Anthony H. Chambers
On a whim I withdrew from the lively scene around me, slipped away from the circle of men and women with whom I’d maintained a variety of relationships, and finally, after searching for an appropriate hideaway, found a monastery run by the Shingon sect in the Matsuba-chō district of Asakusa, where I rented a room in the monks’ quarters.
The monastery was in an obscure, labyrinthine neighborhood in the shadow of the Twelve-Story Tower, reached by following the Shinbori Canal in a straight line from Kikuya Bridge and behind Honganji. The slum spread over the district like an overturned trash bin, and along one edge of it stretched the ocher earthen wall that surrounded the monastery. The enclosure gave an impression of great calm, gravity, and solitude.
Rather than secluding myself in a suburb like Shibuya or Ōkubo, I thought from the outset that somewhere in the central city I could surely find some secret, timeworn place, unnoticed by anyone else. Just as stagnant pools form here and there in a swift mountain stream, secluded pockets must lie between the bustling streets in the heart of the city—quiet sections through which most people would never have occasion to pass.
There were other considerations as well.
An enthusiastic traveler, I’d been to Kyoto and Sendai and from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south, but right here in Tokyo—where I’d lived for twenty years since my birth in Ningyō-chō—there probably were streets on which I’d never set foot. Indeed, there must have been many of them. In the honeycomb of streets wide and narrow at the heart of this huge city, I could no longer be certain which were more numerous—those I’d passed down or those I hadn’t.
I must have been eleven or twelve years old when I went with my father to the Hachiman Shrine in Fukagawa.
“Now we’ll take the ferry and I’ll treat you to the famous noodles at Komeichi in Fuyugi,” he said, leading me around behind the shrine buildings. The narrow, brimming, low-banked river, so unlike the canals at Koami-chō or Kobuna-chō, pushed its languid way between the eaves of houses packed together on either side. Weaving between the barges and lighters that floated parallel to the banks and looked longer than the channel was wide, the little ferry crossed back and forth with only two or three strokes of the pole against the bottom.
I’d often visited the Hachiman Shrine before, but I never gave any thought to what might lie behind the compound. I always paid my respects to the main building from the direction of the torii gate in front, and so I suppose I simply thought of it as a flat, dead-end view, all front and no back, like a panoramic picture. Now as I gazed at the river and the ferry and the land stretching forever beyond them, the unfamiliar scene reminded me of the worlds one often encounters in dreams, far more remote from Tokyo than either Kyoto or Osaka.
I tried to picture the streets behind the Kannon Hall at Asakusa, but nothing came to mind except the tiled roof of the massive red building itself seen from the line of shops leading up to it. As I grew older and my contacts expanded, I felt as though I’d explored every corner of Tokyo in the course of visiting friends, going to see the cherry blossoms, and other outings, but often enough I would stumble on hidden enclaves like those I’d discovered as a child.
I searched high and low, thinking that a world set apart like that would be the ideal place to hide, and the more I explored, the more neighborhoods I found through which I’d never passed before. I had crossed Asakusa Bridge and Izumi Bridge many times, but I’d never set foot on Saemon Bridge, which lies in between. Going to the Ichimuraza Theater in Nichō-chō, I’d always turn at the corner by the noodle shop, from the avenue where the trolley runs; but I couldn’t recall ever having walked the two or three blocks beyond the theater toward the Ryūseiza. What was the east bank like to the left of the old Eitai Bridge? I couldn’t be sure. The neighborhoods around Echizenbori, Shamisenbori, and San’yabori were also unfamiliar to me.
The monastery at Matsuba-chō was in the strangest neighborhood of all. Just around the corner and down the alley from the Rokku amusement district and the Yoshiwara licensed quarter, this lonely, forgotten section delighted me. It was fun to leave behind that old friend of mine—“gaudy, extravagant, commonplace Tokyo”—and be able to watch the commotion quietly from my hiding place.
I didn’t go into seclusion to study. My nerves in those days were worn smooth, like an old file, and responded only to the most vivid, full-bodied stimuli. I could no longer enjoy first-rate art or food that required a delicate sensibility. I felt too jaded to respond to the ordinary urban pleasures, to appreciate a chef in the gay quarters—the embodiment of the smart, downtown style—or to admire the skill of kabuki actors from western Japan, like Nizaemon and Ganjirō. The predictable and indolent life I’d been leading from force of habit, day after day, was now more than I could bear. I wanted to try a more unconventional, fanciful, artificial mode of living.
Was there nothing weird and mysterious enough to make my deadened nerves shudder with excitement? Was there nowhere I could indulge in a barbaric, fantastical atmosphere, closer to a dream world than reality? I let my mind wander through the realms of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian legends, recalled the detective stories of Conan Doyle and Ruikō, longed for the burned earth and green fields of the tropics, where the sun’s rays are so intense, and looked back fondly on the eccentric mischief of my childhood.
I thought that dropping out of sight and willfully keeping my activities secret would be enough to provide my life with a certain mysterious, romantic quality. I’d savored the pleasures of secrets since childhood. The pleasure of games like hide-and-seek, treasure hunt, and blindman’s buff—especially on a dark evening, in a dimly lit storeroom, or before the double-leafed storehouse doors—came primarily from the aura of secrecy inherent in them. It was from a desire to experience again the sensations I’d enjoyed as a child playing hide-and-seek that I hid myself downtown in that obscure, unnoticed spot. Also, the monastery’s affiliation with the esoteric Shingon sect, which was intimately associated with secrets, charms, maledictions, and the like, was calculated to appeal to my curiosity and to foster my daydreams.
My room was in a newly enlarged section of the living quarters. It faced south, and the eight floor mats had been slightly discolored by the sun, imparting a rather peaceful, warm feeling to the room. In the afternoon, when the gentle autumn sun blazed red like a magic lantern against the shoji by the veranda, the room was as bright as a paper-covered lampstand.
Shelving the documents on philosophy and art that had been my companions until then, I littered the room with books rich in weird tales and illustrations—detective novels and books on magic, hypnotism, chemistry, and anatomy, which I’d take up at random and immerse myself in as I lay sprawled on the mats. Among them were Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, De Quincey’s Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts, tales like The Arabian Nights, and even a strange French book on “sexologie.”
I prevailed upon the head priest to lend me old Buddhist paintings of Hell and Paradise, Mt. Sumeru, and the recumbent Buddha from his private collection. These I hung haphazardly on the walls of my room, like maps on the walls of the teachers’ room at school. A steady thread of mauve smoke rose calmly from the incense burner in the alcove and filled the bright, warm room with its fragrance. Now and then I’d go to a shop beside Kikuya Bridge and buy some sandalwood or aloes to put in the burner.
The room presented a mesmerizing spectacle on clear days, when the rays of the noontime sun struck the shoji with full force. From the old paintings that covered the surrounding walls, brilliantly colored Buddhas, arhats, bhiksu, bhikṣuṇi, upāsaka, upāsikā, elephants, lions, and unicorns swam out into the abundant light to join a host of living figures from the countless books thrown open on the floor—on manslaughter, anesthesia, narcotics, witchcraft, religion—merging with the incense smoke and looming dimly over me as I lay on a small scarlet rug, gazing with the glassy eyes of a savage, conjuring up hallucinations, day after day.
At about nine o’clock in the evening, after the other residents of the monastery were fast asleep, I’d get drunk by gulping down some whiskey from a square bottle. Then I’d slide open the wooden shutters at the veranda, climb over the graveyard hedge, and set out for a walk. Changing my costume every night so as not to be recognized, I plunged into the crowd in Asakusa Park or picked through the shop-front displays of antique dealers and secondhand bookstores. One night I’d tie a scarf over my head, don a short cotton coat with vertical stripes, apply red polish to the nails of my carefully scrubbed bare feet, and slip on leather-soled sandals. Another night I might go out wearing gold-rimmed dark glasses and an Inverness with the collar turned up. I enjoyed using a false beard, a mole, or a birthmark to alter my features. But one night, at a secondhand clothing shop in Shamisenbori, I saw a woman’s lined kimono with a delicate speckled pattern against a blue ground and was seized with a desire to try it on.
When it came to clothing and fabric, I felt a deep, keen interest that went beyond a simple liking for a good color combination or stylish design. Whenever I saw or touched a beautiful piece of silk, I wanted to wrap my body in it. Often the pleasure it gave rose up inside me to a crest, as if I were gazing at the texture of a lover’s skin. And, although it wasn’t only women’s garments that attracted me, I did sometimes feel jealous of women, whose lot permitted them to wear, without embarrassment and whenever they wanted, the silk crepes I loved so much.
The idea of wearing that fine-patterned crepe kimono, languid and fresh in the secondhand clothing shop—the delicious sensation of that soft, heavy, cool fabric clinging to my flesh—made me shiver with anticipation. I want to put it on, I told myself. I want to walk the streets dressed as a woman. Without a second thought, I decided to buy it. I even bought a long Yūzen underkimono and a black crepe jacket to go with it.
The kimono must once have been worn by a large woman, because it was just the right size for a smallish man like me. As the night darkened and silence fell over the big, empty monastery, I took my place stealthily before the mirror and began to apply my makeup. The effect was a bit grotesque at first, when I smeared some white paste on the yellow skin at the bridge of my nose, but when I used my palms to extend the thick white liquid to every part of my face, it spread surprisingly well, and the sensation of that sweetly fragrant, cool dew seeping into my pores was invigorating. When I applied rouge and polishing powder, I was delighted at the transformation of my alabaster-white face into that of a fresh, animated-looking woman. It made me realize that the techniques of makeup, tested every day by actors, geishas, and ordinary women on their own bodies, are far more interesting than the arts of the painter or man of letters.
Long underkimono, detachable collar, underskirt, rustling sleeves lined with red silk—my flesh was granted the same sensations as those known by the skin of every woman. I whitened my wrists and the nape of my neck, donned a wig in the gingko-leaf style, covered my head and mouth with a hood, and ventured out into the night streets.
It was a dark evening, and the sky looked like rain. I wandered for a while in the lonely streets of Senzoku-chō, Kiyosumi-chō, and Ryūsenji-chō, all laced with canals, but neither the policemen on their beats nor any passersby seemed to notice me. The cool touch of the night wind made my face feel dry, as though an extra layer of skin had been stretched over it. The hood over my mouth grew warm and moist from my breath, and at every step the hem of my long crepe underskirt tangled playfully with my legs. Thanks to the waistband binding my pelvis and the wide sash wrapped tightly from the pit of my stomach to my ribs, I felt as though feminine blood had naturally begun to flow in my veins, and masculine feelings and postures gradually disappeared.
When I extended my white-painted hands from the shadow of my Yūzen sleeves, their firm, sturdy lines faded in the darkness, and they floated there softly, white and plump. I loved the way they looked; I envied women for having beautiful hands like these. What fun it would be to dress like this and commit all sorts of crimes, like Benten Kozō on the stage! Sharing something of the mood of secrecy and suspicion that readers of detective novels and crime stories appreciate, I gradually turned my steps toward the crowded Rokku section of the park. It wasn’t hard to imagine I was someone who’d committed a particularly brutal crime, perhaps murder or robbery.
When I went from the Twelve-Story Tower to the bank of the pond, and then to the intersection by the Opera House, decorative lighting and arc lamps glittered on my heavily made-up face and brought out the colors and pattern on my kimono. Arriving in front of the Tokiwaza Theater, I saw myself reflected in a giant mirror at the entrance to a photographer’s studio, splendidly transformed into a woman among the bustling throng.
Under my thick white makeup, the secret man was hidden completely—my eyes and mouth moved like a woman’s, seemed on the point of smiling like a woman’s. None of the many women who passed me in the crowd, giving off the sweet smell of camphor and the faint rustle of silk, ever doubted that I was one of their own species. Among them were some who looked enviously at the elegance with which I’d made up my face, and at my old-style clothing.
Everything about the familiar nighttime commotion in the park looked new in the light of this disguise. Everywhere I went, everything I saw was as rare and curious as something encountered for the first time. Ordinary reality seemed to be endowed with a dreamlike mystery when I viewed it from behind a veil of secrecy, deceiving human eyes and electric lights under the cover of voluptuous cosmetics and crepe garments.
From that time on, I continued this masquerade almost every night, growing confident enough to mingle in the gallery of the Miyatoza Theater and in motion-picture houses. It would be close to midnight when I returned to the monastery, but as soon as I went inside I’d light the oil lamp, sprawl on the rug without loosening the clothing on my tired body, and gaze with lingering regret at the colors of my gorgeous kimono as I waved the sleeves back and forth. When I faced the mirror, the white powder had begun to wear thin but was still clinging to the coarse skin on my sagging cheeks. As I stared at the image, a degenerate pleasure, like the intoxication of old wine, stirred my soul. With the paintings of Hell and Paradise behind me, I’d sometimes recline languidly on my quilts like a courtesan, still wearing my showy long underkimono, and flip through the pages of weird volumes until dawn. As I grew more daring and more skilled in disguise, I’d slip a knife or an opiate into the folds of my sash before I went out, the better to excite fanciful associations. Without committing any crime, I wanted fully to inhale the romantic fragrance attendant on crime.
Then, one evening about a week later, thanks to a strange concurrence, I stumbled upon the makings of an even weirder, more fanciful, and more disturbing affair.
That evening, having drunk a good deal more whiskey than usual, I went up to the special reserved seats on the second floor of the San’yūkan movie house. It must have been close to ten o’clock. The packed theater was heavy with thick, smoky air, and the smell of humanity rose warmly from the silent, squirming crowd below to float about me, threatening to spoil my makeup. With each sharp squeak of the projector in the darkness, and each ray of light piercing my eyes from the dizzily unfolding movie, my drunken head hurt as if it would split. Now and then the movie would stop and the electric lights would go on suddenly, and I’d look around from the deep shadow of my hood, through the tobacco smoke that drifted over the heads of the crowd downstairs like clouds rising from a valley floor, at the faces of the people who overflowed the theater. I took secret pride in the fact that many men were peering curiously at my old-fashioned hood, and many women were stealing covetous glances at the smart hues of my clothing. In novelty of dress, seductiveness, and beauty, none of the women in the audience was as conspicuous as I was.
At first no one sat next to me. I don’t know exactly when the seats came to be occupied, but when the lights went on for the second or third time, I realized that a man and woman were sitting just to my left.
The woman looked twenty-two or -three but in fact was probably four or five years older than that. Her hair was done smartly in the mitsuwa style, and her entire body was wrapped in an azure silk-crepe manteau; only her lovely face, which glowed with health, was clearly, even ostentatiously, exposed. Something about her made it difficult to know whether she was a geisha or an unmarried young lady, but it was apparent from the attitude of the gentleman with her that she wasn’t a respectable married woman.
“. . . Arrested at last . . .” In a low voice she read out an English title that appeared on the screen. Blowing richly fragrant smoke from an M.C.C. Turkish cigarette into my face, she threw me a sparkling glance with her big eyes, eyes that gleamed more sharply in the dark than the jewel on her finger.
It was a husky voice, like that of a professional balladeer, out of keeping with her charming figure—unmistakably the voice of a woman called T. with whom I’d formed a casual shipboard relationship when I’d traveled to Shanghai two or three years before.
In those days, too, I recalled, I couldn’t tell from her manner and dress whether she was a professional woman or a respectable lady. The man who accompanied her on the ship and the man with her tonight were quite different in bearing and features; but no doubt there were countless men running like a chain through the woman’s past, linking the gap between these two men. In any case, she was clearly the sort of person who flits like a butterfly from man to man.
Two years earlier, she had fallen in love with me on that sea voyage, but we reached Shanghai without having exchanged our real names or any information about ourselves, and, once there, I casually dropped her and slipped out of sight. I’d thought of her simply as a woman in a dream on the Pacific Ocean; I never expected to see her again, particularly in a place like this. She’d been a little plump before, but now she was wonderfully slender and sleek, and her round, moist eyes, with their long eyelashes, were limpid and imperious enough to make a man doubt that he was man enough. Only her lips—so fresh in color that one would think they might leave a crimson bloodstain on whatever they touched—and the length of the hair at the side of her face were unchanged. Her nose appeared to be higher and sharper than before.
Had she noticed me? I couldn’t be certain. When the lights went on, I guessed from the way she was flirting in whispers with her companion that she’d dismissed me as an ordinary woman and was paying me no particular attention. The only certainty was that, sitting next to her, I couldn’t help feeling ashamed of the costume I’d been so proud of. Overawed by the charm of this vital, seductive creature, I felt like a freak in the makeup and clothing I’d taken so much trouble over. Unable to compete with her in femininity or beauty, I faded away, like a star before the moon.
How pretty her supple, fluttering hand was, swimming like a fish from the shadow of her manteau, clearly defined in the murky air that hung so densely in the theater. Even as she was speaking with the man, she’d raise her eyes dreamily and look at the ceiling, knit her brows and look down at the crowd, or show her white teeth as she laughed, and her face would brim with a different expression each time. Her large black eyes, capable apparently of expressing virtually any meaning, were being scrutinized like jewels from even the furthest recesses of the ground floor. The parts of which her face was made were too suggestive to be mere organs for seeing, smelling, hearing, or speaking, too sweet to be anything but the sugared bait with which to catch a man’s heart.
No one’s gaze was directed at me now. Like a fool, I began to feel jealousy and rage over the beauty of the woman who’d usurped my popularity. It was mortifying to be slighted, to have my own light extinguished by the charming features of a woman I’d once toyed with and abandoned. Perhaps she’d recognized me after all and was taking her ironic revenge.
Gradually, though, I sensed my jealousy of her looks change to longing. Defeated as a woman, I wanted to win her over again as a man, and to revel in the victory. I was seized by an urge to grab hold of that supple body and crush it in my arms.
Do you know who I am? Seeing you tonight after all this time, I am falling in love with you again. If you feel you might like to link up with me again, could you come and wait for me in these seats again tomorrow evening? I would prefer not to let anyone know my address and so beg you to come here tomorrow at the same hour and wait for me.
Under cover of darkness I took a piece of Japanese paper and a pencil from my sash, dashed off this note, and slipped it into her sleeve; I then watched her carefully.
She calmly saw the movie through until it ended at around eleven o’clock. Then, taking advantage of the confusion when the audience rose and began noisily to disperse, she whispered in my ear, “. . . Arrested at last . . .” She gazed at my face for a moment with even more confidence and daring than before and finally disappeared with her companion into the crowd.
“. . . Arrested at last . . .”
She had recognized me. The thought made me shudder.
But would she come as requested the following night? She seemed far more worldly than before. Had I underestimated her and given her the advantage? Tense with anxiety and trepidation, I returned to the monastery.
There, as usual, I was just removing my outer garments, so that I’d be dressed only in my long underkimono, when a small piece of Western paper, folded into a square, fell from inside my hood.
“Mr. S. K.” The ink inscription shone like silk when I held it up to the light. It was unmistakably her handwriting. She’d stepped out once or twice during the film—in the interval she must have penned an answer quickly and slipped it into my collar without anyone noticing.
I never dreamed I’d see you here of all places. You may have changed your clothing, but how could I fail to recognize the face I’ve never forgotten these three years, even in my dreams? I knew from the beginning that the woman in the hood was you. I find it amusing, by the way, to see that you’re as eccentric as ever. At the same time, it makes me uneasy to think that you may simply be indulging this eccentricity when you say that you want to meet me, but I’m too happy to be able to judge properly, so I shall do as you say and wait for you tomorrow night without fail. For reasons of my own, however, I wonder if you would mind going to the Thunder Gate crossing between nine and nine-thirty. A rickshaw man whom I shall send to meet you will pick you up and take you to my house. Just as you want to conceal your address, I, too, prefer that you not know where I live, and so I shall arrange for the man to bring you to me blindfolded. I hope that you will agree to this one condition, because if you don’t, I shall never be able to see you again, and nothing could be sadder than that.
As I read this letter, I felt that I’d become a character in a detective story. Curiosity and alarm both swirled in my head. Maybe the woman understood my own proclivities so well that she was acting like this deliberately.
There was a heavy downpour the next evening. Changing my costume completely, I put on a man’s silk kimono and a mackintosh and went splashing into the night. The rain pounded on my silk umbrella like a waterfall. The Shinbori Canal having overflowed into the surrounding streets, I tucked my tabi socks into the breast of my kimono and walked on my clogs barefoot. My feet glistened in the lamplight that spilled from the houses along the street. Everything was blotted out by the din of the driving rain; most of the shutters were closed on the usually bustling avenues, and two or three men with their skirts tucked up ran off like routed soldiers. Aside from an occasional trolley spraying puddles of water from the rails as it passed, there were only the lamps placed here and there above utility-pole advertisements, dimly illuminating the hazy, rain-filled air.
When I finally reached the Thunder Gate crossing, my mackintosh, my wrists, and even my elbows were soaking wet. Standing dejectedly in the rain, I looked around in the light from the arc lamps, but no one was in sight. Perhaps someone was hiding in a dark corner and keeping an eye on me. I stood there for a time with this thought in mind, until finally, in the darkness toward Azuma Bridge, I saw a red lantern moving along, and an old-fashioned, two-passenger rickshaw rattled swiftly across the paving stones by the trolley tracks and came to a stop before me.
The rickshaw man was wearing a large, round wicker hat and a rain cape. “Please get in, sir.” As his voice melted in the drumming of the rain, he quickly moved behind me, wrapped a length of fine silk twice around my eyes, and pulled it so tight that it pinched the skin at my temples.
“Here, let’s get in.” The man grasped me with his rough hands and lifted me into the rickshaw.
The rain beat against the musty canvas hood. It was clear that a woman was riding beside me. Inside the hood, the air was stuffy with body heat and the smell of white makeup.
Lifting the rickshaw’s shaft, the man spun us around several times in the same spot to mask the direction in which he finally started off. Before long he turned right, then left. It felt as though we were wandering in a labyrinth. Now and then we entered a street with a trolley line or crossed a little bridge.
We were rocked by the rickshaw for a long time. The woman beside me must of course have been T., but she sat there without speaking or moving. No doubt she was riding with me to make sure that I kept my blindfold on. Even without her supervision, though, I would have had no desire to remove it. The dream-woman I’d met at sea, the interior of a rickshaw on a rainy evening, the secrets of the city at night, blindness, silence—all these had merged to plunge me into the haze of a perfect mystery.
Presently the woman parted my tight lips and put a cigarette in my mouth. Striking a match, she lit it for me.
After about an hour, the rickshaw finally stopped. Taking hold of me again with his rough hands, the man guided me fifteen or twenty feet down what seemed to be a narrow alley, opened what must have been a back door, and led me into a house.
Left in a room with my eyes still covered, I sat alone for a while. Before long I heard the sound of a sliding door being opened. Without saying a word, the woman snuggled up to me, her body as limp and fluid as a mermaid’s. She lay back on my lap, put her arms around my neck, and untied my blindfold.
The room was about eight mats in size, or twelve by twelve feet. The construction and furnishings were excellent, and the wood well chosen, but just as the woman’s status was unclear, I couldn’t tell whether it was a house of assignation, a kept woman’s home, or a respectable, upper-class residence. Beyond the veranda was some thick shrubbery, enclosed by a wooden fence. Given only this range of vision, I couldn’t begin to guess what part of Tokyo the house might be in.
“I’m so glad you came,” the woman said, leaning against a square rosewood table in the center of the room and letting her white arms creep languidly across its surface like two living creatures. I was astonished by the tremendous change in her appearance from the night before—she was wearing an austere striped kimono with a removable collar and a lined sash, and her hair was done in the everyday, ginkgo-leaf style.
“You must think it odd that I’m dressed like this tonight. But the only way to keep others from knowing one’s circumstances is to alter one’s appearance every day.” As she spoke, she lifted a cup from the table and poured some wine into it. Her manner was more gentle and subdued than I remembered.
“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me. Since we parted company in Shanghai, I’ve known all sorts of men and suffered as a result, but, strangely, I couldn’t forget you. Please don’t drop me like that again. Go on meeting me—forever—as someone whose position and circumstances you don’t know. A dream-woman.”
Every word and phrase left a sad little echo in me, like music from some strange land. How could the flashy, spirited, intelligent woman of the night before present such a melancholy, admirable figure tonight? It was as if she’d discarded everything and was now baring her soul to me.
“Dream-woman,” “secret woman”—savoring this strange liaison, in which the distinction between reality and illusion was always blurred, I went to her house almost every night and enjoyed myself there until two o’clock in the morning, when, blindfolded again, I’d be escorted back to the Thunder Gate crossing. We met for a month, then two months, without knowing each other’s address or name. At first I had no desire to investigate her circumstances or seek out her residence; but as the days passed, I was moved by a strange curiosity. To what part of Tokyo was the rickshaw carrying us? How did we get from Asakusa to here, the neighborhood I was passing through now with my eyes covered? I was determined to know this much. Maybe the woman’s house, where the rickshaw finally came to rest after thirty minutes, an hour, sometimes an hour and a half of rattling through the city streets, was surprisingly close to the Thunder Gate crossing. As I was rocked along every night in the rickshaw, I couldn’t help speculating secretly about our location.
One night I could stand it no longer. “Take off this blindfold, won’t you?” I pleaded with the woman while we were in the rickshaw. “Just for a moment.”
“No, no, you mustn’t!” She gripped my hands in panic and pressed her face against them. “Please, don’t be difficult. This route is my secret. You might stop seeing me if you discovered it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’d no longer be a ‘dream-woman.’ You love the woman in the dream more than you love me.”
I tried everything I could think of to overcome her reluctance.
“I have no choice, then,” she finally said with a sigh. “I’ll let you look . . . but only for a moment.” With obvious misgivings, she removed my blindfold. “Can you tell where we are now?” she asked uneasily.
Against an unusually black sky, stars glittered everywhere in the wonderfully clear air, and the white mist of the Milky Way flowed from one horizon to the other. The narrow street, lined with shops on both sides, was gaily illuminated by lamplight. The lane was a lively one, but oddly enough I had no idea where it was. The rickshaw ran on down the street until the name “Seibidō,” written in large letters on a seal maker’s shop sign, came into view at the end of the street, a block or two ahead.
When I peered from the rickshaw at the small lettering at the edge of the sign where the shop’s address was written, the woman seemed suddenly to notice. “Oh, no,” she said, and covered my eyes again.
A busy little street with many shops and a seal maker’s sign at the end—I decided it must be a street I’d never traveled along before. Once again I felt the tug of curiosity I’d felt as a child when confronted with a riddle.
“Could you make out the letters on that sign?”
“No, I couldn’t. I have no idea where we are. And I know nothing about your life, except what happened three years ago on the Pacific. It’s as if you put a spell on me and whisked me off to some phantom land a thousand leagues away.”
Hearing my reply, the woman said in a poignant voice, “I hope you’ll always feel that way. Think of me as a woman in a dream who lives in a phantom land. Please, never insist again the way you did just now.”
I guessed that there were tears in her eyes.
For some time after that, I couldn’t forget the mysterious street scene I’d been allowed to glimpse that evening. The seal maker’s sign at the end of that busy, brightly lit lane was etched sharply in my mind. I racked my brains trying to think of a way to find that street, until finally I worked out a plan.
In the course of those long months when we were being pulled around together nearly every night, the number of revolutions the rickshaw made at the Thunder Gate crossing and the number of right and left turns settled into a routine, and before I knew it I’d memorized the pattern. One morning I stood on a corner at the crossing and, with my eyes closed, turned myself around several times. When I thought I had it about right, I trotted off at the same pace as a rickshaw. My only method was to calculate the intervals as best I could and turn into side streets here and there. Sure enough, there was a bridge, and there was a street with trolley rails, just where they should be; and so I thought I must be on the right track.
The route, beginning at the Thunder Gate crossing, skirted the edge of the park as far as Senzoku-chō and followed a narrow lane through Ryūsenji-chō toward Ueno. At Kurumazaka-shita it bore to the left and, after following the Okachimachi street for seven or eight blocks, once again turned to the left. Here I ran smack into the narrow street I’d seen that night.
And right in front of me was the seal maker’s sign.
Keeping my eyes on the sign, I advanced straight forward, as though I were probing the inner depths of a secret cavern. When I reached the end of the street and looked at the cross street, I was surprised to see that it was a continuation of the Shitaya Take-chō avenue, where a bazaar is held every evening. Just a few yards away, I could see the secondhand clothing shop where I’d bought that fine-patterned crepe kimono. The mysterious lane connected Shamisenbori and the Naka-Okachimachi street, but I couldn’t recall ever having passed through it before. I stood for a while in front of the Seibidō sign that had puzzled me for so long. The houses lining the street had been crowned that night by a sky full of dazzling stars, wrapped in a dreamlike, mysterious air and brimming with red lamps; but now they looked like shacks, shriveled in the hot rays of the autumn sun. I felt immediately disappointed.
Spurred on by an irrepressible curiosity, though, I guessed at the direction and ran on, like a dog returning to its home, following a scent on the road.
When I entered Asakusa Ward again, the route proceeded to the right from Kojima-chō, crossed a street with a trolley line near Suga Bridge, followed the bank of the Daichi River toward Yanagi Bridge, and emerged at the avenue leading to Ryōgoku. I could see what a roundabout way the woman had taken to make me lose my bearings. I passed Yagenbori, Hisamatsu-chō, and Hama-chō and crossed Kakihama Bridge—and suddenly I didn’t know which way to go.
I was sure that the woman’s house was in an alley nearby. I spent an hour going in and out of narrow side streets in the neighborhood.
Directly across from the Dōryō Gongen temple, in a narrow space between the eaves of the tightly packed houses, I found a humble, narrow, nearly invisible alley. Intuitively I knew that the woman’s house lay down that alley. I went in. The second or third house on the right was enclosed by a handsome wooden fence that had been treated to bring out the grain, and from the railing of a second-floor window, through a screen of pine needles, the woman was staring down at me with an ashen face.
Unable to hide the mocking look in my eyes, I gazed up at the second floor, but the woman returned my stare expressionlessly, as though she were feigning ignorance and pretending to be someone else. Indeed, she might as well have been disguised as someone else, so different was her appearance now from the impression she’d given at night. She had agreed, just once, to a man’s request to loosen his blindfold, but that had been enough for her secret to be exposed. A trace of the regret and sadness she must have felt showed fleetingly on her face, and then, without a sound, she disappeared behind the shoji.
Her name was Yoshino. She was a widow, and wealthy for that neighborhood. As with the seal maker’s sign, all her riddles had been solved. I stopped seeing her at once.
Two or three days later I left the monastery and moved to Tabata. The satisfactions to be gained from “secrets” were now too bland and pallid for me. I intended to seek more vivid, gory pleasures.