Kesa and Morito

UPPER PART

Night. Morito stands outside the earthen wall, gazing at the moon’s pale disk, treading on fallen leaves, lost in thought.

His monologue:

“The moon has risen already. Usually I can hardly wait for it to come up, but tonight, of all nights, I am terrified of dawn. When I think that the man I have been until now will be lost in a single night, and that from tomorrow I shall have become a murderer, my body trembles even as I stand here. Imagine these two hands turned red with blood. How accursed I shall seem then, even to myself. If only I were killing a man I hated, I would not have to suffer this way. But tonight I must kill a man I do not hate.

I have known that man by sight for some time. I learned only through this affair that his name is Wataru Saemon-no-jo, but I cannot remember when I first became familiar with that pale face, too soft for a man’s. When I learned that he was Kesa’s husband, it is true that for a moment I felt jealousy. But that jealousy has now vanished cleanly away, leaving not the slightest trace upon my heart. So although Wataru may be called my rival in love, I neither hate nor resent him. No, I might even say I feel sympathy for him. When I heard from Koromogawa how much trouble Wataru had taken to win Kesa, I even found him lovable. Did he not go so far as to take lessons in poetry simply because he wanted Kesa for his wife? When I imagine the love poems composed by that painfully earnest samurai, a smile comes to my lips before I know it. Yet it is not a smile of mockery. I find something touching in a man who would humble himself so far before a woman. Or perhaps the passion of that man, who tries so hard to please the woman I love, gives me, as her lover, a certain satisfaction.

But do I love Kesa enough to say such a thing? The love between Kesa and me is divided into two periods, then and now. I loved Kesa before she married Wataru. Or at least I thought I loved her. But when I think of it now, there was much that was impure in my feelings then. What did I seek from Kesa? In those days, when I was still a virgin, I clearly desired Kesa’s body. If some exaggeration may be allowed, what I called my love for Kesa was in truth no more than a sentimental feeling that had beautified that desire. Proof of this is that during the three years after my connection with Kesa was broken off, I certainly did not forget her; but if before that I had known her body, would I still have continued to think of her without forgetting? Shamefully, I do not have the courage to answer yes. Mixed into my later attachment to Kesa was a considerable lingering regret that I had never known her body. And while I harbored that restless longing, I at last entered into this present relation, which I had feared and yet awaited. Then now? I shall ask myself anew. Do I truly love Kesa?

But before answering that, I must, however unwillingly, recall once more the course of events. When I met Kesa by chance after three years at the dedication of Watanabe Bridge, I spent roughly the next half year trying every means to create an opportunity to meet her secretly. And I succeeded. No, I did more than succeed. At that time I was able, just as I had dreamed, to know Kesa’s body. But what ruled me then was not necessarily only the lingering regret I mentioned, the regret of not yet knowing her body. When I sat with Kesa on the mats of the same room in Koromogawa’s house, I had already noticed that this longing had somehow grown faint. The fact that I was no longer a virgin may also have helped, once the moment came, to weaken my desire. But more than that, the chief reason was that the woman’s beauty had faded. The Kesa of now is indeed no longer the Kesa of three years ago. Her skin has lost its luster all over, and around her eyes there are faint dark rings like shadows. Around her cheeks and beneath her chin, the former fullness has vanished as though it had never been. The only thing barely unchanged may be those fresh eyes of hers, firm and dark-pupiled. This change was certainly a terrible blow to my desire. I still remember clearly the powerful shock I felt when, facing her for the first time in three years, I could not help turning my eyes away.

Then why did I enter into relations with that woman, when I felt relatively little of such lingering desire? First, I was moved by a strange wish to conquer her. When Kesa sat opposite me, she deliberately exaggerated the love she felt for her husband Wataru. Yet it could not stir in me anything but a sense of emptiness. ‘This woman feels vanity about her husband,’ I thought. Or I thought, ‘Perhaps this too is an expression of defiance, because she does not want to buy my pity.’ And along with that, the desire to expose this lie worked more strongly on me with every passing moment. If I am asked why I thought it was a lie, if I am told that my very thinking so was conceit, I have, of course, no grounds for argument. Nevertheless, I believed it was a lie. I still believe it even now.

But this desire to conquer her was not all that ruled me then. Besides that, even merely saying this makes me feel my face grow red. Besides that, I was ruled by pure lust. It was not the lingering regret of not knowing that woman’s body. It was a lower thing, a desire for desire’s own sake, one that did not require the other person to be that woman at all. Perhaps even a man who buys a puppet-woman of the streets would not have been as vile as I was then.

In any case, moved by such various motives, I at last had relations with Kesa. Or rather, I humiliated Kesa. And now, returning to the question I first asked, no, there is no need at this late hour to ask myself again whether I love Kesa, even if I ask only myself. At times I feel hatred for that woman. Especially after everything was over, when I forced her up from where she lay weeping, Kesa seemed to me an even more shameless woman than my own shameless self. Her disordered hair, the makeup on her sweaty face, everything about her showed the ugliness of her heart and body. If until then I had loved that woman, that love disappeared forever on that day. Or if until then I had not loved her, it would be no mistake to say that from that day a new hatred was born in my heart. And ah, tonight, for the sake of a woman I do not love, am I not about to kill a man I do not hate?

And this is no one’s fault at all. I myself said it openly with this very mouth. ‘Let us kill Wataru.’ When I think of the moment I put my mouth to that woman’s ear and whispered those words, I almost suspect I must have been mad. Yet I did whisper them. Though I thought I would not, though I clenched my teeth against it, still I whispered them. Looking back now, I cannot understand why I wanted to whisper them. But if I force myself to think, then the more I despised that woman and the more I hated her, the more unbearable became my desire to inflict some further violation on her. Nothing could have suited that purpose better than killing Wataru Saemon-no-jo, the husband whose love Kesa had flaunted, and forcing her, whether she wished it or not, to consent to it. So perhaps, like a man attacked by a nightmare, I pressed upon that woman a murder I myself did not want to commit. If even that is not motive enough for my saying I would kill Wataru, then there is no choice but to explain it by saying that some power unknown to men, call it the devil Mara if you like, lured my will and drove it down an evil path. In any case, I persistently whispered the same thing again and again into Kesa’s ear.

Then after a while Kesa suddenly raised her face and gave the reply that she would obediently agree to my plan. But I was not merely surprised by how readily she answered. When I looked at Kesa’s face, there was a mysterious light in her eyes that I had never seen before. Adulteress. That thought came to me at once. At the same time, a feeling like disappointment suddenly spread the terror of my own design before my eyes. Needless to say, even then the repulsiveness of that woman’s wanton, withered beauty continued to torment me. If I could have done so, I would have broken my promise on the spot. I would have thrust that faithless woman down to the very bottom of all possible humiliation. If I had done that, even if I had toyed with her, my conscience might still have been able to take refuge afterward in a sort of righteous indignation. But I could not find the room to do it. When that woman, as though she had seen through my feelings, suddenly changed her expression and fixed her eyes upon mine, I confess honestly: the reason I ended by fixing the day and hour and making a promise to kill Wataru was entirely my fear of the revenge Kesa would take on me if by any chance I refused. No, even now this fear stubbornly grips my heart. Let anyone laugh at me for cowardice as much as he likes. Such people do not know the Kesa of that moment. ‘If I do not kill Wataru, then even if Kesa herself does not lay a hand on me, I shall surely be killed by this woman. If that is the case, I may as well kill Wataru first.’ When I looked into that woman’s tearless, weeping eyes, I thought this in despair. And was not my fear confirmed after I swore the oath, when Kesa lowered her eyes and smiled, one dimple forming in her pale face?

Ah, because of that accursed promise, upon a heart already defiled beyond defilement I am now adding the crime of murder. If, with tonight upon me, I were to break that promise, this too I could not endure. For one thing, there is the oath. And for another, I said I feared revenge. That is by no means a lie. But beyond that there is still something else. What is it? What is this great power that drives me, coward that I am, to kill an innocent man? I do not know. I do not know, but perhaps, no, that cannot be. I despise that woman. I fear her. I hate her. And yet still, still even so, perhaps it is because I love her.”

Morito continues pacing and does not open his mouth again. Moonlight. Somewhere a voice is singing an imayo song.

Truly, the human heart is no different from the darkness of ignorance;

it burns only with the fires of earthly desire, and life is merely what vanishes away.

LOWER PART

Night. Kesa sits outside the curtained bedchamber, turning her back to the lamp’s light, biting her sleeve, lost in thought.

Her monologue:

“Will he come, I wonder, or will he not? I cannot imagine he would fail to come, and yet the moon is already sinking and I hear no footsteps. Could he have suddenly changed his mind? If by some chance he does not come, ah, like a puppet-woman, I shall have to raise this shameful face and see the light of day again. How could I do anything so brazen, so wicked? If that happens, I will be no different from a corpse thrown away by the roadside. Humiliated, trampled underfoot, and in the end forced to expose the shame of my body shamelessly to the daylight, and still I would have to remain silent like a mute. If by any chance it comes to that, I could not die enough even if I died. No, no, he will surely come. From the moment, as we parted the other day, when I looked into his eyes, I have been unable to think otherwise. He is afraid of me. Though he hates me and despises me, still he is afraid of me. True, if I were relying on myself, I could not say with certainty that he will come. But I am relying on him. I am relying on his selfishness. No, I am relying on the base fear that selfishness awakens in him. That is why I can say this: he is certain to come here secretly.

But what a wretched person I am, now that I can no longer rely on myself. Three years ago I relied above all on myself, on this beauty of mine. Rather than three years ago, perhaps it would be closer to the truth to say until that day. That day, when I met him in a room at my aunt’s house, with only one glance I understood the ugliness of myself reflected in his heart. He wore a face as though nothing were wrong and spoke all sorts of tender words meant to entice me. But how could the heart of a woman who had once learned her own ugliness be comforted by such words? I was simply bitter. Afraid. Sad. Even the horror I felt as a child, held in my nurse’s arms while watching a lunar eclipse, was nothing compared with what I felt then. All the many dreams I had possessed vanished somewhere at once. Afterward, only a loneliness like a rainy dawn quietly surrounded me. Trembling within that loneliness, I at last entrusted this body, as good as dead, to him. To a man I did not love, to that lecherous man who hated me and despised me. Was it that I could not endure the loneliness of being shown my own ugliness? And in that feverish instant when I pressed my face to his breast, did I try to deceive everything? Or else, like him, was I too moved only by a filthy feeling? The mere thought makes me ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed. Especially when I left his arms and returned again to the freedom of my own body, how contemptible I thought myself.

From anger and loneliness, no matter how hard I tried not to weep, my tears overflowed without end. Yet it was not only that my chastity had been broken that made me sad. What was hardest for me was that, even after my chastity had been broken, I was despised besides; that, like a dog diseased with leprosy, I was tormented even while I was hated. And after that, what in the world was I doing? Thinking of it now, I can grasp it only dimly, like a memory from the distant past. I only remember that while I was sobbing, when his mustache touched my ear, together with his hot breath a low voice whispered the words, ‘Let us kill Wataru.’ The moment I heard that, I felt a strange vividness that I still do not understand myself. Vividness? If moonlight can be called bright, then perhaps that too was a vivid feeling. But it was a vividness altogether different from the brightness of moonlight. Yet was I not, after all, comforted by those terrible words? Ah, is a woman the kind of creature who can feel glad to be loved by someone even if it means killing her own husband?

With that lonely, vivid feeling, like the brightness of a moonlit night, I continued to weep for a while. And then? And then? When did I ever make a promise to guide that man in and let him strike down my husband? But at the same moment I made that promise, I thought of my husband for the first time. I will honestly say, for the first time. Until then my mind had been fixed entirely on myself, on myself who had been humiliated. Then, at that moment, I remembered my husband, my timid husband, no, not my husband himself, but the face of my husband smiling when he said something to me, as clearly as though it were before my eyes. It was probably in the instant I remembered that face that my plan suddenly rose in my heart. For by then I had already resolved to die. And I was glad that I had been able to resolve it. But when I stopped weeping and raised my face and looked at him, and when there, just as before, I found my own ugliness reflected in his heart, I felt as though my gladness had vanished all at once. It was, I remember again the darkness of the lunar eclipse I saw with my nurse. It was as though all the many specters hidden beneath that gladness had been released at once. Is my taking my husband’s place truly because I love him? No, no. Behind such a convenient excuse, I was trying to atone for the sin of having entrusted my body to that man. I, who did not have the courage to kill myself. I, who had the mean desire to make myself look even a little good in the eyes of the world. Yet that much might still be looked on with some indulgence. I was baser than that. Far baser, far uglier. Under the name of taking my husband’s place, was I not trying to avenge myself on that man’s hatred, on his contempt, and on the wicked lust with which he had toyed with me? As proof, when I looked at his face, that mysterious vividness like moonlight vanished, and only a sad feeling at once froze my heart. I am not dying for my husband. I am trying to die for myself. I am trying to die because of the bitterness of my wounded heart and the resentment of my defiled body. Ah, not only was there no worth in my living. There was not even worth in my dying.

But even such a worthless death is far more desirable than living. Forcing myself to smile despite my sadness, I repeated my promise to him to kill my husband. That quick-witted man must have more or less guessed from my words what I would do if by any chance he failed to keep the promise. In that case, there is no reason that a man who even swore an oath should not come secretly. Was that the sound of the wind? When I think that the suffering I have endured since that day will at last end tonight, I do feel, as might be expected, a certain loosening of the heart. Tomorrow’s sun will surely cast its chilly light upon my headless corpse. When he sees it, my husband will, no, I must not think of my husband. My husband loves me. But I have no power to do anything with that love. From long ago, I could love only one man. And that one man is coming tonight to kill me. Even the light of this lamp is too bright and public for someone like me. And I, tormented to the end by that lover.”

Kesa blows out the lamp flame. Before long, in the darkness, there is a faint sound of a lattice shutter opening. With it, thin moonlight enters.

March 1918