The Frolic of the Beasts

Chapter 2

Yūko knew full well just how much of a fun-loving, hotheaded youth Kōji had been two years earlier. Ippei had a Western ceramics shop in Ginza and during the busy seasons such as the summer holidays and year-end he hired students from his alma mater to work on a temporary basis. Kōji had measured up to Ippei’s requirements, and he was able to continue the side job out of season, as well as being welcome at Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane.

Ippei had graduated with a degree in German literature, and after working for a while as a lecturer at another private university he inherited his parents’ Ginza shop, where he continued to write highbrow literary critiques, for which he had acquired something of a reputation. His works were extremely few in number, but he had an avid following among his readers and his older books, which had since gone out of print, commanded high prices. He produced translations and commentaries on the works of authors like Hofmannsthal and Stefan George, and he had also written a critical biography of Li He. His literary style was exquisitely refined and displayed none of the businesslike aspects inherent to his ceramics trading, but instead was brimming with the cool eccentricity and embellishment characterizing a lover of art.

As a consequence of halfheartedly dabbling in spiritual matters, this kind of person tends unwittingly to acquire the privilege of contempt for the generality of spiritual activities otherwise unknown to the average human and becomes a strangely vacant and sensual being.

Right from the start of his side job, Kōji was astonished at how busy Ippei was with his love affairs. Of course, Kōji remained detached from these matters, which had nothing whatsoever to do with him. On one occasion, as he was about to finish work and go home, Ippei had been extremely friendly, calling him back and suggesting they go for a drink together. As soon as they were settled in the bar, Ippei began to talk.

“You haven’t got any ties at all. I’m really quite envious. No parents, no brothers and sisters, nor relatives. Not even a wife and child. I detest people with splendid families and splendid guarantors. And tell me, I’ll wager you have only enough money to get by on, don’t you?”

“I think I can make do somehow until I graduate on the money my old man left me. But that on its own isn’t enough.”

“That’s okay, isn’t it? You can use what you earn in my shop as spending money.”

“I appreciate it.”

After a moment’s silence, Ippei sipped his drink and said, “I heard you were involved in a fight a couple of days ago.”

Surprised, Kōji stammered slightly: “H-how did you know that?”

“A store assistant heard the story from one of your colleagues; he thought it amusing and came to tell me.”

Kōji scratched his head like an embarrassed schoolboy. Ippei demanded a full explanation, and so Kōji related how that night, after the shop had shut, he and a fellow part-time employee had gone for a drink at a whiskey bar in Shinjuku. As they left a fight began, and having quickly settled the matter, they made off. Ippei was much more interested in Kōji’s state of mind than in the incident itself.

“Is it because you were annoyed? Did you do it because you were angry about something?”

“I don’t really know why. I just lost my temper all of a sudden.” Having never been questioned like this before, Kōji was at a loss to explain.

“You’re twenty-one years old, all alone, so lighthearted, and so quarrelsome. Do you sometimes think yourself extremely romantic?”

Kōji pursed his lips and remained silent, sensing that he was being either ridiculed or afforded praise he didn’t deserve.

“It’s a good thing to be able to fight and express your anger. The future of the world is all but in your hands. After that, ‘old age is all that awaits you.’ There is nothing other than that.”

This obscure quote from ancient poetry sounded terribly affected to Kōji. Ippei posed another question: “I suppose you never feel like the world sometimes slips out of your grasp and escapes from between your fingers like sand, do you?”

“Yeah, I do. And when that happens I start to get angry.”

“Yes, but don’t you see? That’s one of your merits. For so long I have given in to that escaping sand.”

Kōji resented being lectured on his senior’s adulation of life and philosophical sentiments.

“In other words, what you’re trying to say is that I’m just like everyone else?”

He drew a cynical conclusion in an attempt to bring the conversation to an end, and having done so, he glanced sideways at the face of this near forty-year-old wealthy man as it loomed up at him out of the dim light of the bar. Ippei, who had two suits made each month, was dressed in a sober necktie and a pale Italian silk shirt. In every respect he brought to mind the elegant appearance of the man in the French novel L’homme couvert de femmes. He went to a high-class hair salon; though he could afford to pay anytime, he held an account with a first-rate tailor, and out of a sudden fancy, he had obtained a pair of English-made spats, which he had grown tired of wearing almost immediately.

Ippei had everything. At least from Kōji’s point of view, what he didn’t possess wasn’t worth mentioning. And while he may have lost his youth, he made use of the youth of others without reserve, greedily sucking on Kōji, doglike, until the very marrow of the bones had gone. Despite Ippei’s largesse, Kōji didn’t feel inclined to be his characteristic cheerful self. Kōji’s cheerfulness was his well-oiled, well-maintained skates, the means by which he was able to glide along on the surface of life. With friends of the same age, he could ingratiate himself without anxiety. He enjoyed joining in with the families of such friends where compassion would be shown for his orphan status, where he could eat to his heart’s content, and, above all, where he could behave in a slightly egotistical but nevertheless ebullient manner.

Society heaps praise upon those individuals who refuse to be prejudiced against the unfair treatment life has dealt them. Indeed, it is deeply touched by the natural attitude to life displayed by these unnatural individuals. For Kōji, even a fight represented a semi-artificial impulse designed to elicit such praise. It was the expression of an attempt to behave normally in society, although he didn’t consider it necessary to confide such secrets to Ippei. Indeed, was it necessary to impart more than he had already to Ippei? Ippei, who had everything.

On that particular night, Ippei and Kōji drank at the counter. A girl drew near like a shadow but left again, having been ignored by Ippei. The bartender attempted to strike up a friendly conversation, but Ippei didn’t reply and so he moved off to chat with another customer. Dozens of liquor bottles lined up against the wall, cigarette smoke lingered like clouds, the soot-covered ceiling, the fragrance of perfume as girls moved to and fro in the narrow bar… A girl staggered over, on the point of collapse, gripped the far edge of the counter with her hands, and then proceeded to order another scotch soda for her customer in a slovenly tone of voice. Kōji was surprised by the warmth of her arm as it came into contact with his hand. The girl laid her cheek against her exposed forearm and gazed up at him out of drunken eyes.

“Pretending to do gymnastics, huh?” said Kōji.

“Ha, calisthenics more like.”

The girl’s hands were finely strained as they gripped the opposite side of the counter, her silver nails hooked firmly into the thick decorative padding on its side. She repeatedly bumped her large, white, pallid breasts forcibly against the counter’s side.

“I feel really good,” she said.

Kōji scanned her quickly pulsating body, her wholeheartedly debauched appearance, and her apparent enthusiastic embrace of alcoholic intoxication. It was all terrifying. She was laughing with large, expressionless eyes. Then suddenly she straightened herself, banged into Kōji’s arm with her shoulder, and, seemingly transformed, walked away with a steady gait. In the space vacated by the girl, there lingered a kind of depression in the air created by her warm, generous body. It was like a wheel rut—utterly inflexible and everlasting…

“Now take my wife,” Ippei said, as he deliberately drew the stem of his cocktail glass through his fingers. “She’s a real odd case. I’ve yet to meet a stranger girl.”

“Everyone at work says how pretty your wife is. But I’ve never seen her in the store.”

Confronted by such flattery, Ippei gave the youngster an affected and supercilious look of contempt.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, my boy, at your age. I’m telling you she is odd. She’s frightfully tolerant, and to this day has not once exhibited any jealousy. A wife, that is to say, if she is a normal type of girl, is jealous every time her husband breathes. You’ll find out, too, when you get one yourself. But mine isn’t like that. I’ve tried to scare her often enough. But she doesn’t frighten at all. You could fire a pistol right in front of her eyes and she would probably just delicately turn her face aside. You may have heard it from the others, I’ve tried to make her jealous, I’ve tried everything, really I have.”

“Maybe your wife is good at hiding her emotions. Maybe she has a strong sense of self-esteem, and…”

“How perceptive of you. A splendid analysis,” said Ippei, attempting to thrust his extended index finger at the bridge of Kōji’s nose. “Likely as not you’ve hit the nail on the head. But she hides it so cleverly, so perfectly. So you see, you would be grossly mistaken in thinking that she doesn’t love me, because she does. She loves me terribly. She loves me with more than a wife’s usual moderation. It’s always the same gloomy, overly serious, stubborn frontal attack, always in that precise order. It’s her army of love. A solemn army. And she always makes sure that I clearly see it march past, and then feigns indifference. I don’t hate my wife. It’s rather an embarrassing confession: I don’t hate any woman who will love me. Even supposing it’s my wife, do you see? I get awfully tired sometimes. This is all I wanted to tell you.”

Ippei struck a match and lit an English cigarette with the deliberate composure of one who has just finished confessing all to one whose worth he values very little. There was something condescendingly tolerant about the way he struck the match, and Kōji hated it.

It is true to say that Kōji, who had yet to meet Yūko, fell in love with her that same night. And in all probability that, too, was a part of Ippei’s plan. Kōji was clearly jealous of Ippei’s corrupt heart. Notwithstanding this, his first impression of Ippei, having spent an evening with him in leisurely conversation, can only be described as insubstantial. Ippei was nothing more than a worthless, boring, middle-aged well-to-do playboy of the sort that can be found in any large city, and he had merely devised a slightly eccentric pretext for his dissipated lifestyle.

Early one particular afternoon close to Christmas, however, Kōji was surprised to find that the impression he had formed of Ippei during the latter’s confession in the bar that night was belied by what he now saw. For Ippei, dressed in a good-quality suit, received his valued clients with cups of coffee, conversing with them as he nimbly went back and forth between shop front and office.

“If it were a gift of slightly higher quality, I could show you a Meissen plate or perhaps a Sèvres vase. Admittedly it’s a little on the expensive side, but I’m sure if it is your good self, sir, you could manage it if you abstained from your customary drink for one night.” Or, alternatively, “Ah, yes, a sixty-piece coffee set for a year-end gift, wasn’t it? May I recommend our own gift paper? I guarantee, wrapped in this the item will appear at least three times its price…”

Kōji thought, How on earth can someone possessing several volumes of his own literary work bring himself to say such a thing?

Moreover, Ippei knew how to manipulate the provincial millionaires, using his reprimanding, pedantic tone to force purchases that exceeded the customer’s expectations.

Kōji hadn’t the faintest idea of the complex sequence of events behind Ippei’s sometimes childlike, sometimes adult character—the injured self-pride (notwithstanding the way he spoke to his customers), which he always gloomily clung to, and which he believed, by some strangely fixed notion, would only be salved by Yūko’s jealousy; his wife’s refusal to cooperate in this, and her rejections; and his numerous, hysterical love affairs. Nor did Kōji understand the strange passion that tore Ippei between the servility of the dealer and the superiority of the intellectual while working to further the irreparable ruptures occurring in every aspect of his personal life and in his state of mind.

Kōji thought only of Yūko. He wasn’t to know until much later how much of a hopeless love affair theirs would prove to be, and absorbed in his fantasy he formed an exceedingly simple schematic picture in his mind. First of all, there was a miserable, despairing woman. Then there was a self-indulgent, heartless husband. And last, a hot-blooded, sympathetic young man. And with that the scenario was complete.

That summer’s day, which had begun with the assignation at the hospital—Yūko carrying her sky-blue parasol—and which had culminated in the incident at nine o’clock in the evening, took place some six months after Kōji had first met Yūko. That is to say, it occurred after he had taken a shop delivery around to Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane, where he first made her acquaintance.

The more frequent their meetings, the more Kōji felt driven to despair, right from the start of the days they were scheduled to meet. It was as if a cold torrent was beginning to flow clamorously in his innermost heart, and he hated himself more than he had done on any other morning. The request for a date would always come from him, and he would importune her before approval was eventually obtained. Moreover, Yūko would take him along only on shopping excursions, trips out for lunch, or else to a dance if he was lucky, and then she would promptly leave whenever it suited her.

On the morning of their last tryst, Kōji lifted his head out from under his quilt and gazed over at his university notebooks piled up on his desk, their voluminous open pages curling up in the summer sunlight as it came in through the window. As he did so he recalled the bundle of papers that Yūko, after considerable hesitation, had disclosed to him at their last meeting. The papers were a private investigator’s report she had commissioned, a compilation of the names of Ippei’s female acquaintances that detailed the name and address of one girl in particular—Machiko—as well as the fact that Ippei visited her every Tuesday evening.

“You must never tell my husband about this, do you understand? In any case, I’m content just knowing about it. It’s just that, well, he mustn’t find out I’ve checked up on him like this. That’s all I have to live for at the moment. Promise you will keep it secret? I shall die if you betray me.”

That was the first time Kōji had seen Yūko cry. It wasn’t a stream; on the contrary, the tears spread out faintly from the corners of her eyes and in an instant had become a sparkling thin film covering the whole of the surface. Kōji felt that, if he were to touch those tears, which had clearly been shed out of pride, his finger would freeze.

He recalled experiencing a dream at the time. In it, Ippei was gripped by a wild ecstasy, having seen the bundle of papers, and burning with conviction he determined to renounce all the other women and rush back to his wife’s side. Once there, however, he discovered not his wife but her corpse. This quick drama had flashed across Kōji’s mind in one noisy instant. It was like listening to the siren of an ambulance as it dashed along a deserted street late at night. Kōji almost lent a hand in the accomplishment of that tragedy.

“I’m going to go and visit someone in T Hospital at three,” said Yūko, adding that Kōji should wait for her in the front garden of the hospital at three thirty.

T Hospital was a large, modern building located not very far from Ippei’s residence. It stood roughly halfway up a south-facing slope in the middle of a residential area forming a valley, and a gentle, wide sloping driveway looped its way around the hospital to the front entrance. This newly built five-story hospital had an airy appearance, incorporating the piloti style of architecture, with glass-faced walls, white-tiled pillars, and blue-tiled window frames. There was a lawn on the south-facing slope of the front garden, as well as hemp palms, Himalayan cedars, and a variety of shrubbery. Two or three benches had been set out, although nothing in particular had been provided to block out the intense sunlight of the summer afternoon.

With one side of his face exposed to the westerly sun, Kōji stared fixedly in the direction of the main entrance and felt as though the light were eating into his face like a red crab, leaving its imprint on his cheek. It was three forty-five, and there was still no sign of Yūko. A pair of kites was flying above the hospital. Cheerless fluorescent lamps shone from within the large, bright windows. One window was closed in by a set of glossy venetian blinds. Another displayed the shining silver of medical instruments. And by the windowsill a kettle was visible, and a red plastic toy.

Sweat dripped down the collar of Kōji’s suit as he waited. He suddenly felt that what Yūko had told him about visiting someone in the hospital was a lie. Perhaps she’d come here in connection with her own condition. What if by some chance that corruption that had taken such a firm hold of Ippei had also rooted itself inside Yūko and inflamed her soul like a summer sunset?

A sky-blue parasol unfurled near the entrance. Like someone emerging into a heavy downpour, no sooner had Yūko stepped out from behind the large glass doors than she had opened her sun shade. She’s trying to hide her face, thought Kōji, gloomily.

It was approximately thirty yards between the entrance and the bench, the two locations being intersected by a wide vehicle turnaround. He lacked the courage to fix his eyes on her slowly approaching form and averted his gaze toward the ground. Something by his feet caught his attention. It was a black wrench. It had doubtless been forgotten and left by somebody while they were repairing their car on the driveway.

Much later while in prison, Kōji repeatedly reflected on the discovery he made at that moment. That wrench was not merely something that had been dropped there; rather it was the manifestation of a material phenomenon making its sudden entry into this world. To all appearances, the wrench, which lay on its side half-buried in the overgrown lawn exactly on the border with the concrete driveway, looked all the more natural in its present position—as though it ought to be there. However, this was merely a splendid deception, for it was undoubtedly some other indescribable substance that had provisionally assumed the form of a wrench. Some form of substance that originally ought not to have been here at all; a substance that, having been excluded from this world’s order, at times suddenly manifests itself in order to upset the very foundations of that order—the purest of pure substances. It was that substance that must have taken the shape of the wrench.

We normally consider “will” to be something intangible. Take, for instance, a swallow that skims past the eaves, the strange shapes of bright clouds, the sharp ridgeline of a tiled roof, lipstick, a lost button, a single glove, a pencil, or the hard fastener of a flexible curtain. We don’t normally refer to such objects by the term “will.” However, if we assume that not our will, but the will of “something” exists, then it would come as no surprise to find that “something” manifesting itself as some form of material phenomenon. While consciously working to upset our even, everyday sense of order, it becomes stronger, more unifying, waiting for the moment when it can integrate us into its own inevitably full and jostling system, and while it normally scrutinizes us from some invisible form, at the most critical moment it takes on shape and manifests itself as a tangible material object. Where do they come from? Kōji often conjectured, while brooding in his cell, that such objects probably came from the stars.

That was but a moment. He gazed intently at the black luster of the wrench. The moment was imbued with a quite inexplicable enchantment; time stood still and almost burst with the fascination of the wrench. Time was like a basket piled up with fruit. Thanks to that dirty, black, key-shaped piece of iron, a cool, mellow, charming fascination overflowed from the basket in a mere instant. Without hesitation Kōji picked it up and put it in the inside pocket of his summer jacket. It burned like fire and penetrated his shirt, pleasantly warming the flesh of his chest. Before long, the sky-blue parasol came closely into view, its stretched silk canopy raised aloft, and Yūko smiled wryly with thickly painted lips.

“Sorry to have kept you. I should think you were hot, weren’t you? I should have let you borrow this.”

She held her parasol against the back of the bench and blocked out the westerly sun. At that moment, Kōji had no reason at all to believe that Yūko had witnessed his strange behavior just now.

Kōji vividly recollected what they had discussed at length under the hot sunlight. To begin with, Yūko related how the condition of the patient she had just visited had improved considerably more than she had expected. Kōji listened without believing a word of it. Then, totally out of the blue, she said that she thought she had aged, a notion that Kōji enthusiastically denied.

“But when I look at my husband’s face I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” said Yūko, as always, gradually broaching the topic of conversation Kōji most disliked. Whenever she began talking about Ippei, she appeared to Kōji like a woman who was rapidly sinking in a swamp right in front of him. Before he even had time to reach out his hand, she had slipped between the open lotus flowers, feet, thighs, stomach, and then chest, instantly drowned in the mire, until even her thickly adorned thin lips disappeared, still wearing that smile, and afterward, all that remained on the surface of the swamp was a faint ripple of water.

Yūko told the story, which, incidentally, Kōji had already heard from time to time, of how much fun Ippei had been in his twenties; how he had been the personification of youth itself. That was evident in the long, enraptured commentary “The Vilification of Youth” that appeared in his biography of Li He, and at the time he wrote it, Ippei undoubtedly looked upon his own adolescence in the same light as the celestial man in that brilliant poem of the same name:

The respect in which Kōji differed from Ippei could be simply expressed in the verse: “He went through life without so much as reading a word.”

There was no reason why Yūko should have recited this poem while sitting on the bench drenched in the summer sun. She had previously lent the book to Kōji, and she had in particular drawn his attention to this piece, which he read in the austere surroundings of his lodgings; he realized that the disagreeable line quoted by Ippei during their first conversation in the bar that night was the closing verse of the poem. The young Ippei had certainly not wanted for anything. But now everything he possessed had begun to emit the stench of decay. There was no reason to believe that Yūko had not detected this foul odor, but likely as not she had come to love its fragrance. Ever since Ippei had convinced himself that only good fortune was destined to come his way, the manner in which he lived his dreadfully affected and artificial lifestyle had become markedly conspicuous.

Ah! It was an unbearable topic of conversation for Kōji! What could he do to shut her up? He suddenly stood up, swung his arms around as if he was doing gymnastic exercises (the wrench, which had already cooled, repeatedly knocked against his chest), and then walked around and sat down on the back-to-back bench. This nonchalant reaction to what Yūko saw as a stolid conversation cut her deeply.

There was a moment of hot silence around the bench. The chirring of a cicada sounded from the hairy trunk of a hemp palm. Kōji felt the tip of one of the parasol’s spokes stick slightly in his hair, but he left it as it was. A little while later, Yūko stepped in front of him, and stared down at him, still holding the parasol. Her face appeared slightly pale due to the shadow it cast.

“Why are you angry? What do you want me to do? You’re so self-centered, what right have you got—”

“What right? Don’t talk nonsense. Why don’t you sit down?”

“I don’t want to. It’s so hot here.”

The protest sounded extremely childlike.

“Well, if that’s the case, please move out of the way. I’m trying to look at the view.”

“I’m going home.”

Yūko, however, did not go home. Feeling hurt by the certain knowledge this young nobody had of the hollow home to which she ought to return, Yūko, far from following her intentions, sat down beside Kōji on the scorching bench.

“Can’t you leave that subject alone?”

“I have, haven’t I?”

“It’s annoying when you talk about him all the time.”

“It’s an uncomfortable topic of conversation for me, too, you know. It’s not just you.”

“You mean you talk about him involuntarily?”

“It’s my song. Is it forbidden to hum a tune? It’s my song I tell you.”

“And you expect me to join in the chorus? You must be joking. It’s a timid, cowardly song with only a bone-like shell of self-respect remaining.”

Kōji’s boorish choice of words was unsubstantiated by the facts. It was unclear when he had begun to use such uncouth language and at what point Yūko had chosen to overlook it. And there was no doubt that she welcomed those too-familiar youthful words as if she were being pleasantly stung with a light and pliant whip. In any case, Kōji was caught in a dilemma between the choice of language—which was constrained by an excess of familiarity—and excessive behavior, which was compelled by his emotions. While he was looking closely at Yūko’s hot cheeks, there appeared to be between them, as always, a distance similar to that between the skin of a patient and her doctor.

It was a meaningless squabble that went round and round in circles. Yet, because it was an honest anger, their heartbeats quickened. And then the anger quietly lost direction and gave way to a sense of common purpose… Kōji later wondered why, despite this confrontation, the quiet serenity of the surrounding scenery had remained etched in his memory.

The grassy south-facing slope commanded a view of the immediate locality—the three sides of the town in the valley, surrounded by hills that were covered with rows of houses, and on the summit of the hills stood sparse clumps of trees reaching up and almost touching the sky.

Closely built houses—some old, some modern—basked in the westerly summer sun and produced an unattractive, stark stereoscopic effect. The yellowish buildings of a junior high school soared precipitously in the east, while to the west could be seen an automobile firm, above which an ad balloon—displaying the names of new models of cars—hung in the sky like a sagging stomach. It was quiet, without a single solitary human form; a weary scene engulfed in the vast summer light. There were graves, too. Close to the summit, a narrow cemetery containing no more than a dozen or so tombstones, closed in on the house rooftops from above, looking like a group of cornered, naked refugees about to face the firing squad—backs against the cliff wall, standing on tiptoe, trembling with fear, huddled together in a state of paralysis, unable to help themselves.

Then came the evening meal, where they hardly said a word to each other. And afterward, Kōji’s sudden victory and Yūko’s submission. From that evening until nightfall, everything seemed to slide down like the flow of a dirty waterfall. After dinner they had gone to a small basement drinking house. Yūko suddenly began to speak her mind, to which Kōji added strong rebuttals, and for the first time they quarreled to their hearts’ content, stinging each other to the quick. Kōji accused Yūko of being spineless.

“You’re just a weak-willed coward. You’re afraid of facing up to reality. Of course, you want to know the truth, but you refuse to look at it with your own two eyes.”

“That’s a lie. It’s just that the truth, when I do eventually face up to it, is bound to be worse than it is on paper. I would rather see Ippei lose his presence of mind. Seeing his impassive face, well, it would simply be the end.”

“Well, if it’s the end it’s the end, isn’t it?”

“What would a child like you know about it?”

Kōji became confused, losing track of where he was trying to lead Yūko. Was it not possible that in his passion he was trying to transform her into the woman Ippei desired her to be?

Even assuming it was so, he hated the monstrously grotesque reality of Yūko’s obstinate refusal to change. And if it were something he could break down, even if the result meant the success of Ippei’s stratagem, he would have to accept it.

“If that’s the case, do you hate my husband? Or is it that you really hate me?” said Yūko, at length, her tone challenging.

“Maybe both of you. But maybe I hate the boss the most.”

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you? Here I am, a lady of means and with a lover to boot, receiving a monthly allowance from my husband. Why can’t I stay as I am? Even if I carry on like this, you won’t suffer at all, will you?”

“It’s because you tell lies. That’s why we can’t go on like this. I can’t allow such lies, even if they are nothing to do with me.”

And in this way Kōji finally showed his bright, youthful colors. Twenty-one-year-old Kōji—wearing a red military uniform and blowing his trumpet. He was able to behold his own portrait without being the least bit ashamed. Being in a position to openly scrape off the dark, worldly confusion of others was a privilege of youth, and after all, who could stand in his way?

Yūko, despite having drunk a considerable amount, fixed her pellucid eyes on Kōji’s face. She looked like somebody who suddenly had thrust before them an incomprehensible picture or a map that was impossible to trace. She extended an elegant finger into the dusky light and, like a blind woman, reached out to touch his cheek, only to stop halfway. To Yūko, Kōji’s cheek appeared to suddenly harden like stone. Her head was bent forward and a green-tinged shadow fell across her cheek, and in a terribly cold, almost possessed tone of voice she said, “Today is Tuesday.”

What Kōji vividly remembered, more than the thirty-minute passage of time between eight thirty and nine o’clock that evening, was the stillness of the scene—almost as if it were a painting formed of living people.

It took place in an ordinary apartment. Ippei was sitting up on the bed at the back of the room, dressed in a silvery gray silk gown. At his feet sat Machiko, wearing an identical gown, her hands thrust in the pockets. They were both naked underneath. A stand-type electric fan generously waved its drooping neck above their heads. Since the apartment had been hastily arranged, the color and design of the curtains and furniture did not match. Unfinished drinks stood on the bed table together with an ashtray. A three-sided mirror with its wings spread out appeared as if it was about to swallow up the room. With his pallid, tired face, Ippei looked sick.

A little while after they had knocked, Machiko appeared at the door, having adjusted the collar of her gown. Yūko slipped sideways into the room, followed by Kōji. Machiko drew back and sat on the bed, and Ippei quickly pulled his gown around him and propped himself up.

There was no great outcry or quarrel, events so far had run as fluidly as water—and then stopped; the four of them observed one another as if looking through a transparent glass wall, a glass wall that had suddenly been erected before their eyes, and that was extremely difficult to negotiate.

There was a marvelously surreal aspect to this truly wretched, mundane portrayal of reality. It was almost hallucinatory in its crystal clarity. Kōji recalled how the thoroughly creased sheet, which had appeared from beneath the displaced feather quilt, looked very much like a collection of lines drawn by an abstractionist depicting a diagram of movements.

There was something in the way Ippei hurriedly donned his gown and sat upright that brought to mind the behavior of a comic strip character and was the only flaw in the sequence of actions; even Ippei seemed to be aware that in that instant Kōji considered it so. For in thrusting his arm into the sleeve of the gown, while he hadn’t actually committed the blunder of missing the opening completely, the action was certainly performed with a little too much haste.

Having entered that silk labyrinth, Ippei’s emaciated, white, forty-year-old arm had thrashed about inside two or three times and, after struggling each time against the irresolute, unkind silk resistance of the lining cloth, had, at length, succeeded in grasping the awaiting air on its way out. There were certainly elements at work within this behavior that, had it continued even a fraction longer, would have upset the completion of this tableau vivant, but Ippei, when all was said and done, managed to exercise a modicum of subtle restraint.

The foursome, motionless, stared at one another. The act of looking seemingly transformed the person being looked at into some kind of monster. Like the chairman of a meeting, Ippei probably felt obliged to be the first to break the silence, and he spoke to Kōji. As far as Ippei was concerned, it was very fortunate that Kōji was there.

“Ah, I see you have come along as well. You’ve well and truly searched us out, haven’t you? Madam is no doubt grateful to you.”

Kōji sensed that this indirect form of address “Madam” had hurt Yūko terribly.

But, more than that, he felt bitterly disappointed and even betrayed. For at the moment Yūko appeared, Ippei failed to express intense delight or anything remotely resembling it. He thought about what had happened. Wasn’t it just such an expression of delight I had truly wanted to see? If it were not so, how have I endured six months of so much self-renunciation and humiliation?

Had not Kōji desired to witness the very instant when the truth of perverse human nature begins to shine? The moment when a fake jewel emits the luster of the genuine article? Sheer delight itself? The manifestation of an irrational dream? The very moment when the ridiculous becomes the sublime? Kōji had loved Yūko out of such expectations; he had hoped to shatter the reality of her protected world, and he had even been prepared to accept that the consequences might ultimately lead to Ippei’s happiness.

He would have at least rendered his services for the sake of somebody.

Whereas, what he had actually witnessed was nothing other than things he had grown utterly tired of seeing: the mediocre concealment of human shame, the irony of keeping up appearances. He had unexpectedly witnessed the ungraceful collapse of the drama he had believed in. The wind having been taken out of his sails, Kōji thought to himself, If that’s how it is, then it can’t be helped. If nobody can change it, then by this hand I…

But he didn’t know how to change it, and he steadily felt himself losing his composure.

Yūko spoke with an enervated, hoarse voice. “Why don’t you return home quietly, dear?”

Those words sounded awfully deflated, and Kōji wondered whether she hadn’t lost her mind. Ippei extricated his legs from where he had thrust them under the quilt. He moved them as though he were swimming, fishing around on the floor for his slippers with those hirsute, white, spindly limbs, and having located them, he arranged his gown and sat upright on the bed. He began to talk in a tone of soft persuasion, but the import was quite the opposite.

“Come now, displaying that kind of attitude and telling me to go home will produce nothing but the opposite effect, don’t you think? It’s a foolish thing to say and doesn’t become you at all. And as for myself, I shall return home when I consider it fit to do so and not when instructed to do so by my wife. Bringing matters to a conclusion at the eleventh hour is not a good idea. Now, darling, you run along first with Kōji here, and I will join you later. I trust there are no objections? I must also consider the position of this lady.”

Just then, Kōji noticed Machiko quivering all over like a dog that, having returned home through the rain, suddenly vigorously shook off all the raindrops. And yet for all that, her pale made-up face remained completely expressionless.

But then Yūko dropped her parasol to the floor, and Kōji was startled as she covered her face with her hands and began to cry. It was a bitter, coarse, primitive cry, and one that he had no reason to have heard from her before. She slumped to her knees, still crying, and gave vent to a ceaseless torrent of indistinct utterances. How Ippei had hurt her despite her love, how she had persevered against these hardships, and how she had been waiting in the hope that his heart would return to her. This indulgent whining carried around the room in every direction as it left Yūko’s body—which now lay crumpled on the carpet. It were as if dirty water was splashing through the air from a broken vase that had been dropped on the floor, and listening to this torrent Kōji wanted to cover up his ears—in the end, he screamed out in his mind: Hurry up and die! Please let this woman die quickly!

He may have hated Yūko, but, losing his presence of mind, his heart felt overwhelmed with sadness.

He became confused, so that he wasn’t sure whom he hated. He felt miserable, as though he were being ignored—like a slender pencil barely managing to stand on end.

The three stood idly by for what seemed like quite some time, gazing at Yūko’s crouching figure. Machiko stood up and made as if to help Yūko to her feet, and as she did so, Kōji saw how she was pulled up short by a look in Ippei’s eye. That momentary failed action appeared meaningless and transparent, as if watching sand crumble and fall to pieces as it rises up from the seabed. Kōji wondered why it was that human beings occasionally make such strange gestures. It was the same type of behavior a bird exhibits when, perched on top of an unstable branch, it suddenly stretches up tall and then retracts its neck.

In any case, it wasn’t of any great significance. Yūko continued crying and jabbering. Despite the rotating electric fan, the room, with its closed curtains, was grossly hot. At length, she stood up, the hem of her skirt in disarray, and rushed toward Ippei, appearing to leap on top of his knees, screaming as she went, “Go home! Go home right away!”

That she appeared to have leapt onto her husband’s knees may have been due to the exaggerated impression they made at that moment, and maybe Yūko had only placed her tear-soaked, slack hand on the knees of Ippei’s gown. Nevertheless, the upper half of Ippei’s body collapsed backward on the bed; then, having gained momentum, it bounced back, pushing Yūko’s bent body aside. More so than Machiko, it was possible that the presence of Kōji had been responsible for the strange vanity evident in that instant in Ippei’s unnecessarily violent behavior. Perhaps, having brushed her aside, in that moment, Ippei had grabbed hold of his wife around the chest in an attempt to impart a life lesson to Kōji and in the hope of seeing society’s distant approbation reflected in the younger man’s eyes. Gripping her so, he struck his wife heavily across the cheek. Having been hit, Yūko was quiet, but Machiko uttered a slight shriek.

Bull’s-eye! thought Kōji, looking on. Ippei had done her over pretty well. But far from deriving a cold sense of satisfaction, Kōji felt his whole body seething with excitement. Ippei struck Yūko once again. Her white face appeared docile like that of a doll, and with his arm no longer in place to support her, she collapsed obliquely onto the floor. Kōji reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He later recalled the natural smoothness of his actions at that time. Without any hint of emotion, objective, or motive, he took part in a flowing series of spontaneous movements and, with no impediments, freely crossed the boundary of no return. Ippei turned his head. Kōji pounced and struck frenzied blows with the wrench he had clasped in his hand. The wrench buried itself terribly deeply, and Ippei’s head moved in accordance with its impact.