A Dark Night's Passing Read online

  Laborers carried down from the bank straw baskets filled with cement and gravel which a formidable, bearded fellow would then work over with a shovel. Near him two men, having placed a straw mat over poured cement, were pounding it with a heavy wooden pounder that they held between them.

  A man wearing a suit and Japanese gaiters was busy with a surveying instrument. Beyond him a man was bracing two poles, stuck in the ground some feet apart, by nailing planks on them diagonally in the shape of an “X.” Just below him a woman laborer squatted beside a puddle of water streaked with oil and washed her face.

  The two brothers pulled themselves away from the bridge railing. Nobuyuki said as they walked, “It’s a hand-to-mouth existence they lead. They work today so that they can eat today. But you know, I envy them their sense of immediate necessity. It’s something that’s completely lacking in my kind of work.” After a short pause he said, “Sometimes I can’t help feeling very uneasy about what I’m doing.”

  Kensaku looked at his brother in surprise. This was a side to Nobuyuki he had never thought existed. “Are you thinking of leaving the company?”

  Nobuyuki nodded. “Yes, I am. I intend to resign as soon as I have a clear idea of what I want to do with myself.”

  “There’s no need to wait, surely?”

  “I suppose not,” Nobuyuki said and looked away, slightly offended.

  Kensaku realized he had been tactless. In his relationship with his father and stepmother, Nobuyuki was peculiarly timid. Despite his earlier dissolute life, which had naturally caused them much unhappiness, he had somehow always retained an incongruous sense of filial responsibility. And he was still inordinately fearful of doing anything that might hurt or disappoint his father. Of course his father loved him in return. “What sort of thing do you want to do?” Kensaku asked, but his brother would not give a clear answer.

  They soon found the restaurant they were looking for. It was a small place specializing in fowl.

  After they were seated Nobuyuki said, “That fellow I came out of the office with, he’s one of our salesmen. He told me something that really shocked me. A couple of months ago a rather elderly salesman named Kawai came up to me and asked me if I would lend fifty yen to a younger colleague of his, a fellow by the name of Noguchi. Kawai told me that there had been illnesses in Noguchi’s family, and that he was badly in need of money. Well, I never did like this old fellow Kawai, but I’ve always liked Noguchi, who’s really much too nice to be a salesman. Besides, I myself had heard that Noguchi’s kids were ill. So I handed over fifty yen to Kawai to give to Noguchi. Kawai then asked what interest I wanted to charge, so I said I didn’t want any interest. He then offered to make Noguchi write out a formal receipt. Again I said no. Being the sort of man Noguchi is, I said, he’d probably be too ashamed to show his face in the office if he couldn’t pay me back, so why not tell him that it’s your money.

  Don’t mention my name at all, I said. And what do you think I found out today? Kawai apparently went over to poor Noguchi and lent him my fifty yen minus twelve yen in advance interest. Of course Noguchi spent the money a long time ago, but Kawai still has the note he made Noguchi sign. That fat man you just saw me with was furious, and kept on saying he was going to knock Kawai down. I had to tell him that knocking him down wouldn’t do any good. Don’t make a fuss, I said, just go and get the note and the twelve yen from him. Kawai unfortunately is a very successful salesman, as you might guess, so firing him would be out of the question.”

  What a tolerant fellow Nobuyuki is, Kensaku thought. If he had been Nobuyuki he would probably have lost his temper, called the nasty old man into his office and given him a dressing down he would never forget.

  “Why let him get away with it?” he said. “At least tell him what you think of him.”

  “But what good will that do? He’ll just hate me for it. He’ll never think he did anything wrong, you know.”

  “How can you be so tolerant? Didn’t you get angry when this other man told you the story?”

  “Yes, I did. But when one realizes the pointlessness of trying to punish the other fellow, one soon stops being angry.”

  “Maybe so, maybe you’re right. But I simply couldn’t make myself think like that.”

  “You only make matters worse for yourself when you start arguing with a fellow like Kawai.”

  “But that wouldn’t be enough to make me want to forgive such a man.”

  “Well, let’s say that unlike you, I was born easygoing.”

  An hour later they left the restaurant and walked to Ginza. In a shop there Nobuyuki bought a camel’s hair scarf and gave it to Kensaku. A going-away present, he said.

  PART II

  1

  It was a remarkably gentle winter day. The ship had already cast off its moorings. Below on the pier, standing among a host of others who had come to see the passengers off, were Oei and Miyamoto. Kensaku had asked Oei not to come, saying that after all he was going to get off at Kobe and he wanted no fuss made over such a short trip. But Oei had insisted. She wanted to see the ship, she said, and had come along to Yokohama with Miyamoto in tow. “Please take good care of yourself, and please write regularly,” she had said to Kensaku on the ship as the bells started ringing. Kensaku had momentarily felt quite emotional.

  The propellers were churning; gradually the ship moved farther and farther away from the pier. The three continued to wave at each other, smiling occasionally, until Kensaku became embarrassed by the protracted ceremony. When at last the ship’s course was set and there was a distance of some fifty yards between the stern and the pier, Kensaku bowed, muttered his final farewell and walked away, not without some feeling of guilt.

  His was a small, four-berth cabin, but luckily there were few passengers aboard and he was its only occupant. He sat on one of the stools—there were no proper chairs—wondering what he might do. Restlessly he got up and pulled out his suitcase from under the bunk. With the key attached to his watch chain he opened it and aimlessly examined the contents. Then he began to worry about the two he had deserted. Very soon he was back on deck.

  The ship was farther out than he would have guessed. The faces of those still standing on the pier were no longer recognizable. But there were two figures standing apart from the rest, and he was fairly certain they were Oei and Miyamoto. Indeed, the one holding a half-closed parasol at a slant was unmistakably Oei. He waved his hand, and the two figures responded immediately, Miyamoto enthusiastically with his hat and Oei more restrainedly with her parasol.

  Much more comfortable now that he couldn’t see their faces, Kensaku pulled out his handkerchief and started waving it. When the ship reached the opening in the breakwater, Kensaku could not see them at all. A thin mist (or was it smoke?) spread over the harbor, and the shore became vaguer and vaguer behind the gradually thickening veil. It was a strain now to locate the pier that they had just left. They passed an English warship lying with stately calm on the surface as though rooted to the bottom of the sea. On her stern was painted the name “Minotaur.” By then even the large buildings standing along the pier had become invisible.

  Kensaku leaned against the railing and watched the water being churned by the propellers. The colors created by the agitation were strikingly beautiful. At the back of his mind was the picture of Oei and Miyamoto leaving the pier, walking across the stone-paved yard with its cobweb of rails and out into the streets. From below deck a gong sounded, announcing lunch.

  There were not many people at his table—a young, English-speaking foreigner, a nanny in the employ of one of the first-class passengers, and a ship’s officer. The officer and the foreigner were conversing. Kensaku sat in silence, trying to eat the tasteless beef. The foreigner, who was sitting next to him, turned to him and said in English, “Can you speak English?” He answered in English, “No, I can’t.” Then thinking that a foreigner living in Yokohama could hardly not know any Japanese, he asked in Japanese, “But can’t you speak Japanese?” Th
e young foreigner, uncomprehending, cocked his head and blushed in embarrassment.

  The nanny soon left the table, presumably to go to her ward. (She was never seen again.) Then the officer excused himself. Kensaku, left alone with the foreigner in the large, deserted hall, had no choice but to talk to his sole companion in his inadequate English. After lunch, when Kensaku was sitting alone in the smoking lounge on the upper deck, the young foreigner came in with a deck of cards and asked him to play. Kensaku declined, being in no mood to learn the rules of some new game the foreigner might introduce. The foreigner resignedly played solitaire, periodically gathering the cards and shuffling them loudly.

  His home was in Australia, he said. He had been transferred to Yokohama from the United States only three weeks before. Then he had received a telegram saying his mother was ill, and was now on his way home to Sydney. He wanted so much to catch a view of Mt. Fuji; did Kensaku think it was too cloudy for that? He had good cause to wonder, Kensaku thought: for the misty and unseasonably gentle weather earlier had been a forewarning of worse weather to come. There was now a wintry chill in the air, and the sky was a bleak, dull grey.

  As the ship was rounding the coast of Misaki Kensaku changed into a kimono and lay down in his bunk. He was soon fast asleep. When he awoke it was already past four o’clock. He threw on his overcoat and went up on deck. Mt. Fuji was clearly etched against the clouded, evening sky. Immediately beneath were the mountains of Izu in attendance on the giant, and in the foreground, the sea. It was all a little too neat, and reminded Kensaku of a Hokusai print.

  In the smoking lounge someone was playing the piano badly. The playing stopped, and the young foreigner came out. “So that’s Mt. Fuji,” he said with evident satisfaction.

  It was too cold to be standing outside, so Kensaku went into the lounge to look at the view from there. Ōshima, the first of the Seven Islands of Izu, was already behind them. One by one the other islands made their appearance. The young foreigner had returned to the lounge, and alas was again at the piano. With his briar pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth, he sang in a low voice as he played. Occasionally he would stop and address a remark to Kensaku: he had once heard Paderewski play; he had a sister who was a very good violinist, etc.

  Kensaku was still sleepy. He had slept little these last four or five nights, and the two-hour nap he had just had was far from enough. He went back to his bunk. But this time he lay wide awake. The ship was rolling quite badly. Besides, the cabin was near the stern, and he was assailed by the most outlandish noises—the ceaseless grinding of the rudder chain, the rhythmic pounding of the engine, the chop-chop-swish-swish of the propeller blades cutting the water.

  He began to feel a little seasick. He noticed that his hands were an unpleasant pink color, just as though he had drunk too much. On the wall opposite the bunk was a mirror. His face, half-buried in the pillow, looked back at him, nicely framed. It, too, was pink. He was wont to fall sick whenever he traveled. Was he now catching a cold? He was half-dozing when the dinner gong sounded.

  The young foreigner complained that he had forgotten to bring a book with him. It was just as well, he said, that the ship’s library would be open the next day. Kensaku had brought with him an English translation of the works of Garshin, the Russian writer. He lent this to the foreigner.

  It was a cold night. From habit he became wide awake now that it was late. He sat alone in the large, chilly dining hall writing postcards. He wrote to Nobuyuki, Sakiko, Ogata—they had come to see him off at Shinbashi Station—and to Oei and Miyamoto. Then he wrote to Tatsuoka, who would be somewhere around Penang by now. He addressed the card to the Japanese embassy in Paris.

  Tatsuoka’s departure for France was a sad event for Kensaku. Tatsuoka showed little interest in the arts—his indifference sometimes seemed to Kensaku almost an affectation—but he was passionately devoted to his own work. And when he talked about the designing of aircraft engines and his own hopes as a designer, he could move even Kensaku, who knew nothing about such things. Kensaku missed him very much.

  His feet, in cotton socks and hemp-soled sandals, felt thoroughly chilled. Above him hung a large fan, which he would look at suspiciously from time to time. It would presumably start working when this ship, bound for Australia, reached some such place as Manila.

  The postcards were all written. He decided he would go up on deck once more before turning in and look at the view. But the night was pitch-black, and there was nothing to see. A tiny light shone high up on the mast. At first Kensaku thought it was a distant star. There was not a soul in sight. There was the sharp cry of the wind, and the sound of the wave crests breaking as the wind hit them—that was all. Neither the engine nor the rudder chain was audible. The ship, like some enormous, silent monster, pushed her way through the wind, farther and farther into the dark.

  He stood huddled in his overcoat, his legs spread apart in a steadying stance. Even then he almost lost his balance several times, for besides the strong wind there was the rolling of the ship to contend with. The wind beat against his bare head until he felt his scalp going numb. His eyes itched, irritated by the eyelashes bent down by the wind. Above and below, to his right and left, the darkness stretched without limit. And here he was, standing in the very middle of this enormous thing. Everyone else was asleep in his house. He alone stood face to face with nature, as mankind’s chosen representative. But together with this exaggerated sense of self-importance came the helpless feeling that he was about to be swallowed up by the great darkness around him. It was not altogether unpleasant. He fought against it nevertheless. As if to prove to himself his own presence, he tightened the muscles in his lower abdomen and breathed deeply. As soon as he stopped doing so, however, he again felt in danger of being swallowed up.

  A black shape approached him. It was the cabin steward. The wind carried away his words, and Kensaku had no idea what he was saying. He retreated into the darkness. Kensaku, too, finally left the deck to return to his cabin. His body was thoroughly chilled.

  He was tired. But from force of habit he took a magazine with him to bed. Within ten minutes he was struggling to keep his eyes open, to catch the elusive printed words that kept on running away from him. And when temporarily he would succeed in recapturing his consciousness, the print would become clear, but the meaning would be a plaything of his dreams. Finally he let his eyes close and submitted happily to sleep’s onslaught. And as he fell asleep, there was this thought in his mind: the dreadful, hectic life of these last three months is at last over, and now this deep, peaceful sleep has come.

  He opened his eyes and saw the silvery light of an overcast day filtering through the thick glass of the porthole. He lifted his head to take a look outside. The sea was still rough, the waves rising and breaking under the cold, leaden sky. It was eight o’clock. He got up and went to the dining hall. He had breakfast alone, for the young foreigner had already had his. After breakfast he went back to his cabin to fetch his overcoat, then went up on deck. The wind had abated a little. He could see in the distance the coastline of Kishu.

  He found the young foreigner aft, marching vigorously back and forth, back and forth. He was out of breath but somehow was able to continue humming a tune. “Good morning!” he called out to Kensaku. “Join me, it will make you warm!” Kensaku was dressed informally in kimono with long woollen drawers underneath, hardly a suitable outfit for marching. He declined and went into the smoking lounge. A few moments later the young foreigner came in, holding the book Kensaku had lent him. He was much impressed by the short story “Four Days,” he said, using words like “terrible” and “morbid” to describe its quality.

  The steward came in. Kensaku asked him, “When are we arriving in Kobe?” He had a train schedule with him, and he wanted to see which west-bound train he could hope to catch.

  “We are a little behind because of the weather last night,” the steward answered. “But we are going full speed now, and we ought to reach Kobe by about
three.”

  He was right. Even before the ship had completely stopped, launches from the various hotels began circling round, in a manner reminiscent of predatory rickshaw men. The last to come was a large launch of the Japan Mail Lines. Kensaku boarded this and went ashore. In a few minutes he was on a rickshaw speeding toward Sannomiya Station, his suitcase, bearing the custom officer’s chalk marks, perched between his legs.

  2

  In the soft glow of the sunset the becalmed sea along Shioya and Maiko was beautiful. On a small boat swaying gently near the shore a fisherman sat crosslegged, mending his net. From a pine tree growing in the white sand a rope stretched to a larger fishing boat, already moored for the night. Kensaku sat by the train window, happily gazing at the scene. As night approached he became sleepy again. It seemed that after the irregular life he had been leading, his body was starved for sleep. He went into the dining car and had a simple meal. Back in his coach he changed into a kimono and lay down on the seat. At about eleven the porter awakened him to tell him that they would be in Onomichi soon.

  Both the inns listed in the guidebook were right in front of the station. He chose one and went in. It was a surprisingly dignified-looking establishment. He could hear someone playing the samisen, however, so he said to the head clerk, “Give me a quiet room.” He was shown to a back room upstairs. He crossed the room immediately upon entering and slid open the door. The outer storm door had not yet been closed, and the light from the room illuminated the pickets along the top of the garden wall. Beyond the wall was a modest path, and beyond that a narrow strip of sea hemmed in by a large island. Moored here were dozens of small fishing boats and cargo boats, their reddish yellow lights shining prettily on the water. The gaiety of the scene reminded him of a busy Tokyo street at night.