Confessions of a Mask (17 page)

Here for the first time we were brought face to face with positive evidence of the damage that had been done in the air raid the night before. The passageway over the tracks was filled with victims of the raid. They were wrapped up in blankets until one could see nothing but their eyes or, better said, nothing but their eyeballs, for they were eyes that saw nothing and thought nothing. There was a mother who seemed to intend to rock the child in her lap eternally, never varying by so much as a hairsbreadth the length of the arc through which she swayed her body, back and forth, back and forth. A girl was sleeping, leaning against a piece of wicker luggage, still wearing scorched artificial flowers in her hair.

As we went along the passageway we did not receive even so much as a reproachful glance. We were ignored. Our very existence was obliterated by the fact that we had not shared in their misery; for them, we were nothing more than shadows.

In spite of this scene something caught fire within me. I was emboldened and strengthened by the parade of misery passing before my eyes. I was experiencing the same excitement that a revolution causes. In the fire these miserable ones had witnessed the total destruction of every evidence that they existed as human beings. Before their eyes they had seen human relationships, loves and hatreds, reason, property, all go up in flame. And at the time it had not been the flames against which they fought, but against human relationships, against loves and hatreds, against reason, against property. At the time, like the crew of a wrecked ship, they had found themselves in a situation where it was permissible to kill one person in order that another might live. A man who died trying to rescue his sweetheart was killed, not by the flames, but by his sweetheart; and it was none other than the child who murdered its own mother when she was trying to save it. The condition they had faced and fought against there—that of a life for a life—had probably been the most universal and elemental that mankind ever encounters.

In their faces I saw traces of that exhaustion which comes from witnessing a spectacular drama. Some hot feeling of confidence poured into me. Though it was only for a few seconds, I felt that all my doubts concerning the fundamental requirement of manhood had been totally swept away. My breast was filled with a desire to shout. Perhaps if I had been a little richer in the power of self-understanding, if I had been blessed with a little more wisdom, I could have gone on to a close examination of that requirement and could finally have understood the real meaning of myself as a human being. Instead, comically enough, the warmth of a kind of fantasy made me put my arm around Sonoko's waist for the first time. Perhaps this action and the brotherly, protective spirit that prompted it had already shown me that what is called love had no meaning for me. If so, it was a sudden insight into truth, which was forgotten just as quickly as it came. . . .With my arm still around her waist, we walked in front of the others and passed hurriedly through the gloomy passageway. Sonoko said not a word.

We got on the elevated train, and its lights seemed strangely bright. I could see Sonoko gazing at me. Her eyes, though still black and soft, seemed somehow urgently pleading.

When we transferred to the metropolitan loop line, about ninety percent of the passengers were air-raid victims. Now there was an even more noticeable smell of fire. They were loud and boastful as they related to each other the dangers they had undergone. In the true sense of the word, this was a rebellious mob: it was a mob that harbored a radiant discontent, an overflowing, triumphant, high-spirited dissatisfaction.

Reaching S Station, where I was to part from the others, I returned Sonoko's bag to her and got off. As I walked along the pitch-dark streets to my house I was reminded over and over again that my hands were no longer carrying her bag. At last I recognized the important role which that bag had played in our relationship. It had served as a tiny drudgery, and for me the weight of some sort of drudgery was always needed to keep my conscience from raising its head too high.

When I arrived home the family greeted me as though nothing had happened. After all, Tokyo covers a vast area and even such an air raid as that of the night before could not affect it all.A few days later I visited the Kusano house, taking some books I had promised to lend Sonoko. There will be no need to give their titles when I say they were just the sort of novels that a young man of twenty should choose for a girl of eighteen. I experienced an unusual delight in doing the conventional thing. Sonoko happened to be out, but was expected back soon. I waited for her in the parlor.

While I was waiting, the sky of early spring became as cloudy as lye; it began to rain. Sonoko had apparently been caught in the rain on her way home, for when she came into the gloomy parlor drops of water still glistened here and there in her hair. Shrugging her shoulders, she sat down in the shadows at one end of the deep sofa. Again a smile spread across her lips. She was wearing a crimson jacket, from which the roundness of her breasts seem to loom up in the thin darkness.

How timidly we talked, with what a paucity of words! This was the first opportunity we had ever had to be alone together. It was obvious that the carefree way we had talked to each other on that brief train journey had been due largely to the presence of the chatterbox behind us and of the two sisters. Today there remained not a vestige of that boldness which, only a few days before, had led me to hand her a one-line love letter written on a scrap of paper.

Even more than before I was overcome with a feeling of humbleness. I was a person who could not help becoming serious whenever I let my guard down, but I was not afraid to do so before her. Had I forgotten my act? Had I forgotten that I was determined to fall utterly in love like any other person? However that may be, I had not the slightest feeling of being in love with this refreshing girl. And yet I felt at ease with her.

The shower stopped and the setting sun shone into the room. Sonoko's eyes and lips gleamed. Her beauty depressed me, making me remember my own feeling of helplessness. This painful feeling made Sonoko seem all the more ephemeral.

"As for us," I blurted out, "who knows how long we'll live? Suppose there were an air raid at this minute. Probably one of the bombs would fall directly on us."

"Wouldn't that be wonderful!" She was serious. She had been toying with the pleats of her Scotch-plaid skirt, folding them back and forth, but as she said this she lifted her face and the light caught a sparkle of faint down on her cheeks. "Oh—if only a plane would come silently and make a direct hit on us while we're here like this—Don't you think so?" She did not realize that she was making a confession of love.

"H'm. . . . Yes, that'd be fine," I replied in a conversational tone. Sonoko could not possibly have realized how deeply my answer was rooted in my secret desire. When I think back over it now, this dialogue strikes me as highly humorous. It was a conversation that, in peacetime, could have taken place only between two persons who were deeply in love."I'm really fed up with being separated by death and lifelong partings," I said, adopting a cynical tone to cover
_m
y embarrassment. "Don't you sometimes feel that, in times like these, to separate is normal and to meet is the miracle . . . that, when you think of it, even our being able to meet and talk together like this for a time is probably quite a miraculous thing? . . ."

"Yes, I also . . ." She started speaking with some hesitation. Then she went on with an earnest but agreeable serenity. "But here when I was thinking we'd just begun meeting already we're to be separated. Grandmother is in a hurry to leave. As soon as we came home the other day, she sent a telegram to my aunt at N Village in N Prefecture, asking her to find a house for us. This morning my aunt called by long distance and said there're no houses to be had, no matter how you search. So she asked us to come and stay at her house. She said she'd be happy to have us because we'd make her house livelier. Grandmother made her mind up on the spot and said we'd come within two or three days."

I could not make a casual reply. The pain I felt in my heart was so piercing that it surprised even me. The feeling of ease I felt with Sonoko had given me an illusion, a belief that all our days would be spent together and that everything would remain just as it was now. In a deeper sense it was a twofold illusion: the words with which she passed the sentence of separation upon us proclaimed the meaninglessness of our present meeting and revealed that my present feeling was only
_a
passing happiness, and at the same time as they destroyed the childish illusion of believing this would last forever, they also opened my eyes to the fact that, even if there were no parting, no relationship between a boy and girl could ever remain just as it was.

It was a painful awakening. Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty? At least there was no doubt that I was alone in regarding the duty as a heavy burden.

At last I spoke:

"So, you're leaving. . . . But of course even if you were here, I myself would have to be going away before long. . . ."

"Where're you going?"

"They've decided to send us to live and work at some factory again beginning this month or in April."

"But a factory—that'll be dangerous, with the air raids and all."

"Yes, it'll be dangerous," I answered despairfully. I took my leave as quickly as possible. . . .

All the following day I was in a carefree mood inspired by the thought of having already been relieved of
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he obligation to love her. I was cheerful, singing in a loud voice, kicking aside the disgusting Compendium of Laws.

This curiously sanguine state of mind lasted the entire day. That night I fell asleep like a child. Then suddenly was awakened by the sound of sirens blowing far and wide in the middle of the night. All the household went to the air-raid shelter grouchily, but no planes appeared and soon the all-clear siren sounded. Having dozed off in the shelter, I was the last to emerge above ground, my steel helmet and canteen dangling from my shoulder.

The winter of 1945 had been a persistent one. Although spring had already arrived, coming with the stealthy footsteps of a leopard, winter still stood like a cage about it, blocking its way with gray stubbornness. Ice still glittered under the starlight.

Through the foliage of an evergreen tree my wakeful eyes picked out several stars, which looked warmly blurred. The sharp night air mingled with my breathing. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the idea that I was in love with Sonoko and that a world in which Sonoko and I both did not live was not worth a penny to me. Something inside told me that if I could forget her I'd better do so. And immediately, as though it had been lying in wait, that grief which undermined the foundations of my existence flooded over me again, just as it had that day when I saw Sonoko coming down the steps onto the platform.The grief was unendurable. I stamped the ground. Nevertheless I held out one more day.

Then I could stand it no longer and went to see her. The packers were at work just outside the front door. There on the gravel they were tying straw ropes around something like an oblong chest, wrapped in straw matting. The sight filled me with uneasiness.

It was the grandmother who came to meet me in the entryway. Behind her I could see piles of goods that had already been packed and were waiting to be carried out. The hallway was full of waste straw. Noticing the grandmother's slightly embarrassed expression, I decided to leave at once without seeing Sonoko.

"Please give these books to Miss Sonoko." Like an errand boy from a book shop I again held out several sugary novels.

"Thank you so much for all you've done," the grandmother said, making no move to call Sonoko. "We've decided to leave for N Village tomorrow evening. Everything has worked out without a bit of trouble and so we can leave earlier than we'd planned. Mr. T has rented this house as a dormitory for his employees. Truly it is sad to say good-bye. All the children were so happy knowing you, so please come to visit us at N Village too. We'll send you word when we're settled, so be sure and come to see us."

It was pleasant to hear the grandmother's precise and sociable way of speaking. But, just like her too-wellshaped false teeth, her words were nothing but a perfect alignment of some sort of inorganic matter.

"I hope all of you stay well" was all I could say. I could not bring myself to speak Sonoko's name.

Then, as though summoned by my hesitation, Sonoko appeared in the hail at the foot of the stairs. She was carrying a large cardboard hatbox in one hand and several books in the other. Her hair was ablaze in the light that entered from an overhead window. Seeing me, she cried out, startling her grandmother:

"Please wait a minute."

She raced back upstairs, her footsteps sounding boisterously. I was elated by the sight of the grandmother's astonishment, as it made me realize how much Sonoko must love me. The old lady apologized, saying the entire house was in a mess and there was no room in which to receive me. Then she disappeared busily into the interior.

Soon Sonoko came running back down. Her face was very red. She put on her shoes without saying a word, while I stood petrified in one corner of the entryway. Then she stood up and said she would accompany me as far as the station. There was a strength in the commandingly high pitch of her voice that moved me. Although I continued gazing at her and turning my uniform cap round and round in my hands with a naïve gesture, within my heart there was a feeling as though everything had suddenly become motionless. Keeping close together, we went out the door and walked silently along the gravel path to the gate.