‘Thank you,’ said Mokichi again, smiling now, ‘and I am sure this tasty-looking eel will help sustain us both, in all our work …’
‘Yes,’ said Akutagawa, nodding and smiling, too. ‘Let’s eat …’
But Akutagawa hardly ate at all, just picking at the various dishes, just toying with the food, then setting down his chopsticks –
‘I think it was Ikkyū who said he had spent thirty years in an obscure blur. But I’ve spent thirty years doing nothing worthwhile, and so, over and over, I say to myself, Kill yourself, kill yourself …’
‘You’re not alone in that,’ said Mokichi, but with a little laugh, trying to lighten the mood of his companion. ‘I very often feel much the same …’
‘Yes, but in your poetry, in your tanka, you create or you find such beauty in all that afflicts you, in all that you suffer … I never can, I always fail … You know, I recently read the prison diary of Kyūtarō Wada … I mean, even an anarchist can wrest beauty from suffering, in his descriptions of the hardships of prison life, when he writes: “It’s all so quiet, all I hear is a flea jumping …” or “The number of insects in the barley rice is rising, there is a cloud in the summertime …” But the best is surely, “This malady of piles, Jack Frost is piercing me.” I can truly feel how he must feel, can truly imagine the hardship of suffering from piles in prison, but I’m so impressed, so envious an anarchist can write such poetry …’
‘For his try, life for Kyū-san,’ said Mokichi in a sing-song voice, echoing a popular jingle of the day, ‘for his killing, ten years for Ama-san.’
‘How dark these times truly are,’ said Akutagawa. ‘But amidst all the horror he must endure, a man like Wada never lets the darkness overwhelm him. And in your own poetry, too, you light a lamp and walk on, Sensei.’
‘What other choice do we have,’ said Mokichi, gently.
‘I never can, I always fail,’ said Akutagawa again, and then, softly, he began to quote Mokichi’s own words, from his recent work:
‘When I shut myself away / I am resigned to / almost anything / and sit here with legs crossed / while the night is wearing on –’
Mokichi could hear drops of rain falling on the stones in the garden now as he sighed and said, ‘There does seem to be a sense of doom and death around us all these days. Like me, you seem to have been engulfed in bad luck, too. Yet we have to keep writing, what other choice do we have?’
‘Perhaps I should end this half of my life in your new hospital,’ said Akutagawa, quietly, staring out into the garden, staring out into the night and its rain, ‘and then spend the rest of my life out there …’
Mokichi closed his eyes; he could not count the number of times he had discovered patients who had hung themselves or cut their own throats, the number of times he had been obliged to notify their families, the numberless feelings of failure he had experienced, the feeling of failure he always felt. Mokichi opened his eyes again; he looked across the table at the man sat staring out into the night, his body gaunt and skin grey, his hair and nails both long and dirty, and solemnly, and sternly, Mokichi said, ‘First you need to rest, and so you have to sleep; then when you are rested, when you are stronger, then you can think about the future, only then should you search for the light again …’
‘You are right,’ said Akutagawa. ‘For when I look to the future, when I search for the light, I see only darkness, I feel only dread …’
After the dinner at Jishōken, at the gate of the restaurant, the door to the taxi, under borrowed umbrellas, Mokichi thanked Akutagawa, Akutagawa thanked Mokichi, and then Mokichi said, ‘You remember the first time we met, in my office in Nagasaki? Well, I was in a wretched mood because I had just sent my wife packing to Tokyo after a terrible quarrel. I hated Nagasaki, felt trapped and imprisoned there for ever. And we talked about Ishida, and you spoke about Poe, and of Sōseki-sensei and Kōjin, the only escape from this world being through faith, madness or death?’
‘It seems so long ago now,’ said Akutagawa. ‘A different time, a different world; a better time, a better world. But, of course, I remember …’
‘Well, of those three exits,’ continued Mokichi, ‘more than ever I have come to accept and to believe in faith as our only hope, our only possibility. But I do not mean faith in gods or a God, I mean faith in our work, faith in our writing; the power of words, of salvation through art …’
Under his borrowed umbrella, Akutagawa nodded.
‘And so please, Sensei,’ said Mokichi, ‘please have faith in your work, have faith in your words …’
‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa. ‘I feel better, thanks to you, Sensei.’
Mokichi raised his umbrella, looking up towards the hill on which Akutagawa lived, and said, ‘It’s good you are so close to your home tonight, and so I hope you will be able to sleep soon, and to sleep well.’
‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa again. ‘I do plan to write a little first, but then to take a draught and sleep, all thanks to you, Sensei.’
In the dark, narrow road, by the open door to the taxi, Mokichi smiled, patted Akutagawa on his shoulder and said, ‘As long as one can both write and sleep, then one can endure all fate throws our way.’
‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa again, one last and final time, and then, in the night and in the rain, as Mokichi got into the back of the cab, in the last and
