Akutagawa now sat forward in his seat, looked across the desk piled high with papers and with work, and stared at Mokichi as he said, sincerely said, ‘Sensei, I will never forget the night I first read the opening of Shakkō, the first three tanka of your sequence – running and running, along this dark road, and my unbearable remorse, dark, dark, running too / that faint firefly glow, of itself, out of itself, I crush on my dark road / nothing, nothing to be done, the light’s gone out, and in my palm this crushed firefly – I was living in Shinjuku; it was the year after the death of the Emperor, the suicides of General Nogi and his wife, and I was blind, I was but a blind youth. But when I read Shakkō, when I read your tanka, I was no longer blind, no longer but a blind youth, for I could see, I could see the light of poetry.’
There was silence again; silence while Mokichi bowed his head, silence until Mokichi said, ‘Thank you, sincerely, Akutagawa-sensei. Forgive me; I am in a wretched mood, I know. In truth, I have not found this city as conducive as I had hoped, either for my research or for my poetry. Maybe you’ve all heard that Hakushū-sensei has declared he will retire from writing tanka. And though his declaration fills me with great regret, at least I know he can continue to display his power in other forms of poetry or prose. Sadly, that is not the case with me. But I do not need to publicly declare an end to my tanka; as any reader can sense, my tanka is dying by itself, like a demented person who dies quietly and leaves no will.’
‘No,’ protested Kikuchi. ‘You cannot say that, please do not say that, Sensei! Why, only on the train from Tokyo, Akutagawa and I were quoting your last lines from Aratama, your tanka on first arriving here in Nagasaki: At daybreak the great steam horn sounds from the ship, its echo lingering: the mountains arrayed … Such poignancy, such …’
‘Such a long time ago now, it seems,’ said Mokichi. ‘Yet it’s not even been two years. I fear I have been too long in this place.’
And now there was silence again, another silence, a silence, long and strained, until Kikuchi said, ‘We were all so very shocked by the news of Dr Ishida, the incident, the murder, a tragedy …’
‘Yes,’ said Mokichi. ‘Indeed.’
‘It almost defies belief …’
‘Yes,’ said Mokichi again.
‘Is there any news from America,’ asked Nagami. ‘Any further developments?’
Mokichi sighed, shook his head, then said, ‘As you may already know, the Japanese Psychiatric Association are seeking to have Ishida extradited, so that he can be cared for and treated here. However, even if we are successful, I fear it will be a long, drawn-out affair. And so, for now, Ishida remains in a prison in Baltimore.’
Akutagawa now sighed, too, then said, ‘Perhaps it is something about the place, something about Baltimore. After all, it is the place where Edgar Poe lost his mind and went insane.’
‘Indeed,’ said Mokichi.
‘Strangely, I was already reminded of the last hours of Poe,’ continued Akutagawa, ‘when I first read the textbook by Ishida-sensei, in which he writes of how the diseases of the mind reduce a man to but a lump of flesh, plagued by delusions, and the doctor concludes it is surely better to die than to stay alive in such a state of madness and insanity. It is reported that when Mr Poe was taken into the Washington University Hospital in Baltimore and asked about his friends, he replied, My best friend would be the man who gave me a pistol that I might blow my brains out …’
Again, Mokichi looked across his desk at this gaunt, intense and haunted man, and asked, ‘So you are a student of psychiatry then, Mr Akutagawa?’
‘Not a student,’ said Akutagawa, with a smile and a shake of his head. ‘But I am interested and do try to read the latest papers …’
‘Is there a particular reason for your interest?’
‘My mother,’ said Akutagawa. ‘She went insane.’
‘I see,’ said Mokichi. ‘I am sorry.’
‘And so, of course, I am interested in the hereditary nature of insanity, and naturally fearful. But,’ said Akutagawa now, and with a smile again, but a different smile, lonesome and resigned, ‘whether one is the child of a madwoman or not, as Sōseki-sensei wrote in Kōjin, how can any one of us escape this world of ours, except through faith, madness or death …?’
‘Indeed,’ said Mokichi, abruptly arising from his chair and desk, turning to the window, staring through the glass, the big crane of the Mitsubishi shipyard visible through the trees, the steam horn of the Shanghai liner sounding in the port. And then, his back to his visitors still, Mokichi sighed and said, ‘It seems no matter where one goes, no matter where one hides, whether in the West or East, America or Japan, Nagasaki or Tokyo, it seems that trinity of choices remain our only exits …’
In the Nagasaki Prefectural Hospital, in the heavy silence of this office, within this last and final silence, almost in a whisper now, Akutagawa said, ‘In the end, as Poe said, at the very end, Lord, help my soul.’
*
In nineteen hundred and nineteen, in the eighth year of Taishō, I am waiting; waiting at the station in Nagasaki, for the train back to Tokyo, waiting on the train back to Tokyo, at the station back in Tokyo, waiting in the taxi back to Tabata, in the genkan of my house, waiting in the hallway, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the study, waiting at my desk, among my books, among my papers, I’m waiting, I am waiting; waiting to hear the wind through the reeds, waiting for the tide and waiting for the waves, waiting, just waiting, still waiting, always waiting, I’m waiting, I am waiting;
