grave. Disturbed by this discovery, I made up several lines of verse and wrote them down on the white paper that had recently been folded like a lotus leaf and left before the grave. Intended to suggest a certain French poet, the lines read: I am in the ground now, together with the maggots. With my index finger I traced the words in mud as delicately as a ghost might have done.
The next evening I went to the grave before I did my sprinting. The words of the ghost had washed away in the rain that morning, so none of the bereaved kin would have been offended by seeing them on a visit to the grave. The white lotus leaves had torn in places.
Even as I fooled around like this, I got better at running. My leg muscles began to bulge too, but my complexion remained the same as ever. Beneath the deep tan on my face a pale, dirty color still lingered. It was quite unsavory.
I was very intrigued by my face. When weary of reading, I would take out a hand mirror and gaze at myself. Smiling, frowning, looking contemplative with my cheek resting on my palm, I never got bored. I mastered certain expressions guaranteed to make people laugh. Wrinkling my nose, pursing my mouth, and squinting, I would turn myself into a charming bear cub. I chose that particular look when puzzled or dissatisfied.
Around this time my next older sister was in the local hospital because of an illness. If I showed her my bear-cub face, she would roll about in bed laughing hard and holding her stomach. My sister had a middle-aged maid from home for company, but she was still lonely. That’s why my visits meant a lot to her. My slow footsteps in the hospital corridor echoed louder than those of other people, so my sister could hear me approaching her room. By the time I got there, she would be elated.
If I didn’t visit her for a week, my sister would send the maid to fetch me. With a solemn look the maid would say, You’d better come or your sister’s temperature will go up. She’ll be worse off then.
I was now fourteen or fifteen, and veins had become faintly visible on the back of my hand. I felt something strange and momentous taking place within me. I was secretly in love with a classmate, a short fellow with dark skin. We always walked home together after school, blushing when our little fingers merely grazed one another. Once, as we were heading along the back road after school, my friend noticed a lizard swimming right in a ditch where parsley and chickweed grew wild. Without a word he scooped up the lizard and gave it to me. I couldn’t stand such creatures, but I pretended to be overjoyed as I wrapped this one in my handkerchief. Back home, I released the lizard in the garden pool where it swam around, its tiny head wavering. I looked in the pool the next morning, but the lizard was gone.
Stuck on myself, I never considered telling my companion how I felt. I usually didn’t say much to him, anyway. With the skinny girl from next door, it was even worse. She was a student too, and I was quite aware of her. Even when I came toward her on the street, though, I quickly looked away as if in contempt.
One night in autumn a fire broke out near our house. Along with the others I got up to watch the flames shooting from the darkness of the neighborhood shrine and the sparks scattering all around. A grove of dark cedars loomed above the flames, and small birds darted through the air like innumerable fluttering leaves. I knew perfectly well that the girl was standing in her white pajamas by the gate next door and looking at me. I kept gazing toward the fire, though, with the side of my face toward her. I figured the glare of the flames would make my profile glitter and look splendid.
Being this way, I couldn’t initiate anything on my own, neither with this classmate nor with the girl next door. When alone, though, I would act bold. I’d close one eye and laugh at myself in the mirror, or carve a thin mouth in the desktop with a knife and press my lips to it. When I colored it with red ink afterwards, the mouth turned so dark and ugly I gouged it out with my knife.
One spring morning as I was heading for my third-year class in high school, I stopped on a bridge and leaned against the vermilion-painted railing. A wide stream flowed below, just like the Sumida River, and I drifted into a reverie the like of which I had never known. I felt as though someone else was behind me, and that I myself was always assuming some pose or other. I would comment on my every gesture, no matter how slight, as if I were standing beside my own self. Now he’s perplexed and is just looking at his palm—that’s what I would say. Or maybe—He muttered something now while scratching behind his ear. Because of this habit, I could no longer act on the spur of the moment, as one less aware of himself would. When I came out of that reverie on the bridge, I trembled in my loneliness. And, while still in this mood, I thought of my past and my future. I went on across the bridge, various memories coming to mind, my footgear clattering on the floorboards. Again, I fell to dreaming. And I finally let out a sigh. Could I really become someone?
That’s when I started getting fretful. Since I couldn’t be satisfied with anything, I kept writhing about in vain. Masks in one layer after another—as many as ten or twenty—had fastened themselves upon me, and I could no longer tell how sad any one of them really was. In the end I found a dreary way out of my dilemma—I would be a writer. There were many others who were subject to this same sort of incomprehensible agitation, and all of them would be my confederates.
My younger brother had started high school by then, and the two of us shared a room. After talking over the matter, we got together with five or six friends and began a little magazine. A large printing shop stood just down the street on the other side, and I easily arranged to have our magazine produced there. I had the shop use a pretty lithograph for the front cover too. When everything was ready, we distributed copies to our classmates.
Thereafter I published something in each monthly issue. At first I wrote philosophic stories on ethical questions. I proved adept at composing a few lines in the style of the fragmentary essay. We kept the magazine going for about a year, but I got into trouble with my oldest brother about it.
Anxious about this mania for writing, my brother sent me a long letter from home. Chemistry uses equations, he wrote, while geometry depends on theorems. With literature, however, there wasn’t anything equivalent to these equations or theorems that helped clarify matters. That’s why genuine understanding of literature came only with age and the right circumstances.
My brother had written in a formal and stiff manner, and I agreed with what he said. In fact, he had set down my very qualifications. Responding immediately, I wrote that I was truly fortunate to have such a splendid older brother. His letter was right on the mark. However, I had to point out that my interest in literature didn’t hamper my studies. Indeed, I worked all the harder because of it. I let my brother know exactly where I stood, mixing in some exaggerated feeling here and there.
More than anything, I felt I had to stand out from the crowd. The very thought kept me at my books, and, from the third year of high school, I was always at the head of the class. For someone who doesn’t want to be thought a drudge, that’s quite an accomplishment. Instead of my classmates jeering at me, I actually brought them to heel, including the judo champ we had nicknamed Octopus. In one corner of the room there was a large jar for wastepaper. Sometimes I would point to it and wonder out loud if an octopus could fit inside. The champ would stick his head in the jar and let out a strange, reverberating laugh.
The good-looking fellows in class were devoted to me as well. Even when I cut out triangular, hexagonal, and flower-shaped plasters and pasted them over my pimples, no one joked about it.
The pimples were distressing all the same, especially when they kept on spreading. Each morning when I awoke, I would run my hand over my face to see how things were. I bought all sorts of ointments, but nothing seemed to work. Before going to the drugstore, I’d write down the name of the ointment. Do you have any of this? I would ask, showing the scrap of paper with the writing. I had to make it seem I was doing someone else a favor.
I was horny—that’s what the pimples really showed. The mere thought made
