A Shameful Life Read online

  I froze. It suddenly dawned on me that, all this time, Horiki had never really seen me as having turned over a new leaf. To him I was still nothing more than a shameless, stupid ghost who had even managed to fail at dying, a “living corpse.” When he could use me for his own amusement, he did so. That was the extent of our “friendship.” As you might expect, this realization did nothing to cheer me but, given the circumstances, it was only natural that Horiki should feel this way. Ever since I was a child I’d failed at being human so it was only right that I be scorned, even by the likes of Horiki.

  “Crime. What’s the antonym for crime, I wonder? This is a tough one,” I said, feigning bland indifference.

  “Law, of course.” His response was so blasé that I looked up, considering him. The flickering red glow of the neon light from a nearby building gave his expression a particularly grim look, and the flinty, pitiless features of a detective. I was utterly taken aback.

  “That’s not what crime is, you know. Not at all.”

  Law? The antonym of crime! Yet, perhaps that kind of simplistic thinking is typical of people in society. The belief that crime flourishes when there are no detectives around.

  “Well what, then? God? You do have the stink of a Christian priest about you, after all. A bit disgusting, really.”

  “Now let’s not be so hasty. We should put our heads together for this one. It’s an interesting problem, no? I suspect we might learn all there is to know about a man by the way he answers this question.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The ant for crime is . . . virtue. A virtuous citizen. That is to say, someone like me.”

  “Enough joking. Anyway, virtue is the ant for evil. It’s not the ant for crime.”

  “So crime and evil are different, then?”

  “Yes. I think so. Virtue and evil are human concepts. They’re moral terms arbitrarily made up by human beings.”

  “You never shut up, do you? All right, then, it must be God after all. God, God, God. You can’t go wrong by putting everything on God. Damn, I’m hungry.”

  “Yoshiko’s boiling some broad beans for us now.”

  “Excellent. Love ’em.”

  He lay back, arms crossed behind his head.

  “It’s almost as though you don’t care about crime at all.”

  “Of course not. I’m not a criminal like you, after all. I like to have a good time and all but I don’t go around getting women killed or stealing their money.”

  Deep in my heart an echo, faint and desperate, welled up in protest. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t steal anyone’s money. As usual, however, my resolve soon wavered. It was my fault, after all.

  I was incapable of a straightforward argument. The gloom brought on by the shōchū made me more irascible by the minute, and it was all I could do to keep my anger in check. I started muttering, as though talking to myself.

  “Just being thrown in jail isn’t a crime. If we can figure out the ant for crime then we can grasp the essence of crime. . . . God? Salvation? Love? Light? But Satan is the ant for God and I suppose that suffering would be the ant for salvation. Hate for love, darkness for light, evil for virtue. Crime and prayer, crime and regret, crime and confession, crime and . . . Ah, I give up. They’re all synonyms. What is the ant for crime?”

  “The opposite of crime is revenge. Sweet like revenge. I’m starving here. Go get me something to eat.”

  “Go get it yourself!” For what may very well have been the first time in my life, I roared in anger.

  “Fine. I’ll just wander downstairs and commit some crimes with Yoshi-chan. A hands-on experiment will reveal more than any amount of debate. The ant of crime is sweet beans. No, broad beans.”

  He was so drunk by then he could barely speak without slurring.

  “Do what you like. Just get the hell out of here!”

  “Crime and hunger, hunger and beans—no, they’re synonyms,” he continued to mutter nonsense as he clambered to his feet.

  Crime and punishment. Dostoevsky. This thought grazed the edge of my consciousness and I gasped with sudden realization. What if we looked at Mr. Dost’s Crime and Punishment not as synonyms, but reconfigured them as antonyms? Crime and punishment . . . Utterly at odds with one another, chalk and cheese. Dost’s crime and punishment as ants . . . Dost’s fetid swamp, a pond teeming with algae, the very depths of chaos . . . Ah, I was on the verge of realization but no, still . . . It was then, just as these thoughts were racing through my head like the shadows of a spinning lantern . . .

  “Hey! Terrible beans! Get down here!” Horiki was standing over me. His voice sounded strange, his pallor off. He’d just stumbled off downstairs but he was back already.

  “What’s wrong?”

  There was a strange tension in the air as we went down the stairs to the second floor. Halfway down the next flight of stairs Horiki stopped.

  “Look!” He whispered urgently, pointing.

  The small window above my room was open and we could see inside. The light was on, two animals were inside.

  I felt dizzy, my vision blurred. It’s just what human beings do, that’s all. No cause for surprise, I whispered to myself, gasping for breath. I stood rooted to the spot, forgetting even to go to Yoshiko’s aid.

  Horiki cleared his throat loudly. I fled, springing up the stairs to the roof where I threw myself down, face to the drizzling summer night. What I felt then was not rage, hatred, or even sadness but rather an overpowering terror. It was not the terror of a ghost in a graveyard. It was the terror of encountering a spirit, clad all in white, amid the towering cedars of a Shintō shrine. A ferocious, ancient terror that robbed me of speech. My hair began to turn gray that night. I lost confidence in everything. I was suspicious of everyone. I was forever alienated from all notions of hope, sympathy, or joy in the workings of the world. This was truly a decisive moment in my life. It was as though my head had been split open and, from that moment on, any interaction whatsoever with human beings caused that wound to throb.

  “I feel bad for you but maybe now you’ll know better. I’m not coming back here. This place . . . It’s hell. But you should forgive Yoshi-chan. You’re no prize yourself, after all. Well, I’m off.”

  Horiki was no fool. He wasn’t one to linger when things grew awkward.

  I sat up, drank the shōchū, crying bitterly. I thought I could go on weeping forever.

  At some point Yoshiko had come up to the roof. She stood behind me, holding a dish heaped with broad beans, a vacant expression on her face.

  “He said . . . he wouldn’t do anything. . . .”

  “No. Don’t say anything. It’s never occurred to you to doubt people. Sit down. Have some beans.”

  We sat next to one another, eating beans. Could it be that trust is a crime? He was a shopkeeper, a small, stupid man of about thirty who commissioned cartoons from me, always making a great show of reluctance when it came to paying me the few coins that were my fee.

  The shopkeeper didn’t dare come around again after that, but, for some reason, I found I hated Horiki even more than the shopkeeper. Horiki, who’d discovered them at it but, rather than coughing or clearing his throat to interrupt them, just left and came back up to the roof to tell me. On sleepless nights this hatred and rage had me writhing and groaning in my bed.

  It was not a question of forgiving or not forgiving. Yoshiko had a gift for trusting people. She didn’t know to be suspicious of them. Therein lies the tragedy.

  I ask you, God. Is trust a crime?

  It wasn’t that Yoshiko had been defiled but that her trust had been violated. This caused me such unbearable pain I thought I couldn’t go on living. For someone like me, mean and trembling, forever humoring those around him, whose ability to trust had already been irrevocably shattered, Yoshiko’s pure and innocent trust was as clean and refreshing as a waterfall deep in the woods. In one night it had turned to filthy, yellow sewage. Do you see? Ever since that night Yoshiko trembled before even my slightest
smile or frown.

  If I called out to her she gave a start and looked around nervously. No matter how hard I tried to make her laugh, no matter how much I played the clown she always seemed to be quivering with fright. She started talking to me with excessive politeness.

  Is innocent trust, in the end, the root of all crime?

  I read every story I could find featuring wives who were violated. Yet, not one of them had been so cruelly violated as Yoshiko. There was nothing, not the slightest element of fiction about it. My suffering might have been eased somewhat had there been anything even faintly resembling love between Yoshiko and the shopkeeper, but, in the end, it came down to one summer night when Yoshiko trusted someone and that was all there was to it. And so my head seemed to shatter, my voice grew hoarse, my hair turned gray before its time, and Yoshiko trembled in fear the rest of her life. Most of the stories I read focused on whether or not the husband would forgive his wife’s “deeds,” but that wasn’t such a terribly important point for me. Happy indeed, I thought, is the husband who has the right to decide whether or not to forgive. If he deems the offense unforgivable there’s no need for a fuss, he simply divorces her out of hand and finds a new wife. Or, if he can’t do that, he “forgives” her and endures. In either case, everything is arranged to suit the husband’s feelings. That is, while it no doubt comes as quite a shock to the husband, in the end it is for all that nothing more than a “shock”—not something one returns to over and over again, endlessly, like the pounding of waves on the shore. It is, I thought, the kind of problem that, one way or the other, could be resolved by a husband’s righteous anger. Yet, in my case, I possessed none of the rights of the husband, and the more I considered it, the more it seemed to me that everything was my fault. Far from being angry with her, I dared not utter the slightest word of reproach. Indeed, it was because she possessed such rare virtue that she had been violated. It was that virtue, that pure and innocent trust, long admired, that her husband had found so unutterably endearing.

  Is innocent trust a crime?

  Even that sole, saving virtue was now clouded with suspicion. Nothing made sense to me anymore. My only refuge was alcohol. I drank shōchū from the moment I got up, my features coarsened beyond recognition, several teeth fell out, my cartoons devolved into little more than pornography. No, I’ll be honest. I’d started copying erotic prints and selling them in secret. I needed the money for shōchū. Whenever I looked at Yoshiko, trembling and too frightened to meet my gaze, I recalled how completely trusting she’d once been, and I couldn’t help wondering if that little shopkeeper had been the only one. Maybe Horiki? Or maybe a complete stranger? Suspicion gave rise to suspicion, yet, still, I lacked the courage to come out and ask her directly. So I got drunk on shōchū, and, writhing in my usual terror and anxiety, I made timorous attempts at confronting her, plying her with contemptible leading questions. Like a fool, I alternated between joy and sorrow even as, on the surface, I continued to play the clown to the hilt. I subjected her to despicable, torturous, loving caresses, and then passed out, dead drunk.

  Toward the end of that year I came home late one night, stinking drunk. I wanted a glass of sugar water but Yoshiko was already asleep, so I went to the kitchen and dug around for the sugar jar, but when I opened it I discovered that instead of sugar there was only a small, slender black box. I picked it up absently and was astonished when I saw the writing on the box. Most of the letters had been scratched off, probably with someone’s fingernail, but the English writing remained. “DIAL.”

  Dial. I was drinking so much shōchū those days I’d stopped using sleeping pills, but, as I’d always been plagued with insomnia, I was familiar with most of the brands. And in that single box of Dial was certainly more than enough for a fatal dose. The seal was intact but she must’ve tried to erase the letters and then hid the box in the sugar jar because, some day, she’d want it and it would be there. Poor girl, unable to read the Roman alphabet, she’d only scratched part of the English writing off before deciding it was enough. (You have committed no crime.)

  Careful not to make a sound, I filled a glass with water and, slowly breaking the seal on the box, I tipped its contents into my mouth and calmly drank the glass of water down in one go before turning out the lights and going to bed.

  I slept like the dead for three days and nights. The doctor put it down as an accidental overdose so they were able to hold off reporting it to the police. Apparently the first thing I said upon regaining consciousness was that I wanted to go home. Where, precisely, I meant by “home” wasn’t clear even to me, but they told me I broke down in tears after I said it.

  The fog gradually lifted, and, opening my eyes, I saw Flounder, looking disgruntled, sitting by my pillow.

  “Last time it was the end of the year too, you know. It’s always the end of the year with him. The one time we’re busiest, running around like mad. It’s our health he’s putting at risk with stunts like this.”

  He was talking to the Madam of the Kyōbashi bar.

  “Madam?” I called out.

  “Yes? What is it? Are you awake?” She looked down at me, her smiling face seeming almost to cover my own.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “Let me divorce Yoshiko.” The words were out before I realized what I was saying.

  I heard a faint sigh as she straightened.

  It was then that I let slip something so truly outlandish, something so comical and so idiotic it defies description.

  “I, I want to go someplace where there aren’t any women.”

  Flounder reacted first, roaring with laughter. Madam began to giggle, and soon I too flushed and grinned wryly, tears still running down my cheeks.

  “Yes indeed, a fine idea,” Flounder said. His coarse laughter seemed to go on forever. “You should go someplace where there aren’t any women. You fall to pieces when there are women around. No women—that’s a fine idea.”

  Someplace without women. This silly, flippant wish would later be realized in the most dismal manner imaginable.

  Yoshiko had somehow convinced herself that, in taking the pills, I’d been sacrificing myself for her, that I’d been taking her place. As a result she became even more timid, never smiling at anything I said, hardly speaking at all. It was too depressing at home, so I was forever going out, drowning myself in cheap liquor again. Ever since the Dial incident, though, I’d gone as thin as a rail. My arms and legs felt heavy and I fell behind in my cartoon work. Flounder left me some money when he came to see me at the hospital (he’d called it a “small gift from Shibuta” when he handed it over, acting for all the world as if it were coming out of his own pocket, but it seems that it too was from my brothers. Unlike when I ran away from his house, I saw through Flounder’s play-acting now—if only vaguely—and when he started putting on airs I played my part too, pretending not to suspect a thing, muttering my meek thanks. There were times I almost understood why Flounder insisted on these convoluted deceptions and times I did not. It was all very strange to me), so I spontaneously decided to use it for a solitary tour of the hot springs in southern Izu. But I was unsuited for a leisurely trip to the spas. I grew inconsolable when I thought of Yoshiko, and the reflective state of mind you need to contemplate mountain landscapes eluded me entirely. I didn’t bother changing into the quilted jacket provided by the inn, nor did I bother with the baths. Instead I rushed outside and, bursting into a grimy coffee shop, bathed myself in shōchū instead. By the time I went back to Tokyo, I was in even worse shape than when I’d left.

  It had snowed heavily in Tokyo. I was stumbling about, drunk, in one of the back alleys of Ginza, quietly singing the refrain, “How many hundreds of leagues from home,” over and over again, kicking the tips of my shoes at the snow that had accumulated when I suddenly vomited. That was the first time I’d ever vomited blood. I’d made a giant rising sun flag in the snow. For a while I just squatted there, scooping up clean snow in both hands and washing my face w
ith it as I wept.

  Whaaat narrow alley is thiiis?

  Whaaat narrow alley is thiiis?

  The forlorn voice of a young girl singing the nursery rhyme seemed to drift out from the darkness, so faint I thought my ears might be playing tricks on me. Misery. The world had all sorts of miserable people—I doubt it would be much of an exaggeration to say it was filled with miserable people. Yet their misery was of the sort where they could unabashedly protest their misery to “society.” “Society,” in turn, immediately understood their protest and was sympathetic to it. My misery, on the other hand, was entirely the product of my own guilt, so there was nobody I could turn to. Should I venture even the most tentative of objections it wouldn’t just be Flounder sneering at me, despairing at my nerve, but all of society as a whole. Was it simply that I, as the saying goes, thought “the whole world revolves around me”? Or was it the opposite? Was I too timid? I myself had no idea. I was nothing more than a lump of guilt, capable only of making myself ever more miserable, with absolutely no idea how to stop.

  I stood up and my first thought was to get some sort of medicine, so I went to the nearest pharmacy. My gaze met that of the lady of the shop. Instantly. She lifted her head, eyes widening as though bathed in a flash of light, standing rooted to the spot. Yet her eyes widened not in loathing or fear but rather in pleading, as though yearning for salvation. Ah, she is miserable too. I’m certain of it. Those who suffer misery can sense it in others. Just as this thought crossed my mind I saw her totter as she leaned heavily on a pair of crutches. I had to suppress my sudden urge to rush to her side. Tears spilled from my eyes as I gazed at her. Her large eyes began to overflow with tears as well.

  That’s all. Without a single word, I turned and left, stumbling back to my apartment. I had Yoshiko make me a glass of salt water and, drinking it down, went to bed without a word. The next morning I lied and said that I felt a cold coming on so I could spend the day in bed. By the time night fell, I had grown so anxious I could endure it no longer and I went back to the pharmacy, this time smiling as I explained my condition in detail and asked the woman for advice.