A Bow

Yasukichi had only just turned thirty. On top of that, like every hack writer, he lived a dizzying, hectic life. So while he thought about tomorrow, he hardly ever thought about yesterday. And yet, as he walked along the street, or sat facing a stack of manuscript paper, or rode on the train, there were moments when some scene from the past would suddenly rise before him in vivid detail. From what experience had taught him, this usually seemed to happen when some association was triggered by a smell. And, sadly enough for someone living in the city, those smells were almost always what people would call bad odors. For instance, no one could possibly wish to smell the soot-smoke of a train. Yet the memory of a certain young lady, a young lady he had met five or six years earlier, would spring back to life the instant he caught that smell, as suddenly as sparks bursting from a chimney.

He had met this young lady at a summer resort station. Or, to be more exact, on the platform of that station. At the time, he was living in that resort town, and, whether it rained or blew, it was his habit to board the down train that left at eight in the morning and to get off the up train that arrived at 4:20 in the afternoon. Why he rode the train every day, of all things, does not matter. But if you ride a train every day, you very quickly acquire a dozen or so familiar faces. The young lady was one of them. Still, in the afternoons, from the seventh of the month until some day in the late twenties of March, he had no memory of ever once seeing her. And in the mornings too, the train she took was the up train, which had nothing to do with Yasukichi.

The young lady was probably sixteen or seventeen. She always wore a silver-gray dress and a silver-gray hat. She may have been rather short. And yet she looked slender. Her legs in particular, those legs in silver-gray stockings and high-heeled shoes, were as slim as a deer’s. Her face was not what one would call beautiful. Still, Yasukichi had never, whether in East or West, seen a modern novel whose heroine was described as beautiful without qualification. Whenever authors came to describing a woman, they almost always inserted some disclaimer like, “She was not beautiful, but...” or something of that sort. It would seem that, for modern people, admitting the existence of beauty without conditions is somehow beneath their dignity. So Yasukichi too attached a “but” to this young lady. To repeat it once more for clarity: her face was not beautiful, exactly. But it was a charming round face, with the tip of the nose turned up just a little.

Sometimes she would stand absentmindedly amid the noisy crowd. Sometimes she would sit on a bench apart from the crowd, reading a magazine. Or else she would idle along the edge of the long platform.

Even when Yasukichi saw her figure, he never felt the excited pounding of the heart one reads about in love stories. He merely thought, “There she is,” just as he did when he saw the naval district commander, another familiar face, or the cat at the station kiosk. Still, he did feel the ordinary fondness one has for someone familiar. So whenever, now and then, he failed to spot her on the platform, he felt something like disappointment. Something like disappointment, that is, though he did not feel it especially keenly. In fact, when the kiosk cat disappeared for two or three days, he felt exactly the same sort of loneliness. And if the naval district commander had suddenly dropped dead or something, then perhaps, though this may be a bit doubtful, he too would at least have felt that things were somehow not quite as they should be, if not as strongly as in the cat’s case.

Then one day in late March, on a muggy, overcast afternoon, Yasukichi boarded the up train that was due in at 4:20, as usual, on his way back from work. If his faint memory is to be trusted, he was tired from checking documents that day, and so, even in the train, he probably did not read as he usually did. He only remembers leaning against the window and looking out at the springlike mountains and fields. In some novel in a foreign language he had once read, the sound of a train running across flat ground had been rendered as “Tratata tratata Tratata,” and the sound of a train crossing an iron bridge as “Trararach trararach.” If one listened absentmindedly, it could indeed sound something like that. He remembers thinking about that too.

After a listless thirty minutes, Yasukichi finally got off at the station of that summer resort. On the platform, a down train that had arrived a little earlier was still standing there. Mingling with the crowd, he happened to glance at the people getting off that train. And there, unexpectedly, was the young lady. As I have already said, he had never once met her in the afternoon before. And now, suddenly, right before his eyes, there appeared that silver-gray figure, like a cloud lit through by sunlight, or like the bloom on a pussy willow. Naturally he thought, Oh. The young lady too seemed, at that instant, to have seen his face. And at the very same moment, Yasukichi found himself bowing to her.

The young lady who was bowed to must surely have been startled. But what kind of expression she made, unfortunately, he had forgotten by now. Indeed, perhaps even then he had not the composure to observe it closely. No sooner had he thought, What have I done? than he felt his ears beginning to burn. But this much he does remember: the young lady bowed back to him.

Once he had finally gotten outside the station, he was angry at his own stupidity. Why in the world had he bowed? The bow had been entirely reflexive. It was no different from blinking the instant lightning flashes. If so, it had not been an act of free will. And surely one need not bear responsibility for actions not performed by free will. But what must she have thought? True, she had bowed back. But perhaps she too had done so only reflexively, out of surprise. By now she was probably taking him for some kind of ill-bred young ruffian. Better still, at the moment he thought, What have I done? he ought to have apologized for the impropriety. And yet even that had not occurred to him...

Instead of going back to his boarding house, Yasukichi walked down to a deserted stretch of sandy beach. This was not unusual. Whenever the world thoroughly disgusted him, with his five-yen-a-month rented room and his fifty-sen boxed meals, he always came here to smoke his Glasgow pipe. That day too, gazing at the cloudy sea, he first lit the pipe with a match. There was no help for what had happened today. But tomorrow, surely, he would see the young lady again. What would she do then? If she had taken him for a boorish youth, it was only natural that she would not so much as give him a glance. But if she had not taken him for such a fellow, then tomorrow too she might answer his bow as she had today. Answer his bow? Did he, Horikawa Yasukichi, intend to bow to her again with perfect composure? No, he had no intention of bowing. But once he had bowed to her, it seemed quite likely that at some opportunity she and he might exchange greetings. And if they did exchange greetings... Yasukichi suddenly remembered how beautiful her eyebrows had been.

Now, seven or eight years later, the one thing he recalls with peculiar vividness is the stillness of the sea at that moment. Before such a sea, Yasukichi sat for a long time in a daze, holding in his mouth a pipe gone out. Of course, his thoughts were not fixed only on the young lady. For example, he also thought of a novel he was soon to begin. Its hero was an English teacher burning with a revolutionary spirit. His bony, celebrated neck knew how to bow to no authority whatsoever. Only once in all his life had he carelessly bowed to a certain young lady he merely knew by sight. The young lady might have been rather short. Yet she looked slender. Especially the legs in silver-gray stockings and high-heeled shoes... In any case, it may be true that his thoughts naturally kept drifting back to the young lady.

The next morning, at five minutes to eight, Yasukichi was walking along the crowded platform. His heart was taut with expectation for the moment he might meet the young lady. It was not that he wished to avoid meeting her. Yet it was equally true that he would have found it unsatisfactory not to meet her. His state of mind, one might say, was no different from that of a boxer bracing himself before a match against a powerful opponent. But even more unforgettable was a peculiarly morbid anxiety that the instant he came face to face with her, he might do something absurd, something beyond the bounds of common sense. Once, long ago, Jean Richepin had given Sarah Bernhardt, whom he happened to pass in the street, an outrageously brazen kiss. Yasukichi, born a Japanese, probably would not go so far as a kiss, but he felt he might suddenly stick out his tongue or make a face at her. Chilled inwardly, he cast his eyes around at the people nearby, as if searching and yet not searching.

Then almost at once his eyes found the young lady, walking calmly toward him. As though advancing to meet fate, he kept straight on. The two drew closer and closer. Ten paces, five, three... now she stood right before him. Yasukichi, keeping his head up, looked straight at her face. She too fixed steady eyes on his face. They looked at one another and were about to pass by without anything happening.

And then, at that very instant, he suddenly felt something like agitation in her eyes. At the same moment, he felt almost all through his body an impulse to bow to her. But it was truly an event of a single moment. The young lady, leaving behind him as he stood there taken aback, passed quietly on, like a cloud lit through by sunlight, or like a pussy willow in bloom...

About twenty minutes later, Yasukichi was being rocked along in the train, his Glasgow pipe in his mouth. It was not only her eyebrows that had been beautiful. Her eyes, too, had been cool and dark. Her nose, tilted just a little upward... But was thinking such things what one called being in love? How he answered that question, this too has not remained in memory. The only thing Yasukichi remembers is the pale, luminous melancholy that came over him then. Watching the single thread of smoke rising from his pipe, he went on for some time thinking of nothing but the young lady in the midst of that melancholy. All the while, of course, the train was running through a gorge of mountains lit on one side by the morning sun. “Tratata tratata tratata trararach.”

(September, 1923)