Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu (12 page)

Then, one morning as he was eating breakfast alone, a thought occurred to him. He shook his head and slapped his chopsticks down on the tray. He stood up and paced three times around the room, then folded his arms and stepped outside. He’d suddenly grown suspicious of his new pose. Pretending to be without will or emotion—was this not, in fact, the deepest recess of the liar’s hell? How did making a conscious attempt to be an idiot qualify as a life free of lies? The greater his efforts, the thicker the layers of lies had become. To hell with it, then, he thought. All that was left was the world of the unconscious. Though it was well before noon, Saburo set out for a drinking spot.

Parting the rope curtain and entering the place, he saw that, early in the day though it was, two customers were already there. And, wonder of wonders, who might they be but Taro the Wizard and Jirobei the Fighter? Taro was seated at the southeast corner of the table, his smooth, plump cheeks flushed pink from the saké he drank as he twisted and twirled his long, dangling mustache. Jirobei was encamped opposite him, in the northwest corner, and his swollen face gleamed with greasy sweat as he slowly swung his left arm in a wide, sweeping arc to take a drink, then held the cup up to eye level and gazed at it vacantly. Saburo took a seat halfway between them and started right in drinking. The three had never met before, of course. They sized one another up, each of them stealing furtive glances—Taro with his narrow eyes half closed, Jirobei taking a full minute to turn his head to either side, and Saburo with the restless, darting gaze of a hunted animal. Little by little, as the saké gradually did its work, the three of them edged closer together. When their intoxication, which each had struggled to contain, finally erupted, Saburo was the first to speak.

“It seems to me that the fact that we happen to be drinking together like this, at this time of day, means that there’s some sort of bond between us. Especially when you consider where we are: Edo teems with so many people that it’s said if you walk half a block you’re in a different world, yet here we are in the same little shop at the same time of the same day—it’s like a miracle.”

Taro gave a great yawn. “I drink because I like saké. Quit looking at me like that,” he drawled, and raised his neckerchief to mask the lower half of his face.

Jirobei spoke up after slapping the table and leaving a depression four inches long and an inch deep. “You’re right,” he said. “You could call it a bond. I just got out of prison.”

Saburo asked what he’d been in for.

“Well, here’s what happened...” In a barely fathomable murmur, Jirobei proceeded to tell his entire life story. When he finished, a single tear rolled down his cheek and dropped into his saké cup, which he then drained at a gulp.

Saburo pondered the tale for a while and finally said, by way of preamble, that he felt as if they were brothers, then launched into his own story, pausing after every sentence in an effort to prevent so much as a single lie from escaping his lips.

Jirobei, after listening for some time, declared, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” and promptly fell asleep in his chair. But Taro, who had until then done nothing but yawn in boredom, now opened his narrow eyes as wide as they would go and listened intently.

When the story was finished, Taro languidly removed his neckerchief mask. “You said your name was Saburo? Listen, I understand exactly how you feel. My name’s Taro. I’m from Tsugaru. I came to Edo two years ago, and I’ve been loafing about in places like this ever since. You want to hear my story?”

In his usual sleepy tone of voice, Taro related his own experiences, down to the smallest detail. No sooner had he finished than Saburo gave a great shout: “I know! I know just what you mean!”

The shout awoke Jirobei. Opening his cloudy eyes, he turned to Saburo. “What’s all the racket about?” he said.

Saburo was ashamed of his own raptures. Ecstasy is the ultimate lie. He tried to force himself to be calm, but his intoxication wouldn’t permit it. His half-hearted attempt to control himself only provoked the rebelliousness in his soul, and at last he threw all caution to the wind and spat out a lie of enormous proportions. “We three are artists!” he proclaimed, but all it did was further fuel the fire of prevarication. “We’re brothers, we three! Now that we’ve met, not even death can separate us. Our day will come, and soon—I’m certain of it! Listen, I’m a writer. I’m going to write the stories of Taro the Wizard and Jirobei the Fighter and, with your leave, my own story as well, to offer the world three models for living. Who cares what people say?” Now the flames of Saburo the Liar’s lies were burning at maximum intensity. “We’re artists, I tell you! We needn’t bow down to anyone, though he be the noblest and richest prince in the land. For men like us, money carries no more weight than a falling leaf!”

— I —

he members of the family of the famous painter Irie Shinnosuke, who passed away some eight years ago, all seem a bit on the eccentric side. This is not to say that the family is abnormal; it’s possible that their way of life is as it should be and that the rest of us are the abnormal ones, but, in any case, the atmosphere of the Irie home is decidedly different from most. It was this atmosphere that suggested to me the idea for “On Love and Beauty,” a short story I wrote some time ago.

The story opened with descriptions of the five Irie sons and daughters and went on to sketch a certain insignificant little incident. It was a naive, sentimental, and trivial work, to be sure, but one that I nonetheless remain quite fond of, although I must admit that my affection is not so much for the story itself as for the family described therein. I loved that family. I cannot pretend that my depiction of their household conforms precisely to the facts, however. To put it in such overblown terms causes me more than a little embarrassment, but my account included certain elements that fell short of Goethe’s ideals of “poetry and truth.” There are even a few colossal lies mixed in. Most regrettable of all is that, although I wrote about the five brothers and sisters and their kind and sagacious mother, the structure of the story was such that I was forced to take the liberty of omitting the grandmother and grandfather. This, I now realize, was an unwarrantable measure. It would appear that, in the final analysis, one simply can’t give a complete picture of the Irie household without including this venerable couple, and I’d like to say a few words about them now.

First, however, I must make one further disclaimer. What I am about to describe is not the Irie household as it exists today, but as it was four years ago, when I began to scribble the previous story. Things have changed for the family since that time. Marriage, and even death, have intervened. Compared to four years ago, the atmosphere of the household is somewhat gloomier. And it is no longer possible for me to drop by the house for a casual visit, as I once used to do. The five brothers and sisters, and I myself, have gradually grown more adult, more polite, more guarded—have become, in short, “members of society”—and when we do on occasion meet, it’s not the least bit fun. To speak plainly, I no longer have much interest in the Irie family. If I am to write about them, I want to write about them as they were in the past. Having made that much clear...

The grandfather, at that time, spent each day at his leisure. If it is true that an uncommon romanticism flowed through the veins of the Irie family, it most likely originated with this elderly gentleman. In the prime of his life he had managed a rather successful trading operation in Yokohama, but far from opposing the decision of Shinnosuke, his late son and only heir, to enter the Art Academy rather than study business, the old man actually boasted about it to those around him. That’s the sort of man the grandfather was. Even now that he was advanced in years and retired from business, he refused to confine himself to sitting around the Irie house in Kojimachi. He was past eighty, and yet after dressing immaculately each morning as if he had some important affair to attend to, he would make his escape the moment no one was watching, slipping out though the back gate with astonishing speed. After walking at a brisk pace for two or three blocks, he would glance back to make sure he wasn’t being followed, then pull a hunting cap from his pocket. The cap was a gaudy checkered specimen that he’d worn lovingly for forty years. It had always been an eyesore, and was now crumpled with age, but without it a walk simply wasn’t a walk.

With this cap set jauntily on the back of his head, then, he would set out for the Ginza. There he’d enter Shiseido and order hot chocolate, a single cup of which he’d sit over and sip at for as long as an hour or two. He’d survey the entire room, and if he happened to see one of his old business acquaintances with a young geisha or some other companion of that sort, he would immediately call the man over in a loud voice, insist that the couple join him in his booth, and proceed to hold them captive as he drawled out a series of caustic remarks. He derived unspeakable pleasure from this.

On the way home from these excursions, the grandfather would often buy a meager gift for someone in the family. He was, apparently, plagued by a certain sense of guilt over his unorthodox behavior, and recently he’d been making a concerted effort to get on the good side of everyone else in the house. To this end he’d come up with the idea of conferring a medal of honor upon the family member who performed the most meritorious service each week. The medal was one he’d devised himself by passing a red silk cord through a hole punched in a silver Mexican coin. Unfortunately, no one wanted this prize very badly. It was a matter of consternation to all of them that the person who received the medal was obliged to wear it, whenever at home, for the entire week.

The mother, being a model of filial piety toward her father-in-law, would express gratitude whenever she received the award and promptly attach it to her sash, albeit in as inconspicuous a location as possible. Each time she allotted the grandfather an extra bottle of beer for his nightcap she was awarded the medal then and there, like it or not. When the eldest son blundered, on occasion, into having the medal bestowed upon him for such services as accompanying the grandfather to a music hall, he accepted his fate with the good grace one would expect of a man of his staid and serious nature, and would wear it prominently around his neck for the entire week. The elder daughter and second son avoided being put into that position. The elder daughter’s clever ruse was to proclaim herself quite unworthy of the honor and positively decline to accept. The second son, for his part, had gone so far as to stuff the medal in his dresser drawer and claim to have lost it, although the grandfather had seen through this bit of subterfuge at once and sent the younger daughter to search his room. She was unfortunate enough to find the prize, as a result of which she was designated the next recipient. The grandfather was clearly partial to the younger daughter. Though she was the most self-centered member of the family and devoid of any special merit whatsoever, he was forever looking for an excuse to confer his award upon her. When this happened, she generally put the medal away in her purse and left it there the entire week. She alone was permitted such exceptional behavior.

The youngest son was the only one who had the slightest desire to be awarded the prize. Even he felt somehow awkward and embarrassed when obliged to wear it around his neck, yet he always experienced a certain sense of loss the moment it was taken away from him and given to someone else; and occasionally, when the younger daughter was out, he would sneak into her room, open her purse, and gaze nostalgically at the medal inside. The grandmother had never once been awarded the medal, for the simple reason that from the very beginning she had emphatically refused to have anything to do with it. Being a plain-spoken woman, she had described the entire idea as “imbecilic.”

It would be difficult to give a clear picture of the grandmother without touching upon her affection for the youngest son, who was quite simply the apple of her eye. He once took up the study of hypnotism and attempted, without the least success, to mesmerize his grandfather, mother, and brothers and sisters. One by one they returned his gaze, peering at him curiously as he tried to put them to sleep. Everyone enjoyed a good laugh over this except the youngest son himself, who was on the verge of tears and sweating profusely by the time he turned to his last subject, the grandmother. She fell into a deep sleep almost immediately, nodding in her chair, and innocently answered the hypnotist’s solemn questions.

“Grandmother, you can see a flower, can’t you?”

“Yes. It’s very pretty.”

“What sort of flower is it?”

“It’s a lotus.”

“Grandmother, what do you love most?”

“You.”

This reply gave the hypnotist pause.

“Who is ‘you’?”

“Why, it’s you. Kazuo [the youngest son].”

The rest of the family burst into laughter, which snapped the grandmother out of her trance, but the hypnotist had at least managed to save face. Later, however, when the ever-serious eldest son worriedly asked the grandmother if she’d really been in a trance, she chuckled and muttered: “What do
you
think?”

I could go on and on about the Irie family, but for now I’d prefer to present you with a rather long story constructed by the family members themselves. As anyone familiar with them knows, the Irie brothers and sisters all have a certain fondness for the literary arts, and from time to time they gather to tell a story by turns. This often takes place, at the urging of the eldest son, when they’ve assembled in the drawing room on a cloudy Sunday and find that boredom has begun to weigh upon them. The game begins with one of them describing whatever sort of character might pop into his or her mind, and the others take turns concocting that character’s destiny. Simpler tales they do on an impromptu basis, each delivering his or her portion orally, but when the story offers interesting possibilities they take the precaution of writing their episodes out and passing the manuscript around. They presumably have a number of these co-authored narratives stashed away somewhere. Occasionally the grandfather, grandmother, and mother help out, and this appears to have been the case with the rather long story we’re concerned with today.

— II —

The youngest son, though not very accomplished at this sort of endeavor, was generally the one who started off, and he generally made a mess of things. But this time he really intended to put his heart into it. When, with the five days of New Year’s vacation before them, the brothers and sisters grew bored and decided to engage in the usual storytelling pastime, the youngest son once again expressed a desire to take the lead. “Let me start,” he said. “I’ll go first.” It was always the same, and as usual his elder brothers and sisters just smiled ruefully and let him have his way. This being the first story of the year, they decided to take special care and write it out by turns. The deadline for each contributor was to be the morning of the day after receiving the manuscript. Each therefore had one entire day to conceive and write his or her portion, and the story would be complete by the fifth night or the sixth morning. During these five days, all of the brothers and sisters would be slightly on edge and aware of having a certain rare sense of purpose in their lives.

The youngest son, then, had once again expressed a desire to go first, and since his wish had been granted he was to begin the story, but unfortunately he had no idea what to write. He appeared to be suffering a block. He wished he hadn’t volunteered to start. On New Year’s Day, the other brothers and sisters all went out to enjoy themselves, and the grandfather too had disappeared early in the morning, decked out in tails. The only ones left in the house were the mother, the grandmother, and the youngest son, who sat in his room sharpening and resharpening a pencil. After some hours had gone by, he could feel tears welling up, and at last, utterly desperate, he abandoned himself to a sinister plot. Plagiarism. He felt he had no choice. His heart pounding, he leafed through various books from his shelf—a copy of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
, a volume of stories by Hans Christian Andersen,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
, and so on. Stealing a little bit from here, a little bit from there, he somehow managed to throw something together.

Once upon a time, in the middle of a forest in the north country, there lived a horrible, ugly old witch. Though a truly vile old hag in every way, she was kind to one person—her only daughter, Rapunzel. The witch was absolutely devoted to Rapunzel, and every day she combed out her hair with a golden comb. Rapunzel was a beautiful girl. She was also a spirited, sassy child, and by the time she turned fourteen she had ceased to listen to anyone. There were times, in fact, when she went so far as to scold her own mother. But the witch so doted on her daughter that she would merely smile and beg forgiveness.

It was the time of year when cold north winds blow through the forest, leaving the trees more scantily clad with each passing day, and preparations for winter had begun at the witch’s house. One evening a wonderful prize wandered into the enchanted forest. A handsome young prince, mounted on horseback, had lost his way in the gathering darkness. He was the sixteen-year-old son of the king of this land. Engrossed in the chase during a hunting expedition, he’d lost contact with his servants and was unable to find the path back home. With his golden armor shining like a torch in the dim light, there was small chance that the witch would fail to notice him. She flew out of her house with the speed of the wind and in no time at all had pulled the prince down from his saddle.

“How nice and plump this boy is!” she gurgled. “Just look at that tender white flesh... Fattened on walnuts, no doubt.” The old witch had long, sparse whiskers, and eyebrows that hung down over her eyes. “He’s like a fat little lamb! I wonder how he tastes. Pickled in brine, he ought to be just the thing for the long winter nights!”