Dragonflies
Part I
Hiranuma took his glasses off and laid his head down on his desk. He felt unaccountably sleepy. Should he yield to temptation and have a nap? Why not? He was alone in his own office, in his own house, where downstairs Shizuko, his wife, was dreamily playing a waltz or something on the piano. Maybe it was the music that was making him drowsy.
He was fifty-four years old. Of his youthful dreams of being a great writer, little had materialized. Still, all things considered, he had not done too badly. He published this and that, here and there, was respected if not lionized, and if his name failed to live on after his death, as almost surely it would---so what?
Akutagawa, now. There was a name to reckon with. Dead at thirty-five, a suicide, and yet, eighty years later, who did not know him? Even those who had never read an Akutagawa story knew the name. He, Hiranuma, was at that moment engaged in writing an essay on him, an appreciation to mark the eightieth anniversary of his death. It was a problem, this essay he'd been commissioned to write. Rereading the master's stories, he was forced to ask himself: were they really so marvelous? Was there really so much more to them than jejune cleverness? When you waved away the smoke of verbal agility, was there any fire at the core?
What was that---the phone? He shook off his torpor and listened. Yes, unmistakably, the phone was ringing downstairs. Shizuko, deep in her music, would not hear it. He would have to dash downstairs if he was not to miss the call; not that there was anyone he especially wanted to speak to. Still...
He fairly threw himself on the phone. "Hello!"
"Hiranuma? Is that you?"
Sawamoto, sounding just the faintest bit tipsy.
"You working?"
"Not really."
"Come join me for a drink. I'm at the Cinnamon and Clover."
Why not? He was getting nowhere with the essay. "All right, give me an hour."
He hung up, went back upstairs and shut off the computer. What was the weather like? Summer was over but autumn had not yet begun. He gazed out the window at gray skies threatening rain. If only it would rain! It hadn't in weeks. Though there was no shortage of drinking water, Hiranuma felt the drought acutely; he felt parched, like the brownish grass and the withering flowers one saw in the neighborhood. He gazed beyond a line of ragged trees at the sea, gray as the sky and placid as a sheet of glass. It seemed to be waiting for something, expecting something... or was that just a literary figure of speech? "Time I gave up writing altogether," he murmured to himself. "Give up reading too. All I ever do is read and write, write and read. Hell with all that. Go out there and live, while there's still time. Do some real work for a change, physical work, handling real things instead of forever juggling words... Might start by washing this window, it's filthy."
He was wearing short pants and a white t-shirt. Should he change? What for? He poked his head into the music room. "Shizuko, I'm going out for a bit. Be home for dinner."
She gave a barely perceptible nod and went on with her playing.
***
It is good, thought Hiranuma, sitting with closed eyes on the Sapporo-bound train, to have a lifelong friend. Everyone should have one, and yet how many people do?
He and Sawamoto had known each other since nursery school. Through elementary school, high school and college they had been inseparable, closer than twin brothers. They had double-dated, Hiranuma squiring Shizuko, Sawamoto this girl or that---he was pleasing but not easily pleased, and never remained with the same girl for long. Three times married, twice divorced and once widowed, now living with a woman half his age, Sawamoto could definitely claim the more exciting life of the two. Which was fine with Hiranuma. Excitement was not something he craved. Excitement he could live without; the world would be the better for a little less of it.
At the station he'd mechanically purchased a newspaper, and now, jolted out of his reverie by a high school girl flinging herself with superfluous energy into the seat beside him, he scanned the headlines. Another cabinet minister resigning over campaign funding irregularities; another terrorist suicide bombing in the Middle East; another climatologist presenting fresh evidence that the earth was warming, the ozone layer thinning, polar ice melting and seas rising even faster than had been supposed. This girl beside him, now---did she read the papers? What effect would all this grim news have on someone her age? He felt an unaccountable impulse to engage her in conversation, to ask her---but it wouldn't do; she would immediately think he wanted to molest her, and besides, so absorbed was she in her cell phone---what sort of messages would that hyperactive thumb of hers be tapping out? and to whom?---that anyone in her vicinity, looking at her, might well come to doubt his own existence, and that of the world as well.
The Cinnamon and Clover was at Kotoni Station. Hiranuma folded up his newspaper and cleared his throat. Without for an instant breaking the rhythm of her tapping, the girl swung her legs over just enough to allow him to pass. As he did so he saw her face. She was rather homely, poor child---lusterless hair, thick glasses, flat nose. A strange sensation came over him. He did not at once know how to interpret it. It was a kind of pity, an aching, stabbing pity---but for whom? For this girl? Because she was homely? No, her homeliness was beside the point, it was something else. Was it really impossible to speak to her? Couldn't he just ask her her name? No, out of the question. If he had been a fly, or a speck of dust, or gazing at her from a prison in another dimension, she could not have been less aware of his presence than she was as he hovered over her, evidently with something on his mind. You'd think she'd have been curious at least, or alarmed... but no, her detachment was supreme; her tapping went on uninterrupted.
***
"Well," grunted Sawamoto. "Sit down. Ono-kun!"---that to a young waiter who, hearing his name called, came striding over. "My friend here has a bit of catching up to do. What'll you have?"
"Oh...scotch."
"Make it a double. And another shochu for me. Listen," he said as soon as the waiter had left, "what do you say to you and me taking a little trip?"
"A trip? Where?"
"I don't know. India?"
"India! What would we do in India?"
Sawamoto laughed. "Bathe in the Ganges, what else? What's the news from Zenibako?"
"The news from Zenibako... Do you know what I was doing when you called? Trying to write an essay on Akutagawa."
"Ah, Akutagawa." A vague, dreamy smile softened the contours of Sawamoto's face. Amazing, thought Hiranuma. It was not so much that Sawamoto looked young for his age---there was that too, of course---but that he, Hiranuma, could look at Sawamoto and see, if he chose, a six-year-old boy, or a sixteen-year-old boy, never mind that his hair, though thick, was iron-gray, and that the flesh on his ruddy face had begun noticeably to sag. "I wonder if it's the same with him when he looks at me," he thought---though he, bald except for a thin unsightly tuft just above the forehead, had no claim at all to a youthful appearance. The thought came to him, as it did almost every time he met Sawamoto and looked with envy at his trim, muscular body, that he really should try to get in shape a bit. He had let himself go to an unpardonable degree. And yet as boys he, Hiranuma, had been far the more athletic of the two, a consistent medal-winner on Track and Field Day and a splendid mid-fielder on the Zenibako Junior High School soccer team.
"Ah, Akutagawa," sighed Sawamoto. "Do you remember what he meant to us?"
"Remember! How can I forget? We discovered him at thirteen, and it was love at first sight. Hero-worship, anyway. Hero-worship at first sight. Reading him, we made up our minds to become writers."
"And you actually did become one."
"Don't make me laugh."
"What's the matter with you?"
They fell silent as the waiter returned with their drinks, and the silence lengthened as Hiranuma, eyes closed, savored the first sip of scotch.
"What do you mean, 'don't make me laugh,'?" asked Sawamoto after a time.
"Eh? What were we talking about? Hm. Excellent scotch. But actually you can't judge by a first sip. The first sip of almost any scotch is marvelous. The real test is the second sip, or the third."
"We were talking about Akutagawa."
"Yes. He died eighty years ago this year, and Chuo Koron asked me to write a commemorative essay. Which, as you can imagine, I was only too happy to do. But then I started rereading his stories and... have you read him lately?"
"Well, I teach Rashomon every year. Never seem to grow tired of it."
"What about the kids?"
"Oh, the kids! They, of course, have more important things on their minds. Literature to them is... how shall I say this, now?... not what it was to us."
"No."
"Well? You were rereading the stories... and?"
"And... I don't know. Maybe it's me. We admired them so much, and now..."
"They don't stand the test of time?"
"Rashomon, granted, is in a class by itself. But the others... beyond a certain facile cleverness, I seem to see very little in them. Maybe it's just... hm... maybe it's a phase I'm going through."
Sawamoto laughed heartily, and Hiranuma smiled. "It's just a phase you're going through" had been a favorite saying of Sawamoto's older sister, who had once looked down at her teenage brother and his friends from the great height of her new-fledged adulthood. "And how is Yoshie these days?" Hiranuma asked.
"Fine, fine. Her older boy is getting married next month."
***
"Let's go somewhere for dinner," said Sawamoto.
Hiranuma shook his head. "I can't. I promised Shizuko I'd be back. What time is it?" He looked at his watch. "Good heavens! After five already. I'd better---"
"Sit, sit! What's the matter with you? You've been married thirty years. High time you demanded a longer leash!"
"Leash?"
"Don't mind me, I'm drunk. At least stay for one more round. Ono-kun!"
"No, really, I---"
"Call her, tell her you'll be an hour late! If domestic happiness comes at the price of not being permitted to have dinner with an old friend once in a blue moon---"
"It's not that, it's---"
"It's what?"
"I don't know, she's---"
"Is anything wrong?"
Hiranuma sighed. "Not wrong exactly... Well.... The other day... it was strange..."
"Another round," said Sawamoto to the waiter, who bowed slightly and vanished. "Well?" he prompted Hiranuma. "What was strange?"
"You know that narrow little road that skirts the beach, out by the---"
"My dear child. My dear boy. I grew up in Zenibako, remember? There's no need for you to walk me through the place. I can close my eyes and see it as clearly as you see it when you're there. Yes, I know the narrow little road that skirts the beach. Know every bend, every rise and fall in it. Every pothole. What about it?"
"On both sides of the road there are hamanasu bushes."
"When the book royalties dry up you can become a tour guide. Don't you remember? Our mothers used to go out there together to pick hamanasu. They boiled it down to make hamanasu jam, which I hated because it tasted just like boiled tomatoes."
"Well, Shizuko went out there on her bike the other day... What's today?"
"Thursday."
"Monday, then. She rode out there to pick hamanasu."
"Bit early, no? Hamanasu doesn't ripen till October."
"I don't know, it's been a crazy season. Climate change, global warming, whatnot. Flowers have been blooming out of season, the cicadas began chirping in July... Anyway---oh, thank you," he said to the waiter as he laid before him another glass of scotch. "Hm... I suppose I'd better call her."
"Well, call her then."
"Is there a payphone?"
"Why don't you join the twenty-first century already and get yourself a cell phone?"
"No thanks. I'm distracted enough as it is."
"Well, here, use mine." Sawamoto drew it from a knapsack lying on the chair beside him and handed it over across the table.
"How do I...?"
"Just press this button and input the number. Seriously, Hiranuma. You keep resisting the new technology the way you do, and in a few years you're going to be utterly helpless."
Sawamoto sipped his shochu, closed his eyes and smiled. "Maybe I'll go to Greece instead of India," he thought. "Or Jerusalem. I've always wanted to go to Jerusalem, walk the streets trodden by the prophets of old..."
"She's not answering." Hiranuma handed the phone back to him. "She's probably still playing the piano. You can't hear the phone in there."
"Listen. Forget India. Let's go to Jerusalem."
"What?"
"Did I mention that I've been reading the Bible lately?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Yes, I.... but we'll talk about that later. I'm still waiting to hear about the strange thing that happened to Shizuko-san when she went to the narrow little road by the beach to pick hamanasu."
"Well... She comes back after an hour or so. I'm upstairs in my room wondering why Akutagawa seems so... so lifeless. Grateful for the distraction, I go downstairs to the kitchen and say how about some tea?---we usually have tea at around four-thirty... She mumbles no thanks and walks past me out of the room. A moment later I hear the door of her music room close, and she starts playing."
"How very odd!" Sawamoto exclaimed ironically, and burst out laughing. "Don't mind me, I'm drunk. Well, go on, go on!"
"Over dinner the story came out. In that narrow road she'd run into, of all people... her piano teacher."
"Her piano teacher."
"A guy in his mid-sixties. Shizuko's been his student for twenty years. I remember she once said, 'He's like a father to me.'"
"Well?"
"He was with a young girl. They were holding hands."
"Very suggestive!"
"At the sight of Shizuko... well, you can imagine his astonishment. She was about the last person he would have expected, or wanted, to meet."
"Her surprise was no less, I daresay."
"It was very... what's the word?... disconcerting. Very awkward. I can understand that, but..."
"But what?"
"She actually... I mean, you know Shizuko. Is she the sort to get all unhinged over... over something like that?"
"I wouldn't have thought so. Is she unhinged?"
"Yes! It's as if her whole world has collapsed around her! Honestly, Sawamoto, I've never, ever seen her in the state she's in!"
"Hm! But are you sure this thing with the piano teacher is the cause of it?"
"Well, she was perfectly fine up until the time she left the house on Monday afternoon, and she came back..."
"Unhinged."
"Unhinged, yes. When she speaks at all, it's about that, nothing but that---the piano teacher who was once like a father to her, How he 'lowered himself,' 'degraded himself'---those are her words. How can she ever look him in the face again? How can she ever study under him again? 'Shi-chan,' I said, 'really, you're making a mountain out of a molehill, this is his private life, it has nothing to do with you, and besides, you may be misinterpreting what you saw...' 'If you'd seen the look on his face when he saw me,' she shot back---honestly, you'd think I was the guilty party, the way her eyes flashed!---'if you'd seen the look on his face, you wouldn't say I was misinterpreting what I saw! Believe me, if anything in this world is certain---'"
"Nothing is," murmured Sawamoto.
"My words exactly---and precisely the last thing I should have said! She flung past me out of the room, and the next thing I hear is the slamming of the music room door."
"Whew!"
"That was Monday night. Since then she's come round a bit, but... well, however trivial it may seem to you or me, to her, apparently, it was a great shock."
"Uncanny. Unless she was having an affair with him?"
Hiranuma gaped at his friend in astonishment. "Sawamoto! Did you just say what I think you said?"
"Sorry, sorry! It just slipped out!" Sawamoto was genuinely distressed. "Hiranuma, listen to me! We've known each other all our lives! You were my best friend when we were kids You're my best friend now. Shizuko-san too I've known since we were teenagers. You know I wouldn't say anything... or think anything... Damn! It's the drink. It's gone to my head! There's only one cure for that, and that's... another drink! Ono-kun!"
"No, really, I'm going."
"You're not angry?"
"No." He rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet and began fumbling in his pocket, apparently struggling to extract his wallet from a deep and tangled interior.
"My treat," said Sawamoto. "It's the least I can do, to make amends... You accept my apology?"
"Of course."
"Well, good luck at home. We'll speak again soon. Ono-kun, bring me a cup of hot strong coffee, would you? There's a good fellow!"
***
What time was it? He had expected the train to be full, but here was an empty seat; he fairly collapsed into it and closed his eyes. His head ached and he felt terribly disoriented. How much had he drunk? Not much, he would have thought, and yet see the effect it was having on him! "And I was hoping to get some work done tonight!"
Well, tomorrow was another day. The question was, how to recapture something of the feeling Akutagawa's writing had once awoken in him? He read and read, he strained his imagination; it was no use. The horse was dead; you flogged it in vain. Was it the horse that was dead, or he, the flogger? "Yes, maybe I'm the dead one, and Akutagawa is as alive as ever."
He must, though unaware of having done so, have fallen asleep, because all of a sudden he found himself looking out the window into the gathering darkness, wondering where on earth he was. As if in answer to his unspoken question came an unctuous recorded announcement through overhead speakers, a woman sounding like a mother welcoming her kindergarten children home: "Next stop, Zenibako, Zenibako. The doors on the left side will open."
"What! Zenibako already!" Where was everyone? The train was practically empty. He rose unsteadily to his feet, lurched heavily forward, and grabbed a strap just in time to keep from falling. The train slowed and stopped; the doors opened. Mastering his dizziness with an effort, Hiranuma strode purposefully out of the train and up the stairs into the station. He slipped his ticket into the slot and the gates opened to admit him. He scanned the milling crowd. Would Shizuko have come to meet him? He smiled at this pleasant fantasy. Yes, it really did seem for a moment as if he had been away for a long time, months, years, and Shizuko would detach herself from the crowd and fling herself on his neck, delighted to have him back again.
Outside he was surprised at how chilly it had become---and he in short pants! What a spectacle he must present! Here was a fleet of waiting taxis---should he take one? It was tempting, but no, the night air and a brisk walk would do him good. Sure enough, no sooner had he begun to walk than he felt better. He breathed deeply. On his left was the sea, its black rippling surface glittering here and there with the reflected glow of the street lights. The waves rolled gently, producing a sound like that of leaves rustling in the breeze. How odd. He had lived here all his life; the sound of the waves was as familiar as the sound of his own breath; and yet that comparison had never occurred to him before. Which signified... what, exactly? He chuckled out loud. Yes, life was full of little surprises.
He crossed the tracks and turned right into a narrow path that led into a grove of dwarf bamboo. Only one who knew the path as well as he did could have walked it in the dark. "I wonder how many other men my age live in the house they grew up in," he mused. Yes, it was strange, though in another sense perfectly natural and ordinary. His parents had been getting on; they found the house too much to look after and decided to sell it and move into a smaller apartment. They were delighted when Hiranuma himself had come forward as the buyer. The royalties from his first book had gone into the down payment. In a sense he was still living off that first book of his. His reputation, such as it was, rested on it. For a time it had been a bestseller and was selling even now, a quarter of a century later. "Yes," he thought, chuckling again, "I peaked before I was thirty, and it's been downhill ever since!"
He came out of the path into an unpaved lane, and turned right into another. His house was the very last one, on a bluff overlooking the sea. What was this, though---was it dark? Yes, unmistakably it was; there was not a single light on. Could Shizuko have gone to bed already?
***
He slipped his key into the lock and opened the door. "Shizuko?" What time was it? He had the distinct impression of having left the bar before six, but an after-midnight feeling pervaded the house---and not only the house; hadn't the train been strangely empty? Well, there was no accounting for the things that can happen when you're drinking---still, he hadn't drunk that much... At least he didn't think he had. In the hallway he stumbled against something and lurched forward, but managed to keep from falling, and in the kitchen he switched on the light. The clock on the wall above the sink settled the question of time: it was ten minutes past eight, which is about what he would have figured. So there was no time warp, no hours lost to a drunken stupor; true, he was just the slightest bit giddy, and would hesitate to trust himself behind the wheel of a car, but otherwise he was sober enough; he could rely on his sensory apparatus to more or less tell him the truth about the world; or if not that at least about his immediate surroundings.
"Shizuko!" he called out, slightly louder this time. He saw no sign of any dinner preparations under way. Could she be still in the music room? Sitting on her piano stool, staring vacantly into the darkness and brooding about the piano teacher and his young paramour, or whatever she was? Really, this was too much. He, Hiranuma, was by no means a forceful personality; there was nothing of the authoritarian in him; still, wasn't it time to tell Shizuko in no uncertain terms that enough was enough, that whatever her own views on the question of marital fidelity, this was not a matter that concerned her and she was to put it out of her mind once and for all? "If you really feel so strongly about it, get yourself another piano teacher, but this endless brooding---it simply won't do!"
Yes, that's what he would tell her. He should have taken a firm line sooner. Sometimes a woman needs that---not only a woman; all of us. We come to a crisis in our life, real or imagined, and risk magnifying it out of all proportion without someone---husband, wife, father, mother, teacher---to give us a little shake and say, "Enough! Time to move on, get on with your life!"
He proceeded along the dark corridor to the music room, his certainty that she was there diminishing with every step he took. At the door he paused. "She won't be there, and then what'll I do?" A kind of despair came over him. It froze him; he had never felt anything quite like it before. "What is this? What's going on?" He flung open the door. The curtains had not been drawn; the room was bathed in pale moonlight. The piano, a baby grand, was open, and sheet music rested on the stand.
"Should I call the police?" he thought, closing the door behind him. A scene unfolded in his mind: siren blaring, a police car screeches to a halt in front of the house; the officer gets out of the car and he, Hiranuma, struggling to make himself heard above the wail of the siren, explains the situation. "Have you checked the bedroom?" asks the officer, at which Hiranuma, blushing and stammering, admits that the idea simply hadn't entered his head.
***
Yes, there she was, curled up in her futon, under the goose down quilt he had bought her for her birthday three years ago. Born in the south of Japan, she had come to Hokkaido at fourteen, her father having been transferred by his company to its Sapporo office. You'd think she would long ago have got used to the cold, but she never had; even now the Hokkaido winter was too much for her.
"Shizuko?"
She did not stir.
"Well, let her sleep," he thought. He turned to go, but paused in the doorway. Retracing his steps, he approached the foot of the futon. Looking down at her, he was struck by a youthful, almost childlike quality in her face. She was probably dreaming about her childhood; she often did. "Don't you?" she'd asked him once, and was surprised when he replied, "No, never." "And yet," she said, smiling, "you live in the house you grew up in!"
"I'll have a bath, fix myself a bite of dinner, then go upstairs and try to get some work done." But the segment of his brain that made decisions and the segment that generated physical movement seemed to have parted company. He continued to stand there, gazing at his wife's face. What was it about that face that set her apart from all other women in the world? They had met in (of all places!) a university physics class. He was majoring in literature, she in music. In those days arts students needed at least one science credit in order to graduate. Charming coincidences lubricated their early friendship: each had originally selected biology and been turned away because the course was full; both had blundered into physics as a last resort; they soon fell hopelessly behind, and took comfort in each other, shyly and hesitantly at first, gradually more openly. Shizuko was not only Hiranuma's first love; she was his first female friend, the first girl with whom he'd had even a casual relationship---the first girl, in a word, whose mere presence had not terrified him into a state of shrinking imbecility.
He loved her. He who had never loved before fell in love with her face before he'd ever heard her voice; then he fell in love with her voice, with the words her voice uttered, with the slightly crooked teeth she exposed when she smiled, with the tiny cluster of freckles on her forehead that reminded him of stars---in short, with every feature and quality she possessed, not because those features and qualities were demonstrably good in themselves, but because they were hers. That is how a shy teenage boy loves, and there is nothing surprising about it; what is perhaps surprising is that he loved her the same way now, at fifty-four.
***
Part II
"God is not dead!" Sawamoto declaimed.
"No, of course not," said young Ono, the waiter, gravely. "Let me call you a taxi."
"He's not dead. He simply said, 'Ok, children, you're grown up now, you're on your own'---"
"Sir, really, it's almost closing time. Let me call you a taxi."
"---and He left! 'I've fulfilled my responsibilities,' He said---'created the world, created mankind, nurtured him when he was helpless...' But infancy doesn't last forever! It's too bad, it would be better if it did, far better if it did---don't you think so, Ono? If you had a choice now---wouldn't you choose to be an infant forever? I know I would. Hm. A taxi, you say. No, I don't think so. I think I'll take a walk. How much do I owe?"
"Twenty-two thousand three hundred yen."
"No! Really? Did I drink as much as that?"
"You and your friend."
"Ah, my friend! Of course. I'd forgotten. My friend. I'll tell you a little secret, Ono, which you're too young to have discovered on your own. We have no friends. When all is said and done, we are alone. No God, no friends... Tell me something. Supposing I were to say to you, 'I left my wallet at home, I can't pay.' Would you let me go, trusting me to come back tomorrow? Or would you call the police?"
"I'd have to ask the manager."
"Let me tell you a little story. Bear with me for just one more minute. When I was a student I had a part-time job at a little bar very much like this one. One day an elderly gentleman very much like I am now---urbane, distinguished, erudite, but with an unfortunate tendency to drink too much and, when he did, to talk too much---one day this elderly gentleman said to me, 'I left my wallet at home. I can't pay.' And without the slightest hesitation, without asking the manager, I said to him, 'That's all right, sir, you'll pay next time.' I believe his bill too came to twenty-two thousand... what was it?"
"Twenty-two thousand three hundred."
"Quite so. Twenty-two thousand three hundred. Well, you'll think about what I've told you, Ono, won't you? Twenty...two...thousand... here's twenty-five. Keep the change. A little tip. Something to remember me by."
"Won't you be coming again, sir?"
"Probably not for some time. I've been thinking, you see, of taking a little trip. Well, goodbye. All the best."
He was free at last. As he opened the door and breathed in the night air, it really did seem to him as though young Ono had been holding him against his will in that oppressive air infused with alcohol fumes and cigarette smoke---that he had endured it all that time only for Ono's sake. "What's this?" he thought; "rain?" Yes, a faint drizzle was falling; you couldn't feel individual drops, but before you knew it your face was wet, your clothes damp and clinging, your glasses misted over until the lights of this dull, featureless little suburb looked like a scene from a Monet painting. "Maybe I'll go to Paris..."
He walked with a long purposeful stride, but without any idea of where he was going. He came to a red light and stopped; then, laughing at himself, he crossed in defiance of the light. "Pavlov's dogs, that's what we are. Pavlov's dogs. Not a car in sight, but the light is red, and the good citizen stops! Since when have I become such a good citizen? I let down my guard for an instant, and behold---Sawamoto Toshiaki, good citizen!
"What a fool I am." He had called Hiranuma intending to confer with him about a certain matter, and instead their talk had meandered into this channel and that, and suddenly Hiranuma was on his way, the matter on Sawamoto's mind unaddressed, not so much as mentioned. "What if I call him again, now?" What time was it? He glanced at his watch---"What! After eleven already!" He should be getting home; Kaori would be waiting up for him. "Poor Kaori," he thought. Such beauty as she possessed he had never, ever encountered in a woman---never; not in person, not in a movie, not in the paintings of even the greatest masters. Once upon a time she'd been his student. True, the admission standards at the women's college he taught at were less than rigorous; still, it was something of a mystery to him how she had managed to meet them. She was not retarded, at least not in the clinical sense, but painfully, painfully slow all the same, and the blank incomprehension with which she faced every situation that confronted her would have made life on her own impossible---at least so Sawamoto would have thought. Her helplessness had melted his heart. Was it part of her beauty? Perhaps it was, Sawamoto thought now for the first time; perhaps it was. He newly divorced and she newly graduated, they had drifted together, becoming first lovers, then roommates---or whatever their living arrangement could be called. Two years had passed since then, and still that imbecile beauty of hers fascinated him. Hiranuma was a writer; maybe he could make something of it---if he ever saw her, that is. Sawamoto had never introduced them, had only spoken of her in the vaguest terms, and Hiranuma for his part had never shown any curiosity. Hiranuma and that Shizuko of his. Homely though she was, she was the only woman he saw, the only woman he had ever seen. When it came to matters sexual, Hiranuma and Sawamoto were polar opposites; neither understood the other, and each regarded the other with a kind of pitying contempt.
"Yes, I'd better be heading home," he thought again. "Well, all right then, home. Where's the station? No, really..." He slipped his knapsack off his back and rummaged about in it in the dark, finding at last what he was looking for---his cell phone. "Why doesn't Hiranuma have a cell phone like everyone else?" Calling him on his home phone at this hour would be awkward. "Am I drunk enough to shrug that off? If I can pose the question, probably not. So the solution is to get a little drunker. But where? All the bars around here are closed. I'd have to go to Susukino or something. Excuse me"---this to a passerby under an umbrella. "Which way's the station?"
"Straight ahead two blocks, then turn right."
"Ah."
Whether he went to Susukino or went home, the station was his first stop. Come to think of it, hadn't Kaori warned him as he left the house that morning to take his umbrella? The sun had been shining then, and the weather forecast said nothing about rain, but shouldn't he know by now that Kaori, stupid though she was when it came to rational thinking, possessed certain instincts that never played her false? It was not that she had a peculiar gift for weather forecasting---she had a peculiar gift for forecasting, period. She was a seer, a prophetess, a Cassandra---and he, true to form, had not believed her, with the result that now he was getting soaked to the skin. He never learned. Maybe he was the stupid one. It's people who think they're intelligent, who take their intelligence for granted, who are most easily led astray. Yes, once upon a time he and Hiranuma had been the two smartest kids in Zenibako, maybe in all Hokkaido. Hiranuma at least had a handful of books to show for it---not great books, rather far from it, but books all the same. As for himself, what was he? A teacher of miscellaneous literature (the polite term was "comparative" literature) in an insignificant college, repository for kids who couldn't get into better places. Soon he wouldn't even be that.
"Home," he decided as he approached the station.
**
"Would you like some hot tea?" Kaori asked as she helped him off with his knapsack.
"Yes," said Sawamoto, "because it's you who offer it, and only for that reason. Why aren't you in bed?"
"I'm not sleepy."
"What were you doing?"
"Reading."
"Reading what?"
"Moby-Dick."
It was the only book she ever read. "You must know it by heart by now. Go ahead. Recite it. Let's see how far you get."
"Have a bath first. I'll get your tea ready."
"Recite Moby-Dick."
"'Call me Ishmael. Some years ago---never mind how long precisely---having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore'..."
"You know, maybe that's what I'll do! Take a cue from old Ishmael and 'see the watery part of the world'. What do you think, Kaori---shall we go a-whaling?"
"Oh, let's!"
"We'll sleep on it, and see how we feel in the morning. How many women, by the way, were there on the Pequod? Do you happen to remember?"
"None."
"It's no place for you, Kaori. Well, I'll have a bath."
"Go. The water is hot. You're wet. I told you to take your umbrella, didn't I?"
"You did. Next time you tell me to do something, I swear I'll listen."
"No you won't. I'm Cassandra, under Apollo's curse. I have the gift of prophecy, but no one believes me."
"I'll believe you."
"Who sees the future better, you or me?"
"You."
"Well, what I see is that you won't believe me. Go."
***
"There have been cultures in this world where they sacrificed women like her," he mused to himself as the hot water lapped his chin. He closed his eyes. "How strange," he thought. "When I was a kid I used to wonder what sin I'd committed that merited the punishment of being Sawamoto Toshiaki. It could only have been something dire, something horrible, something beyond a boy's imagination. I wanted to grow up fast. Maybe as a grownup I'd know what I had done. Alas, no. I grew up in vain. At college I studied foreign cultures, foreign languages---why? To escape my own background; to escape being me. It's funny---not even to Hiranuma did I ever breathe a word of this, and yet he must have guessed---intuited, I suppose the word would be---since the main character in his second novel is clearly based on me, and he suffers from that very complaint---illness, I really should call it. Maybe Hiranuma himself suffered from it. Maybe everyone does. A pity, a genuine pity, that Hiranuma isn't a better writer. Not that he doesn't have talent of a kind; but to tackle a theme like that you need genius. Never mind. He's done all right for himself. He has a past, a present even a future---while all I have is this hot water lapping against my chin---and enough self-pity to choke a horse." He smiled. "Ah, yes! Well, enough. Kaori is waiting with tea."
***
"Why are you wasting your youth with me?" Sawamoto said. "Get yourself a boyfriend your own age; marry; have children. Live! Ah, Kaori, of the many, many sins for which I will have to render account to my Maker, the worst, positively the worst, will be robbing you of your youth."
"Are you tired of me?"
"The day I'm tired of you will be the day I'm tired of life, and there'll be only one thing left to do, and that's put a bullet through my brain. You misunderstand me. Don't you want a home, a child?"
"I have a home---right here. And I have a child---you." She giggled, raising a hand to her mouth in girlish embarrassment. "You're my child, and I'm your mother."
"There's some truth in that," Sawamoto agreed.
"More tea?"
"No, I don't think so. Listen. I'm going to tell you a secret. You're not to tell anybody. Okay? Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes. Tell me."
"All right then. The people at Wakaba Women's College---the people in the office, the people who make the decisions---"
"Mr. Ozawa?"
"Yes, him and the others on the steering committee. They want me to take early retirement. They want to phase me out. Me and my subject. They have to cut costs, you see, and comparative lit doesn't pay."
"Doesn't pay! You taught me everything I know!"
Smiling, Sawamoto reached out and laid his hand on hers. He stroked her long, delicate fingers "That's not enough, apparently. It's a fact, you know, that these days literature is not high on people's lists of subjects you need to master in order to get ahead in the world. Commerce, science, engineering---that's where the action is. Literature is at best an adornment, not a serious pursuit. One lit prof is enough, they've decided, and Professor Kaga, being younger, better-looking and also a bit of a celebrity, having appeared on TV, is their preference. The retirement package they've offered me is very generous. It would settle us pretty comfortably for years to come."
"What did you tell them?"
"I haven't given them an answer yet. Ozawa has given me a week to think it over. This evening I met up with my old friend Hiranuma---you've heard me speak of him---intending to ask his advice, but somehow the subject never came up."
"Don't take it."
"No?"
"Spit in their faces and walk out. Don't take it."
Sawamoto laughed out loud. "My dear, that's very nice, very theatrical, it'll make for a lovely effect, but what will we live on?"
"You can get another job, at another school."
"At my age? Kaori, I'm fifty-four. Schools don't hire fifty-four-year-old rejects from other schools."
"Well, persuade them to change their minds. You can do it. You can persuade anyone to do anything."
***
Part III
Hiranuma woke with a start, bathed in sweat. At first he didn't know where he was, or who he was... Slowly the sound of Shizuko's rhythmic breathing steadied him. He closed his eyes and lay back on the pillow. "What a frightful dream!" What time was it? It was pitch dark. In the dream he'd had an invisible, soundless gun. His rampage had begun with Shizuko. Then he went out and killed old Iihara-san as he pruned the azalea shrubs in his garden. His next victim was an old woman walking her dog. The dog was a big coal-black animal. It sprang for Hiranuma's throat but, barely off the ground, dropped like a stone. Hiranuma's aim was unerring. He strolled through the unpaved lanes and paved streets of Zenibako, killing everyone he met---people he knew, people he didn't know. Sirens wailed in vain. He killed and killed, his pleasure mounting to an almost unbearable pitch. Yes, this was power, this was freedom! To kill and kill and kill, pointlessly, purposelessly, and yet not to be so much as suspected!
"My God!" he thought. "How could I dream something so... so dreadful? What does it mean?" He peered through the darkness at Shizuko lying beside him. Such peaceful sleep! Did nothing, nothing of his agitation communicate itself to her?
Careful not to wake her, he eased himself slowly out of his futon. "I'd better have a bath, I'm all sweaty. No, I'll have a cup of hot milk."
He switched on the light in the kitchen and saw it was ten past four. "Almost morning." And yet still dark. Yes, the nights were getting longer. Soon autumn would begin in earnest. He took a carton of milk carton from the fridge, measured out a cupful, poured it into a pot and put it on the stove. He sank into a chair and closed his eyes. "My God."
"Good morning."
Hiranuma gasped. Shizuko stood smiling in the doorway, rubbing her eyes. "I took a pill and slept like a corpse. What time did you get home? What are you making? Hot milk? What time is it?"
"Would you like some?"
"It's the middle of the night!"
"Well, go back to sleep."
"No, I've slept enough. More than enough. Where were you last night? I have a vague recollection of you going out."
"I had a drink with Sawamoto. I came home for supper, as I said I would, but you were already asleep."
"I'm sorry. I haven't been--- your milk's boiling!"
Hiranuma sprang to his feet, managing to turn off the fire just in time to prevent the milk from boiling over. He poured the frothy liquid into his cup and sat down again. "Haven't been what?"
"Haven't been... myself. Youth doesn't last forever, you know."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I believe the technical term is menopause."
"No! Really?"
"Will you still love me when I'm an old lady?"
"I'll love you as long as you're you."
"Yes, but when I'm an old lady will I be me?"
"I had a dreadful dream last night." He told her, omitting the detail that she had been his first victim. She sensed the gap in the narrative.
"What about me?" she asked. "Did I survive the rampage?"
"No, dear. You didn't."
"Don't look so... There is a difference, you know, between killing someone and dreaming you killed someone. Besides---is there a better way to go?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's the perfect death. The very opposite of the slow deterioration and lingering agony that's more likely in store for us."
"Shizuko! What are you saying---that you want to die?"
"Let's reason this out. Supposing you had a choice. Supposing a god appears to you. 'Hiranuma-san,' he says, 'you are a good man---not a perfect man, not the best of men, but a good man all the same, and your reward is this choice which I am now offering you: you can die right now, right this minute, peacefully, painlessly, or you can go on living to a ripe old age and die of cancer, your brain eaten away by Alzheimer's...' What would you choose?"
"I... I don't know."
"Don't you ever think about it?"
"Yes, but..."
"For me, the choice would be easy. 'Take me now,' I'd say."
***
After a bath, Hiranuma got dressed and climbed the stairs to his office. The day had got off to an unusually early start; even now it was only twenty minutes to eight. The sky was a cloudless pale blue. It was a September sky but an August sun, glaring, intense, malevolent, and the thermometer on the wall next to a photograph he wouldn't part with for all the money in the world showed twenty-six degrees. He slid open the window. Shizuko's garden, in which she grew all manner of vegetables, was blocked from view by the red vinyl roof, stained here and there with bird droppings, of the house's first floor. Dragonflies flitted through the air. Beyond the roof, past a row of scraggly trees whose leaves here and there already showed traces of yellow, was the sea, Ishikari Bay. "How strange," he thought; "I live right on the sea and yet I neither fish nor swim." He had done both as a boy, and no doubt could now if he wanted to... "But let's see if we can get some work done."
He sat down at his desk and switched on his laptop. Sawamoto made fun of him for "not joining the 21st century." True, he frowned on cell phones, but he had taken to computers readily enough, and did all his work on one. "Supposing there had been computers in Akutagawa's day," he thought lazily. "Would his stories have turned out differently?"
He called up the essay he'd been writing, and frowned. "Is this all I've done?" He read it over, his frown deepening with every word. "Have I sunk to this?" Even as a rough draft it seemed to reflect badly on him. "There's only one thing to do---delete and start again. Or... better still, call Chuo Koron and say he was sorry, he just didn't have the essay in him, and rather than submit something unworthy either of the master or of himself, he preferred to bow out while there was still time. "But that's the trouble---there isn't still time, they're expecting it by early next week. I've committed myself, I must soldier on, praying to the gods for some spark of inspiration, or insight, or... something.. If only it wasn't so hot! It's September, September!"
He stood up, his disgust at the weather merging with his disgust at himself. "If that god of Shizuko's came to me now, right this minute, with his proposition, I think... I think I'd know what to say." Absent-mindedly he moved over to the window. The lone photograph thumbtacked just next to it, badly faded, showed a child of three in a white dress and a funny little white sun bonnet. It was Shizuko. She had given it to him when they were teenagers. Quite possibly she had forgotten its existence; she never came up to the second floor, never entered his office---not that he had forbidden her to, he certainly had nothing to hide. What if she did come up and saw it there---would she be surprised?
Returning to his desk, he picked up a book lying on it, one of several, a collection of Akutagawa stories. Idly he flipped through the pages; then, when nothing in particular caught his eye, he turned with a sort of grim purposefulness to the table of contents. He would pick a story and force himself to read it through, if force was the only thing that worked. Surely, if he chose his story wisely, something of his former admiration for the author would come to life again; even if it meant having to write about his past feelings as though they were present, he should be able to grind out something;; he was an experienced writer, after all, and they weren't asking him for a book, just two thousand words at most; fifteen hundred would do... Really, what was the matter with him? Shizuko had mentioned menopause; maybe something of the sort was affecting him too.
Here was one that looked promising: Autumn Mountain. Yes, yes... a memory, vague at first, slowly took shape, of him and Sawamoto---how old would they have been? thirteen? fourteen?---each perched on a separate rock at the beach watching the waves roll in and he, Hiranuma, urging Sawamoto to read that particular story; he himself had just read it the night before and... He blushed as an expression he'd used came back to him: "All of life is contained in those four pages!" The ironic smile that was so characteristic of Sawamoto had come to him somewhat later in life. At that time, at fourteen, he had not had it; no, then he had unabashedly shared his friend's boyish enthusiasm. The two boys immediately ran back to Hiranuma's house. Hiranuma handed him the book and waited patiently, scarcely daring to breathe lest he distract Sawamoto's concentration while Sawamoto, sitting cross-legged on the floor, read, to all appearances perfectly oblivious to everything going on in the world outside the story.
"'And speaking of Ta Ch'ih, have you ever seen his Autumn Mountain painting?'
"'No, I haven't seen it. And you?'
"'Well, strange to say, I'm not really sure whether or not I have seen it...'"
That is the perplexing dialogue with which the story begins. Two elderly connoisseurs of painting are sipping tea and discussing the great thirteenth-century master Ta Ch'ih. Having piqued his host's curiosity, the guest then proceeds to tell his story. ("Yes, it's coming back to me," murmured Hiranuma to himself.) The story's structure is vintage Akutagawa: something heard by one character is transmitted to another and then to a third, so that by the time it gets to the reader it has been mutilated by distortion, willful exaggeration and lapses of memory. Many years ago a certain art critic heard a rumor of a lost Ta Ch'ih masterpiece owned by a collector in a distant province. He makes the journey, introduces himself to the collector, and is shown the painting. It is beautiful beyond his wildest dreams. How does one describe beauty? Beauty is indescribable, but few writers, Hiranuma had to admit, could better evoke it than Akutagawa. "The mountain and its hills were fresh green, as if newly washed by rain..."But it was not so much the description of the painting as Akutagawa's account of its effect on the viewer that transformed what otherwise would have been, to Hiranuma, mere scenery into something majestic, something to make the heart throb. Yes, his heart was throbbing now.
The visiting critic's attempts to persuade the owner to sell him the painting are in vain. He returns home, defeated and yet uplifted. He doesn't own the painting, true, and may never set eyes on it again, but he has seen it, hasn't he? And having seen it, he will surely not forget it. It will infuse his life, beautify his life. Decades pass. The connoisseur who is narrating the story now comes to the point, which is his own attempt, having heard of the older critic's discovery of the painting, to see Autumn Mountain for himself. He makes his own journey to the distant province. The original owner is long dead and his collection dispersed, but inquiries lead him to a certain nobleman said to have inherited Autumn Mountain. The nobleman ushers his visitor inside; yes, certainly, it will be his delight and his pleasure to show the painting to his honored guest; he orders it brought out and hung on the wall; there it is... yes, yes, it is beautiful, marvelous, perfect---"And yet... and yet I felt at once that this was not the same painting that Yen-k'o had seen once long ago. No, no, a magnificent painting it surely was, yet just as surely not the unique painting which he had described with such religious awe!"
Hiranuma closed the book. For a time his mind seemed to go blank; then he noticed that he was breathing more rapidly than usual, as though after an unaccustomed physical exertion. The sound of waves reached him through the open window. He turned to see a huge swarm of dragonflies flying past. "How many would there be there?" he wondered idly. "Thousands, millions..." There seemed no end to them.
"I wonder if Sawamoto remembers," he thought. "Hm. What would he be doing now? Maybe I'll call him and ask him. What time is it?"
9:12, said the lower right-hand corner of his computer screen. Hastily, without even glancing at them, he deleted the few paragraphs he'd written. "Would he be teaching now? He'll be surprised to hear from me, I hardly ever call him, it's always he who calls me, for some reason..." Yes, it was true; that had never struck him before. "Well, I'll dial his number."
He walked slowly, as though seeking to avoid notice, down the stairs. At the sight of Shizuko in the hallway he gave a slight start: "Oh!"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I just... I thought I'd give Sawamoto a call..."
"Sawamoto?"
"Yes, I... I want to ask him something... about Akutagawa. I'm working on a piece about Akutagawa, you see, and..."
"Iwao. Come into the kitchen with me. I have something to tell you."
He looked at her in quizzical bewilderment, surprised at her sudden firmness of purpose, but she did not meet his eyes. She turned abruptly and proceeded into the kitchen, leaving him to follow. She was seated at the table before he entered the room.
"Sit down."
"What is it? What's the matter?" There were terrors in life; he was acutely aware of having been spared them so far; what was Shizuko about to hit him with? Had his turn come at last?
"Sit."
"All right. What is it?"
"Iwao. Once, a very long time ago, before we were married, Sawamoto and I... Sawamoto and I slept together."
She paused, looking at him intently. Hiranuma's eyes were fixed on her, but he saw nothing. His mind was blank. The only thought of which he was conscious was a palpably stupid one. It was: "I wonder what my face looks like at this moment."
The silence lengthened. He became aware of the sound of the refrigerator motor, and thought, "We've had that fridge for over a quarter of a century."
"I wanted you to know," she said at last. "I thought you should. It's been weighing on me."
"Why?" he said in a strangled voice.
"I'm not sure. Was I wrong? Should I have kept the secret? Kept you in the dark?"
"Kept me in the dark... Shizuko, I've been 'in the dark' for... before we were married, you say... for thirty years." With despair and disgust he heard the trembling, the quivering in his voice; it was a mouse's voice, not a man's; it positively squeaked. "Why now? Why all of a sudden?"
"When I saw Nakagawa-sensei with that...that woman..."
"Well? What? What does Nakagawa-sensei have to do with it?"
"The revulsion, the revulsion I felt, the loathing... it was not really of him, but of me, of me, for what I did with... with Sawamoto.... It brought it all back, made me... made me relive it... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have... I just... I just had to!"
"Had to what?"
"Had to tell you."
"I see. And now that you've told me, what... what...?"
Sobbing helplessly, Shizuko was unable to answer. She only shook her head back and forth, as though vigorously denying something.
***
When the fog in his brain lifted, he couldn't recall having returned to his office; nor did he know how long he had been standing at the window, watching the dragonflies---for it was they that seemed to be engaging his attention. The sun was hotter and brighter than ever. This was beyond even August heat; probably some sort of meteorological record was being set; he would read about it in the paper tomorrow. Climate change, global warming... in a few decades his beloved Zenibako would be tropical; if he chanced to return to it in some future life he would not recognize it. From the sun's position in the sky he judged it to be about mid-morning---ten, ten-thirty. He strained his ears. Was Shizuko playing? No, there was not a sound to be heard anywhere---except, now that the notion of sound had come into his head, that of a train going by---to Sapporo, or to Otaru? You'd think it would be obvious, from the sound, but it didn't seem to be; maybe his ears were just not sensitive enough. Shizuko, with her musician's ears, would surely know.
Shizuko. What was she doing? Still crying? Yes, he had left her in tears, he remembered now. Should he go down and comfort her? Tell her it didn't matter? It didn't, of course. Something that happened thirty years ago with no consequences at the time doesn't start mattering now. They'd been kids---not living, just playing at life. They weren't married, she didn't owe him a wife's fidelity, no one was in the wrong, no crime had been committed... "Look," he would say to her---he sat down at the desk as he began mentally composing his speech---"what you've told me changes nothing, nothing. I love you, Sawamoto is my best friend... In fact, I still want to call him, I want to ask him about this Akutagawa story I just read. We read it together when we were kids. In fact, why don't you read it, it's really a marvelous story, it's called Autumn Mountain; wait, I'll get it for you..."
The words flowed through his mind, and he sat there, motionless and attentive, as though listening to someone else speak. He closed his eyes. "Really, if I'm going to write this damned essay I'd better get started. If only it wasn't so wretchedly, miserably hot! Who ever heard of such heat in September? It's crazy, idiotic!"
Part IV
Sawamoto, in his office at Wakaba Women's College, started at a knock on the door. Reflexively he slammed shut the book he'd been reading. Then he smiled to himself. "You'd think I'd been doing something naughty." The book was Einstein's Universe, by Nigel Calder. He had seen it in a book store recently and purchased it on a whim. His studies had focused exclusively on literature and history; of physics, of the physical world in general, he knew nothing. The obscure thought behind his impulse to buy the book had been that it might help remedy his woeful ignorance, but it was hopeless. His reasoning power, quite adequate when put to work on familiar territory, seemed to utterly desert him here. Possibly it was the math involved; maybe "Einstein's universe" was fundamentally incomprehensible to the non-mathematical mind. Maybe he should study mathematics. It had caused him some awful traumas in high school, and he had turned his back on it as soon as he got to university, but maybe now was the time---
So he had been thinking when the knock startled him out of his reverie. Tossing the book onto a pile of books on the floor behind him, he called out, "Come in." The door opened, and in stepped a young woman in black-framed spectacles.
She wore a white wool sweater, and---her glasses and evident shyness notwithstanding---was rather pretty. "I---I'm sorry to disturb you..." She stammered and her voice cracked. Who was she? Presumably someone in one of his classes. Could he seduce her? He seemed to love her already. What was love, after all? A feeling. What produced the feeling? It could be anything. What struck him now was the way her thick black hair was caught behind her shapely, tiny right ear, though the left ear was unexposed. A trivial detail, scarcely noticeable, and yet he had noticed it, and found himself unable to take his eyes off it. "Sit down," he smiled, motioning her into the chair across the desk from him. Had he ever seen her before?
"I just wanted to tell you---" her voice was a child's; if he'd been talking to her on the phone he would have guessed her age to be about twelve---"how much I... your lecture, how much I enjoyed it..."
"Did you really? I'm so glad." What lecture would she be referring to? He had given four that day. "Please, sit down," he said again. "May I ask you what it was in particular that struck you?"
"What you said about consciousness."
Ah. That enabled him to place her in the second year comp lit class he'd taught first thing after lunch. He'd gone way off the topic on that one---something rather easy for him to do when the topic was Dickens. He had little regard for Dickens---and yet generation after generation had unanimously pronounced him a genius, "so I must be wrong," he told himself without conviction.
"I wonder..." She sat down at last. "I wonder if... I could ask you... if you're not busy..."
"No, my child."
Would she wince at "my child"? It had slipped out. No, she seemed untroubled by it.
"I wanted to... you said, I think, that,,, that consciousness..."
What efforts, Sawamoto wondered, had it cost her to strike up the courage to knock on the door? "Such a timid little thing!"
"What I was trying to say," he began, "was that... well, suppose we think of it this way: the brain is a physical organ. A physical, finite organ---like the stomach, for instance, or the liver, or the heart. It has its functions, and its attributes, and one of its attributes is consciousness. But what a strange, absurd notion it is---and yet how many fall prey to it!--- that our consciousness, arising as it does out of a physical organ, the brain, for a physical purpose, survival, perceives everything that exists! Of course it doesn't! That's madness! It perceives only what it perceives, and as to what it doesn't perceive---why, it simply has no conception of what it doesn't perceive! No conception! No possibility of a conception. There must be whole worlds, whole universes---"
"Whole universes!" Her voice as she echoed him was an awed whisper.
"Whole universes---not distant from us, not light-years away, but right here, right in front of our eyes, if we had eyes to see them; at our fingertips, if we possessed the nerves to sense them... yes, whole universes, of which we know nothing and can know nothing, the greatest genius no less than the most hopeless idiot. What is beyond the range of the brain, the brain cannot know, it's as simple as that. Only the artist, perhaps, can sense something of them, these other universes---vaguely, remotely..."
"Do you believe in God?"
"In God? Do I believe in God? What do you mean---the God of the Christians?"
"Well---"
He noticed now for the first time the tiny silver cross she wore around her neck. "Are you a Christian?"
She nodded.
"Ah. Well, in that case, I have nothing to say."
"Oh, but... please..." She seemed flustered, as though fearing she had offended him in some way. "I so want... You see, I came to you because... because no one..."
"No one what, my child?"
"No one talks as you do. Listening to you, I seem to see... I don't know... I seem to glimpse... new things, new... new... new horizons..." She flushed lividly. Sawamoto regarded her in some perplexity. "She's saying, 'Take me, I'm yours,'" he thought. "You see," she went on, making an effort to master her confusion, "my parents are missionaries, they run a little church in Nakanoshima, and from the time I was an infant all I've known is God, Jesus, the Holy Mother..."
"And this no longer seems sufficient?" Sawamoto asked.
"No! My parents are like... they're like grownup children."
"And you no longer want to be a child?"
"No!"
"I see."
***
As Hiranuma settled into his seat on the train, he noticed the girl sitting beside him and started. Was he mistaken? He must be---she could not possibly be the same one he had sat beside four days earlier on his way to meet Sawamoto, and yet... but why, on second thought, was it not possible? It was the same time of day, and no doubt most students rode the same train home from school at the same time... Still, it was a remarkable coincidence. The resemblance, or identity, was not merely in her face. Her very posture on the seat seemed identical, her very manner as she bent over her cell phone; even her hair seemed to fall about her face in exactly the same way. One could fancy her engaged in the same text-mail (or whatever it was called) conversation she'd been having the first time, typing in precisely the same words, receiving precisely the same replies.
An utterly insane thought now occurred to him. If only it were possible---but such was the unbridgeable gulf between one person and another that, innocent though the thought was, yielding to it could quite conceivably get him arrested. The idea was simply to have her read Autumn Mountain and then ask her what, if anything, it meant to her. He had the book with him, in the inner pocket of his jacket (after the brief spell of tropical heat it had suddenly turned cool enough for a jacket). How would she react if he cleared his throat or mumbled "Excuse me" or something to get her attention, and then proceeded to talk to her about the story? He could give her the book as a gift...
"Maybe it's fortunate," he thought, "that I failed to outgrow my childhood shyness. It's protecting me now from doing something totally, totally outrageous."
The pub Sawamoto had suggested they meet at this time was a place called Aphrodite, near Teine Station. Were there any bars in the city Sawamoto didn't know? Yes, he certainly got around. How dull Hiranuma was in comparison. Here was the train pulling in to Teine Station. As he stood up he made a vague effort to catch the girl's eye, but she was in another world. Would she be aware, even dimly, of his existence? Almost certainly not---but then, he reflected, why should she be aware of it?
He drew his jacket, a gray windbreaker, more tightly around him. It was positively chilly. Mount Teine, as he exited the station, was on the right. Every October, usually around mid-month, he and Shizuko climbed it to admire the autumn foliage. How long had that been going on? Years, decades. "A rite of passage," he thought---meaninglessly enough; the words just happened to form in his mind. Rites of passage were generally associated with spring---and, of course, with youth. "Well," he smiled, "this one is associated with autumn and age, and so much the better for it."
The Aphrodite bar was just a few paces down a narrow lane-like street lined on both sides with hole-in-corner ramen restaurants, yakitori grills, karaoke joints and neighborhood bars. It was quiet now, but at night it was probably lively enough. Hiranuma pushed open the door and squinted into the relative darkness. Sawamoto saw him first. "Hiranuma-kun!"
Sawamoto, perched on a stool at the counter, seemed the only customer in the place. "Abe-kun!" Here too, apparently, he was on familiar terms with the staff. Hiranuma settled in beside him. The bartender, a lean grizzled old man in a white apron, must have materialized from somewhere beyond Hiranuma's field of vision. He confronted Hiranuma with an air of truculent impatience, as though Hiranuma should have given his order a long time ago and was keeping him waiting unnecessarily. "Scotch," Hiranuma muttered hurriedly.
"Make it a double," said Sawamoto, precisely as he had four days before at the Cinnamon and Clover. "And another shochu for me. Listen," he said, turning on his stool to face Hiranuma. "Has the thought ever struck you---but of course it has; how could it fail to strike a thinking man?---that by the time you reach our age our life has basically been lived, and that the years remaining are, at best, redundant? At worst of course they're appalling. Of all the horrors in the world, those of old age are the most terrible. They turn life into a sick joke. I need hardly say I'm thinking of my father, whose condition in his latter years I'm sure you remember. But let's presuppose, perennial optimists that we are---eh?---the best-case scenario: you're healthy, financially secure, in full possession of your mental faculties. Even so---what's left? Travel? We've already traveled enough to know that one place is pretty much like another. Grandchildren? Neither of us has children, so that happiness, if it is one, is denied us. Love? Well, you tell me, Hiranuma. Is love at fifty-four---to say nothing of sixty-four and seventy-four--- is love at fifty-four a reason for living?"
"Love?"
"Yes, love. I know how you feel about Shizuko-san and all that---ah, thank you. Kampai! We have a visiting professor of the Jewish faith with us, who tells me the Hebrew equivalent is 'l'chaim!---to life!' To life, Hiranuma, to life! What was I saying? Love. Is love at fifty-four a reason for living?"
"I don't know."
"You know, some years ago I spent a week meditating at a Zen temple. On the wall of the meditation hall there hung a sign, which said, 'Each of you must clarify the great matter of life and death. Time passes swiftly. Do not be negligent!' As for time passing swiftly, I'm sure you'll agree that it gets swifter with each passing year. Let's not be negligent, Hiranuma! Let's 'clarify the great matter of life and death.' But you're not drinking."
Hiranuma absent-mindedly sipped his scotch and said, "Do you remember a story called Autumn Mountain?"
"Autumn Mountain?"
"Akutagawa. We read it together when we were kids. Don't you remember? I---"
"Yes, Yes, I think I do remember. Autumn Mountain... The image that comes to mind is of old Chinese sages... Ah! Yes! They're discussing a painting, a supremely beautiful painting, and the question it hinges on is, Does the painting actually exist?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"Nothing. I---"
"Nothing?'
"It's just... I came across it while working on that essay I told you about, and reread it for the first time since we read it together, and... Hm... Do you happen to recall how the story ends?"
"If you gave me enough time I could probably dredge it out of my memory."
"The sages are unable to determine whether the painting exists or not, but conclude that it doesn't matter, because, whether it exists or not, the image of the beautiful painting was engraved forever in their hearts. And when they realize this, they 'laughed and clapped their hands with delight.'"
"Ah. One of two things (forgive me, I'm a little drunk). Either what you've just said is utterly beside the point, or else---or else it is the point! Ha ha! Which is it, Hiranuma?"
"Both. Neither. I'm a little tipsy myself, I think. Does it matter whether the painting existed? Does it matter that you slept with Shizuko?"
"That I---what?"
"Slept with Shizuko."
"Hiranuma---"
"Oh, don't worry. I'm not accusing you of anything. It happened ages, ages ago, before we were married, before---"
"Hiranuma, are you mad?"
"Remember I told you about her encounter with the piano teacher and a young girl, and how strangely it affected her? Well, the key to the mystery turns out to be that the sight of them reminded her of that memory she'd suppressed all these years---"
"Hiranuma, I never slept with Shizuko."
"No?"
"Never."
"Sawamoto, you've slept with so many women, you can't be expected to remember them all."
"In another context I'd take that as a compliment. Abe-kun! Another."
"Not for me, I have to---"
"You have to nothing! Remember what we're here for!"
"What do you mean? What are we here for?"
"Why---to clarify the great matter of life and death."
"Oh, life and death need no clarifying. Life and death are clear. It's the human heart, the human heart that is muddy."
"Well, let's clarify the human heart, then. No longer ago than yesterday, Hiranuma, a girl walked into my office... a girl... I wonder if anything like this has ever happened to you..." He proceeded to tell the story, which Hiranuma, preoccupied with his own thoughts, scarcely took in.
"No, nothing like that has ever happened to me," he heard himself mumble, not sure what, if anything, he meant.
"Do you know," said Sawamoto, "there are people out there, many people, maybe even most people, who would look at our respective biographies, yours and mine, and say that you are a good man and I am a bad man. I am willing enough to credit you with being a good man, but am I bad?... I won't force you to answer if you don't want to," he smiled when Hiranuma remained silent. "I suppose your goodness extends to an unwillingness to pass judgment. How does the Bible put it? 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' Or words to that effect. Hiranuma, you're a writer, tell me: What is 'good'? What is 'evil'? Do the words have any meaning at all?... You don't answer. You seem to have slipped into one of those 'other universes' I was talking about. Any meaning, I mean, beyond the purely conventional one---a good person obeys the rules, a bad person breaks them. And what about freedom, Hiranuma? We can't clarify the matter of life and death without considering freedom. In all the universe---this one, anyway---there is only free being: man. Every other creature---its actions are wholly determined, or very nearly so, by the laws of physics and biology. Only man is free---free to devise ends that are not rooted in physics or biology. Have you ever thought about this, Hiranuma? But of course you have. Every thinking man---"
"The other night I... I had a dream."
"Yes?"
"A dream. I dreamed I had a gun that could neither be seen nor heard. I could kill with impunity---and I did, indiscriminately, everyone I met, beginning with Shizuko. I killed and killed. Tell me: what does such a dream mean, Sawamoto?"
"It means, first of all, that you'd better have another drink. Abe-san! Tell me something, Abe-san. We were just discussing, my childhood friend here and I, whether love, past a certain age, is a reason for living. Would it be indiscreet of me to ask how old you are?"
"Eighty-one."
"Eighty-one! Really! Do you hear that, Hiranuma? Isn't it funny how a stray bit of information can alter your perspective? A moment ago I thought you looked old; now suddenly, without a wrinkle in your face having undergone the slightest alteration, you look young! But tell us, enlighten us---is love a reason for living at eighty-one?"
"I am a bartender, not a philosopher."
"Yes, I understand, but---"
"Love is no reason for living at any age. Love is a cruel trick our body chemistry plays on us to make us bring children into the world, something we'd never do in our right minds."
"Didn't Schopenhauer say that?"
"Yes, I believe he did."
"And you say you're not a philosopher! Hiramuma---let's die! I've decided. I've 'clarified the great matter.' It's time to go. Let's go together. We were practically born together, it's only fitting that we die together. Abe, you look like a man with connections---you could get us a couple of guns, couldn't you? They needn't be invisible, just ordinary ones. What do you say? We'd make it worth your while."
Deigning neither to answer nor to show any facial expression of any kind, Abe withdrew to prepare the drinks Sawamoto had ordered.
"I know what he's thinking: 'A true Japanese dies not with a gun but with a sword.' Well, he has a point, only frankly I'm terrified of pain, and I never claimed to be, or particularly wanted to be, for that matter, a true Japanese. Let me tell you something about death, Hiranuma. Death is birth, and I want to be born. Well? What do you say? You ask me what your dream means. The meaning is plain---to go on encumbering the earth past your time is to wreak murderous ruin upon it."
"I don't want to die."
"No?"
"No. I want to live. You asked before if love is a reason for living at our age. My answer is yes. It is a reason for living."
"Half an hour ago you weren't so sure."
"I'm sure now."
"Really! What can have convinced you, I wonder?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe it's what you said about freedom."
"What did I say? I don't remember!"
"Well, man is free... Freedom is love... I'm not sure I... Hm. I'm a little muddled."
"Well, here, this'll take care of that," said Sawamoto as Abe, looking dour as ever, returned with their drinks.
"No, really, I've had enough, I have to---"
"Nothing of the sort! You don't order a drink and walk out leaving it undrunk! Abe, what do you think of a man who orders a drink and---Come, Hiranuma, one more won't kill you, and here it is, right in front of you. I won't keep you after that, I promise. I have to be going too. Kaori's waiting."
"Thank you, no." He stood up, reached into his pocket for his wallet, drew out a five thousand yen note, and slapped it on the counter. Without another word he strode, staggering just a little, towards the door.
"Hiranuma! Don't leave me here all alone!" cried Sawamoto with mock pathos. "That man," he said to Abe as soon as the door had closed behind Hiranuma, "just accused me of sleeping with his wife. Can you believe it? Of all the... I don't even like his wife! Phew! Ugly little thing, and a snob to boot. Thinks she's a musician. She's never heard real music. And Hiranuma thinks she's a treasure because he's never known a real woman. Ah, here comes a merry crowd. L'chaim, gentlemen, l'chaim!" he called out to a party of six gray-suited businessmen who tumbled in laughing, having evidently started their night on the town somewhere else. "Well, time for me to be off," said Sawamoto, downing his shochu in one gulp. "They're expecting me at home. Bring me the bill. How much do I owe?"
***
"Kaori, let's die."
"Yes, let's."
Sawamoto closed the apartment door behind him and let his knapsack fall to the floor. Kaori skipped up to him and they kissed. "Ugh! Shochu!" she said.
"Yes, I'm sorry. What are you cooking? It smells good."
"Of course it's good. Mackerel. Go have a bath---and brush your teeth! By the time you're through dinner will be ready."
"Never mind dinner. Get your jacket. We're going to die."
"Why do I need a jacket for that?"
"Because it's chilly out, and it's a ten-minute walk to the train station."
"Are we going somewhere?"
"We're going to jump in front of the Sapporo express and be annihilated."
"All right." She disengaged herself from his embrace and went to the closet to get her jacket.
"Kaori---do you think I'm joking? I'm serious."
"Of course you are. I know."
"You know, and yet you follow me as lightly as though I'd said, 'Let's go to the supermarket to buy a few vegetables.' Recite something from Moby Dick. Did you read today?"
"Yes."
"Recite something."
"'I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears---'"
"All right, that's enough. Is the bath hot?"
"Yes."
"Let's bathe together."
"We're not going to die?"
"Why would a woman like you---a girl, I should say---want to die?"
"I'm a woman. You made me a woman."
"Why would you want to die?"
"I don't want to die. Unless you do. If you do, I want to too."
"Why?"
"It's natural, isn't it?"
"No, Kaori, it's not."
"Did I do something wrong?"
"Only one thing. You attached yourself to a corrupt old man like me. You should never have done that."
"You're not a corrupt old man. You're good, and true, and I'll do everything you want me to. I'll be your slave, knowing that as your slave I'm freer than any other woman on earth."
"Come, Kaori, come, let's have a bath."