one that wanted to cry. If I could have, I might have tried a tear or two myself.
Yet her last remark, confirmed by her tears, had certainly turned out to be painful and humiliating for me too. I was drunk, but the pain I felt in her words refused to go away. I might reject them, ignore them, but I did feel their significance.
"I guess you know about Karajima. He was my husband's employer. What do you think of him, Mr. Sugi?"
Of course I knew how influential Karajima had been as a propagandist for the Japanese army. I had even seen him once, a handsome, well-built, fair-complected man. He was quite adept in his role as hero and gentleman. He wore tasteful ties, the best of clothes. In spite of myself, I could still accept his absolute self-confidence in treating others as subhuman. But I detested the way he played the sophisticate that knows every thought and emotion of the man he's with. It was stupid and depressing to be governed by such men of power. I had listened to his ranting voice and polished speeches, and even after spitting, I had been left with an aftertaste of something dirty. But when the war ended, I had forgotten him. I had forgotten his nastiness too. Once you started talking about nastiness, everything, yourself included, seemed nasty.
Her husband had worked in Karajima's printing division and later had been sent to Hankow. She had to remain alone in Shanghai. Karajima had offered to find her a room, and on the day they were to inspect it, she had gone to Karajima's office. When he had closed the door after her, he told her he had liked her from the first and violently threw his arms around her.
"Some of his workers ought to have been in the next room. I struggled and cried out, but no one came."
Though she might have been upset, she easily told me everything. Sometimes she stole a glance at me with those beautiful eyes of hers. Apparently she wanted to see if I was disturbed. I didn't let on that I was.
"He was like an animal," she said. Her words and look seemed to point an accusing finger at all men. I began thinking that if I had the power, I too—I even imagined that I was the one, not Karajima, who had those arms around her. What it had amounted to, at any rate, was that she had let him have her. She had lived on without even a thought of suicide.
"He had me every night after that." I kept staring at her body, and that searing pain I so patiently endured was possibly not unpleasant.
Out went a Karajima directive to Hankow, so her husband was stationed there until the end of the war. For the duration she had been Karajima's possession. Try as she might to hide from him, up he drove in his car. All the neighbors and her husband's friends knew about it, but no one stopped Karajima. When her husband had finally returned to Shanghai, he was totally emaciated from a terrible case of diarrhea. He was bedridden from the moment they had carried him off the truck. She was still kept by Karajima. He was generous with money and supplies. And sometimes he summoned her from the bedside of her stricken husband.
Her husband knew about their relationship and kept abusing her with it.
She admitted the affair and asked him to forgive her. He refused to take the medicine purchased with Karajima's money, but without these funds they wouldn't have been able to afford electricity, water, even the sheets the invalid was lying on. He was tormented by the thought that his friends had so contemptuously forsaken him. It was even more painful to have her consoling him. He often kept telling her how detestable she was, yet he said she deserved pity.
"He's good. And so like a child."
She rolled her tear-drenched handkerchief into a ball, and opening her compact, she began putting on some make-up. She colored her slightly opened lips a fresh red, and as she powdered her face, her cheeks kept expanding and contracting. She was skillful, thorough.
"Well, how about now? Karajima I mean."
"I've definitely left him. I'm determined to hate him until I die. He'll be caught soon since he's a war criminal."
A cold, blunt expression was on her face. When she finished speaking, I picked up my cup. I felt my grim smile had somehow distorted my face. I couldn't explain why I felt only suspicious then.
Did she really despise Karajima? Wasn't there more pleasure than misfortune in having given herself to him? Her resolutions to the contrary, she had, however half-heartedly, kept up the relationship so that some desire other than monetary might have been behind it. In her eagerness to live comfortably, or if not that at least adequately, I doubted if there was any self-accusation or humiliation behind the affair.
I imagined she had the same detestable human instinct to survive by merely living, by forgetting all about pain and humiliation, especially when I was so well aware of that same instinct in me. The simple assault of her charm made me feel even more convinced of the truth of my observation. I felt sick, depressed.
"I believe in you. That's why I've gone into all of this."
She poured me some wine.
"But I really came on my husband's orders. He doesn't want to see any of his former friends. He's read your poems and believes in you. He wants to talk to you. Can you come just once as a favor to him? He'll be overjoyed. We're so miserable all the time! How about tomorrow? It's best to come early. The past few days he's been quite ill."
She had returned after making me promise to visit the next day. At the same time I was worrying about the dust blowing all over the concrete platform I was lying on, the particles sticking to my skin, which hadn't been exposed to a bath for a month, I kept wondering if I ought to go. It made little difference if I did or not. Of course, there was plenty to interest me. Yet whether I went or not didn't really matter. There wasn't a soul to accuse me of not doing something to help them out of their situation.
As I walked along, a youngster selling candy kept pestering me. I find these kids annoying except when I'm drunk. At a street corner I saw a Japanese having his hat stolen by a young delinquent. That troubled, weak-looking face should have evoked some sympathy in me, but all the same I couldn't help finding it disagreeable. He had run a few steps after the thief and had stopped, relinquishing his hat, stealing a glance at me. I couldn't help feeling disgusted by the sight of his helpless eyes.
I reached the woman's apartment, the Indian gate-keeper opening the iron gate for me. He looked sharply at my Japanese-resident armband. I rang the doorbell three doors beyond.
She seemed quite delighted as she ran down the stairs. It made me feel good to have caused that happiness in her. But I sensed the contradiction. She was too lively, quite out of keeping with the daily depression she had talked about.
As I took off my shoes at the threshold of the third floor apartment, I saw the signs of a sick person in the next room. He must have been lying in bed waiting for me. I felt the tension with which he must have waited. Perhaps it was a momentous interview for him. To me it shouldn't have meant a thing. I would have been disgusted with myself had I made it momentous when it was nothing of the sort.
She offered me a cushion to sit on, a colorful one.
The invalid was so very thin that the flatness of his covers made it seem as if his body wasn't under them. At first he turned sideways to look at me, but he glanced back up at the ceiling right away. At that very moment heavy wrinkles, like a monkey's or a baby's just after its birth, formed on his face. He was crying. It was embarrassing to see his neck and shoulders shaking as he tried to stop himself. His forehead and cheeks were an ugly red.
The tears made it difficult for him to speak. His voice often grew weak, gave out.
"At first he had only diarrhea, but
