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 me dizzy with shame. Actually, I’d be better off dead. My face attained its greatest notoriety within my family just about then. My oldest sister, who had gone to live with her husband’s household, supposedly said that no woman would come to our own house as my bride. Informed of this, I applied even more ointment.
My younger brother worried about my pimples too. Time after time he went to buy medicine in my stead. As children my brother and I had never gotten along; when he took the entrance exam for high school, I prayed that he would fail. After we began living together away from home, though, I gradually came to appreciate my brother’s even temper. As he grew up, he turned quiet and shy. Occasionally he submitted an essay to the magazine, but his writing was flat. His grades didn’t look good next to mine either, and this troubled him. I would be sympathetic, and then he’d get even more discouraged. His hair came down in a widow’s peak over his forehead, something he detested as effeminate. He sincerely believed that his narrow forehead had made him a dunce.
When I was with someone during this period of my life, I would either reveal everything about myself or else conceal it. To be honest, the only one I really confided in was this brother of mine. He told me everything about himself and I did the same.
One dark night in early autumn we went out to the harbor wharf. A breeze was blowing in from the strait as we talked about the red string my Japanese-language teacher had once described. The teacher had said that each boy in the class had such a string tied to the baby toe of his right foot, but no one could see it. The other end was always attached to a girl’s baby toe. The string was very long, and it wouldn’t break even when the boy and girl were far apart. It wouldn’t tangle either, even if the two of them met right on the street. And, our teacher said, this string meant that the boy and girl were destined to marry each other.
When I first heard this story, I was so excited that I rushed home to tell my younger brother. And that evening on the wharf, listening to the waves and the cry of the sea gulls, we spoke of the red string once again.
What’s your wife-to-be doing right now? I asked.
My brother shook the wharf railing two or three times with both hands. Then, somewhat awkwardly, he said, She’s walking in a garden.
That was just like my brother. Yes, a young girl in large wooden clogs, walking in a garden with her fan and gazing at the primroses—how perfect for him.
Now it was my turn. Gazing out at the dark sea, I said, Mine’s wearing a red sash. And then I closed my mouth tight. A ferry boat heading across the strait seemed to roll on the horizon, its windows entirely lit up as though the boat were actually a large inn.
One thing I had kept from my brother. When I came back for the vacation that summer, a new maid was Working in the house. Wearing a red sash over her yukata, this petite girl had been very abrupt in helping me out of my shirt and trousers. Her name, I had learned, was Miyo.
Whenever I went to bed, I would secretly light up a cigarette and think of various ways to begin a story. At some point Miyo must have detected this habit. One evening, after laying out the bedding, she placed a tobacco tray right beside my pillow. When she came in the next morning to straighten up, I told her that I smoked on the sly and she should not bring me the tray. All right, she said, a sullen look on her face.
When a troupe of storytellers and musicians came to our village that summer, the household servants were allowed to see a performance. You go too, my brother and I were told. But at that period of our lives, we only made fun of such provincial amusements. Instead of the theater, we headed for the rice paddies to catch fireflies. We had gone almost as far as the woods of the neighboring village, but the dew was so heavy we came back with only twenty or so fireflies in our cage.
Presently the servants came wandering in from the theater. I had Miyo spread the bedding and hang up the mosquito net. Then my brother and I turned out the light and released the fireflies inside the net. As they glided back and forth, Miyo stood outside the net watching. I sprawled out on the bedding alongside my brother, more aware of Miyo’s dim figure than of the faint glowing of the fireflies.
“Was