal desire under the Blue Sky. When he saw Kimiko's arms and legs, he could perceive himself—like some mangy dog in heat—sniffing around them with abandon, and loathing would come surging forth.

He pushed resolutely upstream. The physical agony this demanded carried within it both welling rage and the approaching joy of carnal desire, breeding a peculiar frenzy.

It was an unfamiliar land.
There were no birds in flight.
Taihei found a dilapidated shed.
He wordlessly took Kimiko’s arm and walked resolutely toward the shed.
Taihei swept Kimiko into his arms.
Then Kimiko responded with even greater force than he had mustered, and through unexpected acts of tenderness, Taihei was driven to madness.
When they came to their senses, they were covered in dust.
Both Taihei’s limbs and Kimiko’s arms and legs became countless small wounds from the surrounding lumber and dead branches, blood seeping out.

The boat drifted down the river as though nothing had occurred.
Taihei only had to steer the rudder; he didn’t need to row much at all.
Kimiko lay on her back as if nothing had happened, both hands clasped over her forehead with eyes closed.
The skin, exposed to the sun, began to turn red.
Taihei realized he was shackled to that flesh and realized he couldn’t endure the pain of losing it, despairing at his own wretchedness.
Taihei denied and utterly despised every aspect of Kimiko except carnal desire.
He refused to acknowledge even a shred of pure affection or a shred of personality and made no attempt to drape their connection in veils of sorrow or melancholy.
He was merely a hungry ghost of carnal desire.

He already knew Kimiko would not propose a love suicide.
Taihei was possessed by an obsession with carnal desire, but he was not one to agree to a love suicide.
Not only did he refuse the demand for death, but in amplifying that refusal, he undoubtedly envisioned an absolute denial and contempt of personality.
Kimiko knew that.
Taihei was merely a beast fixated on flesh, ignoring personality, but Kimiko had detected how this monomania of carnal desire alone—by stripping away personality and idols—intensified into an absolute obsession of animalistic force.
That obsession would never die while life endured; she had discerned it was merely an insect clinging to the flesh, yielding to its power.

Taihei despaired at the wretchedness of being unable to die and the darkness of carnal desire; he anguished from dread of the unknown time stretching before his hatred and carnal lust.

But Kimiko left.
Leaving behind a small trunk.
"I'm going to visit a friend—I might not come back tonight," she said, leaving those words behind.
At that moment, he was struck by a fleeting unease, but could do nothing.
Three days passed, five days passed, ten days passed—Kimiko did not return.

★

Taihei, driven by an irresistible compulsion, went to visit Shōkichi.
The hope that perhaps Kimiko might be there was one thing, but seeing Shōkichi’s face contorted with the same anguish was at least another of his hopes.
Kimiko was not there either.

“Mr. Ikuta.”
“Why don’t we take a walk outside?”
“There are things I’d like to discuss while we walk, but…”

Shōkichi said he might as well go to work while he was at it, changed into Western clothes, and came out carrying a bag.
Heading out toward the wharf at Shibaura, Taihei laid bare the whole story of Kimiko having been with him.

“I came to visit you once after you moved there.”

Then, for a long while, Shōkichi walked in silence, shoulder to shoulder with him.

“Agh!”

A small, stifled groan escaped from Shōkichi’s mouth.
Shōkichi slowly brought one hand to his face.
When he felt as though something like a rod had pierced through his intestines and emerged, tears streamed violently down his face, and he dropped his bag.

Shōkichi lunged at Taihei like a madman.
He pressed down on Taihei’s throat and thrust upward again and again with both fists.

“You bastard!
You bastard!
You bastard!”

Taihei was pressed against the warehouse’s concrete and had his chin thrust upward by fists.
The pain nearly caused him to lose consciousness for a moment, but at that instant, in the radiant blue sky he glimpsed, he saw Kimiko’s pure white arms and legs.

Shōkichi released his grip, then supported his body in a posture that seemed to press against the warehouse’s concrete with both hands, remaining dazed for a while as he steadied his breath.
Taihei, while mentally replaying Kimiko’s body he had seen in the blue sky, continued to find it oddly refreshing that that flesh had already departed.

Taihei spent a little over a month gazing at the trunk.
Strangely, the lice were no longer there.
That fact sometimes felt strange to him.
Within the lice had dwelt a lovely woman.
She had said she’d do his laundry someday, but she never did any such washing.

Taihei thought he would return this trunk to Shōkichi. Because he felt Kimiko's eyes watching him—watching Taihei live out his days gazing at the trunk. When Kimiko came to retrieve the trunk and realized it had been delivered to Shōkichi, Taihei felt satisfaction as he imagined her miscalculation in that moment. Yet when he considered Kimiko might rage over this, he suffered from the conflict between his anxiety and satisfaction.

Taihei visited Shōkichi, carrying the trunk.

“How about it? Why don’t we go try a hot spring or something?”

“How about it? How about we go to a hot spring or something?”

“No matter where we go, it’d be the same thing... We—”

“Ha ha ha.”

Shōkichi took out several dolls from the cupboard of the chest.
They were cloth dolls stuffed with cotton, all female forms, with rouge applied to their cheeks and large eyes that sat glossy yet stagnant. Their bellies, legs, and arms were unnervingly flabby and sensual, and when you bent their arms or twisted their waists to look at them, they began to look like living beings.

“These are all Kimiko’s creations.”

“Who knew she had such artistry?”

They were indeed remarkable works. They somehow seemed to resemble Kimiko. Every doll embodied carnal desire of the flesh rather than intellect. There was a clinging persistence and eyes fixated on carnal lust.

“Take whichever you like.”
“They might not make suitable room decorations, though.”
“There’s something oddly suffocating about them, don’t you think?”

said Shōkichi.

But Taihei returned without taking the dolls.
Until he bid farewell, he had been wavering whether to take one home after all, but once he stepped outside, that hesitation vanished.
Hatred toward vulgar souls intensified.
Low carnal desires crawling through darkness and denial of the woman who lacked anything uplifting overflowed, and a refreshment that had escaped that darkness was felt filling the air.
Those dolls were also overflowing with a peculiar carnal sensuality, and yet somehow resembled Kimiko, Taihei mused, lost in reminiscence tinged with ease.
But neither the overcoat of winter midnight nor the passion beneath blue skies could be found anymore.
If it weren’t for that overcoat and that blue sky—and when he came to realize that neither that overcoat nor that blue sky would ever return, a sharp pain shattered his entire body, and Taihei knew only a thousand-foot sigh.