堀木と自分。
Horiki and myself.
互いに軽蔑しながら附き合い、そうして互いに自らをくだらなくして行く、それがこの世の所謂「交友」というものの姿だとするなら、自分と堀木との間柄も、まさしく「交友」に違いありませんでした。
If keeping company while despising each other, and so each of us debasing himself in the process, is the true shape of what this world calls "friendship," then the relation between Horiki and myself was undoubtedly a "friendship" in the fullest sense.
自分があの京橋のスタンド・バアのマダムの義侠心にすがり、（女のひとの義侠心なんて、言葉の奇妙な遣い方ですが、しかし、自分の経験に依ると、少くとも都会の男女の場合、男よりも女のほうが、その、義侠心とでもいうべきものをたっぷりと持っていました。男はたいてい、おっかなびっくりで、おていさいばかり飾り、そうして、ケチでした）あの煙草屋のヨシ子を内縁の妻にする事が出来て、そうして築地、隅田川の近く、木造の二階建ての小さいアパートの階下の一室を借り、ふたりで住み、酒は止めて、そろそろ自分の定った職業になりかけて来た漫画の仕事に精を出し、夕食後は二人で映画を見に出かけ、帰りには、喫茶店などにはいり、また、花の鉢を買ったりして、いや、それよりも自分をしんから信頼してくれているこの小さい花嫁の言葉を聞き、動作を見ているのが楽しく、これは自分もひょっとしたら、いまにだんだん人間らしいものになる事が出来て、悲惨な死に方などせずにすむのではなかろうかという甘い思いを幽かに胸にあたためはじめていた矢先に、堀木がまた自分の眼前に現われました。
Relying on the chivalrous spirit of that madam of the standing bar in Kyobashi (a woman's chivalrous spirit is an odd way to put it, but from my own experience, at least among men and women of the city, it was women rather than men who possessed in abundance that thing one might call chivalrous spirit — men, for the most part, were timid, fussed only over appearances, and, besides, were stingy), I had managed to make Yoshiko of the tobacco shop my common-law wife, and so we rented a room on the ground floor of a small two-story wooden apartment building near the Sumida River in Tsukiji, and lived there together; I had given up drink, and was throwing myself into the cartoon work that was gradually becoming my settled occupation; after supper the two of us would go out to see a film, and on the way home we would stop in at a coffee shop, or buy a pot of flowers — no, more than that, it was a pleasure simply to listen to the words and watch the movements of this small bride who trusted me from the bottom of her heart, and I had just begun, faintly, to warm in my breast the sweet thought that perhaps I too might gradually become something like a human being, and might be spared a miserable death after all, when Horiki once again appeared before my eyes.
「よう！ 色魔。おや？ これでも、いくらか分別くさい顔になりやがった。きょうは、高円寺女史からのお使者なんだがね」
"Hey! Lady-killer. Well, well — you've gone and got yourself something like a sensible face on you, for all that. I've come today as a messenger from the lady of Koenji."
と言いかけて、急に声をひそめ、お勝手でお茶の仕度をしているヨシ子のほうを顎でしゃくって、大丈夫かい？ とたずねますので、
So he began, then suddenly dropped his voice, jerked his chin toward Yoshiko, who was in the kitchen preparing tea, and asked whether it was all right,
「かまわない。何を言ってもいい」
"It doesn't matter. Say whatever you like."
と自分は落ちついて答えました。
I answered calmly.
じっさい、ヨシ子は、信頼の天才と言いたいくらい、京橋のバアのマダムとの間はもとより、自分が鎌倉で起した事件を知らせてやっても、ツネ子との間を疑わず、それは自分が嘘がうまいからというわけでは無く、時には、あからさまな言い方をする事さえあったのに、ヨシ子には、それがみな冗談としか聞きとれぬ様子でした。
In fact Yoshiko was, one might almost say, a genius of trust: not only did she never suspect anything between me and the madam of the Kyobashi bar, but even when I told her of the incident I had caused at Kamakura, she never doubted anything between me and Tsuneko — and this was not because I was skilled at lying; there were times, indeed, when I spoke of it quite plainly — it was only that to Yoshiko, all of it seemed to be nothing but a joke.
「相変らず、しょっていやがる。なに、たいした事じゃないがね、たまには、高円寺のほうへも遊びに来てくれっていう御伝言さ」
"Full of yourself as ever, aren't you. Oh, it's nothing much — just a message that she'd like you to come around to Koenji and pay a visit once in a while."
忘れかけると、怪鳥が羽ばたいてやって来て、記憶の傷口をその嘴で突き破ります。たちまち過去の恥と罪の記憶が、ありありと眼前に展開せられ、わあっと叫びたいほどの恐怖で、坐っておられなくなるのです。
Just when I had begun to forget, some monstrous bird would come flapping in and tear open the wound of memory with its beak. In an instant the memory of past shame and past sin would spread out before my eyes in vivid detail, and a terror that made me want to cry out would come over me, until I could no longer sit still.
「飲もうか」
"Shall we drink?"
と自分。
I said.
「よし」
"Good."
と堀木。
Horiki said.
自分と堀木。形は、ふたり似ていました。そっくりの人間のような気がする事もありました。もちろんそれは、安い酒をあちこち飲み歩いている時だけの事でしたが、とにかく、ふたり顔を合せると、みるみる同じ形の同じ毛並の犬に変り降雪のちまたを駈けめぐるという具合いになるのでした。
Myself and Horiki. In shape we were alike, the two of us. There were times I even felt we were identical human beings. Of course that was only true while we were out drinking cheap liquor from place to place, but in any case, whenever the two of us met face to face, we would turn, before we knew it, into two dogs of the same shape and the same coat, running about the snow-fallen streets together.
その日以来、自分たちは再び旧交をあたためたという形になり、京橋のあの小さいバアにも一緒に行き、そうして、とうとう、高円寺のシヅ子のアパートにもその泥酔の二匹の犬が訪問し、宿泊して帰るなどという事にさえなってしまったのです。
From that day on, we fell into the form of having renewed our old friendship; we went together to that little bar in Kyobashi, and in the end the two drunken dogs even paid a visit to Shizuko's apartment in Koenji, and stayed the night there before going home.
忘れも、しません。むし暑い夏の夜でした。堀木は日暮頃、よれよれの浴衣を着て築地の自分のアパートにやって来て、きょう或る必要があって夏服を質入したが、その質入が老母に知れるとまことに具合いが悪い、すぐ受け出したいから、とにかく金を貸してくれ、という事でした。あいにく自分のところにも、お金が無かったので、例に依って、ヨシ子に言いつけ、ヨシ子の衣類を質屋に持って行かせてお金を作り、堀木に貸しても、まだ少し余るのでその残金でヨシ子に焼酎を買わせ、アパートの屋上に行き、隅田川から時たま幽かに吹いて来るどぶ臭い風を受けて、まことに薄汚い納涼の宴を張りました。
I have not forgotten it. It was a sultry summer night. Horiki came to my apartment in Tsukiji around dusk, wearing a rumpled summer kimono, and told me that he had pawned his summer clothes that day for some necessity, but that if his old mother found out about the pawning it would be a truly awkward business, so he wanted to redeem them at once, and in any case would I lend him some money. Unfortunately I had no money at hand either, so, as was my custom, I told Yoshiko to see to it, and had her take her own clothes to the pawnshop to raise the money; after lending some to Horiki there was still a little left over, so I had Yoshiko buy shochu with the remainder, and we went up to the roof of the apartment building, and there, catching now and then the faint, drain-smelling wind that blew up off the Sumida River, held a truly shabby little party to enjoy the evening cool.
自分たちはその時、喜劇名詞、悲劇名詞の当てっこをはじめました。これは、自分の発明した遊戯で、名詞には、すべて男性名詞、女性名詞、中性名詞などの別があるけれども、それと同時に、喜劇名詞、悲劇名詞の区別があって然るべきだ、たとえば、汽船と汽車はいずれも悲劇名詞で、市電とバスは、いずれも喜劇名詞、なぜそうなのか、それのわからぬ者は芸術を談ずるに足らん、喜劇に一個でも悲劇名詞をさしはさんでいる劇作家は、既にそれだけで落第、悲劇の場合もまた然り、といったようなわけなのでした。
It was then that we began a guessing game of comic nouns and tragic nouns. This was a game of my own invention: nouns, I held, are all distinguished as masculine, feminine, or neuter, but at the same time they ought properly to be distinguished as comic or tragic — a steamship and a train, for instance, are both tragic nouns, while a streetcar and a bus are both comic nouns, and anyone who cannot see why is not fit to discuss art; a playwright who lets even one tragic noun slip into a comedy has already failed on that count alone, and the same holds true in the case of a tragedy.
「いいかい？ 煙草は？」
"Ready? Cigarettes?"
と自分が問います。
I asked.
「トラ。（悲劇の略）」
"Tra. Short for tragedy."
と堀木が言下に答えます。
Horiki answered at once.
「薬は？」
"Medicine?"
「粉薬かい？ 丸薬かい？」
"Powder, or pills?"
「注射」
"An injection."
「トラ」
"Tra."
「そうかな？ ホルモン注射もあるしねえ」
"Is that so? There are hormone injections too, you know."
「いや、断然トラだ。針が第一、お前、立派なトラじゃないか」
"No, it's decidedly tra. The needle alone — that's a proper tra if ever there was one, isn't it?"
「よし、負けて置こう。しかし、君、薬や医者はね、あれで案外、コメ（喜劇の略）なんだぜ。死は？」
"All right, I'll grant you that. But medicine and doctors, you know, are surprisingly com — short for comedy. Death?"
「コメ。牧師も和尚も然りじゃね」
"Com. And pastors and Buddhist priests are the same, aren't they."
「大出来。そうして、生はトラだなあ」
"Excellent. And life, then, is tra."
「ちがう。それも、コメ」
"No. That's com too."
「いや、それでは、何でもかでも皆コメになってしまう。ではね、もう一つおたずねするが、漫画家は？ よもや、コメとは言えませんでしょう？」
"No, at that rate everything ends up being com. Well then, let me ask you one more — what about a cartoonist? Surely you can't call that com?"
「トラ、トラ。大悲劇名詞！」
"Tra, tra. A great tragic noun!"
「なんだ、大トラは君のほうだぜ」
"What, the great tra there is you yourself."
こんな、下手な駄洒落みたいな事になってしまっては、つまらないのですけど、しかし自分たちはその遊戯を、世界のサロンにも嘗つて存しなかった頗る気のきいたものだと得意がっていたのでした。
Reduced to this sort of clumsy pun, the game becomes tiresome, but at the time we were rather proud of it, convinced that no salon anywhere in the world had ever devised anything so exceedingly clever.
またもう一つ、これに似た遊戯を当時、自分は発明していました。それは、対義語の当てっこでした。黒のアント（対義語の略）は、白。けれども、白のアントは、赤。赤のアントは、黒。
There was, too, another game resembling this one that I had invented around that time. It was a guessing game of antonyms. The ant — short for antonym — of black is white. But the ant of white is red. The ant of red is black.
「花のアントは？」
"What's the ant of flower?"
と自分が問うと、堀木は口を曲げて考え、
I asked, and Horiki twisted his mouth in thought, and said,
「ええっと、花月という料理屋があったから、月だ」
"Let's see — there's a restaurant called Kagetsu, Flower-Moon, so it's moon."
「いや、それはアントになっていない。むしろ、同義語だ。星と菫だって、シノニムじゃないか。アントでない」
"No, that's not an ant at all. If anything, it's a synonym. A star and a violet, aren't those synonyms too? Not ants."
「わかった、それはね、蜂だ」
"I've got it — it's a bee."
「ハチ？」
"A bee?"
「牡丹に、……蟻か？」
"Peony, and... an ant, is it?"
「なあんだ、それは画題だ。ごまかしちゃいけない」
"Oh, come now, that's just a motif. Don't try to cheat."
「わかった！ 花にむら雲、……」
"I've got it! Clouds across the blossoms, ..."
「月にむら雲だろう」
"You mean clouds across the moon."
「そう、そう。花に風。風だ。花のアントは、風」
"That's it, that's it. Wind across the blossoms. Wind. The ant of blossoms is wind."
「まずいなあ、それは浪花節の文句じゃないか。おさとが知れるぜ」
"That's no good—isn't that a line out of some naniwa-bushi ballad? It gives away your upbringing."
「いや、琵琶だ」
"No, it's biwa."
「なおいけない。花のアントはね、……およそこの世で最も花らしくないもの、それをこそ挙げるべきだ」
"Worse still. The ant of blossoms, you see—one ought to name whatever in this world is least like a blossom."
「だから、その、……待てよ、なあんだ、女か」
"Well then, that's—wait, hold on. Oh, is it woman?"
「ついでに、女のシノニムは？」
"While we're at it, what's the synonym for woman?"
「臓物」
"Entrails."
「君は、どうも、詩を知らんね。それじゃあ、臓物のアントは？」
"You really don't know poetry, do you. All right then, what's the ant of entrails?"
「牛乳」
"Milk."
「これは、ちょっとうまいな。その調子でもう一つ。恥。オントのアント」
"That's rather good, that one. Keep it up, one more. Shame. The ant of ont."
「恥知らずさ。流行漫画家上司幾太」
"Shamelessness. The fashionable cartoonist Jōshi Ikuta."
「堀木正雄は？」
"What about Horiki Masao?"
この辺から二人だんだん笑えなくなって、焼酎の酔い特有の、あのガラスの破片が頭に充満しているような、陰鬱な気分になって来たのでした。
Somewhere around here the two of us gradually stopped being able to laugh, and fell into that gloom peculiar to shochu drunkenness—the sensation of the head being filled with shards of glass.
「生意気言うな。おれはまだお前のように、繩目の恥辱など受けた事が無えんだ」
"Don't talk big. I haven't yet had the disgrace of being bound with rope, the way you have."
ぎょっとしました。堀木は内心、自分を、真人間あつかいにしていなかったのだ、自分をただ、死にぞこないの、恥知らずの、阿呆のばけものの、謂わば「生ける屍」としか解してくれず、そうして、彼の快楽のために、自分を利用できるところだけは利用する、それっきりの「交友」だったのだ、と思ったら、さすがにいい気持はしませんでしたが、しかしまた、堀木が自分をそのように見ているのも、もっともな話で、自分は昔から、人間の資格の無いみたいな子供だったのだ、やっぱり堀木にさえ軽蔑せられて至当なのかも知れない、と考え直し、
I was startled. In his heart Horiki had never treated me as a proper human being at all; he understood me only as a failed suicide, a shameless fool, a sort of monster, what one might call a 'living corpse,' and what we had was nothing more than a 'friendship' in which he made use of me only insofar as I was useful for his own pleasure, and thinking this did not, I confess, leave me with a pleasant feeling—but then again, it was only natural that Horiki should see me so, for I had been, from childhood on, a child who seemed to lack the qualifications to be human, and it was perhaps only fitting that I should be despised even by Horiki, I thought, reconsidering,
「罪。罪のアントニムは、何だろう。これは、むずかしいぞ」
"Sin. What would the antonym of sin be, I wonder. Now this one's difficult."
と何気無さそうな表情を装って、言うのでした。
So I said, feigning an air of indifference, as though it were nothing to me.
「法律さ」
"The law."
堀木が平然とそう答えましたので、自分は堀木の顔を見直しました。近くのビルの明滅するネオンサインの赤い光を受けて、堀木の顔は、鬼刑事の如く威厳ありげに見えました。自分は、つくづく呆れかえり、
Horiki answered so evenly that I looked again at his face. Catching the red light of a nearby building's blinking neon sign, his face appeared as dignified as some fiendish detective's. Thoroughly taken aback, I said,
「罪ってのは、君、そんなものじゃないだろう」
"Sin, surely, isn't a thing like that."
罪の対義語が、法律とは！ しかし、世間の人たちは、みんなそれくらいに簡単に考えて、澄まして暮しているのかも知れません。刑事のいないところにこそ罪がうごめいている、と。
The antonym of sin, the law! And yet it may be that the people of the world all think of it just that simply, and go on living with untroubled faces—that it is precisely where no detective is watching that sin goes writhing about.
「それじゃあ、なんだい、神か？ お前には、どこかヤソ坊主くさいところがあるからな。いや味だぜ」
"Then what, is it God? There's something about you that reeks of a Christian preacher. It's obnoxious."
「まあそんなに、軽く片づけるなよ。も少し、二人で考えて見よう。これはでも、面白いテーマじゃないか。このテーマに対する答一つで、そのひとの全部がわかるような気がするのだ」
"Now, don't dismiss it so lightly. Let's think about it a little more, the two of us. Isn't this rather an interesting theme, though? I have the feeling that from a single answer to this theme, one could know everything about a person."
「まさか。……罪のアントは、善さ。善良なる市民。つまり、おれみたいなものさ」
"Don't be absurd. ... The ant of sin is virtue. The good citizen. In other words, someone like me."
「冗談は、よそうよ。しかし、善は悪のアントだ。罪のアントではない」
"Let's leave off the joking. But virtue is the ant of vice. Not the ant of sin."
「悪と罪とは違うのかい？」
"Are vice and sin different, then?"
「違う、と思う。善悪の概念は人間が作ったものだ。人間が勝手に作った道徳の言葉だ」
"I think they're different. The concepts of good and evil are things human beings made. Words of morality that human beings made up for their own convenience."
「うるせえなあ。それじゃ、やっぱり、神だろう。神、神。なんでも、神にして置けば間違いない。腹がへったなあ」
"Ah, shut up. Then it's God after all, isn't it. God, God. Whatever it is, you can't go wrong calling it God. I'm hungry."
「いま、したでヨシ子がそら豆を煮ている」
"Right now, downstairs, Yoshiko is boiling broad beans."
「ありがてえ。好物だ」
"Bless her. That's my favorite."
両手を頭のうしろに組んで、仰向にごろりと寝ました。
He clasped both hands behind his head and flopped over onto his back.
「君には、罪というものが、まるで興味ないらしいね」
"You don't seem to have the slightest interest in this thing called sin, do you."
「そりゃそうさ、お前のように、罪人では無いんだから。おれは道楽はしても、女を死なせたり、女から金を巻き上げたりなんかはしねえよ」
"Well, of course not—I'm not a sinner, the way you are. I may have my indulgences, but I don't go getting women killed, or squeezing money out of them."
死なせたのではない、巻き上げたのではない、と心の何処かで幽かな、けれども必死の抗議の声が起っても、しかし、また、いや自分が悪いのだとすぐに思いかえしてしまうこの習癖。
That I had not gotten her killed, that I had not squeezed money from her—even when some faint but desperate voice of protest rose up from somewhere in my heart, still, this habit of mine, of at once thinking again that no, it was I who was in the wrong.
自分には、どうしても、正面切っての議論が出来ません。焼酎の陰鬱な酔いのために刻一刻、気持が険しくなって来るのを懸命に抑えて、ほとんど独りごとのようにして言いました。
I am, no matter what, incapable of arguing a point head-on. Struggling to hold back the way my mood grew more jagged by the minute under the gloomy drunkenness of the shochu, I said, almost as if talking to myself,
「しかし、牢屋にいれられる事だけが罪じゃないんだ。罪のアントがわかれば、罪の実体もつかめるような気がするんだけど、……神、……救い、……愛、……光、……しかし、神にはサタンというアントがあるし、救いのアントは苦悩だろうし、愛には憎しみ、光には闇というアントがあり、善には悪、罪と祈り、罪と悔い、罪と告白、罪と、……嗚呼、みんなシノニムだ、罪の対語は何だ」
"But being thrown into jail isn't the only thing that's sin. If I knew the ant of sin, I feel I could grasp the substance of sin itself—God, ... salvation, ... love, ... light, ... but God has an ant called Satan, and the ant of salvation would be suffering, and love has hatred for its ant, and light has darkness, and virtue has vice, and sin and prayer, sin and repentance, sin and confession, sin and—ah, they're all synonyms, every one of them. What is the antonym of sin?"
「ツミの対語は、ミツさ。蜜の如く甘しだ。腹がへったなあ。何か食うものを持って来いよ」
"The antonym of tsumi is mitsu—sin turned backwards is honey. Sweet as honey, it is. I'm hungry. Go bring me something to eat."
「君が持って来たらいいじゃないか！」
"Why don't you go bring it yourself!"
ほとんど生れてはじめてと言っていいくらいの、烈しい怒りの声が出ました。
It came out in a voice of fierce anger, almost, one might say, for the first time in my life.
「ようし、それじゃ、したへ行って、ヨシちゃんと二人で罪を犯して来よう。議論より実地検分。罪のアントは、蜜豆、いや、そら豆か」
"All right then, I'll go downstairs and commit a sin with little Yoshiko, just the two of us. Field investigation beats argument. The ant of sin is honey beans—no wait, broad beans, is it."
ほとんど、ろれつの廻らぬくらいに酔っているのでした。
He was drunk almost to the point where his words no longer held together.
「勝手にしろ。どこかへ行っちまえ！」
"Do as you please. Go on, get out of here!"
「罪と空腹、空腹とそら豆、いや、これはシノニムか」
"Sin and hunger, hunger and broad beans—no, wait, are these synonyms?"
出鱈目を言いながら起き上ります。
Spouting nonsense the whole while, I got up.
罪と罰。ドストイエフスキイ。ちらとそれが、頭脳の片隅をかすめて通り、はっと思いました。もしも、あのドスト氏が、罪と罰をシノニムと考えず、アントニムとして置き並べたものとしたら？ 罪と罰、絶対に相通ぜざるもの、氷炭相容れざるもの。罪と罰をアントとして考えたドストの青みどろ、腐った池、乱麻の奥底の、……ああ、わかりかけた、いや、まだ、……などと頭脳に走馬燈がくるくる廻っていた時に、
Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky. It flickered for an instant across a corner of my brain, and I caught my breath. What if that Mr. Dosto had not thought of crime and punishment as synonyms, but had set them side by side as antonyms? Crime and punishment — things that never touch each other at all, things as incompatible as fire and ice. Dosto's blue-green slime, his rotten pond, down at the bottom of his tangled chaos, thinking of crime and punishment as an antonym pair — ah, I was on the verge of understanding it, no, not yet — and thoughts like these went spinning round and round through my brain like a revolving lantern, when—
「おい！ とんだ、そら豆だ。来い！」
"Hey! A hell of a thing, these fava beans. Come on!"
堀木の声も顔色も変っています。堀木は、たったいまふらふら起きてしたへ行った、かと思うとまた引返して来たのです。
Horiki's voice and complexion had changed. He had only just now gotten up unsteadily and gone downstairs, and no sooner had he done so than he came hurrying back.
「なんだ」
"What is it."
異様に殺気立ち、ふたり、屋上から二階へ降り、二階から、さらに階下の自分の部屋へ降りる階段の中途で堀木は立ち止り、
Strangely charged with menace, the two of us went down from the roof to the second floor, and midway down the stairs from the second floor to my own room below, Horiki stopped short,
「見ろ！」
"Look!"
と小声で言って指差します。
he said in a low voice, pointing.
自分の部屋の上の小窓があいていて、そこから部屋の中が見えます。電気がついたままで、二匹の動物がいました。
The little window above my room was open, and through it the inside of the room could be seen. The light was still on, and there were two animals in there.
自分は、ぐらぐら目まいしながら、これもまた人間の姿だ、これもまた人間の姿だ、おどろく事は無い、など劇しい呼吸と共に胸の中で呟き、ヨシ子を助ける事も忘れ、階段に立ちつくしていました。
Reeling with dizziness, I kept muttering inside my chest, in time with my hard breathing, this too is the form human beings take, this too is the form human beings take, there is nothing to be startled by — and, forgetting even to go to Yoshiko's rescue, I stood rooted to the stairs.
堀木は、大きい咳ばらいをしました。自分は、ひとり逃げるようにまた屋上に駈け上り、寝ころび、雨を含んだ夏の夜空を仰ぎ、そのとき自分を襲った感情は、怒りでも無く、嫌悪でも無く、また、悲しみでも無く、もの凄まじい恐怖でした。それも、墓地の幽霊などに対する恐怖ではなく、神社の杉木立で白衣の御神体に逢った時に感ずるかも知れないような、四の五の言わさぬ古代の荒々しい恐怖感でした。自分の若白髪は、その夜からはじまり、いよいよ、すべてに自信を失い、いよいよ、ひとを底知れず疑い、この世の営みに対する一さいの期待、よろこび、共鳴などから永遠にはなれるようになりました。実に、それは自分の生涯に於いて、決定的な事件でした。自分は、まっこうから眉間を割られ、そうしてそれ以来その傷は、どんな人間にでも接近する毎に痛むのでした。
Horiki gave a loud cough. I, as though fleeing alone, ran back up to the roof, lay down, and looked up at a summer night sky heavy with rain, and the feeling that seized me then was not anger, nor was it disgust, nor, again, was it grief — it was a tremendous, overwhelming terror. And it was not the sort of terror one feels toward ghosts in a graveyard; it was more like the ancient, savage terror, admitting no argument, that one might feel on encountering the white-robed body of a god among the cedars of a shrine grove. My hair began turning prematurely gray from that night on, and I lost confidence in everything more and more, and came to suspect people ever more bottomlessly, and grew forever estranged from every hope, joy, and fellow-feeling toward the workings of this world. It was, in truth, a decisive event in my life. I had been struck full across the brow, and from that time on the wound ached every time I drew near to any human being.
「同情はするが、しかし、お前もこれで、少しは思い知ったろう。もう、おれは、二度とここへは来ないよ。まるで、地獄だ。……でも、ヨシちゃんは、ゆるしてやれ。お前だって、どうせ、ろくな奴じゃないんだから。失敬するぜ」
"I feel for you, but still, this ought to have taught you something. I'm never coming here again. It's like hell here. ...But forgive little Yoshiko. You're no great prize yourself, after all. So long."
気まずい場所に、永くとどまっているほど間の抜けた堀木ではありませんでした。
Horiki was not the sort of fool to linger long in an awkward place.
自分は起き上って、ひとりで焼酎を飲み、それから、おいおい声を放って泣きました。いくらでも、いくらでも泣けるのでした。
I got up, drank shochu by myself, and then wept aloud, sobbing. I could have gone on weeping endlessly, endlessly.
いつのまにか、背後に、ヨシ子が、そら豆を山盛りにしたお皿を持ってぼんやり立っていました。
Before I knew it, Yoshiko was standing behind me, vacant, holding a plate heaped with fava beans.
「なんにも、しないからって言って、……」
"He said he wouldn't do anything, so..."
「いい。何も言うな。お前は、ひとを疑う事を知らなかったんだ。お坐り。豆を食べよう」
"It's all right. Don't say anything. You never learned how to doubt people. Sit down. Let's eat the beans."
並んで坐って豆を食べました。嗚呼、信頼は罪なりや？ 相手の男は、自分に漫画をかかせては、わずかなお金をもったい振って置いて行く三十歳前後の無学な小男の商人なのでした。
We sat side by side and ate the beans. Ah — is trust a sin? The man in question was an uneducated little tradesman of about thirty, who had me draw cartoons for him and then, with a great show of importance, left behind some paltry sum of money.
さすがにその商人は、その後やっては来ませんでしたが、自分には、どうしてだか、その商人に対する憎悪よりも、さいしょに見つけたすぐその時に大きい咳ばらいも何もせず、そのまま自分に知らせにまた屋上に引返して来た堀木に対する憎しみと怒りが、眠られぬ夜などにむらむら起って呻きました。
That tradesman, to be sure, never came around again after that, but for some reason it was not hatred of the tradesman that rose up in me — it was hatred and anger toward Horiki, who, the moment he had first discovered it, without so much as a loud cough or anything of the kind, had turned straight back to the roof to tell me — that would well up in me on sleepless nights, until I groaned aloud.
ゆるすも、ゆるさぬもありません。ヨシ子は信頼の天才なのです。ひとを疑う事を知らなかったのです。しかし、それゆえの悲惨。
There is no question of forgiving or not forgiving. Yoshiko was a genius at trust. She simply did not know how to doubt anyone. But therein lay the misery of it.
神に問う。信頼は罪なりや。
I ask God: is trust a sin?
ヨシ子が汚されたという事よりも、ヨシ子の信頼が汚されたという事が、自分にとってそののち永く、生きておられないほどの苦悩の種になりました。自分のような、いやらしくおどおどして、ひとの顔いろばかり伺い、人を信じる能力が、ひび割れてしまっているものにとって、ヨシ子の無垢の信頼心は、それこそ青葉の滝のようにすがすがしく思われていたのです。それが一夜で、黄色い汚水に変ってしまいました。見よ、ヨシ子は、その夜から自分の一顰一笑にさえ気を遣うようになりました。
It was not so much that Yoshiko had been defiled, but that Yoshiko's trust had been defiled, that became, for me, a seed of anguish so great, for so long afterward, that I could scarcely go on living. To someone like myself, repulsively timid, forever watching only the color of other people's faces, someone whose very capacity to trust another had already cracked through, Yoshiko's unblemished trust had seemed nothing less than refreshing, like a waterfall through green leaves. And in a single night it turned into yellow, filthy water. See — from that night on, Yoshiko grew careful even of my every frown, my every smile.
「おい」
"Hey."
と呼ぶと、ぴくっとして、もう眼のやり場に困っている様子です。どんなに自分が笑わせようとして、お道化を言っても、おろおろし、びくびくし、やたらに自分に敬語を遣うようになりました。
When I called to her like that, she would flinch, and seem at a loss where to rest her eyes. However much I tried, clowning, to make her laugh, she only grew flustered, timid, and took to using excessively polite language with me.
果して、無垢の信頼心は、罪の原泉なりや。
Is unblemished trust, after all, the very wellspring of sin?
自分は、人妻の犯された物語の本を、いろいろ捜して読んでみました。けれども、ヨシ子ほど悲惨な犯され方をしている女は、ひとりも無いと思いました。どだい、これは、てんで物語にも何もなりません。あの小男の商人と、ヨシ子とのあいだに、少しでも恋に似た感情でもあったなら、自分の気持もかえってたすかるかも知れませんが、ただ、夏の一夜、ヨシ子が信頼して、そうして、それっきり、しかもそのために自分の眉間は、まっこうから割られ声が嗄れて若白髪がはじまり、ヨシ子は一生おろおろしなければならなくなったのです。たいていの物語は、その妻の「行為」を夫が許すかどうか、そこに重点を置いていたようでしたが、それは自分にとっては、そんなに苦しい大問題では無いように思われました。許す、許さぬ、そのような権利を留保している夫こそ幸いなる哉、とても許す事が出来ぬと思ったなら、何もそんなに大騒ぎせずとも、さっさと妻を離縁して、新しい妻を迎えたらどうだろう、それが出来なかったら、所謂「許して」我慢するさ、いずれにしても夫の気持一つで四方八方がまるく収るだろうに、という気さえするのでした。つまり、そのような事件は、たしかに夫にとって大いなるショックであっても、しかし、それは「ショック」であって、いつまでも尽きること無く打ち返し打ち寄せる波と違い、権利のある夫の怒りでもってどうにでも処理できるトラブルのように自分には思われたのでした。けれども、自分たちの場合、夫に何の権利も無く、考えると何もかも自分がわるいような気がして来て、怒るどころか、おこごと一つも言えず、また、その妻は、その所有している稀な美質に依って犯されたのです。しかも、その美質は、夫のかねてあこがれの、無垢の信頼心というたまらなく可憐なものなのでした。
I went searching for various books about wives who had been violated, and read them. But I thought there was not a single woman violated so miserably as Yoshiko. To begin with, this hardly makes any kind of story at all. If there had been between that little tradesman and Yoshiko even the faintest feeling resembling love, my own feelings might, if anything, have been easier to bear — but it was only that on one summer night Yoshiko had trusted him, and that was all, and yet because of it my brow was struck clean across, my voice grew hoarse, my hair began turning white early, and Yoshiko was left to spend the rest of her life in flustered timidity. Most of those stories seemed to place their weight on whether or not the husband would forgive the wife's "act," but to me that did not seem so agonizing a question. How fortunate, I thought, is the husband who reserves to himself the right to forgive or not forgive — if he truly felt he could not forgive her, then rather than making such a fuss over it, why not simply divorce his wife at once and take a new one? And if he could not even do that, then he could "forgive" her, so to speak, and put up with it — either way, it seemed to me, everything could be settled all around by the husband's feelings alone. In other words, such an event, however great a shock it might truly be to the husband, was, after all, a "shock" — unlike a wave that beats and washes in without ever exhausting itself, it seemed to me a trouble that could be dealt with, one way or another, by the anger of a husband who had the right to be angry. But in our case the husband had no right whatsoever, and the more I thought of it, the more everything seemed somehow my own fault, so that far from growing angry, I could not so much as speak a word of reproach to her; and besides, that wife had been violated precisely on account of a rare and excellent quality she possessed. And what was more, that quality was the very thing the husband had always longed for — an unbearably endearing, unblemished trust in others.
無垢の信頼心は、罪なりや。
Is unblemished trust a sin?
唯一のたのみの美質にさえ、疑惑を抱き、自分は、もはや何もかも、わけがわからなくなり、おもむくところは、ただアルコールだけになりました。自分の顔の表情は極度にいやしくなり、朝から焼酎を飲み、歯がぼろぼろに欠けて、漫画もほとんど猥画に近いものを画くようになりました。いいえ、はっきり言います。自分はその頃から、春画のコピイをして密売しました。焼酎を買うお金がほしかったのです。いつも自分から視線をはずしておろおろしているヨシ子を見ると、こいつは全く警戒を知らぬ女だったから、あの商人といちどだけでは無かったのではなかろうか、また、堀木は？ いや、或いは自分の知らない人とも？ と疑惑は疑惑を生み、さりとて思い切ってそれを問い正す勇気も無く、れいの不安と恐怖にのたうち廻る思いで、ただ焼酎を飲んで酔っては、わずかに卑屈な誘導訊問みたいなものをおっかなびっくり試み、内心おろかしく一喜一憂し、うわべは、やたらにお道化て、そうして、それから、ヨシ子にいまわしい地獄の愛撫を加え、泥のように眠りこけるのでした。
I came to suspect even the one quality I had relied on, and I no longer understood anything at all, and the only place left for me to go was drink, and nothing but drink. My face took on an expression of the utmost baseness; I drank shochu from morning on, my teeth crumbled and chipped away, and the cartoons I drew came to be little more than pornography. No — I will say it plainly. It was around then that I began making copies of erotic prints and selling them on the sly. I wanted money to buy shochu. Whenever I saw Yoshiko, forever averting her eyes from mine, flustered, I would think: this woman knew nothing at all of caution, so might it not have been more than that once with the tradesman? And Horiki, too? No — perhaps even with someone I knew nothing of? — and suspicion bred suspicion, and yet I had no courage to bring myself to question her outright, and with that familiar dread and terror writhing inside me, I would only drink myself drunk on shochu and, timidly, half in fear, attempt, in the smallest way, something like a cowardly, leading interrogation, my heart foolishly rising and falling within me, while on the surface I went on clowning more than ever — and then, afterward, I would force upon Yoshiko a hideous, hellish caress, and fall asleep like the dead.
その年の暮、自分は夜おそく泥酔して帰宅し、砂糖水を飲みたく、ヨシ子は眠っているようでしたから、自分でお勝手に行き砂糖壺を捜し出し、ふたを開けてみたら砂糖は何もはいってなくて、黒く細長い紙の小箱がはいっていました。何気なく手に取り、その箱にはられてあるレッテルを見て愕然としました。そのレッテルは、爪で半分以上も掻きはがされていましたが、洋字の部分が残っていて、それにはっきり書かれていました。ＤＩＡＬ。
At the end of that year, I came home late at night hopelessly drunk, wanting to drink some sugar water, and since Yoshiko seemed to be asleep, I went to the kitchen myself and found the sugar jar, and when I opened the lid, there was no sugar in it at all — only a small, black, oblong paper box. I picked it up without thinking, and when I saw the label pasted to it, I was struck with horror. More than half the label had been scratched away with a fingernail, but the part with the Roman letters remained, and on it was written, plainly: DIAL.
ジアール。自分はその頃もっぱら焼酎で、催眠剤を用いてはいませんでしたが、しかし、不眠は自分の持病のようなものでしたから、たいていの催眠剤にはお馴染みでした。ジアールのこの箱一つは、たしかに致死量以上の筈でした。まだ箱の封を切ってはいませんでしたが、しかし、いつかは、やる気でこんなところに、しかもレッテルを掻きはがしたりなどして隠していたのに違いありません。可哀想に、あの子にはレッテルの洋字が読めないので、爪で半分掻きはがして、これで大丈夫と思っていたのでしょう。（お前に罪は無い）
Dial. I myself, at the time, relied entirely on shochu and had not been using any sleeping drugs, but insomnia had become something like a chronic ailment of mine, so I was on familiar terms with most sleeping drugs. This one box of Dial alone was surely more than enough to kill. The seal on the box had not yet been broken, but there could be no doubt that she meant to use it someday, and had hidden it in a place like this, even scratching away the label. Poor girl — since she could not read the Roman letters on the label, she must have scratched half of it away with her fingernail and thought that would be enough. (You are not to blame.)
自分は、音を立てないようにそっとコップに水を満たし、それから、ゆっくり箱の封を切って、全部、一気に口の中にほうり、コップの水を落ちついて飲みほし、電燈を消してそのまま寝ました。
Taking care to make no sound, I quietly filled a glass with water, then slowly broke the seal on the box, threw the whole of it into my mouth at once, calmly drank down the water in the glass, put out the light, and went straight to sleep as I was.
三昼夜、自分は死んだようになっていたそうです。医者は過失と見なして、警察にとどけるのを猶予してくれたそうです。覚醒しかけて、一ばんさきに呟いたうわごとは、うちへ帰る、という言葉だったそうです。うちとは、どこの事を差して言ったのか、当の自分にも、よくわかりませんが、とにかく、そう言って、ひどく泣いたそうです。
For three days and three nights, I lay as though dead, or so I was told. The doctor took it to be an accident and held off reporting it to the police. As I began to come to, the first words I am said to have murmured in delirium were, I'm going home. What home I meant by that, even I myself do not really know, but in any case, I am told I said it, and wept bitterly.
次第に霧がはれて、見ると、枕元にヒラメが、ひどく不機嫌な顔をして坐っていました。
Gradually the fog cleared, and when I looked, Flatfish was sitting at my pillow, wearing a thoroughly displeased expression.
「このまえも、年の暮の事でしてね、お互いもう、目が廻るくらいいそがしいのに、いつも、年の暮をねらって、こんな事をやられたひには、こっちの命がたまらない」
"Last time too, it was the end of the year, you know. Both of us busy enough to make our heads spin, and every single time, you pick the end of the year to go and pull something like this — it's more than a body can stand."
ヒラメの話の聞き手になっているのは、京橋のバアのマダムでした。
The one listening to Flatfish's complaint was the madam of the bar in Kyobashi.
「マダム」
"Madam."
と自分は呼びました。
I called out.
「うん、何？ 気がついた？」
"Yes, what is it? Have you come to?"
マダムは笑い顔を自分の顔の上にかぶせるようにして言いました。
The madam said this, bringing her smiling face down close over mine, as though to cover it.
自分は、ぽろぽろ涙を流し、
Tears spilled from my eyes, one after another, and
「ヨシ子とわかれさせて」
"Let me part from Yoshiko."
自分でも思いがけなかった言葉が出ました。
The words came out even to my own surprise.
マダムは身を起し、幽かな溜息をもらしました。
The madam straightened up and let out a faint sigh.
それから自分は、これもまた実に思いがけない滑稽とも阿呆らしいとも、形容に苦しむほどの失言をしました。
And then I went and made another slip of the tongue, one just as unexpected, so absurd — whether comic or merely foolish I find it hard to say — that it defies description.
「僕は、女のいないところに行くんだ」
"I'm going to a place where there are no women."
うわっはっは、とまず、ヒラメが大声を挙げて笑い、マダムもクスクス笑い出し、自分も涙を流しながら赤面の態になり、苦笑しました。
Hwahaha — Flatfish let out a great laugh first, in a loud voice, and Madam began to giggle too, and I, tears running down my face, turned red with embarrassment and managed only a bitter laugh.
「うん、そのほうがいい」
"Yes, that would be better."
とヒラメは、いつまでもだらし無く笑いながら、
Flatfish said, still laughing on and on in that slack way of his,
「女のいないところに行ったほうがよい。女がいると、どうもいけない。女のいないところとは、いい思いつきです」
"You ought to go somewhere there are no women. Having women around is no good at all. Somewhere with no women — that's a fine idea."
女のいないところ。しかし、この自分の阿呆くさいうわごとは、のちに到って、非常に陰惨に実現せられました。
Somewhere with no women. But this foolish, delirious remark of mine was, in time, to be realized in a most ghastly way.
ヨシ子は、何か、自分がヨシ子の身代りになって毒を飲んだとでも思い込んでいるらしく、以前よりも尚いっそう、自分に対して、おろおろして、自分が何を言っても笑わず、そうしてろくに口もきけないような有様なので、自分もアパートの部屋の中にいるのが、うっとうしく、つい外へ出て、相変らず安い酒をあおる事になるのでした。しかし、あのジアールの一件以来、自分のからだがめっきり痩せ細って、手足がだるく、漫画の仕事も怠けがちになり、ヒラメがあの時、見舞いとして置いて行ったお金（ヒラメはそれを、渋田の志です、と言っていかにもご自身から出たお金のようにして差出しましたが、これも故郷の兄たちからのお金のようでした。自分もその頃には、ヒラメの家から逃げ出したあの時とちがって、ヒラメのそんなもったい振った芝居を、おぼろげながら見抜く事が出来るようになっていましたので、こちらもずるく、全く気づかぬ振りをして、神妙にそのお金のお礼をヒラメに向って申し上げたのでしたが、しかし、ヒラメたちが、なぜ、そんなややこしいカラクリをやらかすのか、わかるような、わからないような、どうしても自分には、へんな気がしてなりませんでした）そのお金で、思い切ってひとりで南伊豆の温泉に行ってみたりなどしましたが、とてもそんな悠長な温泉めぐりなど出来る柄ではなく、ヨシ子を思えば侘びしさ限りなく、宿の部屋から山を眺めるなどの落ちついた心境には甚だ遠く、ドテラにも着換えず、お湯にもはいらず、外へ飛び出しては薄汚い茶店みたいなところに飛び込んで、焼酎を、それこそ浴びるほど飲んで、からだ具合いを一そう悪くして帰京しただけの事でした。
Yoshiko seemed to have convinced herself that I had somehow taken the poison in her place, standing in for her, and she grew even more flustered around me than before, would not laugh no matter what I said, and was reduced to a state where she could hardly speak at all, so that being inside the apartment room grew oppressive to me, and before long I would go outside and, as always, gulp down cheap liquor. But ever since that business with the Dial, my body had grown noticeably thin and wasted, my arms and legs were heavy and listless, and I had taken to neglecting my cartoon work; and with the money Flatfish had left behind at the time as a get-well gift (Flatfish presented it as though it had come straight from himself, calling it "a token from Shibuta," but this too seemed to be money from my brothers back home. By then, unlike that time I had fled from Flatfish's house, I had come to see through, however dimly, that self-important little performance of his, so for my part I played it cunningly too, pretending to notice nothing at all, and offered Flatfish my meek thanks for the money — though why he and the others went to the trouble of such a roundabout contrivance was something I could half understand and half not, and it never failed to strike me as strange), with that money I made up my mind and went off alone to a hot spring in southern Izu, but I was hardly the sort who could manage such a leisurely round of hot-spring visiting; thinking of Yoshiko left me endlessly forlorn, and I was very far indeed from any settled state of mind in which one might sit gazing at the mountains from an inn room — I never even changed into the padded robe, never once got into the bath, but kept dashing outside to duck into some grubby little tea-house, where I drank shochu, quite literally by the bucketful, and came back to Tokyo having only made my condition worse.
東京に大雪の降った夜でした。自分は酔って銀座裏を、ここはお国を何百里、ここはお国を何百里、と小声で繰り返し繰り返し呟くように歌いながら、なおも降りつもる雪を靴先で蹴散らして歩いて、突然、吐きました。それは自分の最初の喀血でした。雪の上に、大きい日の丸の旗が出来ました。自分は、しばらくしゃがんで、それから、よごれていない個所の雪を両手で掬い取って、顔を洗いながら泣きました。
It was a night of heavy snow in Tokyo. Drunk, I walked through the back streets of Ginza, murmuring over and over under my breath, half-singing, here, hundreds of leagues from home, here, hundreds of leagues from home, scattering with the toes of my shoes the snow that kept on piling up as I went, and then all at once I brought something up. It was the first blood I had ever coughed. On the snow a great flag of the rising sun took shape. I crouched there for a while, and then scooped up snow in both hands from a spot that was not soiled, and washed my face with it, weeping as I did.
こうこは、どうこの細道じゃ？
What narrow path, oh what narrow path is this?
こうこは、どうこの細道じゃ？
What narrow path, oh what narrow path is this?
哀れな童女の歌声が、幻聴のように、かすかに遠くから聞えます。不幸。この世には、さまざまの不幸な人が、いや、不幸な人ばかり、と言っても過言ではないでしょうが、しかし、その人たちの不幸は、所謂世間に対して堂々と抗議が出来、また「世間」もその人たちの抗議を容易に理解し同情します。しかし、自分の不幸は、すべて自分の罪悪からなので、誰にも抗議の仕様が無いし、また口ごもりながら一言でも抗議めいた事を言いかけると、ヒラメならずとも世間の人たち全部、よくもまあそんな口がきけたものだと呆れかえるに違いないし、自分はいったい俗にいう「わがままもの」なのか、またはその反対に、気が弱すぎるのか、自分でもわけがわからないけれども、とにかく罪悪のかたまりらしいので、どこまでも自らどんどん不幸になるばかりで、防ぎ止める具体策など無いのです。
The pitiful little girl's singing voice reaches me faintly from far away, like an auditory hallucination. Unhappiness. In this world there are all manner of unhappy people — no, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say there is nothing but unhappy people — but the unhappiness of those people is such that they can protest against what is called the world, openly and with dignity, and the "world" too can readily understand and sympathize with their protests. My unhappiness, however, springs entirely from my own sins, so that there is no way for me to protest to anyone; and if I so much as start to say something that even sounds like a protest, stammering it out, then not only Flatfish but every last person in the world would surely be astonished that I could bring myself to say such a thing at all — whether I am, in the end, what is commonly called "a selfish man," or, on the contrary, simply too weak-willed, I do not know myself, but in any case I seem to be a lump of sin through and through, and so I only go on becoming unhappier and unhappier of my own accord, with no concrete way of holding it back.
自分は立って、取り敢えず何か適当な薬をと思い、近くの薬屋にはいって、そこの奥さんと顔を見合せ、瞬間、奥さんは、フラッシュを浴びたみたいに首をあげ眼を見はり、棒立ちになりました。しかし、その見はった眼には、驚愕の色も嫌悪の色も無く、ほとんど救いを求めるような、慕うような色があらわれているのでした。ああ、このひとも、きっと不幸な人なのだ、不幸な人は、ひとの不幸にも敏感なものなのだから、と思った時、ふと、その奥さんが松葉杖をついて危かしく立っているのに気がつきました。駈け寄りたい思いを抑えて、なおもその奥さんと顔を見合せているうちに涙が出て来ました。すると、奥さんの大きい眼からも、涙がぽろぽろとあふれて出ました。
I got up, thinking I should at least find some suitable medicine, and went into a drugstore nearby, and found myself face to face with the wife who kept it; in that instant she lifted her head and opened her eyes wide as though caught in a flash of light, and stood there stock-still. But in those wide-open eyes there was no trace of shock or disgust — what showed there was something close to a look of seeking rescue, of yearning. Ah, this woman too must surely be an unhappy person, I thought, for an unhappy person is quick to sense unhappiness in another — and just then I noticed that she was standing precariously, propped on crutches. Suppressing the urge to rush to her side, I went on looking into her face, and tears came to my eyes. Then, from her large eyes too, tears came welling and spilling over.
それっきり、一言も口をきかずに、自分はその薬屋から出て、よろめいてアパートに帰り、ヨシ子に塩水を作らせて飲み、黙って寝て、翌る日も、風邪気味だと嘘をついて一日一ぱい寝て、夜、自分の秘密の喀血がどうにも不安でたまらず、起きて、あの薬屋に行き、こんどは笑いながら、奥さんに、実に素直に今迄のからだ具合いを告白し、相談しました。
Without another word after that, I left the drugstore, made my staggering way back to the apartment, had Yoshiko make me salt water and drank it, and went to bed in silence; the next day too I lied that I had a touch of a cold and slept the whole day through, and that night, unable to bear the anxiety over my secret coughing of blood, I got up, went back to that drugstore, and this time, laughing, confessed quite frankly to the wife the state my body had been in until then, and asked her advice.
「お酒をおよしにならなければ」
"You must give up drinking."
自分たちは、肉身のようでした。
We were like blood kin to each other.
「アル中になっているかも知れないんです。いまでも飲みたい」
"I may already have become an alcoholic. Even now I want to drink."
「いけません。私の主人も、テーベのくせに、菌を酒で殺すんだなんて言って、酒びたりになって、自分から寿命をちぢめました」
"You mustn't. My own husband, though he had consumption, used to say he was killing the germs with liquor, and drowned himself in drink, and shortened his own life by his own hand."
「不安でいけないんです。こわくて、とても、だめなんです」
"It's the anxiety — I can't help it. I'm afraid, it's simply too much for me."
「お薬を差し上げます。お酒だけは、およしなさい」
"I'll give you some medicine. Only give up the liquor, at least."
奥さん（未亡人で、男の子がひとり、それは千葉だかどこだかの医大にはいって、間もなく父と同じ病いにかかり、休学入院中で、家には中風の舅が寝ていて、奥さん自身は五歳の折、小児痲痺で片方の脚が全然だめなのでした）は、松葉杖をコトコトと突きながら、自分のためにあっちの棚、こっちの引出し、いろいろと薬品を取そろえてくれるのでした。
The wife (a widow, with one son who had entered a medical school somewhere in Chiba or thereabouts, and who before long had come down with the same illness as his father and was on leave from school, in hospital; at home lay her father-in-law, bedridden with palsy; and the wife herself, at the age of five, had lost the use of one leg entirely to infantile paralysis) went tapping about on her crutches, this shelf and that drawer, gathering together for me one medicine after another.
これは、造血剤。
This, a blood-building tonic.
これは、ヴィタミンの注射液。注射器は、これ。
This, a vitamin injection. And this, the syringe.
これは、カルシウムの錠剤。胃腸をこわさないように、ジアスターゼ。
This, calcium tablets. And diastase, so as not to upset your stomach.
これは、何。これは、何、と五、六種の薬品の説明を愛情こめてしてくれたのですが、しかし、この不幸な奥さんの愛情もまた、自分にとって深すぎました。最後に奥さんが、これは、どうしても、なんとしてもお酒を飲みたくて、たまらなくなった時のお薬、と言って素早く紙に包んだ小箱。
This is such-and-such. This is such-and-such — she explained five or six kinds of medicine to me this way, with real tenderness, but this unhappy woman's tenderness too was, for me, too much to bear. Last of all she said, this is the medicine for when you absolutely cannot help wanting a drink, no matter what, and quickly wrapped a small box in paper.
モルヒネの注射液でした。
It was a morphine injection.
酒よりは、害にならぬと奥さんも言い、自分もそれを信じて、また一つには、酒の酔いもさすがに不潔に感ぜられて来た矢先でもあったし、久し振りにアルコールというサタンからのがれる事の出来る喜びもあり、何の躊躇も無く、自分は自分の腕に、そのモルヒネを注射しました。不安も、焦燥も、はにかみも、綺麗に除去せられ、自分は甚だ陽気な能弁家になるのでした。そうして、その注射をすると自分は、からだの衰弱も忘れて、漫画の仕事に精が出て、自分で画きながら噴き出してしまうほど珍妙な趣向が生れるのでした。
The wife said it would do less harm than liquor, and I believed her; and besides, this was just at the moment when the drunkenness of liquor had begun, at last, to feel unclean to me, and there was, too, the joy of being able, after so long, to escape from that devil called alcohol — so without the least hesitation I injected the morphine into my own arm. All my anxiety, my restlessness, my shyness, were cleanly swept away, and I became an extremely cheerful, talkative man. And once I had that injection, I would forget even the wasting of my body and throw myself into my cartoon work, and such odd, whimsical ideas would come to me that I would burst out laughing even as I drew them.
一日一本のつもりが、二本になり、四本になった頃には、自分はもうそれが無ければ、仕事が出来ないようになっていました。
What was meant to be one dose a day became two, and by the time it had become four, I had already reached the point where I could not work at all without it.
「いけませんよ、中毒になったら、そりゃもう、たいへんです」
"This won't do. If you become addicted, that really will be terrible."
薬屋の奥さんにそう言われると、自分はもう可成りの中毒患者になってしまったような気がして来て、（自分は、ひとの暗示に実にもろくひっかかるたちなのです。このお金は使っちゃいけないよ、と言っても、お前の事だものなあ、なんて言われると、何だか使わないと悪いような、期待にそむくような、へんな錯覚が起って、必ずすぐにそのお金を使ってしまうのでした）その中毒の不安のため、かえって薬品をたくさん求めるようになったのでした。
When the drugstore wife said this to me, I began to feel as though I had already become a fairly serious addict (I am, by nature, one who falls very easily for another person's suggestion. Someone would tell me, don't spend this money, and then add, but of course, knowing you — and at that a strange illusion would come over me that not spending it would somehow be wrong, would betray what was expected of me, and I would invariably go and spend it at once) — and out of this very anxiety over addiction, I came, perversely, to demand still greater quantities of the drug.
「たのむ！ もう一箱。勘定は月末にきっと払いますから」
"Please! One more box. I'll settle the bill without fail at the end of the month."
「勘定なんて、いつでもかまいませんけど、警察のほうが、うるさいのでねえ」
"The bill can wait any time, that's not the trouble — it's the police who are the bother."
ああ、いつでも自分の周囲には、何やら、濁って暗く、うさん臭い日蔭者の気配がつきまとうのです。
Ah, always, everywhere around me, there clings some murky, dark, suspicious air of the outcast, the one who lives in the shadows.
「そこを何とか、ごまかして、たのむよ、奥さん。キスしてあげよう」
"Somehow or other, fudge it, please, won't you, ma'am. I'll give you a kiss for it."
奥さんは、顔を赤らめます。
The wife would blush.
自分は、いよいよつけ込み、
And I, pressing my advantage further still,
「薬が無いと仕事がちっとも、はかどらないんだよ。僕には、あれは強精剤みたいなものなんだ」
"Without the medicine my work doesn't go anywhere at all. For me it's like some kind of tonic for vigor."
「それじゃ、いっそ、ホルモン注射がいいでしょう」
"Well then, wouldn't a hormone injection do just as well, if not better?"
「ばかにしちゃいけません。お酒か、そうでなければ、あの薬か、どっちかで無ければ仕事が出来ないんだ」
"Don't make fun of me. It has to be liquor, or else that medicine — one or the other, or I can't work at all."
「お酒は、いけません」
"Liquor won't do."
「そうでしょう？ 僕はね、あの薬を使うようになってから、お酒は一滴も飲まなかった。おかげで、からだの調子が、とてもいいんだ。僕だって、いつまでも、下手くそな漫画などをかいているつもりは無い、これから、酒をやめて、からだを直して、勉強して、きっと偉い絵画きになって見せる。いまが大事なところなんだ。だからさ、ね、おねがい。キスしてあげようか」
"There, you see? Ever since I started using that medicine, I haven't touched a drop of liquor. Thanks to it my body's been in very good condition. I don't intend to go on drawing wretched cartoons like this forever either — from now on I mean to give up drink, put my health right, study hard, and make myself into a great painter, you'll see. Right now is the important stretch. So, please, I'm asking you. Shall I give you a kiss for it?"
奥さんは笑い出し、
The wife burst out laughing,
「困るわねえ。中毒になっても知りませんよ」
"You really are a trial. I won't be responsible if you end up an addict."
コトコトと松葉杖の音をさせて、その薬品を棚から取り出し、
and, her crutches tapping, took the medicine down from the shelf,
「一箱は、あげられませんよ。すぐ使ってしまうのだもの。半分ね」
"I can't give you a whole box. You'd only use it up right away. Half, then."
「ケチだなあ、まあ、仕方が無いや」
"What a miser. Well, it can't be helped."
家へ帰って、すぐに一本、注射をします。
I went home and immediately gave myself one injection.
「痛くないんですか？」
"Doesn't it hurt?"
ヨシ子は、おどおど自分にたずねます。
Yoshiko asked me, timidly.
「それあ痛いさ。でも、仕事の能率をあげるためには、いやでもこれをやらなければいけないんだ。僕はこの頃、とても元気だろう？ さあ、仕事だ。仕事、仕事」
"Of course it hurts. But to raise my efficiency at work, I have to do this whether I like it or not. I've been very lively lately, haven't I? Now then, work. Work, work."
とはしゃぐのです。
That was how I would carry on, in high spirits.
深夜、薬屋の戸をたたいた事もありました。寝巻姿で、コトコト松葉杖をついて出て来た奥さんに、いきなり抱きついてキスして、泣く真似をしました。
There were nights I knocked on the door of the pharmacy at a late hour. The wife would come out in her nightclothes, hobbling along on her crutches with a clatter, and I would throw my arms around her at once and kiss her, and make a show of weeping.
奥さんは、黙って自分に一箱、手渡しました。
She would hand me a box without a word.
薬品もまた、焼酎同様、いや、それ以上に、いまわしく不潔なものだと、つくづく思い知った時には、既に自分は完全な中毒患者になっていました。真に、恥知らずの極でした。自分はその薬品を得たいばかりに、またも春画のコピイをはじめ、そうして、あの薬屋の不具の奥さんと文字どおりの醜関係をさえ結びました。
By the time I had come to know in my bones that this drug too was, like shochu — no, worse than shochu — a loathsome, filthy thing, I was already a complete addict. It was, in truth, the very extremity of shamelessness. For no reason but to obtain that drug, I took again to copying erotic pictures, and went so far as to enter into a literal, sordid liaison with the pharmacist's crippled wife.
死にたい、いっそ、死にたい、もう取返しがつかないんだ、どんな事をしても、何をしても、駄目になるだけなんだ、恥の上塗りをするだけなんだ、自転車で青葉の滝など、自分には望むべくも無いんだ、ただけがらわしい罪にあさましい罪が重なり、苦悩が増大し強烈になるだけなんだ、死にたい、死ななければならぬ、生きているのが罪の種なのだ、などと思いつめても、やっぱり、アパートと薬屋の間を半狂乱の姿で往復しているばかりなのでした。
I want to die, I would rather die, it is beyond retrieving now, whatever I do, whatever I attempt, it can only come to nothing, it can only smear more shame over shame, a bicycle ride to a waterfall among the green leaves and the like is not a thing I can hope for anymore, only wretched sin will pile upon foul sin, only my suffering will swell and grow more intense, I want to die, I must die, to go on living is itself the seed of my sin — even as I fixed my mind on such thoughts, still, all I did was go back and forth between the apartment and the pharmacy, half out of my mind.
いくら仕事をしても、薬の使用量もしたがってふえているので、薬代の借りがおそろしいほどの額にのぼり、奥さんは、自分の顔を見ると涙を浮べ、自分も涙を流しました。
No matter how much work I did, my use of the drug increased to match it, so that what I owed for it mounted to a frightening sum, and the wife would well up with tears the moment she saw my face, and I would weep too.
地獄。
Hell.
この地獄からのがれるための最後の手段、これが失敗したら、あとはもう首をくくるばかりだ、という神の存在を賭けるほどの決意を以て、自分は、故郷の父あてに長い手紙を書いて、自分の実情一さいを（女の事は、さすがに書けませんでしたが）告白する事にしました。
As a last resort for escaping this hell — with a resolve so absolute that, should it fail, there would be nothing left but to hang myself, a resolve I staked as though on the very existence of God — I decided to write a long letter to my father back home and confess to him the whole truth of my situation (though the matter of women, of course, I could not bring myself to write of).
しかし、結果は一そう悪く、待てど暮せど何の返事も無く、自分はその焦燥と不安のために、かえって薬の量をふやしてしまいました。
But the result was worse still — wait as I might, day after day, no reply ever came, and the impatience and anxiety of it only drove me, instead, to increase the dose all the more.
今夜、十本、一気に注射し、そうして大川に飛び込もうと、ひそかに覚悟を極めたその日の午後、ヒラメが、悪魔の勘で嗅ぎつけたみたいに、堀木を連れてあらわれました。
On the very day I had secretly resolved that that night I would inject ten vials all at once and then throw myself into the Ōkawa, Flatfish appeared that afternoon, as though he had sniffed it out with a devil's instinct, bringing Horiki with him.
「お前は、喀血したんだってな」
"So you've been coughing up blood, have you."
堀木は、自分の前にあぐらをかいてそう言い、いままで見た事も無いくらいに優しく微笑みました。その優しい微笑が、ありがたくて、うれしくて、自分はつい顔をそむけて涙を流しました。そうして彼のその優しい微笑一つで、自分は完全に打ち破られ、葬り去られてしまったのです。
Horiki said this, sitting cross-legged before me, and smiled with a gentleness I had never once seen in him before. That gentle smile was so welcome, so gladdening, that I turned my face away and wept. And by that one gentle smile of his alone, I was utterly broken, and buried.
自分は自動車に乗せられました。とにかく入院しなければならぬ、あとは自分たちにまかせなさい、とヒラメも、しんみりした口調で、（それは慈悲深いとでも形容したいほど、もの静かな口調でした）自分にすすめ、自分は意志も判断も何も無い者の如く、ただメソメソ泣きながら唯々諾々と二人の言いつけに従うのでした。ヨシ子もいれて四人、自分たちは、ずいぶん永いこと自動車にゆられ、あたりが薄暗くなった頃、森の中の大きい病院の、玄関に到着しました。
I was put into a car. In any case I had to go into hospital, leave the rest to us, Flatfish too urged me, in a subdued tone — a tone so quiet I would almost call it merciful — and I, as though I possessed neither will nor judgment of my own, only wept and whimpered and obeyed the two men's instructions with meek, unquestioning compliance. The four of us, Yoshiko included, were jolted along in the car for a very long while, and by the time the light around us had begun to dim, we arrived at the entrance of a large hospital standing in a wood.
サナトリアムとばかり思っていました。
I took it, without question, for a sanatorium.
自分は若い医師のいやに物やわらかな、鄭重な診察を受け、それから医師は、
I was examined by a young doctor whose manner was strangely gentle and courteous, and then the doctor said,
「まあ、しばらくここで静養するんですね」
"Well now, you'll rest quietly here for a while."
と、まるで、はにかむように微笑して言い、ヒラメと堀木とヨシ子は、自分ひとりを置いて帰ることになりましたが、ヨシ子は着換の衣類をいれてある風呂敷包を自分に手渡し、それから黙って帯の間から注射器と使い残りのあの薬品を差し出しました。やはり、強精剤だとばかり思っていたのでしょうか。
He said this smiling as though bashfully, and Flatfish and Horiki and Yoshiko were to go home, leaving me there alone; but Yoshiko handed me a bundle wrapped in a cloth, containing a change of clothes, and then, without a word, drew from the fold of her sash the syringe and what remained of that drug, and held them out to me. Had she, after all, still been convinced that it was some sort of tonic?
「いや、もう要らない」
"No, I don't need that anymore."
実に、珍らしい事でした。すすめられて、それを拒否したのは、自分のそれまでの生涯に於いて、その時ただ一度、といっても過言でないくらいなのです。自分の不幸は、拒否の能力の無い者の不幸でした。すすめられて拒否すると、相手の心にも自分の心にも、永遠に修繕し得ない白々しいひび割れが出来るような恐怖におびやかされているのでした。けれども、自分はその時、あれほど半狂乱になって求めていたモルヒネを、実に自然に拒否しました。ヨシ子の謂わば「神の如き無智」に撃たれたのでしょうか。自分は、あの瞬間、すでに中毒でなくなっていたのではないでしょうか。
It was, indeed, a rare thing. That was, without much exaggeration, the one and only time in my whole life up to that point that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a man without the capacity to refuse. To refuse a thing offered filled me always with the terror that it would open up, in the other person's heart and in my own, some glaring crack that could never afterward be mended. And yet at that moment I refused, quite naturally, the morphine I had been seeking with such half-crazed desperation. Was it that I had been struck by what I might call Yoshiko's god-like ignorance? Was it not, perhaps, that at that very instant I had already ceased to be an addict?
けれども、自分はそれからすぐに、あのはにかむような微笑をする若い医師に案内せられ、或る病棟にいれられて、ガチャンと鍵をおろされました。脳病院でした。
But directly after that, I was led away by that young doctor with the bashful smile, put into a certain ward, and the door was locked behind me with a clang. It was a mental hospital.
女のいないところへ行くという、あのジアールを飲んだ時の自分の愚かなうわごとが、まことに奇妙に実現せられたわけでした。その病棟には、男の狂人ばかりで、看護人も男でしたし、女はひとりもいませんでした。
The foolish, delirious words I had spoken when I drank that Dial — that I wanted to go somewhere with no women in it — had come true in the strangest way. In that ward there were only madmen, all of them men, the attendants too were men, and there was not a single woman.
いまはもう自分は、罪人どころではなく、狂人でした。いいえ、断じて自分は狂ってなどいなかったのです。一瞬間といえども、狂った事は無いんです。けれども、ああ、狂人は、たいてい自分の事をそう言うものだそうです。つまり、この病院にいれられた者は気違い、いれられなかった者は、ノーマルという事になるようです。
Now I was no longer merely a sinner, but a madman. No — I say emphatically, I was not mad at all. Not for a single instant was I ever mad. But ah, it seems that madmen, as a rule, say exactly that of themselves. Which is to say, it appears that whoever is put into this hospital is called insane, and whoever is not, is called normal.
神に問う。無抵抗は罪なりや？
I ask God: is non-resistance a sin?
堀木のあの不思議な美しい微笑に自分は泣き、判断も抵抗も忘れて自動車に乗り、そうしてここに連れて来られて、狂人という事になりました。いまに、ここから出ても、自分はやっぱり狂人、いや、癈人という刻印を額に打たれる事でしょう。
At that strange, beautiful smile of Horiki's I had wept, and, forgetting all judgment, all resistance, had climbed into the car, and had been brought here, and had become a madman. Before long, even when I am let out of here, I shall no doubt still have the brand struck upon my forehead — madman, no, a ruined man.
人間、失格。
A human being, disqualified.
もはや、自分は、完全に、人間で無くなりました。
I had now, completely, ceased to be a human being.
ここへ来たのは初夏の頃で、鉄の格子の窓から病院の庭の小さい池に紅い睡蓮の花が咲いているのが見えましたが、それから三つき経ち、庭にコスモスが咲きはじめ、思いがけなく故郷の長兄が、ヒラメを連れて自分を引き取りにやって来て、父が先月末に胃潰瘍でなくなったこと、自分たちはもうお前の過去は問わぬ、生活の心配もかけないつもり、何もしなくていい、その代り、いろいろ未練もあるだろうがすぐに東京から離れて、田舎で療養生活をはじめてくれ、お前が東京でしでかした事の後仕末は、だいたい渋田がやってくれた筈だから、それは気にしないでいい、とれいの生真面目な緊張したような口調で言うのでした。
It was early summer when I came here, and through the iron-barred window I could see, in the hospital garden's small pond, red water lilies in bloom; and then three months passed, the cosmos in the garden began to flower, and unexpectedly my eldest brother came from home, bringing Flatfish with him, to take me back — telling me that Father had died, at the end of the previous month, of a stomach ulcer, that they would no longer inquire into my past, that they did not mean to let me worry over how I would live, that there was nothing I need do, but that instead — however much regret I might feel about it — I was to leave Tokyo at once and begin a life of convalescence in the country, and that as for cleaning up after what I had done in Tokyo, Shibuta had, for the most part, already seen to it, so that was nothing I need trouble myself over — all this he said in that grave, strained tone of his that I knew so well.
故郷の山河が眼前に見えるような気がして来て、自分は幽かにうなずきました。
I felt as though the mountains and rivers of my home were rising up before my eyes, and I gave a faint nod.
まさに癈人。
A ruined man indeed.
父が死んだ事を知ってから、自分はいよいよ腑抜けたようになりました。父が、もういない、自分の胸中から一刻も離れなかったあの懐しくおそろしい存在が、もういない、自分の苦悩の壺がからっぽになったような気がしました。自分の苦悩の壺がやけに重かったのも、あの父のせいだったのではなかろうかとさえ思われました。まるで、張合いが抜けました。苦悩する能力をさえ失いました。
Once I learned that my father was dead, I became more listless than ever, utterly spiritless. Father was gone now — that dear, dreadful presence that had never once left my breast even for an instant was gone now — and I felt as though the jar of my suffering had gone empty. It even seemed to me that the very weight of that jar, which had always been so terribly heavy, might have been my father's doing all along. All the fight went out of me, as it were. I lost even the capacity to suffer.
長兄は自分に対する約束を正確に実行してくれました。自分の生れて育った町から汽車で四、五時間、南下したところに、東北には珍らしいほど暖かい海辺の温泉地があって、その村はずれの、間数は五つもあるのですが、かなり古い家らしく壁は剥げ落ち、柱は虫に食われ、ほとんど修理の仕様も無いほどの茅屋を買いとって自分に与え、六十に近いひどい赤毛の醜い女中をひとり附けてくれました。
My eldest brother carried out, to the letter, the promise he had made me. Four or five hours south by train from the town where I was born and raised, there was a hot-spring resort by the sea, unusually warm for the Tōhoku region, and on the outskirts of that village he bought and gave to me a thatched cottage of five rooms — a fairly old house, it seemed, its walls flaking away, its pillars eaten through by insects, scarcely fit even for repair — and attached to me a single servant, a hideous woman with dreadful red hair, nearing sixty.
それから三年と少し経ち、自分はその間にそのテツという老女中に数度へんな犯され方をして、時たま夫婦喧嘩みたいな事をはじめ、胸の病気のほうは一進一退、痩せたりふとったり、血痰が出たり、きのう、テツにカルモチンを買っておいで、と言って、村の薬屋にお使いにやったら、いつもの箱と違う形の箱のカルモチンを買って来て、べつに自分も気にとめず、寝る前に十錠のんでも一向に眠くならないので、おかしいなと思っているうちに、おなかの具合がへんになり急いで便所へ行ったら猛烈な下痢で、しかも、それから引続き三度も便所にかよったのでした。不審に堪えず、薬の箱をよく見ると、それはヘノモチンという下剤でした。
A little more than three years passed after that, during which I was, on several occasions, subjected to a strange sort of violation by that old servant, Tetsu, and now and then something like a marital quarrel would break out between us; my chest ailment went on with its ups and downs, and I would grow thin and then fill out again, and sometimes bring up blood-streaked phlegm; and yesterday, when I told Tetsu to go buy me some Calmotin and sent her on an errand to the village pharmacy, she came back with a box of Calmotin in a different shape from the usual one, which I paid no particular mind to, but when I took ten tablets before bed and felt not the least bit sleepy, and was wondering, how strange, my stomach suddenly turned odd, and I hurried to the privy to find myself in the grip of violent diarrhea, and what was more, I had to make my way to the privy three times running after that. Unable to bear the mystery of it, I looked closely at the box, and found it was a laxative called Henomochin.
自分は仰向けに寝て、おなかに湯たんぽを載せながら、テツにこごとを言ってやろうと思いました。
Lying on my back with a hot-water bottle on my stomach, I thought I would give Tetsu a scolding.
「これは、お前、カルモチンじゃない。ヘノモチン、という」
"This isn't Calmotin, you know. It's called Henomochin."
と言いかけて、うふふふと笑ってしまいました。「癈人」は、どうやらこれは、喜劇名詞のようです。眠ろうとして下剤を飲み、しかも、その下剤の名前は、ヘノモチン。
I began to say, and then broke into a snicker despite myself. It seems "a ruined man" is, after all, a comic noun. Trying to get to sleep, I drink a laxative — and what's more, the laxative's name is Henomochin.
いまは自分には、幸福も不幸もありません。
Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.
ただ、一さいは過ぎて行きます。
Only, everything passes.
自分がいままで阿鼻叫喚で生きて来た所謂「人間」の世界に於いて、たった一つ、真理らしく思われたのは、それだけでした。
In the whole howling inferno of the so-called "human beings'" world in which I have lived until now, that was the one and only thing that ever seemed to me to resemble a truth.
ただ、一さいは過ぎて行きます。
Only, everything passes.
自分はことし、二十七になります。白髪がめっきりふえたので、たいていの人から、四十以上に見られます。
This year I turn twenty-seven. My hair has gone conspicuously gray, so that most people take me for over forty.