Carmen
Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Carmen” is a brief, ironic literary sketch set in Tokyo during the years surrounding the Russian Revolution. Framed by the narrator’s memory of a visiting Russian opera company, the piece blends cosmopolitan glamour, gossip, and tragedy with Akutagawa’s characteristic detachment. The focus is less the opera itself than the magnetic figure of Iina Bruskaya, the singer expected to perform Carmen, and the men drawn into her orbit. Akutagawa uses theatrical images, casual conversation, and suggestive omissions to create a mood of decadent modernity, where performance and life seem to merge. The result is a sharp, elegant miniature about desire, spectacle, and the unsettling indifference of those who inspire ruin in others.
Was it before the Revolution, or after? No, it could not have been before the Revolution. And why not? Because I still remember a joke by Danchenko that I happened to overhear at the time.
On a muggy night heavy with the threat of rain, T, a stage manager, stood on the balcony of the Imperial Theatre with a glass of soda water in his hand, talking with the poet Danchenko. It was Danchenko, the blind poet with flaxen hair.
“This too is the sign of the times, I suppose. That the Grand Opera of Russia should come all the way to Tokyo, Japan.”
“That is because the Bolsheviks are from the radical party.”
This exchange took place, I am sure, on the fifth night after the opening night, the night Carmen appeared onstage. I was infatuated with Iina Bruskaya, who was supposed to play Carmen. Iina was a full-bodied woman with large eyes and flaring nostrils. Naturally I had been looking forward to seeing her as Carmen, but when the first act rose, it was not Iina who was playing the part. It was some gaunt actress with pale blue eyes and a high nose, I forget her name. Sitting in the same box as T, our tuxedo fronts side by side, I could not help feeling disappointed.
“So Carmen isn’t our Iina tonight.”
“They say Iina is taking the night off. And the reason is highly romantic, too.”
“What happened?”
“One marquis from the old Empire, some fellow or other, came chasing after Iina and arrived in Tokyo the day before yesterday. But without his knowing it, Iina had already come under the protection of an American businessman. When the marquis saw that, he fell into despair. Last night he hanged himself in his room at the hotel.”
As I listened to this story, a certain scene came back to me. It was Iina late at night in a hotel room, surrounded by a crowd of men and women, idly handling a deck of cards. Dressed in black and red, she seemed to be telling fortunes in the gypsy style, and smiling at T, she said, “Now let me tell your fortune.” Or rather, that is what she was said to have said. Since I knew no Russian beyond da, I naturally had to rely on T, who knew a dozen languages, to translate for me. Then, after turning over the cards, she said, “You are happier than that man. You will be able to marry the person you love.” “That man” was a Russian who had been talking with someone beside Iina. Unfortunately, I do not remember his face or how he was dressed. The only thing I do remember is the carnation he wore in his breast. Might not that “man” from that night have been the very one who, having lost Iina’s love, hanged himself to death? ...
“Then she ought not to appear tonight.”
“Shall we go out and have a drink somewhere?”
T too, of course, belonged to the Iina camp.
“Let’s at least stay through one more act.”
It was probably during that intermission that we spoke with Danchenko.
The next act was dull for us as well. But not five minutes after we had taken our seats, five or six foreigners came into the box directly opposite ours. And at their head, unmistakably, was Iina Bruskaya. Iina sat down in the very front of the box and, waving a fan of peacock feathers, leisurely began to watch the stage. What was more, she began laughing and chatting merrily with the foreign men and women accompanying her, among whom there was surely the American who kept her.
“It’s Iina.”
“Yes, it’s Iina.”
In the end we did not leave our box until the last act, until Jose, embracing Carmen’s corpse, cried out in anguish, “Carmen! Carmen!” This was, of course, because we were watching Iina Bruskaya rather than the stage. Because we were watching this Russian Carmen, who seemed utterly unmoved by having driven a man to his death.
× × ×
Two or three days later, one night, T and I sat sharing a table in a corner of a restaurant.
“Did you notice that ever since that night, Iina has had a bandage on the ring finger of her left hand?”
“Now that you mention it, I think she did.”
“When Iina went back to the hotel that night, she...”
“Don’t, you mustn’t drink that.”
I warned T. In the glass, lit by a faint gleam, a small golden beetle was still struggling on its back. T poured the white wine onto the floor and, making a strange face, went on:
“She smashed a plate against the wall, and then used the broken pieces as castanets, and, not caring that her fingers were bleeding... ”
“She danced like Carmen?”
At that moment a waiter with white hair, wearing a face completely out of keeping with our excitement, quietly brought over a plate of salmon. ...
(April 10, 1926)