7

It was after eleven when his eyes opened. By good chance he’d slept deep and well, but maybe because he’d drunk so much the night before, he felt a dull ache in the back of his head. He pulled himself out of bed and raised the blinds on the window. As he gazed upward he could see the back of the building next door beyond the glass doors. A large concrete chimney soared into the bright, clear sky, and white clouds floated quietly above the roof of the eight-story building. The color of the sky, the shapes of the clouds, and the cheery sunlight met his eyes and, surrounded by the moist warmth of the steam-heated room, he realized that, early as it was, spring had already arrived. He found himself imagining the successful accomplishment of today’s pleasures. When he’d missed the chance to go to Yokohama last night and wandered into this hotel at one in the morning, it had been gloomy and on the brink of rain. He had prayed that it wouldn’t rain tomorrow, and this weather bode extremely well.…

“All evil deeds require a day with a perfectly clear sky for their working.” He didn’t remember when it was that he’d taken this as his motto. Among the things to be considered evil deeds were deceiving people, stealing money, indulging in dissipation, and such like, but as long as the weather was good, he felt remarkably free of the pricks of conscience. Was it his physical constitution that made him so susceptible to the influence of the weather? Or could it be that a man living such an isolated life, like he was, would be given to bouts of depression if he wasn’t always surrounded by bright colors? For his entertainments, too, as much as possible he preferred daytime to night. Something like last night, where he’d had that unimaginable encounter with the woman, had made him into quite a sentimentalist, but that, too, was the working of “night.” If it had happened on a morning with weather like this, he would surely not have felt so off balance. Look at that blue, blue sky! That sunlight! I’ve got nearly three hundred yen in my breast pocket and that classy woman waiting for me! Am I not fortunate?

As he lay in bed with these thoughts running through his head, he had a sudden realization: I have to get a shave. In fact, he’d shaved just the previous morning and it hadn’t grown out much. Usually he let it go for two or three days, but the woman was so stylish that if he weren’t perfectly smooth in the Western style, she might tell him he was a boor. Even with this gorgeous weather, she’d be put off if he looked scruffy. Since he’d had the leisure to do that stupid shopping on the Ginza last night, he should at least have gotten himself a Gillette.

He called the bellboy and asked him, “Say, before I take my bath, I’d like to have my face cleaned up—do you have a barber in the hotel?”

“Well, actually, we don’t have a barber …”

“Might you have a safety razor?”

“We don’t have razors either, but they probably have them at the Marunouchi Building. Shall I go see if they have them?”

“Yes, get me a Gillette as quickly as possible.”

He handed the bellboy a five-yen bill, and then, jumping out of bed, he paced back and forth restlessly in the room, going over to look out the window now and then, checking on the state of the weather. So—I’m at the very top of a four-story building. Those guys down there below me are a different kind of animal. That Nakazawa, my ex-wife, they’re just maggots in my sight! He made as if to spring up into the air, and whirled around on his heel two or three times.

He had to be on the train by twelve, and if he was to grab a bite to eat, this was the time to do it. Impatience rushed him along as he plied the Gillette in the Western-style bath, and he found himself pulled back into those same old fantasies that came boiling up, brought by thoughts of the pleasures that were about to be his. He had to arrive at Sakuragicho by one. And the woman would be standing at the exit wearing what she had been wearing the night before. And then—? And then what should they do? Wasn’t there something sensational they could do? But that house in Honmoku was too wretched a place. Wouldn’t there be some place more elegant, brighter, grander, something more suitable for making love to a woman like that? Or even better—should he bring her to this hotel? … As he lay in the tub looking up and watching the soap bubbles running down his arm, he idly played out fancies—let’s do that, and then we’ll do this.… Eventually, he was quite in a trance, seeing clearly before him things that were not there; then he came to with a start and went back to scrubbing himself briskly. This just won’t do. If I keep wrapping myself up in delusions, that alone will exhaust me. Until I meet with the woman I mustn’t think about it. I must diligently wash myself, fill my belly, and run off to Tokyo Station. For the present, that’s what I should pay attention to. Even as he thought this, and knew that time was passing, his mind would not work as he willed it to; he warned himself, “It’s late, it’s getting late,” but kept endlessly pursuing his fantasies. Grappling with so many daydreams, he couldn’t brush them aside as they pressed in on him one after another.

“Oh hell, I’m in trouble—I’ve only got fifteen minutes till twelve!” He hastily grabbed for his kimono without even drying himself properly and, while dressing, pushed the bell on the wall.

“My bill! Quickly! I’d planned to go eat, but there’s no time. Hurry up and bring the bill right away!”

He had put his overcoat on over his damp body; he was dripping with sweat but had no time to mop it with his handkerchief. Not waiting for the bellboy to come, he went down to the lobby by elevator, settled the bill and, without even checking the change, raced out of the building.

“Say, here’s your walking stick!” The bellboy came running several hundred feet behind him, shouting and brandishing the bulldog-headed cane he’d bought the night before. But all he did was half turn around momentarily and gesture as if to say, Never mind—I give it to you, it’s yours! He ran all the way to Tokyo Station. The plaza in front had never seemed as huge as it was today. He’d seen the building right ahead of him as he turned the corner from the hotel, yet no matter how much he ran, it was still off in the distance. He’d have to manage to get there and then go to the train entrance at the far end of the long, long building, and then make it through the long, long underground passageway and go up and down stairs. He was filled with rage just to think of that interminable path until he arrived at the long platform—how inconvenient they’d made the train stop! As he ran he felt his throat seizing, and he spat out bits of undigested material left in his stomach from the night before.

Luckily, he made it just before the train left the platform. At this time of day there were few passengers in the second-class car, but few as they were, when he entered his eyes were met with a flickering, incomprehensible burst of red, white, all sorts of bright colors, and he stared despite himself. They were perhaps the wives or daughters of some foreign embassy: a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old mademoiselle who seemed to be going to see someone off on a ship or meeting one, because she had a big basket of flowers standing in front of her; a young woman around twenty who could have been her sister; and a fiftyish woman who might have been their mother. Accompanying them was a fatherly, elegant older gentleman and a boy around thirteen or so. They made up the larger part of the passengers, with only two or three additional Japanese in the car. As the train began moving, the women continued their bright chattering. It was his considered opinion that no matter how beautiful Western women were, they always smelled of soap—better to see them in the movies. But now, so close to them in actuality, he couldn’t help being excited. Additionally, the Honmoku woman and these “hairy foreigners” were connected in some inevitable way. In just another hour, she’ll be mine, he thought and felt a strange joy welling up in him. With no other impetus, he felt that the visions he had conjured up not long ago in the bath were appearing right before his eyes. Come to think of it, these Westerners are strange creatures. Even the women move with amazing power; they stuff themselves with butter and beef, anything fatty and oily, develop their bodies as much as possible, and then they wear all this exciting clothing. Women’s ways are fully dedicated to presenting in the mind one idea only—how to stimulate—in the most effective, appropriate, and intense way. A man’s nerves are gradually desensitized as he becomes more and more accustomed to something he sees all the time, so the woman’s presentation must become increasingly intense to be able to arouse him. For her to go out publicly on the street in full daylight in outfits like this is far more stunning than if she were walking around naked. Their clothing is not for the purpose of keeping out heat or cold … its function is to draw attention. This is of course what Tolstoy was attacking in “The Kreutzer Sonata,” but setting Tolstoy aside, surely the general run of men burn with passion morn till night. In fact, when you look at it this way, that’s precisely what the will to live stems from. “It’s a waste not to live. Life brings us these beautiful creatures; in order to get my hands on one of them, I’ll work with all my energy, make as much money as I can …” This must be where Western men get their entrepreneurial work ethic, their vitality. The woman’s clothing is the propeller that makes them move. After all, wasn’t it that Honmoku propeller that got me to churn out thirty pages in only four days? …

When they got out at Sakuragicho, he shouldered his way through the line of Westerners as they made their way down the platform, and feverishly raced down and then up the stairs of the underground passage. And then, his propeller—the Fraülein’s green hat—there it appeared, amid the crowd at the exit gate.

“Ah, there she is, she’s there!” He was just about to raise his hand to her when the woman acknowledged him, and then after signaling him sharply with a powerful glance, she turned on her heel and went ahead to wait for him at the station exit. There was a distance of thirty or forty feet between them as he was about to go out the exit gate. Maybe because he was looking at her from a distance, he suddenly felt something like a light disappointment. Certainly her clothing and accessories were just as they had been, but somehow they gave a different impression from the time before. First of all, it was strange, but today rather than looking like a typist, she’d turned completely into a streetwalker, no matter how he tried to see her. It wasn’t that her makeup was different. She still looked fresh and unmade-up. So what could it be? There are women who give a completely different impression in daylight and at night. Was she one of them? Or was it because he’d been drunk at the time? No, rather, could it be that today the woman must be sober, and when she gets serious, her demon’s skin is stripped off? … What is she, this kind of woman? This person I’ve been chasing feverishly in such utter confusion—wanting to make that guy Nakazawa envy me, getting all messed up myself in the process, cranking out thirty pages in four days …

“It’s exactly one, isn’t it—you are quite punctual.” The woman spoke, looking at her watch, as he came up to her.

“Have you been waiting long?”

“I got here three minutes ago.” As he vaguely watched out of the corner of his eye the line of foreigners troop past the two of them and start to get into an automobile, she then prompted him, “Well, what shall we do at this point—go to Honmoku?”

“That’s all right with me.… What do you want to do?”

“Either way …” It was her usual curt, perfunctory tone. Mizuno began to get an increasingly strong sense that he was making a fool of himself. The scene was just what he’d been anticipating all this time, but it looked like it was going to end pathetically. She says, “Either way,” so should I tell her, “Well then, please excuse me, I’m just not as interested in you as I was before.” But if he did that, she might just calmly break it off herself: “Oh, yes? Well then, that’s just the way it has to be.” … But even as he hesitated, he didn’t feel like retreating, since he’d come all the way out here. Oh, come on, don’t say anything, and let’s see what amusements develop. Don’t be such a sap, whining about how pathetic it is. Come on. It’s pretty good anyway, isn’t it? Seeing this body again, these arms …

“Hey, let’s go somewhere interesting.”

“Fine with me. Where?”

“Don’t you know some good place?”

“Can you row a boat?—I’d like to go out on the ocean.”

“No, that won’t work. I’m no good at any kind of exercise, boating, tennis, all of them.”

“Well, then, let’s go driving out in the country.”

“But we have to have at least some general destination in mind. Shall we go to Kamakura by car?” Bit by bit, he was entrapping himself. “At any rate, no matter where we go, I need to get something to eat … there must be some great place you know in Yokohama.”

“Why don’t we leave right away, before that? Wouldn’t it be better to eat in Kamakura?”

“That’s a bit cruel, you know. I haven’t had anything to eat yet today. I was worried about being late, so I rushed off to get here as soon as I got up.” Mizuno said this deliberately joking, and the woman snickered in amusement.

“Well, then, we’d better go to the station restaurant.”

“Instead of that—what do you like? Shouldn’t we go to a place you like?”

“I’m not hungry right now. I could have a drink, though.”

“How about Chinese? They say Yokohama is great for that.”

“Oh ugh, no way!” The woman screwed up her face as she spoke. “Do you really eat filthy stuff like that?”

“Don’t worry—it’s all right, since it’s all fully cooked.”

“No—there’s no way I’d eat it. It stinks, and it’s dirty, and unsanitary … totally barbaric!”

“But didn’t you say you’d been to Shanghai?”

“Sure, I was in Shanghai, but I never once ate even chop suey. I always stuck to Western food. So let’s go to the station restaurant—that’ll do.”

She spoke as she continued steadily climbing the stairs, and Mizuno followed her. She opened the door to the second floor restaurant and lightly called out, “Hi there!” as if she went there all the time.

“Welcome!” Mizuno felt that the waiter was looking at him with an expression that said, “Oh, great, she’s brought another peculiar guy to chew up today!” so he tried to be unobtrusive. The woman took off her coat, revealing those luscious arms.

“What will you have? Are you here for a meal?”

“He’ll eat, I’ll drink. Now, what shall I have? What’ve you got in cognacs?”

“Hennessey, Martell, that’s about it.—For the Hennessey, we’ve got the Extra.”

“I hate Hennessey. Give me the Martell.” The woman went on like this, with all this sophisticated knowledge Mizuno didn’t have.

“What is this stuff, this Martell? Is it different from whiskey?”

“It’s cognac, is what it is.”

“Cognac, is that a kind of brandy?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s strange. Didn’t you say that you only drink whiskey?”

“When? When did I say that?”

“At the London Bar, when you caught those insurance company guys, and you said it in German. Ich kann nur Whiskey trinken, you said.”

“I was just saying stuff to intimidate them. I pretty much like all Western liquor, but I hate Japanese saké—it makes your mouth smell. Don’t you go drinking Japanese liquor today!” And the woman, with another slight gesture, crooked her little finger as she lifted her glass. “How about it? Want to try it?”

“Well, maybe I’ll have some whiskey …?”

“But try this. Japanese don’t know the taste of brandy. When you get used to drinking it, it’s much better than whiskey.”

“For all the show you make of German—isn’t brandy French?”

“Yes, but if you go to Germany, you find some things that are better than French. The Rhine wine they make in the Rhine valley is much tastier than French wine. Real drinkers say it’s the best.”

“Does that liquor come to Japan, do you suppose?”

“It does, but what you get in Japan is no good. If you don’t go to the Rhine and taste the real thing there, you’ll never know how good it is.” Starting with her lecture on liquor, she went on to talk nostalgically about her memories of the Rhine region. Mizuno kept her company and tried what she was drinking but couldn’t tell at all what was good about it. Because he was taking all this strong alcohol on an empty stomach, drunkenness came upon him quite quickly. “Get drunk fast, get drunk fast”—Mizuno drank as if he were praying this magic spell. The drunker he got, the more beautiful the woman came to appear. Her presence was so splendid, so classy, she looked as she had recently at the London Bar, like the vision he had created in his mind ever since then, not inferior to that diplomat’s wife and daughter … hey, that’s right, hasn’t she been getting to seem that way bit by bit? Isn’t that one of the great things about being drunk? Right? How about it? He wished he could give Nakazawa a glimpse of this. “Say, Mr. Mizuno, you’re doing really well! You’ve finally caught her—”

“Hey, what about what you promised?” The woman suddenly spoke, as if she could read in his eyes what Mizuno was dreaming.

“Uh … ah … anytime is okay, I’ve got it with me.”

“Well then, pass it over to me now. ‘Payment in advance,’ you know.”

Mizuno saw that the woman’s hand and pocketbook were now under the table, and so he took the bundle of bank notes out from his breast pocket and put his hand under the table like hers.

“It’s all there, sixteen bills, right?”

“Right—danke schön!” Under the table, the clasp of the pocketbook snapped shut. At the same time, a flirtatious smile floated over her cheeks.

“How much do you make a month anyway?”

“How much do you think?”

“Between five hundred and a thousand yen?”

“Well, whether or not that’s what I make, anyway I need a thousand a month for living expenses.”

“What takes so much, lots of clothes?”

“My clothes are pretty low key, and generally I just buy the material and make them myself, so that doesn’t take much, but there are after all the luxuries. Cars, for example—I spend around a hundred yen a month on limos.”

“That is quite a luxury—but, you know, I spend a couple hundred or so a month myself,” Mizuno added, deliberately expansive.

“You sure ride a lot. Isn’t that extravagant of you, too?”

“I need it for work. For a woman it’s a luxury, but for a man it’s a necessity.—But if you need a thousand yen a month, well then, your former husband must have been pretty well off.”

“Western men think it’s perfectly normal for their wives to spend a thousand yen. And so in the West, if they don’t have money, they can’t get married. A Japanese man marries even if he’s poor, and he leaves his wife in a miserable state. I think that’s terrible. And it’s the woman’s fault if she goes to be his bride.”

“You’re right—it’s her fault. They operate on the principle that love covers all poverty.”

“If it were me, I’d have to get a thousand yen a month just for spending money.”

“So if someone gave you that, you’d marry him?”

“I’m not saying that I wouldn’t if he didn’t, but Japanese men are hopeless.”

“There are exceptions among Japanese men, you know. I for one like a woman with expensive tastes.”

“Really? But if you tried having me as your frau, you’d regret it, you know—because I’m willful, wild, hard to control.”

“I like a woman like that … makes being good to her worth the effort. It would be great to try having a wife like that at least once. Give her all the luxury she wants, let her buy whatever she wants, eat whatever fancy foods she wants, let her do whatever she wants, let her behave just as she desires—I’ve always dreamed of getting myself a frau like that. But of all the Japanese women I’ve seen until now, not one has been worth it. Maybe there is one, but I’ve never bumped into her. That’s why even now I’m all by myself.”

“Oh yeah? You’re not married?”

“I have been, but I wised up and got rid of her, two or three years ago.—I’ve been on my own ever since. I intend to hold out until I can make my dream a reality.”

Under the table he felt the tip of the woman’s shoe touch him. On top of the table she stretched out her hand and arms as if to excite his sense of touch. As his stomach filled, a different appetite came bubbling up. His whole body was impatient. The three or four feet of table between them became an unbearable hindrance …

“I love your arms …” When they got into the car, he took the woman’s hand as if he’d been eagerly waiting just for that chance, and loosely swung her arm back and forth. “When we met at the London Bar that time, it was your arms that seduced me. They are truly magnificent, truly!”

“Everyone says that, that my arms are great—”

“They are great! It’s a pleasure just to swing them like this. I’d like to make them into a toy and swing them forever.”

“If you want, make me into a toy.”

“It doesn’t bother you? To have me hanging on you so much like this …?”

“Not at all—I like having guys hanging on me.”

When Mizuno was young, he had, like all literary-minded young men, talked often about “platonic love,” but he’d never actually had the experience of true spiritual love. He was a kind of woman worshipper. But as is the case with men of this type, because they dream of a woman as so beautiful, so nearly like a goddess, when they encounter the reality they always feel disillusioned. For a man, when a woman loses her divinity, there is nothing else but for her to become a plaything. For Mizuno, the women with whom he’d been in any relationship approaching romantic had all been nothing more than toys. It was something like love, but not real love. He didn’t know what real love was, so he didn’t know how it was different, but at any rate it surely was not this tepid thing. As a poor man envies a rich man, he vaguely imagined that true romantic love would be such that the pleasure would be shared mutually soul to soul, that there would be rapture to the depths of his soul. It was ridiculous that he should be near forty and still be thinking such things, but although he’d touched the skin of many women up to this day, he’d never touched the “heart” of a woman. And he realized that it was not the woman’s fault but rather some spiritual element lacking in him, and that sometimes made him sad. He’d just never known a love that could raise him from the earthly plane to a heavenly realm. He didn’t understand ecstatic joy, a state of self-abandonment. And he would gradually age, and finally die without having tasted it. That dissatisfaction was always in his head. Every time he got another woman, he was in a fever: this time will do it, this time … And these days he’d been getting sloppy: when he was in his cups he’d even delude himself so that no matter who he got his hands on—a geisha, a prostitute—he would “fall in love” for no reason at all. With the energy of drunkenness he would elevate some worthless woman to the status of an ideal and pile on nauseating flattery, play up to her, tease her, sigh deep sighs, and do such stupid things that even he could hardly believe his own acting. But however clever his performance was, nonsense is nonsense after all, and true intoxication was hardly likely to bubble up from such love. As drunk as he seemed to be, somewhere at the core his heart was always stone cold sober. Whenever he started to heat up, immediately he heard a voice coming from himself, insulting him, and his passion would sputter out and disappear.…

“Do you really feel that you could become my toy for me?”

“It’s not that I’d be doing you a favor. Although you are swinging my arm like crazy …”

“No, what I’m talking about is not arms.”

“Not just arms—you could make any part of me your toy.”

“Being a toy is complicated, you know. I’ve made a number of women into toys before now, and not one of them was able to do it completely. I think you might be able to do it, but …”

“What is it, that you’re looking for?”

“Do you think you can truly get me totally drunk? Theater, nonsense, anything would be fine, however you do it, could you pretend and make it seem to me like real love? If you could do that, I’d pay you as much as you want …”

“Well then, give me your order. What kind of woman do you want?”

“Are you saying you could become any kind of woman?”

“I’m pretty sure I can. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to make my living as I do, you know.” The woman spoke with full confidence, in tones that showed a fundamental understanding of her profession.

Before long, the car passed through the town of ramshackle houses, with the sea spreading out broadly on the left side. In the hillsides on the right, raw red scars gouged the earth, still left from the landslides during the earthquake. These things swept through his field of vision. As the car raced on, he could feel his heart pounding along with it.

“The man I was with, that German man? He had some unusual tastes, and he had a number of orders for me.”

“Orders …?”

“For example, he liked to hear a woman crying—not wailing out loud, but sniffling along quietly, as if she were whispering.… He said that gave him pleasure.”

“So you did what you were told?”

“I sure did. I cried really well for him. There’s no woman who cries as well as you, he said to me, and as a result he was very good to me. When I cried particularly well, afterward he’d be in a great mood, and he’d buy me a new dress or other stuff.”

“The guy sounds like some kind of pervert.”

“All men are perverts. Some of them are even weirder, but for the most part I do what they order, if it’s not too off the wall. One man told me he wanted me to be a deaf-mute.”

“Why?”

“He said that hearing people talk bothered him. He was extremely moody, but shy on top of that, and he said to me, I don’t need to hear you, it’s enough for you to be a silent toy.”

“That’s impressive—he knew just what he wanted. Of course he was a Westerner, right?”

“Right. Japanese men don’t have very complicated needs. They’re pretty conventional and boring. ‘Love’ is a kind of theater, and it doesn’t work if you haven’t thought out the plot.”

“Well then, I’d like to have you work out a plot for me.”

“Just what kind of woman do you want me to be?”

“When I make love to a woman I always feel regret afterward, and I get sad. Even right in the instant, I’ve never been so carried away that I lost track of where I was. I always feel somewhere that this is not real love, it’s a fake.”

“These days there isn’t any such thing as real love. We’re all acting, you know.—What it comes down to is, you’re just not good at theater.”

“Could be. But it also depends on the actress.”

“I’m a fabulous actress, you can rely on that.—And I’ll write you a script that will always interest you, with turns and changes.”

“Turns, and colors …”

“It’ll be Technicolor.”

Mizuno placed the woman’s hand flat on his knee and fiddled with her ring and middle fingers as if making a twisted paper string.