Dazai Osamu, a member of a rich and influential family, was widely known during his lifetime, particularly to the younger generation, for his dissipation and excesses. His writings are autobiographical at least to the extent that we find in most of them the personage of a dissolute young man of good family, but Dazai was also gifted with a fertile imagination. His celebrity as a writer came after the war, with such stories as “Villon’s Wife” and the novel The Setting Sun.
•
I was awakened by the sound of the front door being flung open, but I did not get out of bed. I knew it could only be my husband returning dead drunk in the middle of the night.
He switched on the light in the next room and, breathing very heavily, began to rummage through the drawers of the table and the bookcase, searching for something. After a few minutes there was a noise that sounded as if he had flopped down on the floor. Then I could hear only his panting. Wondering what he might be up to, I called to him from where I lay. “Have you had supper yet? There’s some cold rice in the cupboard.”
“Thank you,” he answered in an unwontedly gentle tone. “How is the boy? Does he still have a fever?”
This was also unusual. The boy is four this year, but whether because of malnutrition, or his father’s alcoholism, or sickness, he is actually smaller than most two-year-olds. He is not even sure on his feet, and as for talking, it’s all he can do to say “yum-yum” or “ugh.” Sometimes I wonder if he is not feeble-minded. Once, when I took him to the public bath and held him in my arms after undressing him, he looked so small and pitifully scrawny that my heart sank, and I burst into tears in front of everybody. The boy is always having upset stomachs or fevers, but my husband almost never spends any time at home, and I wonder what if anything he thinks about the child. If I mention to him that the boy has a fever, he says, “You ought to take him to a doctor.” Then he throws on his coat and goes off somewhere. I would like to take the boy to the doctor, but I haven’t the money. There is nothing I can do but lie beside him and stroke his head.
But that night, for whatever reason, my husband was strangely gentle, and for once asked me about the boy’s fever. It didn’t make me happy. I felt instead a kind of premonition of something terrible, and cold chills ran up and down my spine. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I lay there in silence. For a while there was no other sound but my husband’s furious panting.
Then there came from the front entrance the thin voice of a woman, “Is anyone at home?” I shuddered all over as if icy water had been poured over me.
“Are you at home, Mr. Otani?” This time there was a somewhat sharp inflection to her voice. She slid the door open and called in a definitely angry voice, “Mr. Otani. Why don’t you answer?”
My husband at last went to the door. “Well, what is it?” he asked in a frightened, stupid tone.
“You know perfectly well what it is,” the woman said, lowering her voice. “What makes you steal other people’s money when you’ve got a nice home like this? Stop your cruel joking and give it back. If you don’t, I’m going straight to the police.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I won’t stand for your insults. You’ve got no business coming here. Get out! If you don’t get out, I’ll be the one to call the police.”
There came the voice of another man. “I must say, you’ve got your nerve, Mr. Otani. What do you mean we have no business coming here? You amaze me. This time it is serious. It’s more than a joke when you steal other people’s money. Heaven only knows all my wife and I have suffered on account of you. And on top of everything else you do something as low as you did tonight. Mr. Otani, I misjudged you.”
“It’s blackmail,” my husband angrily exclaimed in a shaking voice. “It’s extortion. Get out! If you’ve got any complaints I’ll listen to them tomorrow.”
“What a revolting thing to say. You really are a scoundrel. I have no alternative but to call the police.”
In his words was a hatred so terrible that I went goose flesh all over.
“Go to hell,” my husband shouted, but his voice had already weakened and sounded hollow.
I got up, threw a wrap over my nightgown, and went to the front hall. I bowed to the two visitors. A round-faced man of about fifty wearing a knee-length overcoat asked, “Is this your wife?”, and, without a trace of a smile, faintly inclined his head in my direction as if he were nodding.
The woman was a thin, small person of about forty, neatly dressed. She loosened her shawl and, also unsmiling, returned my bow with the words, “Excuse us for breaking in this way in the middle of the night.”
My husband suddenly slipped on his sandals and made for the door. The man grabbed his arm and the two of them struggled for a moment. “Let go or I’ll stab you!” my husband shouted, and a jackknife flashed in his right hand. The knife was a pet possession of his, and I remembered that he usually kept it in his desk drawer. When he got home he must have been expecting trouble, and the knife was what he had been searching for.
The man shrank back and in the interval my husband, flapping the sleeves of his coat like a huge crow, bolted outside.
“Thief!” the man shouted and started to pursue him, but I ran to the front gate in my bare feet and clung to him.
“Please don’t. It won’t help for either of you to get hurt. I will take the responsibility for everything.”
The woman said, “Yes, she’s right. You can never tell what a lunatic will do.”
“Swine! It’s the police this time! I can’t stand any more.” The man stood there staring emptily at the darkness outside and muttering, as if to himself. But the force had gone out of his body.
“Please come in and tell me what has happened. I may be able to settle whatever the matter is. The place is a mess, but please come in.”
The two visitors exchanged glances and nodded slightly to one another. The man said, with a changed expression, “I’m afraid that whatever you may say, our minds are already made up. But it might be a good idea to tell you, Mrs. Otani, all that has happened.”
“Please do come in and tell me about it.”
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay long.” So saying the man started to remove his overcoat.
“Please keep your coat on. It’s very cold here, and there’s no heating in the house.”
“Well then, if you will forgive me.”
“Please, both of you.”
The man and the woman entered my husband’s room. They seemed appalled by the desolation they saw. The mats looked as though they were rotting, the paper doors were in shreds, the walls were beginning to fall in, and the paper had peeled away from the storage closet, revealing the framework. In a corner were a desk and a bookcase—an empty bookcase.
I offered the two visitors some torn cushions from which the stuffing was leaking, and said, “Please sit on the cushions—the mats are so dirty.” And I bowed to them again. “I must apologize for all the trouble my husband seems to have been causing you, and for the terrible exhibition he put on tonight, for whatever reason it was. He has such a peculiar disposition.” I choked in the middle of my words and burst into tears.
“Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Otani, but how old are you?” the man asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the torn cushion, with his elbows on his knees, propping his chin on his fists. As he asked the question he leaned forward toward me.
“I am twenty-six.”
“Is that all you are? I suppose that’s only natural, considering your husband’s about thirty, but it amazes me all the same.”
The woman, showing her face from behind the man’s back, said, “I couldn’t help wondering, when I came in and saw what a fine wife he has, why Mr, Otani behaves the way he does.”
“He’s sick. That’s what it is. He didn’t used to be that way, but he keeps getting worse.” He gave a great sigh, then continued, “Mrs. Otani, my wife and I run a little restaurant near the Nakano Station. We both originally came from the country, but I got fed up dealing with penny-pinching farmers, and came to Tokyo with my wife. After the usual hardships and breaks, we managed to save up a little and, along about 1936, opened a cheap little restaurant catering to customers with at most a yen or two to spend at a time on entertainment. By not going in for luxuries and working like slaves, we managed to lay in quite a stock of whisky and gin. When liquor got short and plenty of other drinking establishments went out of business, we were able to keep going.
“The war with America and England broke out, but even after the bombings got pretty severe, we didn’t want to be evacuated to the country, not having any children to tie us down. We figured that we might as well stick to our business until the place got burnt down. Your husband first started coming to our place in the spring of 1944, as I recall. We were not yet losing the war, or if we were we didn’t know how things actually stood, and we thought that if we could just hold out for another two or three years we could somehow get peace on terms of equality. When Mr. Otani first appeared in our shop, he was not alone. It’s a little embarrassing to tell you about it, but I might as well come out with the whole story and not keep anything from you. Your husband sneaked in by the kitchen door along with an older woman. I forgot to say that about that time the front door of our place was shut, and only a few regular customers got in by the back.
“This older woman lived in the neighborhood, and when the bar where she worked was closed and she lost her job, she often came to our place with her men friends. That’s why we weren’t particularly surprised when your husband crept in with this woman, whose name was Akichan. I took them to the back room and brought out some gin. Mr. Otani drank his liquor very quietly that evening. Akichan paid the bill and the two of them left together. It’s odd, but I can’t forget how strangely gentle and refined he seemed that night. I wonder if when the devil makes his first appearance in somebody’s house he acts in such a lonely and melancholy way.
“From that night on Mr. Otani was a steady customer. Ten days later he came alone and all of a sudden produced a hundred-yen note. At that time a hundred yen was a lot of money, more than two or three thousand yen today. He pressed the money into my hand and wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Take care of it please,’ he said, smiling timidly. That night he seemed to have drunk quite a bit before he came, and at my place he downed ten glasses of gin as fast as I could set them up. All this was almost entirely without a word. My wife and I tried to start a conversation, but he only smiled rather shamefacedly and nodded vaguely. Suddenly he asked the time and got up. ‘What about the change?’ I called after him. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do with it,’ I insisted. He answered with a sardonic smile, ‘Please save it until the next time. I’ll be coming back.’ He went out. Mrs. Otani, that was the one and only time that we ever got any money from him. Since then he has always put us off with one excuse or another, and for three years he has managed without paying a penny to drink up all our liquor almost singlehanded.”
Before I knew what I was doing I burst out laughing. It all seemed so funny to me, although I can’t explain why. I covered my mouth in confusion, but when I looked at the lady I saw that she was also laughing unaccountably, and then her husband could not help but laugh too.
“No, it’s certainly no laughing matter, but I’m so fed up that I feel like laughing, too. Really, if he used all his ability in some other direction, he could become a cabinet minister or a Ph.D. or anything else he wanted. When Akichan was still friends with Mr. Otani she used to brag about him all the time. First of all, she said, he came from a terrific family. He was the younger son of Baron Otani. It is true that he had been disinherited because of his conduct, but when his father, the present baron, died, he and his elder brother were to divide the estate. He was brilliant, a genius in fact. In spite of his youth he was the best poet in Japan. What’s more, he was a great scholar, and a perfect demon at German and French. To hear Akichan talk, he was a kind of god, and the funny thing was that she didn’t make it all up. Other people also said that he was the younger son of Baron Otani and a famous poet. Even my wife, who’s getting along in years, was as enthusiastic about him as Akichan. She used to tell me what a difference it makes when people have been well brought up. And the way she pined for him to come was quite unbearable. They say the day of the nobility is over, but until the war ended I can tell you that nobody had his way with the women like that disinherited son of the aristocracy. It is unbelievable how they fell for him. I suppose it was what people would nowadays call ‘slave mentality.’
“For my part, I’m a man, and at that a very cool sort of man, and I don’t think that some little peer—if you will pardon the expression—some member of the country gentry who is only a younger son, is all that different from myself. I never for a moment got worked up about him in so sickening a way. But all the same, that gentleman was my weak spot. No matter how firmly I resolved not to give him any liquor the next time, when he suddenly appeared at some unexpected hour, looking like a hunted man, and I saw how relieved he was at last to have reached our place, my resolution weakened, and I ended up by giving him the liquor. Even when he got drunk, he never made any special nuisance of himself, and if only he had paid the bill he would have been a good customer. He never advertised himself and didn’t take any silly pride in being a genius or anything of the sort. When Akichan or somebody else would sit beside him and sound off to us about his greatness, he would either change the subject completely or say, ‘I want some money so I can pay the bill,’ throwing a wet blanket over everything.
“The war finally ended. We started doing business openly in black-market liquor and put new curtains in front of the place. For all its seediness the shop looked rather lively, and we hired a girl to lend a little charm. Then who should show up again but that damned gentleman. He no longer brought women with him, but always came in the company of two or three writers for newspapers and magazines. He was drinking even more than before, and used to get very wild-looking. He began to come out with really vulgar jokes, which he had never done before, and sometimes for no good reason he would hit one of the reporters he brought with him or start a fist fight. What’s more, he seduced the twenty-year-old girl who was working in our place. We were shocked, but there was nothing we could do about it at that stage, and we had no choice but to let the matter drop. We advised the girl to resign herself to bearing the child, and quietly sent her back to her parents. I begged Mr. Otani not to come any more, but he answered in a threatening tone, ‘People who make money on the black market have no business criticizing others. I know all about you.’ The next night he showed up as if nothing had happened.
“Maybe it was by way of punishment for the black-market business we had been doing that we had to put up with such a monster. But what he did tonight can’t be passed over just because he’s a poet or a gentleman. It was plain robbery. He stole five thousand yen from us. Nowadays all our money goes for stock, and we are lucky if we have five hundred or one thousand yen in the place. The reason why we had as much as five thousand tonight was that I had made an end-of-the-year round of our regular customers and managed to collect that much. If I don’t hand the money over to the wholesalers immediately we won’t be able to stay in business. That’s how much it means to us. Well, my wife was going over the accounts in the back room and had put the money in the cupboard drawer. He was drinking by himself out in front but seems to have noticed what she did. Suddenly he got up, went straight to the back room, and without a word pushed my wife aside and opened the drawer. He grabbed the bills and stuffed them in his pocket.
“We rushed into the shop, still speechless with amazement, and then out into the street. I shouted for him to stop, and the two of us ran after him. For a minute I felt like screaming ‘Thief!’ and getting the people in the street to join us, but after all, Mr. Otani is an old acquaintance, and I couldn’t be too haish on him. I made up my mind that I would not let him out of my sight. I would follow him wherever he went, and when I saw that he had quieted down, I would calmly ask for the money. We are only small business people, and when we finally caught up with him here, we had no choice but to suppress our feelings and politely ask him to return the money. And then what happened? He took out a knife and threatened to stab me! What a way to behave!”
Again the whole thing seemed so funny to me, for reasons I can’t explain, that I burst out laughing. The lady turned red, and smiled a little. I couldn’t stop laughing. Even though I knew that it would have a bad effect on the proprietor, it all seemed so strangely funny that I laughed until the tears came. I suddenly wondered if the phrase “the great laugh at the end of the world,” that occurs in one of my husband’s poems, didn’t mean something of the sort.
And yet it was not a matter that could be settled just by laughing about it. I thought for a minute and said, “Somehow or other I will make things good, if you will only wait one more day before you report to the police. I’ll call on you tomorrow without fail.” I carefully inquired where the restaurant was, and begged them to consent. They agreed to let things stand for the time being, and left. Then I sat by myself in the middle of the cold room trying to think of a plan. Nothing came to me. I stood up, took off my wrap, and crept in among the covers where my boy was sleeping. As I stroked his head I thought how wonderful it would be if the night never never ended.
My father used to keep a stall in Asakusa Park. My mother died when I was young, and my father and I lived by ourselves in a tenement. We ran the stall together. My husband used to come now and then, and before long I was meeting him at other places without my father’s knowing it. When I became pregnant I persuaded him to treat me as his wife, although it wasn’t officially registered, of course. Now the boy is growing up fatherless, while my husband goes off for three or four nights or even for a whole month at a time. I don’t know where he goes or what he does. When he comes back he is always drunk; and he sits there, deathly pale, breathing heavily and staring at my face. Sometimes he cries and the tears stream down his face, or without warning he crawls into my bed and holds me tightly. “Oh, it can’t go on. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. Help me!”
Sometimes he trembles all over, and even after he falls asleep he talks deliriously and moans. The next morning he is absent-minded, like a man with the soul taken out of him. Then he disappears and doesn’t return for three or four nights. A couple of my husband’s publisher friends have been looking after the boy and myself for some time, and they bring money once in a while, enough to keep us from starving.
I dozed off, then before I knew it opened my eyes to see the morning light pouring in through the cracks in the shutters. I got up, dressed, strapped the boy to my back and went outside. I felt as if I couldn’t stand being in the silent house another minute.
I set out aimlessly and found myself walking in the direction of the station. I bought a bun at an outdoor stand and fed it to the boy. On a sudden impulse I bought a ticket for Kichijoji and got on the streetcar. While I stood hanging from a strap I happened to notice a poster with my husband’s name on it. It was an advertisement for a magazine in which he had published a story called “François Villon.” While I stared at the title “François Villon” and at my husband’s name, painful tears sprang from my eyes, why I can’t say, and the poster clouded over so I couldn’t see it.
I got off at Kichijoji and for the first time in I don’t know how many years I walked in the park. The cypresses around the pond had all been cut down, and the place looked like the site of a construction. It was strangely bare and cold, not at all as it used to be.
I took the boy off my back and the two of us sat on a broken bench next to the pond. I fed the boy a sweet potato I had brought from home. “It’s a pretty pond, isn’t it? There used to be many carp and goldfish, but now there aren’t any left. It’s too bad, isn’t it?”
I don’t know what he thought. He just laughed oddly with his mouth full of sweet potato. Even if he is my own child, he did give me the feeling almost of an idiot.
I couldn’t settle anything by sitting there on the bench, so I put the boy on my back and returned slowly to the station. I bought a ticket for Nakano. Without thought or plan, I boarded the streetcar as though I were being sucked into a horrible whirlpool. I got off at Nakano and followed the directions to the restaurant.
The front door would not open. I went around to the back and entered by the kitchen door. The owner was away, and his wife was cleaning the shop by herself. As soon as I saw her I began to pour out lies of which I did not imagine myself capable.
“It looks as if I’ll be able to pay you back every bit of the money tomorrow, if not tonight. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“Oh, how wonderful. Thank you so much.” She looked almost happy, but still there remained on her face a shadow of uneasiness, as if she were not yet satisfied.
“It’s true. Someone will bring the money here without fail. Until he comes I’m to stay here as your hostage. Is that guarantee enough for you? Until the money comes I’ll be glad to help around the shop.”
I took the boy off my back and let him play by himself. He is accustomed to playing alone and doesn’t get in the way at all. Perhaps because he’s stupid, he’s not afraid of strangers, and he smiled happily at the madam. While I was away getting the rationed goods for her, she gave him some empty American cans to play with, and when I got back he was in a corner of the room, banging the cans and rolling them on the floor.
About noon the boss returned from his marketing. As soon as I caught sight of him I burst out with the same lies I had told the madam. He looked amazed. “Is that a fact? All the same, Mrs. Otani, you can’t be sure of money until you’ve got it in your hands.” He spoke in a surprisingly calm, almost explanatory tone.
“But it’s really true. Please have confidence in me and wait just this one day before you make it public. In the meantime I’ll help in the restaurant.”
“If the money is returned, that’s all I ask,” the boss said, almost to himself. “There are five or six days left to the end of the year, aren’t there?”
“Yes, and so, you see, I mean—oh, some customers have come. Welcome!” I smiled at the three customers—they looked like workmen—who had entered the shop, and whispered to the madam, “Please lend me an apron.”
One of the customers called out, “Say, you’ve hired a beauty. She’s terrific.”
“Don’t lead her astray,” the boss said, in a tone which wasn’t altogether joking, “she cost a lot of money.”
“A million-dollar thoroughbred?” another customer coarsely joked.
“They say that even in thoroughbreds the female costs only half-price,” I answered in the same coarse way, while putting the sake on to warm.
“Don’t be modest! From now on in Japan there’s equality of the sexes, even for horses and dogs,” the youngest customer roared. “Sweetheart, I’ve fallen in love. It’s love at first sight. But is that your kid over there?”
“No,” said the madam, carrying the boy from the back room in her arms. “We got this child from our relatives. At last we have an heir.”
“What’ll you leave him beside your money?” a customer teased.
The boss, with a dark expression, muttered, “A love affair and debts.” Then, changing his tone, “What’ll you have? How about a mixed grill?”
It was Christmas Eve. That must have been why there was such a steady stream of customers. I had scarcely eaten a thing since morning, but I was so upset that I refused even when the madam urged me to have a bite. I just went on flitting around the restaurant as lightly as a ballerina. Maybe it is only conceit, but the shop seemed exceptionally lively that night, and there were quite a few customers who wanted to know my name or tried to shake my hand.
But I didn’t have the slightest idea how it would all end. I went on smiling and answering the customers’ dirty jokes with even dirtier jokes in the same vein, slipping from customer to customer, pouring the drinks. Before long I got to thinking that I would just as soon my body melted and flowed away like ice cream.
It seems as if miracles sometimes do happen even in this world. A little after nine a man entered, wearing a Christmas tricornered paper hat and a black mask which covered the upper part of his face. He was followed by an attractive woman of slender build who looked thirty-four or thirty-five. The man sat on a chair in the corner with his back to me, but as soon as he came in I knew who it was. It was my thief of a husband.
He sat there without seeming to pay any attention to me. I also pretended not to recognize him, and went on joking with the other customers. The lady seated opposite my husband called me to their table. My husband stared at me from beneath his mask, as if he were surprised in spite of himself. I lightly patted his shoulder and asked, “Aren’t you going to wish me a merry Christmas? What do you say? You look as if you’ve already put away a quart or two.”
The lady ignored this. She said, “I have something to discuss with the proprietor. Would you mind calling him here for a moment?”
I went to the kitchen, where the boss was frying fish. “Otani has come back. Please go and see him, but don’t tell the woman he’s with anything about me. I don’t want to embarrass him.”
“If that’s the way you want it, it’s all right with me,” he consented easily, and went out front. After a quick look around the restaurant, the boss walked straight to the table where my husband sat. The beautiful lady exchanged two or three words with him, and the three of them left the shop.
It was all over. Everything had been settled. Somehow I had believed all along that it would be, and I felt exhilarated. I seized the wrist of a young customer in a dark-blue suit, a boy not more than twenty, and I cried, “Drink up! Drink up! It’s Christmas!”
In just thirty minutes—no, it was even sooner than that, so soon it startled me, the boss returned alone. “Mrs. Otani, I want to thank you. I’ve got the money back.”
“I’m so glad. All of it?”
He answered with a funny smile, “All he took yesterday.”
“And how much does his debt come to altogether? Roughly—the absolute minimum.”
“Twenty thousand yen.”
“Does that cover it?”
“I’ll make it good. Will you employ me starting tomorrow? I’ll pay it back by working.”
“What! You’re joking!” And we laughed together.
Tonight I left the restaurant after ten and returned to the house with the boy. As I expected, my husband was not at home, but that didn’t bother me. Tomorrow when I go to the restaurant I may see him again, for all I know. Why has such a good plan never occurred to me before? All the suffering I have gone through has been because of my own stupidity. I was always quite a success at entertaining the customers at my father’s stall, and I’ll certainly get to be pretty skillful at the restaurant. As a matter of fact, I received about five hundred yen in tips tonight.
From the following day on my life changed completely. I became lighthearted and gay. The first thing I did was to go to a beauty parlor and have a permanent. I bought cosmetics and mended my dresses. I felt as though the worries that had weighed so heavily on me had been completely wiped away.
In the morning I get up and eat breakfast with the boy. Then I put him on my back and leave for work. New Year’s is the big season at the restaurant, and I’ve been so busy my eyes swim. My husband comes in for a drink once every few days. He lets me pay the bill and then disappears again. Quite often he looks in on the shop late at night and asks if it isn’t time for me to be going home. Then we return pleasantly together.
“Why didn’t I do this from the start? It’s brought me such happiness.”
“Women don’t know anything about happiness or unhappiness.”
“Perhaps not. What about men?”
“Men only have unhappiness. They are always fighting fear.”
“I don’t understand. I only know I wish this life could go on forever. The boss and the madam are such nice people.”
“Don’t be silly. They’re grasping country bumpkins. They make me drink because they think they’ll make money out of it in the end.”
“That’s their business. You can’t blame them for it. But that’s not the whole story is it? You had an affair with the madam, didn’t you?”
“A long time ago. Does the old guy realize it?”
“I’m sure he does. I heard him say with a sigh that you had brought him a seduction and debts.”
“I must seem a horrible character to you, but the fact is that I want to die so badly I can’t stand it. Ever since I was born I have been thinking of nothing but dying. It would be better for everyone concerned if I were dead, that’s certain. And yet I can’t seem to die. There’s something strange and frightening, like God, which won’t let me die.”
“That’s because you have your work.”
“My work doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t write either masterpieces or failures. If people say something is good, it becomes good. If they say it’s bad, it becomes bad. But what frightens me is that somewhere in the world there is a God. There is, isn’t there?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
Now that I have worked twenty days at the restaurant I realize that every last one of the customers is a criminal. I have come to think that my husband is very much on the mild side compared to them. And I see now that not only the customers but everyone you meet walking in the streets is hiding some crime. A beautifully dressed lady came to the door selling sake at three hundred yen the quart. That was cheap, considering what prices are nowadays, and the madam snapped it up. It turned out to be watered. I thought that in a world where even such an aristocratic-looking lady is forced to resort to such tricks, it is impossible for anyone alive to have a clear conscience.
God, if you exist, show yourself to me! Toward the end of the New Year season I was raped by a customer. It was raining that night, and it didn’t seem likely that my husband would appear. I got ready to go, even though one customer was still left. I picked up the boy, who was sleeping in a corner of the back room, and put him on my back. “I’d like to borrow your umbrella again,” I said to the madam.
“I’ve got an umbrella. I’ll take you home,” said the last customer, getting up as if he meant it. He was a short, thin man about twenty-five, who looked like a factory worker. It was the first time he had come to the restaurant since I started working there.
“It’s very kind of you, but I am used to walking by myself.”
“You live a long way off, I know. I come from the same neighborhood. I’ll take you back. Bill, please.” He had only had three glasses and didn’t seem particularly drunk.
We boarded the streetcar together and got off at my stop. Then we walked in the falling rain side by side under the same umbrella through the pitch-black streets. The young man, who up to this point hadn’t said a word, began to talk in a lively way. “I know all about you. You see, I’m a fan of Mr. Otani’s and I write poetry myself. I was hoping to show him some of my work before long, but he intimidates me so.”
We had reached my house. “Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll see you again at the restaurant.”
“Good-bye,” the young man said, going off into the rain.
I was wakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the front gate being opened. I thought that it was my husband returning, drunk as usual, so I lay there without saying anything.
A man’s voice called, “Mrs. Otani, excuse me for bothering you.”
I got up, put on the light, and went to the front entrance. The young man was there, staggering so badly he could scarcely stand.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Otani. On the way back I stopped for another drink and, to tell the truth, I live at the other end of town, and when I got to the station the last streetcar had already left. Mrs. Otani, would you please let me spend the night here? I don’t need any blankets or anything else. I’ll be glad to sleep here in the front hall until the first streetcar leaves tomorrow morning. If it wasn’t raining I’d sleep outdoors somewhere in the neighborhood, but it’s hopeless with this rain. Please let me stay.”
“My husband isn’t at home, but if the front hall will do, please stay.” I got the two torn cushions and gave them to him.
“Thanks very much. Oh, I’ve had too much to drink,” he said with a groan. He lay down just as he was in the front hall, and by the time I got back to bed I could already hear his snores.
The next morning at dawn without ceremony he took me.
That day I went to the restaurant with my boy as usual, acting as if nothing had happened. My husband was sitting at a table reading a newspaper, a glass of liquor beside him. I thought how pretty the morning sunshine looked, sparkling on the glass.
“Isn’t anybody here?” I asked. He looked up from his paper. “The boss hasn’t come back yet from marketing. The madam was in the kitchen just a minute ago. Isn’t she there now?”
“You didn’t come last night, did you?”
“I did come. It’s got so that I can’t get to sleep without a look at my favorite waitress’s face. I dropped in after ten but they said you had just left.”
“And then?”
“I spent the night here. It was raining so hard.”
“I may be sleeping here from now on.”
“That’s a good idea, I suppose.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do. There’s no sense in renting the house forever.”
My husband didn’t say anything but turned back to his paper. “Well, what do you know. They’re writing bad things about me again. They call me a fake aristocrat with Epicurean leanings. That’s not true. It would be more correct to refer to me as an Epicurean in terror of God. Look! It says here that I’m a monster. That’s not true, is it? It’s a little late, but I’ll tell you now why I took the five thousand yen. It was so that I might give you and the boy the first happy New Year in a long time. That proves I’m not a monster, doesn’t it?”
His words didn’t make me especially glad. I said, “There’s nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.”
TRANSLATED ET DONALD KEENB