One (2/2)

by Osamu Dazai

Thanks to Shizuko's arrangements, a meeting between Hirame, Horiki, and Shizuko was established. I was completely cut off from my hometown and began living with Shizuko "openly and honestly." Also, thanks to Shizuko's efforts, my manga unexpectedly brought in money, which allowed me to buy alcohol and cigarettes. However, the anxiety and gloom in my heart only grew stronger.

As if sinking into despair, while drawing "The Adventures of Kinta-san and Ota-san" serialized in Shizuko's magazine, I would suddenly recall my hometown house, and the overwhelming loneliness would make my pen stop, causing me to hang my head and shed tears.

At such times, Shige-ko was a faint salvation for me. Around that time, Shige-ko called me "Otō-chan" without any hesitation.

"Otō-chan. Is it true that God gives you anything if you pray?"

Hearing those words, I too wanted to pray.

Ah, grant me a cold will. So that I may know the essence of humanity. Is it a sin for one person to push another aside? Grant me a mask of anger.

"Yes, that's right. He'll give you anything, Shige-chan, but maybe not me, Otō-chan."

I was even afraid of God. I couldn't believe in God's love, only in God's punishment. Faith seemed like bowing down to receive God's rod and heading towards the judgment stand. I could believe in hell, but I absolutely couldn't believe in the existence of heaven.

"Why not?"

"Because I disobeyed my parents' instructions."

"Really? Everyone says Otō-chan is a very good person."

That's because everyone is deceiving me. I know that the people in this apartment show me kindness. However, it was an extremely difficult task to explain to Shige-ko how much I feared everyone, how the more I feared, the more I was liked, and the more I was liked, the more I feared, and this unfortunate illness that compelled me to distance myself from everyone.

"Shige-chan, what in the world do you want to ask God for?"

I casually changed the subject.

"Shigeko wants a real father."

Hearing those words, I was startled and felt dizzy. Was I Shigeko's enemy, or was Shigeko my enemy? Either way, there was another terrifying adult here who threatened me. Strangers, incomprehensible strangers, strangers full of secrets. Shigeko's face suddenly appeared that way to me.

I had thought that Shigeko alone was different, but this child also possessed "the tail of a cow that unexpectedly swats a horsefly to death." From then on, I had to be timid even around Shigeko.

"Pervert! Are you there?"

Horiki started visiting me again. He was the man who had made me so lonely on the day I ran away from home, yet I couldn't refuse him and greeted him with a faint smile.

"Your manga seems to be quite popular, doesn't it? Amateurs have a fearless courage that I can't match. But don't let your guard down. Your drawing is not good at all."

He spoke with the attitude of a master. I writhed as I wondered what kind of face he would make if I showed him the "ghost" picture I drew.

"Don't say that. It would make me scream 'Gyaah!'"

Horiki said triumphantly.

"Talent for getting by in the world alone will eventually show its flaws."

Talent for getting by in the world... I truly could only manage a bitter smile. I couldn't possibly have talent for getting by in the world. However, is my fear, avoidance, and deception of people precisely the same form as adhering to the maxim "let sleeping dogs lie"? Ah, do people not understand each other at all, seeing each other completely wrong yet believing they are inseparable best friends, never realizing it throughout their lives, and then crying and reading eulogies when the other person dies?

Horiki, being the person who helped clean up the aftermath of my running away from home, behaved as if he were my benefactor in rehabilitation, giving me plausible-sounding lectures, visiting late at night drunk to stay over, and borrowing five yen (it was always five yen) from me.

"But you should stop your womanizing here. Society won't tolerate it any further."

What exactly was society? Was it a plurality of humans? Where was the substance of this thing called society? I had lived my life thinking it was something strong, strict, and terrifying, but when Horiki said that, it suddenly occurred to me,

"Isn't society you?"

The words almost came to the tip of my tongue, but I held them back, not wanting to anger Horiki.

(Society won't allow that.)

(It's not society. It's you who won't allow it, isn't it?)

(If you do that, society will make you suffer terribly.)

(It's not society. It's you, isn't it?)

(Society will bury you eventually.)

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

Know your own horror, strangeness, wickedness, old foxiness, and witchiness! Various thoughts like these crossed my mind, but I merely wiped the sweat from my face with a handkerchief, saying,

"Cold sweat, cold sweat,"

and just laughed.

However, since that time, I began to hold a thought-like idea: "Isn't society an individual?" And after I started thinking that society might be an individual, I became somewhat more capable of acting on my own will than before. To borrow Shizuko's words, I became a little more selfish and less timid. Also, to borrow Horiki's words, I became strangely stingy. And to borrow Shigeko's words, I stopped doting on Shigeko as much.

Every day, silent and unsmiling, while caring for Shigeko, I drew serialized manga with nonsensical titles such as "Kinta-san and Ota-san's Adventure," "Nonki Osho" (a spin-off of my carefree father), and "Sekkachi Pin-chan." Orders came not only from Shizuko's company but also from more vulgar, third-rate publishers, but my mood was utterly gloomy, and I drew with a slow brushstroke, solely for the sake of earning money for alcohol.

When Shizuko returned from work, I would abruptly go out, drink cheap, strong alcohol at stalls and stand bars near Koenji Station, and return to the apartment a little cheerful. Then, I would say to Shizuko:

"The more I look at you, the stranger your face seems. Actually, I got the idea for Nonki Osho's face from your sleeping face."

"Your sleeping face has also aged quite a bit. Like a man in his forties."

"It's your fault. You drained me. The flow of water and human life, ah. Why are you worrying so much?"

"Don't make a fuss, go to sleep quickly. Or do you want to eat?"

Shizuko was calm, as if she didn't care about me.

"I'll drink if it's alcohol. The flow of water and human life, ah. The flow of people, and the flow of water, and the body of water, ah."

Singing that, I would undress Shizuko, press my forehead against her chest, and fall asleep. That was my daily routine.

The next day, I repeated the same things, following the same routine as yesterday. In other words, as long as I avoided rough, great pleasures, great sorrows would not come either. A toad goes around a bothersome stone blocking its path.

When I found a verse from Guy Charles Cros's poem, translated by Ueda Bin, I blushed alone. A toad. That is me. Whether the world allows it or not. Whether it buries it or not. I am an animal inferior to dogs and cats. I just move sluggishly like a toad.

My drinking gradually increased. I not only drank near Koenji Station but also went to Shinjuku and Ginza, sometimes even staying out all night. Breaking from convention, I acted like a ruffian in bars, kissed indiscriminately, and became a more dissolute and vulgar drunk than even before the double suicide, or rather, even more so than back then. I became so desperate for money that I would take Shizuko's clothes.

More than a year had passed since I wryly smiled at that torn kite. In the season of cherry leaves, I secretly took Shizuko's obi and undergarments again, went to a pawn shop, got money, drank in Ginza, and stayed out two nights in a row. On the third night, I finally felt unwell. Unconsciously, I tiptoed to the front of Shizuko's room in the apartment, and I heard Shizuko and Shigeko's conversation from inside.

"Why do you drink alcohol?"

"Daddy doesn't drink because he likes it. He's such a good person, that's why..."

"Do good people drink alcohol?"

"Not really..."

"Daddy will surely be surprised."

"He might dislike it. Look, look, it jumped out of the box."

"It's like Sekkachipin-chan."

"Yes, it is."

I heard Shizuko's low, genuinely happy laughter. I opened the door slightly and peeked inside. A white rabbit child was hopping around the room, and the mother and child were chasing it.

(They are happy, these people. I, a fool, am coming between these two and will soon ruin them. Modest happiness. A good parent and child. Happiness, oh, if God would listen to the prayer of someone like me, just once, just once in my life, I pray.)

I felt like crouching there and pressing my palms together in prayer. I quietly closed the door, headed back to Ginza, and never returned to the apartment after that.

I found myself lying down again as a kept man, this time on the second floor of a stand bar near Kyobashi. Society. It seemed I was beginning to vaguely understand it myself. In a conflict between individuals, especially an immediate one, all that mattered was to win. Humans never submit to other humans. Even slaves exact their own servile, petty revenge. Therefore, humans have no other way to survive than to rely on a single, decisive match in the moment.

I abandoned my apartment in Koenji and simply told the madam of the stand bar in Kyobashi, "I've broken up." That was enough. In other words, the decisive match was settled, and from that night on, I rudely took up residence on the second floor there. However, "society," which should have been terrifying, did me no harm, and I offered no explanations to "society." If the madam was agreeable, then everything was fine.

I was like a customer, a husband, an errand boy, and a relative all at once, and from the outside, I must have been a very enigmatic presence. Yet, "society" didn't suspect a thing, and the regulars of the bar called me "Ha-chan, Ha-chan," treating me very kindly and buying me drinks.

I gradually stopped being wary of the world. I began to think that the world was not such a terrifying place after all. I realized that the fear I had harbored until then was due to being threatened by what I called "scientific superstitions": whooping cough germs dancing in the spring wind, blindness-causing germs lurking in public baths, ringworm germs in barbershops, scabies mites swarming on train straps, and even tapeworm larvae and distoma eggs hidden in undercooked sashimi and beef or pork.

Certainly, the idea of hundreds of thousands of bacteria floating around might be "scientifically" correct. However, I also came to understand that if I completely ignored their existence, they were nothing more than "scientific ghosts" completely unrelated to me. How much I had been threatened by "scientific statistics" like the one that said if three grains of rice were left in a lunchbox, and ten million people left three grains each day, it would amount to wasting several sacks of rice. Every time I left even a single grain of rice, or blew my nose, I was tormented by the illusion that I was wasting mountains of rice or pulp, and felt a dark sense that I was committing a grave sin. However, that itself was a "scientific lie," a "statistical lie," a "mathematical lie," and three grains of rice could not be collected; as an application problem of multiplication and division, it was merely a truly primitive and low-level theme.

It was as absurd as repeatedly calculating how many passengers would fall with one foot into the dark toilet hole without electricity, or how many would drop their feet into the gap between the entrance/exit of a local train and the platform. I had never actually heard of anyone getting injured by missing the toilet hole. I gradually came to understand the true nature of the world, to the point where I felt a fondness for and wanted to laugh at my past self, who had been taught such hypotheses as "scientific facts," accepted them as reality, and lived in fear until yesterday.

Nevertheless, humans were still terrifying beings to me, and I had to drink a glass of alcohol before I could meet customers at the shop. It was a morbid curiosity. Every night, I would go out to the shop, and like a child tightly gripping a small animal they were slightly afraid of, I would, emboldened by drink, begin to expound my clumsy theories on art to the customers.

I was an unknown cartoonist. I lived a life devoid of great joy or sorrow. Even though I secretly yearned for rough pleasures, not caring how much sorrow might follow, my current joy consisted solely of chatting idly with customers and drinking their sake.

After coming to Kyobashi, I continued this trivial life for nearly a year. My cartoons began appearing not only in children's magazines but also in cheap, vulgar magazines sold at stations. Under the ridiculous pseudonym Ikuta Joushi, I drew dirty nude pictures and inserted verses from the Rubaiyat into them.

“Stop your useless prayers. Throw away anything that brings tears. Come on, let’s have a drink. Remember only the good things and forget about unnecessary worries. Those who threaten people with anxiety and fear are always plotting, fearing the great sins they have committed and preparing for the revenge of the dead. Come on, fill your cup with wine and fill your heart with joy. When I woke up this morning, it was just desolation. This mood, which has changed so much overnight. Stop thinking about curses. It’s like a drum echoing from afar, that’s the anxiety. Am I to be blamed for every little fart? Is justice the guide for life? What justice resides on a blood-soaked battlefield, or at an assassin’s blade? Where is the guiding principle? What light of wisdom is there? In this beautiful yet terrifying floating world, fragile human children are burdened with loads they cannot bear, implanted with seeds of uncontrollable lust, and merely cursed with good, evil, sin, and punishment. They can do nothing but wander. Given no power or will to suppress, where did they wander? What are they criticizing, examining, and re-recognizing? Empty dreams, non-existent illusions. Because I forgot the wine, all these thoughts are foolish. How about it, look at this endless sky. There’s a tiny dot floating here. Do you know why the Earth rotates? Rotation, revolution, and reversal are all arbitrary. I feel a supreme power everywhere and discover the same humanity in every nation and every people. Am I a heretic? Everyone is misreading the scriptures. Otherwise, they have no common sense or wisdom. I hate prohibiting the joys of the flesh, or stopping drinking, I hate all that.”

However, around that time, there was a girl who advised me to stop drinking. "It's not good, you're drunk every day from noon," she would say. She was the seventeen or eighteen-year-old daughter of the small tobacco shop across from the bar. Her name was Yoshi-chan, and she was fair-skinned with overlapping teeth. Every time I went to buy cigarettes, she would smile and give me advice. "Why is it not good? Why is it bad? Drink all the sake you can, oh child of man, extinguish, extinguish, extinguish hatred, you know. From ancient Persia, well, let's stop there, it's only the jade cup that brings a slight intoxication that brings hope to a heart weary with sorrow, understand?"

"I don't understand."

"You bastard, I'll kiss you."

"Go ahead."

She would stick out her lower lip, completely unashamed.

"You idiot, your sense of chastity..."

However, Yoshi-chan's expression clearly exuded the scent of an untouched virgin.

On a bitterly cold New Year's night, I went out to buy cigarettes in a drunken stupor. However, I slipped on a manhole in front of the tobacco shop and fell in. I desperately screamed, "Yoshi-chan, help me!" Then, Yoshi-chan pulled me out. I had injured my right arm, so she had to treat it. At that moment, Yoshi-chan said with a profound expression:

"You drink too much."

Her words made me feel a little ashamed. I was indifferent to dying, but I couldn't bear to be injured and become disabled. So, while Yoshi-chan was treating my arm wound, I considered quitting alcohol.

"I'll quit. From tomorrow, I won't drink a single drop."

"Really?"

"I'll definitely quit. If I quit, Yoshi-chan, will you be my bride?"

Of course, the talk of marriage was a joke.

"Mochi!"

"Mochi" was an abbreviation for "Mochiron" (of course), and at the time, abbreviations like "Mobo" (modern boy) and "Moga" (modern girl) were popular.

"Alright, it's a promise. I'll definitely quit."

However, the next day, I started drinking again from noon. In the evening, I stumbled outside and stood in front of Yoshi-chan's shop.

“Yoshie-chan, I’m sorry. I drank it.”

“Oh, how awful. You’re just pretending to be drunk.”

Her words startled me. I felt the alcohol cool a little.

“No, I really drank it. I’m not pretending to be drunk.”

“Don’t tease me. You’re a bad person.”

She showed no signs of doubting me at all.

“You can tell just by looking. I’ve been drinking since noon today. Please forgive me.”

“You’re quite the actor, aren’t you?”

“It’s not acting, you idiot. I’ll kiss you.”

“Do it.”

“No, I don’t have the right. I have to give up on marrying you too. Look at my face, it’s red, isn’t it? I really drank.”

“That’s because the setting sun is hitting it. You can’t fool me. We made a promise yesterday. There’s no way you would drink. We made a promise. Drinking is a lie, a lie, a lie.”

Looking at Yoshie-chan’s pale face, smiling in the dimly lit shop, I thought. Ah, an innocent virgin is truly a precious thing. Until now, I had never slept with a woman younger than myself. I will marry her. No matter how great the sorrow that comes later, I don’t care. I want to experience such wild pleasure, just once. I used to think the beauty of virginity was a sweet poet’s fantasy, but it truly exists in this world after all. I decided then and there that when we got married and spring came, we would go see Aoba Falls together by bicycle. And I had no hesitation in stealing that flower in what is called a “one-shot game.”

Thus, we got married, and the pleasure we gained afterward was not necessarily great, but the sorrow that eventually came was unimaginably horrific. For me, “the world” was indeed a bottomless, terrifying place. It was certainly not an easy place where everything could be decided by such a one-shot game.