Early Light Page 2

  “They’re fine.”

  “Where are they?”

  “At the school.”

  “I’ve got some riceballs. I had to walk like mad, but at least I got some food.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Let’s keep our spirits up. Look at this. Most of the things we buried are fine. We’ll be all right for the time being.”

  “We should have buried more stuff.”

  “It’s all right. With all this, we’ll be able to hold our heads up high wherever we go for help. I’m going to take some food to the school. You stay here and rest. Here, have some riceballs. Take as many as you like.”

  A woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight is in some ways more mature than a man of forty or more. She was a rock, a model of composure. Her perfectly worthless brother-in-law proceeded to rip a few planks from the fence, lay them on the ground in the field in back, and sit down with legs crossed to stuff his cheeks with the riceballs she’d left. I was completely without resources or plan. But, whether good for nothing or just plain stupid, I didn’t give a thought to what we were to do. The only thing that really concerned me was my daughter’s eye problem. How in the world would we go about treating it now?

  Before very long my wife and sister-in-law arrived. My wife had the baby on her back, and my sister-in-law was leading my daughter by the hand.

  “Did you walk all the way here?” I asked my daughter.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding.

  “Is that right? That’s really something. The house burned down.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded again.

  “It looks like the doctor’s place is gone, too,” I said, turning to my wife. “What are we going to do about her eyes?”

  “We had them washed out this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “A doctor came by the school.”

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “No, just the best they could do. A nurse did it.”

  “Oh.”

  We took shelter for the day at the house of a schoolfriend of my sister-in-law’s on the outskirts of town. With us we carried the food and the pots and pans we’d unearthed from the pit. Smiling at my sister-in-law, I pulled a watch from my pocket.

  “We’ve still got this. I grabbed it before I ran out of the house.”

  It was my brother-in-law’s pocket watch. I’d found it in the desk some time before and taken it out for my own use.

  “Good going.” She smiled back at me. “You surprise me. This really adds to our assets.”

  I was rather proud of myself. “It can be pretty inconvenient if you don’t have a timepiece, you know.” I pressed the watch into my little girl’s hand. “See?” I said. “It’s a watch. Put it up to your ear. Hear it go tick-tick-tick? Look at that,” I told my wife and her sister. “It even makes a good toy for blind kids.”

  My daughter was standing perfectly still with her head cocked and the watch pressed against her ear when suddenly it slipped from her hand. It made a clear, tinkling sound as it hit the ground. The crystal was smashed to pieces. It was beyond repair. One could hardly expect to find a shop selling watch crystals.

  “Oh, no,” I said, my heart sinking.

  “Dummy,” my sister-in-law muttered, but I was relieved to see that she didn’t seem particularly distressed about suddenly losing what was virtually the only “asset” she had left.

  We cooked dinner in a corner of the garden at the schoolfriend’s house, then retired early in a six-mat room inside. My wife and her sister, tired as they were, seemed unable to sleep and were quietly discussing what we should do.

  “Hey, there’s nothing to worry about,” I told them. “We’ll all go to my family’s place up north. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  They fell silent. From the beginning, neither of them had put much stock in any opinions of mine. They were apparently devising plans of their own now and didn’t even deign to reply.

  “All right, I know you don’t have any faith in me.” I smiled sourly. “But, listen, trust me just this once. That’s all I’m asking.”

  I heard my sister-in-law giggle in the darkness, as if I’d said something totally outlandish. Then she and my wife continued their discussion.

  “Fine. Suit yourselves,” I said with a chuckle of my own. “Not much I can do if you won’t trust in me.”

  “Well, what do you expect?” my wife suddenly snapped. “You say such preposterous things, we never know if you’re joking or serious. It’s only natural that we don’t rely on you. Even now, with things the way they are, I bet all you can think about is sake.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “But if we had some, you’d drink it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, maybe I would.”

  The two ladies decided that, at any rate, it wouldn’t do to impose on our present hosts any more than we already had, and that, come morning, we’d have to look for somewhere else to stay. The following day we loaded our things on a large cart and went to the house of another of my sister-in-law’s acquaintances. This house was quite a spacious affair. The man who owned it was about fifty and seemed a gentleman of sterling character. He lent us a ten-mat room. We also found a hospital nearby. The gentleman’s wife told us that the prefectural hospital in Kōfu had been destroyed and had relocated to a building here on the outskirts of town. My wife and I each shouldered a child and set out, taking a shortcut through the mulberry fields, and reached the hospital, at the foot of the mountains, in about ten minutes.

  The opthalmologist was a woman.

  “The girl can’t open her eyes at all. We’re thinking about heading for my family’s house in the country, but it’s a long trip by train, and we don’t even want to attempt it if her condition might get worse on the way. We’re really at our wits’ end.” Wiping the sweat from my face, I fervently described the girl’s symptoms, hoping to induce the lady doctor to do everything in her power to help us.

  “What, this?” she said breezily. “This will clear up in no time.”

  “Really?”

  “It hasn’t affected the eyes themselves at all. I’m sure you’ll be able to travel in four or five days.”

  My wife broke in to ask if there were any injections that could be given for this sort of thing.

  “There are, yes, but . . .”

  “Please, Doctor,” said my wife, bowing deeply.

  Whether the injection worked or the infection had simply run its natural course I couldn’t say, but my daughter’s eyes opened on the afternoon of the second day after we visited the hospital.

  “Thank goodness, thank goodness,” was all I could say, and I said it over and over. The first thing I did was take her to see what was left of the house.

  “See? It burned all up.”

  “Yeah,” she said, with a big smile on her face. “Burned all up.”

  “Everything’s gone. Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Odagiri house, the Chino house, they all burned up.”

  “Yeah, they all burned up,” she said, still smiling.

  TRANSLATED BY RALPH McCARTHY

  ONE HUNDRED VIEWS

  OF MOUNT FUJI

  The slopes of Hiroshige’s Mount Fuji converge at an angle of eighty-five degrees, and those in Bunchō’s paintings at about eighty-four, but if you study survey maps drawn by the army, you’ll find that the angle formed by the eastern and western slopes is one hundred twenty-four degrees, and that formed by the northern and southern slopes is one hundred seventeen. And it’s not only Hiroshige and Bunchō—most paintings of Fuji, in fact, depict the slopes meeting at an acute angle, the summit slender, lofty, delicate. Some of Hokusai’s renditions fairly resemble the Eiffel Tower, peaking at nearly thirty degrees. But the real Fuji is unmistakably obtuse, with long, leisurely slopes; by no means do one hundred twenty-four degrees eas
t-west and one hundred seventeen north-south make for a very steep peak. If I were living in India, for example, and were suddenly snatched up and carried off by an eagle and dropped on the beach at Numazu in Japan, I doubt if I’d be very much impressed at the sight of this mountain. Japan’s “Fujiyama” is “wonderful” to Westerners simply because they’ve heard so much about it and yearned so long to see it; but how much appeal would Fuji hold for one who’s never been exposed to such popular propaganda, for one whose heart is simple and pure and free of preconceptions? It would, perhaps, strike that person as almost pathetic, as mountains go. It’s short. In relation to the width of its base, quite short. Any mountain with a base that size should be at least half again as tall.

  The only time Fuji looked really tall to me was when I saw it from Jukkoku Pass. That was good. At first, because it was cloudy, I couldn’t see the top, but I judged from the angle of the lower slopes and picked out a spot amid the clouds where I thought the peak probably was, only to find, when the sky began to clear, that I was way off. The bluish summit loomed up twice as high as I’d expected. I was not so much surprised as strangely tickled, and I cackled with laughter. I had to hand it to Fuji that time. When you come face to face with absolute reliability, you tend, first of all, to burst into silly laughter. You just come all undone. It’s like—this is a funny way to put it, I know, but it’s like chuckling with relief after loosening your belt. Young men, if ever the one you love bursts out laughing the moment she sees you, you are to be congratulated. By no means must you reproach her. She has merely been overwhelmed by the absolute reliability she senses in you.

  Fuji from the window of an apartment in Tokyo is a painful sight. In winter it’s quite clear and distinct. That small white triangle poking up over the horizon: that’s Fuji. It’s nothing; it’s a Christmas candy. What’s more, it lists pathetically to the left, like a battleship slowly beginning to founder. It was during the winter three years ago that a certain person caught me off guard with a shocking confession. I was at my wits’ end. That night I sat alone in one room of my apartment, guzzling sake. I drank all night, without sleeping a wink. At dawn I went to relieve myself, and through the wire mesh screen covering the square window in the toilet I could see Fuji. Small, pure white, leaning slightly to the left: that’s one Fuji I’ll never forget. On the asphalt street below the window, a fishmonger sped by on his bicycle, muttering to himself (“You can sure see Fuji good this morning . . . Damn, it’s cold . . .”), and I stood in the dark little room, stroking the mesh screen and weeping with despair. That’s an experience the like of which I hope never to go through again.

  In the early autumn of 1938, determined to rethink my life, I packed a single small valise and set out on a journey.

  Kōshū. What distinguishes the mountains here is their gentle and strangely aimless rise and fall. A man named Kojima Usui once wrote, in The Landscape of Japan, that “to these mountains come many cross-grained, self-willed sorts to disport themselves like wizard monks.” As mountains go, these are, perhaps, freaks. I boarded a bus in Kōfu City and arrived, after a boneshaking, hour-long ride, at Misaka Pass.

  Misaka Pass: one thousand three hundred meters above sea level. At the top of the pass is Tenka Chaya, a small teahouse, in a room on the second floor of which my mentor Ibuse Masuji had been holed up writing since early summer. I’d come with the knowledge that I’d find him here. Provided it wouldn’t be a hindrance to his work, I, too, intended to rent a room in the teahouse and do a bit of disporting amid those mountains.

  Mr. Ibuse was hard at work. I received his permission and settled in, and spent each day from then on, like it or not, face to face with Fuji. This pass, once a strategic point on the road to Kamakura that connected Kōfu with the Tokaido Highway, offers a prospect of the northern slope that has been counted as one of the Three Great Views of Mount Fuji since ancient times. Far from being pleased with the view, however, I found myself holding it in contempt. It’s too perfect. You have Fuji right before you and, lying at its feet, the cold, white expanse of Lake Kawaguchi cradled by hushed, huddling mountains on either side. One look threw me into blushing confusion. It was a wall painting in a public bath. Scenery on a stage. So precisely made to order it was mortifying to behold.

  On a sunny afternoon two or three days after I’d arrived, when Mr. Ibuse had caught up on his work somewhat, we hiked up to Mitsu Pass together. Mitsu Pass: one thousand seven hundred meters above sea level. A bit higher than Misaka Pass. You reach the top after climbing a steep slope, more or less on all fours, for about an hour. Parting the ivies and vines as I half crawled toward the summit, I presented a spectacle that was far from lovely. Mr. Ibuse was in proper hiking clothes and cut a jaunty figure, but I, having no such gear, was clad in a dotera—a square-cut, padded cotton kimono—that the teahouse had provided me with. It was too short and left a stretch of hairy shin exposed on either leg. I was also wearing a pair of thick, rubber-soled workshoes lent me by an old man at the teahouse, and was acutely aware of how shabby I looked. I’d made a few adjustments, securing the dotera with a narrow, manly sash and donning a straw hat I’d found hanging on the wall, but the only result was that I looked even more bizarre. I’ll never forget how Mr. Ibuse, a person who would never stoop to belittling someone’s appearance, eyed me with a compassionate air and tried to console me by muttering something about it not becoming a man, after all, to concern himself very much with fashion.

  At any rate, we eventually reached the top, but no sooner had we done so than a thick fog rolled over us, and even standing on the observation platform at the edge of the cliff provided us with no view whatsoever. We couldn’t see a thing. Enveloped in that dense fog, Mr. Ibuse sat down on a rock, puffed slowly at a cigarette, and broke wind. He looked decidedly out of sorts. On the observation platform were three somber little teahouses. We chose one that was run by an elderly couple and had a cup of hot green tea. The old woman felt sorry for us and said what a stroke of bad luck the fog was, that it would surely clear before long, that normally you could see Fuji right there, looming up before you, plain as day. She then retrieved a large photograph of the mountain from the interior of the teahouse and carried it to the edge of the cliff, held it high in both hands, and earnestly explained that you could generally see Fuji just here, just like this, this big and this clear. We sipped at the coarse tea, admiring the photo and laughing. That was a fine Fuji indeed. We ended up not even regretting the impenetrable fog.

  It was, I believe, two days later that Mr. Ibuse left Misaka Pass, and I accompanied him as far as Kōfu. In Kōfu I was to be introduced to a certain young lady whom Mr. Ibuse had suggested I marry. Mr. Ibuse was dressed casually, in his hiking clothes. I wore a kimono and a thin summer coat secured with my narrow sash. He led me to the young lady’s house on the outskirts of the city. A profusion of roses grew in the garden. The young lady’s mother showed us into the parlor, where we exchanged greetings, and after a while the young lady came in. I didn’t look at her face. Mr. Ibuse and the mother were carrying on a desultory, grown-up conversation when, suddenly, he fixed his eye on the wall above and behind me and muttered, “Ah, Fuji.” I twisted around and looked up at the wall. Hanging there was a framed aerial photograph of the great crater atop the mountain. It resembled a pure white waterlily. After studying the photo, I slowly twisted back to my original position and glanced fleetingly at the girl. That did it. I made up my mind then and there that, though it might entail a certain amount of difficulty, I wanted to marry this person. That was a Fuji I was grateful for.

  Mr. Ibuse returned to Tokyo that day, and I went back to Misaka Pass. Throughout September, October, and the first fifteen days of November I stayed on the second floor of the teahouse, pushing ahead with my work a little at a time and trying to come to terms with that Great View of Fuji until it all but did me in.

  I had a good laugh one day. A friend of mine, a member of “The Japan Romantics” who was then lectur
ing at a university or something, dropped by the teahouse during a hiking excursion, and the two of us stepped into the corridor on the second floor to smoke and poke fun at the view of Fuji we had through the windows there.

  “Awfully, crass, isn’t it? It’s like, ‘Ah, Honorable Mount Fuji.’”

  “I know. It’s embarrassing to look at.”

  “Say, what’s that?” my friend said suddenly, gesturing with his chin. “That fellow dressed up like a monk.”

  A small man of about fifty, wearing a ragged black robe and dragging a long staff, was climbing toward the pass, turning time and again to gaze up at Fuji.

  “It reminds you of that painting Priest Saigyō Admiring Mount Fuji, doesn’t it?” I said. “The fellow has a lot of style.” To me the monk seemed a poignant evocation of the past. “He might be some great saint or something.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” my friend said with cold detachment. “He’s a common beggar.”

  “No, no. There’s something special about him. Look how he walks—he’s got style, I tell you. You know, they say the priest Noin used to write poems praising Fuji right here on this pass, and—”

  I was interrupted by my friend’s laughter. “Ha! Look at that. You call that ‘having style’?”

  Hachi, my hosts’ pet dog, had begun to bark at Noin, throwing him into a panic. The scene that ensued was painfully ludicrous.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said, crestfallen.

  The beggar’s panic increased until he began to flounder disgracefully about, threw away his staff, and finally ran for dear life. It was true, he had no style at all. Our priest was as crass as his Fuji, we decided, and even now, thinking back on that scene, it strikes me as laughably absurd.

  A courteous and affable young man of twenty-five named Nitta came to visit me at the teahouse. He worked in the post office in Yoshida, a long, narrow town that lies at the base of the mountains below the pass, and said he’d learned where I was by seeing mail addressed to me. After we’d talked in my room for a while and had begun to feel at ease with each other, he smiled and said, “Actually, I was going to come with two or three of my friends, but at the last moment they all pulled out, and, well, I read something by Satō Haruo-sensei that said you were terribly decadent, and mentally disturbed to boot, so I could hardly force them to come. I had no idea you’d be such a serious and personable gentleman. Next time I’ll bring them. If it’s all right with you, of course.”