He, Part Two

I

He was a young Irishman. There is no need to mention his name. I was simply his friend. Even now his sister still sometimes writes of me as “My brother’s best friend.” When I first met him, I had the strange feeling that I had seen his face somewhere before. No, not only his face. The fire burning in the grate in that room, the mahogany chairs lit by the glow of the flames, even the complete works of Plato on the mantelpiece all seemed somehow familiar. And as we talked, that feeling only grew stronger. At last I began to think I must have seen just such a scene once in a dream five or six years earlier. Of course I never said anything of the sort aloud. Puffing on a Shikishima cigarette, he was talking, as was only natural between us, about Irish writers.

“I detest Bernard Shaw.”

I still remember his saying that with such brazen assurance. It was in the winter when we were both, by East Asian reckoning, twenty-five years old. ...

II

Whenever we managed to scrape together some money, we haunted cafes and teahouses. He possessed perhaps thirty percent more of the male principle than I did. One night, with fine snow falling fiercely, we were sitting at a table in the corner of Cafe Paulista. In those days there was a gramophone in the middle of the cafe, set up so that if you dropped in a nickel coin, you could hear music. That night too the gramophone scarcely ceased its accompaniment to our conversation.

“Tell that waiter something for me, would you? Tell him that every time anyone puts in five sen, I’ll put in ten, if only he’ll stop the gramophone.”

“I can’t very well ask him that. For one thing, isn’t it bad taste to use money to stop music other people want to hear?”

“Then it’s bad taste too to use money to make people listen to music they don’t want to hear.”

At that exact moment, by happy chance, the gramophone fell abruptly silent. But at once a student-looking fellow in a hunting cap stood up to put in another coin. The instant he saw that, my friend half rose from his seat and, muttering something damned-this-or-that under his breath, made as if to hurl the cruet stand.

“Stop it. Don’t do anything so idiotic.”

I more or less dragged him out into the street, where the powdery snow was falling thick. Yet it was not as if I myself felt no excitement at all. Arm in arm, we walked on without so much as opening an umbrella.

“On a snowy night like this, I feel I could go on walking forever, as far as my legs would carry me. ...”

He cut me off almost as if scolding me.

“Then why don’t you walk? If I feel like going on forever, then I do go on forever.”

“That’s a bit too romantic.”

“What’s wrong with being romantic? Wanting to walk on and not doing it is just cowardice. Even if you freeze to death, try walking. ...”

Then suddenly he changed his tone and addressed me as Brother.

“Yesterday I sent a telegram to my government back home saying I wanted to volunteer for service.”

“And then?”

“No reply yet.”

Before long we happened to pass the display window of Kyobunkan. Inside the brightly lit window, half covered with snow on the glass, were tanks, photographs of poison gas, and all sorts of books about the war. Still arm in arm, we paused there for a moment.

“Above the War, by Romain Rolland. ...”

“Hm. Not above it, in our case.”

A strange expression came over his face. It was like a rooster fluffing the feathers on its neck.

“What can Rolland possibly know? We’re in the midst of the war.”

His hostility toward Germany was, naturally, nothing I myself could feel so acutely. So I sensed a certain resentment rising in me at his words. At the same time, I felt myself sobering up.

“I’m going home.”

“Is that so? Then I’ll ...”

“Go sink somewhere around here.”

We were standing by the giboshi finial at Kyobashi. On the deserted late-night stretch of Daikongashi there was only a single leafless willow, burdened with snow, its black branches drooping into the stagnant canal water below.

“It’s Japan, after all. A scene like this.”

That was what he said, with deep feeling, before parting from me.

III

As it happened, he was unable to join the war as he had wished. But after returning once to London, he came back to live in Japan again after an absence of two or three years. By then, though, we had changed, or at least I had somehow lost my romanticism. To be sure, he too had not gone unchanged over those two or three years. Wearing an Oshima haori and kimono in the upstairs room of a boarding house run by ordinary townspeople, holding his hands over a brazier, he let out complaints like these:

“Japan is becoming more and more Americanized. Sometimes I think I’d rather live in France than in Japan.”

“That happens to every foreigner sooner or later. Even Hearn was like that in his later years, wasn’t he?”

“No, it isn’t that I’m disillusioned. A man who never had an illusion can’t very well suffer disillusionment.”

“Isn’t that just sophistry? As for me, I probably still have illusions even about myself.”

“That may be so. ...”

With a gloomy face, he gazed through the glass door at the overcast view from the hill.

“I may soon become a correspondent in Shanghai.”

In an instant his words reminded me of the profession I had somehow forgotten he had. I had always thought of him simply as one of us, a man of artistic temperament. But in order to earn his living, he worked as a reporter for an English-language newspaper. Thinking of the “shop” no artist can ever wholly escape, I tried to brighten the conversation.

“Shanghai must be more interesting than Tokyo.”

“I think so too. But before that I’ll have to go back to London one more time. ... By the way, have I shown you this?”

He took a white velvet case from the drawer of his desk. Inside was a slender platinum ring. I picked it up and looked at it, and I could not help smiling at the words engraved inside: “To Momoko.”

“I told them to engrave my name beneath ‘To Momoko.’”

Perhaps it had merely been the craftsman’s mistake. Or perhaps, considering the woman’s line of work, the craftsman had deliberately omitted the foreigner’s name. I felt, not so much sympathy for him, who did not seem to mind, as a kind of sadness.

“Where have you been going these days?”

“Yanagibashi. You can hear the sound of water there.”

That too struck me, a Tokyo man, as oddly pitiful. Yet before long he had recovered a lively look, and began talking about the Japanese literature he was forever reading.

“The other day I read Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s story called ‘The Devil.’ It must be the filthiest thing ever written in the world.”

(Some months later, by chance, I repeated his remark to the author of “The Devil.” The writer merely laughed and said carelessly, “If it’s number one in the world, that’s all that matters!”)

“And What of The Poppy?”

“My Japanese isn’t good enough for that. ... Can you at least stay for dinner today?”

“Yes. I came meaning to.”

“Then wait a moment. There are four or five magazines there.”

Whistling, he promptly began changing into Western clothes. With my back to him, I idly leafed through The Bookman and the rest. Then, in the pauses between whistles, he suddenly let out a short laugh and called to me in Japanese:

“I can sit properly now. But the trousers are in a sorry state.”

IV

The last time I saw him was at a cafe in Shanghai. (About half a year later, he caught smallpox and died.) Under bright blue lamps, with whiskey and soda before us, we looked at the crowd of men and women gathered around the tables on either side. Except for two or three Chinese, most of them were Americans or Russians. Among them was one woman in a celadon-colored gown who was talking more excitedly than anyone else. She was thin, but she had the most beautiful face there. When I saw her face, I was reminded of cut glass. And indeed, beautiful as she was, there was surely something unhealthy about her too.

“Who is that woman?”

“That one? She’s a French ... well, call her an actress. She goes by the name Nini. But never mind her, look at that old man.”

“That old man” sat at the table beside us, warming a glass of red wine between both hands and constantly bobbing his head in time with the band. It would not have been wrong to call him the very image of contentment. I myself was quite interested in the jazz that came ceaselessly blowing from among the tropical plants. But I had no interest, naturally, in an old man who looked happy.

“That old man’s a Jew. He’s lived in Shanghai for thirty years or so. What on earth do you suppose a fellow like that has in mind?”

“What does it matter what he has in mind?”

“No, it matters a great deal. I’m thoroughly sick of China.”

“Not China. Shanghai.”

“China. I stayed in Beijing for a while too. ...”

I could not resist teasing him for that sort of complaint.

“Is China becoming more and more Americanized too?”

He shrugged and said nothing for a while. I felt something close to regret. More than that, I felt I had to say something to ease the awkwardness.

“Then where do you want to live?”

“No matter where I live, ... and I’ve lived in quite a number of places by now ... the only place I think I’d like to live now is Soviet Russia.”

“If that’s so, then go to Russia. A man like you can go anywhere, can’t he?”

Once again he fell silent. Then, and I still remember his face clearly at that moment, narrowing his eyes, he suddenly began to chant a poem from the Manyoshu that even I myself had forgotten:

“Though I think this world hateful and hard to bear, I cannot fly away, for I am no bird.”

I could not help smiling at the sound of his Japanese. Yet somehow I was deeply moved inside as well.

“That old man, of course, but even Nini is happier than I am. After all, as you know ...”

On impulse I turned jocular.

“Yes, yes, I know without hearing the rest. You’re the Wandering Jew.”

He took a sip of whiskey and soda, and once more returned to his usual self.

“I’m not that simple. Poet, painter, critic, journalist, ... there’s more. Son, brother, bachelor, Irishman, ... and by temperament a romantic, by my view of life a realist, politically a communist ...”

Before long we were laughing and pushing back our chairs to stand.

“And to her, a lover.”

“Yes, a lover ... there’s more. Religiously an atheist, philosophically a materialist ...”

The late-night streets were wrapped in something closer to miasma than fog. Perhaps because of the streetlamps, it all looked strangely yellow. Arm in arm, we strode over the asphalt with long steps, just as we had years ago at twenty-five. Just as we had at twenty-five, and yet now I no longer wished to go on walking forever.

“Have I not told you yet about the time I had my vocal cords examined?”

“In Shanghai?”

“No, when I was back in London. They examined my vocal cords and found I was a baritone of world-class caliber.”

He peered into my face with a faintly ironic smile.

“In that case, instead of being a journalist ...”

“Of course, if I’d gone on the operatic stage, I’d have gone as far as Caruso. But now it’s too late.”

“That’s the great loss of your life.”

“No, the one who lost out wasn’t me. All the people in the world lost out.”

By then we were walking along the bank of the Huangpu, where many ships’ lights shone. He paused for a moment and signaled with his chin for me to look. In the dim water under the haze floated the white corpse of a small dog, rocking ceaselessly on the gentle waves. And around its neck, by someone’s doing, hung a loop of grass with flowers on it. It was undeniably beautiful even as it felt cruel. Besides, ever since the Manyoshu poem he had sung, I had been infected with a touch of sentimentality myself.

“Nini, is it?”

“If not, then the singer inside me.”

No sooner had he answered than he let out an absurdly huge sneeze.

V

Perhaps it was because I had received a letter, after a long silence, from his sister in Nice. Two or three nights ago I found myself speaking with him in a dream. However one looked at it, it had to be our first meeting. The fire in the grate was blazing red, and its glow again shone on the mahogany table and chairs. We were naturally talking, as we always did, about Irish writers. But it was not easy to fight off the drowsiness weighing down on me. In the wavering depths of consciousness I heard him say:

“I detest Bernard Shaw.”

Still seated there, I drifted off before I knew it. Then ... I woke of myself. Dawn had not yet fully broken. The lamp wrapped in a furoshiki cloth cast a dim light. Lying face down on my bedding, I lit a Shikishima cigarette to calm a strange excitement. Yet it was somehow eerie beyond bearing that the self who had fallen asleep in the dream should awaken here in the present.

(November 29, 1926)