A Shameful Life Read online

  I borrowed the policeman’s phone book and, finding Flounder’s number, called him and asked him to come down to the prosecutor’s office. He spoke with an arrogance that was new for him but agreed to do as I asked in the end.

  “Hey, you’d better sterilize that phone! He’s coughing up blood, you know.”

  I heard the chief’s voice boom all the way back in my holding cell.

  Later that afternoon they tied a thin, hemp rope about my waist. I was allowed to cover it with my cloak but, even so, a young policeman gripped the other end of the rope tightly as we boarded the train to Yokohama.

  I wasn’t the slightest bit worried. I even felt a little nostalgic for my holding cell and for the old policeman, too. Why am I this way? Here I am, a criminal, all bound up, and this is when I feel calm and relaxed. Even now, writing these words, an easy happiness grows inside me.

  Yet, even among these fond recollections, there was one misstep. One mistake so mortifying that I broke out in a cold sweat, a blunder I will never forget so long as I live. I was brought to the prosecutor’s office—a dim, gloomy place—and underwent another, cursory interrogation. The prosecutor was a quiet man of about forty (if “beauty” had ever been ascribed to me, it was, I do not doubt, nothing more than a base, lascivious beauty. The prosecutor, however, had what can only be called a “virtuous beauty,” with its own aura of wisdom and tranquility). He didn’t seem the type to be bothered by trifles, and I let my guard down entirely. I was answering his questions with a distracted air when I had another fit of coughing. I pulled my handkerchief from my sleeve and, thinking that I might as well make use of the opportunity, devised a despicable scheme. I added two more exaggerated, wheezing coughs, glancing out of the corner of my eye as I pressed the handkerchief to my mouth.

  “Really?”

  It was a gentle smile. I broke out in a cold sweat. I was horrified. No, even now the mere memory of it makes me want to jump to my feet. It is no exaggeration to say I felt even worse than I did in middle school student when that idiot, Takeichi, poking me in the back and calling me a “show off,” sent me plummeting to the depths of hell. These were the two greatest blunders in my life of acting. So mortified was I that I sometimes think I’d rather have been sentenced to ten years in prison than be subjected to the prosecutor’s gentle scorn.

  In the end, I was given a suspended indictment. This didn’t make me feel the slightest bit better. I sat on the bench outside the prosecutor’s office, waiting for Flounder to fetch me, more miserable than I would’ve thought possible.

  I stared out at the glow of the setting sun through the tall window. A line of seagulls seemed to form the Chinese character for “woman” as they flew past.

  THE THIRD JOURNAL

  Part One

  One of Takeichi’s predictions came true, the other did not. The one empty of honor, that women would fall for me, came true, while the more felicitous prediction that I would become a famous artist was never realized.

  At best, I managed to become a third-rate, nameless cartoonist, publishing in lowbrow magazines.

  I was expelled from school as a result of the Kamakura incident and spent my days in a tiny three-mat room on the second floor of Flounder’s house. Each month a meager allowance arrived from home, but even that didn’t reach my hands directly as it was sent in secret to Flounder (my brothers, it seemed, were sending it without my father’s knowledge). All other ties with my family had been completely severed. Though I did my best to ingratiate myself with Flounder, he was forever in a bad mood and never even smiled at me. That people should prove so fickle and change so utterly at the drop of a hat seemed to me more comical than despicable.

  “Stay inside. Just stay in your room.” That’s all he ever said to me.

  I suppose he was afraid I would commit suicide. Believing I might try to follow the woman into death and throw myself into the sea, he forbade me from going outside. In truth, he needn’t have worried. Confined to my tiny room, spending my days and nights curled up under a blanket and reading old magazines like a halfwit, unable to drink or smoke, I’d completely lost the energy to kill myself.

  Flounder’s house was near the medical school in Okubo, not far from Hongō. Though his enthusiastically lettered sign boldly announced the presence of a purveyor of fine arts and antiques, the “Garden of the Green Dragon,” his business was in fact nothing but one of two shops in a tiny row house, with a cramped doorway and, inside, shelves lined with useless rubbish, all covered in a thick layer of dust. (Flounder did not rely on the rubbish in his shop to support himself but rather earned his crust as a go-between—facilitating the transfer of one gentleman’s treasures to another.) Flounder was hardly ever in the shop. He left early each morning with a scowl on his face, and, while he was gone, a shop boy of about seventeen or eighteen was responsible for keeping an eye on me. He spent every spare moment playing catch in the street with the other boys from the neighborhood. I was just a loafer on the second floor, an idiot or a madman, and he subjected me to any number of pompous lectures. Being averse to conflict, I meekly endured his pronouncements with an attitude that alternated between interest and exhaustion. It seemed he was Shibuta’s—Flounder’s—illegitimate son, but the situation was complicated and the connection not openly acknowledged. That Shibuta had never married may have been due in part to these complications. I seemed to recall hearing gossip to that effect when I was living at home but the affairs of others didn’t hold much interest for me, so I don’t know any of the details. Still, the set of the boy’s eyes did have something of the look of a fish about them, so perhaps he really was Flounder’s son. . . . If so, theirs was a cold and lonely relationship. Sometimes, they ordered soba noodles late at night and—without inviting me—ate in wordless silence.

  It was the boy’s job to prepare the meals, so, three times a day every day, he climbed the steps to the second floor, carrying a tray specially prepared for the pest who lived upstairs. He and Flounder would eat in the damp four-and-a-half mat room downstairs, and I could hear the clattering of dishes as they rushed through their meals.

  One evening, toward the end of March, Flounder, who must have come into unexpected funds or perhaps had some other scheme in mind (it may have been a combination of the two, or any number of other possibilities that hadn’t occurred to me), called me down from my room on the second floor and bade me join him at his table upon which, most unusually, there was tuna—not flounder—sashimi, and a bottle of warm saké. The master of the table, full of admiration at the luxury of his own banquet, absently offered me a dribble of saké.

  “So, what exactly are you going to do with yourself?”

  I didn’t say anything but rather picked at a dish of dried sardines. I felt the warmth of mild intoxication wash over me as I gazed into the silver eyes of the dried fish. I longed for a return to the days when I caroused about town and even felt a certain nostalgia for Horiki. A desire for “freedom” began to build inside me, and at any moment I felt that tears would start trickling down my face.

  Since arriving at Flounder’s house I’d lost even the energy to play the clown and meekly surrendered myself to the scorn of Flounder and his boy. For his part, Flounder seemed keen to avoid long, frank talks with me, and I felt no desire to go chasing after him to plead my case. My transformation into a half-witted, freeloading houseguest was all but complete.

  “Now look, this suspended indictment thing—it seems it won’t leave any kind of record. Well then, you’ve got a chance to make a fresh start, if you make the effort. If you mend your ways and confide in me—I mean really confide in me—I’ll give it some thought too.”

  Flounder—but no, not just Flounder but everyone, or so it seemed to me—spoke with a vague, wary edge to his words and with an odd complexity, perhaps due to the liberal sprinkling of verbal loopholes. It seemed a pointless, excessive caution. His endless, petty, annoying rhetorical acrobatics never failed to confound me and I soon gave up trying to follow hi
m, either using my clowning to treat it like a joke or just sitting there, nodding my head in a silent attitude of utter defeat and letting him have his way entirely.

  I didn’t realize it until many years later, but had Flounder only outlined the situation as it really was everything could’ve been resolved without a fuss. His unnecessary caution or, rather, the incomprehensible pretension and posing that is all too common in this world, brought about indescribable misery.

  All he had to do was say the following:

  “We don’t care if it’s a national school or a private school but, come April, make sure that you are going to school. Do this and your family will take care of the expenses.”

  As I discovered much later, that is precisely how things stood. Had I known, I certainly would’ve done as I was told. It was Flounder’s wary, roundabout manner of speaking that made everything sound strangely complicated, and, as a result, the direction of my life changed completely.

  “Of course, if you have no intention of confiding in me then there is very little that I can do.”

  “Confide in you . . . about what?” I truly had no idea what he was getting at.

  “About what’s in your heart, surely.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as? Such as what you are going to do with yourself.”

  “You mean . . . You think I should get a job?”

  “No, tell me what you think.”

  “But even if I wanted to go back to school . . .”

  “Then you’d need money, of course. But the real problem isn’t money. It’s your feelings.”

  Why didn’t he just tell me that the money would be sent from home? That would’ve settled my mind entirely, but instead I stumbled about aimlessly, lost in a fog with no idea which way to go.

  “Well, how about it? Don’t you have any goals? Any dreams for the future? I don’t suppose the person being looked after has any idea how much trouble it is to take care of someone else all the time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m really worried about you. Now that I’ve gone and taken on the job of looking after you I don’t like to see this kind of apathy. I want you to show me you’re determined to make a new start for yourself. A grand start. Now, if you come to me and, in all sincerity, confide your goals and plans for the future in me—why, I’ll do everything I can to help. Now, it’s only poor old Flounder here, so if you have any notions of returning to your old life of luxury you’d better give them up. But if you’re determined, if you’ve set a clear course for the future, and if you confide in me then I have every intention of doing what I can to help, meager though that help might be. Do you see what I’m trying to say? Do you understand? What, precisely, do you, plan to do with yourself?”

  “Well, if I can’t stay here I’ll get a job and . . .”

  “Honestly? Is that what you’re really thinking? These days even people from imperial universities . . .”

  “Oh, no—I didn’t mean a job at a company.”

  “What, then?”

  “As an artist.” I said with sudden resolve.

  “Whaa-?”

  I will never forget how Flounder looked at that moment, neck scrunched up as he laughed, a sly shadow across his face. Scornful yet also not. If I were to liken it to the sea, I suppose it would be akin to that strange, fluttering shadow that hovers over the deepest waters. In his laughter, I thought I had caught a flashing glimpse of the essence of adult life.

  No, no, no, that simply won’t do, you’re not showing the slightest determination, think it over, take the night, think it over carefully. Thus instructed I hurried back upstairs, as though chased. I lay awake in bed but nothing came to me. So, sometime around dawn, I ran away.

  I’ll definitely be back by tonight. I’m going to discuss my future with a friend at the address below. No need to worry. Honest.

  With pencil and stationery, I scribbled the note in large letters and, adding Horiki’s address, snuck out of Flounder’s house.

  I wasn’t running away because I felt humiliated by Flounder’s lecture. I ran away because I was of his mind entirely. I did lack determination. I had absolutely no idea what I should do with myself and, what is more, I genuinely felt sorry for Flounder. I was a constant irritation to him and a burden to his household. Even if, by some miracle, I should manage to rouse myself and resolve on a new course of action, when I thought of Flounder, poor as he was, sending me money each month, it pained me so much that I couldn’t possibly stay any longer.

  I wasn’t really intending to discuss my so-called “plans for the future” with the likes of Horiki. I only wrote that to put Flounder’s mind at ease, even if only for a little while (not in the hope of “throwing him off my scent” like you’d see in a detective novel—well no, I’m sure that must have been a consideration, though only a very slight one—rather, better to say I was terrified that Flounder, shocked by my sudden disappearance, would grow confused, violently agitated. It was a typical, pathetic tendency of mine. I know from the start I’ll be found out but I’m too timid to tell the truth so I always dress it up. I’m not unlike those creatures that society reviles as “liars,” but I hardly ever seek to conceal the truth out of a desire for personal gain. I almost always act out of desperation, on the spur of the moment, when a sudden chill descends on a room and I feel like I’m suffocating. I know I will pay for it later but when my desperate “need to please” rears its head I’m suddenly adding some strange, feeble, idiotic embellishment or other. I’ve been much criticized for this by the so-called “honest people” of the world), and Horiki’s name just popped into my head so I scribbled it in the margins—there was nothing more to it than that.

  I walked a little ways to Shinjuku and sold the books I’d taken with me. That done, as you might suppose, I had absolutely no idea what to do next. I got along with almost everyone, but I’d never known true “friendship.” Drinking friends like Horiki aside, all my interactions with other people were nothing more than exercises in suffering. I played the clown in the hopes of mitigating that suffering, but the clowning itself left me exhausted. If I saw someone on the street with whom I had even the slightest acquaintance, or even someone who looked like an acquaintance, I gave a sudden start; a shudder of disgust rippled through me, leaving me dizzy. I was well liked by others, but it seems I lacked the ability to love them back. (Or rather, let’s say I have grave doubts as to whether or not anyone in this world possesses the ability to “love.”) It was only natural, then, that a person like me would not have any “close friends.” It was all but impossible for me to even “visit” people. The gates of another’s house were more disturbing to me than the gates of hell in The Divine Comedy. Somewhere, I knew, in those depths beyond the gate, a terrible beast lurked, a dragon writhed, filling the air with the stench of rotting meat.

  I had no friends. I had no place to go.

  Horiki.

  I’d meant it as a joke but in the end I did just as I wrote in my letter. I went to see Horiki in Asakusa. This was the first time I’d actually gone to see him at home. Before I’d just sent telegrams, telling him to come and meet me, but now I begrudged even the telegram fee and, disgraced as I was, I wasn’t certain that a telegram would be sufficient to bring him out. So I resigned myself to doing what I disliked most and decided to pay Horiki a visit. With a heavy sigh I climbed aboard a streetcar, and, when it occurred to me that the sole ray of hope left to me in this world was none other than Horiki, a terrible wave of foreboding swept over me, sending shivers down my spine.

  He was at home. His was a tiny two-story house at the end of a filthy alleyway. He lived in a six-mat room that occupied the entirety of the second floor while his aged parents and a young craftsman sewed and pounded away on the first floor, making thongs for geta sandals.

  On that day Horiki showed me a new aspect of his “city boy” persona. It was his cunning. A display of such cold, calculated egotism as to leave a simple country boy like me utterly astounde
d. He was not, it seemed, someone who simply drifted aimlessly through life as I did.

  “You’re hopeless! Has your father forgiven you yet? No?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I’d run away.

  As was my wont, I lied. Though I knew Horiki would discover the truth at any moment, I lied.

  “Oh, it’ll work out one way or another.”

  “Hey, this is no joke. I’m warning you—you’d better wise up. Even an idiot knows when enough is enough. Look, I’ve got things to do—I’m really busy these days.”

  “Things? What kind of things?”

  “Hey! Stop that! Don’t pick at the cushion!”

  I’d been unconsciously fingering the threads at the seam or hem or whatever it’s called—that bundle of threads on the corner of the cushion—and yanking on them. When it came to his own possessions Horiki despised the loss of a single thread. Far from being embarrassed at his own outburst, he glared at me in rebuke. I suddenly realized that, over the course of our association, Horiki had not lost so much as a single thing.

  His mother came up the stairs, carrying a tray with two bowls of sweet adzuki bean soup and rice cakes.

  “Oh, thank you!” Horiki spoke with such unnatural politeness and reserve that one could almost believe him to be a true, filial son.

  “Thank you so much—adzuki and rice cake, is it? Oh, that’s too much! You really shouldn’t have put yourself to so much trouble. I have to go out soon. No, no—please leave it. After all, it is your famous adzuki soup and it would be a shame to waste it. Thank you. Here, you have some too—Mother made it especially for us. Ah, now this is excellent. Wonderful!”

  He was so delighted and ate with such relish that I couldn’t think it entirely an act. I sipped at the soup, but it smelled of boiled water and, when I took a bite of the rice cake, I realized it wasn’t rice cake at all but something I couldn’t identify. I am certainly not scorning their poverty. (Indeed, at the time I thought the soup wasn’t bad, and I was touched by his mother’s consideration. Though I lived in terror of poverty, I don’t think that I scorned it in others.) The soup, and Horiki’s obvious delight in it, showed me the frugal character of the urbanite as well as the true nature of the Tokyo family, with its clear distinction between insider and outsider. I describe this scene simply to record the profound feeling of loneliness and confusion that swept over me as I sat there, plying my chipped and worn chopsticks. I alone had been left behind, a fool, forever fleeing from human society, with no regard for the distinctions of insider and outsider, abandoned even by Horiki.