海の、波打際、といってもいいくらいに海にちかい岸辺に、真黒い樹肌の山桜の、かなり大きいのが二十本以上も立ちならび、新学年がはじまると、山桜は、褐色のねばっこいような嫩葉と共に、青い海を背景にして、その絢爛たる花をひらき、やがて、花吹雪の時には、花びらがおびただしく海に散り込み、海面を鏤めて漂い、波に乗せられ再び波打際に打ちかえされる、その桜の砂浜が、そのまま校庭として使用せられている東北の或る中学校に、自分は受験勉強もろくにしなかったのに、どうやら無事に入学できました。そうして、その中学の制帽の徽章にも、制服のボタンにも、桜の花が図案化せられて咲いていました。
On a shore close enough to the sea that it might almost be called the water's edge, more than twenty good-sized mountain cherry trees stood in a row, their bark black, and when the new school year began, the mountain cherries put out their sticky brown young leaves together with their gorgeous blossoms against the backdrop of the blue sea; and later, when the blossoms scattered like snow, the petals fell in great numbers into the sea, dotting the surface of the water as they drifted, carried on the waves and washed back again to the water's edge — it was to a certain middle school in the Tōhoku region, whose sandy, cherry-strewn beach served as its very schoolyard, that I somehow managed to be admitted, even though I had barely studied for the entrance examinations. And on that school's cap badge, and on the buttons of its uniform, cherry blossoms bloomed too, worked into the design.
その中学校のすぐ近くに、自分の家と遠い親戚に当る者の家がありましたので、その理由もあって、父がその海と桜の中学校を自分に選んでくれたのでした。自分は、その家にあずけられ、何せ学校のすぐ近くなので、朝礼の鐘の鳴るのを聞いてから、走って登校するというような、かなり怠惰な中学生でしたが、それでも、れいのお道化に依って、日一日とクラスの人気を得ていました。
Close by that middle school there lived a family distantly related to mine, and that was one of the reasons my father chose for me this school of sea and cherry blossoms. I was placed in that family's care, and since the school was right nearby, I was the sort of lazy student who would wait until he heard the morning assembly bell before running off to class — and yet, even so, through my usual clowning, I was winning the class's favor more with each passing day.
生れてはじめて、謂わば他郷へ出たわけなのですが、自分には、その他郷のほうが、自分の生れ故郷よりも、ずっと気楽な場所のように思われました。それは、自分のお道化もその頃にはいよいよぴったり身について来て、人をあざむくのに以前ほどの苦労を必要としなくなっていたからである、と解説してもいいでしょうが、しかし、それよりも、肉親と他人、故郷と他郷、そこには抜くべからざる演技の難易の差が、どのような天才にとっても、たとい神の子のイエスにとっても、存在しているものなのではないでしょうか。俳優にとって、最も演じにくい場所は、故郷の劇場であって、しかも六親眷属全部そろって坐っている一部屋の中に在っては、いかな名優も演技どころでは無くなるのではないでしょうか。けれども自分は演じて来ました。しかも、それが、かなりの成功を収めたのです。それほどの曲者が、他郷に出て、万が一にも演じ損ねるなどという事は無いわけでした。
For the first time in my life I had, so to speak, gone out into a strange land, and to me that strange land seemed a far easier place to be than my own native place. One might explain this by saying that by then my clowning had at last come to fit me so closely that it no longer took the effort it once had to deceive people — but rather than that, is it not true that between one's own flesh and blood and strangers, between one's native place and a strange land, there exists, for any genius whatever, even for Jesus the Son of God, an ineradicable difference in how hard or easy the performance is? For an actor, is not the hardest stage of all his own hometown's theater, and above all a single room where every one of his own kinsmen sits gathered together — is it not there that even the finest actor finds himself unable to act at all? And yet I had gone on performing. And what is more, I had met with considerable success at it. Such a practiced hand as I was, having gone out into a strange land, was in no danger whatever of failing in the performance.
自分の人間恐怖は、それは以前にまさるとも劣らぬくらい烈しく胸の底で蠕動していましたが、しかし、演技は実にのびのびとして来て、教室にあっては、いつもクラスの者たちを笑わせ、教師も、このクラスは大庭さえいないと、とてもいいクラスなんだが、と言葉では嘆じながら、手で口を覆って笑っていました。自分は、あの雷の如き蛮声を張り上げる配属将校をさえ、実に容易に噴き出させる事が出来たのです。
My terror of human beings writhed no less violently in the depths of my chest than it had before, if not more so, and yet my performance had become truly free and easy; in the classroom I was forever making the whole class laugh, and even the teacher, sighing in words that this would be a very good class indeed if only Ōba were not in it, would cover his mouth with his hand and laugh all the same. I could even make the army officer attached to the school, who bellowed like thunder, burst out laughing quite easily.
もはや、自分の正体を完全に隠蔽し得たのではあるまいか、とほっとしかけた矢先に、自分は実に意外にも背後から突き刺されました。それは、背後から突き刺す男のごたぶんにもれず、クラスで最も貧弱な肉体をして、顔も青ぶくれで、そうしてたしかに父兄のお古と思われる袖が聖徳太子の袖みたいに長すぎる上衣を着て、学課は少しも出来ず、教練や体操はいつも見学という白痴に似た生徒でした。自分もさすがに、その生徒にさえ警戒する必要は認めていなかったのでした。
Just as I was beginning to breathe easy, thinking that I had perhaps managed to conceal my true self completely, I was, quite unexpectedly, stabbed from behind. And true to what one might expect of a man who stabs from behind, it was done by a student who had the frailest body in the class, a pale, puffy face, and a jacket — plainly a hand-me-down from his father or some older relative — whose sleeves were absurdly long, like the sleeves of Prince Shōtoku's robes; a student who could not manage his schoolwork in the least, and who was always excused to watch from the sidelines during drill and gymnastics, so that he seemed rather feeble-minded. Even I had not thought it necessary to be on my guard against a student like that.
その日、体操の時間に、その生徒（姓はいま記憶していませんが、名は竹一といったかと覚えています）その竹一は、れいに依って見学、自分たちは鉄棒の練習をさせられていました。自分は、わざと出来るだけ厳粛な顔をして、鉄棒めがけて、えいっと叫んで飛び、そのまま幅飛びのように前方へ飛んでしまって、砂地にドスンと尻餅をつきました。すべて、計画的な失敗でした。果して皆の大笑いになり、自分も苦笑しながら起き上ってズボンの砂を払っていると、いつそこへ来ていたのか、竹一が自分の背中をつつき、低い声でこう囁きました。
That day, during gymnastics class, that student (I no longer remember his surname, but I believe his given name was Takeichi) — that Takeichi was, as usual, excused and watching from the side, while the rest of us were made to practice on the horizontal bar. I put on, quite deliberately, as solemn a face as I could manage, and with a shout of "Here goes!" I leapt at the bar — and then, as though I were doing a long jump, sailed straight on past it and came down with a thud on my backside in the sand. It was, from start to finish, a planned failure. Sure enough it brought the whole class to laughter, and as I got up with a wry smile and brushed the sand from my trousers, Takeichi — I had not noticed when he had come over — poked me in the back and whispered to me in a low voice.
「ワザ。ワザ」
"On purpose. On purpose."
自分は震撼しました。ワザと失敗したという事を、人もあろうに、竹一に見破られるとは全く思いも掛けない事でした。自分は、世界が一瞬にして地獄の業火に包まれて燃え上るのを眼前に見るような心地がして、わあっ！ と叫んで発狂しそうな気配を必死の力で抑えました。
I was shaken to the core. That my failure had been on purpose should be seen through — and by Takeichi, of all people — was something I had never once imagined possible. I felt as though I were watching, before my very eyes, the whole world burst at once into the flames of hell, and with a desperate effort I held down the urge to cry out and go mad on the spot.
それからの日々の、自分の不安と恐怖。
My uneasiness and terror, in the days that followed.
表面は相変らず哀しいお道化を演じて皆を笑わせていましたが、ふっと思わず重苦しい溜息が出て、何をしたってすべて竹一に木っ葉みじんに見破られていて、そうしてあれは、そのうちにきっと誰かれとなく、それを言いふらして歩くに違いないのだ、と考えると、額にじっとり油汗がわいて来て、狂人みたいに妙な眼つきで、あたりをキョロキョロむなしく見廻したりしました。できる事なら、朝、昼、晩、四六時中、竹一の傍から離れず彼が秘密を口走らないように監視していたい気持でした。そうして、自分が、彼にまつわりついている間に、自分のお道化は、所謂「ワザ」では無くて、ほんものであったというよう思い込ませるようにあらゆる努力を払い、あわよくば、彼と無二の親友になってしまいたいものだ、もし、その事が皆、不可能なら、もはや、彼の死を祈るより他は無い、とさえ思いつめました。しかし、さすがに、彼を殺そうという気だけは起りませんでした。自分は、これまでの生涯に於いて、人に殺されたいと願望した事は幾度となくありましたが、人を殺したいと思った事は、いちどもありませんでした。それは、おそるべき相手に、かえって幸福を与えるだけの事だと考えていたからです。
On the surface I went on as always, playing my sad clowning and making everyone laugh, but every so often a heavy sigh would escape me unawares, and when I thought that whatever I did, Takeichi had already seen through it, smashed to bits, and that he would surely, before long, go around telling this or that person about it, an oily sweat would break out on my forehead, and I would find myself glancing furtively about with the strange eyes of a madman, though it did no good at all. If I could have, I would have wanted to stay at Takeichi's side morning, noon, and night, around the clock, watching him so that he would not blurt out my secret. And so, while I clung to him in this way, I put every effort into making him believe that my clowning was not what he called "on purpose" but the real thing, and I thought that if only I could manage it, I would like nothing better than to become his one true, irreplaceable friend; and if all of that proved impossible, then there was nothing left but to pray for his death — I even brooded that far. And yet, even so, the thought of killing him myself never once arose in me. In the whole of my life up to now I have wished, countless times, to be killed by someone; but never once have I wished to kill anyone. That was because I thought it would only be granting happiness to an opponent I had cause to dread.
自分は、彼を手なずけるため、まず、顔に偽クリスチャンのような「優しい」媚笑を湛え、首を三十度くらい左に曲げて、彼の小さい肩を軽く抱き、そうして猫撫で声に似た甘ったるい声で、彼を自分の寄宿している家に遊びに来るようしばしば誘いましたが、彼は、いつも、ぼんやりした眼つきをして、黙っていました。しかし、自分は、或る日の放課後、たしか初夏の頃の事でした、夕立ちが白く降って、生徒たちは帰宅に困っていたようでしたが、自分は家がすぐ近くなので平気で外へ飛び出そうとして、ふと下駄箱のかげに、竹一がしょんぼり立っているのを見つけ、行こう、傘を貸してあげる、と言い、臆する竹一の手を引っぱって、一緒に夕立ちの中を走り、家に着いて、二人の上衣を小母さんに乾かしてもらうようにたのみ、竹一を二階の自分の部屋に誘い込むのに成功しました。
To tame him, I first put on my face a "gentle" ingratiating smile, of the kind a false Christian might wear, tilted my head some thirty degrees to the left, put my arm lightly around his small shoulders, and, in a honeyed voice not unlike a coaxing purr, often invited him to come and play at the house where I was boarding — but he would only stand there with a vacant look in his eyes, saying nothing. Even so, one day after school — it was, I believe, toward the beginning of summer — a sudden white shower came pouring down, and the other students seemed at a loss over how to get home, but since my house was right nearby I thought nothing of dashing straight out into it, and it was then that I happened to notice Takeichi standing forlornly by the shoe lockers. I said, come on, I'll lend you an umbrella, and pulling the hesitant Takeichi by the hand, ran with him through the shower, and when we reached the house I asked the landlady to dry our jackets for us, and succeeded in luring Takeichi up to my room on the second floor.
その家には、五十すぎの小母さんと、三十くらいの、眼鏡をかけて、病身らしい背の高い姉娘（この娘は、いちどよそへお嫁に行って、それからまた、家へ帰っているひとでした。自分は、このひとを、ここの家のひとたちにならって、アネサと呼んでいました）それと、最近女学校を卒業したばかりらしい、セッちゃんという姉に似ず背が低く丸顔の妹娘と、三人だけの家族で、下の店には、文房具やら運動用具を少々並べていましたが、主な収入は、なくなった主人が建てて残して行った五六棟の長屋の家賃のようでした。
In that household there were three people: the landlady, past fifty; her elder daughter, about thirty, who wore glasses, was tall, and looked sickly (this daughter had once married out and then come back home again; I called her Anesa, the way the people of that house did); and the younger daughter, called Setchan, who unlike her sister was short and round-faced and seemed to have only recently graduated from girls' school. Downstairs the shop had a few stationery goods and pieces of sporting equipment set out, but the family's main income appeared to come from the rents on five or six rows of tenement houses that the late master of the house had built and left behind.
「耳が痛い」
"My ear hurts."
竹一は、立ったままでそう言いました。
Takeichi said this, still standing there.
「雨に濡れたら、痛くなったよ」
"It started hurting when it got wet in the rain."
自分が、見てみると、両方の耳が、ひどい耳だれでした。膿が、いまにも耳殻の外に流れ出ようとしていました。
When I looked, both his ears were badly discharging. The pus looked ready to spill out over the rim of his ears at any moment.
「これは、いけない。痛いだろう」
"This is bad. It must hurt."
と自分は大袈裟におどろいて見せて、
I said, making an exaggerated show of surprise, and
「雨の中を、引っぱり出したりして、ごめんね」
"I'm sorry, dragging you out in the rain like that."
と女の言葉みたいな言葉を遣って「優しく」謝り、それから、下へ行って綿とアルコールをもらって来て、竹一を自分の膝を枕にして寝かせ、念入りに耳の掃除をしてやりました。竹一も、さすがに、これが偽善の悪計であることには気附かなかったようで、
I said, using words that sounded almost like a woman's, apologizing "gently," and then went downstairs and got some cotton and alcohol, laid Takeichi down with his head pillowed on my knee, and cleaned his ears with great care. Takeichi, for his part, seemed not to notice that this was a wicked scheme of hypocrisy, and
「お前は、きっと、女に惚れられるよ」
"Women are sure to fall for you."
と自分の膝枕で寝ながら、無智なお世辞を言ったくらいでした。
— that was the sort of ignorant flattery he even went so far as to offer, lying there with his head pillowed on my knee.
しかしこれは、おそらく、あの竹一も意識しなかったほどの、おそろしい悪魔の予言のようなものだったという事を、自分は後年に到って思い知りました。惚れると言い、惚れられると言い、その言葉はひどく下品で、ふざけて、いかにも、やにさがったものの感じで、どんなに所謂「厳粛」の場であっても、そこへこの言葉が一言でもひょいと顔を出すと、みるみる憂鬱の伽藍が崩壊し、ただのっぺらぼうになってしまうような心地がするものですけれども、惚れられるつらさ、などという俗語でなく、愛せられる不安、とでもいう文学語を用いると、あながち憂鬱の伽藍をぶちこわす事にはならないようですから、奇妙なものだと思います。
But it was only in later years that I came to realize this had been, in all likelihood, a fearful prophecy of the devil, more than Takeichi himself could have been aware of. To say "to fall for" or "to be fallen for" — those words are terribly vulgar, flippant, and have about them a smug, self-satisfied air, so that no matter how solemn the occasion, the moment even one such word so much as pokes its face in, the whole cathedral of melancholy comes crashing down before your eyes, and you are left with the feeling that everything has gone perfectly flat and featureless; and yet if, instead of some vulgar phrase like "the misery of being fallen for," one uses a more literary expression such as "the anxiety of being loved," it does not necessarily demolish that cathedral of melancholy — which I find a strange thing indeed.
竹一が、自分に耳だれの膿の仕末をしてもらって、お前は惚れられるという馬鹿なお世辞を言い、自分はその時、ただ顔を赤らめて笑って、何も答えませんでしたけれども、しかし、実は、幽かに思い当るところもあったのでした。でも、「惚れられる」というような野卑な言葉に依って生じるやにさがった雰囲気に対して、そう言われると、思い当るところもある、などと書くのは、ほとんど落語の若旦那のせりふにさえならぬくらい、おろかしい感懐を示すようなもので、まさか、自分は、そんなふざけた、やにさがった気持で、「思い当るところもあった」わけでは無いのです。
After I had tended to the pus discharging from Takeichi's ears, he offered that foolish flattery, that I would be fallen for by women, and at the time I only blushed and laughed, saying nothing in reply — and yet, in truth, there was something in it that dimly struck a chord with me. But to write, in the face of the smug, self-satisfied atmosphere that a coarse phrase like "being fallen for" gives rise to, that something in it did strike a chord when he said it — that is to show a sentiment so foolish it would hardly even pass for a line spoken by the young master in a comic story; and I most certainly did not mean, by "there was something that struck a chord," anything in that flippant, self-satisfied spirit.
自分には、人間の女性のほうが、男性よりもさらに数倍難解でした。自分の家族は、女性のほうが男性よりも数が多く、また親戚にも、女の子がたくさんあり、またれいの「犯罪」の女中などもいまして、自分は幼い時から、女とばかり遊んで育ったといっても過言ではないと思っていますが、それは、また、しかし、実に、薄氷を踏む思いで、その女のひとたちと附合って来たのです。ほとんど、まるで見当が、つかないのです。五里霧中で、そうして時たま、虎の尾を踏む失敗をして、ひどい痛手を負い、それがまた、男性から受ける笞とちがって、内出血みたいに極度に不快に内攻して、なかなか治癒し難い傷でした。
For me, women were several times more difficult to fathom than men. In my own family there were more women than men, and among my relatives too there were many girls, and there was also that servant girl involved in the "crime" I have mentioned — so it would not, I think, be too much to say that I was raised playing with nothing but women from my earliest childhood; and yet, for all that, it was truly as though I were treading on thin ice whenever I kept company with those women. I could hardly ever tell, even remotely, what to expect. I moved as though lost in a fog, and every so often I would make the mistake of treading on a tiger's tail and suffer a terrible wound — a wound that, unlike the lash one receives from men, festered inward with an extreme unpleasantness, like internal bleeding, and was slow indeed to heal.
女は引き寄せて、つっ放す、或いはまた、女は、人のいるところでは自分をさげすみ、邪慳にし、誰もいなくなると、ひしと抱きしめる、女は死んだように深く眠る、女は眠るために生きているのではないかしら、その他、女に就いてのさまざまの観察を、すでに自分は、幼年時代から得ていたのですが、同じ人類のようでありながら、男とはまた、全く異った生きもののような感じで、そうしてまた、この不可解で油断のならぬ生きものは、奇妙に自分をかまうのでした。「惚れられる」なんていう言葉も、また「好かれる」という言葉も、自分の場合にはちっとも、ふさわしくなく、「かまわれる」とでも言ったほうが、まだしも実状の説明に適しているかも知れません。
A woman draws you close, then flings you off; or again, a woman will scorn you and treat you harshly where others can see, and then, once everyone is gone, clasp you tight in her arms; a woman sleeps as deeply as though she were dead — I sometimes wonder whether women do not live for the sake of sleeping. These and various other observations about women I had already gathered by the time I was a small child; and though they seemed to belong to the same human species, they struck me as an entirely different kind of creature from men, and moreover this incomprehensible, never-to-be-let-out-of-one's-sight creature busied itself with me in the strangest way. Neither the word "to be fallen for" nor the word "to be liked" suits my case in the least; perhaps "to be fussed over" would come closer to describing the actual state of things.
女は、男よりも更に、道化には、くつろぐようでした。自分がお道化を演じ、男はさすがにいつまでもゲラゲラ笑ってもいませんし、それに自分も男のひとに対し、調子に乗ってあまりお道化を演じすぎると失敗するという事を知っていましたので、必ず適当のところで切り上げるように心掛けていましたが、女は適度という事を知らず、いつまでもいつまでも、自分にお道化を要求し、自分はその限りないアンコールに応じて、へとへとになるのでした。実に、よく笑うのです。いったいに、女は、男よりも快楽をよけいに頬張る事が出来るようです。
Women, even more than men, seemed to let themselves go with my clowning. When I clowned, men, naturally enough, did not go on guffawing forever, and I myself knew that if I got carried away and overplayed my clowning too far with men, it would end in failure, so I always took care to wrap it up at the right moment; but women knew no such moderation, and demanded my clowning of me endlessly, on and on, and I would answer their limitless encores until I was worn out. They really do laugh a great deal. Women, it seems, are able to gulp down a good deal more pleasure than men, on the whole.
自分が中学時代に世話になったその家の姉娘も、妹娘も、ひまさえあれば、二階の自分の部屋にやって来て、自分はその度毎に飛び上らんばかりにぎょっとして、そうして、ひたすらおびえ、
Both the elder and the younger daughter of the family I lodged with during my middle school days would come up to my room on the second floor whenever they had a spare moment, and every single time I would start so violently that I all but leapt into the air, and then be simply overcome with fear, and
「御勉強？」
"Studying?"
「いいえ」
"No."
と微笑して本を閉じ、
I would say, smiling, and close my book, and
「きょうね、学校でね、コンボウという地理の先生がね」
"So today, at school, there's this geography teacher named Konbō, and—"
とするする口から流れ出るものは、心にも無い滑稽噺でした。
the words would come streaming smoothly out of my mouth, some comic little tale that meant nothing to me at all.
「葉ちゃん、眼鏡をかけてごらん」
"Yō-chan, try putting on these glasses."
或る晩、妹娘のセッちゃんが、アネサと一緒に自分の部屋へ遊びに来て、さんざん自分にお道化を演じさせた揚句の果に、そんな事を言い出しました。
One evening, the younger daughter, Setchan, came to my room to play together with Anesa, and after making me perform my clowning to their hearts' content, she came out with something like that.
「なぜ？」
"Why?"
「いいから、かけてごらん。アネサの眼鏡を借りなさい」
"Never mind why, just put them on. Borrow Anesa's glasses."
いつでも、こんな乱暴な命令口調で言うのでした。道化師は、素直にアネサの眼鏡をかけました。とたんに、二人の娘は、笑いころげました。
She always spoke in this rough, commanding tone. The clown obediently put on Anesa's glasses. The moment he did, the two girls collapsed into laughter.
「そっくり。ロイドに、そっくり」
"Just like him. Just like Lloyd."
当時、ハロルド・ロイドとかいう外国の映画の喜劇役者が、日本で人気がありました。
At the time, a foreign film comedian by the name of Harold Lloyd was popular in Japan.
自分は立って片手を挙げ、
I stood up and raised one hand, and
「諸君」
"Ladies and gentlemen."
と言い、
I said, and
「このたび、日本のファンの皆様がたに、……」
"On this occasion, to all my fans here in Japan, ……"
と一場の挨拶を試み、さらに大笑いさせて、それから、ロイドの映画がそのまちの劇場に来るたび毎に見に行って、ひそかに彼の表情などを研究しました。
I attempted a little speech of that sort, sending them into still greater fits of laughter, and after that, every time one of Lloyd's pictures came to the theater in that town, I went to see it, and secretly studied his expressions and the like.
また、或る秋の夜、自分が寝ながら本を読んでいると、アネサが鳥のように素早く部屋へはいって来て、いきなり自分の掛蒲団の上に倒れて泣き、
Then again, one autumn night, as I lay reading in bed, Anesa came darting into the room as quick as a bird, and suddenly collapsed onto my quilt, weeping, and
「葉ちゃんが、あたしを助けてくれるのだわね。そうだわね。こんな家、一緒に出てしまったほうがいいのだわ。助けてね。助けて」
"You'll help me, won't you, Yo-chan. Yes, that's it. We'd do better to walk straight out of this house together. Help me. Help me."
などと、はげしい事を口走っては、また泣くのでした。けれども、自分には、女から、こんな態度を見せつけられるのは、これが最初ではありませんでしたので、アネサの過激な言葉にも、さして驚かず、かえってその陳腐、無内容に興が覚めた心地で、そっと蒲団から脱け出し、机の上の柿をむいて、その一きれをアネサに手渡してやりました。すると、アネサは、しゃくり上げながらその柿を食べ、
Such were the wild things she blurted out, and then she would fall to crying again. But this was not the first time a woman had shown me such behavior, so I was not especially startled by the elder sister's extreme words — if anything I felt a kind of disillusionment at their triteness, their emptiness — and quietly slipping out from under the quilt, I peeled a persimmon on the desk and handed a slice to her. She ate it, still hiccupping with sobs, and
「何か面白い本が無い？ 貸してよ」
"Isn't there some interesting book? Lend me one."
と言いました。
she said.
自分は漱石の「吾輩は猫である」という本を、本棚から選んであげました。
I picked out Soseki's I Am a Cat from the bookshelf and gave it to her.
「ごちそうさま」
"Thank you, that was good."
アネサは、恥ずかしそうに笑って部屋から出て行きましたが、このアネサに限らず、いったい女は、どんな気持で生きているのかを考える事は、自分にとって、蚯蚓の思いをさぐるよりも、ややこしく、わずらわしく、薄気味の悪いものに感ぜられていました。ただ、自分は、女があんなに急に泣き出したりした場合、何か甘いものを手渡してやると、それを食べて機嫌を直すという事だけは、幼い時から、自分の経験に依って知っていました。
The elder sister laughed shyly and left the room, but to try to think what feelings women — not just this one — actually lived by struck me as more tangled, more troublesome, more uncanny than trying to fathom the thoughts of an earthworm. All I knew, from experience since childhood, was this one thing: that when a woman suddenly burst into tears like that, if you handed her something sweet, she would eat it and her mood would mend.
また、妹娘のセッちゃんは、その友だちまで自分の部屋に連れて来て、自分がれいに依って公平に皆を笑わせ、友だちが帰ると、セッちゃんは、必ずその友だちの悪口を言うのでした。あのひとは不良少女だから、気をつけるように、ときまって言うのでした。そんなら、わざわざ連れて来なければ、よいのに、おかげで自分の部屋の来客の、ほとんど全部が女、という事になってしまいました。
Also, the younger sister, Setchan, would even bring her friends to my room, and I, as always, would make everyone laugh impartially, and once the friend had gone home, Setchan would invariably speak ill of her — she'd always say that girl was a bad sort and I should be careful of her. If that was so, she needn't have bothered bringing her in the first place — but thanks to this, nearly all the visitors to my room ended up being women.
しかし、それは、竹一のお世辞の「惚れられる」事の実現では未だ決して無かったのでした。つまり、自分は、日本の東北のハロルド・ロイドに過ぎなかったのです。竹一の無智なお世辞が、いまわしい予言として、なまなまと生きて来て、不吉な形貌を呈するようになったのは、更にそれから、数年経った後の事でありました。
But this was by no means yet the fulfillment of Takeichi's flattering compliment that I would be "loved." I was, in short, no more than a Harold Lloyd of the Tohoku region of Japan. It was only some years later that Takeichi's ignorant flattery came vividly alive as an ominous prophecy and began to take on its sinister form.
竹一は、また、自分にもう一つ、重大な贈り物をしていました。
Takeichi had also given me one more gift of great importance.
「お化けの絵だよ」
"It's a picture of a ghost."
いつか竹一が、自分の二階へ遊びに来た時、ご持参の、一枚の原色版の口絵を得意そうに自分に見せて、そう説明しました。
That was how Takeichi explained it, looking pleased with himself, once when he came to visit me upstairs, showing me a color-plate frontispiece he had brought along.
おや？ と思いました。その瞬間、自分の落ち行く道が決定せられたように、後年に到って、そんな気がしてなりません。自分は、知っていました。それは、ゴッホの例の自画像に過ぎないのを知っていました。自分たちの少年の頃には、日本ではフランスの所謂印象派の画が大流行していて、洋画鑑賞の第一歩を、たいていこのあたりからはじめたもので、ゴッホ、ゴーギャン、セザンヌ、ルナアルなどというひとの絵は、田舎の中学生でも、たいていその写真版を見て知っていたのでした。自分なども、ゴッホの原色版をかなりたくさん見て、タッチの面白さ、色彩の鮮やかさに興趣を覚えてはいたのですが、しかし、お化けの絵、だとは、いちども考えた事が無かったのでした。
Oh? I thought. In later years I could not help feeling that in that very instant the path of my decline had been decided. I knew — I knew that it was nothing but that well-known self-portrait of Van Gogh's. In our boyhood years, the so-called Impressionist paintings of France were all the rage in Japan, and it was usually from around there that people took their first steps into appreciating Western painting; even a middle-school boy out in the country generally knew, from photographic reproductions, the paintings of men like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Renoir. I myself had seen a good many color plates of Van Gogh's work, and had felt a certain interest in the fascination of his brushwork, the vividness of his colors — but never once had it occurred to me that they were pictures of ghosts.
「では、こんなのは、どうかしら。やっぱり、お化けかしら」
"Well then, what about this one? Is this a ghost too, I wonder."
自分は本棚から、モジリアニの画集を出し、焼けた赤銅のような肌の、れいの裸婦の像を竹一に見せました。
I took a collection of Modigliani's paintings from the bookshelf and showed Takeichi that familiar nude figure with skin like scorched red copper.
「すげえなあ」
"That's amazing."
竹一は眼を丸くして感嘆しました。
Takeichi's eyes went round with admiration.
「地獄の馬みたい」
"It's like a horse from hell."
「やっぱり、お化けかね」
"So it is a ghost after all, is it."
「おれも、こんなお化けの絵がかきたいよ」
"I want to paint pictures of ghosts like this too."
あまりに人間を恐怖している人たちは、かえって、もっともっと、おそろしい妖怪を確実にこの眼で見たいと願望するに到る心理、神経質な、ものにおびえ易い人ほど、暴風雨の更に強からん事を祈る心理、ああ、この一群の画家たちは、人間という化け物に傷めつけられ、おびやかされた揚句の果、ついに幻影を信じ、白昼の自然の中に、ありありと妖怪を見たのだ、しかも彼等は、それを道化などでごまかさず、見えたままの表現に努力したのだ、竹一の言うように、敢然と「お化けの絵」をかいてしまったのだ、ここに将来の自分の、仲間がいる、と自分は、涙が出たほどに興奮し、
The psychology of people who fear human beings so much that they come, instead, to long to see with their own eyes, and see beyond all doubt, a monster more and more frightful still — the psychology by which the more nervous a man is, the more easily frightened, the harder he prays for the storm to blow fiercer still — ah, this band of painters, battered and threatened by that monster called the human being, had in the end come to believe in their visions, had seen apparitions vividly present in the midst of broad daylight nature itself, and moreover they had not glossed it over with any clowning, but had labored to render it exactly as it appeared to them — had, as Takeichi said, boldly gone and painted "pictures of ghosts." Here, I thought, were comrades for my future, and I grew so excited that tears came to my eyes, and
「僕も画くよ。お化けの絵を画くよ。地獄の馬を、画くよ」
"I'll paint too. I'll paint pictures of ghosts. I'll paint a horse from hell."
と、なぜだか、ひどく声をひそめて、竹一に言ったのでした。
— for some reason, in a voice pitched strangely low, I said this to Takeichi.
自分は、小学校の頃から、絵はかくのも、見るのも好きでした。けれども、自分のかいた絵は、自分の綴り方ほどには、周囲の評判が、よくありませんでした。自分は、どだい人間の言葉を一向に信用していませんでしたので、綴り方などは、自分にとって、ただお道化の御挨拶みたいなもので、小学校、中学校、と続いて先生たちを狂喜させて来ましたが、しかし、自分では、さっぱり面白くなく、絵だけは、（漫画などは別ですけれども）その対象の表現に、幼い我流ながら、多少の苦心を払っていました。学校の図画のお手本はつまらないし、先生の絵は下手くそだし、自分は、全く出鱈目にさまざまの表現法を自分で工夫して試みなければならないのでした。中学校へはいって、自分は油絵の道具も一揃い持っていましたが、しかし、そのタッチの手本を、印象派の画風に求めても、自分の画いたものは、まるで千代紙細工のようにのっぺりして、ものになりそうもありませんでした。けれども自分は、竹一の言葉に依って、自分のそれまでの絵画に対する心構えが、まるで間違っていた事に気が附きました。美しいと感じたものを、そのまま美しく表現しようと努力する甘さ、おろかしさ。マイスターたちは、何でも無いものを、主観に依って美しく創造し、或いは醜いものに嘔吐をもよおしながらも、それに対する興味を隠さず、表現のよろこびにひたっている、つまり、人の思惑に少しもたよっていないらしいという、画法のプリミチヴな虎の巻を、竹一から、さずけられて、れいの女の来客たちには隠して、少しずつ、自画像の制作に取りかかってみました。
Since my primary-school days I had liked both drawing and looking at pictures. And yet the pictures I drew never won the reputation among those around me that my compositions did. I had never, to begin with, put any trust whatsoever in human words, so that composition-writing was, for me, no more than a kind of clowning courtesy, and it had gone on driving my teachers into raptures all through primary school and middle school alike — though for myself it was not in the least interesting. Only with drawing (cartoons aside) did I take some pains, in my own childish, self-taught way, over rendering my subject. The models given in school art classes were dull, and the teacher's own drawings were clumsy, so that I was left entirely to invent and try out for myself, quite at random, one method of expression after another. Once I entered middle school I had a full set of oil-painting equipment, but even when I sought a model for my brushwork in the style of the Impressionists, what I painted came out flat and lifeless, like some piece of decorative paper-craft, and showed no sign of amounting to anything. It was Takeichi's words, though, that made me realize how utterly mistaken my whole attitude toward painting had been up to then. The naïveté, the foolishness, of straining to render beautifully, just as it was, whatever one felt to be beautiful. The masters, out of their own subjectivity, created beauty from things that were nothing in themselves, or else, even while retching at something ugly, did not hide their interest in it, and steeped themselves in the joy of expression — that is, they seemed to depend not in the least on what other people might think of them. This primitive key to the craft of painting, handed down to me by Takeichi, I took up in secret, hidden from those women visitors of mine, and little by little I set about the making of a self-portrait.
自分でも、ぎょっとしたほど、陰惨な絵が出来上りました。しかし、これこそ胸底にひた隠しに隠している自分の正体なのだ、おもては陽気に笑い、また人を笑わせているけれども、実は、こんな陰鬱な心を自分は持っているのだ、仕方が無い、とひそかに肯定し、けれどもその絵は、竹一以外の人には、さすがに誰にも見せませんでした。自分のお道化の底の陰惨を見破られ、急にケチくさく警戒せられるのもいやでしたし、また、これを自分の正体とも気づかず、やっぱり新趣向のお道化と見なされ、大笑いの種にせられるかも知れぬという懸念もあり、それは何よりもつらい事でしたので、その絵はすぐに押入れの奥深くしまい込みました。
What came out was a picture so dismal that even I was startled. But — this, I told myself in secret, this is exactly my true nature, hidden deep down at the bottom of my chest: outwardly I laugh cheerfully and make others laugh, but in fact I carry inside me a heart as gloomy as this, it cannot be helped — and having admitted that much to myself, still I did not, of course, show that picture to anyone but Takeichi. I disliked the thought of having the gloom beneath my clowning found out and being suddenly regarded with petty wariness, and I was also uneasy that people might fail to recognize it as my true face at all and instead take it for some new twist of clowning, making it fodder for a great laugh — and that, above everything, would have been unbearable — so I put the picture straight away, deep in the back of the closet.
また、学校の図画の時間にも、自分はあの「お化け式手法」は秘めて、いままでどおりの美しいものを美しく画く式の凡庸なタッチで画いていました。
Also, in school art classes, I kept that "ghost method" concealed, and went on painting in my usual mediocre manner, of rendering beautiful things beautifully, just as before.
自分は竹一にだけは、前から自分の傷み易い神経を平気で見せていましたし、こんどの自画像も安心して竹一に見せ、たいへんほめられ、さらに二枚三枚と、お化けの絵を画きつづけ、竹一からもう一つの、
To Takeichi alone I had always been able, without concern, to show my easily wounded nerves, and so this time too I showed him my self-portrait without hesitation; he praised it highly, and I went on painting two more, three more, pictures of ghosts, and from Takeichi I received one more —
「お前は、偉い絵画きになる」
"You're going to be a great painter."
という予言を得たのでした。
— prophecy.
惚れられるという予言と、偉い絵画きになるという予言と、この二つの予言を馬鹿の竹一に依って額に刻印せられて、やがて、自分は東京へ出て来ました。
With these two prophecies — the prophecy that I would be loved and the prophecy that I would become a great painter — branded onto my forehead by that fool Takeichi, I before long came up to Tokyo.
自分は、美術学校にはいりたかったのですが、父は、前から自分を高等学校にいれて、末は官吏にするつもりで、自分にもそれを言い渡してあったので、口応え一つ出来ないたちの自分は、ぼんやりそれに従ったのでした。四年から受けて見よ、と言われたので、自分も桜と海の中学はもういい加減あきていましたし、五年に進級せず、四年修了のままで、東京の高等学校に受験して合格し、すぐに寮生活にはいりましたが、その不潔と粗暴に辟易して、道化どころではなく、医師に肺浸潤の診断書を書いてもらい、寮から出て、上野桜木町の父の別荘に移りました。自分には、団体生活というものが、どうしても出来ません。それにまた、青春の感激だとか、若人の誇りだとかいう言葉は、聞いて寒気がして来て、とても、あの、ハイスクール・スピリットとかいうものには、ついて行けなかったのです。教室も寮も、ゆがめられた性慾の、はきだめみたいな気さえして、自分の完璧に近いお道化も、そこでは何の役にも立ちませんでした。
I had wanted to enter art school, but my father had long since decided to put me through higher school and in the end make an official of me, and had already told me so himself, and I, being by nature incapable of talking back, went along with it in a kind of daze. He told me to try sitting the exam from the fourth year, and since I too was by then thoroughly tired of that middle school by the sea and the cherry trees, I skipped the fifth year and, with only the fourth year completed, sat the entrance examination for a higher school in Tokyo and passed, and went straight into dormitory life — but I was so put off by its filth and roughness that clowning was out of the question; I had a doctor write me a diagnosis of pulmonary infiltration, left the dormitory, and moved to my father's villa in Sakuragi-cho, Ueno. Communal life is something I am, under any circumstances, incapable of. And more than that, words like "the passion of youth" or "the pride of young people" made me shudder to hear them — I simply could not keep pace with that thing called the high-school spirit. Even the classrooms, even the dormitory, seemed to me nothing but a dumping-ground for twisted lust, and my clowning, close to perfect as it was, was of no use to me there at all.
父は議会の無い時は、月に一週間か二週間しかその家に滞在していませんでしたので、父の留守の時は、かなり広いその家に、別荘番の老夫婦と自分と三人だけで、自分は、ちょいちょい学校を休んで、さりとて東京見物などをする気も起らず（自分はとうとう、明治神宮も、楠正成の銅像も、泉岳寺の四十七士の墓も見ずに終りそうです）家で一日中、本を読んだり、絵をかいたりしていました。父が上京して来ると、自分は、毎朝そそくさと登校するのでしたが、しかし、本郷千駄木町の洋画家、安田新太郎氏の画塾に行き、三時間も四時間も、デッサンの練習をしている事もあったのです。高等学校の寮から脱けたら、学校の授業に出ても、自分はまるで聴講生みたいな特別の位置にいるような、それは自分のひがみかも知れなかったのですが、何とも自分自身で白々しい気持がして来て、いっそう学校へ行くのが、おっくうになったのでした。自分には、小学校、中学校、高等学校を通じて、ついに愛校心というものが理解できずに終りました。校歌などというものも、いちども覚えようとした事がありません。
When the Diet was not in session my father stayed at that house only a week or two out of the month, so that when he was away, in that fairly spacious house there were only the three of us — the old caretaker couple and myself — and I would often skip school, though I felt no urge to go sightseeing around Tokyo either (it looks as though I shall end my days without ever having seen the Meiji Shrine, or the bronze statue of Kusunoki Masashige, or the graves of the forty-seven ronin at Sengakuji), and would spend whole days at home reading books or drawing pictures. When my father came up to Tokyo, I would set off for school each morning in a great hurry — though there were times when what I actually did was go to the painting school of the Western-style painter Yasuda Shintaro, in Sendagi-cho, Hongo, and spend three or four hours practicing sketching. Once I had escaped the higher-school dormitory, even when I did attend classes I felt as though I occupied some special position, like an auditor merely sitting in — though that may only have been my own twisted notion — and in any case it all came to feel somehow false and hollow even to myself, and going to school became more and more of a burden to me. Through primary school, middle school, and higher school alike, I never once came to understand what was meant by love of one's school. I never so much as tried to learn a school song.
自分は、やがて画塾で、或る画学生から、酒と煙草と淫売婦と質屋と左翼思想とを知らされました。妙な取合せでしたが、しかし、それは事実でした。
In time, at the painting school, one of the art students introduced me to drink, tobacco, prostitutes, pawnshops, and left-wing thought. A strange combination, but a fact all the same.
その画学生は、堀木正雄といって、東京の下町に生れ、自分より六つ年長者で、私立の美術学校を卒業して、家にアトリエが無いので、この画塾に通い、洋画の勉強をつづけているのだそうです。
That art student was named Horiki Masao. He had been born in the old downtown part of Tokyo, was six years older than me, and, having graduated from a private art school but having no studio of his own at home, was said to keep coming to this painting school to continue his study of Western-style painting.
「五円、貸してくれないか」
"Lend me five yen, will you."
お互いただ顔を見知っているだけで、それまで一言も話合った事が無かったのです。自分は、へどもどして五円差し出しました。
We knew each other's faces only by sight, and had never up to then exchanged so much as a word. Flustered, I held out five yen.
「よし、飲もう。おれが、お前におごるんだ。よかチゴじゃのう」
"Good, let's go drink. It's my treat. You're a fine-looking lad, aren't you."
自分は拒否し切れず、その画塾の近くの、蓬莱町のカフエに引っぱって行かれたのが、彼との交友のはじまりでした。
I could not bring myself to refuse, and being dragged off to a café in Horai-cho near the painting school was the beginning of my friendship with him.
「前から、お前に眼をつけていたんだ。それそれ、そのはにかむような微笑、それが見込みのある芸術家特有の表情なんだ。お近づきのしるしに、乾杯！ キヌさん、こいつは美男子だろう？ 惚れちゃいけないぜ。こいつが塾へ来たおかげで、残念ながらおれは、第二番の美男子という事になった」
"I've had my eye on you for a while now. Yes, that, that very smile of yours, that shy smile — that's the particular look of an artist with real promise. To mark our acquaintance — a toast! Kinu, isn't this fellow handsome? Don't you go falling for him now. Ever since he started coming to the school, I'm sorry to say I've had to settle for being the second handsomest man around."
堀木は、色が浅黒く端正な顔をしていて、画学生には珍らしく、ちゃんとした脊広を着て、ネクタイの好みも地味で、そうして頭髪もポマードをつけてまん中からぺったりとわけていました。
Horiki had a dark complexion and regular features, and, unusually for an art student, wore a proper business suit, favored sober neckties, and wore his hair slicked down with pomade, parted flat in the middle.
自分は馴れぬ場所でもあり、ただもうおそろしく、腕を組んだりほどいたりして、それこそ、はにかむような微笑ばかりしていましたが、ビイルを二、三杯飲んでいるうちに、妙に解放せられたような軽さを感じて来たのです。
It was an unfamiliar place to me, and I was simply terrified, folding and unfolding my arms, wearing nothing but that very shy smile he spoke of — but as I drank two or three glasses of beer, I began to feel a strange lightness, as though I had somehow been set free.
「僕は、美術学校にはいろうと思っていたんですけど、……」
"I was thinking of entering art school, but—"
「いや、つまらん。あんなところは、つまらん。学校は、つまらん。われらの教師は、自然の中にあり！ 自然に対するパアトス！」
"No, forget it. That kind of place is worthless. School is worthless. Our teacher is to be found in nature! Pathos toward nature!"
しかし、自分は、彼の言う事に一向に敬意を感じませんでした。馬鹿なひとだ、絵も下手にちがいない、しかし、遊ぶのには、いい相手かも知れないと考えました。つまり、自分はその時、生れてはじめて、ほんものの都会の与太者を見たのでした。それは、自分と形は違っていても、やはり、この世の人間の営みから完全に遊離してしまって、戸迷いしている点に於いてだけは、たしかに同類なのでした。そうして、彼はそのお道化を意識せずに行い、しかも、そのお道化の悲惨に全く気がついていないのが、自分と本質的に異色のところでした。
But I felt not the slightest respect for what he said. A foolish man, I thought, his painting must be poor too — but he might make a good companion for amusement. That is to say, this was the first time in my life I had ever seen a genuine city good-for-nothing. Different in form though he was from me, he was, at least in this one respect — of being completely severed from the doings of human beings in this world, and bewildered by it — unmistakably of the same kind as I was. And yet the fact that he practiced his clowning without being conscious of it, and moreover was entirely unaware of the misery underlying that clowning, was where he differed from me in essence.
ただ遊ぶだけだ、遊びの相手として附合っているだけだ、とつねに彼を軽蔑し、時には彼との交友を恥ずかしくさえ思いながら、彼と連れ立って歩いているうちに、結局、自分は、この男にさえ打ち破られました。
Despising him always — it is only for amusement, I would tell myself, I keep company with him only as a partner in play — and sometimes even feeling ashamed of the friendship, still, as I went on walking about together with him, in the end I was defeated even by this man.
しかし、はじめは、この男を好人物、まれに見る好人物とばかり思い込み、さすが人間恐怖の自分も全く油断をして、東京のよい案内者が出来た、くらいに思っていました。自分は、実は、ひとりでは、電車に乗ると車掌がおそろしく、歌舞伎座へはいりたくても、あの正面玄関の緋の絨緞が敷かれてある階段の両側に並んで立っている案内嬢たちがおそろしく、レストランへはいると、自分の背後にひっそり立って、皿のあくのを待っている給仕のボーイがおそろしく、殊にも勘定を払う時、ああ、ぎごちない自分の手つき、自分は買い物をしてお金を手渡す時には、吝嗇ゆえでなく、あまりの緊張、あまりの恥ずかしさ、あまりの不安、恐怖に、くらくら目まいして、世界が真暗になり、ほとんど半狂乱の気持になってしまって、値切るどころか、お釣を受け取るのを忘れるばかりでなく、買った品物を持ち帰るのを忘れた事さえ、しばしばあったほどなので、とても、ひとりで東京のまちを歩けず、それで仕方なく、一日一ぱい家の中で、ごろごろしていたという内情もあったのでした。
At first, though, I took this man simply for a good sort, a rare good sort, and I — for all my fear of human beings — let my guard down completely, and thought I had found myself a fine guide to Tokyo. The truth was that, alone, I found the conductor terrifying enough when I boarded a streetcar; even when I wanted to go into the Kabuki-za, the usherettes standing in a row on either side of the staircase with its red carpet at the main entrance terrified me; going into a restaurant, the waiter standing quietly behind me, waiting for my plate to be emptied, terrified me; and above all, when it came time to pay the bill — ah, the clumsiness of my own hands. Whenever I made a purchase and had to hand over money, it was not out of stinginess but from sheer tension, sheer shame, sheer anxiety, that I would grow faint with fear until the world went black before me and I was reduced to something very like a fit of madness, so that far from haggling over the price, I would often forget even to take my change, and there were even times, more than once, when I forgot to take the thing I had bought home with me at all — so that I simply could not walk about the streets of Tokyo alone, and the plain truth of the matter was that, having no choice, I spent whole days lying idle around the house.
それが、堀木に財布を渡して一緒に歩くと、堀木は大いに値切って、しかも遊び上手というのか、わずかなお金で最大の効果のあるような支払い振りを発揮し、また、高い円タクは敬遠して、電車、バス、ポンポン蒸気など、それぞれ利用し分けて、最短時間で目的地へ着くという手腕をも示し、淫売婦のところから朝帰る途中には、何々という料亭に立ち寄って朝風呂へはいり、湯豆腐で軽くお酒を飲むのが、安い割に、ぜいたくな気分になれるものだと実地教育をしてくれたり、その他、屋台の牛めし焼とりの安価にして滋養に富むものたる事を説き、酔いの早く発するのは、電気ブランの右に出るものはないと保証し、とにかくその勘定に就いては自分に、一つも不安、恐怖を覚えさせた事がありませんでした。
So it was that when I handed my purse to Horiki and went out walking with him, Horiki would haggle hard, and — call it a talent for pleasure, or something like it — he showed a mastery of spending a little money to the greatest possible effect, and he kept well away from the expensive taxis, using the streetcar, the bus, the little put-put steam launch, each in its proper turn, and showed as well a real skill at reaching wherever we were going in the shortest possible time, and on the way home in the morning from a prostitute's house he taught me, as a piece of practical education, that stopping at such-and-such a restaurant for a morning bath and a light drink of sake with simmered tofu was, for the price, a way of feeling positively luxurious; and beyond that he held forth on how the beef-rice and grilled chicken sold at street stalls were cheap and full of nourishment, and guaranteed that for getting drunk quickly nothing beat Electric Brandy — in any case, where the bill was concerned, he never once let me feel the least uneasiness or fear.
さらにまた、堀木と附合って救われるのは、堀木が聞き手の思惑などをてんで無視して、その所謂情熱の噴出するがままに、（或いは、情熱とは、相手の立場を無視する事かも知れませんが）四六時中、くだらないおしゃべりを続け、あの、二人で歩いて疲れ、気まずい沈黙におちいる危懼が、全く無いという事でした。人に接し、あのおそろしい沈黙がその場にあらわれる事を警戒して、もともと口の重い自分が、ここを先途と必死のお道化を言って来たものですが、いまこの堀木の馬鹿が、意識せずに、そのお道化役をみずからすすんでやってくれているので、自分は、返事もろくにせずに、ただ聞き流し、時折、まさか、などと言って笑っておれば、いいのでした。
Further still, what saved me in being with Horiki was that Horiki, utterly disregarding what the listener might think, let his so-called pathos erupt as it pleased (or perhaps pathos is precisely this disregard for the other's position), and kept up a stream of worthless chatter around the clock, so that there was never the least danger of the two of us growing tired from walking and falling into that awkward silence. Being naturally reticent, and always guarding, whenever I dealt with people, against the appearance of that dreadful silence, I had been in the habit of forcing out desperate clowning as though it were my last stand — but now this fool Horiki was, without meaning to, taking on that role of clown entirely on his own, so that I needed only to answer him half-heartedly, let it wash past me, and now and then say something like "you don't say" and laugh.
酒、煙草、淫売婦、それは皆、人間恐怖を、たとい一時でも、まぎらす事の出来るずいぶんよい手段である事が、やがて自分にもわかって来ました。それらの手段を求めるためには、自分の持ち物全部を売却しても悔いない気持さえ、抱くようになりました。
Sake, tobacco, prostitutes — I came in time to understand that these were all quite good means of dulling, if only for a while, my fear of human beings. In order to obtain these means I came even to feel I would not regret selling everything I owned.
自分には、淫売婦というものが、人間でも、女性でもない、白痴か狂人のように見え、そのふところの中で、自分はかえって全く安心して、ぐっすり眠る事が出来ました。みんな、哀しいくらい、実にみじんも慾というものが無いのでした。そうして、自分に、同類の親和感とでもいったようなものを覚えるのか、自分は、いつも、その淫売婦たちから、窮屈でない程度の自然の好意を示されました。何の打算も無い好意、押し売りでは無い好意、二度と来ないかも知れぬひとへの好意、自分には、その白痴か狂人の淫売婦たちに、マリヤの円光を現実に見た夜もあったのです。
To me a prostitute seemed neither a human being nor a woman, but something like an idiot or a lunatic, and in her arms I could, to the contrary, feel utterly at ease and sleep soundly. They were all, pitifully, entirely without the least trace of greed. And perhaps because they sensed in me something like the affinity of kinship, these prostitutes always showed me a natural goodwill, not oppressive in its degree — a goodwill without any calculation, a goodwill that was not forced on me, a goodwill toward someone who might never come again. There were nights when, in these idiot or lunatic prostitutes, I actually saw the halo of the Virgin Mary.
しかし、自分は、人間への恐怖からのがれ、幽かな一夜の休養を求めるために、そこへ行き、それこそ自分と「同類」の淫売婦たちと遊んでいるうちに、いつのまにやら無意識の、或るいまわしい雰囲気を身辺にいつもただよわせるようになった様子で、これは自分にも全く思い設けなかった所謂「おまけの附録」でしたが、次第にその「附録」が、鮮明に表面に浮き上って来て、堀木にそれを指摘せられ、愕然として、そうして、いやな気が致しました。はたから見て、俗な言い方をすれば、自分は、淫売婦に依って女の修行をして、しかも、最近めっきり腕をあげ、女の修行は、淫売婦に依るのが一ばん厳しく、またそれだけに効果のあがるものだそうで、既に自分には、あの、「女達者」という匂いがつきまとい、女性は、（淫売婦に限らず）本能に依ってそれを嗅ぎ当て寄り添って来る、そのような、卑猥で不名誉な雰囲気を、「おまけの附録」としてもらって、そうしてそのほうが、自分の休養などよりも、ひどく目立ってしまっているらしいのでした。
But I went there to escape my fear of human beings and to seek a faint night's rest, and while I was playing there with these prostitutes who were, precisely, my own "kind," I seem to have come, without my knowing it, to carry about me always some sort of unwholesome atmosphere — a so-called "bonus" I had never in the least foreseen — and that "bonus" gradually rose clearly to the surface, until Horiki pointed it out to me, and I was startled, and it left an unpleasant taste. Seen from outside, to put it vulgarly, I had been schooled in women by prostitutes, and had lately grown remarkably skilled at it — schooling in women by prostitutes is said to be the harshest kind, and for that very reason the most effective — and already there clung to me that air of being "practiced with women," which women, and not only prostitutes, could apparently sniff out by instinct and draw close to; and it seemed that this lewd, dishonorable atmosphere, received as a "bonus," had come to stand out far more conspicuously than anything like rest.
堀木はそれを半分はお世辞で言ったのでしょうが、しかし、自分にも、重苦しく思い当る事があり、たとえば、喫茶店の女から稚拙な手紙をもらった覚えもあるし、桜木町の家の隣りの将軍のはたちくらいの娘が、毎朝、自分の登校の時刻には、用も無さそうなのに、ご自分の家の門を薄化粧して出たりはいったりしていたし、牛肉を食いに行くと、自分が黙っていても、そこの女中が、……また、いつも買いつけの煙草屋の娘から手渡された煙草の箱の中に、……また、歌舞伎を見に行って隣りの席のひとに、……また、深夜の市電で自分が酔って眠っていて、……また、思いがけなく故郷の親戚の娘から、思いつめたような手紙が来て、……また、誰かわからぬ娘が、自分の留守中にお手製らしい人形を、……自分が極度に消極的なので、いずれも、それっきりの話で、ただ断片、それ以上の進展は一つもありませんでしたが、何か女に夢を見させる雰囲気が、自分のどこかにつきまとっている事は、それは、のろけだの何だのといういい加減な冗談でなく、否定できないのでありました。自分は、それを堀木ごとき者に指摘せられ、屈辱に似た苦さを感ずると共に、淫売婦と遊ぶ事にも、にわかに興が覚めました。
Horiki no doubt said this half as flattery, but there were things that struck me too, heavily, as true — I recall, for instance, having once received a clumsy letter from a girl at a coffee shop; the daughter of the general next door in Sakuragi-chō, a girl of about twenty, used to go in and out of her own gate every morning at just the hour I set off for school, lightly made up, though she seemed to have no business there; when I went out for beef, even when I said nothing, the servant girl there... and again, inside the box of cigarettes handed to me by the girl at the tobacconist's I always patronized... and again, at the kabuki, from the person seated beside me... and again, while I slept drunk on the late-night streetcar... and again, out of nowhere, a letter came, as though from a heart driven to distraction, from a girl among my relatives back home... and again, some girl I could not identify left, while I was out, what looked like a doll she had made herself... because I was extremely passive, none of these ever went further than that — mere fragments, nothing more ever came of any of them — but that some atmosphere clung to me somewhere that made women dream, this was not some loose joke about being a lucky man with women or anything of the sort; it could not be denied. To have this pointed out to me by someone like Horiki, I felt a bitterness close to humiliation, and at the same time my interest in playing with prostitutes abruptly cooled.
堀木は、また、その見栄坊のモダニティから、（堀木の場合、それ以外の理由は、自分には今もって考えられませんのですが）或る日、自分を共産主義の読書会とかいう（Ｒ・Ｓとかいっていたか、記憶がはっきり致しません）そんな、秘密の研究会に連れて行きました。堀木などという人物にとっては、共産主義の秘密会合も、れいの「東京案内」の一つくらいのものだったのかも知れません。自分は所謂「同志」に紹介せられ、パンフレットを一部買わされ、そうして上座のひどい醜い顔の青年から、マルクス経済学の講義を受けました。しかし、自分には、それはわかり切っている事のように思われました。それは、そうに違いないだろうけれども、人間の心には、もっとわけのわからない、おそろしいものがある。慾、と言っても、言いたりない、ヴァニティ、と言っても、言いたりない、色と慾、とこう二つ並べても、言いたりない、何だか自分にもわからぬが、人間の世の底に、経済だけでない、へんに怪談じみたものがあるような気がして、その怪談におびえ切っている自分には、所謂唯物論を、水の低きに流れるように自然に肯定しながらも、しかし、それに依って、人間に対する恐怖から解放せられ、青葉に向って眼をひらき、希望のよろこびを感ずるなどという事は出来ないのでした。けれども、自分は、いちども欠席せずに、そのＲ・Ｓ（と言ったかと思いますが、間違っているかも知れません）なるものに出席し、「同志」たちが、いやに一大事の如く、こわばった顔をして、一プラス一は二、というような、ほとんど初等の算術めいた理論の研究にふけっているのが滑稽に見えてたまらず、れいの自分のお道化で、会合をくつろがせる事に努め、そのためか、次第に研究会の窮屈な気配もほぐれ、自分はその会合に無くてかなわぬ人気者という形にさえなって来たようでした。この、単純そうな人たちは、自分の事を、やはりこの人たちと同じ様に単純で、そうして、楽天的なおどけ者の「同志」くらいに考えていたかも知れませんが、もし、そうだったら、自分は、この人たちを一から十まで、あざむいていたわけです。自分は、同志では無かったんです。けれども、その会合に、いつも欠かさず出席して、皆にお道化のサーヴィスをして来ました。
Horiki, too, out of that vain modernity of his — in Horiki's case I can, even now, think of no other reason — one day took me to some secret study circle, a communist reading group of some kind, called R.S. or something; I cannot clearly remember. For a man like Horiki, a secret communist meeting too was probably no more than another of his usual "guided tours of Tokyo." I was introduced to the so-called "comrades," made to buy a pamphlet, and received a lecture on Marxist economics from a hideously ugly young man seated in the place of honor. But to me it seemed a thing already perfectly obvious. No doubt it was true as far as it went — but there is in the human heart something far more incomprehensible, far more terrible. Call it greed: that does not say enough. Call it vanity: that does not say enough. Set lust and greed side by side: even that does not say enough. Somehow, though I myself did not know quite what it was, I felt that at the bottom of the human world there lay something strange, something almost like a ghost story, not to be accounted for by economics alone, and being as I was thoroughly frightened by that ghost story, even while I accepted so-called materialism as naturally as water flows downhill, I could not, through it, be freed from my fear of human beings, could not lift my eyes to the green leaves and feel the joy of hope. And yet I never once missed a meeting of that R.S. — or so I think it was called, though I may be wrong — and found it unbearably comical to watch the "comrades," with their faces stiffened as though over some tremendous matter, absorbed in the study of theories that amounted to little more than elementary arithmetic, one plus one equals two; and so, with my habitual clowning, I worked to put the meetings at ease, and it seems that, perhaps because of this, the group's stiff atmosphere gradually loosened, until I had become something like an indispensable, popular figure at those meetings. These simple-seeming people may well have taken me for a comrade every bit as simple as themselves, a cheerful, joking sort — but if that was so, then I was deceiving them from beginning to end. I was no comrade. And yet I attended that meeting without fail every single time, and served everyone there with my clowning.
好きだったからなのです。自分には、その人たちが、気にいっていたからなのです。しかし、それは必ずしも、マルクスに依って結ばれた親愛感では無かったのです。
It was because I liked them. It was because I had grown fond of these people. But it was not necessarily an affection bound together by Marx.
非合法。自分には、それが幽かに楽しかったのです。むしろ、居心地がよかったのです。世の中の合法というもののほうが、かえっておそろしく、（それには、底知れず強いものが予感せられます）そのからくりが不可解で、とてもその窓の無い、底冷えのする部屋には坐っておられず、外は非合法の海であっても、それに飛び込んで泳いで、やがて死に到るほうが、自分には、いっそ気楽のようでした。
Illegality. To me this was faintly pleasurable. If anything, I found it comfortable. The legal world, by contrast, was the one that frightened me — in it I sensed something of unfathomable strength — its workings incomprehensible, and I could not bear to sit in that windowless, coldly chilling room; even if outside lay a sea of illegality, to leap into it and swim, and in time go under and die, seemed to me rather the easier course.
日蔭者、という言葉があります。人間の世に於いて、みじめな、敗者、悪徳者を指差していう言葉のようですが、自分は、自分を生れた時からの日蔭者のような気がしていて、世間から、あれは日蔭者だと指差されている程のひとと逢うと、自分は、必ず、優しい心になるのです。そうして、その自分の「優しい心」は、自身でうっとりするくらい優しい心でした。
There is a word, man of the shade — a word that seems to be used to point at the wretched, at losers, at the wicked, in the human world, but I had the feeling that I had been a man of the shade from the day I was born, and whenever I met someone whom the world pointed at as being just such a man of the shade, my heart, without fail, grew gentle. And that "gentle heart" of mine was gentle enough that I myself was entranced by it.
また、犯人意識、という言葉もあります。自分は、この人間の世の中に於いて、一生その意識に苦しめられながらも、しかし、それは自分の糟糠の妻の如き好伴侶で、そいつと二人きりで侘びしく遊びたわむれているというのも、自分の生きている姿勢の一つだったかも知れないし、また、俗に、脛に傷持つ身、という言葉もあるようですが、その傷は、自分の赤ん坊の時から、自然に片方の脛にあらわれて、長ずるに及んで治癒するどころか、いよいよ深くなるばかりで、骨にまで達し、夜々の痛苦は千変万化の地獄とは言いながら、しかし、（これは、たいへん奇妙な言い方ですけど）その傷は、次第に自分の血肉よりも親しくなり、その傷の痛みは、すなわち傷の生きている感情、または愛情の囁きのようにさえ思われる、そんな男にとって、れいの地下運動のグルウプの雰囲気が、へんに安心で、居心地がよく、つまり、その運動の本来の目的よりも、その運動の肌が、自分に合った感じなのでした。堀木の場合は、ただもう阿呆のひやかしで、いちど自分を紹介しにその会合へ行ったきりで、マルキシストは、生産面の研究と同時に、消費面の視察も必要だなどと下手な洒落を言って、その会合には寄りつかず、とかく自分を、その消費面の視察のほうにばかり誘いたがるのでした。思えば、当時は、さまざまの型のマルキシストがいたものです。堀木のように、虚栄のモダニティから、それを自称する者もあり、また自分のように、ただ非合法の匂いが気にいって、そこに坐り込んでいる者もあり、もしもこれらの実体が、マルキシズムの真の信奉者に見破られたら、堀木も自分も、烈火の如く怒られ、卑劣なる裏切者として、たちどころに追い払われた事でしょう。しかし、自分も、また、堀木でさえも、なかなか除名の処分に遭わず、殊にも自分は、その非合法の世界に於いては、合法の紳士たちの世界に於けるよりも、かえってのびのびと、所謂「健康」に振舞う事が出来ましたので、見込みのある「同志」として、噴き出したくなるほど過度に秘密めかした、さまざまの用事をたのまれるほどになったのです。また、事実、自分は、そんな用事をいちども断ったことは無く、平気でなんでも引受け、へんにぎくしゃくして、犬（同志は、ポリスをそう呼んでいました）にあやしまれ不審訊問などを受けてしくじるような事も無かったし、笑いながら、また、ひとを笑わせながら、そのあぶない（その運動の連中は、一大事の如く緊張し、探偵小説の下手な真似みたいな事までして、極度の警戒を用い、そうして自分にたのむ仕事は、まことに、あっけにとられるくらい、つまらないものでしたが、それでも、彼等は、その用事を、さかんに、あぶながって力んでいるのでした）と、彼等の称する仕事を、とにかく正確にやってのけていました。自分のその当時の気持としては、党員になって捕えられ、たとい終身、刑務所で暮すようになったとしても、平気だったのです。世の中の人間の「実生活」というものを恐怖しながら、毎夜の不眠の地獄で呻いているよりは、いっそ牢屋のほうが、楽かも知れないとさえ考えていました。
There is also a phrase, the consciousness of a criminal. Though I have been tormented by that consciousness my whole life long, in this human world, it was for me a fine companion, like a wife who had shared my poverty, and to spend my time in forlorn play alone with that companion may well have been one of the very postures of my life. And there is, too, the common saying of a man carrying a scar on his shin — but my scar had appeared naturally on one of my shins from the time I was a baby, and rather than healing as I grew, it had only gone on deepening, until it reached the bone, and though the nightly pain was a hell of a thousand changing shapes, still — and this is a very strange way to put it — that scar had come gradually to feel closer to me than my own flesh and blood, and the pain of that scar came to seem to me nothing less than the living feeling of the scar itself, or even the whisper of some kind of affection. For a man like that, the atmosphere of that underground movement's group felt strangely reassuring, comfortable to be in — that is to say, it was not so much the true purpose of the movement as the feel, the texture, of the movement that suited me. In Horiki's case it was simply an idiot's bit of mockery — he went to that meeting only the once, to introduce me, and afterward, with some clumsy joke about how a Marxist needed to inspect the consumption side as well as study the production side, never went near the meetings again, and instead kept trying to lure me only toward that "inspection of the consumption side." Thinking back on it, there were all sorts of Marxists in those days. Some, like Horiki, called themselves Marxists out of vain modernity; others, like me, simply liked the smell of illegality and sat themselves down in the midst of it; and if the true believers of Marxism had ever seen through what these people really were, both Horiki and I would no doubt have been raged at like fire and driven out on the spot as base traitors. And yet neither I, nor even Horiki, was ever once expelled — and I in particular found that, in that illegal world, I could behave far more freely and, so to speak, "healthily" than I ever could in the world of the law-abiding gentlemen, so that I came to be trusted as a promising "comrade" and given all manner of errands dressed up in a secrecy so excessive it made me want to burst out laughing. And in fact I never once refused such an errand, took on anything at all without a flicker of concern, never once bungled things by moving awkwardly and drawing the suspicion of the "dogs" — the comrades called the police that — and being stopped for questioning, and, laughing, and making others laugh, I carried out with real precision the work they called "dangerous" — the people in that movement, tense as though over some tremendous matter, went to such lengths of caution, playing amateurishly at detective-novel stunts, that the tasks they entrusted to me were, in truth, almost laughably trivial, and yet they themselves made a great, strenuous business of how dangerous they were. In my state of mind at that time, even if I had become a party member and been caught and made to spend the rest of my life in prison, I would not have minded. I thought that, rather than groaning through hell every sleepless night in dread of the "real life" of human beings in this world, prison itself might even be the easier of the two.
父は、桜木町の別荘では、来客やら外出やら、同じ家にいても、三日も四日も自分と顔を合せる事が無いほどでしたが、しかし、どうにも、父がけむったく、おそろしく、この家を出て、どこか下宿でも、と考えながらもそれを言い出せずにいた矢先に、父がその家を売払うつもりらしいという事を別荘番の老爺から聞きました。
At the villa in Sakuragi-chō my father, what with visitors and outings, would sometimes go three or four days without so much as seeing my face even though we lived under the same roof; and yet, somehow, my father oppressed and frightened me, and I had been thinking, without being able to bring myself to say so, of leaving that house for some lodging house or other, when, just at that time, I heard from the old caretaker of the villa that my father seemed to intend to sell the place.
父の議員の任期もそろそろ満期に近づき、いろいろ理由のあった事に違いありませんが、もうこれきり選挙に出る意志も無い様子で、それに、故郷に一棟、隠居所など建てたりして、東京に未練も無いらしく、たかが、高等学校の一生徒に過ぎない自分のために、邸宅と召使いを提供して置くのも、むだな事だとでも考えたのか、（父の心もまた、世間の人たちの気持ちと同様に、自分にはよくわかりません）とにかく、その家は、間も無く人手にわたり、自分は、本郷森川町の仙遊館という古い下宿の、薄暗い部屋に引越して、そうして、たちまち金に困りました。
My father's term as a Diet member was drawing to its close, and there must have been any number of reasons, but it seemed he had no further intention of standing for election, and besides, having had a retirement house of some kind built back home, he seemed to feel no attachment left to Tokyo; perhaps he had also come to think it pointless to keep up a house and servants merely for the sake of a son who was, after all, no more than a schoolboy at a higher school — my father's mind, like the minds of people of the world, was something I could never really understand — in any case, the house soon passed into other hands, and I moved into a dim room at an old lodging house called the Sen'yūkan in Morikawa-chō, Hongō, and immediately found myself short of money.
それまで、父から月々、きまった額の小遣いを手渡され、それはもう、二、三日で無くなっても、しかし、煙草も、酒も、チイズも、くだものも、いつでも家にあったし、本や文房具やその他、服装に関するものなど一切、いつでも、近所の店から所謂「ツケ」で求められたし、堀木におそばか天丼などをごちそうしても、父のひいきの町内の店だったら、自分は黙ってその店を出てもかまわなかったのでした。
Until then I had been handed a fixed allowance from my father every month, and though it might be gone in two or three days, there had always been tobacco, sake, cheese, fruit in the house whenever I wanted them, and books, stationery, and everything to do with clothing I could always get on so-called credit from the neighborhood shops, and if I treated Horiki to soba or a bowl of tempura over rice, so long as it was a shop my father favored in the neighborhood, I could simply walk out without paying and no one minded.
それが急に、下宿のひとり住いになり、何もかも、月々の定額の送金で間に合わせなければならなくなって、自分は、まごつきました。送金は、やはり、二、三日で消えてしまい、自分は慄然とし、心細さのために狂うようになり、父、兄、姉などへ交互にお金を頼む電報と、イサイフミの手紙（その手紙に於いて訴えている事情は、ことごとく、お道化の虚構でした。人にものを頼むのに、まず、その人を笑わせるのが上策と考えていたのです）を連発する一方、また、堀木に教えられ、せっせと質屋がよいをはじめ、それでも、いつもお金に不自由をしていました。
Now, all at once, living alone in lodgings, I had to make do with everything out of a fixed monthly remittance, and I was at a loss. The money, too, would vanish in two or three days, and I grew frightened, half out of my mind with the anxiety of it, and while firing off, one after another, telegrams begging money in turn from my father, my elder brother, my sisters, and the letters that were to supply the promised "details to follow" — the circumstances I pleaded in those letters were, every one of them, clownish fabrications; I had come to think that, in asking anything of anyone, the best policy was first of all to make them laugh — while doing all this, I also began, on Horiki's instruction, to make diligent trips to the pawnshop, and even so I was forever short of money.
所詮、自分には、何の縁故も無い下宿に、ひとりで「生活」して行く能力が無かったのです。自分は、下宿のその部屋に、ひとりでじっとしているのが、おそろしく、いまにも誰かに襲われ、一撃せられるような気がして来て、街に飛び出しては、れいの運動の手伝いをしたり、或いは堀木と一緒に安い酒を飲み廻ったりして、ほとんど学業も、また画の勉強も放棄し、高等学校へ入学して、二年目の十一月、自分より年上の有夫の婦人と情死事件などを起し、自分の身の上は、一変しました。
In the end, I simply had no capacity to "live," alone, in lodgings where I had no connections of any kind. Sitting alone, still, in that room at the lodging house terrified me — I would feel as though someone might attack me and strike me down at any moment — and so I would fling myself out into the streets, and go help with that movement, or go the rounds of cheap sake with Horiki, and had all but abandoned my schoolwork and my study of painting as well, and in November of my second year at the higher school I brought about a love-suicide affair with a married woman older than myself, and my circumstances changed entirely.
学校は欠席するし、学科の勉強も、すこしもしなかったのに、それでも、妙に試験の答案に要領のいいところがあるようで、どうやらそれまでは、故郷の肉親をあざむき通して来たのですが、しかし、もうそろそろ、出席日数の不足など、学校のほうから内密に故郷の父へ報告が行っているらしく、父の代理として長兄が、いかめしい文章の長い手紙を、自分に寄こすようになっていたのでした。けれども、それよりも、自分の直接の苦痛は、金の無い事と、それから、れいの運動の用事が、とても遊び半分の気持では出来ないくらい、はげしく、いそがしくなって来た事でした。中央地区と言ったか、何地区と言ったか、とにかく本郷、小石川、下谷、神田、あの辺の学校全部の、マルクス学生の行動隊々長というものに、自分はなっていたのでした。武装蜂起、と聞き、小さいナイフを買い（いま思えば、それは鉛筆をけずるにも足りない、きゃしゃなナイフでした）それを、レンコオトのポケットにいれ、あちこち飛び廻って、所謂「聯絡」をつけるのでした。お酒を飲んで、ぐっすり眠りたい、しかし、お金がありません。しかも、Ｐ（党の事を、そういう隠語で呼んでいたと記憶していますが、或いは、違っているかも知れません）のほうからは、次々と息をつくひまも無いくらい、用事の依頼がまいります。自分の病弱のからだでは、とても勤まりそうも無くなりました。もともと、非合法の興味だけから、そのグルウプの手伝いをしていたのですし、こんなに、それこそ冗談から駒が出たように、いやにいそがしくなって来ると、自分は、ひそかにＰのひとたちに、それはお門ちがいでしょう、あなたたちの直系のものたちにやらせたらどうですか、というようないまいましい感を抱くのを禁ずる事が出来ず、逃げました。逃げて、さすがに、いい気持はせず、死ぬ事にしました。
I was absent from school, and had not studied my lessons in the least, and yet I seemed to have some strange knack for producing passable answers on examinations, and had managed, up to then, to keep my family back home entirely deceived — but by now it seemed the school itself had begun quietly reporting things like my shortage of attendance days to my father back home, and my eldest brother, acting for our father, had taken to sending me long letters written in a stern, formal style. But more than that, what pained me directly was my lack of money, and the fact that the business of that movement had grown so fierce, so busy, that it could no longer be done in any half-playful spirit. I had become, in what was called the central district, or some such district — in any case, in Hongō, Koishikawa, Shitaya, Kanda, all the schools thereabouts — the captain of the action squad of Marxist students. On hearing talk of an armed uprising I bought a small knife — thinking back on it now, it was a flimsy little thing, hardly fit even for sharpening a pencil — and carried it in the pocket of my raincoat, dashing here and there to make what were called "contacts." I wanted to drink and sleep soundly, but I had no money. And from the P — I remember they used that code word for the Party, though I may be wrong — came request after request for tasks, without so much as a moment to catch my breath. My frail body could no longer keep up with it. I had helped that group in the first place only out of an interest in illegality, and now that things had grown, as if by some joke turned suddenly serious, so unpleasantly busy, I could not stop myself from privately feeling, toward the people of the P, an irritated sense that this was surely the wrong door to knock at, that they ought to have their own direct people do this work — and so I ran away. And having run away, I naturally felt none too pleased with myself, and resolved to die.
その頃、自分に特別の好意を寄せている女が、三人いました。ひとりは、自分の下宿している仙遊館の娘でした。この娘は、自分がれいの運動の手伝いでへとへとになって帰り、ごはんも食べずに寝てしまってから、必ず用箋と万年筆を持って自分の部屋にやって来て、
Around that time there were three women who showed particular favor toward me. One was the daughter of the Sen'yūkan, the lodging house where I lived. This girl, whenever I came home worn out from helping with that movement, and fell asleep without even eating, would without fail come afterward to my room carrying writing paper and a fountain pen, and
「ごめんなさい。下では、妹や弟がうるさくて、ゆっくり手紙も書けないのです」
"I'm sorry. Downstairs my little brother and sister are so noisy I can't write letters in peace,"
と言って、何やら自分の机に向って一時間以上も書いているのです。
she would say, and sit at my desk writing something or other for over an hour.
自分もまた、知らん振りをして寝ておればいいのに、いかにもその娘が何か自分に言ってもらいたげの様子なので、れいの受け身の奉仕の精神を発揮して、実に一言も口をききたくない気持なのだけれども、くたくたに疲れ切っているからだに、ウムと気合いをかけて腹這いになり、煙草を吸い、
I too might simply have pretended not to notice and gone on sleeping, but the girl so plainly seemed to want me to say something to her that, exercising my usual passive spirit of service, though I truly did not want to speak a single word, I would rouse my exhausted body with a grunt of effort, roll over onto my stomach, light a cigarette, and say,
「女から来たラヴ・レターで、風呂をわかしてはいった男があるそうですよ」
"I hear there's a man who once got a love letter from a woman and used it to heat his bathwater."
「あら、いやだ。あなたでしょう？」
"Oh, how horrid. That was you, wasn't it?"
「ミルクをわかして飲んだ事はあるんです」
"I did once heat up some milk and drink it."
「光栄だわ、飲んでよ」
"I'm honored. Go on, drink it."
早くこのひと、帰らねえかなあ、手紙だなんて、見えすいているのに。へへののもへじでも書いているのに違いないんです。
Won't this woman go home soon — calling it a letter, when it's plainly nothing of the kind. No doubt she's only scribbling some nonsense doodle.
「見せてよ」
"Let me see it,"
と死んでも見たくない思いでそう言えば、あら、いやよ、あら、いやよ、と言って、そのうれしがる事、ひどくみっともなく、興が覚めるばかりなのです。そこで自分は、用事でも言いつけてやれ、と思うんです。
I would say, though I would sooner have died than actually see it, and she would say, oh no, oh no, and be so pleased about it, so unbecomingly pleased, that it only killed my interest all the more. So then I would think, better to give her some errand to do.
「すまないけどね、電車通りの薬屋に行って、カルモチンを買って来てくれない？ あんまり疲れすぎて、顔がほてって、かえって眠れないんだ。すまないね。お金は、……」
"Sorry to trouble you, but would you go to the pharmacy on the streetcar road and buy me some Calmotin? I'm so tired my face is burning, and, of all things, I can't sleep. Sorry. Here's the money—"
「いいわよ、お金なんか」
"Never mind the money."
よろこんで立ちます。用を言いつけるというのは、決して女をしょげさせる事ではなく、かえって女は、男に用事をたのまれると喜ぶものだという事も、自分はちゃんと知っているのでした。
and up she would jump, delighted. Giving a woman some errand to run, I already knew perfectly well, was never a way to disappoint her — a woman, quite the contrary, was glad to be asked to do something for a man.
もうひとりは、女子高等師範の文科生の所謂「同志」でした。このひととは、れいの運動の用事で、いやでも毎日、顔を合せなければならなかったのです。打ち合せがすんでからも、その女は、いつまでも自分について歩いて、そうして、やたらに自分に、ものを買ってくれるのでした。
The second was a so-called "comrade," a literature student at the Women's Higher Normal School. With this one I had, whether I liked it or not, to see her face every single day on the business of that movement. Even after our meetings were over, this woman would go on walking alongside me indefinitely, and was forever buying me things, indiscriminately.
「私を本当の姉だと思っていてくれていいわ」
"You may think of me as your true elder sister."
そのキザに身震いしながら、自分は、
Shuddering at the affectation of it, I answered,
「そのつもりでいるんです」
"That's how I do think of you,"
と、愁えを含んだ微笑の表情を作って答えます。とにかく、怒らせては、こわい、何とかして、ごまかさなければならぬ、という思い一つのために、自分はいよいよその醜い、いやな女に奉仕をして、そうして、ものを買ってもらっては、（その買い物は、実に趣味の悪い品ばかりで、自分はたいてい、すぐにそれを、焼きとり屋の親爺などにやってしまいました）うれしそうな顔をして、冗談を言っては笑わせ、或る夏の夜、どうしても離れないので、街の暗いところで、そのひとに帰ってもらいたいばかりに、キスをしてやりましたら、あさましく狂乱の如く興奮し、自動車を呼んで、そのひとたちの運動のために秘密に借りてあるらしいビルの事務所みたいな狭い洋室に連れて行き、朝まで大騒ぎという事になり、とんでもない姉だ、と自分はひそかに苦笑しました。
putting on an expression of a sorrowful smile as I said it. In any case, out of the single thought that to make her angry would be frightening, that I must somehow talk my way around her, I went on serving this ugly, disagreeable woman more and more, and whenever she bought me things — the things she bought were, without exception, in the most wretched taste, and I would generally hand them straight over to the old man at the yakitori stall — I would put on a pleased face, crack jokes to make her laugh, and one summer night, when she simply would not leave my side, I kissed her in a dark corner of the street, solely in order to be rid of her, whereupon she grew shamefully, madly excited, called a taxicab, and took me off to some cramped Western-style room, apparently an office secretly rented for the use of their movement, in some building, and there followed an uproar that lasted until morning. What a preposterous sort of elder sister, I thought to myself, with a bitter private laugh.
下宿屋の娘と言い、またこの「同志」と言い、どうしたって毎日、顔を合せなければならぬ具合になっていますので、これまでの、さまざまの女のひとのように、うまく避けられず、つい、ずるずるに、れいの不安の心から、この二人のご機嫌をただ懸命に取り結び、もはや自分は、金縛り同様の形になっていました。
Both this lodging-house daughter and this "comrade" were people I was bound, whatever happened, to see every single day, and so, unlike the various other women I had managed before this to evade skillfully, I could not escape them, and little by little, out of that same old anxious heart of mine, I found myself desperately, helplessly currying favor with both of them at once, until I was, by now, all but bound hand and foot.
同じ頃また自分は、銀座の或る大カフエの女給から、思いがけぬ恩を受け、たったいちど逢っただけなのに、それでも、その恩にこだわり、やはり身動き出来ないほどの、心配やら、空おそろしさを感じていたのでした。その頃になると、自分も、敢えて堀木の案内に頼らずとも、ひとりで電車にも乗れるし、また、歌舞伎座にも行けるし、または、絣の着物を着て、カフエにだってはいれるくらいの、多少の図々しさを装えるようになっていたのです。心では、相変らず、人間の自信と暴力とを怪しみ、恐れ、悩みながら、うわべだけは、少しずつ、他人と真顔の挨拶、いや、ちがう、自分はやはり敗北のお道化の苦しい笑いを伴わずには、挨拶できないたちなのですが、とにかく、無我夢中のへどもどの挨拶でも、どうやら出来るくらいの「伎倆」を、れいの運動で走り廻ったおかげ？ または、女の？ または、酒？ けれども、おもに金銭の不自由のおかげで修得しかけていたのです。どこにいても、おそろしく、かえって大カフエでたくさんの酔客または女給、ボーイたちにもまれ、まぎれ込む事が出来たら、自分のこの絶えず追われているような心も落ちつくのではなかろうか、と十円持って、銀座のその大カフエに、ひとりではいって、笑いながら相手の女給に、
Around this same time I also received an unlooked-for kindness from a waitress at a large café in the Ginza, and though I had met her only that once, I could not stop dwelling on that kindness, and felt, in the same way, a helpless sort of worry and an unaccountable dread. By that time I had reached the point where I no longer needed to rely on Horiki's guidance at every turn — I could ride the streetcar alone, could go to the Kabuki-za alone, could even, dressed in a plain kasuri kimono, put on enough brazenness to walk into a café by myself. In my heart I remained, as always, suspicious of, and frightened by, and tormented by human confidence and violence, but on the surface, little by little, I was acquiring something like the "skill" of greeting another person with a straight face — no, that is not quite it; I was, after all, a man who could not greet anyone at all without the painful accompanying laughter of a defeated clown — but in any case, some flustered, half-witted greeting I had, it seemed, become just barely capable of managing, whether thanks to my running about on the business of that movement, or thanks to women, or to drink — but chiefly, in truth, thanks to my constant want of money. Wherever I was, I felt afraid, and I thought that if I could only lose myself, get swallowed up, among the many drunken customers and waitresses and waiters of some large café, this heart of mine, forever feeling itself pursued, might perhaps grow calm; and with ten yen in my pocket I went alone into that large café in the Ginza, and said, laughing, to the waitress who came to me,
「十円しか無いんだからね、そのつもりで」
"I've only got ten yen, so bear that in mind,"
と言いました。
I said.
「心配要りません」
"No need to worry."
どこかに関西の訛りがありました。そうして、その一言が、奇妙に自分の、震えおののいている心をしずめてくれました。いいえ、お金の心配が要らなくなったからではありません、そのひとの傍にいる事に心配が要らないような気がしたのです。
There was, somewhere in her voice, a trace of a Kansai accent. And that one remark, strangely, calmed my trembling, quaking heart. It was not, no, that I no longer had to worry about money — it was that being at this woman's side seemed to call for no worry at all.
自分は、お酒を飲みました。そのひとに安心しているので、かえってお道化など演じる気持も起らず、自分の地金の無口で陰惨なところを隠さず見せて、黙ってお酒を飲みました。
I drank. Feeling at ease with her, I felt, if anything, no urge at all to play the clown, and without hiding the taciturn, gloomy stuff I was really made of, I drank on in silence.
「こんなの、おすきか？」
"Do you like this kind of thing?"
女は、さまざまの料理を自分の前に並べました。自分は首を振りました。
The woman set out various dishes of food before me. I shook my head.
「お酒だけか？ うちも飲もう」
"Just drinking, is it? I'll drink too, then."
秋の、寒い夜でした。自分は、ツネ子（といったと覚えていますが、記憶が薄れ、たしかではありません。情死の相手の名前をさえ忘れているような自分なのです）に言いつけられたとおりに、銀座裏の、或る屋台のお鮨やで、少しもおいしくない鮨を食べながら、（そのひとの名前は忘れても、その時の鮨のまずさだけは、どうした事か、はっきり記憶に残っています。そうして、青大将の顔に似た顔つきの、丸坊主のおやじが、首を振り振り、いかにも上手みたいにごまかしながら鮨を握っている様も、眼前に見るように鮮明に思い出され、後年、電車などで、はて見た顔だ、といろいろ考え、なんだ、あの時の鮨やの親爺に似ているんだ、と気が附き苦笑した事も再三あったほどでした。あのひとの名前も、また、顔かたちさえ記憶から遠ざかっている現在なお、あの鮨やの親爺の顔だけは絵にかけるほど正確に覚えているとは、よっぽどあの時の鮨がまずく、自分に寒さと苦痛を与えたものと思われます。もともと、自分は、うまい鮨を食わせる店というところに、ひとに連れられて行って食っても、うまいと思った事は、いちどもありませんでした。大き過ぎるのです。親指くらいの大きさにキチッと握れないものかしら、といつも考えていました）そのひとを、待っていました。
It was a cold night in autumn. Just as Tsuneko — that was her name, I believe, though my memory has grown faint and I cannot be certain of it; I am the sort of man who has forgotten even the name of the woman with whom he tried to die — had told me to do, I was waiting for her, eating at a certain sushi stall behind Ginza, sushi that was not in the least delicious, (though I have forgotten that woman's name, for some reason the poor quality of the sushi that night alone remains distinctly in my memory. And I recall, as vividly as though I saw it before my eyes even now, the look of the shaven-headed old manaded old man, his face rather like a rat snake's, shaking his head this way and that as he pressed the sushi together, making a great show of skill while in fact cheating his customers; so that in later years, on a streetcar or some such place, I would sometimes find myself thinking, now, haven't I seen that face somewhere, and realize with a wry smile, why, it looks just like that sushi-shop proprietor from back then — this happened more than once. That even now, when that woman's name, and even the shape of her face, have receded far from my memory, I still remember the face of that sushi-shop proprietor accurately enough to draw it, makes me think that the sushi that night must indeed have been wretched, and must have given me no small measure of cold and suffering. To begin with, I had never once, even when someone took me to a shop said to serve delicious sushi, thought it delicious. The pieces are too large. I have always thought, could they not press it neatly to about the size of a thumb?)
本所の大工さんの二階を、そのひとが借りていました。自分は、その二階で、日頃の自分の陰鬱な心を少しもかくさず、ひどい歯痛に襲われてでもいるように、片手で頬をおさえながら、お茶を飲みました。そうして、自分のそんな姿態が、かえって、そのひとには、気にいったようでした。そのひとも、身のまわりに冷たい木枯しが吹いて、落葉だけが舞い狂い、完全に孤立している感じの女でした。
She was renting the upstairs room of a carpenter's house in Honjo. There, in that upstairs room, I made not the least effort to hide the gloom that was always in my heart, and drank my tea with one hand pressed to my cheek, as though I were suffering some terrible toothache. And this posture of mine, it seemed, rather pleased her. She too was a woman who gave the impression of being utterly alone, as though a cold winter wind blew about her, with nothing but fallen leaves whirling wildly in it.
一緒にやすみながらそのひとは、自分より二つ年上であること、故郷は広島、あたしには主人があるのよ、広島で床屋さんをしていたの、昨年の春、一緒に東京へ家出して逃げて来たのだけれども、主人は、東京で、まともな仕事をせずそのうちに詐欺罪に問われ、刑務所にいるのよ、あたしは毎日、何やらかやら差し入れしに、刑務所へかよっていたのだけれども、あすから、やめます、などと物語るのでしたが、自分は、どういうものか、女の身の上噺というものには、少しも興味を持てないたちで、それは女の語り方の下手なせいか、つまり、話の重点の置き方を間違っているせいなのか、とにかく、自分には、つねに、馬耳東風なのでありました。
As we lay together resting, she told me things — that she was two years older than I; that her home was in Hiroshima; that she had a husband, you know, who had run a barbershop in Hiroshima; that the two of them had run away together to Tokyo the previous spring, but that her husband, without settling into any proper work in Tokyo, had before long been charged with fraud and was now in prison; that she had been going to the prison every day bringing him one thing or another, but that starting tomorrow she would stop — she told me all this, but for some reason I have never been able to take the least interest in a woman's account of her own circumstances, whether because women tell such things badly, or because, that is, they put the emphasis in the wrong place — in any case, to me it always went in one ear and out the other.
侘びしい。
Lonely.
自分には、女の千万言の身の上噺よりも、その一言の呟きのほうに、共感をそそられるに違いないと期待していても、この世の中の女から、ついにいちども自分は、その言葉を聞いた事がないのを、奇怪とも不思議とも感じております。けれども、そのひとは、言葉で「侘びしい」とは言いませんでしたが、無言のひどい侘びしさを、からだの外郭に、一寸くらいの幅の気流みたいに持っていて、そのひとに寄り添うと、こちらのからだもその気流に包まれ、自分の持っている多少トゲトゲした陰鬱の気流と程よく溶け合い、「水底の岩に落ち附く枯葉」のように、わが身は、恐怖からも不安からも、離れる事が出来るのでした。
Even though I always expect that a woman's single murmured word ought to stir a far deeper sympathy in me than ten thousand words of her own life's story, I find it strange, even uncanny, that I have never once, from any woman in this world, actually heard that word spoken. And yet, though this woman never once said the word "lonely" aloud, she carried about the outside of her body a wordless, terrible loneliness, like a current of air perhaps an inch wide, so that when I drew close to her, my own body too was wrapped in that current, and it mingled just rightly with the somewhat thorny current of gloom that I myself carried, and I found that I could, like "a withered leaf settling upon a rock at the bottom of the water," free myself from both fear and unease.
あの白痴の淫売婦たちのふところの中で、安心してぐっすり眠る思いとは、また、全く異って、（だいいち、あのプロステチュウトたちは、陽気でした）その詐欺罪の犯人の妻と過した一夜は、自分にとって、幸福な（こんな大それた言葉を、なんの躊躇も無く、肯定して使用する事は、自分のこの全手記に於いて、再び無いつもりです）解放せられた夜でした。
It was something wholly different from the feeling of sleeping soundly and at ease in the arms of those idiot prostitutes (to begin with, those prostitutes had been cheerful) — that one night spent with the wife of a man convicted of fraud was, for me, a night of happiness (I do not intend, anywhere else in this entire notebook, to use so audacious a word without the least hesitation, in plain affirmation) — a night of liberation.
しかし、ただ一夜でした。朝、眼が覚めて、はね起き、自分はもとの軽薄な、装えるお道化者になっていました。弱虫は、幸福をさえおそれるものです。綿で怪我をするんです。幸福に傷つけられる事もあるんです。傷つけられないうちに、早く、このまま、わかれたいとあせり、れいのお道化の煙幕を張りめぐらすのでした。
But it was only the one night. In the morning, when I woke and sprang up, I had already become again the frivolous, feigning clown I always was. A weakling fears even happiness. One can be hurt by cotton wool. There is such a thing as being wounded by happiness. And so, growing anxious to part from her quickly, just as we were, before I could be wounded, I threw up around myself my usual smokescreen of clowning.
「金の切れめが縁の切れめ、ってのはね、あれはね、解釈が逆なんだ。金が無くなると女にふられるって意味、じゃあ無いんだ。男に金が無くなると、男は、ただおのずから意気銷沈して、ダメになり、笑う声にも力が無く、そうして、妙にひがんだりなんかしてね、ついには破れかぶれになり、男のほうから女を振る、半狂乱になって振って振って振り抜くという意味なんだね、金沢大辞林という本に依ればね、可哀そうに。僕にも、その気持わかるがね」
"That saying, 'when the money's gone, so is the bond' — you know, people have it backwards. It doesn't mean that when a man runs out of money, the woman leaves him. It means that when a man runs out of money, he simply loses heart of his own accord, goes to pieces, even his laugh loses its strength, and then he takes to feeling strangely bitter, until at last, out of sheer desperation, it's the man who leaves the woman — goes half out of his mind and leaves her, and leaves her, and leaves her for good. That's according to a book called the Kanazawa Great Dictionary. Poor fellow. I understand the feeling myself, though."
たしか、そんなふうの馬鹿げた事を言って、ツネ子を噴き出させたような記憶があります。長居は無用、おそれありと、顔も洗わずに素早く引上げたのですが、その時の自分の、「金の切れめが縁の切れめ」という出鱈目の放言が、のちに到って、意外のひっかかりを生じたのです。
I have some memory of saying something foolish along those lines, and making Tsuneko burst out laughing. Fearing that overstaying my welcome would invite trouble, I made a quick retreat without even washing my face, but that reckless, nonsensical remark of mine — "when the money's gone, so is the bond" — was later, unexpectedly, to catch on me like a snag.
それから、ひとつき、自分は、その夜の恩人とは逢いませんでした。別れて、日が経つにつれて、よろこびは薄れ、かりそめの恩を受けた事がかえってそらおそろしく、自分勝手にひどい束縛を感じて来て、あのカフエのお勘定を、あの時、全部ツネ子の負担にさせてしまったという俗事さえ、次第に気になりはじめて、ツネ子もやはり、下宿の娘や、あの女子高等師範と同じく、自分を脅迫するだけの女のように思われ、遠く離れていながらも、絶えずツネ子におびえていて、その上に自分は、一緒に休んだ事のある女に、また逢うと、その時にいきなり何か烈火の如く怒られそうな気がしてたまらず、逢うのに頗るおっくうがる性質でしたので、いよいよ、銀座は敬遠の形でしたが、しかし、そのおっくうがるという性質は、決して自分の狡猾さではなく、女性というものは、休んでからの事と、朝、起きてからの事との間に、一つの、塵ほどの、つながりをも持たせず、完全の忘却の如く、見事に二つの世界を切断させて生きているという不思議な現象を、まだよく呑みこんでいなかったからなのでした。
After that, for a full month, I did not see the woman to whom I owed that night's kindness. As the days passed after our parting, my joy faded, and the fleeting debt of gratitude I had incurred began instead to fill me with a groundless dread, so that I came, entirely on my own account, to feel it as a heavy bondage; even the vulgar matter of having left the whole of the café bill that time for Tsuneko to pay gradually began to prey on my mind, until I came to think of Tsuneko too, like the landlady's daughter or that woman from the higher normal school, as merely another woman who did nothing but menace me, and even at a distance I went on being constantly afraid of her; and beyond that, I could not help feeling that if I ever met again a woman with whom I had once lain, she would suddenly turn on me in a fury, so that meeting women again was a thing I found extremely burdensome by nature, and so I kept well away from Ginza more than ever. And yet this reluctance of mine was never any cunning on my part — it was only that I had not yet properly grasped that strange phenomenon, that a woman is able to live by cutting her two worlds cleanly apart, allowing not the least speck of connection between what happens once she has lain down and what happens once she has risen in the morning, as though the one were entirely forgotten in the other.
十一月の末、自分は、堀木と神田の屋台で安酒を飲み、この悪友は、その屋台を出てからも、さらにどこかで飲もうと主張し、もう自分たちにはお金が無いのに、それでも、飲もう、飲もうよ、とねばるのです。その時、自分は、酔って大胆になっているからでもありましたが、
At the end of November, I was drinking cheap sake with Horiki at a stall in Kanda, and even after we had left that stall, this bad friend of mine insisted we drink somewhere else still, and though we no longer had any money left, he kept on and on, let's drink, let's drink some more. At that point, I, partly because the drink had made me bold, said —
「よし、そんなら、夢の国に連れて行く。おどろくな、酒池肉林という、……」
"All right, then, I'll take you to a land of dreams. Don't be startled — a place of wine and flesh, as they say...."
「カフエか？」
"A café?"
「そう」
"That's right."
「行こう！」
"Let's go!"
というような事になって二人、市電に乗り、堀木は、はしゃいで、
And so it was decided, and the two of us boarded a streetcar, Horiki in high spirits, saying —
「おれは、今夜は、女に飢え渇いているんだ。女給にキスしてもいいか」
"I'm starved and parched for a woman tonight. Mind if I kiss one of the waitresses?"
自分は、堀木がそんな酔態を演じる事を、あまり好んでいないのでした。堀木も、それを知っているので、自分にそんな念を押すのでした。
I did not much care for it when Horiki put on that sort of drunken display. Horiki knew this too, which was why he kept pressing me for permission like that.
「いいか。キスするぜ。おれの傍に坐った女給に、きっとキスして見せる。いいか」
"All right? I'm going to kiss her. Whichever waitress sits beside me, I'll kiss her, you'll see. All right?"
「かまわんだろう」
"I suppose it doesn't matter."
「ありがたい！ おれは女に飢え渇いているんだ」
"Good man! I'm starved and parched for a woman."
銀座四丁目で降りて、その所謂酒池肉林の大カフエに、ツネ子をたのみの綱としてほとんど無一文ではいり、あいているボックスに堀木と向い合って腰をおろしたとたんに、ツネ子ともう一人の女給が走り寄って来て、そのもう一人の女給が自分の傍に、そうしてツネ子は、堀木の傍に、ドサンと腰かけたので、自分は、ハッとしました。ツネ子は、いまにキスされる。
We got off at Ginza Yonchome, and went into that great so-called land of wine and flesh, that big café, with Tsuneko as our one and only lifeline, and virtually not a penny between us; and no sooner had Horiki and I sat down facing each other in an empty booth than Tsuneko and another waitress came hurrying over, and that other waitress plumped herself down beside me while Tsuneko dropped down with a thud beside Horiki, and I was struck with a start. Tsuneko was about to be kissed.
惜しいという気持ではありませんでした。自分には、もともと所有慾というものは薄く、また、たまに幽かに惜しむ気持はあっても、その所有権を敢然と主張し、人と争うほどの気力が無いのでした。のちに、自分は、自分の内縁の妻が犯されるのを、黙って見ていた事さえあったほどなのです。
It was not a feeling of regret at losing her. I had, to begin with, very little sense of possessiveness in me, and even on the rare occasions when I did feel some faint pang of reluctance to let a thing go, I lacked the will to boldly assert my claim to it and fight another man over it. Later on, I would even, on one occasion, stand by in silence while my common-law wife was violated before my eyes.
自分は、人間のいざこざに出来るだけ触りたくないのでした。その渦に巻き込まれるのが、おそろしいのでした。ツネ子と自分とは、一夜だけの間柄です。ツネ子は、自分のものではありません。惜しい、など思い上った慾は、自分に持てる筈はありません。けれども、自分は、ハッとしました。
I wanted, as far as possible, to have nothing to do with the disputes of human beings. Being drawn into their whirlpool was a thing I dreaded. Tsuneko and I were bound to each other by no more than a single night. Tsuneko was not mine to lose. A presumptuous desire such as regret at losing her was not a thing I could possibly have felt. And yet, I was struck with a start.
自分の眼の前で、堀木の猛烈なキスを受ける、そのツネ子の身の上を、ふびんに思ったからでした。堀木によごされたツネ子は、自分とわかれなければならなくなるだろう、しかも自分にも、ツネ子を引き留める程のポジティヴな熱は無い、ああ、もう、これでおしまいなのだ、とツネ子の不幸に一瞬ハッとしたものの、すぐに自分は水のように素直にあきらめ、堀木とツネ子の顔を見較べ、にやにやと笑いました。
It was because I felt pity for Tsuneko's lot, having to receive Horiki's ferocious kiss right there before my eyes. Once Tsuneko had been sullied by Horiki, she would have to part from me — and yet I myself possessed no positive warmth of feeling strong enough to hold her back — ah, well, that's the end of it, then, I thought, struck for a moment by Tsuneko's misfortune, but I resigned myself at once, meekly, as water gives way, and looked back and forth between Horiki's face and Tsuneko's, and smirked.
しかし、事態は、実に思いがけなく、もっと悪く展開せられました。
But things unfolded in a way that was, in fact, quite unexpected, and worse still.
「やめた！」
"Never mind!"
と堀木は、口をゆがめて言い、
Horiki said, twisting his mouth, and —
「さすがのおれも、こんな貧乏くさい女には、……」
"Even I draw the line at a woman as shabby-looking as this one...."
閉口し切ったように、腕組みしてツネ子をじろじろ眺め、苦笑するのでした。
He folded his arms as though thoroughly put off, stared Tsuneko up and down, and gave a bitter laugh.
「お酒を。お金は無い」
"Bring the sake. We have no money."
自分は、小声でツネ子に言いました。それこそ、浴びるほど飲んでみたい気持でした。所謂俗物の眼から見ると、ツネ子は酔漢のキスにも価いしない、ただ、みすぼらしい、貧乏くさい女だったのでした。案外とも、意外とも、自分には霹靂に撃ちくだかれた思いでした。自分は、これまで例の無かったほど、いくらでも、いくらでも、お酒を飲み、ぐらぐら酔って、ツネ子と顔を見合せ、哀しく微笑み合い、いかにもそう言われてみると、こいつはへんに疲れて貧乏くさいだけの女だな、と思うと同時に、金の無い者どうしの親和（貧富の不和は、陳腐のようでも、やはりドラマの永遠のテーマの一つだと自分は今では思っていますが）そいつが、その親和感が、胸に込み上げて来て、ツネ子がいとしく、生れてこの時はじめて、われから積極的に、微弱ながら恋の心の動くのを自覚しました。吐きました。前後不覚になりました。お酒を飲んで、こんなに我を失うほど酔ったのも、その時がはじめてでした。
I said to Tsuneko in a low voice. I really did feel like drinking as much as I could hold. Seen through the eyes of the so-called ordinary, worldly man, Tsuneko was not even worth a drunkard's kiss — she was simply a shabby, poverty-stricken-looking woman. Unexpected as it was, extraordinary as it was, I felt as though struck down by a thunderbolt. I drank sake then as I never had before, as much as I could, and more, and grew reeling drunk, and looked into Tsuneko's face, and we exchanged a sad little smile, and even as I thought, yes, now that it's put that way, she really is nothing but a strangely worn-out, poverty-stricken-looking woman, at the very same moment a fellow-feeling between two people with no money (the discord between rich and poor may sound like a threadbare theme, but I think now that it remains one of the eternal themes of drama) — that fellow-feeling welled up in my chest, and Tsuneko became dear to me, and for the first time in my life I became aware, of my own accord, actively, of the stirring of a faint love in my heart. I was sick. I blacked out completely. That was the first time I had ever drunk myself into so complete a loss of self.
眼が覚めたら、枕もとにツネ子が坐っていました。本所の大工さんの二階の部屋に寝ていたのでした。
When I opened my eyes, Tsuneko was sitting beside my pillow. I was lying in that upstairs room at the carpenter's house in Honjo.
「金の切れめが縁の切れめ、なんておっしゃって、冗談かと思うていたら、本気か。来てくれないのだもの。ややこしい切れめやな。うちが、かせいであげても、だめか」
"You went and said, 'when the money's gone, so is the bond' — and here I thought it was a joke, but you really meant it, didn't you. You never once came to see me. What a tangled sort of breaking-off this is. Even if I earn the money for you, is it still no good?"
「だめ」
"No good."
それから、女も休んで、夜明けがた、女の口から「死」という言葉がはじめて出て、女も人間としての営みに疲れ切っていたようでしたし、また、自分も、世の中への恐怖、わずらわしさ、金、れいの運動、女、学業、考えると、とてもこの上こらえて生きて行けそうもなく、そのひとの提案に気軽に同意しました。
After that, she too lay down beside me, and toward dawn, the word "death" came from her lips for the first time; she seemed utterly worn out by the whole business of living as a human being, and I too, when I thought of my fear of the world, its tiresomeness, money, that movement of mine, women, my studies, felt that I could not possibly go on enduring it any longer, and so I agreed to her proposal, quite lightly.
けれども、その時にはまだ、実感としての「死のう」という覚悟は、出来ていなかったのです。どこかに「遊び」がひそんでいました。
And yet, even then, I had not truly, as a matter of felt conviction, resolved that we should die. Somewhere in it there still lurked a kind of play.
その日の午前、二人は浅草の六区をさまよっていました。喫茶店にはいり、牛乳を飲みました。
That morning, the two of us wandered about the sixth district of Asakusa. We went into a coffee shop and drank milk.
「あなた、払うて置いて」
"You pay for it, would you."
自分は立って、袂からがま口を出し、ひらくと、銅銭が三枚、羞恥よりも凄惨の思いに襲われ、たちまち脳裡に浮ぶものは、仙遊館の自分の部屋、制服と蒲団だけが残されてあるきりで、あとはもう、質草になりそうなものの一つも無い荒涼たる部屋、他には自分のいま着て歩いている絣の着物と、マント、これが自分の現実なのだ、生きて行けない、とはっきり思い知りました。
I stood up, took the coin purse from my sleeve, and opened it: three copper coins. I was struck less by shame than by a sense of something ghastly, and there rose at once before my mind's eye the room I kept at the Senyukan — a bleak room with nothing left in it but my school uniform and bedding, not a single thing left worth pawning; and beyond that only the splashed-pattern kimono and the cape I had on my back that very moment — this, I understood with absolute clarity, was the whole of my reality, and I could not go on living.
自分がまごついているので、女も立って、自分のがま口をのぞいて、
Seeing me at a loss, she too stood up, and peered into my coin purse, and said —
「あら、たったそれだけ？」
"Oh, is that really all there is?"
無心の声でしたが、これがまた、じんと骨身にこたえるほどに痛かったのです。はじめて自分が、恋したひとの声だけに、痛かったのです。それだけも、これだけもない、銅銭三枚は、どだいお金でありません。それは、自分が未だかつて味わった事の無い奇妙な屈辱でした。とても生きておられない屈辱でした。所詮その頃の自分は、まだお金持ちの坊ちゃんという種属から脱し切っていなかったのでしょう。その時、自分は、みずからすすんでも死のうと、実感として決意したのです。
It was a voice entirely without guile, but that very fact made it cut into me all the more, right down to the bone. It was painful precisely because it was the voice of the first person I had ever loved. It was not a matter of that much or this much — three copper coins were not money at all, to begin with. It was a strange humiliation, of a kind I had never once tasted before. A humiliation I could not possibly go on living with. I suppose that, after all, I had not yet, at that time, fully shed the nature of a rich man's pampered son. It was then that I resolved, as a matter of genuine, felt conviction, that I myself would go so far as to die.
その夜、自分たちは、鎌倉の海に飛び込みました。女は、この帯はお店のお友達から借りている帯やから、と言って、帯をほどき、畳んで岩の上に置き、自分もマントを脱ぎ、同じ所に置いて、一緒に入水しました。
That night, the two of us threw ourselves into the sea at Kamakura. She said that this sash was one she had borrowed from a friend at the shop, and so she untied it, folded it, and set it down upon a rock, and I too took off my cape and laid it in the same place, and together we walked into the water.
女のひとは、死にました。そうして、自分だけ助かりました。
The woman died. And I alone was saved.
自分が高等学校の生徒ではあり、また父の名にもいくらか、所謂ニュウス・ヴァリュがあったのか、新聞にもかなり大きな問題として取り上げられたようでした。
Perhaps because I was a student at the higher school, and because my father's name too carried some measure of what they call news value, the affair seems to have been taken up in the newspapers as a matter of considerable importance.
自分は海辺の病院に収容せられ、故郷から親戚の者がひとり駈けつけ、さまざまの始末をしてくれて、そうして、くにの父をはじめ一家中が激怒しているから、これっきり生家とは義絶になるかも知れぬ、と自分に申し渡して帰りました。けれども自分は、そんな事より、死んだツネ子が恋いしく、めそめそ泣いてばかりいました。本当に、いままでのひとの中で、あの貧乏くさいツネ子だけを、すきだったのですから。
I was admitted to a hospital by the sea, and one relative came hurrying from home to see to all manner of arrangements, and then, telling me that my father and the whole family back home were so enraged that this might well mean the severing of all ties with my own house, he went back. But more than any of that, I missed Tsuneko, who was dead, and did nothing but snivel and weep. For the truth was that among all the people I had known until then, she alone — that poor, shabby Tsuneko — was the one I had loved.
下宿の娘から、短歌を五十も書きつらねた長い手紙が来ました。「生きくれよ」というへんな言葉ではじまる短歌ばかり、五十でした。また、自分の病室に、看護婦たちが陽気に笑いながら遊びに来て、自分の手をきゅっと握って帰る看護婦もいました。
A long letter came from the daughter of my lodging house, strung together out of fifty tanka poems. All fifty began with the same odd, ungrammatical phrase, "live for me, do." And to my hospital room the nurses would come in high spirits, laughing, to visit, and there were some who, before leaving, would give my hand a quick, tight squeeze.
自分の左肺に故障のあるのを、その病院で発見せられ、これがたいへん自分に好都合な事になり、やがて自分が自殺幇助罪という罪名で病院から警察に連れて行かれましたが、警察では、自分を病人あつかいにしてくれて、特に保護室に収容しました。
It was at that hospital that a defect was discovered in my left lung, and this turned out very much to my advantage, for when, in due course, I was taken from the hospital to the police under the charge of aiding a suicide, the police treated me as a sick man and put me, as a special consideration, in the protection room.
深夜、保護室の隣りの宿直室で、寝ずの番をしていた年寄りのお巡りが、間のドアをそっとあけ、
Late at night, an elderly policeman keeping the night watch in the duty room next to the protection room quietly opened the door between them, and
「おい！」
"Hey!"
と自分に声をかけ、
he called to me,
「寒いだろう。こっちへ来て、あたれ」
"You must be cold. Come over here and warm yourself,"
と言いました。
he said.
自分は、わざとしおしおと宿直室にはいって行き、椅子に腰かけて火鉢にあたりました。
I went into the duty room with a deliberately dejected air, sat down on a chair, and warmed myself at the brazier.
「やはり、死んだ女が恋いしいだろう」
"You must miss the woman who died, after all."
「はい」
"Yes."
ことさらに、消え入るような細い声で返事しました。
I answered on purpose in a thin voice, as though about to fade away.
「そこが、やはり人情というものだ」
"That, after all, is only human feeling."
彼は次第に、大きく構えて来ました。
Little by little he began to carry himself with a larger air.
「はじめ、女と関係を結んだのは、どこだ」
"Where was it that you first had relations with the woman?"
ほとんど裁判官の如く、もったいぶって尋ねるのでした。彼は、自分を子供とあなどり、秋の夜のつれづれに、あたかも彼自身が取調べの主任でもあるかのように装い、自分から猥談めいた述懐を引き出そうという魂胆のようでした。自分は素早くそれを察し、噴き出したいのを怺えるのに骨を折りました。そんなお巡りの「非公式な訊問」には、いっさい答を拒否してもかまわないのだという事は、自分も知っていましたが、しかし、秋の夜ながに興を添えるため、自分は、あくまでも神妙に、そのお巡りこそ取調べの主任であって、刑罰の軽重の決定もそのお巡りの思召し一つに在るのだ、という事を固く信じて疑わないような所謂誠意をおもてにあらわし、彼の助平の好奇心を、やや満足させる程度のいい加減な「陳述」をするのでした。
He asked this in a self-important tone, almost like a judge. He held me in contempt as a mere child and, to relieve the tedium of the autumn night, seemed bent on playing at being the officer in charge of the investigation himself, with the design of drawing out of me some confession with a lewd flavor to it. I saw through this at once and had a hard time holding back the laughter that wanted to burst out of me. I knew perfectly well that I was under no obligation to answer a single question in such an "unofficial interrogation" by a policeman, but, to add a little diversion to the length of the autumn night, I kept up a meek and docile air to the very end, and put on an outward show of what is called sincerity — the sort that believes without a shadow of doubt that this policeman really was the officer in charge, and that the severity of my sentence lay entirely in his good pleasure — and I gave a slipshod "statement," calculated only to satisfy his lecherous curiosity to some middling degree.
「うん、それでだいたいわかった。何でも正直に答えると、わしらのほうでも、そこは手心を加える」
"Well, that gives me a fair idea of it. If you answer everything honestly, we on our side will see to it that things go easier for you."
「ありがとうございます。よろしくお願いいたします」
"Thank you very much. I put myself in your hands."
ほとんど入神の演技でした。そうして、自分のためには、何も、一つも、とくにならない力演なのです。
It was a performance verging on the divine. And yet it was a strenuous piece of acting that did me not the slightest good, not in any single particular.
夜が明けて、自分は署長に呼び出されました。こんどは、本式の取調べなのです。
When day broke, I was summoned before the chief of the police station. This time it was to be the real interrogation.
ドアをあけて、署長室にはいったとたんに、
The moment I opened the door and stepped into the chief's office,
「おう、いい男だ。これあ、お前が悪いんじゃない。こんな、いい男に産んだお前のおふくろが悪いんだ」
"Well now, a fine-looking fellow. But this isn't your fault. It's your mother's fault, for bearing such a good-looking son."
色の浅黒い、大学出みたいな感じのまだ若い署長でした。いきなりそう言われて自分は、自分の顔の半面にべったり赤痣でもあるような、みにくい不具者のような、みじめな気がしました。
He was a dark-complexioned, still-young chief, with the air of a university graduate. Addressed so abruptly, I felt as wretched as though half my face were smeared over with a great red birthmark, as though I were some ugly cripple.
この柔道か剣道の選手のような署長の取調べは、実にあっさりしていて、あの深夜の老巡査のひそかな、執拗きわまる好色の「取調べ」とは、雲泥の差がありました。訊問がすんで、署長は、検事局に送る書類をしたためながら、
The interrogation conducted by this chief, who looked as though he might have been a judo or kendo champion, was truly a plain, businesslike affair, worlds apart from the furtive and endlessly persistent, lecherous "interrogation" of that old policeman in the dead of night. When the questioning was over, the chief, as he wrote out the papers to be sent on to the prosecutor's office,
「からだを丈夫にしなけれゃ、いかんね。血痰が出ているようじゃないか」
"You'd better build up your health. It looks as though you've been coughing up blood."
と言いました。
So he said.
その朝、へんに咳が出て、自分は咳の出るたびに、ハンケチで口を覆っていたのですが、そのハンケチに赤い霰が降ったみたいに血がついていたのです。けれども、それは、喉から出た血ではなく、昨夜、耳の下に出来た小さいおできをいじって、そのおできから出た血なのでした。しかし、自分は、それを言い明さないほうが、便宜な事もあるような気がふっとしたものですから、ただ、
That morning I had begun coughing oddly, and each time I coughed I had covered my mouth with a handkerchief, and on that handkerchief the blood had settled like a scattering of red hail. But it was not blood that had come up from my throat — it was blood from a small boil that had formed under my ear the night before, one that I had picked at. Even so, it occurred to me all at once that it might be convenient not to explain this, and so I merely said,
「はい」
"Yes,"
と、伏眼になり、殊勝げに答えて置きました。
lowering my eyes and answering in a tone meant to sound admirably meek.
署長は書類を書き終えて、
The chief finished writing out the papers and said,
「起訴になるかどうか、それは検事殿がきめることだが、お前の身元引受人に、電報か電話で、きょう横浜の検事局に来てもらうように、たのんだほうがいいな。誰か、あるだろう、お前の保護者とか保証人とかいうものが」
"Whether you're indicted or not is for the prosecutor to decide, but you'd better send a telegram or telephone whoever is to take custody of you and ask him to come to the Yokohama prosecutor's office today. There must be someone — some sort of guardian or guarantor of yours."
父の東京の別荘に出入りしていた書画骨董商の渋田という、自分たちと同郷人で、父のたいこ持ちみたいな役も勤めていたずんぐりした独身の四十男が、自分の学校の保証人になっているのを、自分は思い出しました。その男の顔が、殊に眼つきが、ヒラメに似ているというので、父はいつもその男をヒラメと呼び、自分も、そう呼びなれていました。
I remembered that a dealer in paintings and antiques named Shibuta, a man from our own home province who used to frequent my father's villa in Tokyo and who served my father in the manner of a hanger-on — a stumpy, unmarried man of about forty — had stood as guarantor for me at school. Because this man's face, and especially his eyes, resembled a flatfish, my father always called him Flatfish, and I too had grown used to calling him that.
自分は警察の電話帳を借りて、ヒラメの家の電話番号を捜し、見つかったので、ヒラメに電話して、横浜の検事局に来てくれるように頼みましたら、ヒラメは人が変ったみたいな威張った口調で、それでも、とにかく引受けてくれました。
I borrowed the police station's telephone directory, looked up Flatfish's number, and, having found it, telephoned him and asked him to come to the Yokohama prosecutor's office. Flatfish answered in a pompous tone, as though he had turned into an entirely different man, but all the same, he agreed to take charge of the matter.
「おい、その電話機、すぐ消毒したほうがいいぜ。何せ、血痰が出ているんだから」
"Here, you'd better disinfect that telephone right away. After all, he's been coughing up blood."
自分が、また保護室に引き上げてから、お巡りたちにそう言いつけている署長の大きな声が、保護室に坐っている自分の耳にまで、とどきました。
After I had gone back to the protection room, the chief's loud voice, giving this order to the policemen, reached even my ears as I sat there.
お昼すぎ、自分は、細い麻繩で胴を縛られ、それはマントで隠すことを許されましたが、その麻繩の端を若いお巡りが、しっかり握っていて、二人一緒に電車で横浜に向いました。
Past noon, a thin hemp rope was tied round my body, which I was allowed to hide beneath a cloak, but a young policeman kept a firm grip on the end of that rope, and the two of us set off together by train for Yokohama.
けれども、自分には少しの不安も無く、あの警察の保護室も、老巡査もなつかしく、嗚呼、自分はどうしてこうなのでしょう、罪人として縛られると、かえってほっとして、そうしてゆったり落ちついて、その時の追憶を、いま書くに当っても、本当にのびのびした楽しい気持になるのです。
And yet I felt not the least uneasiness; I even looked back with fondness on that police protection room, and on the old policeman. Ah, why should I be made this way — that to be bound as a criminal should bring me relief instead, a loose and settled calm, so that even now, setting down the memory of that time, I find myself in a truly expansive, happy frame of mind.
しかし、その時期のなつかしい思い出の中にも、たった一つ、冷汗三斗の、生涯わすれられぬ悲惨なしくじりがあったのです。自分は、検事局の薄暗い一室で、検事の簡単な取調べを受けました。検事は四十歳前後の物静かな、（もし自分が美貌だったとしても、それは謂わば邪淫の美貌だったに違いありませんが、その検事の顔は、正しい美貌、とでも言いたいような、聡明な静謐の気配を持っていました）コセコセしない人柄のようでしたので、自分も全く警戒せず、ぼんやり陳述していたのですが、突然、れいの咳が出て来て、自分は袂からハンケチを出し、ふとその血を見て、この咳もまた何かの役に立つかも知れぬとあさましい駈引きの心を起し、ゴホン、ゴホンと二つばかり、おまけの贋の咳を大袈裟に附け加えて、ハンケチで口を覆ったまま検事の顔をちらと見た、間一髪、
Yet even among the fond memories of that period there was one thing — one thing only — a wretched blunder, drenched in cold sweat, that I shall never forget as long as I live. In a dim room at the prosecutor's office I underwent a brief examination by the prosecutor. He was a quiet man of about forty (if my own face could be called handsome, it was, so to speak, a handsomeness tainted with depravity, but this prosecutor's face carried an air of intelligent serenity such that one might almost call it a rightful, an honest handsomeness), and he seemed a man of no petty or fussy disposition, so that I too was entirely off my guard and gave my statement in a vague, absent manner. Then all at once that cough of mine came on, and I took out my handkerchief from my sleeve, and, happening to catch sight of the blood on it, a base, calculating thought rose in me — that this cough too might yet be turned to some use — and I threw in two extra coughs for good measure, kohon, kohon, faked and overdone, and, still holding the handkerchief over my mouth, I stole a glance at the prosecutor's face. In that instant,
「ほんとうかい？」
"Is that real?"
ものしずかな微笑でした。冷汗三斗、いいえ、いま思い出しても、きりきり舞いをしたくなります。中学時代に、あの馬鹿の竹一から、ワザ、ワザ、と言われて脊中を突かれ、地獄に蹴落された、その時の思い以上と言っても、決して過言では無い気持です。あれと、これと、二つ、自分の生涯に於ける演技の大失敗の記録です。検事のあんな物静かな侮蔑に遭うよりは、いっそ自分は十年の刑を言い渡されたほうが、ましだったと思う事さえ、時たまある程なのです。
It was a quiet smile. Cold sweat drenched me through; no, even now, remembering it, I could writhe where I stand. To say that the feeling surpassed even what I felt in my middle-school days, when that fool Takeichi jabbed me in the back saying "on purpose, on purpose," and kicked me down into hell, would not be the least exaggeration. That time, and this — the two of them together stand as the record of the great failures of acting in my life. There are even times when I think that I would rather have been sentenced to ten years in prison than have met with that quiet contempt of the prosecutor's.
自分は起訴猶予になりました。けれども一向にうれしくなく、世にもみじめな気持で、検事局の控室のベンチに腰かけ、引取り人のヒラメが来るのを待っていました。
My prosecution was suspended. Yet I felt not the least gladness at it, and, in a mood of the most wretched misery imaginable, I sat on a bench in the waiting room of the prosecutor's office, waiting for Flatfish, who was to take charge of me, to arrive.
背後の高い窓から夕焼けの空が見え、鴎が、「女」という字みたいな形で飛んでいました。
Through a high window behind me I could see the evening sky burning red, and gulls were flying across it in a shape rather like the character for "woman."