Akutagawa stopped in front of Hyakken, just standing there, still swaying from side to side, his whole body shaking and trembling, and yet smiling proudly, raising his hands before Hyakken, holding them up to his face, offering him a huge handful of nickel and silver coins.
‘Why did you bring so much,’ asked Hyakken.
‘I kept trying to pick out your fare from my purse, but I couldn’t. In the end, I just emptied everything out into my hand. Please just take it all …’
Hyakken picked out a ten-sen coin from his palm and said, ‘Thank you, and I’ll go now, goodbye.’
Akutagawa took one step back into his study and parted his palms, showering his rosewood desk with the coins, the noise ringing through the house, following Hyakken down the steep ladder, his wife calling up the stairs, ‘Are you okay? Are you okay? Did you fall …’
7. ‘Are You Ready to Go Now?’
The first-class battleship Uno went into dry dock at Yokosuka. Her friend the battleship A lay at anchor in the harbour. The A was a younger ship than the Uno. Now and then they would communicate wordlessly across the broad expanse of water. The A felt sorry for the Uno, not only because of her age, but also because she had a tendency to steer erratically (the result of an error on the part of the architect). But in order not to upset her, the A never referred to this particular problem, and always spoke to the battle-seasoned Uno in the most respectful terms … But one cloudy afternoon, a fire broke out in the hold of the Uno, and suddenly, with a fearful roar, she heeled over in the water. The A, who had never been in battle, was naturally shocked, could scarcely believe it … Three or four days later, since there was no longer any pressure from the water on her sides, the Uno’s decks gradually began to crack. When they saw this, the engineers began to hurry along with their repair work even faster. But soon the Uno had given up all hope … And staring out across Yokosuka harbour, the A awaited her own fate now with a growing sense of unease as she began to feel her own decks warping, little by little, the architects of her own design worse even than those of the Uno, the racking on her corners ever more intense, the tide coming in, flooding in, the rising waters and the endless waves, up to her neck and over her chin, into her mouth and through her hair, over her hair and over her head –
I wake in my chair, gasping for air, struggling to breathe, coughing and spluttering, phlegm in my mouth and drool down my chin, the Bible falling from my hands, falling to the floor, as I wipe my chin and dry my eyes; Uno’s condition had deteriorated again, the situation becoming unbearable for his wife and family, and so Dr Saitō had arranged to have Uno hospitalised at the Komine Research Institute in Ōji. When I last visited him, in the asylum, on the ward, strapped to his bed, Uno just stared up at me, shook his head and said again, ‘You and me, me and you, we’re peas in a pod, Ryūnosuke, peas in a pod, possessed by the same demon: the demon of the fin de siècle …’
‘Shu-shu pop-po, shu-shu pop-po, shu-shu pop-po …’
I get up from my chair, pick up the Bible from the floor, put down the Bible on my desk. I light a cigarette and step out of my study, into the corridor. I stand and smoke at the glass windows, watching my two older boys in the sun-drenched garden, playing locomotives –
‘Shu-shu pop-po, shu-shu pop-po …’
They are not only making the sounds of a locomotive, they are moving their arms, imitating the motion of a locomotive. Not only my children do this, I know, many children do, but I wonder why? Is it because they sense the power of a locomotive, with all its noise and steam and speed, all its violence? Perhaps they want to have the violent life of a locomotive? But then the possession of such a desire is not limited to children; adults are the same, we’re all the same, rushing headlong down the tracks, just like a locomotive, but down the tracks to who knows where; the tracks can be many things, anything: fame, women, money, power. But they are always tracks, tracks we cannot leave, and tracks we want to be able to pursue as freely and as selfishly as we can, blind to the fact they are tracks, tracks we cannot leave. And countless generations, in countless societies, have tried to put the brakes on our engines, upon our desires, but they have always failed, and so still we hurtle on, down the tracks –
‘Shu-shu pop-po …’
I turn from the children in the garden, unsteady on my feet, leave the window in the corridor and return to the desk in my study. I light another cigarette, then stare down at the two manuscripts which lie unfinished; one is my autobiography, which perhaps I should call ‘The Art of Slaughtering Dragons’, the other my attempt to write a biography of Christ, in the meagre, shabby words of a useless, washed-up bourgeoisie hack, an attempt to write ‘My Christ’, and which I’ve called ‘Man of the West’ …
In fact, because I’ d come to the day of the deadline, I was forced to abandon this work, and have already submitted it to Kaizō; yet I cannot let it go, let Him go, and so I want to write more …
But looking from one incomplete work to the other, lighting another cigarette, I cannot decide which manuscript to work on now; I need to finish them both, and finish them both today. But before I’m able to decide, now I hear the
