Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu (16 page)

Next up was the younger daughter, an impertinent thing in her own right. Driven by a lust for glory so pronounced that she’d have preferred to give up entirely on any endeavor rather than fail to attain spectacular success, she was, from the moment she awoke on the fourth day, restless and fidgety. When the whole family gathered at the breakfast table, she alone confined herself to a slice of bread and a glass of milk, perhaps sensing that stuffing herself with such common, down-to-earth dishes as miso soup and pickled radishes could only serve to impede her flights of imagination. After finishing breakfast she went into the parlor, where she stood at the piano and began pounding away at the keys. Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Ravel—she played whatever passage came into her head, a hopeless hodgepodge of melodies. This was her way of calling down inspiration from above. She had always been given to overblown histrionics.

Inspiration came. With a serene look on her face, she swept out of the parlor, went to the bathroom, removed her stockings, and washed her feet. A strange thing to do, on the face of it. Apparently she thought of this as a way of purifying herself. A perverse sort of baptism. Now, satisfied that she had attended to the purification of both body and soul, she made a leisurely retreat to her study. Once inside, she sat on a chair, looked up, folded her hands, and murmured:

“Amen.”

This was nothing if not extraordinary, since the younger daughter was by no means a religious person. She had merely borrowed the word temporarily, thinking it a suitable vehicle for expressing the precious tension she felt at that moment.

Amen
. Indeed, the word seemed to soothe her heart. She ceremoniously dropped a stick of the incense Plum Blossom into the brazier at her feet, took a deep breath, and let her eyelids droop dreamily. She felt as if she understood the state of mind of that great woman writer of olden times, Lady Murasaki, and as she recalled the line “In spring, the dawn,” she experienced a rapturous sense of peace and clarity. Then, remembering that the words were in fact written by Sei Shonagon, she came back to earth with a thud and hastily reached for a volume on her desk—
Greek Mythology
. A book of pagan myths. This in itself should suffice to demonstrate the spurious nature of that “Amen” of hers. She claimed that this volume was the fountainhead of her imaginative powers, and that she had only to open it whenever the springs of imagination ran dry, and a flood of flowers, forests, fresh-water pools, love, swans, princes, and fairies welled up before her eyes. This claim of hers was best taken with a grain of salt, however. It was difficult to put much faith in anything the younger daughter said or did. Chopin, inspiration, baptism of the feet, “Amen,” Plum Blossom, Lady Murasaki, “In spring, the dawn,” Greek mythology—there was no connection at all. Utter incoherence. She was in fact devoted to one thing alone—the act of putting on airs.

After riffling through
Greek Mythology
, pausing to gaze at an illustration of a naked Apollo and to smile a thin, spine-chilling smile, she tossed the book aside, opened her desk drawer, extracted a box of chocolates and a tin of hard candies, and, in a hopelessly affected manner, using only her thumb and forefinger and lifting the other three fingers daintily, selected a chocolate, placed it in her mouth, then chewed and swallowed it noisily even as she reached for a hard candy, which she proceeded to crush between her teeth as she reached for another chocolate, and so on, devouring all before her in the manner of a famished ghoul. With this, of course, her efforts to keep her stomach light and airy by breakfasting only on bread and milk came to naught. The younger daughter was by nature a glutton. She’d attempted to appear refined by limiting herself to a light breakfast, but bread and milk were not enough to satisfy her morning appetite—not by a long shot—and once ensconced in her study, away from prying eyes, she had lost no time in letting loose the trencherman inside her. She was a child prone to deceptions of many and various kinds. After gobbling down twenty chocolates and ten hard candies, she assumed a look of childlike innocence and began humming an aria from
La Traviata
. As she hummed, she brushed the dust from her manuscript paper, filled her artist’s pen with ink, and began to write at a leisurely pace, beginning with a critique which revealed a somewhat objectionable attitude.

“Women who live by their instincts and don’t know how to resign themselves to fate are always catalysts for tragedy.” This pronouncement left us by Mlle. Hatsué now appears in danger of being contradicted. Rapunzel, having grown up in the enchanted forest eating skewered frogs and poison mushrooms and being hopelessly spoiled by the old witch’s blind love and doting affection, her only playmates the crows and deer and other beasts of the forest, was a child of nature, if you will, and one can agree that there was indeed something instinctive and primitive about her tastes and sensibilities. Nor is it difficult to imagine that the exotic impulsiveness of her behavior was precisely what the prince found so maddeningly attractive. But was Rapunzel, in fact, a woman who didn’t know how to resign herself to fate? We can agree that she was something of a wild woman and lived by her instincts, but now, with her life hanging by a thread, Rapunzel appears, does she not, to have resigned herself completely, to have given up the fight? She says she wants to die. She says it’s best for her to die. Are these not the words of someone who has resigned herself? And yet Mlle. Hatsué informs us that Rapunzel is a woman who does not know how to resign herself. Were we to heedlessly contradict this audacious assertion we would surely be scolded, and since we dislike being scolded we shall attempt to defend it.

Rapunzel was a woman who did not know how to resign herself. “Let me die,” she says. It’s an utterance that suggests pathos and self-sacrifice, but if one considers carefully one realizes that it is in fact a vain and selfish thing to say. Rapunzel was thinking only of her need to be loved by others. As long as one is capable of believing that one is qualified to receive the love of others, one feels that life is worth living, and the world is a wonderful place. But even if one should discover that one no longer has the necessary qualifications to be loved by others, one must continue to live on. Even if one is not “qualified to be loved,” one is eternally “qualified to love.” To seek only the joy of being adored is to surrender to savagery and ignorance. From the beginning, Rapunzel has thought of nothing but basking in the prince’s affection, and has forgotten to love him in return. She has even forgotten to love the child that she herself gave birth to. No—it’s worse than that: she actually resents and envies her child. And now that she believes that she herself will no longer warrant the love of others, what is her wish? “Let me die. Please kill me and have done with it.” How selfish can a person be? It is her duty to love the prince more. He too, after all, is a lonely child. Imagine how crushed and defeated Rapunzel’s death would leave him! Rapunzel must repay him for his love. And for the sake of her son she must want to live; to want, at all costs, to live. To give that child her affection and think only of raising him to be healthy and strong, no matter how much she might suffer in the process—would not that, in fact, be the true humility of one who knows resignation? The woman who honestly resigns herself to the fact that she herself, being ugly, will not appeal to others, yet who resolves to love nonetheless, even if secretly and from afar, the woman who believes that there is no joy so great as giving of herself—that woman is truly a beloved child of God. Though she might be desired by no one on earth, she shall surely be enveloped in the eternal embrace of God’s love. Blessed is she...

And so on. Having expounded such awesomely laudable sentiments, it remains only for us to confess that they do not by any means reflect our true feelings. We in fact believe that attaining such beauty that everyone we meet falls madly in love with us, is the highest aspiration for any human being, but we do not wish to invite the wrath of Mlle. Hatsué. Mlle. Hatsué happens to be both our elder sister and our French tutor, which means that we must at all times avoid any defiance of her judgments and devote ourselves to following her lead. “Age before beauty,” it is said, but let it not go unnoticed that life can be trying for those who find themselves in the latter category.

Because Rapunzel was, as we have determined, an ignorant person who did not know how to resign herself, no sooner had she sensed that she was about to lose what she perceived as her qualification for being loved, than she began to wish for death. She was without hope. Life, for her, could have no meaning without the prince’s love. The prince, for his part, was desperate to save her. When one is in agony, one prays to God, but in the mad delirium of despair, one may be willing even to cling to the devil. The prince, at his wits’ end, begged the filthy old witch for help, all but clasping his hands together in supplication.

“Please let her live!” he cried, breaking into a clammy sweat as he fell to his knees before the evil-looking one. To save the life of the woman he loved, he thought nothing of casting away every last ounce of pride and self-respect. Our gallant, our naive, our pure-hearted, pitiful prince.

The old woman smiled. “Very well. Rapunzel shall live to a ripe old age. But even if she ends up with a face like mine, you will continue to love her as always, yes?”

The prince wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fevered sweep of his hand.

“I beg of you. I’m in no state even to consider such a question. I want only to see Rapunzel’s health restored. Rapunzel is still young. As long as she’s young and healthy, she could never be ugly to me. Please hurry. Make Rapunzel well again.” The prince’s eyes glistened with tears as he pronounced these bold words. Perhaps to let Rapunzel die while she was still beautiful would be the truest expression of his love... but it was out of the question. A world without Rapunzel would be as black as night. He wanted her to live. To live and to stay beside him forever. He wasn’t concerned about her physical appearance. To lose her would be unbearable. If it weren’t for the old witch standing there watching, the prince would have lain down beside his wife, clung to her emaciated breast, and cried: “I love you, Rapunzel! O mysterious flower, nymph of the forest, child of the mountain air, promise you’ll never leave my side!”

The old witch narrowed her eyes dreamily, gazing with obvious pleasure at the tortured expression on the prince’s face. “What a nice boy,” she muttered, in her raspy voice. “What a nice, honest boy. Rapunzel, you’re a lucky girl.”

“No,” Rapunzel moaned from her sickbed. “I’m a child of misfortune. I’m the daughter of a witch. When the prince shows me his love, it only makes me all the more aware of my lowly birth. I’m so ashamed... I always think of our old home in the forest, and sometimes I even feel my life was easier when I was shut up in the tower, communing with the birds and stars. I don’t know how many times I thought of fleeing this castle and returning home. But I couldn’t bear to part with the prince. I love him. I would give him my life ten times over if I could. The prince is a kind and gentle person, and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave him. That’s why I’ve remained here all this time. I have not been happy. Every day has been hell for me. Oh, Mother! A woman should never take for her husband a man she loves with all her heart. She’ll not be the least bit happy. No, Mother, let me die! I’ll never leave the prince as long as I live—so let me leave him by ending my life. If I die, the prince and everyone else can find happiness.”

“That’s just your selfishness speaking.” The old woman said this with a snaggle-toothed sneer, but the words reverberated with motherly love. “The prince has promised to care for you no matter how ugly you become. He’s mad about you. I must say I’m impressed. The way things stand, if you were to die, why, he might even follow you in death. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you? For the prince’s sake, you must regain your strength and see what happens. Let the future take care of itself. Rapunzel, don’t you understand? You’ve given birth to a baby. You’re a mother now.”

Rapunzel breathed a faint sigh and quietly closed her eyes. The prince, exhausted by his own extreme emotions, now stood frozen in one spot, his face a blank, expressionless mask as, before his eyes and with unimaginable speed, the witch constructed a black magic altar. She dashed out of the room and was no sooner gone than she appeared again, carrying something in her arms, and no sooner had she appeared than she vanished and was back again carrying something else, and so on, until the room was filled with bizarre and wondrous objects. The altar stood upon the four legs of a beast and was covered with a crimson cloth that was made of the dried tongues of five hundred species of snakes and owed its color to the blood that had dripped from those tongues. On top of the altar was an enormous cauldron fashioned from the hide of a black cow, inside of which, though there was no fire, water boiled furiously, all but spilling over the sides. The old witch, her hair in wild disarray, ran round and round the altar, chanting some sort of incantation and tossing rare medicinal herbs and other extraordinary ingredients into the cauldron. Snow that had lain atop a lofty mountain peak since ancient times, frost from bamboo leaves that glittered in the last split second before melting, the shell of a tortoise that had lived ten thousand years, gold dust gathered flake by flake in the moonlight, the scales of a dragon, the eyes of a rat that had never seen sunlight, quicksilver regurgitated by a cuckoo, the glowing tail of a firefly, the blue tongue of a cockatoo, an eternally blooming poppy, the earlobe of an owl, the toenails of a ladybug, the back teeth of a katydid, a plum blossom from the bottom of the sea, and many other precious and all-but-unobtainable objects—one by one she threw them into the boiling mixture, circling the altar some three hundred times before finally coming to a halt. The moment she stopped, the steam that rose from the cauldron began to glow with the seven colors of the rainbow.