Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Murō Saisei

There once was a man.
Even if we speak of "long ago," five years past could be called long ago, and events of ten years prior were long ago as well.
The man composed poems, wrote them on paper, and sold them at market for his livelihood.
His poems weren't particularly skillful, but since all his clients were women, he somehow managed to scrape by with scarcely one customer a day to sustain himself.
The clients would recount various commonplace matters—circumstances for versifying, pity, love, rebellion—and in the end would all say as if rehearsed: "Really now, even should you compose poems for us, it would change nothing. But since you'd be hard-pressed without customers carrying on so," adding that they'd visited today too, behaving as though leaving food money for the man constituted some display of kindness.
The man unwrapped the meager coins from the paper package left behind and put away the same agreed-upon amount into his purse.
With that money, he could eat for about two or two and a half days.
Even if composing and selling poems yielded little, the man was content so long as it brought coin.
For rather than growing irritated daily while writing numerous novels to earn money, he found it better to compose carefree poems—this way he could greet each morning with refreshed spirit when rising.

The man had placed his writing desk in a meager concrete clearing beside the road that rose like a hill, where the entrance formed five or six steps with a landing.
From there rose twelve or thirteen Oya stone steps, and near their summit was a landing with seven or eight final steps leading to the top.
It was the season of falling blossoms, and cherry petals were swept into every corner of the stone steps, while there one could see a dawn scene reminiscent of a shoreline.
The gentle breeze was sweetly fragrant; the warmth welled up from within his cheeks.
The man had been diligently writing poems since earlier and was reading them while making corrections.
The history of women the man had long favored was entirely uniform in type.
Not a single one deviated from similarly rosy complexions in coloration; whenever he saw them, they were always plump-cheeked, healthy-complexioned women.
While gathering herbs, their faces flushed as if from the sun, and he finally felt ashamed of focusing his eyes solely on that.
As he counted off "Number One, Number Two, Number Three, Number Four...", a girl among them sneezed. It was so abrupt that everyone merely chuckled faintly before resuming their photographically serious expressions.
Their ages ranged from eighteen or nineteen to about twenty-six or twenty-seven, following an order of two or three married women and five or six unmarried girls, but among the rosy-cheeked ones was a single person with a bloodless, yellowish pale face.
This was an unexpected countenance that shouldn't have moved the man's heart, yet this person who appeared twenty-five or twenty-six years old naturally had a pale face and didn't even offer a perfunctory smile.
She was the mistress of a shop dealing in Western paper and stationery, but there had been a brief period when the man felt affection for her countenance, which already bore a sharply alluring charm that ran sternly in a single line.
The obedience in her sexual conduct during daylight hours took on a stern solemnity, and through this, she displayed a purity as if completely detached from sensuality.
It was the Madonna type.
From every angle she repelled anything vulgar, her pale face one of noble refinement.

The man thought there was no way such a person would come here now, yet when he looked up, that unmistakably pale face posed its question: "Do you still favor my face?"
The man replied that while he rarely favored anyone besides those with rosy cheeks, now that he beheld her, he had come to understand why he too must favor pale faces.
"In those days, there existed my lyrical predisposition to always find sorrow in women's faces—you possessed this quality abundantly, adjusting the levels of fatigue and sorrow to perfectly match my contemplations."
Through this method of purchasing stationery—selecting unnecessary writing papers this way and that, comparing notebook bindings—all to remain by your side even a moment longer, he had been expending there a longing even he couldn't recognize.
In later years, it seemed something warm yet sickly—like this current self attempting to compose poems—had been left behind at that shop long ago.
You never said anything at all, and there had been no need for you to speak.
I have no memory of ever hearing what might be called your voice; only that you would rise from your long torso into a half-crouch to retrieve notebooks from the shelf.
The yellowish lusterless texture blended seamlessly with that strange sadness in the man—a sadness he deemed the foremost of his longings for women—and he always gazed upon them as beautiful.
If I wanted to meet you, I could summon you from the dark back room by purchasing Western paper or fountain pens in transactions requiring no money.
There, if I wished to create a simple opportunity to see you, I could create one.
That was all there was to it.
There are times when one must accept the fate of simply looking at people.
The person emerging from the dark inner room with suspicious eyes had her entire front-facing body oriented directly toward me.
Face, chest, abdomen, lower abdomen, legs—each part of her three-dimensional figure displayed without shame, charged with immediacy as she pressed forward.
Indeed, that overflowing form filled one's eyes completely—not a single limb remained unaccounted for—until vision itself became burdened by excess weight.
The sexual act not only failed to grasp a partner's full beauty but often lost its greater part, rendering itself an empty endeavor instead.
A gaze fixed on one place loses all else; there comes a time when men find no beauty serves any purpose—when unable to cling to love's most splendid aspects through face-gazing alone.
Just as landscapes require seasonal changes for sustained viewing, people become unable to linger and gaze unless transformations occur—though they might have radiated splendor from disheveled hair, it remained regrettably ordered instead.
The upper arms one never notices despite daily observation would appear plumply attached when bared—strangely beautiful... Even this discovery only revealed itself through complete nudity.

The man who had long since left that shop now looked up in renewed astonishment—eyes wide—at her figure standing before his writing desk to purchase poems, she who had emerged years later from a dust-laden wind.
The man, thinking he must appear like some shabby roadside fortune-teller, hesitated momentarily before addressing her again:
"How in the world did you hear I still lived here—spreading this desk to sell verses as before?" She answered that she'd heard from none—that upon alighting the bus, her feet had naturally turned toward this back alley—adding, "I don't recall you at all. Only after reading of a trade where one voices others' hearts as their own did I come seeking your instruction."
"And if I yet exist in your memory," she continued, "I would hear whether my face and eyes remain unchanged."
The man responded:
"You remain refined without showing the slightest impropriety. However solemn and chaste a woman may be, some wantonness mingled with allure inevitably surfaces—yet in you I discern no such disarray. You keep a face as though never having lain with man—like some consummate liar."
"Even when lying with your husband, you likely maintain that countenance unaltered—uttering no sound—rising afterward to straighten your collar and revert wholly to yourself. Through ten or twenty years you preserve this unsullied solemn visage... Now too, gazing up at you, you still appear as one knowing nothing and having done nothing—such people are rare—perhaps one in tens of thousands."
"Women fundamentally possess this trait of walking with countenances utterly divorced from whether they've lain with men or merely seem to have done so; hence at any banquet they maintain appearances like freshly cut Western pastries—to repeat—this is why their beauty shows no blemish."

The man was able to gaze upon her face as he pleased for the first time in a long while.
Perhaps because the man was among men of a rather foolish sort—the type often portrayed in films through those scenes where a man stares wide-eyed at another man's face with an oddly intense gaze—such an expression might well apply to him.
Since the countless faces of actresses nearing the end of their performances were all pale, he might be viewing this mistress’s face as particularly sorrowful merely by association.
The man thought himself a foolish wretch.

The man said quietly.
“What sort of poem do you require?”
“There exist about three types of sorrow—the hopeless wretch beyond saving; moments when a tryst’s timing goes awry; or the misery of dire poverty without a penny to one’s name. Which of these poems might you need?” inquired the man.

"In truth, I have not come to request your poetic compositions, but rather to ask that you cease writing those verses altogether."
"To speak plainly—a woman stands before you ready to accept all your demands in exchange for severing ties with those daily poems of yours and swearing never to write another word in your lifetime."
"In recompense, should it be me you desire, I could offer you my body."
"In short—rather than poems, I propose an exchange where you may have a woman at your complete disposal," she declared with an intense gaze that probed his material desires.
"If you strip me of my verses, I cannot sustain myself. Daily idleness would make existence intolerable—the self bereft of poetry becomes mere void."
"What use could this hollow shell hold? You visit because I keep shop like some fortune-teller, but were I no poet, you'd find no cause to seek me out," the man countered.

That of hers was something like a parable.

"To put it bluntly, it's this: Do you want a woman? If you do, discard your poems and be done with it," she said.
The man gazed attentively at her face.
Truly beautiful—in one of such pallid complexion there rose a cold current-like emanation, ineffably displaying sorrow's own beauty.
If I could enter this face, I would need nothing else—but how would I survive from tomorrow without selling poems? Was she merely indulging some eccentric whim with this proposal? Or did she have savings enough to let me live in idleness? Such wishful thinking seemed unlikely. That she would come specifically to say such mysterious things was strange indeed. Yet considering how much pallor her entire body possessed, the man thought this might be an irreplaceable opportunity.
He secretly calculated accepting her body but found himself unable to answer immediately.
To discard poetry for a woman was impossible.
"What compels you to make this impossible demand? I want to grasp you yet cannot abandon poetry—only through composing poems does this man exist. Please cease these unreasonable requests," he said honestly.
"So you say that because you don't want me," she said, gathering her things to leave.
"I could accept a term of two or three years, but a lifetime is unthinkable. Moreover, I must ask—what compels you to strip me of my poetic work? That too I wish to understand," I said.

She wore her characteristic smile and said, "By all means, if composing poems brings you joy, keep at it—once I have that confirmation, I've no further business with you." Then she stepped out into the street veiled in its original dust.
The man thought he should have lied about quitting poetry to claim this woman—though such a lie likely wouldn't have deceived her, he'd let slip something irreplaceable.

The man visited the hospital every other day.
It was for having his blood pressure taken and receiving injections, but the hospital was crowded all morning; the entrance's shoe-removal stone was lined with rows of shoes to such an extent that there was no space to place the man's shoes.
The man placed the shoes he had removed at the edge of the shoe-removal stone, entered the waiting room, closed his eyes, and waited for his turn.
The patients were almost entirely women—each one devouring women's magazines intended for patients, with not a single person engaged in conversation.
Only the crisp sound of magazine pages being turned and the rustling of newspapers being read again could be heard.
The man occasionally opened his eyes slightly and gazed at the woman’s fingertips writhing on the paper called a newspaper.

When the man finished his injection and came out to the entrance, he stared at his shoes placed in the center of the shoe-removal stone, their toes pointing outward, neatly arranged. He had certainly removed his shoes in the corner. He had no memory of placing them so centrally. Moreover, being last in the patients' order meant everyone else had already left. Having kept his eyes closed as usual without looking at any patients' faces, he remembered none of their features; though he occasionally half-opened his eyes to steal sidelong glances at women's faces, they remained faint blurs leaving no lasting impression. Who could have straightened his shoes and why? Since he'd left them in the corner, it couldn't be accidental—some intentional motive lay behind this act, one that knew exactly who he was when arranging them.

The man put on his shoes and went out to the main street.
The man recalled what the woman had said yesterday.
It meant this: Because you write about various women, those poems come blazing brightly like a mountain bonfire when read, and since I no longer wish to read them, I want to take the poems from you.
Could jealousy truly exist toward someone with no connection? He couldn't believe some vague, cloud-like envy was enveloping that woman. She was merely a beautiful stationery shop attendant—the man had only gone to meticulously buy knives and paper clips to see her, had only stored her away in minute detail within his heart. The woman had never considered the man worthy of attention—at least he could think so—yet the fact she had deliberately come yesterday contained an untruthful strangeness.
That she would fabricate something called jealousy specifically for him struck him as utterly preposterous.
Within the many poems the man had composed, there existed various people.
That she would go so far as offering her own body to half-kill a poet simply because reading them was unpleasant—such a notion was beyond belief.
I cannot believe such a woman exists in this world.
That she might be skillfully maintaining superficial niceties toward him with such pretty words while actually harboring thoughts of wanting to get close—nay, rather desiring to try getting close—was an unimaginable thing for the man.
A beautiful human never reveals their own heart; the essence of such beauty exists entirely through what they receive from others.
She showed not the slightest sexual allure, remaining as ever a bland Madonna-like figure.
One might wish to shake this so-called Madonna-type upside down, but even when shaken thus, the Madonna-type will not faint.

When walking outside and paying attention, the air around one's face continually formed circular layers that connected to the endless void of the external world.
A woman with her hair tied up at the crown of her head, caught in those circular layers, blended into the street crowd without a smile.
Through this woman's habit, she spread her palms wide as if flaunting her hands to people approaching from behind.
In the filthy backstreets where these palms expanded broadly, the man felt disarray in his unsteady footing as though walking through soft, yielding palms.

Why did she walk with her palms spread out like that—and facing backward?
Was her palm itching, or had she developed a habit from wringing laundry that bent her hand backward? In any case, the man caught up and spoke.
"You have a wheat field behind your house—since you started walking there so quickly, the ears have grown quite heavy," he remarked.
"I don't recall any such wheat field existing," she said with feigned disinterest, quickening her pace to escape the conversation.
When he pressed—"How can you not know that deeply yellowed field? It's right behind your house! You'd see it when washing your face at the well!"—she finally answered as if noticing: "Ah yes, there was a wheat field. I never pay attention to such things."
This woman still disliked the man.
Her dislike stemmed from an irreparable depth, making her hasten her steps.
The man reluctantly matched her pace yet grew flustered trying to walk beside her.
The bus arrived.
"I'm taking this one," she declared mercilessly as she boarded, while at the street corner the man stood frozen watching her depart, thinking what a cruel thing she'd done.

The bus departed, leaving only its deep yellow bulk lingering in his vision.
With a docile gaze unrelated to having just trampled a person's heart when she took her seat, this woman looked out at the window and the passengers' faces.
Her mind showed no trace of the man; the day spread clear with the same beauty as hers.
There were only about twelve or thirteen passengers, but from the moment she boarded, they began regarding her as quite a fine person; the restrained, cautious look in her eyes—as if beholding something dazzling in her face—forced them to conclude that something had nearly occurred just before this woman boarded.
Because a beautiful peril had faintly revealed itself.
Since there was a near-certain convention that incidents occurred wherever such a person went, the male passengers harbored a desire to discern—even if only trivial details—whatever could be read within that brief, swift span.
One example was how her soiled blouse—utterly incongruous with her appearance—and old gray skirt with its flared hem she wore, though unnatural, gave them reassurance.
This woman was deliberately dressing in such shabby attire to conceal her beauty—even one passenger had come to hold such a view.
The habit of spreading her palms manifested even here—opening them on her lap with centers facing upward.
The reflection immediately fell upon her face, and when she moved it, the light settled again onto her palms.
People thus traded face and palms, weaving astonishment.

This person could be a clerk in a merchant household, a server carrying trays in a cafeteria, or an ordinary housekeeper—there was that sort of impression—yet with features of such appearance, she didn't seem like someone engaged in those occupations; perhaps due to circumstances, she was dependently living at a sister's or brother's home while seeking suitable employment—one couldn't tell.
When it came to not knowing what sort of person she was at all, nothing proved more elusive than a woman's background—this person was particularly inscrutable.
The only discernible facts were her poverty and that she made no effort to disguise it—these alone one could concede to understanding.
If she belonged to that type of woman who found men's clinging approaches vexatious and wished to remain undisturbed, then her disheveled appearance made sense—so the passengers made their assessment of her character.

At that time, the man had worked closely with this woman for two full months as a hospital attendant, but she always deftly avoided the opportunities he tried to create, maintaining her position strictly as an attendant to such a visible degree.
There had been nothing that made this woman appear so beautiful.
To be rejected by a woman meant that from that very moment she would develop twice the delicacy.

The man, at the base of the stone steps—as usual holding no divining rod but like a fortune-teller spreading out paper—was patiently writing poems today as well.

“A person who can just glance over and correct your gaze.”

"It’s because you fixate on such showy weed names from the start that you end up unable to write anything."
"As long as you keep toying with words like 'grass' and 'flowers,' you remain in堕落."

“From the side, most people are only half beautiful. From the straight forehead down to the bridge of the nose, your eyes quietly descend.”
“When light suffuses along the nasal ridge, certain passions begin stirring.”
“The moment illumination touches that nose is when a woman ripens into her most beautiful state.”
“Yet if possible – one should observe their half-profile.”

“While kissing and capturing black eyes, when gazing into those black eyes, the roundness we call pupils expands to signify humanity’s incomparable boundless expanse—a vast domain.”
“Trying to discern the seam of that sphere—a saltless sea.”

“All at once came into view a town like clockwork machinery.”
“As I watch, that person grows truly distant—is the attendant walking in such a place?”

“A mouse has a baby.”
“It’s warm and soft, looking ready to collapse at any moment.”

“They all had their circumstances—or were creatures crawling sluggishly upon the earth due to illness.”
“If not for such circumstances, you couldn’t see this god-like being. No matter how you think of it, this living thing clings and won’t let go.”

"Ailing snake."

“The time is sunset.”
“Those who depart from within that—how can your thoughts be made to reach my ears?”
Suddenly, a large russet grasshopper—as big as a sparrow—flew away.
Despite there being no reason for these two creatures to hold any conversation, the man tilted his ear as if trying to listen intently to something.

"For a time, there was something that would not release his gaze."
"It held neither emotion nor novelty, yet there were moments when he had no choice but to gaze upon it."
"It was a physical object and yet not one—misted and drifting through the sky like the sea's roar."

"For women who go unprotected," he mused, "the hues of their fading days blaze too vividly—a future too ragged to even behold comes pressing near." Fragile things wither as fragile things must. Though such thoughts ultimately proved futile, he maintained women still required protection unknown to others. "One doesn't wish to expose beautiful things to wind and rain."

What lay far ahead remained unseen after all; he could only assume it might generally be like this, and the prospect that it might exist there was something he could not foresee.
Rather than this being mere carelessness, the true interest of human encounters lay precisely in this inability to see.

A certain scribbled note in pencil had recorded a multitude of happy things.
When it spoke of happy things, it referred precisely to that matter.
There was no other way to write beyond this expression.
When expressions are pursued to their limits, they arrive at short, scant words.
Even if expressed beyond that, they cannot be as fulfilled as this word.

He had written of black hair as "black hair that makes green".
Black hair may at times appear tinged with green, but this made for an unconvincing description.
He spent the day brooding over such matters.
Are these the thoughts of a fool?

"The woman to be written about—the draftsman’s wife—her face that flushed crimson wherever she walked."
"In the torn shoji of the kitchen, a face that at dusk would fill the paper’s rent—the impoverished painter’s wife."
"Under the fire watchtower there was a sweets shop, and whenever one went to buy something, the sturdy-framed daughter of that house would invariably come out."

An unusual girl often appeared. The day after she had moved from somewhere, she came out in front of the gate and stood gazing at the cherry tree.

Though not first-rate herself, she moved through respectable circles with a face that perpetually made true refinement seem vulgar. Even that quality alone was rarely witnessed, yet by no means was it second or third-rate—the envy that sought to drag her down from first rank simply to behold this was something the man frequently nurtured. Yet a refined and noble countenance could not easily be destroyed thus; nowhere proved more treacherous than where love took root. To become ensnared in this typically ended in utter folly...

“Is there such a thing as prayer while writing?” a certain person said.
“There is—to my shame, it’s all something akin to prayer.”
What endless folly I’ve persisted in.

From near the dust-clouded town, the stationery shop mistress suddenly reappeared.
She approached the man steadily, stopped before his desk, and asked whether the continuation of her poem was ready. The man handed her a single sheet of manuscript.
The mistress read it, carefully folded it into four, placed it in her handbag, and inquired about the payment.
The man named an arbitrary price, and the mistress paid the amount. Today her pale face bore not a trace of ruddiness—not the chill of a corpse’s complexion, but rather the hue of cheeks possessing that glistening firmness found in sea bass or sea bream flesh; an unyielding crispness harboring its own faint luminescence.
No matter how deeply one might cut, it was fashioned from bloodless transparency, and that transparency remained unclouded and clear.

“You have purchased fourteen notebooks you don’t need—was all that done because you wanted to see me?”

The man nodded in agreement.
"Then allow me to inquire—what precisely did you come here hoping to see from me?" she asked.

"Isn't that perfectly clear? I came here to see you."

"Which part of me did you want to see?"

“I wanted to see your bloodless face.”
“In your bloodless complexion, the severe aftermath of you sleeping with your husband becomes cruelly evident—so much so that even an outsider like myself can discern it by the very next morning.”
“That even felt solemn to me.”
“In women, there are times when that matter shows a desolate air akin to suffering—but in your case, it was all too clearly visible to me.”

“I have never felt anything resembling suffering in sleeping with my husband.”
“That might be one of the happy things listed in your poems.”
“If not my husband, who else could make me feel such pleasure?”
“Sleeping with my husband constitutes both living and concluding each day—they amount to the same thing.”
“Would you call my pallid complexion something like that haggard joy you once described?”

“Then have you never considered sleeping with another person? For instance, were you to try sleeping with someone else just once—doesn’t the desire arise to glimpse a different world? In your entire life, has there never been even one such day for a woman?”

“There are indeed moments when a peculiar urge arises quite suddenly, but when my husband lies with me, it promptly erases those wayward feelings.”

“If things were to grow distant between you and your husband—if six months or even a year were to pass in estrangement—what would become of you then…”

“That cannot be known unless circumstances actually become that way. You’re gradually trying to corner me through these intrusive questions, aren’t you?”

“They’re attempting to corner you from every direction.”
“This isn’t some notion I alone harbor—every soul akin to me bears it within.”

“As I believe I mentioned before, were you to abandon both poetry and literature, then matters would indeed proceed exactly as you say.”
“It comes down to this: either keep your poems, or have me become yours.”
“What could you possibly be hesitating for?”

The man fell completely silent.
This person’s bloodless face was precisely what he had always sung of; were he to abandon writing poems, her pallor would exist merely as some lecher’s preference.
If you were to strip from the instrument that which makes a song necessary, there would remain nothing but a sallow-faced woman trudging alone; though dissolving that ineffable thing called melancholy was the man’s task, the woman sought to seize this work and offer her body instead.
Should he let this opportunity slip, this woman would never return to his grasp.
If he were to draw closer now would be the moment—yet still the man kept silent.

The woman gradually pressed her body against the desk until her jacket came to drape over its edge, her lower abdomen appearing tautly constricted against the desk's rim as if precisely molded to its contour.
The stationery shop mistress suddenly said something to the man that had no relation whatsoever to their preceding conversation.

“Is there someone you know here on these stone steps?”

“There’s no one here I know.”

“But you always make your way up here in the evening, don’t you? When foot traffic dwindles, you check your surroundings and climb furtively, step by step. Then the ever-closed door begins to yield, smoothly opening of its own accord. Beyond that door lies another stone staircase where you climb again, step by step.”

“It’s that another commissioner of poems just like you resides there—I ascend to deliver the manuscript.”

“Is your poem truly so lengthy in its composition?”

“I write every day.”

“Huh—”

With that, the mistress let out a voice that seemed crushed by surprise.
The man abruptly looked up at the woman’s eyes.
The desk was gradually pushed across the concrete.
It became clear that force had been exerted in her lower abdomen.
The woman said without moving her eyes.

“Inside that door, there happens to be another set of stone steps leading to a mezzanine, isn’t there?”

"There are steep concrete steps, but they shouldn't be visible from outside."

“No, they are clearly visible. How many steps are there to the upper level?”

“Twelve steps.”

“Is there a handrail?”

“There is no handrail.”

“Then I suppose it means that when you’ve climbed halfway up, some woman lends you a hand.”
“If that were not so, then it would not be a staircase you could ascend to the top...”

“You ask such things—what exactly do you intend to do?”

“In that large hall above the stone steps, three women reside, don’t they? Is it that this tale involves women with identical features—all dressed alike without the slightest variation in appearance—perpetually reading your poems? To draw an analogy—in a room with a three-panel mirror, it is always arranged that three women reside there. When the mirror has partitions, they appear visible as such. The differences in appearance between each panel are scarcely perceptible. You are attempting to perceive three women through a single one, aren’t you?”

“If there were six mirrors, you would probably say that six women appear.”
“Whenever I hand over the manuscript on the landing of the stone steps, I immediately descend.”

“Liar—aren’t you?—putting on such a composed face like that.”

The man realized at that moment that his hand had been grasped by the stationery shop mistress.
It was like plunging hands into cold tap water.
She suddenly peered toward the street before moving to flank the man and cling to him in a sideways embrace.
This street had seen almost no passersby since those who went shopping earlier had returned.
The cherry blossom petals on the concrete landing had long withered since that day, dried up like soiled fingernails and swept into a corner.
This time she squatted in that corner and urgently told him to do the same, calling out "Here! Right here!" in a hushed voice.
When the man wordlessly crouched down, she gathered up the old blue deskcloth covering the writing desk and drew it like a theater curtain.
There they formed a position completely concealed from the street, pressing only their faces together within it.

“There, isn’t this nice? In a place like this where no one would notice at all…” “But if someone looks, we can be seen from the street.” “Come closer. Put one knee toward me.”

“I never imagined you were such a bold person.”

“Please hold my cheeks with both hands. No—come closer still.”

“And then?”

“Stay perfectly still—if you move, your body will slip out from under the desk cloth and be seen from the street. It’s grown quite dark now, hasn’t it?”
“Now then—I shall express gratitude for you having cherished me through such endless years. You may do as you please.”
“Thank you for all this time.”

“……”
“I wonder if my face remains as pale as ever.”
“If you look too closely, the face itself vanishes and only the eyes become visible.”
“Your face too has ceased to be a face—it appears as something entirely different now. A man’s face becomes like a rock wall in such moments—unyielding and ceaselessly spewing forth something. My husband always maintained his ordinary composure—never displayed the slightest trace of influence from me, detestably self-possessed he was—while you’ve gone hard as stone. Frightening, really. One might ask where you acquired such a face.”

“You too have maintained your composure.”
“You’re acting as if this sort of thing means nothing at all, aren’t you?”

“I had been lying with my husband for ten or fifteen years amidst his constant demands of ‘do this’ and ‘do that.’”
“Having done things that would make ordinary women faint, I’ve now met you, you see.”
“No matter how embarrassing the acts might be, they have ceased to be embarrassing.”

"That's why your complexion had always been colorless and transparent—though I had long realized this, I never imagined you to be a woman of such substance."
"It was something a man had devoted his entire being to confronting, yet you had fashioned something wholly separate from that visage—taking my hand without warning, then touching my body while remaining perfectly composed…"

"But now a peculiar sensation stirs within me—could such a thing still exist?—this breathless quivering that has persisted since earlier."
"My husband once said that when a different woman appears, however exhausted a man may be, his vitality rekindles at once."
"Now facing you, I feel what had grown sated with my husband awakening new reactions within my body."
"For women too, when the man changes, one can surrender anew to bodily congress, can one not?"
"Humans can live regressing five years—ten years even—so long as their partners keep changing."

“There is a passage in a foreign writer’s work where a man goes to lie with a woman sleeping upstairs—climbing the steps once more even while still entangled with a laundress—but as a general principle, whether man or woman, when encountering such novel partners, their vitality seems to be rekindled anew.”
“Even someone with a countenance like yours—seemingly transcending male-female relations—pressing forward so openly here would serve as one such example.”
“Even seeing you this closely, I feel there remains nothing left to search for—your transparent coldness lies here without the slightest tremor.”
“What lies deep within humans remains deep; even if a tail is momentarily exposed, the depths stay stored away.”
“That you are a lascivious person is something that could never be discovered under any circumstances.”
“This is what I have always considered to be the most beautiful thing in a woman.”

“What are you saying now of all times? There’s nothing more to say—just place your hands on my body.”

"What will become of your husband?"

"Even were I to stand upside down before him, my husband would not so much as blink an eye."

"Has he tired of you then?"

"He finds nothing left to discover in me."
"I merely go through motions."
"However much I move before a husband who refuses to look, the particulars of that motion blur beyond recognition."
"When such emptiness comes, humans yearn to prove their being through another's eyes."

“You, so gentle—had you been contemplating that as well?”

“Yes—I wanted to witness how you would pounce upon it—I who played this little mischievous game with you, who came daily to my shop buying needless things while devouring my body with your eyes.”
“Forgive me—using an unpleasant word like 'mischievousness'... But I've caught you now, haven't I? I shan't release you.”
“How does it feel—this woman with a corpse-pale body? Cold yet yielding and smooth-skinned... Now surrender that manuscript. I shall burn it as promised—from this day forth, abandon your verse-making.”
“What do you grope for down there? Breasts lie higher. Oh dear—if not those, then you fumble blindly over a woman's form. Though I know every contour of a man's body by rote, when my hands traverse it, the path twists through fog—utterly unknowable.”
“No wonder you struggle so—venturing to touch me for the first time.”
“Follow where my hands lead—lay your straying palms over mine... However dense the mist becomes under such guidance, your way forward shall clear. Keep touching as you advance slowly...”

The man felt a dead weight upon himself, and the woman too received the man's heaviness.

The woman asked if he wouldn’t regret it; the man shook his head, but in that interval she abruptly stood up.
Though the lingering twilight of this season stretched long across the surroundings, every corner of the stone steps was imbued with a dusk that gathered in the shadows.
The woman began slowly ascending the stone steps without saying a word.
The man watched from below, assuming she meant to pluck some wildflower growing there, but when she had ascended five or six steps of the stone stairs, he first realized she was climbing toward a specific destination—namely, the door at the top of the steps.
When one climbed to the top of these stone steps there were further stairs inside leading to a mezzanine floor; but the man followed close behind and placed his hands on her shoulders from behind.
The woman did not turn around.

“Where do you mean to go by climbing there?” he said.
A voice both bitter and composed answered: “I wish to visit the house atop these stone steps. Though I wonder—is that truly unrelated to you?”

“I cannot even tell if that person is present today. Stop this—you must cease startling people so unexpectedly.”

When the woman murmured something further and turned, the man recalled the face of that woman who had emerged from between wheat fields—the one who had suddenly shoved him aside and boarded a bus.
He glimpsed how this reflective effect—where being despised made her appear ever more beautiful—was working a dual transformation upon her countenance.
Perhaps because the pallid face he now scrutinized was tense, it had grown as hard and unyielding as stone.

Without answering, the woman climbed two or three steps with soft footsteps.

The man slipped around from the side and stepped in front of her on the stair, blocking her path as he braced his chest to push her back.

The woman thrust out her lips as if honing them to a point.

"Why do you try to stop me? I want to see her true form. Step aside from there."

"What would meeting her accomplish? What scheme could that woman possibly harbor against you simply for being a woman? You've no position to accuse her of anything."

“No—you must recall what you did to me mere moments ago. My body heat still lingers upon you—you cannot possibly have forgotten what you poured into my womb.”

“And that was just once—moreover, you yourself created that opportunity……”

“Once or ten times—it is all the same.”
“That single time marks the beginning of all depth.”

“So you intend to walk hand-in-hand with that creature called jealousy and hound some guiltless woman?”

“I want to see her.”
“To be frank, I wish to determine whether she’s more beautiful than I—whether her condition surpasses mine. My motive is plain.”
“Now step aside from there and grant me just one glimpse of your precious woman—hoho, truly, do let me behold her.”

The woman laughed brightly, her voice ringing out.
At the hollow boundary of the cave ascending to the second concrete stone step, she let out a strange laugh once more.
At that moment, the woman spoke in a voice that was a step lower and more indulgent—so much so that one would doubt this person could utter such things—trailing off like a weeping willow's branches.
"I thought of making myself up in that woman's exact likeness to please you—after all, if I apply rouge, my cheeks do redden; if I half-undone my always-tied hair, I can appear younger—all of it done to make you favor me. Now step aside from there—quickly, be considerate and let me through."
"Wasn't it you who so adored my translucent body? Let me make it even more—ever more—transparent, until you can see clear through to the other side. So please, let me pass here."

The man resolved within himself not to let her pass here.
Should he permit passage, conflict would erupt between the women; he couldn't remain a silent observer—this would force him to choose sides.
An increasingly oppressive sensation welled up within him.
For in such moments, he perceived at this incident's very origin something that defied alignment with either party.
Ambiguous emotions, by their very nature, ceaselessly transform and manifest through two or three—nay, countless—forms.

“The steps above are not your place to climb.”

On the upper step, the man spread his hands.

“I will make you let me through no matter what—that stance of yours means you’re planning to push me down, aren’t you?”

The woman then suddenly snatched a bound manuscript of poems from the man’s pocket in one swift motion; taking a deliberate breath, she tore it into three horizontal pieces, hurled them onto the steps, and ground them beneath the toe of her red leather shoe.
The man coldly foresaw the woman’s inevitable course of action.

“So has your fury been sated now?”

The woman shook her hair and shouted.

“Tearing up these paper scraps won’t clear the mind in the least.”
“Step aside! If you don’t step aside, I may push you down.”

“Do you truly have such brute strength?”

The woman shook off the man's hand and thrust her shoe tip toward the upper step.
'Are you truly determined to climb?' As even he himself hadn't anticipated, his hands seized her chest and thrust her back in a single motion.
The steep steps engulfed her faltering body; with one violent shake, they flung it down.
She lay sideways on the shuddering stone steps and rolled down to the lower landing.
In that same eerie silence without uttering a sound, she smoothly lifted only her face, placed both hands on the stone steps to raise her body, and stood up with a movement almost too supple.

“This time I’ll drag you down and...”

When the man placed his foot on the mezzanine stone steps, he naturally looked down at the woman’s form.
Her upturned forehead took shape like a round ugly creature as it threateningly approached.
Eyes grown too enraged remained glaring back, fixed upon the man’s own.

Even so, against his will, words bearing some strange semblance of courtesy escaped him.
There in that instant became known—through this brief interval—the distance still separating him from this woman.

“Were you injured?”

“I’m a woman like oil.”

The woman feigned charging up the stone steps, but her body’s pain made her stagger and brace against the wall with her hand. She tried to steady her faltering footing—incapable of immediate ascent—through sheer will, yet her suddenly recovered stance propelled her to charge up to the mezzanine steps in one swift motion, where she stood upon the central landing.
From there to the door remained only three stone steps.

When the man placed his hand on her shoulder, the woman who brushed it off rebuked him in a low voice.

“Be quiet. If you shout here, even the woman behind the door will be thrown into disarray.”
“Just seeing a woman like me makes you fly into a rage.”
“You will lose both that woman and myself at once.”

The man remained silent.
And as the woman’s body became filled with vortex-like bloodless matter, he gazed in bewilderment at how physiological pleasure—in such moments—was something this pale-faced one lured him into experiencing.
The man attempted to grasp the woman’s shoulder, but she swiftly approached the peephole in the glass-paneled door.
However, the door was locked and would not open.

The woman pressed her eye to the door’s peephole glass but, turning around, cautioned the man to look inside the room.
When the man pressed his eye to the glass-paneled door to peer inside, there was no sign of anyone in the soundless room.
The man informed the woman that there was no woman there.
“You must have the key—produce it,” said the woman, and the man replied, “I don’t have any key.”
The man peered inside once more, but there was still no sign of anyone.
He started at finding the three-way mirror by the window now covered with a cloth, but the woman plucked a single pin from her hair, inserted it into the keyhole, gave the handle a firm turn, and the door opened without a sound.
Simultaneously, the woman slid into the two connected rooms, and before the man could utter a word about what she was doing, they stood abruptly in the center of the room.

One room had bookshelves tightly lined up, and the other had folded clothes neatly arranged in order as if for airing out.
They were clothes faded in color, bearing the remnants of fashions from around nineteen to twenty-six years old.
The dustless room, showing no signs of disturbance, held an aura of human presence that gradually compelled their eyes to search every corner.
But what had seemed like a human presence might also have been, they thought, one reason why the warmth of the westward-tilted sun's rays struck this room every day from afternoon onward.

The woman set her eyes on the desk.

There lay fourteen cardboard-bound notebooks stacked in a pile, and she immediately recognized them as those she had sold at her shop.
When she approached the desk, she found these notebooks filled cover to cover with pencil writings - tiny characters in the man's hand - including one volume where he had stopped after filling several pages.
The woman sat before the desk and instinctively bowed her head.
There was nothing to say - she appeared suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contemplations recorded there.

“You may leave now.”

The man deliberately suppressed what showed on his countenance.

“Yes, I will leave. This is the first time in my life I’ve been shown such kindness.”

The man soon heard the soft footsteps of the woman gently descending the stone steps and calmly lit a cigarette. Beside the bath chamber in what he had perceived as a two-room space, there now existed another room where someone crouched with a sharp yet relaxed presence lingering about—and the man seemed to fully perceive this. A sound like an egg cracking occurred, but it seemed to be the sound of the woman sneezing.

The glass-paneled door began gradually opening with a dull creak, and the man gazed at the door frame touched by another woman's fingertips and at her reflected figure... With almost languid slowness as though breathing itself, the door was being opened inch by inch with deliberate care.