Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

"How is Madam’s mood?
How about today?"

The moment I saw Yamazaki’s face, I froze rigidly where I stood at the room’s entrance and asked:
"Your complexion lacks vitality—not exactly sickly, but..."
"Your eyes look agitated again today!"

"I suppose so, I—" Yamazaki murmured vacantly, as if waiting without particular unease for me to continue this manner of criticism about him,

“I’ve been rather busy,” he muttered tersely.

I did not continue.—“What about me?”

“You’re the same as always.
“Did you come here in such a hurry? You’re all flushed.”
“You look healthy—strangely so—”

Yamazaki had said this, but his eyes remained restless, as if trying to gauge the mood of the adjacent room.

We had often made such exchanges in place of greetings.
Though it was usually me who inquired about Madam.
"How about—
"Today? Madam?"

"Hmm, well…"
Yamazaki’s replies and attitude were always fixed.
He was smoking a cigarette with a listless air.

“I can leave right away as I am. It’s just that I came this far on an aimless stroll…”

“Lately you seem to have grown quite fond of taking walks—the opposite of me.”

When I wondered if my visit was an inconvenience, Yamazaki—though apparently not bothered—offered me a cigarette with clumsy hands while,

"Well, sit down.
Anyway, you must be worn out from boredom.
What does it matter if it's a walk?"

As he said this, Yamazaki kept listlessly stroking the vivid scar on his cheek—like one made by a cat's claws—which made me wonder: Though I'd forgotten exactly how many days had passed since I last saw him, it hadn't been half a month yet, and even then it had looked the same—had that not healed yet? For something like that, the recovery seemed absurdly slow...
There had been an overstaying guest, and Yamazaki—carried away—had neglected Madam and made merry, only to be suddenly pounced upon by her while the guest was still present, meeting with a terrible ordeal.

“Has that thing from last time still not healed?” I asked, pointing at Yamazaki’s cheek.

“That’s healed, but—”

“Again?”

“When you came last time, we both got quite drunk.”
“When you arrived at my place, hadn’t dawn already broken?”

Yamazaki said this sorrowfully and, beyond that, was muttering something under his breath with quiet grumbling.

In truth, I hadn’t particularly grown fond of taking walks. I still hadn’t developed the habit of going out aimlessly. On this day too, I went out solely to visit Yamazaki. The previous time, I had indeed gone out for a walk; though I had resolved not to visit him, having lost all mental bearings—wandering as if chasing dreams—I ended up calling on him anyway. And then, I made the same excuse as today.

“If it suits you, I can leave right away as I am. I only came out for an aimless stroll—that’s all.”

“I’m thinking of quitting drinking—whenever I drink, my wife gets in such a foul mood it’s unbearable.”
“In return, I’ve quit this stuff too.”

Yamazaki gestured toward his wife—who was busily eating—with his eyes while,

“It seems she’s suffering from quite severe homesickness.”

“Didn’t you say Madam drinks to distract herself from homesickness?”

“She’s fine if it’s just the two of us. But when drinking with friends, she gets in a foul mood.”

“Does she still not understand a single word of Japanese?”

“Hmm… I don’t want her to understand.”

“Then you have no right to let your complaints boil over about being busy with work. To others—”
“To others—”

Yamazaki’s so-called work mainly consisted of appeasing the moods of his Italian wife—Madam—who had been brought to Japan by him about half a year prior.
Madam’s will could not be communicated to anyone except through Yamazaki’s translations or via the cat and goat she was lovingly raising.

“But being busy is indeed true,” Yamazaki told me sullenly.—“Moreover, while there may be no new friends, the old crowd still frequents my house as always.
They’re mostly drinkers, you see…”

We continued exchanging such words while reluctantly tipping back our cups—Yamazaki’s face gradually reddening, while I too increasingly succumbed to that thousandfold-repeated nature of mine: one who boasts of mental composure yet always falls prey to drink. As I claimed, I didn’t care where I was.
"There’s nothing more pointless than treating you."
I had often been told such things.
In my heart, I bitterly lamented these simple drunken ways—reined in by my own stagnant, impoverished psyche that governed my life’s motions. While yearning for grand leaps forward, I had unwittingly grown wearied by boredom’s weight.
This too became clear only when others pointed it out—a realization that made me break into secret cold sweat—yet when considering how my artistic work showed no progress whatsoever, I would sometimes link this failure even to my drunken antics, viewing it with painful finality.
As years piled on, I feared with cowardly dread that should this hollow vigor—which seemed driven by mere youthful fervor—vanish completely, I would become precisely the foolish empty husk others had long predicted.
I possessed a nature where any remark about me—however worthless or idle—would strike straight to my chest for a time.
No matter how much random abuse or sarcasm was hurled my way, dwelling on it would somehow make me accept it anew—a trait that left me utterly dispirited.
Thus I often staged blustering marital quarrels.
I once fought strangely with a five-year-old child.
And mid-quarrel, I would always suddenly shrink into myself—this was my invariable habit.

"You are fortunate not to have known that earthquake."

I suddenly said such a thing.

“That’s right—I haven’t heard you speak about the earthquake even once yet.”
“At that time, of course I thought you had died.”
“After the earthquake, letters suddenly stopped coming too, you see.”

“That’s strange,” I said.
“That was truly an extraordinary, devastating event.”

In my sleep-deprived state, I had let myself be carried away by delusions somewhat excessively.
“There’s this man named B—a friend from my hometown—who developed a new habit of suddenly leaping up at night ever since that event. Because of it, he’s perpetually sleep-deprived and ended up ruining his shop.”

“Isn’t that you?”

“I—coward though I am—am remarkably insensitive to all external stimuli.”
“I have a habit of forgetting things right away.”

“The earthquake would be different, though.”

“That’s different,” I said, feeling a nebulous contradiction as I gave a weighty nod.
“How exhilarating it would be to vanish completely and suddenly—just like that, without any premonition—like the landslide in the neighboring village where I was. In an instant, you understand—the entire village ended up buried under hundreds of feet of red soil.”

“Whoa!” Yamazaki turned pale.

“That was a magnificent, fatal event,” I repeated as if by habit.
“And by the time I passed through, a small stream was glistening as it flowed through the center of the plain of red earth.”

I shuddered solemnly.
Yamazaki hung his head.

“But that village’s chief—” I began, then trailed off into solitary recollection.
The village chief had been having lunch at his seaside villa.
A tsunami came with the landslide.
Simultaneously, his house became a boat and was carried out to sea, but the second wave swept it back to a shore of red earth like weathered planks.
Because the chief remained seated exactly as he was at the dining table—chopsticks and bowl still in hand—he emerged unharmed.

“What about the village chief?”

“The village chief was apparently saved because he was swimming in the sea.”

I didn’t know which of the rumors was true.
I thought that when I next returned home, I would visit that village chief and ask him about his disaster story.

It was a perfectly clear, hot day.
Due to the earthquake, tsunamis had struck only along the shoreline about twice, but afterward, the sea lay calm—a vast expanse where one could even swim.
Having escaped from the house on the cliff's mid-slope, I gazed out over the blue sea from within a field that was also situated on the cliff's mid-slope.
In this village of nothing but cliffs, the villagers had turned pale as they gathered here and trembled.
My village's back mountain did not collapse.

"But that village chief is probably no longer in that village—with all the villagers having vanished—"

“Rather, what a pitiable village chief.”

After shifting to another topic, I remained silent for a while.

“What is it?” Yamazaki said, watching Madam who sat turned sideways reading, then grasped my shoulder without particular reason. As if startled in darkness, I involuntarily—

“Gyah!” I shouted. “I hate being startled! I’m a coward, you see—”

“Why make such a troubled face? Seems the sake isn’t taking effect.”

“...Yeah, sort of.”

“Your work’s been getting quite a bad reputation.”
“I’ve seen all sorts of things—but more than that, you seem to be defeating yourself.”

“Well, that’s been true since the day I was born.”

I jolted at my flank.
An impenetrable weakness—I felt a discomfort swelling in unexpected places.
“But what exactly was it that you saw?” I pressed.

“There was a writer who gave public speeches badmouthing his own family—such a person existed.”

“—I see.
“In my heart, I’m apologizing to my family with tears welling up, though.”
“It can’t be helped—there’s a defect in these writerly qualities…” I flushed with irritation, maintaining a sullen expression.

“You sarcastic young drunk!”
“And there was that too!”

“You’ve got me there—no arguments here.”

“Slob!”
“And there was also that!”

“Ugh,” I groaned through labored breath, letting out a gasping sigh.

“You’re just twittering on self-indulgently about your trivial little nerves—”

“But still...people have their own...” I muttered in a barely audible voice, grumbling complaints under my breath.

“You’re such a crybaby.”

“Surely, a thirty-one-year-old man…” I responded with a timid, wry smile.

“While spouting self-negating things, you’re ultimately affirming yourself—that’s the problem—”

“What the hell are you saying?” I retorted.

“If you insist on calling that utterly absurd aspect of yourself ‘hope,’ then I suppose it is hope…”

“...”

I bit my lip as if holding back tears and sniffled sharply through my nose.

“You sly man.”

“That stings!” I shouted, my face turning crimson red.
Then again I muttered in a low voice:
“You’ve seen through something terrifying.
Ah—this is truly the pinnacle of shameful blushing!
Ah! I’ve no face left to show others—ahhhhhh!”

I shut my mind’s eye and collapsed face-first onto the dining table.
My entire body burned as though aflame.
My heartbeat pounded like a fire-alarm bell struck wildly.
My breath seemed ready to choke off entirely.

Yamazaki continued after catching his breath.
“They say this and that—‘Takino drinks excessively at night, probably influenced by some novelist.’”
“‘One can almost grasp Takino’s face as he writes such things’—there are those spreading these rumors they call ‘sources undisclosed.’” Here Yamazaki inserted his own remark: “But—”
“While this person claims to understand your face, they state from the outset they can’t comprehend your novels.
“Is this someone you’re acquainted with?”

I finally raised my face and responded calmly for the first time.
“That’s vulgar harassment.
“It’s what you’d call third-rate sarcasm.”
“The person—they knew my face from when I rented the room next to theirs in Ushigome Ward years ago, but we haven’t properly met in ages.—So where exactly did these critiques appear?” I asked in return.
But I had indeed read those criticisms before.
My habit of scrutinizing others’ words about myself with a pounding heart had grown increasingly pronounced.
Had they been within reach, I’d never have overlooked them.
And at that time—just as I’d shown before Yamazaki moments earlier—I’d turned red and pale all alone; yet here I was now, deliberately playing ignorant as I inquired.
This infuriated me—both Yamazaki’s exaggerated manner of speaking and how, despite having entirely forgotten this favorable arrangement, I’d let myself be manipulated by his words into unexpected disgrace.

“The literary section of △ Newspaper, the monthly review column of △ Magazine, and the short critiques section of △△ Pamphlet—places only the most attentive readers could find.”

“I see. Then show me later.—Never mind, I’ve somehow ended up feeling refreshed.”

“You seem to be dismissed with a laugh as quite the barbarian.”

“Is that so?”
“What a predicament.”

“I’ve caught wind of your reputation for being unkind to your wife.”

“You’re overthinking things because you’re overseas-educated.”

“No way—”
“If old man Henry were here, he wouldn’t let you say such things.”

“That’s why I never shared tastes with Henry.”
“With Mother, at least our tastes align…”

“You’re outrageous. To discuss matters of taste with one’s parents—that is indeed barbarism.”

“I lack any real pessimistic philosophy. Merely cowardly—I know sorrow well enough. As you often say—I truly think myself a frightful Foolish from the depths of my heart.”

“Seems so—a pity though.”
I grow more misanthropic by the day.
Melancholy.

“You’re so busy though!”

“So I’m not bored.”
“Like you.”

“This sake is truly awful.”
“Actually, that’s what’s been bothering me most since earlier.”
“Since I couldn’t bring myself to mention it, I kept prattling on about other things—bitterly.”
“…The reason I screamed and collapsed onto the table earlier was really because this sake was so vile I couldn’t stomach it—I made that show trying to choke it down in one go.”
“…How absurd—to serve such swill in this beautiful tokkuri!”

Yamazaki would so readily begin—observing me making what seemed a bored, bitter face—to airily expound: What an impatient bore I must be, how I put up empty fronts with words while having nothing substantial within that made me anxious, how I likely harbored particularly foul gloom, how whenever conversation lapsed you maintained such a strangely lonely expression it became unbearable—and so on, using phrases I had once written in my own essays and had since grown weary of, as if reciting memorized lines—until I grew irritated and retorted: "This sake—"

However, just as my words were about to continue a bit longer—

“Oh!” Yamazaki widened his eyes as if terribly startled.
It would be accurate to say he turned pale with shock.
This mirrored exactly my own astonishment when, moments earlier, I had heard Yamazaki’s report of the criticism and cried out “That hurts!”
Rather, it was I who found myself momentarily dumbstruck—“You’ve somehow learned to discern liquor’s taste now?!”
“Damn it,” Yamazaki groaned with self-abandon.
Then with sorrowful intensity, he stared wide-eyed and fixed his gaze upon my face.

For some reason I felt pity,

"Why?" I couldn't help asking kindly.
"Last night I drank too much again—my stomach's been acting up."
"So I thought maybe my tongue's off—been running all sorts of tests."

"No—damn it all," Yamazaki protested in a hushed voice, flushing crimson like I had moments before. "This is dirt-cheap swill."
"I only agreed on the price—secretly got it from some backcountry acquaintance."
"Every friend who comes here gets force-fed this rotgut."
"For a guzzler like you? Figured you'd handle it fine—felt safe enough."
"...That's why I've been barely touching it today myself—can't stand the stuff."
"When alone? I sneak better stock."

“No wonder I thought you were holding your liquor remarkably well today. I’d felt maybe you’d gone abroad and returned with a hardened constitution.”

“This really is awful.—Still, what a mess this has become... Awful, just awful. You, let’s stop drinking—there’s no other Japanese sake in my house. You dislike Western liquor... Well, my apologies.” Yamazaki showed a charming demeanor as if his mood had somehow recovered. “Let’s eat, let’s eat. I’ll even have some beer with you,” he said.

“I’ve begun making economic living my main focus. That way, you’ll find life happier.—Hey, do you know this fellow △△? A man who returned on the same ship as me—lately he’s been publishing high-collar works and gaining wild popularity among the new generation’s men and women. Go to Ginza parlors and you’ll often see him there, parading around with his Western-dressed wife, nose held high as he boasts about his travels to literary students—but you’d better not visit his house. To my surprise, that guy—the famous gourmet—has secretly stockpiled this sake too. He doesn’t know I’m acquainted with that friend from the countryside liquor store—though he himself was friends with him back in our student days… I was utterly shocked at the time. And really, he should quit it—‘This sake here, my friend,’” [he says,] “‘is my specially ordered pride and joy from such-and-such region! No matter how carefully selected, Tokyo brews simply don’t suit our palates!’ Putting on that affected air, I gleefully raised my cup—*flourish*.”

Yamazaki wrinkled his nose and pointed at my cup. “This stuff—if I weren’t at home, I might’ve been fooled too. But Ah! I recognized it straightaway—the scent I’ve grown all too familiar with at home. But I knew my manners, so I endured it, you know. Because that country friend came just the other day, I asked him about it—and sure enough. That fellow had apparently been asked by △△ to keep it under wraps, but he ended up spilling everything to me. △△ is apparently coming within two or three days, and I’m in a bind... Well... shall we eat?”

“It’s still passable—I should get accustomed to drinking this sort of sake too. Once I’ve practiced enough at your place, maybe I’ll put in a discreet order.”
“As for me, I’m hardly in a position to complain about luxury—but this sake...”

“That’s right—it’s barely drinkable.”
“Let’s just stop.”

“If we’re going to try living different kinds of lives from now on, that won’t do.”

“What’s this? Don’t go connecting our drinking talk to something else.”
“Stop that—”
“And let’s quit this swill too.” —“But don’t misunderstand—my wife’s been worrying herself over me, trying to prevent reckless losses.”
“Because she knows postwar hardships…”

“She seems thoroughly displeased,” I said without ever turning toward Madam.

“Oh, it’s dreadful!”

“What time does she retire? She could simply go to bed first if she likes.”

“She keeps nocturnal hours."
"When guests are present, she maintains appearances until dawn."
"Her manners remain impeccable."

“And you’ve truly abstained from drink entirely of late?”

“Hmm,” Yamazaki responded, flustered for some reason, his eyes darting white-and-black as he nodded.

“Didn’t you once declare yourself a formidable drinker?” I stared at him with suspicious eyes—a malicious glint in my amused composure—as I keenly felt how splendidly our positions from moments before had been inverted.

“I’ve decided not to drink…”

“Homesickness has been cured, thanks to your affection.”

“Well…” Yamazaki gave a flustered reply.
Earlier, he had been ranting that her homesickness was worsening by the day, making the task of appeasing her all the trickier.

“That was good.”
“But I’m feeling rather pained—all I sense is Madam’s feigned indifference glaring through me!”
“Truthfully, I’ve never handled foreigners well.”
“Not since being made to socialize with that American girl—Henry’s friend’s daughter—nigh on ten years back…”

“I get it.—Let’s drop this already.”
“I’m scared of her.”

“Let’s drink that!”

I pointed at the ceramic sake bottle I spotted on the display shelf behind Yamazaki and suddenly shouted.

“Huh?!” Yamazaki reflexively jerked his chin back nervously.
“You probably dislike Western liquor.”
“Tsk!”
“Tsk! Tsk!”
“That is her sake.”

“I like that. That’s good sake. It’s a drink I’m deeply familiar with.”

“Wouldn’t that be poisonous, mixing them like this?”

“In my novel Polar Night Chronicle, there’s a scene where my twenty-year-old self sneaks out at night to steal my old man’s liquor. I’ve been realizing since earlier—and getting sentimental over—how that liquor was exactly the same as this one here. That’s actually how I first learned the taste of sake.”

“I’ve never read any of your novels. You’re lying!” Yamazaki spat out.

“Henry used to drink two or three cups of that with his breakfast every morning.”
“Back then, you couldn’t get that in the countryside—my old man had it sent from Flora’s place in Yokohama.”

“This bastard—Flora despises him!”

After some heated arguing, we took turns tilting the ceramic Western-style liquor bottle with its handle into our respective glasses.

“Fine! If it’s come to this, no helping it, Takino!”
“The drink’s hitting me all at once—suddenly!”

“You’ve done military service before too, haven’t you?”
“I believe you were indeed an army sergeant.”
I said those things.

“I’m strong, I tell you!”
“Come on, how about it? Try twisting my arm.”

“Let’s drink through the marrow of night.”
At last I found some composure.—Had I contracted B’s illness? When sober, I felt terribly vulnerable—constantly gripped by thoughts that my breathing might stop any moment. For instance, even while being assailed by fears that the great earthquake might strike again at any time, I’d developed this strange habit of somehow needing to keep clumsily planting my feet down just to stay grounded.

“I too have somewhere within me an equally intense version of that feeling.”
It overwhelmed me.
“We both hate becoming adults... spouting such trivial nonsense!”

“B’s condition has shifted from internal turmoil to outward behavior—ever since the earthquake.”

“Stop that talk about B—”

“Bastard—to your sake barrel—!”

I raised my glass high and sang playfully.
“On my head, a crown of grapes—huh?”

At that moment, Yamazaki’s wife—who had been sitting perfectly still, her fervent gaze fixed on her book—suddenly raised an indignant expression and barked out a few forceful words at her husband.

“Hey, Yamazaki! What did you say?” As Yamazaki’s words responding to Madam ceased, I hastily requested his interpretation.

“—You fool!”
“Take that racket straight to hell!”
“But I mean—”
“This bastard’s talking about me!”

“……”

I was struck in the chest with a thud and turned pale. The criticisms Yamazaki had conveyed to me earlier were nothing more than peripheral matters compared to this. My usual fear seemed to be precisely such delusions. To me, it was a word that—on the contrary—even a facile imagination could conjure up in its desperation.

Yamazaki forced a pained smile. “She’s short-tempered.”
“So I made sure to apologize in advance.”
“But it’s fine this way… As long as we talk calmly and carefreely, keeping gentle smiles on our faces—even if we badmouth her a little—she’ll think we’re discussing tomorrow’s weather. No—I just made that clear beforehand.” As he spoke, Yamazaki leaned his head out the window to observe the sky.
“But Takino, I was shocked.”
“You must be terrified too—even her words could pass as printed criticism.”
“Look here—I did mention this earlier—even regarding my own work: ‘Disappear!’”
“What an amazing criticism that was!”
“No one could possibly respond to being told that—no one at all—”
“Hey—it’s a fine moonlit night.”

“……”

I stood up unsteadily and, like someone suffering from seasickness, cradled my empty head as I staggered. Furthermore, I closed my eyes weakly, as if struck by an attack of cerebral anemia, pressed my forehead with my right palm, and with one willowy arm groping through empty space, falteringly staggered to the window.

＊

“Send paired carp to a distant friend; summon a child to cook them—within lies a letter on plain silk; kneel long and read the unadorned missive.”
Long ago, I once heard from a certain friend how writing the characters for “paired fish” could be made to signify “letter,” which struck me as profoundly elegant.

＊

My dear Mrs. Flora H.—
I have yet to fulfill any of the promises made when you and my mother expressed expectations for my literary works.
Moreover, though you had requested me to report both my account of the disaster during the great earthquake and my current circumstances, I had neglected them together.
Please allow me to substitute this bulky package and this plain letter in place of those two promises.
Please read this only during your most leisurely hours, inserting bookmarks as you go—I would count it a kindness.
—In a plain letter I cannot fully convey it.
My works consist solely of short stories occasionally published in a few monthly magazines issued in this capital—I still possess no single novel, nor of course any English translations such as you hoped and sent.
I have written only such meager works as can be understood if you judge them by these two chapters before and after.
And today again I have written such writing.
Because I did not know how to properly convey it in a mere plain letter.
Even so, I have lately been devoting myself solely to my creative work.
And since I am in good health, rest assured.
As for the preceding and following chapters, I would be happy if you would consider them my creation.
“Yamazaki—you should at least know his name.”
For he has been my close friend since your time in Japan.
However, it would be problematic if you were to think that Yamazaki is only as characterized in the previous chapter—the same applies to Madam.
For there are many instances where I have arbitrarily made him eloquent on paper.
However, it is true that I have been frequently visiting Yamazaki’s house as of late.
His wife is as charming as you.
To my utmost shame—having known no foreign acquaintances since you—whenever I visit Yamazaki, I first think of you.

“Yamazaki also sometimes asks me about you.”
I once wrote a short literary sketch titled “A Certain May Morning’s Tale.”
You took as its hint an anecdote from your stay at my house.
The story where I drank too much and incurred your displeasure.

Even so, this plain letter has been my only work all summer—from June until today—and I am resolved to return to the countryside and begin new work.
When autumn comes, you might receive a cheerful plain letter from me.
Next time I will certainly write a proper plain letter.

Under the low corrugated iron roof with only two rooms beneath it, seven or eight people sprawled about. The heat was monstrous—my head felt dangerously unsteady. I had said I would return to the countryside, but even there I now possessed no study of my own between the post-earthquake disarray and my enduring inability to acclimate to travel—leaving me pitifully adrift while clinging to this 'new work' in limbo. Had Yamazaki departed for a summer retreat I might have borrowed his study; instead he abandoned his plans altogether when sake stockpiled in quantity had turned completely to vinegar from unprecedented seasonal warmth, needing to recoup those losses. The village chief who survived the tsunami by miracle had reportedly relocated to a distant prefecture as tax official—rendering visits impossible. Even I—barely sustaining life under such conditions—found myself fearing this existence of perpetual suspension might transform materials for my 'new work,' painstakingly gathered over years, into what Yamazaki called vinegar through sheer stagnation. Then perhaps I should visit your country instead—though regardless, what they called our capital's worst heatwave in over a decade had descended.

II

“Well then, this wound on your cheek now might as well be my doing—that’s right, when I finally staggered home that night, dawn was just beginning to break.”

“It’s so disgraceful I can’t even go outside.”

Yamazaki muttered drowsily, self-conscious about the forehead wound—clawed by his wife, he insisted.

“You really must leave early today… Huh?
“My wife’s taking a nap right now.”
“—How on earth does your wife cut her nails?”
“Aren’t they sharpened into triangles?”

“Life won’t allow it,” I said, staring wide-eyed and shaking my head in fierce denial.
“Those nails are dreadful—they stir old memories in me too.”

“Why don’t you return to the countryside?”

“It’s good that Mother’s still holding up—as for me—”

“So I’m just... me?!”
“Hmph!”
“...But you aren’t deliberately seeking out an unhappy life yourself either, are you?”

“That’s right—but I’ve grown all too accustomed to it by now.”

“To your so-called long student life!”
“Even so, you’re still studying?”

Instead of using terms like “miserable” or “unfortunate,” Yamazaki kept recasting it as a “student life”—something I had never once acknowledged or described myself as being—in what seemed a trivial attempt to brighten my spirits.
“Old friends do have a rather troublesome aspect to them.”

With that, I made a bitter face.
I felt as though something had startled me.
"My wife keeps lamenting my utter incompetence.
That woman seems to have only now truly begun regretting marrying me."

"That’s likely how it is," Yamazaki nodded without any hint of surprise.
"Women, you... women, you..."

“She’s such a cheap complainer,” I nearly blurted out, then sank into despondency over my own foolishness in endlessly repeating the same complaints.

I had always resolved to refrain from voicing such kinds of thoughts to others.
Through mere minor adversities in domestic life, my own mind seemed to have become terribly warped.
Those I encountered—those I encountered—were each a strange new shock to me.
"It's troublesome—it might actually be better if a spouse's complaints couldn't reach those around us like at your place."
"That woman has been interfering with my work lately—seems to utterly despise me."

“Why don’t you try having some fun?”

“Let her go have some fun instead!” I shouted with strange intensity.
And I, like a timid man crossing a log bridge, spread both arms like wings and began explaining with complaints.
“Look at me now—you must recognize this outfit, my one good suit from student days.”
“This had strangely survived.”
“I’d discarded it as trash back then, but found it by chance in an old chest that escaped the fire at Grandmother’s house—just a month ago… So after all these years, it’s unexpectedly become my presentable outfit again.”
“Must look quite shabby—see here!”
“Look how badly this part’s been eaten by insects.”

“What a blow—for someone like you who used to be such a show-off! But that should be fine—you won’t take it to the pawnshop. My apologies—if rumors are to be believed, you’ve even sold off Henry’s hand-me-down kimono by now, haven’t you?” Yamazaki comforted me with an air of deep sympathy. “I recognize that tie pin of yours. For a long time now, you seem to have mainly used only that. You must be quite fond of it, huh?”

I suddenly considered telling some well-crafted, casual lie but, finding no words for it, muttered in a terribly conventional tone while staring at my necktie.
I was embarrassed to keep answering truthfully, but there was no other way.

“This also came along with the outfit.”
“Look! Just look at this!”
“Look—there’s only one left now!”
“This is just…” I muttered with a covetous look, fiddling with the tarnished silver brooch shaped like the Statue of Liberty’s clenched fist on my chest.
Ah, why didn’t I at least ask for that crown-shaped one studded with jewels back then, Flora!
I’ve forgotten how old I was when she gave me that for my birthday, but that too must have been another ill-conceived pose!

Out of idleness, I told Yamazaki the story of our earthquake ordeal. Not merely because he had been overseas and never experienced it himself did Yamazaki lend an earnest ear to my account.

"I'll repeat myself—I truly thought you were dead back then, given how perilous that location was. And since the earthquake, you've abruptly ceased sending any letters at all...... Earthquakes are terrifying. We're like those sitting beside a volcanic crater, you know? When I think on it, I can't remain composed."

“That’s right,” I said, biting my lower lip.

After concluding the detailed account of our ordeal, I appended the following episode.

“You know, B—who lived next door to me in the same village—slept right through that great earthquake without even knowing it.”
“I should clarify—B wasn’t a drinker like me back then, though that changed afterward.”

After escaping to the field at the cliff’s edge and noticing B was missing, I panicked and rushed to his solitary room.
He had been visiting me for four or five days prior while coming to the village for hot spring therapy.—There lay B beneath a lightweight roof resembling a tea room—twisted like a crushed insect cage—his mouth contorted in deep sleep.

“A dream! Just a dream!”
“In the dream I’m having a dream.”
“Ah, it’s you—I’m having a terrifying dream right now.”
“Ah, it’s terrible—!”

The moment he was awakened and glimpsed the devastation, B said these words and clung to me.
I fled to the field like an eager ant from the very start, bearing the large B—who couldn’t walk—on my shoulders without uttering a single word.

B was acting as if he had gone mad.
After arriving at the field, I tried to convince him with a hoarse voice that this was no dream.

“Here—it comes!”

With every slight tremor from the ceaseless aftershocks, B would scream and leap up, matching the duration of the ground's shaking.
The nearby villagers had all gathered and stood in a group at the field on the cliff's midslope.
Each time B's screams struck them, the entire group clasped hands together.

“There’s wood piled over there—move that!” commanded B.
The village’s main product was wooden crafts, and that factory stood at its rear.
B pointed at thick planks about six feet long that were stacked like a mountain.
The ground would split open—so he claimed.
The people had nothing but delusional rationality.
They possessed no strength beyond blindly following others’ grand pronouncements.
Even imagining how this would be recalled an hour later filled me with revulsion.

The villagers rushed out together—children strapped to backs, elders’ hands gripped tight.
B led at the front while I brought up the rear.
With hand raised in perpetual shout, B resembled a frontline lieutenant.—“Hurry! Hurry!”

The villagers, imagining that it would soon become a bridge, each stood motionless on the planks they had brought back.

“Everyone—don’t release the poles!” shouted B.
They rushed into the thicket and hastily constructed sturdy green bamboo poles taller than their own height.
The thicket’s interior became a battlefield-like commotion.
Since the thicket stood on a slope, it failed to serve as proper shelter.
Some among them even turned back to their homes to fetch carrying poles.

“Here—it comes!” shouted B, thrusting his six-foot pole into the ground like pushing a boat, planting both legs squarely to brace his entire frame.
Men and women of all ages obeyed this command in unison, solemnly and flawlessly mirroring B’s stance.
The road stretched like an elevated platform twelve feet above when viewed from the fields below.
“That’s it!”
No sooner had B muttered this to himself than he firmly grasped my hand, then my wife’s in turn, before charging fiercely up toward that higher roadway.

“Don’t let go of the poles! Don’t step off the planks!” B bellowed a desperate command to the crowd. “……Here—it comes!”

And he flipped his body like a bird in flight, demonstrating a vivid example.
B’s entire body—though I’d never seen what shape such a thing might take—was exactly a seismograph.
In response to subtle seismic intensities, his form made people perceive various postures as living tableaux.
The precision of his movements was at times that of Benkei upholding his six laws.
He became an Olympic champion poised at the starting line.
Just when he seemed to transform into a tiger howling at the mountain moon, he twisted his entire body into the earth with even greater force than Katō Kiyomasa who felled tigers.
Becoming an expert boatman descending rapids, he thrust his pole masterfully in all directions.
It held the ferocity of Sun Wukong desperately swinging his golden-banded staff.
—(B continued believing this was a dream until much later.)

“Here—it comes!”

In response to B, the villagers echoed.
They became gymnasts who had undergone harsher training than Spartan soldiers and synchronized their breathing.—Ah, even I cannot help but think that such terrifying life-risking gymnastics were ever performed on this earth—it seems nothing but a dream.
Ah, even if I were to become a writer of fairy tales, I could never imagine such a fantastical gymnast.

“Ever since then, B became a pitiable neurasthenia patient,” I murmured, dropping my eyes as if in prayer.
“He married, but by the second month his wife was the one who left.
B would be tormented by nightmares at least twice nightly, springing up like a released spring, and with all his voice could muster would shriek that command.
His town—like that village—was earthquake-terrorized, neighbors often leaping upright en masse at midnight.
Ultimately they had to drive him from the town.
For B—with day and night fully reversed—even managing his family trade became impossible.”

“Takino—please don’t introduce B to me,” said Yamazaki, eyes shining with unease. “Even I’d leap out of my skin if subjected to that.” He then tilted his head intently, as if listening to the sky.

“He’s somewhat on the mend.
“Before coming to my place, he’d apparently been touring waterfalls around the country.
“But since I’m scared too, we’ve resolved to drink until our bodies give out and are saved by that.
“Now he drinks three times as much sake as I do.
“I’m the one who can’t stand being subjected to that, you know.”

“Wouldn’t being with you actually worsen B’s condition?”

“We never discuss earthquakes.
B has nowhere left to go.
Like my household, his family too went bankrupt when the earthquake struck.
Don’t you have any work for B?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“He should work nights, and it needs to be somewhere noisy.”

“Wouldn’t he be interested in joining a new theater troupe?”

“His voice is genuine.”
“But he’d only manage one role at best.”
“I watched the expressionist play 'The Bride of the Pasture' with him, but he kept staring at that screaming bride with a terrifying look in his eyes.”
“After we got back, he did a spot-on imitation of that… and that man’s lines too—”

We gathered our brows and thought about work for B, but no suitable ideas ever surfaced. In the end, Yamazaki—developing suspicions about my abnormal fervor—

“Aren’t you using B as a pretext to talk about yourself?” he said. “You’re the one who’s unnervingly good at imitating B’s signature line—it’s disturbingly convincing. Lately you’ve developed this habit of referring to yourself in third person—it’s not what I’d call literary! Just some bizarre fragility growing more pronounced!”

“Goodness!” I exclaimed in astonishment, gazing out the window.
The windowpane glimmered faintly white like water’s depths.
“Had dawn broken…?”

“This is a disaster!”

Yamazaki heaved himself up from the chair and began shouting repeatedly in panic.
“Have we not ended up drinking through the night again?
My wife has gone somewhere!
Where could she have gone? She was definitely here just a moment ago!
This is terrible!
The clock! The clock!
Where’s the clock?
Takino, hurry up and find the clock!”

“Hey, calm down a bit, Yamazaki!
I’ll do it now!
I’ll do it now!” I gasped, trying to calm my frenzied friend.

I hadn’t noticed until then, but I realized for the first time that I was terribly drunk. It was an unusual kind of drunkenness—while my neck alone retained some semblance of self-awareness, when I tried to rise slowly my legs refused to function, and my hands couldn’t grasp where I intended.

“I can’t walk,” said Yamazaki.
“I hadn’t realized I was this drunk! Oh, oh!”

“You too?!” I groaned in a death-rattle voice.

“Ah—my eyes’re suddenly swimming,” he said.

“Pull yourself together...I’ll now—”

Having said that, I tried pushing up from the chair’s armrest but immediately fell back on my rear.
My own eyes had begun flickering at some point; looking around, I saw three or five precious sake bottles on the table—formerly lined up decoratively on the wall shelf—now emptied and toppled over or uncorked with missing stoppers, standing silent like a still life steeped in eternal quiet.

“The clock’s over there but I can’t see it—I’ll do it now—I’ll do it now,” I repeated. “Is it truly dawn now? Or has the moonlight deceived us? I’ll go check—just stay put and wait calmly.”

I mustered every ounce of strength, crawled on all fours, and inched my way toward the same window I had groped my way to before.

“Takino, don’t you get it?”
“Don’t mess this up!”
“Shadows differ between dawn and moonlit nights—staring at the sky won’t get you anywhere. Hey!”
“What a blockhead!”
“Fine then, I’ll look!” Yamazaki clicked his tongue and slid off the chair.

＊

Having written this far in midsummer midnight, I stopped my pen and thought.
—I imagined Flora's expression as she would read this.

I feared I had to stop.
It was bound to be misunderstood.—But what else did I possess that could answer her demands?

Around the end of spring, I welcomed my first summer since moving to this Tokyo suburb—a house in the forest's shade without a study.

With the mindset of one beginning a novel, I started composing what might pass for a proper letter through separate effort. Even were its form different, it was fated to become something akin to what preceded it.

I passed the dawn without once regarding the liquor cabinet readied for bedtime. At daybreak, cicadas in the surrounding trees grew clamorous—that these insects sang at dawn too became knowledge first acquired this summer.
—I remained seated with cheek propped on hand.

Attempting to compose even the simplest letter, I impatiently wrote one line only to discard it, wrote three lines only to tear them up, and by noon had gone through an entire booklet of stationery.
I did not even rise for meals.
I pulled out another booklet from the box, encountered an unusually strong earthquake for this time of evening, shouted “Gyah!” and leapt back from my desk—with oily sweat beading on my forehead, I kept scrapping draft after draft with nothing but variations on “My dearest—” “My dearest—”.
Midsummer, August 3rd.