Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

I had returned to a town near where my mother lived, yet there was no need to share her house; I could have been free anywhere. So why hadn't I remained in the capital all this time?
If not that, then why hadn't I embarked on that long journey with the wife I had always longed for—when there had been no hindrance to doing so—?
Why hadn't I tried living somewhere new and stimulating for once—when that alone had seemed to offer some faint glimmer of brightness—?

Taruya would let slip such mutterings along with feverish sighs—indeed, there might have been such meaning to them—if one were to forcibly string together his days of listless sighs.
And he—irritably shaking his head as he felt both the artificiality of posing "Why—?" to himself and the perpetually immobile grimace that never served laughter—would at night seclude himself in the deep north-facing room where embankment grasses grew thick enough to brush against the window, or go to the boatbuilder's detached workshop rented at the hill's base, there to diligently occupy himself with something, never tiring of it.

"I've rather taken to the brightness of that detached workshop over there—they say the old man built it almost entirely with his own hands—and I hear they'll be putting up another building soon. When they finally demolish this house, why don't we rent that one instead?"

"If it's just a matter of renting—" his wife also suggested moving to new land.
"Why don't we let the elderly caretakers have that place?"

The elderly caretakers were a couple who had been minding this house for over a decade.

“It’s not like I moved here because there was this house or anything—I came, so I’m just sort of living here, that’s all.”
Taruya said something inconsistent.

“Then if this hadn’t been here, you wouldn’t have come?”

“—The house and such aren’t the issue.”

“Not an issue…?”
Saikun wore a light sneer.
“Coming to a place you don’t even want to live—what a delightful idea.”

And indeed, he would always feel a surge of irritation when his wife presumptuously settled matters so easily.
He grew irritated when, even regarding scenery and local customs, his wife placed undue emphasis on Tokyo—her hometown—and dismissively spoke ill of his countryside.

"There's nothing that captivates my heart—not even a scenery I wish to depict," he said—"Ah, what a dull place. I never had any feelings of being bound by something like a hometown from the start."

“No matter what we do, we’re bound to end up living with your mother eventually. Not that I mind.”
“Absolutely not.”

He shook his head again.
He was terrified by the wretched pliability of his own disposition—how absurdly it might warp itself to any environment—yet there could be no circumstance impactful enough to shatter him upon collision.
In some corner of my heart—having returned like this without any necessity—could there have lurked some ill-fated ambition, as though I meant to peer once more into that tedious, gloomy swamp?
He had harbored such doubts, yet there was no such tension in his heart.

He was simply staring at his own seated figure—one that seemed absorbed in plunging into a single task.
There was only wordless passion.

"When this gets demolished...I'll naturally have to move...As if mourning some lingering trace I don't even cling to...No—" He frowned deeper.
"No matter where I am—I remain unchanged."

“Even if I absolutely have to live there with them—”

“It’s not like I’m utterly helpless when it comes to supporting myself.”

“But—”

“Even without that house, I won’t go there.”

“Since I’ve resolved not to need anything anymore and made a clean break of it, I’ll finally be able to throw myself into my studies now—after all, that’s what you wanted.”

"I'm leaving—."
When I thought of my younger days up until now, I felt wretched—it induced vomiting.

“Mr. G, you know…”

“Let G take it then—it’s Mother’s doing. After all, G was just doing the work I should’ve been doing in my place.”

“…”

The above dialogue is not realistic.
They never exchanged such solemn reflections about matters of daily life.
It had transformed several days of their shared life and breath into dialogue—Taruya remained mostly shut away in his room.
Saikun, drawing strength from his unanticipated resoluteness, felt a breezy liberation as though released from some invisible tether.
Yet Taruya felt wretched about himself muttering "Why—" like at the beginning, accompanied by the loathsomeness of his work's stagnation.

It was a quiet evening with distant night-fishing boat lights flickering. Taruya flipped through a five- or six-year-old notebook bearing playful characters like "moshihogusa seaweed" on its cover, skipped past pages lined with poems, and inspected the section fastened with a metal clasp at the top corner.

"Eerie compromise! Will the day come when I cease to fear this? —It is dreadful."

"—From this mood where I cannot maintain my usual assertions, even lyrical sentiments and habits of fantasy gradually fade into shadows—leaving only this wretched feebleness being subjected to irresistible oppression from all things? It’s not philosophical—I cannot bear being made to harbor this question mark within me. It is an accursed law, yet one decreed by no king—a law whose breaking brings no fear of prison chains is pitiable, and that it is not a law mourned for being unbreakable makes it accursed."

"Bound by chains of reason and confined within human dwellings."
"Emotions run wild through mountains and fields—As I mutter this and test my reason, behold—is it not donning a mask of brazen licentiousness?"

Taruya read pages scrawled with such phrases in impassioned Japanese and English script while smoking a cigarette.
While wondering why someone had clasped such absurd characters with a metal fastener and flipping through the pages, he found them soiled here and there with nosebleed stains.

In each house throughout the same town—when fathers were fathers, mothers were mothers, and children were children, all raising plumes of discontent—there floated up unbidden my own figure, helplessly irritated at being made to swallow a leaden sword.

"—Ever since then, and even now at times, I see in dreams my father's (silent testament) and my mother's (silent compassion). Though I am not in the least obedient to such dreams, and though I have never once considered my value as a child to my parents, there is something here that makes one feel a certain (blessing) of possessing an undoubted true child in this world. There exists that which makes known the silent life enduring from child to child. All manner of conflicts, every good and evil—these things lie free far beneath my own feet—I must think."

Taruya lay face down at the desk, dozing off while contemplating the carefree "freedom" written in the old notebook.
It was a spring-like evening veiled in haze.

“Daichan’s been here waiting since earlier—the meal’s already prepared.”

Saikun said, leaning her face out from the window above his desk.

“If you’d said so right away, it would’ve been fine—but I was bored, for once—”

“Oh, a nosebleed!”
She pointed at Taruya's nose.

“The weather’s too pleasant—it seems I’ve been dozing off since earlier.”

“How toxic.”

“Daichan, aren’t you starting? Isn’t the sky perfect for it?”

“He says he can’t settle down to work right now, so he intends to take a break for the time being. Daichan’s been lying around listlessly since earlier too—he seems terribly out of sorts, you know.”

Aono Daichan, the Bachelor of Science, had come to the house midway up Taruya’s Hill directly above that spot and was working on his star observations from the drying platform.
Taruya, who never looked up at the sky except beneath closed windows, had made it his habit that whenever he heard Aono had come, he would think tomorrow would bring fine weather.

“Daichan’s telescope is pointed right at my chest—hey, what’s the big idea? Cut it out!—and there I go again, panicking like a fool and running away.”
“Even when I flee—when I look back, it’s still pointing straight at me in this wide-open place that might be a seaside sand plain or a field, who can tell—nothing there at all—and my legs feel so light! While thinking I’ll dash into the house any moment now, I’m shouting ‘Flap-flap!’ and noisily beating my wings, flying about like it’s the greatest fun!”
“Then, you see, I caught sight of the old house that used to stand in front of the station.”
“Coming!”
“And then—at some point I became someone returning from nowhere in particular—when I said that, Mother, who'd been properly practicing calligraphy at her desk, turned to look at me and suddenly doubled over guffawing. When I jerked my head up to stare at the ceiling—it was the sky. The house existed only as a theatrical facade, and upon entering, sure enough—there was just a field.”
“The dance is about to start—shall we go?
“...and Mother invites [me]—”

“All dreams relate to something in our daily lives—everyone—”

“So they say—and when I see dreams so vividly connected to daily matters, I feel contempt for myself. But this one’s unrelated—listen a little longer.”

“But Daichan’s telescope?!”

“That does pose a bit of trouble.”

They continued chatting without pause, illuminating their feet with a flashlight as they ascended the narrow path.
Whether climbing the stone steps or stepping into the entranceway, even while Saikun was arranging the meal, Taruya kept talking.

“I was dozing off while dreaming—”

“Whoosh!” said Aono.
“Stop it—I’ve had enough of this dream talk.”

“When I do so, there’s Father shaving his face in what looks like a drying platform.”
“Mother, for her part, was still sitting at her desk in the shadow of sliding doors without a ceiling—both could be seen obliquely, just like in a Tosa-style painting.”

Taruya kept recounting his dream without cease while fussing with the nasal plug.
This too was because—with his nose stopped up—keeping his mouth open whenever silent made for an uncomfortable predicament.
“Suddenly I find myself wondering—where on earth am I standing now...”

II

When the rain stopped, the kite season in this area drew near.
Taruya devoted all his efforts to selecting only those brief periods—without distinction between day and night—when drowsiness and restlessness did not mingle.
He was being brought lunch baskets by his wife even at night in the boatbuilder's detached room.

“I once took this thing to the tidal flats ahead with Mr. N and his family, you know.”

“Ah, I had wanted to go to that rocky shore again this year, but...”

“You’re always sleeping.”

The upper house—where until last autumn the American N family, friends of her father who’d been displaced by the earthquake, had lived exactly as they left it—she skillfully utilized.
Consulting sections like “For the Sick” in old cookbooks, she proposed unconventional meals.
For him in his sedentary state, these proved perfectly suited.

One afternoon, he had fallen asleep around ten in the morning but choked on a stiflingly fragrant scent and awoke to find Aono’s Fuyuko sitting by his pillow.

“Saikun told me to wake you up, but when I came and saw how soundly you were sleeping, I ended up just watching your face.”

“The perfume stench is awful!”

“I sprayed some for you—it reeked of sweat, you see—”

Fuyuko wore a displeased expression.
She was of such a nervous disposition that it bordered on illness.
There was a husband who served as a government official abroad, but he had been back at his brother’s for over two years now.
He apparently had no intention of returning—what a nuisance!
There had been a time when her brother vented his frustration to Taruya.
When Taruya looked into Fuyuko’s eyes—those eyes that blinked infrequently yet quivered with nervous intensity—he would invariably feel a chill of oppression.

“Since the crabapple blossoms have reached full bloom”—Fuyuko informed him in a gratingly affected tone—“I came all this way specifically to invite you.”
Taruya made no move to comply yet found himself unable to refuse.

On the road to B Village, Taruya and his companions encountered the impatient Aono, who was walking toward them carrying a large camera without so much as glancing aside.
He was heading to Taruya’s "observation deck".

"That was the plan, but—since the sky suddenly cleared up so perfectly a moment ago, I can't just stand around dawdling—I'm useless..."
Aono tried to brush past them.
"That damn bird's been tormenting me again."
"All because of that cursed thing—"

Aono would often complain about the nuisance of his duty—having to herd the crane playing in the garden into the aviary each evening—making it a habitual grievance.
“What about the feed?”
“I bought it here.”
When Fuyuko retorted sharply,
“Ahh! I can’t do anything until that house burns down!”
Aono burst out with this sudden lament, his eyes brimming.
Yet he turned back with a clatter of shoes, like someone bound by an unbreakable command.

Taruya’s wife stood dumbfounded at this bizarre spectacle.
Even if this duty were strictly reserved for the master himself, surely his sister could have substituted for him occasionally in something as simple as feeding the crane—or so she mused.
Aono had claimed that with Winnecke’s Comet approaching within a million and a half ri of Earth, he begrudged every second of starlit nights needed for preparations—and yet—

Aono—now reduced to a disembodied voice forging ahead through dusk’s veiling haze—

"Agh! Agh!" he let out a staccato scream.
"What the hell! This absurd nonsense—do whatever you damn well please!"

“What the hell!” Fuyuko retorted.
And having returned to her earlier composure, she continued discussing with Taruya’s wife what sorts of amusements they might pursue come summer.

On the bridge, they encountered Aono’s manservant coming their way carrying a camera.

In Aono’s house remained several strange, lonely family customs.
“I wouldn’t mind living in some back-alley tenement or taking on any job—if it’s for our own lives—compared to the idiocy of keeping up that absurd house just to maintain it—”
“That’s the crux—it’s crushing. However passively you approach it, merely living in that house constitutes work enough for one man. You wouldn’t have time to read a single book.”
“Ah! I’d become a science teacher at any school—I want to abandon that house.”
He would often confide such worries to Taruya.
And he strove year after year to steadily pare down the household management.
Tenant farmer relations were severed; through mandarin orchard exchanges, debts shrank this much.
The racehorses had been disposed of—with each such resolution, Aono would inform Taruya with eyes gleaming joyfully.
“My sole wish now is to go live in Fengtian—but even attempting it, I couldn’t muster the travel funds. Yet staying in that house, things somehow manage—but I tell you, that’s truly terrifying when you think on it.”
“Lately I’ve not handled actual money—grand schemes exist only on ledgers, vanishing or becoming others’ property—I can’t even procure petty cash anymore.”

Until last year there had been red-crowned cranes, but now only a single male remained.
Regarding the particulars of family customs, Aono had been deeply ashamed and never spoke of them to others, yet there seemed to be some peculiar tradition associated with keeping cranes.
In Taruya’s childhood memory of being taken there by his mother—a crane had stood in the garden, and come evening Daichan’s grandfather would hold a long-handled fan-like object to herd the bird with an air of perfect tranquility, a scene that lingered in his mind.
Assuming a stance like one drowsily swinging a naginata, he would gently sweep at the bird’s legs, strike its wings when it resisted, send gusts to alter its course—repeating these motions with rapt focus while keeping ample distance, gradually steering it toward the aviary.
For even at midday beneath that forest-encircled sky within the detestable manor, darkness would already lie thick about; all one could perceive was the faint white form darting through air like something floating on water, and the pursuer’s labored breaths.
In the gloom, the crane beat its wings with solemn grandeur and loosed a piercing cry.

Taruya—the "long-handled fan-like object" he would probably use daily provided it didn’t rain—was something no painting would depict nor any zoo employ. It must have been invented by someone in Aono’s house. Each time came the instruction: “Bring that thing here for a moment.” It wasn’t simply called “the crane-herding tool”—it must have had some special name he wanted to ask about, but Daichan would become terribly embarrassed at such questions for reasons unknown.

“Why don’t you acquire a female one?” Taruya asked Daichan at some point, whereupon Daichan immediately replied:

“It’s no joke—you can’t imagine how relieved I’ve been since there’s only one left.”
“We can’t even afford to buy one—! Even with just that damn thing alone, do you have any idea how I have to handle it every single day?!”

Aono shuddered and said.

“So Brother really did abandon it and come here after all.”
“His conscience must have been pricking him, so he went back there like that.”

When Taruya and the others passed through Aono’s gate, Fuyuko clicked her tongue and muttered.
“I do think it’s pitiful, but I can’t do anything about it either.”

When they were shown into the sitting room, Fuyuko left the Taruya couple behind to prepare the snow lanterns—another age-old custom—that would be lit amidst the crabapple trees.

“How about you come help too?”
Taruya carelessly turned to his wife and said,
“…………”
Fuyuko halted as if startled and perplexed.
Then she wore a rare smile.
Taruya reflexively interpreted refusal in Fuyuko’s expression and flushed red.
But her smile was not merely the sort that leaves inarticulate men red-faced through awkward exchanges—it carried a water-like sadness that seeped into him.
There lingered an indescribably faint, somber atmosphere.

Unlike Daichan, Fuyuko lacked any tendency to feel bashful about her duties at our house before others.
She seemed oblivious that their various hereditary tasks were considered rare in the world.

Taruya’s wife had grown as reserved as when visiting a temple.

“I was supposed to put a curling iron through Shūko’s hair.”
Fuyuko suddenly uttered this, apparently intending to break the tedious silence.
Then she departed accompanied by Shūko.
Both women had short hair.

Taruya was bored, so while he thought it pitiful for the shy Daichan to be watched, since neither Daichan nor the crane were distinctly visible anyway, he gazed at the garden through the bamboo blind.
The lamps in the sitting room had not yet been lit, so the outside was brighter.

In the garden, crabapple flowers filled every corner in full bloom.
"When those snow lanterns are lit up later—it must look stunning! I wonder if Daichan’s already done with them?"
Musing this way while slipping into an uncharacteristically calm state—eyes half-closed—he suddenly caught sight of Daichan emerging from within the blossoms.
The crane was there too.
Though both crane and Daichan had been actively working beneath the flowers this whole time, Taruya had lost track of them amid such overwhelming profusion of blossoms.

Aono was chasing the crane with the long-handled fan-like implement his grandfather had used in former times. Taruya realized with belated clarity that Daichan's features bore resemblance to those grandfather's. And Daichan had grown old too—the thought surfaced unbidden.

Taruya had assumed that Daichan—being extremely short-tempered in all matters except astronomy and perpetually gritting his teeth at our house's traditions—would surely not imitate his grandfather's methods when herding the crane. Yet upon looking, he found him following the old man's exact form, as if he knew no other method than that.
But the male crane would flip away from Daichan’s long-handled fan-like object and dart frantically here and there, so the pursuer could not always swing it gently; instead, he ended up leaping about like a child chasing fireflies or striking the ground with all his might like a farmer wielding a hoe.
If he acted with the leisurely demeanor of a sage summoning clouds like his grandfather, gaps would only widen—the crane would writhe its neck as if sticking out its tongue mockingly right before its pursuer’s eyes, strike a contemptuous pose, and crane its beak skyward.
As if to say, “Ah, this feels splendid—fan me more,” it would ultimately tuck its head beneath a wing, stand on one leg like a signpost, and become utterly still.—Daichan couldn’t help letting out an impatient cry.
“Idiot!”
“Damn thing!” he shouted.
The crane, frightened, let out a cry as if pleading while hiding itself among the flowers, then crouched down and noisily flapped its wings against the ground.
Apparently, some flowers had already fallen; together with the wings that struck the ground, snow-like petals fluttered upward like powdery snow.

Even after Fuyuko had finished lighting the snow lanterns, Daichan and the crane's struggle only grew more irritating.

“Now, let’s take our time with the flower viewing.”
Fuyuko—who had returned wearing a sudden bright smile—rolled up the bamboo blind with swift efficiency, oblivious to Taruya’s bewilderment, then threw open every shoji screen at once.
Both garden and sitting room overflowed with evenly spaced lamps, making Daichan’s figure visible as clearly as if within arm’s reach.
Taruya, finding Daichan’s plight unbearable, averted his eyes from the garden, while Fuyuko—seemingly without an ounce of concern for her brother in such straits—pointed out blossoms to admire.
Though Taruya too had to praise the flowers with gracious magnanimity, seeing how Daichan—now aware of being observed from this side—grew flustered like an amateur actor forced onstage made following Fuyuko’s lead utterly impossible.

Taruya, ceremoniously urged to do so, received a sake cup while keeping his gaze fixed on Fuyuko.

“Brother says we’ll end the snow lantern ceremonies after this year. That’s just as well.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it.”

“When I was little, I was made to dance around there to Grandfather’s noh chanting.”
“Shall we play tag later, everyone?”

“Well…”
Taruya’s wife also seemed bashful because of Daichan.
Fuyuko had removed her Western clothes and changed into old-fashioned, flamboyant robes.
Taruya wondered whether her cropped hair didn’t seem particularly discordant due to childhood memories, but it turned out to hold a different sort of fascination.
His mind remained dull and hazy, like the muted glow of snow lanterns.

If you rushed, it was no good—for someone preoccupied with other matters, this must have been more agonizing than being disciplined. To see the movements that a master who had completed his day’s duties should have governed with tranquil mind being carried out reluctantly by the one now setting out to perform those duties… how wretched it all was……

“Even so, there’s no one who could possibly help with that! Brother has kept at it for over ten years since Father passed away, yet he still handles it in such a state!”

Fuyuko went so far as to explain Daichan’s circumstances in that manner to Taruya’s wife for the first time.
Before they knew it, the two women had moved out to the engawa veranda and were watching Daichan’s exertions as if observing some ceremonial spectacle.
The crane kept stumbling over the snow lanterns at the corner of the artificial hill, but Fuyuko did not go to rectify it.
—Taruya disliked going alone to the lavatory in this house.

III

When his wife had to visit her mother at her family home due to illness, Taruya—

“Don’t worry about me—take as many days as you need. Since it’d be a hassle, I’ll just check myself into the hospital while you’re gone—” he said.
He had been diligently going to the town hospital since the cherry blossoms were in bloom.
The creative work he had been mentally preparing since early spring went on hiatus, and during that interval he wrote a short story meant for publication in next month’s magazine.

Aono would rush by bicycle to and from the house in B Village at dusk; otherwise, he devoted himself to devising methods for photographing comets at Taruya’s house.

“I want to go to Fengtian. If not that, then Hokkaido would do…”
Aono abruptly let out such a sigh.
Rarely did he exchange words with anyone he encountered, as if he had forgotten they were living beings.

“Are you all right?”

“...I hear Kei-chan knows a pawnshop—let’s ask Kei-chan.”

Kei-chan was a friend of Taruya’s who lived in Tokyo but had spent most of the previous year at Taruya’s place in the city’s outskirts, becoming friends with Saikun too.

“Will you have Kei-chan come?”

“Since he’s working these days, if you call his workplace he’ll come meet you all the way to Shinagawa.”

She tilted her head and said, “We don’t need to ask Kei-chan—my family surely knows someone.”

“Strange, isn’t it?”

One morning at the dining table that the N people had used as a substitute for a ping-pong table among other things—after Aono had no sooner finished his meal than he fell asleep—Taruya and the others engaged in such a conversation. The strawberries cultivated by the elderly caretakers had reached perfect ripeness.

“Then I can go enjoy myself, right?”

“Ah, but if you get played around with just for fun, that’ll be trouble. Don’t botch the shopping at Kameya.”

“I wrote everything down already—it’s fine. And I don’t need any of the kimonos.”

“I don’t need Western clothes—any of them…”

“It might be better to sell them, you know.”

“Wouldn’t that method be troublesome…?”

Taruya even ate the strawberries Aono had forgotten to touch.—“Let’s send the luggage ahead and walk you to the station,” he said.
The light reaching around his legs—perhaps because he had risen unusually early—left him feeling strangely refreshed.
After the two suitcases containing pawned items and Saikun’s handbag had gone ahead, he—

“I still feel like that won’t be enough,” he said thoughtfully.
As he thought that a cloth-wrapped bundle would suffice since they were sending it via Chitsuki Parcel anyway, his eyes fell upon the rucksack buried in the corner of the trunk.
His wife flinched, but he insisted—“I’ll take them to the port station myself—we’ll send them by railway parcel”—and made her pack her chrysanthemum-patterned furisode and his morning coat, which hadn’t fit into the case.
Then he swiftly wrapped himself in the banded old winter garment—unlikely to become pawnable—that he had cast aside, and earnestly shouldered the rucksack.
And as he hesitated about whether to explain something regarding the luggage to the elderly caretakers—

“There’s no time, no time—if we go on foot—” his wife urged.

She entrusted the lunch basket—now also necessary for Aono—to a café on the village outskirts along the way, adding a pencil-marked bookmark labeled “For the Sick” between its contents.

“What splendid weather we’re having. If you weren’t ill, I’d love to go mountain climbing right away.”

“I was just thinking the same thing—rearranging the bag’s contents at that café—”
“If I were to go to the mountains, I feel like I could write something right away—”

“If you take advantage of my absence to go somewhere strange, you’ll be in for it when I get back. No matter what you do, you can’t hide it anymore—not these days!” She showed her fist to Taruya.

“Until just the other day it was purple, but look—today it’s completely green… I—” He pointed at a mountain to the north. “That densely wooded black mountain over there isn’t so bad once you’re inside, but from afar you’d never feel like climbing it. And this one—” He redirected his finger westward. “The dew on the bare earth there changes hues several times a day depending on the light. Unless you’re over there—” He trailed off.

“You wouldn’t get into a mountain-climbing mood up there!”
“A picnic, right?”
“Where is this place called Tengu’s playground?”
“You can’t see it from here—it’s a bracken-producing area.”

She had forgotten her parasol—what a blunder!
Squinting her eyes, she gazed beyond his fingertip.
"You could buy a very cheap one," Taruya suggested.

"Should I go get my eyes fixed?"
She said this as if suddenly remembering.
Her eyelids were asymmetrical—one double-lidded, the other single-lidded.
The single lid wasn't fully so; when furious or laughing excessively, it would oddly transform into a double lid through some quirk of motion.
Moreover, they said deliberate blinking could shift its state at will.
She declared she wanted to perfect both into proper double eyelids.

“If both were properly single-lidded, that’d be fine—but they say even a genuine single lid can get fixed!”
“So a minor procedure would probably sort mine out.”
She even knew such clinics existed inside the Marunouchi Building.

“Which eye?”
Taruya stopped mid-stride to scrutinize her eyelids anew.
“...Not worth fussing over.”
“Hell, I never even noticed till now.”
“You’d hate going under the knife for this, wouldn’t you?”

“Our Kan-chan mentioned it costs around twenty-five yen or something, so for just one eyelid, it’d probably be twelve or thirteen yen, right?”

“That’s expensive.”
Taruya’s face clearly revealed a disapproving expression.

“Look a little more closely, won’t you?”
She called back Taruya—who had turned away and was gazing at the mountains from the bridge railing—saying, “Take a proper look!”
Having said that, she presented one eye as one does when having someone wipe soot-clouded eyes.
Though the hour approached noon, the bridge stood nearly deserted of pedestrians, yet he offered a bitter smile that seemed ill at ease.
A river abundant with gravel banks, where both the watery stretches and the pebbled areas lay bathed in deep sunlight, hazy and indistinct.
Around the river mouth, he could clearly see a small emerging delta where seagulls had gathered.
“Wait until I finish my cigarette!” he said while counting the seagulls.

“Shall I lend you these?”
His wife took out a compact pair of opera glasses from her imitation leather handbag.

“You’re in the mood to go see plays and such?!”
Taruya groaned sorrowfully.

“But I have tickets from Suzuki-san! You didn't let Mother go anywhere last month even though she made a special effort to go out, did you?”

His wife liked Kabuki plays.

“It’s about my eye, look!”
She pressed him again after recalling.

Taruya gazed at her eyelids thrust before him.
She pressed one eye with a hand and added an exaggerated, shutter-like blink to the eye she was showing him.
Then those eyelids changed into slightly swollen-looking double eyelids.

“I see, it’s double-lidded—that should be fine as it is.”
Taruya said with apparent admiration.

"But when I do this, it immediately—"
She said in a helpless voice, "It reverts right away!" while gently fluttering the eye she'd been carefully holding open—instantly returning it to its original single-lidded state.
"That's odd—try demonstrating the other side again!"

She repeated the motion flawlessly.

“It really does!”

“When I think about this, I get really bothered by it whenever I talk to people.”

“So when you laugh, you put your hand around your eyes with a casual gesture, huh?”

“It’s not like that, but…”
Saikun turned red and involuntarily pressed the back of her hand to her face.

“I don’t dislike that habit of yours.”

As they were talking about such things, the rickshaw driver returned and, while handing over tickets and such, informed them that unless they hurried considerably, they likely wouldn’t make it in forty minutes.

IV

“I’d completely assumed you’d gone to your mother’s—yet here you were in a place like this!”

Into Taruya’s room—where he had nearly recovered his health and was thinking of being discharged in two or three days—Aono entered wearing nothing but a rolled-up shirt, without even a jacket.

“I did go! To Mother’s.”

“I did go there, but no matter how hard I tried...”

“There was a temple...”

“Was there?”

“It’s a temple that looks just like an ordinary house..."

Taruya tried to explain...

"If something happened... I too must go there (separate from where he would go after leaving this village house—something he had lately been imagining with increasing frequency)—but what a cluttered mess of a place where I can’t even sketch a proper map! he thought."

“I didn’t even know when your mother moved there—or rather, it’s already been three or four years! I must have gone there several times, but the area looks so different that... who knows!”

“Who did you hear about me from?”

“Today was the first time I met with the old man.”

“Your work seems quite vigorous—I can clearly picture your working style.”
“I’ve already been here over two weeks.”
“Honestly, you’re utterly indifferent to everyday matters!”

“I’m just forgetful.”

“Didn’t you ask Fuyuko-chan? If you’d asked Fuyuko-chan, you would’ve understood about Mother’s situation.”

“I’ve never even spoken to that one! There’s no one as indifferent to others’ work as her—and here I’ve been so busy lately!”

Aono had lately been increasingly careless with the crane, taking it out on even his sister, but when conflicts arose, he could never match her... “How absurd it was—him declaring he’d die by cutting open his belly and putting on such a theatrical act!”

Taruya had heard such things from Fuyuko, but for Daichan, this was the absolute limit! he thought. Aono was a kind older brother to his sister—not a selfish man, but one incapable of telling jokes. Fuyuko had been calling it an act and such, but Taruya felt a chill in his chest. And what kind of frenzy had he performed? he thought, but he lacked the strength to press further.

“I’m deeply envious that you can devote yourself solely to your own work.”

Aono sighed while looking at his wristwatch.

“If only I could just work…”

“You’ve been doing it right there, haven’t you!”
Aono remarked quizzically how Taruya kept saying such things yet was still writing even in a place like the hospital.
And he picked up the paper pieces gathered at Taruya’s bedside.

“Oh, this is quite long. Are you submitting it right away?”

“I wrote it to submit right away. It’s for next month’s magazine.”
“There’s still two or three days until the deadline, but I forced myself to finish writing it last night.”

“That must’ve been hard, writing in bed like that!”

“I just stubbornly pushed through in defiance—it’s terribly embarrassing, but there’s no helping it.”
“I’m thinking of writing one more—whether I like it or not—”
Taruya said such things while lying face up, stiffened as if attempting a deep breath.
“Even when I imagine the unavoidable continuation of such a life, I don’t feel melancholy because of it.”

“...”
Aono did not pay attention to Taruya’s words.
“How’s that creative work you’ve been mentally pausing and resuming coming along?”

“That? That…?”

“Hey, don’t say such strange things—it’s not a dream, it’s that thing we’re always being told about. Was your hospitalization supposed to be a break?”

“Hmm... It feels like what you’d call eternal hospitalization.”
“It’s this way with that and that way with this—putting on airs to avoid wielding the axe, leaning on such pretense while being blown about by the fragmentary sighs of each passing day... but later I’ll surely be shocked to realize I’m just rolling an empty barrel…”

“Spouting such pretentious nonsense—and you’re supposed to be playing the invalid!”
“But you—that’s neither a dream nor an empty barrel! It’s just me writing down your endless blathering!”
“Let’s inquire further—that resting in feelings…”
Aono began—then gave a bitter smile, suddenly self-conscious of how such words inevitably turned convoluted whenever he spoke with Taruya.
“A novel that mentally takes breaks and keeps going!”
What a cumbersome title for a 'novel'!
Taruya thought.

“Let’s give it a proper title—since it’s a hassle to keep uttering cumbersome titles every time this comes up in conversation, and yet saying ‘that one’ or ‘the usual’ feels just as awkward, exactly like—” Taruya began, then flushed red without meaning to and hid his face under the covers.
“Exactly like how I’m stuck not knowing the name of that ‘long-handled fan-like thing’ at your place!”

The foolishness of having tried to blurt out such an absurd metaphor on the spur of the moment made even me feel ashamed.

“Right, it would be good to come up with some title for it.”
Aono said without seeing Taruya’s face.
Taruya could not, no matter how he tried, ask Aono the name of that long-handled fan-like object.
It wasn’t merely that Aono was reserved about matters concerning his own household, but also that in Aono’s own figure swinging such an object, Taruya imagined a fear of harboring a pitiful sense of absurdity—one he himself would never possess—
Taruya had thought that if he could figure out that name, it would make a fitting title for his collection of works.
He had even cautiously inquired with Fuyuko, but for some reason, even she seemed reluctant to answer regarding it and deflected the conversation—there might have been reasons too troublesome to explain in a single evening.

As Taruya closed his eyes and hid in the darkness beneath the covers, Aono muttered to himself.
“No matter what suffering accompanies it’s good that you can immerse yourself in your own work.”
“Oh—looks like exhaustion finally claimed him.—Ah! How it vexes me! Through its doing everything lies ruined! Merely imagining its form makes me feel born for this world’s contempt! Should I encounter its beating wings my very body would scatter! And its cries—”

“Shut up!”
Taruya suddenly blared like a trumpet in the darkness.
“Don’t spew such extravagant complaints, you fool!”
“Bachelor of Science!”
“You’re not the only one doing your star work!”

“But you—mentally keep going…”

“Shut up! Be quiet!”

“So that’s your star work, then!”

“Do whatever you want!”

“Is your work these days as complicated for you as my crane work is?”
“Huh? Taruya?”

“Just like you, I find no interest in real-world matters, damn it!”

“Calm down, Taruya—don’t get so single-mindedly worked up. I’ve somehow grown sad—I don’t understand why!”
“I know you’re unreasonable—that you’re a forgetful man…”

“I do have common sense—for the likes of you! It’s just that all that stuff is utterly uninteresting and bothersome...”

“That’s true for me too—so I…”

“Foolishly tangled matters, vulgar living, things of no interest—not that my dull mind remembers them in detail… I somehow recall them without mixing in fantasy and write them down… Where hope lies, my hands cannot grasp it…”

“But you—didn’t you say earlier that even if you imagined such an inescapable continuity of life, you wouldn’t feel melancholy because of it—”

“Don’t nitpick, you scientist! What’s wrong with you—throwing a tantrum over something as trivial as crane care, making a scene about life and death? And then getting your head whacked by your sister until you couldn’t utter a word! Even so, all you do is spew complaints—just chase that thing away and your work’s done! Then you can spend the rest of your time staring at the damn sky!”

“I’ve somewhat grasped it—that barrel of yours—yes, let’s call it a barrel instead of that long title—is essentially my stars. You want to devote yourself to that alone, but just as I’m hindered by that crane, you’re often made ill by life itself—is that what you’re saying?”

“Shut up! Don’t talk like it’s arithmetic!”
“Say what you will—how I’m made sick isn’t like you!”
“Plus I—unlike you—don’t have that... that long-handled fan…”

“YOU IDIOT! SHUT UP!”
“WHICH OF US IS SPOUTING EXTRAVAGANT COMPLAINTS, YOU WRITER!” Aono shouted.
“DONKEY EARS!
“YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE DOING CREATIVE WORK!”

“So you see, you’re the one with that long-handled fan-like object…”

“SHUT UP! BE QUIET! Enough with your childish delusions! You’re the one spewing complaints yet half-assing your work, then having the nerve to gaze at the skies of some novel that mentally takes breaks and keeps going—how damn convenient!”
“You fool!”

“But that’s you—calm down! Daichan—don’t get so single-mindedly worked up! I somehow…”

“You thief! You tried to break into your mother’s house with a burglary rod the other day, didn’t you?”

“Stop scolding—don’t shout about that!” Taruya turned ashen like an actor playing a tragic role faltering through a pitiful defense.

“There’s a painful reason for that. If it were an ordinary burglary rod, one could finish the job cleanly and be done with it—but I can’t help revisiting it again as painful work, and until I drive it away, that usual……”

“What the hell are you saying?”
“Your mother—since you showed up nearby, she’s too ashamed to even go out anymore! At night she can’t rest easy either...”

“Ah, Daichan—don’t tell me what comes next… It overlaps with what I wrote last night. Threefold sufferings have no salvation.”

“Mistaking them for something usable, you probably stole old gold coins that aren’t even valid anymore.”

“Let’s talk about the stars, Daichan!”

“If you go around saying you saw such dreams, you’d ruin your father’s portrait by drawing a mustache on it!”

“Let’s talk about the stars, Daichan,” Taruya said in a womanish voice while wiping sweat.
“Since I’ve tentatively settled those nuisances last night, today let’s properly discuss the stars—otherwise I’ll start talking about that... continuation from another emotional angle. This time I’ll tackle it in one go—appear exactly as you do when rushing to the observatory after finishing your crane work! And pray my wretchedly tedious self—compelled to brood and write again—doesn’t show up tomorrow.”

“But I’ve got to go now—for the crane.”
“Ah, damn it!”

“It’s been raining since morning, hasn’t it? Since it’s the rainy season, it needs to rain more or I’ll be in trouble.”

“I’d forgotten about the rain.”
“Today was a complete rest day for me.”
“I’m exhausted. Going to sleep.”
“On days free of annoyances, I can’t even do my own work—no matter what I say, you’re better off. Just immerse yourself in that continuation at your own pace… Today for sure…”

The medical officer knocked on the door and took Taruya’s temperature.

Isn’t Daichan suffering from neurasthenia? Getting so worked up over such trivial things!

"That guy seems utterly cursed by his own work"—Taruya muttered as he went out to the corridor for his twilight exercise.
Not a single still object in the vicinity appeared distorted in the slightest.

V

Let’s skip over summer.

Taruya had published a vast number of short stories that made a fool of himself as their protagonist—"Weather Unaware"—while recalling every slightly notable event from his life up to yesterday: "Marital Quarrel," "The Drunken Thief," "Auction," "A Certain Mother and Child’s Tears," "Bitter Insect," "The Portrait Incident," and others—.

Waking near noon to clear skies, he—still half-asleep—leapt up (in that small summer village where even dashing into the streets in such a state would draw no strange looks) and clad only in a black loincloth with a towel over his head raced down the stone steps, crossed the main road, and flew toward the sea. Because it was a rough and remote seaside, there were none of those vibrant groups who had come from afar for summer retreats. Kei-chan and Saikun’s beautiful classmate Miss T would come, and they would always go to the beach from morning; by the time Taruya came running, they would be engrossed in chatting under parasols. It was Taruya’s custom to dash past the parasol where harmonicas played like a swift bird, unfailingly execute a brilliant somersault at the water’s edge, and then dive into the depths of the waves. He had to do that much to wake himself up, for he'd been keeping up fierce all-nighters to write his novel titled "Bitter Insect"—forgetting all scenery and weather in the process.

“Hey!”
Because he raised his head and called out from beyond the waves, it was only then that the group under the parasols noticed his appearance.

“Look! Three distinct white lines from those vertical wrinkles are still there!”

“That’s terrible! You’re not serious?! Do I really make such a dazzled face every time I come to the sea?!”

“Even normally, you have this strange habit of exaggeratedly gathering wrinkles there.” Kei-chan pointed at the space between Taruya's eyebrows and laughed.

As Kei-chan jeered, “Punish! Punish!” the others also laughed.
Taruya didn't understand what was funny, nor did he particularly care about Kei-chan's incomprehensible jeering, but he couldn't grasp why they were laughing.

Though it had apparently been a failure, Aono—having brought his work to a temporary conclusion—hardly showed himself throughout the summer.
Taruya thought that he was probably keeping his distance simply because unfamiliar guests had been visiting continuously.

From behind the hill, Taruya saw children returning in small groups, singing, with ears of susuki grass waving in their hands. When they passed by each other, it seemed someone had peeled an unripe mikan—the sour scent characteristic of an autumn evening struck his nose. Taruya thought, Oh, is tonight the moon-viewing?

That evening, he brought chairs out to the garden and held a moon-viewing with his wife. In both the second floor of the general store across the road below and the boat carpenter’s living quarters, ears of susuki grass could be seen from behind the shoji screens, and the shadows of offerings were cast upon them.

“Usually we’d be invited by Aono, but it seems they’ve canceled this year’s old-style moon-viewing banquet because of Daichan’s situation.”

Taruya told his wife about Aono’s moon-viewing events that blended Heian-period customs.

“It’s like daytime!”

Saikun gazed entranced at the scenery where sea, forest, and village houses stood densely bathed in moonlight.
“It’s so quiet, isn’t it?”
“How strange there’s not a hint of eeriness anywhere.”
“If you go round back, you might find chestnuts to gather!”

“It’s strange how we can’t hear the footsteps of people walking on the opposite road—on this path, even you could make it to Fuyuko-chan’s place alone, couldn’t you?”

“Even a dark night—if I decide to go, I’d be fine.”

“Nonsense!” Taruya suddenly jerked his chin back and grimaced.
“I didn’t ask to hear that kind of answer.”
“I’m just appreciating the moon’s beauty in all its forms—in a waka-like mood!”
“Why must you be such a fool?”

“...”
The wife looked down sorrowfully.
Taruya, as if rudely awakened from the pleasant trance he’d finally managed to enter, irritably continued his own foolish muttering.
(The Drunken Thief) would have been better with such a moonlit night as its backdrop.... It was an event that occurred on such a beautifully moonlit evening!
In such a way—.
Had I done that, that fragmented protagonist's figure wouldn't have ended up such a suffocating reflection of the author himself—did I lack even the mental faculty to transform darkness into moonlit night? Ah, what a colossal failure this has been!

“What are you muttering to yourself about?”

“If you can go, then go ahead and go—all the way to Fuyuko-chan’s place. It’s a moonlit night.”

“I can’t even respond properly—”

“Shall we go together? It’s a bit far, but I’ve suddenly gotten the urge to visit Aono. The moon seen there is truly something—in a garden where you can’t see the sky, light comes sparkling through the treetops.”

“It’s too late!”

――――――――――

Fragments of what Aono spoke in the tatami room—where a taxidermied crane adorned the tokonoma—to Taruya, who had suddenly come to visit on a certain clear autumn day:

"There was probably some mating-call frustration mixed in too—anyway, its agitation since summer had been unbearable. I'd reached my limit and waited until night when its eyes were no longer visible, then carried it into the aviary."

"That day I'd been lying ill since morning, all while thinking I needed to feed it."

“It was only after the incident occurred that I realized that evening had been the moon-viewing.
“My sister was right beside it but didn’t even notice the footsteps—I had thought to invite you all before sunset, but—”
“It was only when the crane fell from the engawa with a thud that my sister finally noticed! We desperately tried to make it spit out the moon-viewing dumpling it had swallowed whole, but it was already too late!”
“You might already know this, but our family’s dumplings are this large due to some age-old custom—though why exactly, I couldn’t say.”

“Why on earth didn’t my sister notice? Later she’d say bone-chilling things as a joke—like ‘I did it on purpose because you kept complaining about that thing so much’—and tease me with that nonsense. But how on earth did the crane get up onto the engawa—in what posture—and how did it take the dumpling into its mouth? Even now, I constantly imagine such trivial things.”

“I don’t think it meant to grab it as food at all—just a sudden fluke... Imagining such things about an animal is foolish, but I keep thinking it must’ve playfully pecked at it on a whim. Even as evening approached, the area remained unusually hushed……Then it must have rolled into its beak, causing it to panic and look upward—and once that happened, the beak gradually became nothing more than a pitiful compass that could only open wider.”

“You—could you someday write about our Crane in one of your novels? Not as a protagonist though. Just include a scene somewhere, like a landscape description in the story—simply show it strolling alone in the garden, as if substituting for a photograph. It shouldn’t be too unreasonable—even within a fairy tale would suffice. I just want to feel like I alone could recognize it there. I’d even tell you all its peculiar habits later, if you’d consent.”
“But that’s impossible anyway—please don’t specially write about the crane. Not that such an empty ending would ever warrant inclusion in a novel.”
“Setting aside literal facts—keep it to yourself that our Crane met such an end, as much as possible.”

“You probably find this contradictory,” Aono said, lowering his eyelids.
“For some reason, I’ve felt strangely lonely since it disappeared—though there should be no room for sentimentality or attachment. I’ve grown weary of everything for now and have shut myself away in the house ever since. And this melancholy feels oddly refreshing. Lately, Fuyuko seems inclined to return to her husband abroad, and I too have made a grand resolution to close up this house by spring and start a life of my own—not in any ominous sense—it’s more like being preempted by that event too suddenly, or to put it grandly, as if lashed by a whip… And it’s not just about that—somehow I still want to linger here a while longer, wrapped in this haze… Ah, but—!”
“Let’s stop before we start fighting again.”
Aono gave a light laugh and extended his hand for a handshake before Taruya.

“I don’t feel any contradiction at all.
“Tell me more about the Crane from that time—and your story.”

Taruya muttered in a low voice while quietly taking Aono’s hand, his gaze—foolish yet intent-filled—fixed on the long-handled fan-like object propped in the alcove corner behind the taxidermied crane.