Pathway to Japanese Literature

I.

By the garden pond where many fallen leaves floated, Taruno was sunbathing, leaning against a rattan chair.
He was gazing up at the sky at length, seemingly lost in some pleasant memory with no concern for his surroundings—or perhaps he had dozed off without realizing it, for even when the thick book that had been lying face-down on his lap slid to his feet with a thud, he made no move to retrieve it.
The book was caught by a small azalea bush, nearly about to fall onto the water’s surface.
And there it lay—the page for "The Reality of Abstract Concepts," marked here and there with a passionate reader’s red pencil underlines of resonance—its pages fluttered by a faint breeze.

Until just recently, large koi had swum leisurely about, but since Taruno had sold off every last one, the garden pond lay quiet as a playground in the dead of winter—stripped of vitality. Normally, red, white, and blue koi would swim about in processional formations, leaving the pond bed perpetually shrouded in a hazy mist—but now, with every corner transparently clear, even the sunken steamship beneath algae shadows and ceramic fragments stood sharply visible. Though this water, drawn from rivulets gushing through cliffside dwarf bamboo and calmly pooled in the garden pond, had never cleared enough after clouding to easily distinguish fish shapes before, seeing such crystal-clear liquid brimming here felt unnervingly hollow and artificial.

Taruno was not leaning against the chair to look at the garden or anything else. He remained utterly indifferent—whether there were koi or not, whether the water sat so emptily clear. "Maybe I should sell off some of those garden trees next—that stone lantern would be just as well gone. Or perhaps that's the way to go—" Though he had been sitting in his study reading, such thoughts alone preoccupied him until he carried his book out to inspect the garden's edge anew—and while contemplating the pleasure of selling such things, slipped into a thoroughly pleasant state and fell fast asleep. He lay with his mouth agape, gazing up at the void. With his toes propped against the right bank, whatever kept him balanced there—should he writhe in some illusory fit—would surely send him tumbling into the water instantly.

“So in other words, we’ve been blithely working as thieves every single day, haven’t we?”

“When the guard came to warn us, it was actually him who turned red.”

“Well of course he’d turn red—if someone saw bandits clattering around working up a storm in broad daylight, women mixed in too—”

Hayashi—the younger brother of Taruno’s friend—along with Taruno’s wife, her brother Shōkichi, and Kayoko (a friend of the wife), returned with red faces, each carrying mountaineering bags stuffed full of mandarins and branches still heavy with fruit in both hands.

“But not even knowing your own field was sold off long ago—that doesn’t make any sort of excuse.”

“Then should we pay up?—But Sis, you were the one who could say such brazen things with a straight face! I mean, when you went ‘Yes, let’s take them!’ back then, what did we do?”

“Just for this year, wouldn’t it be all right if we took as much as we can?”

“I don’t know if this is safe—my legs are still trembling so much I can’t stand it.”

“Shō-chan, you’re hopelessly spineless again! I was shocked—trying to slink off and run away like that. How disgraceful!”
“And what’s more, I thought there was no one as unreliable as you.”

“But it’s not just today! We’ve no idea how many mandarins we’ve taken from that place till now. Last month alone, didn’t we sell off such a huge amount? No matter how kind this new owner claims to be, if he finds out we’ve been selling them…”
Only Shōkichi remained violently agitated.

“Then you’re just as guilty.”

“Is that really true, Sis? If that’s the case, then I’ll run off to Tokyo today—”

“Admittedly, that guard probably doesn’t know the details—but if we barge into the field like this, even our own people would get called out for something.”

“I’m unfazed—even if I run out of food from now on, mandarins, potatoes, whatever I can grab. I’ve got it all figured out, see? Let me tell you now—I’ve been barging into places I thought were someone else’s property all along and plundering as I pleased.”

“What if it was actually your own family’s field all along?”
“Someone who’s admired horse bandits before really is different, aren’t they?”

“Whenever I—” Hayashi continued with artificially bolstered bravado.
“There’s no afternoon snack today!”
“Or when you try to boil beef but there’s no vegetables!”
“On days like that—‘Wait a moment!’ I’d probably head out—not to buy those things, mind you. Our summer desserts… watermelons, peaches, muskmelons—”

“Well then, come back when next summer rolls around—we’ve no need for you in winter, so off you go.”

“Tch, you’re sayin’ some harsh stuff there. A customer this good doesn’t come around twice! I’m a master angler as you’ve seen, and if I head out with my air rifle, I’ll come back loaded with mountain goods in no time… This isn’t a joke—I’m dead serious I could support a family of four or five right here in this village as things stand. Just figure out rice and booze, and hey—sell some fish, mandarins, or birds… We could even start up that barter system thing.”

Hayashi cut off his words and tilted his head as if truly beginning to indulge in such fantasies.
“It’d be nice if I could get hired as a mandarin carrier.”

“But what kind of face would Brother make if he found out about this?”
Shōkichi was alone restlessly fretting over the mandarin orchard.
“Just the other day Brother pointed at that mountain and said ‘As long as that’s there—’ As long as that’s there we can all laze around like this… Tsk!”

“And yet he can’t say a single word to Mother or Mr. G.”
“What a terrible person that Mother is! She’s turned everything in town into money, and now even here—and all under Taruno’s name! The court enforcement officers come, the auction notices arrive!”
“He’s pretending not to know about any of it.”

“Didn’t he say he left everything in town to Mr. G and Mother?”

“He just couldn’t be bothered and abandoned it all—with collateral in place, there’s no asking or being asked! Just when things from Father were finally getting settled, they go and drag Taruno into some unrelated trouble—”

“He came here saying he couldn’t show his face in town—but if he finds out about this too, he’ll start dreading seeing people even here.”

“If it were me, I’d beat the crap out of that G bastard,” Hayashi spat.
Hayashi’s circumstances differed from Taruno’s—he had left school due to discord with his parents and come intending to consult Taruno about employment, but without even broaching the subject, it became clear Taruno lacked any such capability, so he drifted through days of aimless leisure.

Before long, things like what Hayashi had jokingly boasted about earlier—things that only Hayashi could do—somehow kept happening.

They sat down on the edge of the veranda, peeling mandarins, and sank into talk of their foolish way of life.

“A chicken coop’s been built on the path to the mandarin orchard—apparently Mr. G put that up.”

“I know how to catch chickens without making a single sound.”

Taruno was supposed to live in the town across the river where his mother resided, but he detested seeing her or Mr. G, or being recognized by townspeople there as their son. Instead, he had intended to live in this village where his own mandarin orchard could serve as his means of support.
After reading his mother’s letter in the capital about being unable to send tuition and such—Taruno was told, “Become independent there!”
Without grasping the implied meaning of his mother’s words, he had moved here the day after reading the letter.
Taruno knew how his name was being used in town—where the heavy-drinking Mr. G wandered about with the golden-chain-sealed stamp that had once belonged to his late father and now acted in place of Taruno’s own will, stamping documents with loud thuds—but he had never imagined such machinations would extend to the village’s mandarin orchards and vegetable fields.
Taruno felt such a loathsome taint toward anything from the town that he could remain indifferent to G’s actions—but suddenly: court enforcement officer!
Seizure!
Auction!
When he heard words like these—not out of fear of losing possessions, but simply from sensing the other party’s unrelenting aggression—his mind would grow distant.
He found arguments nerve-wrackingly unpleasant.
At the same time, he felt both evil and fear toward the fact that he—a bold debtor—could be so ignorant and possess such a carefree nerve.
If I were to carelessly walk around town, when and from where might some enforcer of rightful claims appear to seize me without a word?
When he thought this, he actually felt invigorated; but the moment he imagined the figures of his mother and her associates surfacing before him, he was assaulted by a sinister shame and indescribable fear, unable to keep his eyes from lowering.
If it had been an event during his absence—even if some Herculean thief had broken in and carried off the entire house—he wouldn’t have cared. But Taruno couldn’t bear to witness the ugly “reason”: mother and child maintaining oblivious expressions toward their respective actions, the child lacking any tongue to speak.

He was of a disposition to let anything settle itself so long as he didn’t have to witness it—and even in the foulest atmospheres, he often found himself reluctantly compromising despite himself, simply because he couldn’t bear to see the other person’s face grow earnestly defensive over nothing more than his own attitude.
The mere thought of adults sitting face-to-face—each asserting materialistic claims born of self-interest while locked in mutual hostility—was enough to send cold sweat coursing down his back.
It wasn’t that he scorned people’s material desires; rather, he found terrifying—and excruciatingly awkward—that moment when people confronted each other, regardless of reason, and an inept tension crackled between them.

When Taruno saw Mr. G—who would panic and veer onto side paths upon nearly encountering him in town (though this wasn’t unique to G)—he felt a painful resonance with the man even as his entire body burned with shame, leaving him unable to remain. He knew of G’s timidity and decent aspects.
He had thought: Mr. G was the one being deceived by my mother!
Mr. G—spurned by his own deceased father and endlessly antagonized by the children—was precisely the one burdened with this preposterous role that betrayed his true nature!
There were times he had thought this.
He believed this mother—who hid behind “womanly” fragility to escape her husband’s wrath, wielded “motherhood” to silence her children’s voices, and vainly sought to cloak their hearts with “melancholia’s” wings—stood alone as the true sinner.

“Long time no see, ha ha ha… Hmm?”
“Where to!”
“Well, that’s fine—a walk?”
“All by yourself—well, occasionally keeping company—”

When Taruno abruptly encountered Mr.G, he—with such eloquence that he wouldn’t let Taruno get a word in—charmed all by himself, like someone chattering away at a telephone receiver.
Mr.G’s conduct didn’t stem from any particular favor toward Taruno—he simply possessed an innately considerate and genuinely kind nature toward everyone.

“Well, a drink! Just joking, well, well…”

When invited by Mr. G in this manner, despite having come out with a certain resolve, Taruno found himself vaguely sensing an uncanny peace and ended up raising a cup alongside him.

“What do you think—isn’t this quiet countryside better suited for study than Tokyo? Hmm… Ever since returning here, your complexion has improved remarkably—truly a healthy color. Must be the better circulation, no?”
“Well, nourish your vitality in this wonderfully fresh air—health comes first—”

“Living in the countryside makes one’s mood grow so… lethargic somehow,” Taruno found himself saying—words he didn’t truly feel.

“There there, that’s precisely what’s commendable! If you lot—if you—get bogged down in worldly affairs or meddle with financial calculations, your crops will naturally turn out poorly, I daresay—yes.”

“Of course that’s probably how it is.”

“However, there are times when you must search—such things also become necessary depending on the occasion, I suppose.”

“How should I know?”

“Someone from the mandarin orchard showing up in town at this hour? Suspicious! Gotcha! Gotcha! Now confess properly,” Mr. G joked around, making a “Fool” gesture.
He had always taken on the role of enlivening gatherings at drinking occasions.
When drinking with Mr. G, one usually ended up being laughed at—when it came to handling women’s moods, he was truly skilled—or so Taruno’s deceased father had remarked. But Taruno found nothing amusing about that G.
But Taruno’s mother had liked being praised to her face and forcing others to exalt her, adopting a haughty expression.
Mr. G was exactly like her servant.
To preserve her own dignity, she did not even consider her own ruin.
Unaware that Taruno was frowning while thinking about his mother, Mr. G continued.

“Why don’t we try going fishing soon? I’ll invite all of you!”
“Do you dislike it?”
“But do try experiencing that feeling just once—you’ll surely come to like it.”
“First off, the scenery around there is magnificent—mountains, forests, wide riverbanks—just like an old travel painting. Sitting on a gabion to eat your lunch—now that’s pure indulgence.”
“It really lets your mind rest, eh?”

“Is the scenery really that good?”

“You paint as well, don’t you?”
“Before the earthquake, when I saw the oil painting of a boat hanging in your room and heard that you had painted it, I was utterly astonished—truly impressed!”

“Now I feel somewhat more confident I could paint better. Though when it comes to what people call ‘good scenery’—I’ve little desire to paint that sort of thing,” said Taruno, his mood having shifted into an uncharacteristically buoyant state of mind. Seemingly lost in haughty thoughts while gazing absently upward, he quietly raised his cup.

“For commemoration’s sake, won’t you paint me something?”

“Right away?”

“No, thank you. I wouldn’t presume to rush you—just whenever the mood strikes… please.”

“I can start right away if you like.”
“There’s one place in the village I’ve had my eye on for painting—this’ll be quite the masterpiece, you know.”

“No, thank you—let’s take our time with that request. Anyway, I must say I envy your line of work. You get to delve solely into your own ideas without even glancing at the world’s ugliness. How fortunate.”
“In my view, the life of an artist ultimately amounts to the Stoic school—what do you think? Hah…!”

“…………”

“Someone like me never laughs except when drinking—the only time I feel like my mind returns to itself is when I go fishing.”
“I’ve always got this abacus in my head, and the damn thing just keeps clattering away nonstop.”

“That’s rough.—I can’t handle this much liquor anymore—it’s too much. I’m heading home.”

“Come on now—how about letting me hear a song? When I passed by your place once, I heard some rousing tunes blaring even in broad daylight.”
“Come on now.”

“That’s probably Shō-chan and the others—they’re café-going students, so they seem to know all sorts of songs, but I—”

“Hah! Hah! No need to immediately put on a serious face and start making excuses…”

Taruno caught a glimpse of the “Taruno” seal glinting on the gold chain tangled in Mr. G’s obi—there was a matter he needed to discuss regarding it—but now he abruptly steeled himself and—

“Since that’s supposedly my clock, give it back”—but he couldn’t bring himself to voice such a serious demand.
If he trampled through the fields at his leisure, acting as if they were his own, it would leave the guard flushing with anger.

II

The sound of fireworks woke Taruno.

Today was another fine day, then!
What kind of event could there be today?— Taruno fearfully muttered to himself while smoking in bed.
The white curtain before his eyes, soaked with sunlight, had turned an eggshell hue.
Because the sun was slanting, the camellia branch in the garden cast a clear shadow in the corner of the window curtain.
And the birdcage hanging on a cane was half-visible, with the bird’s shadow disappearing and reappearing.

Taruno called for his wife to open the window curtain and let in the morning air, but there wasn’t a single human voice around.
He turned off the lamp by his pillow but lacked the energy to rise.
He had been dreaming of dancing wildly hand-in-hand with a One-Eyed Imp and grappling with a humanoid beast, but the continuation of that dream still projected terrifyingly onto the “daylight screen” before his eyes.
His chest was pounding as if struck by a hammer.

He became sad and sang out loud.
And then his eyes snapped open sharply.
It seemed that thinking he’d turned off the lamp had been a dream—there it still was by his pillow, properly lit.
The house was silent.
There was no one.

On days when fireworks sounded，every house in the village was like this.
The villagers had all gone out to the amusement park on the other side of the hill.

――It was a village that could save up a year’s worth during mandarin season’s peak.
And until the next mandarin harvest, it became a village of leisure.
This year brought not only a rare bumper crop of mandarins but also an even greater success in winter fisheries.
Taruno had glimpsed this through the small film Shōkichi brought to his window curtain—each evening saw fishing boats returning from offshore hoisting full regalia of bountiful catches and parading home with majestic pomp.
Then countless launches that had lain in wait within the harbor churned waves like torpedo boats, shuttling between ships and shore until beaches lay buried beneath mountains of tuna.
Next came fierce warriors brandishing crescent blades—raging like Asura as they slit fish bellies, packed ice chunks, and with dazzling speed dismantled glistening mounds—a spectacle so breathtaking it stole observers’ breath.
Finally a freight train laden with spoils blasted an emergency siren’s deafening wail and departed the village station through cheers.

Taruno’s house stood midway up a hill approaching the amusement park—a solitary home nearly two kilometers removed from the village, making interactions with fellow villagers rare and strained—yet the village’s spectacular prosperity seemed to extend its luminous wings and knock right at his doorstep.
As long as the weather held, the amusement park hosted various events daily, while the village itself was deep in its annual spring festival season.
Hayashi and Shōkichi, lured by the village’s diversions, rarely visited the house.
Standing at the gate and gazing out at the distant village, only that one district appeared veiled in a haze sweet with joy, the breath of the heavens lingering in the clouds.
Along the main street at the village outskirts, makeshift eateries had proliferated, strung high with international flags and lined with red lanterns as they played rustic music to beckon passersby.

In this vicinity, the only one with a gaunt deer-like face was Taruno.
By nature he had been a philandering hedonist, so this self-imposed seclusion felt like prison torment; yet no matter how much he resolved to change, he couldn't bring himself to face others in daylight.
He had spent the entire long winter as a creature of shadows.
The very air around him felt utterly removed from personal woes—if only we could all be sound Epicureans, how happy we'd be!
For Taruno—who merely continued his reluctant seclusion without academic rigor or ascetic discipline—the brisk daily bustle grew ever more vibrant like whispered temptation. Oh how he wanted to go out and play!
Oh how I want to see the festival!
It was these envious thoughts that scorched his being.
He could no longer endure fighting this temptation, but when he thought of his mother and Mr.G and himself, dreadful guilt seized him by the collar—even clinging to gateposts tore his arms away; even grabbing stones to thrash saw him swiftly bound like a cornered villain and dragged back to prison.—In dim curtained darkness he writhed grotesquely like a madman.
Seized by the collar and shoved, tripped to collapse flat—all for *A Life Unworthy of Pessimism*, the creed he rigidly upheld...Whenever he saw his mirror-face—now a theatrical pessimist's visage like some bearded warrior from lurid plays—he'd release a thick sigh for no reason.

And he, lacking prudence and losing judgment, when he could no longer remain lying down, knelt beneath the altar in the corner of the room and prostrated himself indefinitely.

In the corner of this room stood a closet-like cabinet with cloth-covered sliding doors—apparently built by the house’s original owner who had likely intended it for use as a Buddhist altar once residents moved in.
Taruno had initially used it as a bookshelf, but after having a dream one day, he inexplicably felt this was sacrilegious and cleared away the volumes.
Finding its barrenness disquieting, he replaced them with the Pax—a relief carving of the Virgin Mary—that had been sitting atop his desk.
This had been given to him years earlier by F, an American woman he’d parted from.
Taruno—who had secured his father’s approval—would have married F had his mother not opposed it.

And so, though it could hardly be called a proper altar, he—having forced himself through prolonged seclusion without any mental release until he could no longer bear the loneliness—grew increasingly superstitious, often kneeling before the dais to secretly entreat divine judgment.

He would light a lamp at the altar and hold what was called the "Lamp Festival," an ancient festival said to have been observed in a distant land.
He would select moonlit evenings and pray beneath the lamp until morning light streamed in.
——We, whether under moonlight, bathed in sunlight, or even in darkness, possess things we cannot speak of—we possess things we cannot speak of except beneath the small lamp we ourselves have lit——it was said that the Lamp Festival originated from the prayers of youths in centuries BC who had known this very sentiment.

There were such tranquil nights, but there were also storm-wracked nights when he became Athens’ unfilial child, attempting to beg Apollo for a cruel sword.
He wanted both his body and his thoughts to depart far from this land, to belong to events conducted under ancient stars.
He had an irrepressible passion.

As Taruno lay with the lamp extinguished, gazing at the window curtain, the distant clatter of hooves reached him—since the garden’s end sloped into a stone-studded embankment that blocked his view of the road below, he cupped a hand behind his ear to better catch the commotion on the thoroughfare.
It was, as usual, a procession of carriages and horses heading to the upper amusement park, signaled by fireworks.

No human voices could be heard, but the horses’ neighs alone echoed with terrifying grandeur.
Car horns blared, carriage wheels rumbled, and when he strained his ears further, the ceaseless ringing of countless bicycle bells continued as if a throng of pilgrims were pressing in.
And as the fireworks shattered across the sky, a thunderous “Waaah!” of cheers erupted from all directions like ambushing troops.

Taruno involuntarily—
"That looks fun," he sighed with longing.
He raised himself up in bed and gazed at the beautiful sky through a gap in the window curtain.
The bright blue sky stretched clear without a single cloud.
A paper doll balloon released by recent fireworks fluttered seaward.
Not even a breeze stirred.
As long as fair weather continued, horse races had been running daily since last week—today likely saw some grand festival alongside them too, judging by the massive crowds.
To these races went Hayashi and Shōkichi and their wives—not for amusement but with pale-faced intensity.

Before long came a music ensemble approaching while resoundingly playing a march.—That must be it!
So today was finally their day to take center stage!
Thinking this, Taruno sat upright and listened with nervous intensity.

“Hmm—they’ve grown rather skilled!”
“They do seem tense enough—but their breath control holds steady and their stamina remains undiminished! What magnificent vigor—to keep playing unfazed even while climbing slopes after such a journey,” Taruno marveled privately.
This was the village’s first rustic band—organized by reservists from the veterans’ association and volunteers of the youth league.
It had been last autumn—a time when Taruno hadn’t yet become so reclusive within village life.
A youth representative—having heard cheerful trumpet sounds echoing from Taruno’s room each dawn and dusk—came seeking instruction on wind instruments.
Since their sole ambition was mastering military marches—Taruno proudly demonstrated exemplary techniques.
A massive taiko drum was hauled into his room.
Though he’d never struck one before—matching military cadences proved simple enough—so he took up drumsticks instead of a baton—beating rhythm while guiding their trumpet drills.
Shōkichi—adept at harmonica—and Kayoko—who’d taken up mandolin—joined in too—and thus night after night—an uncanny grand ensemble persisted in Taruno’s chamber—a wondrous cacophony defying earthly logic.

When Taruno imagined the band members standing on the street for the first time, his chest tightened sharply, and an unnatural pulse surged up to his throat.……He had strictly warned them to avoid straying from the score with ticklish melodic flourishes, but now, in a state of total absorption where they could no longer resist a touch of flair, the clarinet unexpectedly added goat-like comical cries between phrases, while the cornet—deliberately blared sky-high—ingeniously cut its breath at the peak of a high note, letting the sound scatter like falling petals to caress people’s hearts with cheeky playfulness. Yet far from grating, this instead seemed to lighten the steps of passersby.
The large drum alone maintained an overly earnest rhythm, which rather felt impatient, but the drummer continued to bolster the momentum with solemn force, skillfully providing precise restraint to the others’ slightly wayward lighter rhythms while harmonizing them.
……Everything dissolved into the serene morning light, as though defying all reason.

The band was performing their signature piece “Spring in Full Bloom!”—a song most deeply intertwined with memories of Taruno, one they had rehearsed through practice after practice until they could play it with full confidence.
The voices of children joyously swarming around them in a great chorus enveloped Taruno’s entire body like rain.—“Spring in full bloom, flowers ablaze—from between clouds fragrant with purple—”

Taruno caught the wind in his lungs and burst from the room.
He streaked across the garden, scrambling rabbit-like up the bamboo-choked embankment until he reached Kōshindō Hall’s rear.
From that vantage point, the thoroughfare stretched straight below—a gentle slope unfurling from the village.
Directly beneath his gaze lay the red-earth path wedged between cliffs that climbed toward the hilltop amusement park.
He pressed against the precipice edge, sinking into grass cover to peer downward.
The band had already crested the hill and begun circling to the far side, their faint echoes retreating into dissolution.

But the thoroughfare was choked with a tremendous crowd.
The villagers had mostly passed through already, and those now streaming in consisted largely of strangers to Taruno—people who had journeyed from distant suburbs on excursions. Yet when he looked carefully, scattered here and there appeared faces of townsfolk he recognized.
Each time, Taruno felt an electric shock course through him and jerked his head back like a tortoise retreating into its shell.

The guard of the mandarin orange orchard passed by, swinging a cane while wearing a new suit today.
He himself was unaware, but the stockbroker’s clerk—who was forcing him to vacate this residence without argument by thrusting forth a document bearing his own seal beneath his own name—sped away in an automobile flanked by geisha on either side.

“This matter won’t be settled without meeting the principal himself.”
“Meeting him won’t change a thing!”
“Nothing would come of nothing!”
“Anyway, you’ve surely set the date for leaving to Tokyo by now?”
“Who commissioned you to do this?”

Hayashi answered indignantly.

"Let me tell you—it's to Mr. Taruno's mother."

"Aki-chan, stop it."
Shōkichi interrupted Hayashi.
Hayashi made a fearsome face.

And with a shout of “Just you wait!”, the clerk hurried back.
The clerk was G’s drinking companion.

“Mother! When I say that, I become unable to say anything—Mother herself knows this. That man used to be employed by my father, but now it seems he’s taken Mother as his master. During the earthquake, Mother even joined forces with G to try to drive out Father—when I think of that, it makes me furious.”

“…………”

He wasn’t scared, but Taruno couldn’t bring himself to look at the clerk’s face as he uttered the word “mother.”

He glimpsed the goateed court enforcement officer and gold-rimmed-glasses-wearing bank clerk—who occasionally visited Taruno regarding auction notices—as they passed beneath Taruno’s house, momentarily paused to point at something while exchanging nods, then moved on.
The bank clerk was red-faced.

The bank clerk and Taruno had once had such a conversation.

“Even if it’s called an auction—since my address is Shinmachi if it’s not held here—they shouldn’t need to bring the notices over!”
“There’s no use opening them anyway—look how they’ve piled up like this.”

“As a bank, we truly feel terribly sorry for you, but―”

“Apparently they’re paying the bank’s interest, so I’m sorting out other things.”
“Well, of course there’s no one from my family in Shinmachi—that’s out of the question—but neighboring Aomachi…”

“Naturally that’s so, but as a bank we can’t intervene to that extent.”

“What do you mean by that?”
“Aomachi is Mother.”
“That she herself doesn’t know—I’m ashamed.”
“The bank has entangled itself with some outrageous character, hasn’t it?”
“I want to be arrested as a swindler—”

“Now now—please don’t let your emotions run away with you.”
“I heard from Aomachi that you’ll be going to Tokyo soon—in which case this place here is already unnecessary anyway...”

“I don’t need anything—I’m the one who feels terrible for you all.”
Taruno felt goodwill toward this bank clerk.

Aomachi!
At such moments when he inadvertently let slip a pitying expression toward Taruno, Taruno found himself unable to meet his gaze.

The court enforcement officer wasn’t given to emotional displays, yet despite his beard—which seemed at odds with his nature—he remained a gentle and courteous man. Even during visits, he would only present the writ in a hushed voice, almost furtively.
He kept exchanging pleasantries with the wife.

“I’ve had enough of this, again!”

“Ah, my legs are tired.”
“Having to walk here every time—it’s unbearable.”

The wife and the court enforcement officer had become acquainted.

“You went to Shiomizu last Sunday, didn’t you?”

“Where did you see me?”

“When I went to Shinmachi yesterday to pick up a letter, I met your mother on the way and heard about it.”

“Ah—that’s right—we met at Shiomizu.”

“With Mother?”

“Yes…”

The koto teacher—Mother’s longtime friend who knew every recent detail of Taruno’s household—approached accompanied by beautiful girls. She turned toward his gate and whispered something to her companion.
Girl A made an appalled face as if exclaiming “Oh!”, Girl B flushed red and turned away her face, while Girl C gaped mockingly.
Girl B was the sister of Taruno’s friend who often visited them.—Taruno’s vision blurred at Mother’s hypocrite-like expression as she briskly drove her carriage away.
Beside Mother sat Mr.G—cigar in mouth—with his overcoat collar open and leaning back.
They passed through Taruno’s gate without once glancing at his house.

Taruno could no longer bear to look at the crowd there—on top of everything else. Not even ten minutes had passed since he began watching, yet faces of acquaintances kept appearing in great numbers. On the newly cut red dirt road where cliffs on both banks jutted up with fault surfaces as vividly red as a model diagram, the intensely yellowish sunlight poured down so fiercely it evoked a tropical midday. From the start Taruno had been squinting against the glare, brows furrowed, when abruptly the light began swirling violently into vortices. In an instant, shapes blurred as though an elephant were sinking into smoke, and chaos descended like colored glass shattering utterly into pieces—Taruno, thrown into a boiling cauldron of disgrace, collapsed supine into lush grass brimming with serene light, still gripping the telescope in his clenched hand.

III

The cuckoo clock hanging in Taruno’s room struck noon.
Then, around the same time, the bonging clock in the tea room rang eight o’clock.
—In the tea room lay Hayashi face up, legs raised as if mid-handstand against a pillar,

"What time is it really?" he said.

"Probably around ten o'clock."

Taruno’s wife was sitting by the window, knitting.

“Why don’t you stop this bonging clock? Or if not this one, then that other one over there—they’re both wrong… Once you start paying attention, your whole sense of time gets completely warped!”
Shōkichi muttered as if talking to himself, sitting cross-legged before the brazier and blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

“Even though he can pull chains while lying down—should’ve stopped that other one instead—but Brother just had to go yanking this one.”

The cuckoo clock gained over an hour each night, while the bonging clock lost nearly an hour.
The clocks had often become their topic of conversation, but here there was no need for exact timekeeping, and the village seemed to lack any clock repair shop.
As his wife had noted, Taruno remained perpetually idle—so he would often lie there extending his arm to pull the chain.
But since they never adjusted it, the clunk-clunk of the perpetually fast cuckoo clock announcing the hour might have been racing around the globe at a sprint, meeting clock after clock in city after city—

“Even that one would keep accurate time for about half a day if you set it once, generally—”
“So I…”
As the wife tried to continue,

“The other night, I had a terrible time with him,” Shōkichi recounted resentfully, glancing up at the pillar clock.
His sister had gone out to Tokyo and was away; Hayashi these days was often craving alcohol and hadn’t returned from the village izakaya that evening either.
The three of them slept in the sitting room while Taruno, having locked himself inside his adjacent room from within, would occasionally mutter something under his breath as he lived perpetually alone.
When Shōkichi suddenly awoke, he found being alone unbearably lonely.
In the neighboring room, Taruno seemed awake—his usual muttering would occasionally shift into incomprehensible songs before dissolving into muffled chuckles.
Shōkichi felt deeply unnerved.
Though too timid to walk alone at night, when the pillar clock struck ten he resolved to venture outside.
He had resolved to go meet Hayashi.

As he walked down the moonlit street swinging a walking stick without drawing anyone’s notice, he began to feel something odd about the brightness—and before he could make sense of it, the light wasn’t moonlight at all, but soon the pale dawn was breaking!
I was sure it had been nine or ten in the evening—and yet—

“Once you understand what happened, it’s nothing—but at the time, it was downright eerie, I—” Shōkichi froze mid-sentence, compelled to grasp for some fitting description before continuing in a hushed, weighty tone.
“I went pale and rigid—my body turned clear like a minnow—and in that moment—I couldn’t tell whether I was dreaming or dead.”
“I mean—at ten o’clock at night, the darkness started lifting to dawn…”

“That’s rough—I get it too. Got plastered and passed out on Tanpomichi once, woke up with the sun scorching down… Way more mysterious than your deal—”

“That was the weekly winding day—must’ve been way behind. How idiotic.”

“If it’s that bad, you should at least set this one once each morning!”

“For me, if I calculate how much they gain by day two and lag by day three, I can figure the time right away—balance it out! What’s amazing is how perfectly exact each clock’s speeding up and slowing down is!” —He found a strange delight in this.
She would explain such computational thoughts.

“That’s impressive!” Shōkichi blurted out resentfully.
Hayashi forced a wry smile,

“Because I ate too many potatoes, my chest is burning unbearably.”
“Shō-chan, get me the Takadiastase from over there.”

“Oh—it’s empty!”

Suddenly, Taruno appeared there,

“When shall we move?” he said.

“Have you decided on Shinmachi?” his wife asked in return.

“…………”

Taruno, with a sullen face, retreated into silence once more.

As everyone lapsed into an awkward silence, after a while, Hayashi boomed in a deeply impressed voice,

“When I sit here staring at ’em like this, my legs look so damn huge!” he exclaimed.

But after that, no one tried to speak.
Hayashi gazed at his legs propped against the pillar, Shōkichi blew smoke at the ceiling, and his wife kept her hands moving with her knitting.
Sunlight was shining up to the middle of the room.

Taruno’s Apollo had not told Taruno to leave the city where his mother lived!
Instead, it had commanded that he remain in that city to await his mother’s aging days—that he must wait for the mother who would come to his door leaning on a staff of ruin—so declared Apollo.

When he first heard this oracle, he was disgusted—utterly disgusted!
Clutching at the Pax Maria, he railed against Apollo’s cruelty or yearned for some aimless monk’s wandering—but since Taruno’s emotions were fundamentally self-serving, divorced from any moral sense of good or evil, they soon turned hollow,

"If I am told to stay—" he knelt as all people do in such cases, reverently submitting to the absolute command.

Coinciding with this shift, Taruno’s reading of late had just emerged from a decade with Plato and taken its first step into Aristotle’s “Meta.”
He was a history enthusiast who forgot the passage of time, immersed in deep reading.
It had been a ten-year journey since he first opened the door to the “Age of Chaos,” gazing up at successive philosophers’ gates with Don Quixote-like passion from La Mancha until arriving at Plato.
If calculated at this rate, his historical research would not reach early modern thought unless he lived to be one hundred.

On Taruno’s desk sat a large globe, with protractors and compasses scattered about. He now had to observe and comprehend what existed. He had to apply his own scrutiny to what existed and impose order upon it. Just as the history of philosophy demanded Aristotle follow Plato, a calm experimentalist needed to emerge in Taruno’s mind.

“What exists must not be lost—it must be placed before one’s eyes and its essence carefully studied,” he muttered. Of course, his “what exists”—did not mean merely physical objects.

“Let’s go to Shinmachi—no matter how tattered that house may be, it still seems to be mine after all.”

“There’s no choice but to go.”
“Look—they’ve plastered seizure notices on everything!”
His wife gestured vaguely at their belongings around them.
Though placed as discreetly as possible—under chair seats, inside trunk lids—wherever she pointed glared those diagonally pasted red property seizure tags.
“And if we move there, our Tokyo luggage still sits unpacked...”

“Why don’t we have Shō-chan and the others go untie that?”

“The packing’s finished, and we’ll certainly be leaving right away with it…”

“Let’s not steer the conversation that way—”

“Once it gets closer, the eviction pressure will surely become fierce—can you endure it?”

“I’ll endure and start working—”
Taruno said to his wife, who was looking down.
“Endure?”
“No—I take that back.”
“In my mind, it’s eviction—!”
“It’s not about saying such things—but in our house, Mother—damn it! I told myself not to mention her, yet here I am doing it!”
“Retracted! —I’m perfectly fine, that is—”
“No matter what incident occurs, I’m unfazed!”
“If I think that way, then I’m perfectly fine, eh?”

Taruno kept repeating how calm he was, but his body seemed the very opposite of calm, his complexion visibly draining of color by the moment.
“Agh! This is strange—my mind’s perfectly composed, but—oh no! My cigarette’s fallen from my hand—it seems the usual fit is coming on!”

“You mustn’t stay silent—you have to keep talking.”
His wife shouted frantically.
If he stayed silent, he would immediately begin to lose consciousness.
Occasionally, during these fits of his, a new treatment had been discovered.
It was a crude remedy—as long as he kept talking, his consciousness would return—but indeed, it had proven effective for him.

“Please, keep talking!”

His wife supported the staggering Taruno and guided him to the bed.
It was an uproar of trying to call a man back from the brink of his last breath.

“Father!”
“Father! Father!”

“Alright, alright—if I stay silent, it’ll be bad.”
“—You know that Alexander the Great was Aristotle’s most loyal disciple, don’t you?”
“It was Alexandria where the Great King most purely manifested the Master’s materialism on this earth.”
“I may not have knowledge of architecture—but if given a stable or a prison cell where Platonic satisfaction can be obtained, I count myself fortunate. Even there, in some sense, I intend to plan the construction of my Alexandria.”

“If we go to the suburbs of Tokyo, we must build a house with a balcony—you were drawing up blueprints for a house... I’m glad.”

“Why did the Great King call his beloved horse Bucephalus?”
“Let me tell the tale.”

“Oh, that was the horse’s name!”
She, who detested history, even wondered whether the “Great King” he spoke of was a living person.
Moreover, even ordinarily, when Taruno referred to modern figures he respected—and there were a considerable number of such figures—he would inexplicably avoid their actual names, instead calling them by heroic titles drawn from his own historical lexicon: “Emperor Aurelius of X Town,” “Venerable Epicurus of Y Company,” “Master Sophocles of A Hall,” and so forth.

"I thought it wasn't an English word for motorcycle."
"Because you're always calling it my Bucephalus."

"Generally they refer to horseback riding that way—but if we trace its origin—"

"The gasoline ran out three months back—we even have to walk to fetch the mail now."

"Are those pasted on that one too?"

“Yes, on the edge of the saddle.”

“I want to buy a planetarium—a machine that lets you freely observe celestial phenomena from any chosen night, whether ten thousand years past or future.”
“Whether it’s the night sky when Cleopatra descended the Nile, the ominous stars Salome pointed to, the heavens on the evening you were born, or even the celestial bodies from that dreadful fight in the dead of night—when Father caught that intruder sneaking into our house—this machine can project them all freely onto a domed ceiling.”
“In Germany, they’ve built permanent halls for these where every single night all sorts of programs are being projected through them, but I want one.”
“If I include even the shipping costs, 300,000 yen would suffice—don’t you think that’s cheap?”

“Really now—when you write your next novel, you should buy it then.”

“Very well.”
“The plan’s set.—We’ll move to Shinmachi the morning of the day after tomorrow, and from that evening on, I’ll begin my creative work.”

“Oh, how wonderful!”
“I simply must have a summer hat—do finish writing quickly so you can buy it for me.”

“Straight to that point!
“That’s foolish.”
“With the planetarium purchase in this next novel, there won’t be a single yen to spare.”
“Then there’s repaying Father’s debts… Well, just look at this list!”
“Facts! Facts! Without facts, what is philosophy? Without real life, what is creation?”
“The life in Shinmachi awaits.”

Then he expounded on the origins of tragedy—how the daughters of Azens, upon reading the first tragedian’s works, had all cut their hair in grief, and how this later became material for comedy—and as he spun these tales, the treatment’s effects gradually took hold. Retrieving the cigarette he had earlier dropped,

“So that’s where the trend originated,” he remarked admiringly, gazing at his wife’s short hair.

His wife, having settled Taruno into the room and returned,

“We’re doing it the day after tomorrow!” she announced, and Hayashi—
“This’ll be the easiest move in the world,” he said.
Hayashi, disliking the prospect of falling silent and sullen, endeavored to lift the others’ spirits.
“Let them take everything—writing a novel in this echoing emptiness might not be so bad, right here.”
“But Aki-chan, there are red tags pasted on the desk too.”

“No—just let me keep talking. If I stay silent, I can’t bear it—”

“You’re so spacey, Aki-chan.”

“Red tags were pasted on both the tick-tock clock and the cuckoo clock, but the clocks kept moving as usual—I wonder if I should start by writing that.”

“What a melodramatic aria,” Shōkichi muttered pitifully.
Hayashi, trying to continue saying something more, suddenly uttered the phrase “confronting life...” and burst into loud laughter—a self-mocking forced laugh.

“Delightful!” he shouted.

“What’s so delightful about it, Aki-chan? How rude! Here we all are, pale as ghosts!”

“Aha-ha-ha—Mr. Taruno’s—”
Hayashi couldn’t figure out how to express his goodwill toward his brother’s friend and just,

“I can’t help but laugh…” he laughed.

“It must be around noon already. What will everyone do about lunch?”
“What will everyone do about lunch?”

“I don’t want to eat—my chest feels too full,” Shōkichi said, lying down sideways.

“What about you, Aki-chan?”

“This sweet potato heartburn still won’t go away—let’s skip lunch.”
“Hey, Shō-chan—let’s go try unpacking the luggage.”

…………

“Shō-chan, go ask your brother what we’re doing about lunch!”
“Since he hasn’t eaten breakfast either, go ask if he can manage to eat just a little—even if he has to force himself.”

Shōkichi stood up and went.

“Could it be that the food is bad, causing such a strange case of anemia?”

“No way—”
“But he rarely volunteers to eat anything on his own—I wonder if he isn’t hungry.”

“That person—apparently when something stressful happens, he just can’t eat at all. The moment he tries to pick up his chopsticks, he starts feeling queasy…”

“Please stop—I’m starting to feel strange too.”
“Aha-ha—I’ll just step out for a bit—I’ll be right back though—”

Hayashi, as if struck by a sudden idea, hurriedly tried to leave.

His wife looked up at the pillar clock,

“Check the time on your way back.”
“Oh, and—” she called out to Shōkichi.
“What are you doing?
“Shō-chan, is Brother asleep?”

“He’s awake.”
“Can he eat?”
“He says he’ll eat—that he’s so hungry he might faint, so hurry up and prepare it.”

“Well then, Aki-chan, I’ll leave the chicken to you,” she called out, rolling up her shirt sleeves.

“Alright! I was just about to head out with that in mind—I’ll be back in ten minutes, so get things ready…” Hayashi declared in a booming voice as he retreated beyond the entryway.
Needless to say, Hayashi was not going out to buy a chicken.

(May 1928 (Showa 3))