And Then

  At first he was in a daze, not knowing where or how he walked. The scene he had just witnessed danced furiously in his mind as if it would burn itself in. When that had subsided somewhat, he felt unspeakable humiliation over his own conduct. He asked himself why he had engaged in such a vulgar act and then fled as if surprised in the midst of it. He stood in the dark lane and rejoiced to himself that the world was about to be conquered by night. The heavy air of early summer closed in on him, and with every step he took, he felt as if he would suffocate. When he came to the top of Kagurazaka, his eyes were suddenly blinded. Countless human forms enveloped his body and countless lights burned his head without mercy. Daisuke went up Waradana as if he were fleeing.

  When he got home, Kadono met him with his usual aimless look and asked, “It’s pretty late, Sensei. Have you had dinner yet?”

  Since he did not want to eat, Daisuke replied that he had and shut Kadono out as if to drive him away. But before two or three minutes were up, he clapped his hands and called him back. “There wasn’t a messenger from home?”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s fine,” was all he said.

  Kadono continued to stand in the doorway as if vaguely dissatisfied. “Sensei, does that mean you didn’t go home?”

  “Why?” Daisuke’s face was ill-humored.

  “Why, you said something like that as you were leaving.”

  Daisuke found it tiresome to keep talking to Kadono. “I did go home—if they haven’t sent a messenger that’s fine, isn’t it?”

  Kadono answered noncommittally, “Is that right?” and went out. Daisuke, knowing that his father was more impetuous where he was concerned than with anything else in the world, had questioned Kadono because he was afraid the old man might have sent a messenger on his heels. When Kadono had retired to the houseboy’s room, he decided that he had to see Michiyo the next day.

  As he lay that night Daisuke pondered the way in which he should arrange his meeting with Michiyo. If he sent a letter by a ricksha driver to fetch her, she would probably come, but given the discussion he had just had with his sister-in-law, there was no guarantee that he would not be visited even the next day by his brother or sister-in-law. On the other hand, the thought of seeing Michiyo at Hiraoka’s house was painful to him. He decided that there was no choice but to meet at a place unrelated to them both.

  In the middle of the night it began raining hard. The muffled roar that enveloped the house made the mosquito netting look cold and out of place. Daisuke lay in the midst of the noise, waiting for the night to end.

  The rain did not clear until the next day. From the damp verandah, Daisuke stared up at the dark sky and once again changed the plans he had made the night before. It was distasteful for him to call Michiyo to a common teahouse to talk to her. For want of anything better, he had even thought of meeting her under the blue sky, but given the weather, there was little hope for that. From the start, he was disinclined to go to Hiraoka’s house himself. He concluded that the only choice left was to bring Michiyo to his own house. Kadono would be something of a nuisance, but he thought they could manage so that their conversation would not carry into the houseboy’s room.

  Until shortly before noon, he sat gazing absently at the rain. As soon as he had finished his lunch, he flung on a rubber raincoat and went out. He walked in the rain to the bottom of Kagurazaka and there called his home in Aoyama. He took the initiative to announce that he planned to come over on the following day. It was his sister-in-law who came to the telephone. She had not yet told Father anything, so wouldn’t Daisuke think it over carefully again? With his thanks Daisuke pushed the button and hung up. Next he rang the number of Hiraoka’s newspaper office to find out if Hiraoka had reported to work that day. He received the answer that he had indeed. Daisuke made his way once more up the hill in the rain. He entered a flowershop and bought a good many large, white lilies, and with these in hand, went home. He divided the still dripping flowers and placed them in two vases. Then he filled the same large bowl he had used before, cut the stems short on the remaining lilies, and tossed them in. When that was done he sat at his desk and wrote Michiyo a letter. His message was exceedingly brief. He only said that since there was something he urgently wished to talk to her about, would she please come.

  Daisuke clapped and called Kadono. Kadono appeared sniffing loudly. As he took the letter he said, “It smells awfully good in here, doesn’t it.”

  “You’re to take a ricksha and bring her back, all right?” Daisuke emphasized.

  Gazing at the white lilies, Daisuke abandoned himself to the powerful scent that enveloped the room. In this scent he distinctly recognized Michiyo’s past. And inseparable from that past, the shadow of his own past lay coiled like smoke. Presently, he said in his heart, “Today, for the first time, I am returning to the past, which belonged to nature.” When he was able to say this, he felt a peace pervade his entire being such as he had not known in recent years. Why could he not have returned sooner, he thought. Why had he tried to resist nature at all, he thought. In the rain, in the lilies, in the now revived past, he saw a life of pure, unadulterated peace. There was no selfishness in this life, either on its face or on its back. No gain or loss. No oppressive morality. Only the free-floating clouds and nature flowing like water. All was blissful. And all was beautiful.

  Presently, he awoke from his dream. Daisuke was suddenly seized by the eternal anguish spawned by that instant of bliss. His lips lost their color. He gazed at himself in silence. The blood flowing beneath his fingernails seemed to quiver violently. He stood and walked over to the lilies. He drew his face close so that his lips all but touched the petals, and he drew in the scent until he was dizzy. He wanted to move his lips from flower to flower and smother himself in the sweet scent until he fainted and fell to the floor in the middle of the room. Presently, he folded his arms and paced back and forth between the study and the living room. His heart throbbed without ceasing. From time to time he came to the corner of a chair or the front of his desk and stopped. And then began walking again. The agitation of his mind would not allow him to rest for long in one spot. At the same time, he had to stop at random points in order to deliberate.

  The time gradually wore on. Daisuke never lost sight of the hands of the clock. Occasionally he peered out at the rain from beneath the eaves. It was still falling straight from the sky, which had become somewhat darker than before. Most of the clouds had gathered in one place, swirled in an eddy, and looked suspiciously ready to descend upon the earth. At that moment they sucked through the gate a ricksha glistening with rain. When the sound of the wheels, overwhelming the rain, echoed in Daisuke’s ear, his pale cheeks betrayed a smile and he put his right hand to his heart.

  Michiyo followed Kadono from the entranceway along the verandah. In her navy-blue and white cotton print kimono with an arabesque obi, she looked so different from the last time that Daisuke at first glance felt something new. Her color, as usual, was not good, but when she came to the doorway and stood face to face with Daisuke, her eyes, brows, and mouth ceased all their activity and became rigid. As she stood on the threshold, she gave the impression that even her legs were rooted. From the moment she had seen the letter, Michiyo had of course anticipated something. In that anticipation were mingled fear and joy and anxiety. In the space of time between stepping from the ricksha and being shown to the living room, Michiyo’s face had overflowed with the colors of that anticipation. Then, her expressions had come to an abrupt halt. Daisuke’s manner was so intense that it had jolted her.

  Daisuke pointed to one of the chairs. Michiyo sat as she was told and Daisuke took the seat opposite hers. The two sat facing each other for the first time. But for some time neither uttered a word.

  “You wanted to see me about something?” Michiyo asked presently. Daisuke only said “Yes.” With that, the two fell back to listening to the sound of
the rain.

  “Is it something urgent?” Michiyo asked again.

  Daisuke said again, “Yes.” The two could not talk lightly as they usually did. Daisuke was ashamed of the self that required the help of alcohol in order to declare itself. He had already resolved that when he bared his heart to Michiyo, he would have to be his own natural self. But now, seated formally opposite her, he found himself longing for a drop of alcohol. He thought of going to the next room where he could stealthily pour himself a glass of his customary whiskey, but in the end, he could not bear to come to that decision. Unless he could stand in the open air and broad daylight and make his declaration in his normal condition, he would not be his own true self. To erect a wall of drunkenness and become bold from its heights was, he could not help feeling, cowardly, cruel, and insulting. He had come to be unable to adopt moral postures toward the practices of society; but in its place, he intended that there be not a shred of immorality in his intentions toward Michiyo. Indeed, he could not have stooped to base, vulgar acts, there was not the room for it, so deeply did he love her. Still, asked what he wanted, he could not come forth immediately. Asked a second time, he still hesitated. The third time, he had no choice but to say, “Well, I’ll get to it by and by,” and lit a cigarette. Michiyo’s face became increasingly pale each time the answer was postponed.

  The rain continued, long and thick, falling noisily. Because of the rain, because of the sound of the rain, the two were cut off from the world. They were even cut off from Kadono and the old woman, who lived in the same house. Alone, the two were sealed in the scent of the white lilies.

  “I went out and bought those flowers.” Daisuke turned and looked around. Michiyo’s face followed his and traveled once around the room. Then she took a deep breath with her nose.

  “I wanted to recall the days when you and your brother were in Shimizuchō, so I bought as many as I could,” said Daisuke.

  “What a lovely scent.” Michiyo had been gazing at the large petals, wide open as if in flight, but when she turned her eyes to Daisuke, her cheeks were faintly flushed. “When I think of those days,” she began, and stopped.

  “Do you remember?” “I remember.”

  “You wore bright collars and did your hair in the butterfly style.” “But that was just after I came to Tokyo. I quit doing it right away.”

  “Weren’t you wearing your hair like that when you brought the lilies the other day?”

  “Oh, you noticed? That was the only time.” “You wanted to wear your hair like that then?” “Yes, it was just a fancy.”

  “When I saw your hair, it reminded me of those days.” “Oh,” said Michiyo bashfully.

  When Michiyo was in Shimizuchō—it was after she and Daisuke had begun to talk easily—Daisuke had once complimented her on the hairstyle she had worn when she first came from the country. At the time, Michiyo had smiled, but even when she had heard those words, she would never do her hair in the butterfly style again. The two remembered the incident well. But they did not raise it to their lips.

  Michiyo’s brother had been generous and easygoing by nature, and the warmth of his companionship had endeared him to his friends. Daisuke had been especially close to him. The brother’s own easygoing nature had made him particularly fond of his quiet, submissive sister. When he brought her out from the country, it was not at all from a sense of duty to educate his younger sister, but out of sympathetic concern for her future and, moreover, the desire to keep her at his side for the present. Even before he sent for Michiyo, he had confided as much to Daisuke. At the time, Daisuke, like any youth, had responded to these plans with considerable curiosity.

  After Michiyo came, Daisuke and her brother had become even closer. As to which of them had advanced the pace of their friendship, Daisuke himself could not tell. Since the brother’s death, whenever Daisuke looked back upon that period, he could not but recognize a certain significance in their intimacy. The brother failed to shed any light upon it before his death. Daisuke himself never ventured to disclose anything. And thus their thoughts remained secret and were buried away. If the brother had privately revealed his intentions to Michiyo during his lifetime, Daisuke was ignorant of it. It was only that he derived a special feeling from Michiyo’s bearing and her speech.

  Even in those days, Daisuke presented himself to Michiyo’s brother as a man of taste. Michiyo’s brother did not have more than an average sensitivity. Whenever their conversation turned to deeper subjects, he frankly confessed that he did not understand and avoided needless argument. He once found the phrase “arbiter elegantiarum” somewhere and abused it by using it as a second name for Daisuke. Michiyo would sit in the next room, listening silently to her brother’s and Daisuke’s conversation. She thus learned the term “arbiter elegantiarum” and once startled her brother by asking its meaning.

  Her brother had as good as completely delegated the education of Michiyo’s taste to Daisuke. For the sake of his sister’s mind, which turned to Daisuke’s for enlightenment, he endeavored to make their opportunities for contact as frequent as possible. Daisuke did not refuse. Looking back, he even detected traces of his having assumed the responsibility voluntarily. Michiyo, of course, received his instruction gladly. In this way, the three spun together from month to month like three spokes in a wheel. Knowingly or unknowingly, the spokes drew closer and closer as the wheel turned. Just as they were about to merge into one ring, one of them disappeared, and the remaining two lost their equilibrium.

  Daisuke and Michiyo began to talk without reserve about their past of five years ago. As they talked, their present selves receded into the background and they slowly returned to their student days. The distance between them shrank to what it had once been.

  “If my brother hadn’t died then and were still alive and well, I wonder what I’d be doing now.” Michiyo seemed to be longing for the past.

  “Do you mean that you’d be a different person if your brother were alive?”

  “I wouldn’t be a different person. How about you?” “It’s the same with me.”

  Then Michiyo said, almost reprovingly, “Oh, that’s not true.” Looking intently at her, Daisuke answered, “I have never changed, then or now.” He did not remove his gaze from her for some time.

  Michiyo averted her eyes immediately and said, almost as if to herself, “But you were already changed then.”

  Her voice was much too low to pass for an exchange in an ordinary conversation. Daisuke, as if stepping on a fleeting shadow, caught the tail end of her words: “I haven’t changed at all. It just seems that way to you. It can’t be helped if it seems that way, but it’s a misunderstanding.”

  For his part, Daisuke spoke more earnestly and clearly than usual, as if in self-defense.

  “Misunderstanding or whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

  Without a word, Daisuke studied Michiyo’s manner. Her eyes had been cast down from the beginning. Daisuke could easily see the trembling of her long lashes. “You are necessary to my existence. Absolutely necessary. It was because I wanted to tell you this that I had you come all the way over.”

  Daisuke’s words were unadorned by the sweet turns of an ordinary lover’s speech. His tone, like his words, was plain and simple. It even verged on the severe. His using the pretext of urgent business to call Michiyo was all that smacked of childish poetry. But of course, Michiyo was a woman who could understand urgent business apart from its vulgar sense. Moreover, she had little interest in the adolescent phrases that appeared in popular novels. It was true that Daisuke’s words did not offer anything dazzling to Michiyo’s senses. It was also true that Michiyo did not thirst in that way. Daisuke’s words bypassed her senses and penetrated her heart. The tears flowed from her trembling lashes down her cheeks.

  “I want you to consent to this. Please.”

  Michiyo wept still more. She was utterly u
nable to respond to Daisuke. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and put it to her face. Only a part of her dark brows and forehead and hairline was visible to Daisuke. Daisuke dragged his chair closer to Michiyo. “You will consent, won’t you?” he said next to her ear.

  Michiyo still kept her face covered. Between the sobs, a voice sounded from the handkerchief, “It’s too much.”

  The words ran through Daisuke like an electric current. From the bottom of his heart he felt that his confession had come too late. If he was going to declare himself, he should have done it before Michiyo was married to Hiraoka. He could not bear to hear these few words of Michiyo’s that trickled alternately with her tears. “I should have confessed this to you three or four years ago,” he said glumly and pressed his lips together.

  Michiyo immediately removed the handkerchief from her face. She lifted her eyes from beneath their reddened lids and looked straight at Daisuke and began, “You didn’t have to do that, but why...” and hesitated, but continued decisively, “Why did you let me go?” No sooner had she said this than she put the handkerchief to her face again and wept.

  “It was wrong of me. Please forgive me.”

  Daisuke grasped Michiyo’s wrist and tried to take the handkerchief from her face. Michiyo did not even try to resist. The handkerchief fell to her lap. Still looking at her lap, she said faintly, “It’s cruel.” The flesh on her small mouth quivered.

  “If you say that I’m cruel, there’s nothing I can say to that. But I’ve been punished accordingly.”

  Michiyo lifted wondering eyes to his face. “How?”

  “It’s more than three years since you got married, but I’m still single,”

  “But that’s of your own choosing.”

  “No, it’s not of my choosing. Even if I think of marrying, I can’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve been pressed by my family to get married. But I’ve refused them all. I’ve just refused another match. As a result, I don’t know what will happen between my father and me. But I don’t care what happens, I’m going to refuse. As long as you’re taking revenge on me, I have to refuse.”