A Shameful Life Read online

  “Sorry, but I’ve got things to do,” Horiki said, standing up and putting on his jacket. “Got to go. Sorry.”

  At that moment a female visitor arrived for Horiki, and the direction of my life changed completely.

  Horiki brightened suddenly. “Oh, I’m sorry—I was just about to go and pay a visit on you but then this one here showed up. No, no, not at all—please come in. Have a seat.”

  Horiki seemed very agitated. I’d gotten up from the cushion I’d been sitting on and, turning it over, held it out for the visitor, but Horiki, snatching it from me, turned it over again before offering it to the woman. There were only the two cushions in the room, Horiki’s and the one for guests.

  The woman was tall and thin. She sat politely beside the cushion, in the corner of the room by the doorway.

  I listened absently to their conversation. She apparently worked for a magazine that had commissioned a print or the like from Horiki and she’d come to pick it up.

  “We are in rather a hurry.”

  “It’s done—I finished it ages ago. Here you are.”

  A telegram arrived.

  Horiki’s good humor faded as he read, his smile replaced by a scowl.

  “Dammit—what’ve you done now?”

  The telegram was from Flounder.

  “Anyway, just go home. I ought to take you there myself but I’m too busy for that now. What were you thinking, sitting there looking so pleased with yourself when you’ve just run away from home!”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Okubo,” I replied without thinking.

  “Well, that’s not far from my office.”

  She was twenty-eight, from Kōshū, amid the mountains. She lived in an apartment out in Kōenji with her five-year-old daughter. It had been three years since her husband died, she said.

  “You look like you went through a lot growing up. You’re so sensitive, poor thing.”

  That was my first time living as a kept man. When Shizuko (for that was her name) left for work at the magazine in Shinjuku I stayed home, dutifully caring for her daughter, Shigeko. Before I came along she’d play at the superintendent’s apartment while her mother worked, but now she seemed wholly taken with this new, “sensitive” man who’d shown up to be her playmate.

  I’d been there for a week or so, idly whiling the time away. Power lines ran near the window and a kite decorated with a colorful drawing of an old-fashioned houseboy had become entangled in them, tossing this way and that, torn in places by the strong, dusty spring winds. Still, it clung tenaciously to the wire, bouncing back and forth as though bobbing its head in agreement. I grimaced and reddened each time I saw it. It even appeared in my dreams, making me groan in my sleep.

  “I want . . . some money.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot. . . . It’s true what they say, you know. When poverty comes in, love flies out.”

  “Don’t be silly. That’s just old-fashioned nonsense. . . .”

  “Is it, though? How can you tell? If things stay like this I might run off one of these days.”

  “Which of us is poor? And which of us is going to run off? You’re being silly.”

  “I want to earn my own money to buy liquor—no, cigarettes. I think my paintings are a lot better than Horiki’s.”

  At times like this, memories of the self-portraits I’d painted in middle school—what Takeichi called my “monster paintings”—rose up, unbidden, from the depths of my mind. My lost masterpieces. They’d vanished over the many times I’d moved, but I couldn’t help thinking that they in particular had been truly superb. I had painted any number of pictures since, but those remembered masterpieces seemed now so impossibly distant I was left feeling hollow and plagued by the dull ache of loss.

  A half-empty glass of absinthe.

  That is how I secretly described that eternal, irreparable sense of loss. Whenever people talked about paintings, that half-empty glass of absinthe flitted before my eyes and I grew restless. I writhed with the desire to show them my lost paintings, to convince them of my talent.

  She snickered. “Really? It’s so cute the way you joke with a straight face.”

  I’m not joking! It’s true! Oh, I wish I could show you. After a moment’s idle anguish, however, I gave up and changed tack. “Cartoons, then. At least I can outdo Horiki when it comes to cartoons.”

  I was ignored when I was serious, and only when I was clowning and deceiving, as now, did my words seem to carry a ring of truth.

  “That’s not a bad idea. I was impressed, to be honest. I’ve seen the ones you’re always drawing for Shigeko and they even make me laugh. How about it? Want to give it a try? I can talk to the editor at work.”

  Her company published an obscure monthly magazine for children.

  When women see you . . . We can’t help ourselves. We feel compelled to do something, to help. . . . You’re always so timid and yet still a comedian. . . . Sometimes, you get so lonely and depressed but when women see this, we only want to help you all the more.

  Shizuko often said things like that, flattering and coaxing me. Yet, when it occurred to me that her remarks possessed the unwholesome quality specific to words addressed to a kept man they had the opposite effect and I found myself sinking even further, unable to rouse even a glimmer of spirit. I wanted money, not women. I secretly yearned and schemed for some means to support myself, enabling me to escape from Shizuko, but, in the end, these schemes only made me more reliant upon her. She took care of the mess I left behind when I ran away just as she took care of everything else. This woman from Kōshū was more formidable than any man, and it wasn’t long before I had to “tremble” before Shizuko too.

  She set up a meeting between herself, Flounder, and Horiki where it was decided that all remaining ties with my family would be severed and Shizuko and I would live openly as husband and wife. Furthermore, thanks to Shizuko’s deft maneuverings, my cartoons were bringing in surprisingly large amounts of money. Even as I spent that money on liquor and cigarettes, my feelings of loneliness and gloom only grew worse with each passing day. I’d sunk so low that there were times when, drawing “The Adventures of Kinta and Ota” for Shizuko’s magazine, I would suddenly find myself so overwhelmed by longing for my family back home that my pen ceased its scratching and, my head hanging, tears began to spill from my eyes.

  At such times Shigeko was my faint salvation. She’d already taken to calling me “Daddy” without the slightest self-consciousness.

  “Daddy, is it true? If you pray to God he’ll give you whatever you want?”

  If so, I’m the one who should be praying, I thought.

  Oh Lord, grant me cold determination. Grant me understanding of the nature of “humans.” It is no sin even to shove another aside. Oh God, grant me the mask of anger.

  “Yes, that’s right. God will give you anything you ask for, but I don’t think it’ll work for me.”

  I was terrified even of God. I couldn’t bring myself to trust in God’s love, I could only believe in His wrath. Faith. To me, that meant standing before the judgment seat, head hung low, waiting to be scourged by His whip. I could believe in hell readily enough but the idea of heaven was beyond me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t obey my parents.”

  “Really? But everyone says you’re good.”

  That’s because I’m deceiving them. I knew as well as she did that everyone in the building was fond of me. But I was terrified of them all, and the more terrified I was the more they liked me. The more they liked me, the more terrified I became. I wanted to escape from all of them. But it was far too difficult to explain this unfortunate malady of mine to Shigeko.

  “What will you ask God for?” I asked, casually changing the topic.

  “I, I want my real daddy.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, my vision swam. An enemy. I don’t know if I was Shigeko’s enemy or if she was mine, but in the end her
e too was yet another terrifying adult, threatening me. A stranger, an incomprehensible stranger, a stranger full of secrets. That is how Shigeko appeared to me then.

  At least I have Shigeko, or so I had thought. Yet, in the end this one too had a tail that could “crush the life from a horsefly with a single blow.” From that point on I trembled before even her.

  “Hey, pervert! You there?”

  Horiki started visiting again. He’d caused me such profound sadness the day I ran away, but still I couldn’t refuse him, and I greeted him with a weak smile.

  “So, looks like your cartoons are quite the thing. That’s the world for you, I guess—fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Must be true. Don’t let it go to your head, though—your sketching is still a joke.”

  Who did he think he was, putting on airs as though he were a master? How would he react if I showed him one of my monster paintings? Even as I lapsed into my usual, idle writhing I replied, “Now, don’t say such things. You’ll only make me scream.”

  He seemed to grow smugger still.

  “Well, when your only talent is for getting ahead in the world people will see through you eventually.”

  A talent for getting ahead in the world? Honestly, I could only grimace in reply. Me? A talent for getting ahead in the world! Yet, perhaps there was something to what he said. Perhaps people like me, those who live in terror of human beings, who seek to avoid them at any cost, who deceive them—perhaps, in some strange way, these things worked in our favor. Perhaps we look like people who conscientiously observed that cunning old saying, “let sleeping dogs lie.” Oh, people don’t know the first thing about one another. They think themselves the very best of friends even as they utterly fail to understand each other. They live their whole lives thus, never realizing their mistake, and when one of them dies, they weep as they give the eulogy.

  Horiki (reluctantly, I’m sure, and only at Shizuko’s prodding) helped clean up the mess after I ran away from Flounder’s, so, perhaps because of this, he had convinced himself that my new start in life was all thanks to him. As though he were the one who had united me with Shizuko. So, he solemly subjected me to lectures, showed up drunk in the middle of the night searching for a place to sleep, or came over to borrow five yen (always five yen).

  “Well, I hope you’ve put your womanizing days behind you now. Society won’t tolerate any more of it, you know.”

  What exactly was society? A plurality of people? Where, precisely, was the material form of this thing called society located? I’d lived my whole life in terror of society, imagining it to be something strong, forbidding, frightening. Yet, as Horiki spoke, it suddenly came to me.

  “When you say society, you mean you, right?”

  The words rose to the tip of my tongue but I swallowed them, not wanting to anger Horiki.

  (Society won’t tolerate it.)

  (It’s not society. It’s you who won’t tolerate it, right?)

  (If you go on doing things like that, society won’t go easy on you.)

  (It’s not society, though, is it? It’s you.)

  (Society will bury you alive.)

  (It’s not society. It’s you who will bury me, isn’t it?)

  Know thyself. Know thy terrifying, strange, wily, villainous, crone-like self!

  Such thoughts flitted across my mind, but, in the end, I merely wiped the sweat from my brow with my handkerchief and, laughing, said, “You’ve got me in a cold sweat!”

  Ever since this encounter I’ve maintained this quasi-philosophical belief (is not society nothing more than the individual?).

  And, having arrived at the realization that society is nothing more than the individual, it became much easier for me to act in accord with my own wishes. Or, in Shizuko’s words, I became a little more selfish and less timid. Or, in Horiki’s words, I grew stingy. Or, in Shigeko’s words, I didn’t play with her as much.

  I passed each day in grim silence, looking after Shigeko, filling orders for cartoons (I occasionally received orders from other publishers too but they were all third-rate magazines, even cruder than Shizuko’s). I drew “The Adventures of Kinta and Ota” or “The Happy-Go-Lucky Priest”—a brazen copy of “The Happy-Go-Lucky Dad”—or other, silly cartoons such as “Hasty Pin-chan,” which even I didn’t understand. Deep in my melancholy I drew sluggishly (I draw very slowly), my only thought being to earn money for drinking. The moment Shizuko got back from work I rushed out the door, as though it were the changing of shifts, and headed straight for the cheap standing bars near Kōenji Station where I drank cheap, strong liquor until I began to feel a bit more cheerful. Then, going home,

  “You know . . . The more I look at you the stranger you look. Did you know your face was the inspiration for the Happy-Go-Lucky Priest? I got the idea watching you sleep.”

  “Well, you look really old when you sleep. Like you’re in your forties.”

  “It’s your fault. You suck the life right out of me. Like the rushing of waters, so go lives of men.” I sang, “Why do you fret so? As the willow on the banks of the streeeam.”

  “Stop making such a racket and go to bed. Or would you like something to eat?” She was always so calm, as though she wasn’t paying any attention to me at all.

  “I’ll have a drink if we have anything. Like the rushing of water, so go lives of men. Like the rushing of men . . . no, water, so goes the life of water.”

  Shizuko undressed me as I sang and, head pressed to Shizuko’s breast, I fell asleep. Such was my routine.

  And thus we begin again the next day,

  Under the same, settled rules of the past

  If only we might avoid great, violent joys

  So too will we escape great sorrows.

  As the toad hops around

  The stone blocking his path.

  When I first read this translation—originally from a poem by Guy Charles Cros, I think—I flushed a crimson so deep my face seemed to burn.

  A toad.

  (That’s all I am. It makes no difference if society forgives me or not, if it buries me or not. I am lower even than a dog or a cat. A toad. Just plodding along.)

  I began to drink more and more. I no longer confined myself to the bars around Kōenji Station but ventured out to Shinjuku and Ginza, sometimes not coming home until the following day. All I wanted was to avoid the “settled rules of the past.” I played the scoundrel in bars, kissing every girl I saw, reverting to the same wild drunk I’d been before the love suicide. No, I was worse. I even started selling off Shizuko’s clothes when I ran out of money.

  One night, over a year after I found myself grimacing at the tangled kite outside the window, just after the cherry blossoms had scattered, I smuggled some of Shizuko’s underrobes and obi out of the house and pawned them. With money in my pocket, I went drinking in Ginza and stayed out for two nights running. But by the third night, even I couldn’t help feeling a little bad, and I went back home. Walking with unconscious stealth, I went up to the door to Shizuko’s room. Shigeko and Shizuko were inside, talking.

  “Why does he drink?”

  “Daddy doesn’t drink because he likes it. It’s just that he’s too good so, so . . .”

  “Do all good people drink?”

  “Well, no, it’s not that but . . .”

  “I bet Daddy’ll be surprised, won’t he?”

  “He might not be very happy. Look, now, he’s jumped out of the box.”

  “He’s just like Hasty Pin-chan, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.” Shizuko said with a soft, contented laugh.

  I slid the door open a crack and peeked inside. A tiny white rabbit jumped here and there as mother and daughter chased after it.

  (They are happy. These are happy people. And here I am, an idiot, blundering into their midst, destroying everything. Simple joy. A good mother and daughter. Oh Lord, if you listen to the prayers of people like me, just once, just once in my life, I beg you.)

  I felt like dropping to my kn
ees and clasping my hands in prayer right there. Silently, I slid the door shut, went back to Ginza, and never again returned to that apartment.

  So it was that I came to take up residence on the second floor of a downtown standing bar in Kyōbashi, a kept man once again.

  Society. I felt I was beginning to understand it, if only vaguely. It was a struggle between one individual and another, and it was a struggle that took place at a specific moment in time, and all you needed to do was to win in that moment. No one person can conquer another entirely, and even a slave can manage a slave’s servile riposte, so all we can do is bet everything on a single throw of the dice, an all-or-nothing bet, right then and there. There’s no other way to go through life. People sing the praises of honor and loyalty, but the sole focus of all human endeavor is the individual. Beyond the individual there is but another individual. The inscrutability of society, the sea is not society—it is the individual. In this way I was somewhat liberated from my terror of that mirage, that vast ocean of the world. I no longer felt compelled to display the same infinite consideration toward all matters, behaving instead with a degree of casual disregard for others as the situation and moment required.

  I abandoned the apartment in Kōenji, went over to the Madam of the standing bar in Kyōbashi and said, “I’ve left her.”