Her eyelids narrowed over her eyes, which, ablaze with fever, were riveted on me.
As I went out the iron gate, firecrackers were going off everywhere, ringing in my ears. The next day would be the old calendar New Year. Red streamers were posted on the pillars and doors of every house. Some of the streamers had already been torn to shreds and were fluttering in the dust along the streets. Those fluttering scraps looked strangely vivid among the withered leaves and trash. A mother with her baby bundled up in a red cloth rode by on a rickshaw. Somehow those red colors seemed warm, mystical. As I walked back, I saw only the vivid reds of the festival. Men and women sat or walked or gathered in groups, their hands and faces dirty, their blue clothing worn out, filthy. Those men and women were trying to greet the New Year in some small way. For the first time apparently, I discovered that all these Chinese were living together, indifferent to me and other Japanese.
When I knocked at the back door, my landlady opened it. She smiled and then brought out a bottle of sake for me. If was a gift from the Japanese Self-Governing Council.
"You can celebrate the New Year," she said.
I took the bottle and went up to my room. The sake was sweet and thick. That night I had to finish a detailed report on a confiscated Japanese factory. I had to write in English or Chinese the name, serial number, and value of at least two hundred different kinds of precision machines. A catalogue and dictionary were on my crate. I made up my mind to buy some navel oranges with part of my fee. I would bring them as a gift when I visited the invalid.
By evening I was half-finished. I was drunk and tired. I felt a pain in my side, and my fingers could hardly move. My eyes kept getting weaker. Some men came into the alley to sell bread. A few came with pastry. All of them were Japanese reduced to becoming peddlers. No one bought anything from them.
Aoki dropped in. He wrote editorials for a Japanese newspaper.
"Why haven't you been to the Art Association meetings?"
"I haven't felt like it."
"The day after tomorrow the Cultural Division of the Chinese Control Office is calling everyone together. How about coming with me?"
"Can't. I've got documents to do." I couldn't help feeling how superficial the word "culture" was. Aoki kept on talking about the Chinese People's Court and other topics. They didn't interest me either. All I could think about were those yellow oranges I had seen, lustreless, piled high.
When Aoki left, I crawled into bed and tried to doze off. It was windy out, and someone kept knocking at the back door. I had a hunch it was for me. It was annoying to be plagued with callers. I heard a woman's voice. The thought rushing through me that she had come drove away my heavy, uncomfortable drowsiness. I sat up in bed. She was coming, coming! I was drunk. There was no telling how callous or even violent I would become.
She opened the door, and I heard her brown raincoat rustling, her outer clothing visible through it. Small drops of water sparkled minutely on her coat. "Just a second!" she said. She stepped over my bedding on the mats, unfastened the window, and quietly opened it. The dark grating was drenched with rain. "It's all right. He didn't follow me." She closed the window after peering down into the alley. "I bumped into Karajima on the street. I told him I was going to your place, and he said he'd come with me. I broke away from him and ran here."
Her wet cheeks were pale. She looked tired.
"Is he still hanging around?"
"Yes. I even met him the last time I was here." Her face was quite strained.
"He can't forget me. He said so himself. Strange, isn't it?—I brought you a snack. Have it with your sake."
"You came out just for that?"
"Yes. I really wanted you to have it." She took some teabiscuits from a black box. They were fried brown and looked homemade.
"Tomorrow's the New Year. I wonder if I can come see you?" she said.
I hadn't mentioned her sick husband, nor had she made the slightest reference to him.
"Quite free and easy, am I not?"
"Yes, free and easy." "Perhaps I'm slightly insane."
"A little," I said.
But I had my mind on Karajima. I wanted a detailed account of him. In spite of her reluctance he was what fascinated me.
"He's really all steamed up about you after all." "It looks that way." She showed her annoyance at my having mentioned it. "That conceited thing went so far as to ask me to save him! I was dumbfounded. It's too late for jokes like that. With the war crimes he's going to be charged with, he's really losing his mind."
"You mean he asked you to help him?"
"Odd, isn't it? A man asking a woman to help him out!"
That surprised me too. My only impression of Karajima was as the man of power you can't help despising. I had thought of him as an annoying insect, not as a man with feelings similar to my own. I didn't really loathe him—that is, I didn't really think about him. So I wasn't quite ready to accept her words at face value.
"It's not even a question of saving him. Since it's absolutely impossible for me to. Even if I could, I don't want to be dragged into the mess he's in. I definitely left him, you know, when the war ended."
She sounded phony to me. That was what she had said at our last meeting. I suspected her words were false, but she probably hoped they didn't sound that way.
"It strikes me he's not the type to scream for help. It's just that he needs you."
"I don't know about that. At any rate, I'm afraid. While he's alive, I can't sleep." She gave me the same look she had used at the door of her apartment. "Will you protect me? Will you love me? I love you."
"You mean—?" I might have felt overjoyed, but even then I wanted to equivocate. It was all so new. In contrast to me, she looked absolutely certain.
"I'm really in a difficult situation. You see that, don't you? So I'm quite serious. Don't lie. If you love me, say so. A half-hearted reply won't settle anything. I'm honestly in love with you."
"I love you. Of course I do. But maybe I can't protect you. I can't protect anyone."
"You love me then?"
"Yes."
"That's enough for me. That's fine. If only you do. Well, perhaps it's difficult for you to protect me." There was no malice in her smile. "You do seem lazy."
"I haven't had any experience along that line."
She grabbed my shoulders and stood up and kissed me. Her lips were quite soft. When she was about to move away, I put my arms around her and gave her a fairly hard kiss.
I felt she had planned this scene. I was certain she was following a script. But that didn't upset me. I didn't even feel I was being taken in. In fact, the thought that she was precious to me kept steadily increasing.
"But can you love me? Can you love a woman Karajima had?" Her eyes were riveted on me, her face oddly static, almost blank, because of her own passion.
"Love me! Think of me with pity! Oh, I want
