He is, He is, He just is, He just –
After the Fact, Before the Fact
Snot!
Only at the tip of the nose
Remains
A trace of twilight.
‘Self-Mockery’, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, July 23, 1927
It was the Age of Shōwa, the summer after the death of Taishō, still early in the morning. Yasukichi was walking through the pine woods, along the shore at Kugenuma. Beyond the dead-still pines, beyond the low sand dunes, the sea yawned, clouded and grey. On the edge of the pines, among the dunes, Yasukichi came upon the frame of a swing, just its frame, for the seat of the swing was missing, its seat gone. Only two ropes remained, the two ropes dangling down, hanging-still from the frame; a gallows by the sea.
A crow landed on the redundant, topmost pole, then another, and another, then another. The four crows turned to stare at Yasukichi –
Yasukichi took off his panama hat and bowed his head. The biggest crow lifted its enormous beak heavenwards and cawed once, twice, a third time, then a fourth; exactly four times –
Should I take it as a sign, as a warning?
Yasukichi snorted, laughed; he couldn’t remember ever feeling this bad, the worst days he’d ever had. He hadn’t been able to write or even read for the heat, hadn’t slept for the humidity. Even way down here, down by the sea, the heat and the humidity were the worst he’d ever known. Intolerable, unbearable. For days, weeks now. But then this morning, just before the dawn, he’d heard the rain begin to fall, drop by drop, falling upon the cottage and its garden, drop by drop, on the pond and on the stones, with a chill through the house, a shiver down his spine.
Yasukichi stuck out his tongue at the four crows, put his hat back on his head, and then walked on, following the darkened, damp sandbanks of bleached, withered grass, the tops of the short, sparsely growing pines, on and on he walked, beside the banks, along the shore, on and on, the houses and trees of Enoshima island looming up closer, ever closer in the melancholy, morbid gloom of this oppressive, smudged-grey morning.
Yasukichi tried not to look at the sea, not out to sea, to keep his eyes on the beach, on the sand. But a pair of black ruts, tracks made by a cart, cut diagonally across him and again, again Wheat Field with Crows came to his mind and again, again he felt bereft, bereft then overwhelmed; once, a long time ago now, he’d been standing outside a bookstore, turning the pages of pictures in a volume on Van Gogh, when suddenly, quite suddenly, he understood what a ‘painting’ was; he knew these were only reproductions, he would never see the originals, but even in these photographs of his paintings, Yasukichi saw something, sensed something: a different way, a new way of looking at the world, of being in the world. He’d felt renewed, had felt restored, looking at the branches of a cherry tree, seeing the curve of a woman’s cheek. But as he looked at the black ruts, their two tracks in the sand, he felt, sensed someone had come this way before, with a bandage wrapped around his head, over the place where his ear had been, a long-stemmed pipe in his mouth and a vision in his eyes, on his way to work, to work and to insanity, to insanity then suicide, on his way to death –
‘Don’t think like that,’ cried a voice on the air, the coquette, teasing voice of a woman, laughing, ‘it’s a new age, a new era!’
Up ahead, sat on the sand with her back to a dwarf hedge of bamboo, Yasukichi could see a young woman with bobbed hair and an unnecessary parasol talking to a man in an Inverness raincoat and a panama hat –
‘Don’t tell me what to think,’ said the man, his figure and voice rising in anger now. ‘Just listen to yourself! What kind of animal are you?’
‘What kind of animal am I,’ the young woman cried …
Yasukichi didn’t stop to listen to the rest of their argument, to watch the rest of their scene, quickly walking away, away from the argument, away from the scene, all arguments and all scenes, over the sand and shells and off the beach, walking as fast as he could, onto the pebbles and pine cones, a crow flitting out of nowhere, casting a shadow across him; Yasukichi glanced up then away, but now tripped, then stumbled and almost fell –
At his feet, Yasukichi saw a wooden tally lying on the path, framed in black pitch. He picked it up, tried to read the inscription on the sea- and weather-worn wood, but all he could read were the dates: 1892–1927. The tally must have belonged to a foreigner buried at sea, nailed to the sailcloth wrapped around his corpse –
Yasukichi dropped the wood; the dates on the tally meant the man had died at thirty-five, the age Yasukichi was now –
Should I take it as a sign, as a warning?
Yasukichi shuddered; born in Meiji, alive through Taishō, here in Shōwa still, but he felt cursed, he felt jinxed, no longer welcome in the world, as though someone or -thing was out to get him, to get him to leave.
Beside the clouded sea, beneath the muddy sky, uncertain what to do, unsure where to go, Yasukichi just walked, the sea watching him go, the sky following him still as he walked and he walked; walked and walked until he came to a street, a street of shops, a street and shops he knew, but the street was deserted, deserted but for a black and white dog sitting in the road.
The dog turned its face to stare at Yasukichi, and then barked once, twice, a third time, then a fourth; only four times, exactly four times
