Two (2/2)

by Osamu Dazai

It was a night when heavy snow fell in Tokyo. I was drunk, walking down a back alley in Ginza, repeatedly muttering, "Hundreds of miles from home, hundreds of miles from home," and kicking the snow with the tip of my shoe. Then, suddenly, I vomited. It was my first time spitting blood. A large red stain, like a Japanese flag, appeared on the snow. I squatted for a while, scooped up clean snow with both hands, washed my face, and cried.

"Where is this narrow path?"

The singing voice of a pitiful young girl, like a hallucination, faintly reached me from afar. In this world, there are various unfortunate people; no, it's not an exaggeration to say that there are only unfortunate people. However, their misfortunes allow them to protest boldly to society, and society understands and sympathizes with their protests. But all my misfortunes stem from my own sins, so I cannot protest to anyone. If I were to stammer even a single word of protest, the people around me would surely be surprised and dumbfounded that I could say such a thing. I no longer knew if I was "selfish" or too weak-willed. In any case, I was a lump of guilt, only becoming more and more unfortunate, and there was nothing I could do.

I stood up and entered a nearby pharmacy, looking for some suitable medicine. The moment I met the proprietress's eyes, she widened her eyes in surprise and stood frozen. However, there was no color of shock or disgust in her eyes; rather, there was a look of seeking salvation, of adoration. Ah, this person must also be unfortunate. Unfortunate people are sensitive to the misfortunes of others, I thought, when I suddenly noticed she was standing precariously on crutches. Suppressing the urge to rush to her, tears welled up as I met her gaze. Then, tears also streamed from her large eyes.

After that, I left the pharmacy without saying another word and stumbled back to my apartment. I had Yoshiko make me salt water to drink, and then I went to bed in silence. The next day, I lied and said I had a cold, staying in bed all day, but by night, the anxiety about my secret hemoptysis became unbearable, so I got up and went back to that pharmacy. This time, smiling, I honestly confessed my condition to the proprietress and sought her advice.

"You must stop drinking alcohol."

We were like a single body.

"I might be an alcoholic. I still want to drink."

"You mustn't. My husband also became a heavy drinker, saying he was killing germs with alcohol, and he shortened his own life."

"I'm so anxious. I'm scared, and I don't know what to do."

"I'll give you medicine. Just stop drinking alcohol."

The proprietress, tapping her crutch, prepared various medicines for me.

"This is a blood tonic. This is a vitamin injection. Here's the syringe. These are calcium tablets. There's also diastase so you don't upset your stomach."

She lovingly explained five or six types of medicine, but the love of that unfortunate proprietress was also too deep for me. Finally, she said, "This is medicine for when you absolutely can't resist drinking alcohol," and quickly handed me a small box wrapped in paper.

It was a morphine injection.

"It's less harmful than alcohol," she said, and I believed it too. Furthermore, I had just begun to find the intoxication of alcohol unclean, and there was also the joy of finally escaping the demon of alcohol after a long time. Without any hesitation, I injected the morphine into my arm. All anxiety, impatience, and shame completely disappeared, and I became a very cheerful and eloquent speaker. And when I took that injection, I forgot my physical weakness, devoted myself to my manga work, and new, strange ideas came to me one after another, so much so that I would laugh while drawing them myself.

What was supposed to be one a day became two, and by the time it was four, I couldn't work without it anymore.

"You shouldn't, it'll be terrible if you get addicted."

When the pharmacist's wife said that, I felt like I had already become quite an addict. I'm very susceptible to suggestion. Even if I'm told, "You shouldn't use this money," if someone says, "That's just like you," I get the illusion that it would be wrong not to use it, as if I'd be going against expectations, and I always end up spending that money. Because of the anxiety of that addiction, I started seeking out more of the medicine.

"Please! Just one more box. I'll definitely pay the bill at the end of the month."

"The bill can be paid anytime, but the police are getting noisy."

Ah, there's always a murky, dark, and suspicious presence of shady characters lingering around me.

"Please, just try to fudge it somehow, ma'am. I'll give you a kiss."

The wife's face turned red.

I pressed on further,

"I can't get any work done without the medicine. For me, it's like a powerful tonic."

"In that case, wouldn't a hormone injection be better?"

"Don't make fun of me. I can't work without either alcohol or that medicine."

"Alcohol is no good."

"Right? You know, ever since I started using that medicine, I haven't had a drop of alcohol. Thanks to it, my body feels much better. I don't intend to keep drawing clumsy manga forever. From now on, I'll quit drinking, heal my body, study, and I'll definitely become a great artist. Now is a crucial time. So, please, shall I give you a kiss?"

The wife started to laugh.

"This is troublesome. Don't say I didn't warn you if you get addicted."

With the sound of her crutches echoing, she took the medicine from the shelf,

"I can't give you a whole box. You'll use it up right away. Just half."

"How stingy. Well, I guess it can't be helped."

As soon as I get home, I give myself an injection.

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

Yoshiko asks herself timidly.

“It hurts. But to increase work efficiency, I have to do it whether I like it or not. I’ve been very energetic lately, haven’t I? Now, back to work. Work, work.”

He was in high spirits.

Late at night, he even knocked on the door of a pharmacy. He suddenly embraced and kissed the pharmacist’s wife, who came out in her nightgown, leaning on crutches, and pretended to cry.

The wife silently handed him a box.

By the time I realized that medicine, like shochu, or rather, even more so, was an unclean thing, I had already become a complete addict. It was truly the height of shamelessness. In my desire to obtain that medicine, I started copying erotic prints again and formed a literally ugly relationship with that disabled pharmacist’s wife.

I want to die, I wish I could just die, there’s no turning back now. Whatever I do, it only makes things worse, only adds to my shame. Aoba Falls by bicycle, such a thing is beyond my reach. Only defiling sins accumulate, and my suffering grows and intensifies. Even when I thought, I want to die, I must die, living itself is the seed of sin, I still just went back and forth between my apartment and the pharmacy in a half-crazed state.

No matter how much I worked, my drug use only increased, and my debt for medication had reached a terrifying amount. My wife would tear up when she saw my face, and I would cry too.

Hell.

With the resolve that this was the last resort to escape this hell, and if it failed, there would be nothing left but to hang myself, I wrote a long letter to my father in my hometown and confessed my true situation (though I couldn't bring myself to write about the woman).

However, the result was even worse; no reply came no matter how long I waited, and due to that impatience and anxiety, I ended up increasing my dosage of the drug.

That afternoon, on the very day I had secretly resolved to inject ten doses at once that night and then jump into the Ōkawa River, Hirame appeared with Horiki, as if sniffing it out with a devilish intuition.

"You coughed up blood, didn't you?"

Horiki said this, sitting cross-legged in front of me, and smiled more gently than I had ever seen him smile before. That gentle smile was so welcome and so joyful that I involuntarily turned my face away and shed tears. And with that one gentle smile of his, I was completely broken and buried.

I was put into a car. Hirame, too, in a somber tone (it was a quiet tone, almost to be described as benevolent), advised me that I absolutely had to be hospitalized and to leave the rest to them. I, like someone devoid of will or judgment, simply cried and meekly obeyed their instructions. The four of us, including Yoshiko, were driven for a long time, and when it grew dim, we arrived at the entrance of a large hospital in the woods.

I thought it was a sanatorium.

I received an unusually soft and polite examination from a young doctor, and then the doctor said,

"Well, you'll be recuperating here for a while, won't you?"

he said, smiling as if shyly. Hirame, Horiki, and Yoshiko were to leave me alone, but Yoshiko handed me a furoshiki bundle containing a change of clothes, and then silently offered me the syringe and the remaining medicine from between her obi. Had she still thought it was a tonic?

"No, I don't need it anymore."

It was truly a rare occurrence. It was no exaggeration to say that refusing an offer, throughout my entire life up to that point, happened only that one time. My misfortune was the misfortune of someone incapable of refusal. I was tormented by the fear that if I refused an offer, an eternally irreparable, glaring crack would form in both the other person's heart and my own. However, at that moment, I very naturally refused the morphine I had been seeking with such near-frantic desperation. Was I struck by Yoshiko's "god-like ignorance," so to speak? Perhaps, at that moment, I was no longer an addict.

Nevertheless, I was soon after led by that young doctor with the shy smile to a certain ward, where I was admitted, and the key was turned with a click. It was a mental hospital.

My foolish delirium, when I drank that Gial, about going to a place without women, had come true in a truly strange way. That ward was filled only with male lunatics; the nurses were men, and there wasn't a single woman.

Now, I was not just a criminal, but a madman. No, I was absolutely not mad. I had not been mad for a single moment. But, oh, madmen usually say that about themselves, so I've heard. In other words, it seems that those who are put in this hospital are insane, and those who are not are normal.

I ask God: Is non-resistance a sin?

I wept at Horiki's strangely beautiful smile, forgot judgment and resistance, got into the car, and was brought here, becoming a madman. Even if I leave here now, I will still be branded on my forehead as a madman, no, a ruined person.

Disqualified as a human being.

I am no longer completely human.

I arrived here in early summer. Through the iron-barred window, I could see red water lilies blooming in the hospital garden. Three months passed, and cosmos flowers began to bloom in the garden. Around that time, unexpectedly, my eldest brother from my hometown came to pick me up, bringing a flounder. He informed me that our father had died of a stomach ulcer at the end of last month. He then said in a serious tone, "I won't question your past anymore. I don't intend to make you worry about your livelihood. You don't have to do anything. However, although you may have many lingering attachments, please leave Tokyo immediately and start a recuperation life in the countryside. You don't need to worry about the aftermath of what you did in Tokyo, as Shibuta should have taken care of it."

I felt as if the mountains of my hometown were spreading before my eyes, and I nodded faintly.

Indeed, I was a ruined person.

After learning of my father's death, I became even more listless. Father was no longer there. That nostalgic yet terrifying presence, which had never left my heart for a moment, was gone. I felt as if the vessel of my suffering had become empty. It was almost as if that heavy vessel of suffering had actually been because of my father. It was as if all my drive had drained away. I had even lost the ability to suffer.

My eldest brother faithfully kept his promise to me. About four or five hours south by train from the town where I was born and raised, there was a seaside hot spring resort, unusually warm for the Tohoku region. He bought an old house with five rooms on the outskirts of that village. It was a thatched cottage where the walls were peeling, the pillars were worm-eaten, and it was almost beyond repair. And he provided me with a single ugly, red-haired maid, close to sixty years old.

Then, a little over three years passed. During that time, I had several strange encounters with an old maid named Tetsu, and sometimes even marital-like quarrels began. My chest illness fluctuated, I lost and gained weight, and coughed up blood. Yesterday, I asked Tetsu to buy me some Carbromal, but she brought back Carbromal in a box of a different shape than usual. I didn't pay much attention to it, and after taking ten tablets before bed, I still wasn't sleepy at all, so I thought it was strange. Then my stomach started to feel bad, and I rushed to the toilet. The violent diarrhea continued, and I ended up going to the toilet three times. Suspicious, I looked closely at the medicine box and saw that it was a laxative called Henomochin.

I lay on my back, a hot water bottle on my stomach, and thought about complaining to Tetsu.

"This, what you brought, isn't Carbromal. It's Henomochin."

I started to say, and then involuntarily laughed. The word "invalid" seems to have a comical ring to it. To take a laxative when trying to sleep, and for that laxative to be named Henomochin.

For me now, there is neither happiness nor unhappiness. Only, the days pass.

In the "human" world where I had lived amidst pandemonium until now, that was the only thing that seemed like a truth.

Only, the days pass.

I will be twenty-seven this year. Because my gray hairs have increased, most people mistake me for being over forty.