“There may not be enough.” I looked inside my bag and told Mr. Uehara how much money I had.
“With that much you have enough to drink at two or three more places. Don’t be silly.” He spoke with a scowl, then laughed.
“Would you like to go drinking somewhere else?”
He shook his head. “No, I’ve had enough. I’ll get a taxi for you. You had better go back.”
We climbed up the dark stairs from the basement. Mr. Uehara, who was one step ahead of me, turned around suddenly and gave me a quick kiss. I took his kiss with my lips tightly shut. I felt no special attraction for him, but all the same, from that moment on my “secret” came into being. Mr. Uehara clattered up the stairs, and I slowly followed, with a strangely transparent feeling. When I stepped outside, the wind from the river felt wonderful against my cheek.
He hailed a taxi for me, and we separated without saying anything.
I felt, as I was tossed in the decrepit old taxi, as if the world had suddenly opened wide as the sea.
One day, when I was feeling depressed after a quarrel with my husband, I suddenly took it in my head to say, “I have a lover.”
“I know. It’s Hosoda, isn’t it? Can’t you possibly give him up?”
I remained silent.
Whenever there was any unpleasantness between my husband and myself, this matter would always be brought up. “It’s all over now,” I thought. It was like buying the wrong material for a dress—once you have cut it you can’t sew the material together again, and you’d best throw the whole thing away and start afresh on another piece of material.
One night my husband asked me if the child I was carrying was Hosoda’s. I was so frightened that I shook all over. I realize now that my husband and I were both very young. I did not know what love was. I did not even understand simple affection. I was so wild about Mr. Hosoda’s pictures that I used to tell people I met that every day of one’s life would be filled with beauty if one were the wife of such a man, and that marriage was meaningless unless it were to a man with taste like his. And so everyone misunderstood, and I, who knew nothing of love or affection, would publicly say without any embarrassment that I loved Mr. Hosoda. I never attempted to take back my words, which made things terribly complicated. That was why even the little infant then sleeping within me became the object of my husband’s suspicions. Although neither of us openly spoke of divorce, the atmosphere grew increasingly chilly, and I returned to my mother’s house. The child was stillborn. I took ill and was confined to my bed. My relations with my husband had come to an end.
Naoji, perhaps feeling a kind of responsibility for my divorce, bellowed that he would die, and his face decomposed with weeping. I asked him how much he still owed the pharmacist. He mentioned a fantastically large figure. Later I learned that Naoji had lied, being unable to confess the actual amount, which was close to three times what he told me.
I said, “I’ve met your Mr. Uehara. He’s a delightful man. Don’t you think it would be amusing if the three of us went drinking together sometime? I was simply amazed how cheap sake is. As long as you stick to sake, I can always foot the bill. And don’t worry about paying the pharmacist. It will be arranged somehow.”
Naoji seemed enchanted that I had met and liked Mr. Uehara. That night, as soon as he had obtained money from me, he rushed off to Mr. Uehara’s place.
Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit. I praised Mr. Uehara and borrowed his novels from my brother. When I had read them, I told Naoji what a wonderful writer I thought Mr. Uehara. Naoji was astonished that I could understand him, but seemed very pleased all the same, and made me read other works by Mr. Uehara. Before I knew it I had begun to read his novels in earnest, and Naoji and I gossiped a great deal about him. Naoji staggered off almost every night to drinking parties at Mr. Uehara’s. Bit by bit, as Mr. Uehara had planned, Naoji was switching to alcohol. Without Naoji’s knowledge, I asked Mother what to do about the pharmacist’s bill. She covered her face with one hand and for a while sat motionless. Presently she looked up and said with a smile, “I can’t think of anything to do. I don’t know how many years it may take, but we’ll have to pay back a little each month.”
Six years have gone by since then.
Moonflowers. Yes, it must have been painful for Naoji, too. Even now his path is blocked, and he probably still has no idea what to do in what way. His drinking every day must be only in the hope of death.
I wonder how it would be if I let go and yielded myself to real depravity. Perhaps that might make things easier for Naoji.
“I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved,” Naoji wrote in his notebook. Those words made me feel depraved myself, and my uncle and even Mother somehow then seemed depraved. Perhaps by depravity he actually meant tenderness.
CHAPTER FOUR / LETTERS
I couldn’t make up my mind whether to write to him or what to do. Then, this morning the words of Jesus—“wise as serpents and harmless as doves”—flashe
d into my head and in a sudden burst of courage I decided to write him a letter.
I am Naoji’s sister. If you have forgotten me, please try to remember.
I must apologize that Naoji has again been such a nuisance and caused you such bother. (As a matter of fact, I cannot help feeling that Naoji’s affairs are for Naoji to decide, and it is nonsensical for me to offer an apology.) Today I am writing to ask you a favor not for Naoji but for myself. I heard from Naoji that your old place was destroyed during the war and that you have since moved to your present address. I had thought of paying a visit to your house (which seems to be very far out in the suburbs from Tokyo), but of late my mother’s health has been rather poor, and I can’t possibly leave her to go up to Tokyo. That is why I made up my mind to write you a letter.
There is something I would like to discuss with you.
The matter I have to discuss may appear extremely dubious from the point of view of the usual “Etiquette for Young Women,” or even a positive crime, but I—no, we—cannot go on living as we have. I must therefore ask you, the person whom my brother Naoji respects most in the whole world, to be so kind as to listen to my plain, unadorned feelings and to give me the benefit of your guidance.
My present life is unendurable. It is not a matter of like or dislike—we (my mother, Naoji, and myself)—cannot possibly go on living this way.
Yesterday I was in pain and feverish. I was hardly able to breathe and felt at a complete loss what to do with myself. A little after lunch the girl from the farmer’s house down the road came in the rain with a load of rice on her back. I handed over to her the clothes I had promised. The girl sat facing me in the dining-room, and as she drank some tea she said, in a really down-to-earth tone, “How much longer can you go on by selling your things?”
“Six months. Perhaps a year,” I answered. Then, half covering my face with my right hand, I murmured, “I’m sleepy. I’m so terribly sleepy.”