Sir,
You are being watched.
I warned you, but you did not listen. You doubted my resolve and sincerity. But you will not doubt me now:
You were seen together on the Ginza, among the crowds, all the people, brash and brazen, casually strolling along as though you had never known the existence of sin, under the electric lamps, before the store windows, pausing before a Western tailor shop, laughing at the mannequins, entering a bookstore, browsing through the titles. Yes, your face may well burn with embarrassment as you read, yet still you cling to the notion that this letter is but a lucky guess, an elaborate prank, do you not? Well, in the bookstore, on its second floor, with the woman at your side, that woman on your arm, you came to the collected works of Dostoevsky, and you took down one volume, and you turned to its title page: the novella Dvoynik.
You bought the book, you left the store, and together you walked on, on and on, until you came to a second-hand shop. In the window was a stuffed swan, its neck erect, its wings yellow and moth-eaten. Here, before this stuffed swan, in plain sight, you embraced, kissed and parted. She headed south, you headed north.
You stood in a queue, you boarded a trolley. Between the red lettering of the advertisements hanging from the ceiling, before the ashen flecks of the dirt staining the windows. You sat among the passengers. The carriage moving out of the lights, the trolley heading into the darkness. You got up from your seat, you alighted from the trolley. The crowds now absent, only shadows now present. You walked up a slope. You turned right, you turned left. You pushed open a gate in the wall around a house. And the gate swung shut behind you. In the night and in the rain. Among the stone lanterns, behind the tall trees. Despite the hour, despite its lateness. There was a light in the house, children’s voices from a bedroom. Then the light was gone, now the children were silent. You climbed the steep ladder, you walked along the passage. You entered your study. The study was lined with books, the floor covered in papers. On a table were pots, in the pots were brushes. You took off your raincoat. You hung up the coat. Then you took off your skin. You hung up your skin. And the thing that remained stood in the centre of the room. Smaller than a man, maybe just over three feet. Lighter than a man, perhaps but thirty pounds. Its pallor green, its sheen reptilian. The thing had webbed hands, the thing had webbed feet. And an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, beneath short, coarse brown hair. Now the thing picked out a fine brush. Then the thing walked over to the skin. The entire pelt of a human body hanging from a peg. And the thing began to touch up the skin with its brush. A dab here, a spot there. Now the thing stepped back from the skin on its peg. Then the thing put back the brush in its pot. The thing walked back to the skin on the peg. The thing lifted up the skin from the peg. Now the thing shook the skin out like a cloak. Then the thing wrapped the skin around itself. And now the thing was a man again, the thing was you again. And then you turned to the window. And in the night, and in the rain. You smiled at me, without shame, without shame, then laughed and said, ‘Quack, quack! Pleased to meet you. My name is Tock.’
Your true-self has been seen. Now you will be exposed.
No more warnings, no more chances.
Yasukichi let the letter fall from his hand onto the desk. He stared down at the letter, the letter lying on top of the blank sheet of manuscript paper, lying beside his copy of Dvoynik.
*
Ryūnosuke could hear the sound of the rain falling in the bamboo grove outside. The wind in the trees and the waves on the river. Ryūnosuke looked down at the cigarette he was holding between his fingers. It was still lit, it was still long. Ryūnosuke shook his head and said, ‘I do not understand …’
‘It is not a question of understanding,’ said the man. ‘It is a matter of believing. Simply believing …’
Ryūnosuke looked across the table at the man again. And Ryūnosuke said, ‘So you cannot help me?’
The man rose from the table. He walked over to one of the piles of books and papers. He picked up a book from the pile. He sat back down at the table. And he handed Ryūnosuke a Bible –
‘Only the man who governs his passions can attain peace and sainthood. But the man who fails to control his passions, that man is condemned to live in Hell as a demon.’
*
It was the Age of Winter, still the Age of Winter, around the second anniversary of the death of Sensei. Yasukichi Horikawa had caught the train from Kamakura to Tokyo, crossed the city, bought flowers and come
