My uncle’s business is swindling. He has no money at all. He and my aunt are extremely cold and extremely stingy people. For some time after I arrived, I had to endure an empty stomach and would return to my sister’s house once every three days or so for something to eat. Sometimes when we had run out of provisions we were obliged to make do with yams and potatoes. But not my uncle and aunt. My aunt is an extremely disagreeable person. She is calculating about everything, interested only in appearances, and is inclined to poke into everything around her, which often enough includes me, so that I feel the sting of her busybody’s needle. As for my uncle, broke as he is, he drinks his sake. And when he returns to the country he carries on like a lord. But if you look beneath the surface you find nothing but surprises. He’s even involved in more than one lawsuit. He can never leave on a train without dashing off to a pawnshop to raise money for a ticket, or going to my sister’s place and wheedling from her what he needs to get by; it seems he feels he’s repaying the loan with what it costs him to board me.
My aunt must have been thinking all along that I’d be paying my way with my writing; when she catches me with my pen in hand she’ll take a dig at me, asking what I expect to earn by scribbling on a scrap of paper. Sometimes, by way of dropping a hint, she’ll wave an ad in my face from the help-wanted column in the newspaper, “Hiring clerks.”
All this is repeated endlessly until I lose all sense of why I ever came here. I find myself thinking strange thoughts. The bizarre, utterly formless life of this family and the constantly shifting miasma of their internal circumstances haunt me day and night and I feel as if I am lost in a terrifying dream. When I consider that no one could possibly understand my plight no matter how I explained it, I must conclude forlornly that I am living all alone in a world inhabited by demons. Sometimes I feel I shall go mad. Properly speaking, when I begin to suspect that I have already lost my mind, I become unbearably afraid. Not only does no ray of light reach me in the underground dungeon where I suffer, but I feel I no longer have hands or feet. I suppose I feel that way because even if I lift my hands or move my feet, I remain in pitch-darkness. I can appeal all I like, a thick, cold wall blocks my voice and prevents it being heard. In all the world there is only me. I have no friends, and even if I did it would make no difference. Who, after all, would have a mind capable of touching the feelings of a ghostly presence like mine? An excess of pain has prompted me to write this letter. I haven’t written expecting to be rescued. I know your circumstances. I haven’t the slightest desire to receive any sort of material aid from you. If some portion of my pain, reaching you, would only create in the compassion flowing in your veins like lifeblood a swell of sympathy for me, I would be satisfied. For that alone would place within my grasp a guarantee that I exist in society as a member of the human race. Is there, I wonder, no single ray of light that can reach the vast world of people from the darkness of this devil’s confinement? I begin to think not. A reply from you, or no reply, will determine my certainty of this.
The letter ended here.
[165]
JUST THEN the ash on Tsuda’s cigarette, which had lengthened to nearly an inch, dropped on the letter. Eyeing the powder scattered across the vertical and horizontal indigo ruling of the manuscript page, he became suddenly aware that until now he hadn’t moved the hand in which he was holding the cigarette. More precisely, his lips and hand at some point had forgotten the cigarette’s existence. Moreover, since finishing the letter and dropping the ash had not occurred simultaneously, he was obliged to acknowledge an interval of vacant time that had been sandwiched between the two events.
What could have accounted for that empty time? It was hard to imagine anything with less relevance to Tsuda intrinsically than this letter. He didn’t know the author. He had no inkling of the connection between the author and Kobayashi. As for the contents, the incidents described were so alien to his own position and circumstances they might have been occurring in another world.
But his observations didn’t end there. Something had startled him. Until now he had been wont to assume that the world was what he beheld in front of him, but just now he had been obliged abruptly to turn and look behind. He had halted in that attitude, his gaze fixed upon an existence opposite to himself. As he stared at that ghostly presence he was encountering for the first time ever, he cried out to himself Ah, this is a person, too! He saw in front of his eyes with blinding clarity the fact that someone at a vast distance from himself was if anything closely connected.
Here he stopped and circled. But he didn’t advance a single step. He went no further than understanding the meaning of the repellant letter in a manner that befitted him.
As Tsuda brushed the cigarette ash off the manuscript paper, Kobayashi, who had been in conversation with Hara, turned at once in his direction. Tsuda had caught a few phrases apparently intended to conclude their business.
“Don’t worry about it…. Something will work out…. You’ll be fine.”
He pushed the letter toward Kobayashi in silence. Leaving it on the table, Kobayashi spoke.
“You read it?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
Tsuda offered no reply. But he felt the need of ascertaining his companion’s intention.
“I don’t see why you had me read this.”
Kobayashi returned the question.
“You don’t see why I had you read it?”
“I don’t even know who the author is.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Let’s say that doesn’t matter; why should I care?”
“About the author or the letter?”
“Either one.”
“What do you think?”
Tsuda hesitated again. His hesitation was in fact evidence that the meaning of the letter had reached him. It was as if, to put it more clearly, his awareness that he had managed to interpret the letter in his own way was impeding his reply. Presently he spoke.
“In the sense you mean, they’re both irrelevant to me.”
“And what’s the sense I mean?”
“You don’t know?”
“Tell me what you think.”
“I’ve had enough of this.”
Tsuda wondered whether the letter wasn’t intended by Kobayashi to serve the same purpose as the painting. Perhaps he was trying to maneuver him into making a material sacrifice so that he could crow, “What did I tell you? You’ve surrendered after all.” To Tsuda that would amount to an affront beyond enduring. Then let him try, he bridled, let him threaten all he liked with a destitute ghost and see where it would get him. When he spoke, his resentment was audible in his voice.
“How about telling me outright what you were thinking. Like a man!”