伊豆の南、温泉が湧き出ているというだけで、他には何一つとるところの無い、つまらぬ山村である。戸数三十という感じである。こんなところは、宿泊料も安いであろうという、理由だけで、私はその索寞たる山村を選んだ。昭和十五年、七月三日の事である。その頃は、私にも、少しお金の余裕があったのである。けれども、それから先の事は、やはり真暗であった。小説が少しも書けなくなる事だってあるかも知れない。二箇月間、小説が全く書けなかったら、私は、もとの無一文になる筈である。思えば、心細い余裕であったが、私にとっては、それだけの余裕でも、この十年間、はじめての事であったのである。私が東京で生活をはじめたのは、昭和五年の春である。そのころ既に私は、Ｈという女と共同の家を持っていた。田舎の長兄から、月々充分の金を送ってもらっていたのだが、ばかな二人は、贅沢を戒め合っていながらも、月末には必ず質屋へ一品二品を持運んで行かなければならなかった。とうとう六年目に、Ｈとわかれた。私には、蒲団と、机と、電気スタンドと、行李一つだけが残った。多額の負債も不気味に残った。それから二年経って、私は或る先輩のお世話で、平凡な見合い結婚をした。さらに二年を経て、はじめて私は一息ついた。貧しい創作集も既に十冊近く出版せられている。むこうから注文が来なくても、こちらで懸命に書いて持って行けば、三つに二つは買ってもらえるような気がして来た。これからが、愛嬌も何も無い大人の仕事である。書きたいものだけを、書いて行きたい。
In the south of Izu, a dull mountain village with nothing at all to recommend it besides the fact that a hot spring happened to bubble up there. It gave the impression of some thirty households. It was for no other reason than that lodging would likely be cheap in such a place that I chose that desolate mountain village. This was on the third of July, Showa fifteen. In those days I still had a little money to spare. But what lay beyond that, all the same, was pitch dark. It was entirely possible that I would find myself unable to write a single line of fiction. If two months went by and I had written nothing at all, I was bound to be penniless again, just as before. Thinking back on it, it was a precarious kind of margin, but even so small a margin as that was, for me, the first I had known in these ten years. I began my life in Tokyo in the spring of Showa five. By that time I already kept a house together with a woman named H. My eldest brother back home sent us more than enough money every month, and yet the two of us fools, even while warning each other against extravagance, always had to carry a piece or two to the pawnshop by the end of the month. In the sixth year, at last, I parted from H. What was left to me was a set of bedding, a desk, a desk lamp, and a single wicker trunk. A considerable debt remained as well, uncomfortably. Two years after that, through the good offices of a senior acquaintance, I made an unremarkable arranged marriage. Two years further on, for the first time, I caught my breath. Nearly ten slim volumes of my work had already been published. It began to seem to me that even without commissions coming from the other side, if I wrote with all my might and carried the work to them myself, two times out of three it would be bought. From here on was a grown man's work, with no charm in it, none at all. I wanted to write only what I wanted to write.
甚だ心細い、不安な余裕ではあったが、私は真底から嬉しく思った。少くとも、もう一箇月間は、お金の心配をせずに好きなものを書いて行ける。私は自分の、その時の身の上を、嘘みたいな気がした。恍惚と不安の交錯した異様な胸騒ぎで、かえって仕事に手が附かず、いたたまらなくなった。
It was an exceedingly precarious, uneasy margin, and yet I felt glad to the very bottom of my heart. At least for another month I could go on writing what I liked without worrying about money. My own circumstances, at that time, felt to me like a lie. In the strange, mingled agitation of ecstasy and anxiety, I found myself, if anything, unable to settle to the work, unable to sit still.
東京八景。私は、その短篇を、いつかゆっくり、骨折って書いてみたいと思っていた。十年間の私の東京生活を、その時々の風景に託して書いてみたいと思っていた。私は、ことし三十二歳である。日本の倫理に於ても、この年齢は、既に中年の域にはいりかけたことを意味している。また私が、自分の肉体、情熱に尋ねてみても、悲しい哉それを否定できない。覚えて置くがよい。おまえは、もう青春を失ったのだ。もっともらしい顔の三十男である。東京八景。私はそれを、青春への訣別の辞として、誰にも媚びずに書きたかった。
Tokyo, Eight Views. I had long wanted, someday, at my leisure, to labor over that short piece. I had wanted to write my ten years of life in Tokyo entrusted to the scenery of each moment. I am, this year, thirty-two. By the reckoning of Japanese custom too, this age already means one has begun to enter the region of middle age. And when I question my own body, my own passions, sadly, I cannot deny it either. Best to remember it well. You have already lost your youth. A man in his thirties with a plausible face. Tokyo, Eight Views. I wanted to write it as a farewell address to youth, fawning on no one.
あいつも、だんだん俗物になって来たね。そのような無智な陰口が、微風と共に、ひそひそ私の耳にはいって来る。私は、その度毎に心の中で、強く答える。僕は、はじめから俗物だった。君には、気がつかなかったのかね。逆なのである。文学を一生の業として気構えた時、愚人は、かえって私を組し易しと見てとった。私は、幽かに笑うばかりだ。万年若衆は、役者の世界である。文学には無い。
He's turning into more and more of a vulgarian, that one. Such ignorant backbiting reaches my ears now and then, whispered along with the faint wind. Each time, I answer strongly within my own heart. I was a vulgarian from the start. Hadn't you noticed? It is the reverse. When I braced myself to make literature my life's work, fools, if anything, took me for easy prey. I only smile faintly. The eternal young blade belongs to the actor's world. There is none such in literature.
東京八景。私は、いまの此の期間にこそ、それを書くべきであると思った。いまは、差し迫った約束の仕事も無い。百円以上の余裕もある。いたずらに恍惚と不安の複雑な溜息をもらして狭い部屋の中を、うろうろ歩き廻っている場合では無い。私は絶えず、昇らなければならぬ。
Tokyo, Eight Views. I thought that it was precisely in this present stretch of time that I ought to write it. Just now I had no pressing work under promise to anyone. I had a margin of over a hundred yen besides. This was no time to be idly sighing out that tangled sigh of ecstasy and anxiety, wandering back and forth about a cramped room. I must, ceaselessly, ascend.
東京市の大地図を一枚買って、東京駅から、米原行の汽車に乗った。遊びに行くのでは、ないんだぞ。一生涯の、重大な記念碑を、骨折って造りに行くのだぞ、と繰返し繰返し、自分に教えた。熱海で、伊東行の汽車に乗りかえ、伊東から下田行のバスに乗り、伊豆半島の東海岸に沿うて三時間、バスにゆられて南下し、その戸数三十の見る影も無い山村に降り立った。ここなら、一泊三円を越えることは無かろうと思った。憂鬱堪えがたいばかりの粗末な、小さい宿屋が四軒だけ並んでいる。私は、Ｆという宿屋を選んだ。四軒の中では、まだしも、少しましなところが、あるように思われたからである。意地の悪そうな、下品な女中に案内されて二階に上り、部屋に通されて見ると、私は、いい年をして、泣きそうな気がした。三年まえに、私が借りていた荻窪の下宿屋の一室を思い出した。その下宿屋は、荻窪でも、最下等の代物であったのである。けれども、この蒲団部屋の隣りの六畳間は、その下宿の部屋よりも、もっと安っぽく、侘しいのである。
I bought a large map of Tokyo city, and at Tokyo Station boarded a train bound for Maibara. This is not a pleasure trip, I told myself, over and over. You are going, laboring, to build a grave and important monument for the whole of your life. At Atami I changed to a train for Ito, and from Ito took a bus for Shimoda, and rode three hours south along the east coast of the Izu peninsula, jolted by the bus, and got down at that mountain village of some thirty households, a place with nothing left to be seen of it. Here, I thought, a night's lodging surely could not run to more than three yen. Only four small, shabby inns stood in a row, wretched almost past bearing. I chose the one called F. Of the four, it seemed to me, it had at least something a little better about it. Led up to the second floor by a servant with a mean, coarse look about her, and shown into the room, I found myself, grown man that I was, on the verge of tears. I remembered a room I had rented three years before in a boardinghouse in Ogikubo. That boardinghouse had been the lowest sort of thing, even for Ogikubo. And yet this six-mat room next to the bedding closet was shabbier still, more forlorn, than that lodging-house room had been.
「他に部屋が無いのですか」
"Is there no other room?"
「ええ。みんな、ふさがって居ります。ここは涼しいですよ」
"No. They're all taken. This one is cool, though."
「そうですか」
"I see."
私は、馬鹿にされていたようである。服装が悪かったせいかも知れない。
It seemed I was being made a fool of. Perhaps it was because my clothes were shabby.
「お泊りは、三円五十銭と四円です。御中食は、また、別にいただきます。どういたしましょうか」
"Lodging is three-fifty or four yen. The midday meal is extra, separately. What shall we do?"
「三円五十銭のほうにして下さい。中食は、たべたい時に、そう言います。十日ばかり、ここで勉強したいと思って来たのですが」
"The three-fifty one, please. I'll say when I want the midday meal. I've come meaning to work here for about ten days."
「ちょっと、お待ち下さい」女中は、階下へ行って、しばらくして、また部屋にやって来て、「あの、永い御滞在でしたら、前に、いただいて置く事になって居りますけれど」
"Just a moment, please." The servant went downstairs, and after a while came back up to the room again. "Well, if it's a long stay, it's arranged that we take payment in advance—"
「そうですか。いくら差し上げたら、いいのでしょう」
"I see. How much should I give you, then?"
「さあ、いくらでも」と口ごもっている。
"Well—whatever you like," she said, faltering.
「五十円あげましょうか」
"Shall I give you fifty yen?"
「はあ」
"Yes, sir."
私は机の上に、紙幣を並べた。たまらなくなって来た。
I laid the bills out on the desk. It became more than I could bear.
「みんな、あげましょう。九十円あります。煙草銭だけは、僕は、こちらの財布に残してあります」
"I'll give you all of it. There's ninety yen here. I've kept back only tobacco money in this wallet of mine."
なぜ、こんなところに来たのだろうと思った。
Why, I wondered, had I come to a place like this.
「相すみません。おあずかり致します」
"I'm terribly sorry. I'll take charge of it, then."
女中は、去った。怒ってはならない。大事な仕事がある。いまの私の身分には、これ位の待遇が、相応しているのかも知れない、と無理矢理、自分に思い込ませて、トランクの底からペン、インク、原稿用紙などを取り出した。
The servant left. I must not be angry. There was important work to do. Perhaps, in my present station, treatment of just this sort was fitting enough, I forced myself to believe, and took pen, ink, and manuscript paper out from the bottom of my trunk.
十年ぶりの余裕は、このような結果であった。けれども、この悲しさも、私の宿命の中に規定されて在ったのだと、もっともらしく自分に言い聞かせ、怺えてここで仕事をはじめた。
Such was the outcome of my first margin in ten years. But this sadness too, I told myself plausibly, had been laid down beforehand within my own fate, and, enduring it, I began my work here.
遊びに来たのでは無い。骨折りの仕事をしに来たのだ。私はその夜、暗い電燈の下で、東京市の大地図を机いっぱいに拡げた。
I had not come to play. I had come to do laborious work. That night, under the dim electric light, I spread the large map of Tokyo city out to fill the whole desk.
幾年振りで、こんな、東京全図というものを拡げて見る事か。十年以前、はじめて東京に住んだ時には、この地図を買い求める事さえ恥ずかしく、人に、田舎者と笑われはせぬかと幾度となく躊躇した後、とうとう一部、うむと決意し、ことさらに乱暴な自嘲の口調で買い求め、それを懐中し荒んだ歩きかたで下宿へ帰った。夜、部屋を閉め切り、こっそり、その地図を開いた。赤、緑、黄の美しい絵模様。私は、呼吸を止めてそれに見入った。隅田川。浅草。牛込。赤坂。ああなんでも在る。行こうと思えば、いつでも、すぐに行けるのだ。私は、奇蹟を見るような気さえした。
How many years had it been since I had spread out such a thing, a full map of Tokyo, and looked at it. Ten years before, when I first came to live in Tokyo, I had been ashamed even to buy such a map, hesitating again and again for fear people would laugh at me as a country bumpkin, until at last I resolved on it, one copy—all right, then—and bought it with a deliberately rough, self-mocking air, and tucked it into my breast and walked back to my lodging with a dissolute gait. At night, with the room shut tight, I opened the map in secret. A beautiful patterned picture of red, green, and yellow. I held my breath and gazed into it. The Sumida River. Asakusa. Ushigome. Akasaka. Ah, everything was there. If I only meant to go, I could go at once, any time. I felt almost as though I were looking at a miracle.
今では、此の蚕に食われた桑の葉のような東京市の全形を眺めても、そこに住む人、各々の生活の姿ばかりが思われる。こんな趣きの無い原っぱに、日本全国から、ぞろぞろ人が押し寄せ、汗だくで押し合いへし合い、一寸の土地を争って一喜一憂し、互に嫉視、反目して、雌は雄を呼び、雄は、ただ半狂乱で歩きまわる。頗る唐突に、何の前後の関聯も無く「埋木」という小説の中の哀しい一行が、胸に浮かんだ。「恋とは」「美しき事を夢みて、穢き業をするものぞ」東京とは直接に何の縁も無い言葉である。
Now, even when I look at the whole shape of Tokyo city, like a mulberry leaf eaten through by silkworms, what comes to mind is only the figures of each person's life, living there. Onto this featureless plain, people come crowding in droves from every corner of Japan, jostling and shoving, drenched in sweat, rejoicing and grieving over their struggle for an inch of ground, eyeing one another with envy, at odds with one another, the females calling to the males, the males only walking about half-crazed. Quite abruptly, with no connection to what came before or after, a mournful line from a novel called Umoregi rose up in my chest. "As for love"—"it is a thing that dreams of beauty and does deeds unclean." A phrase with no direct bearing on Tokyo whatsoever.
戸塚。──私は、はじめ、ここにいたのだ。私のすぐ上の兄が、この地に、ひとりで一軒の家を借りて、彫刻を勉強していたのである。私は昭和五年に弘前の高等学校を卒業し、東京帝大の仏蘭西文科に入学した。仏蘭西語を一字も解し得なかったけれども、それでも仏蘭西文学の講義を聞きたかった。辰野隆先生を、ぼんやり畏敬していた。私は、兄の家から三町ほど離れた新築の下宿屋の、奥の一室を借りて住んだ。たとい親身の兄弟でも、同じ屋根の下に住んで居れば、気まずい事も起るものだ、と二人とも口に出しては言わないが、そんなお互の遠慮が無言の裡に首肯せられて、私たちは同じ町内ではあったが、三町だけ離れて住む事にしたのである。それから三箇月経って、この兄は病死した。二十七歳であった。兄の死後も、私は、その戸塚の下宿にいた。二学期からは、学校へは、ほとんど出なかった。世人の最も恐怖していたあの日蔭の仕事に、平気で手助けしていた。その仕事の一翼と自称する大袈裟な身振りの文学には、軽蔑を以て接していた。私は、その一期間、純粋な政治家であった。そのとしの秋に、女が田舎からやって来た。私が呼んだのである。Ｈである。Ｈとは、私が高等学校へはいったとしの初秋に知り合って、それから三年間あそんだ。無心の芸妓である。私は、この女の為に、本所区東駒形に一室を借りてやった。大工さんの二階である。肉体的の関係は、そのとき迄いちども無かった。故郷から、長兄がその女の事でやって来た。七年前に父を喪った兄弟は、戸塚の下宿の、あの薄暗い部屋で相会うた。兄は、急激に変化している弟の兇悪な態度に接して、涙を流した。
Totsuka. — I was here, at the very first. My brother, the one directly above me, had rented a house here by himself and was studying sculpture. I graduated from the higher school at Hirosaki in Showa five, and entered the French literature department of Tokyo Imperial University. I could not make out a single word of French, and yet I still wanted to hear lectures on French literature. I held Professor Tatsuno Yutaka in a vague awe. I rented and lived in an inner room of a newly built boardinghouse some three blocks from my brother's house. Even between brothers of the same blood, living under the same roof is bound to bring on awkward things—neither of us said as much aloud, but that mutual reserve was silently agreed to between us, so that we came to live three blocks apart, though within the same neighborhood. Three months after that, this brother died of illness. He was twenty-seven. Even after his death I remained in that lodging house in Totsuka. From the second term on, I scarcely went to school at all. I was giving my hand, unconcerned, to that shadowed work which the world feared most of all. Toward literature, which called itself one wing of that work with such overblown gestures, I felt only contempt. For that one stretch of time, I was a pure political man. In the autumn of that year, a woman came up from the country. I had sent for her. It was H. H and I had become acquainted in early autumn of the year I entered the higher school, and had gone on seeing each other for three years after that. She was an unworldly geisha. For this woman's sake I rented a room in Higashi-Komagata, in Honjo ward. It was the second floor of a carpenter's house. There had, until that time, not once been any physical relation between us. My eldest brother came up from home over the matter of this woman. The brothers, who had lost their father seven years before, met each other in that dim room of the Totsuka lodging house. My brother, faced with his younger brother's savage manner, so abruptly changed, wept.
必ず夫婦にしていただく条件で、私は兄に女を手渡す事にした。手渡す驕慢の弟より、受け取る兄のほうが、数層倍苦しかったに違いない。手渡すその前夜、私は、はじめて女を抱いた。兄は、女を連れて、ひとまず田舎へ帰った。女は、始終ぼんやりしていた。ただいま無事に家に着きました、という事務的な堅い口調の手紙が一通来たきりで、その後は、女から、何の便りもなかった。女は、ひどく安心してしまっているらしかった。私には、それが不平であった。こちらが、すべての肉親を仰天させ、母には地獄の苦しみを嘗めさせて迄、戦っているのに、おまえ一人、無智な自信でぐったりしているのは、みっとも無い事である、と思った。毎日でも私に手紙を寄こすべきである、と思った。私を、もっともっと好いてくれてもいい、と思った。けれども女は、手紙を書きたがらないひとであった。私は、絶望した。朝早くから、夜おそく迄、れいの仕事の手助けに奔走した。人から頼まれて、拒否した事は無かった。自分の其の方面に於ける能力の限度が、少しずつ見えて来た。私は、二重に絶望した。銀座裏のバアの女が、私を好いた。好かれる時期が、誰にだって一度ある。不潔な時期だ。私は、この女を誘って一緒に鎌倉の海へはいった。破れた時は、死ぬ時だと思っていたのである。れいの反神的な仕事にも破れかけた。肉体的にさえ、とても不可能なほどの仕事を、私は卑怯と言われたくないばかりに、引受けてしまっていたのである。Ｈは、自分ひとりの幸福の事しか考えていない。おまえだけが、女じゃ無いんだ。おまえは、私の苦しみを知ってくれなかったから、こういう報いを受けるのだ。ざまを見ろ。
On condition that he would surely see us made husband and wife, I resolved to hand the woman over to my brother. Of the two of us, the arrogant younger brother who handed her over and the elder brother who received her, it must have been the elder brother, several times over, who suffered the more. The night before I handed her over, I held the woman for the first time. My brother took her and, for the time being, went back with her to the country. The woman was, throughout, in a kind of daze. Only a single letter came, in a stiff, businesslike tone, saying that she had arrived home safely, and after that, no word at all from her. It seemed the woman had settled into a very great sense of ease. This was, to me, a grievance. Here I was, fighting, having thrown all my own flesh and blood into consternation, having made my mother taste the suffering of hell itself, and for her alone to be lying there slack with such ignorant confidence—I thought it a disgraceful thing. She ought to have sent me letters even daily, I thought. She might have loved me more, much more, I thought. But the woman was one who did not care to write letters. I despaired. From early morning until late at night I ran myself ragged helping in that usual work of mine. I never once refused when asked by others. Little by little I began to see the limits of my own ability in that particular direction. I despaired doubly now. A woman from a bar behind the Ginza took a liking to me. Everyone has, once, a season of being liked. It is an unclean season. I invited this woman and went with her into the sea at Kamakura. I had thought that when it broke down, that would be the time to die. That usual work of mine, set against the gods, had all but broken down as well. Work that was, even physically, all but impossible, I had taken on only because I did not want to be called a coward. H thinks of nothing but her own happiness alone. You are not the only woman there is. Because you never understood my suffering, this is the reward you get for it. Serves you right.
私には、すべての肉親と離れてしまった事が一ばん、つらかった。Ｈとの事で、母にも、兄にも、叔母にも呆れられてしまったという自覚が、私の投身の最も直接な一因であった。女は死んで、私は生きた。死んだひとの事に就いては、以前に何度も書いた。私の生涯の、黒点である。私は、留置場に入れられた。取調べの末、起訴猶予になった。昭和五年の歳末の事である。兄たちは、死にぞこないの弟に優しくしてくれた。
What was hardest for me was that I had become cut off from every one of my own flesh and blood. The awareness that, over the matter of H, my mother, my brothers, my aunt too, had all come to be simply exasperated with me, was the most direct single cause of my throwing myself into the sea. The woman died, and I lived. About the one who died I have written before, many times. It is the black spot of my life. I was put into a police cell. After questioning, prosecution was suspended. This was at the close of Showa five. My brothers were kind to their brother who had failed even to die.
長兄はＨを、芸妓の職から解放し、その翌るとしの二月に、私の手許に送って寄こした。言約を潔癖に守る兄である。Ｈはのんきな顔をしてやって来た。五反田の、島津公分譲地の傍に三十円の家を借りて住んだ。Ｈは甲斐甲斐しく立ち働いた。私は、二十三歳、Ｈは、二十歳である。
My eldest brother freed H from her position as a geisha, and in February of the following year sent her along to me. He is a brother who keeps his word with scrupulous exactness. H arrived wearing an easygoing face. We rented and lived in a thirty-yen house near the Shimazu subdivision at Gotanda. H worked briskly and devotedly. I was twenty-three; H was twenty.
五反田は、阿呆の時代である。私は完全に、無意志であった。再出発の希望は、みじんも無かった。たまに訪ねて来る友人達の、御機嫌ばかりをとって暮していた。自分の醜態の前科を、恥じるどころか、幽かに誇ってさえいた。実に、破廉恥な、低能の時期であった。学校へもやはり、ほとんど出なかった。すべての努力を嫌い、のほほん顔でＨを眺めて暮していた。馬鹿である。何も、しなかった。ずるずるまた、れいの仕事の手伝いなどを、はじめていた。けれども、こんどは、なんの情熱も無かった。遊民の虚無。それが、東京の一隅にはじめて家を持った時の、私の姿だ。
Gotanda is the era of the fool. I was, utterly, without will. Of hope for a fresh start there was not the slightest trace. I lived only currying the favor of the friends who occasionally called on me. Far from being ashamed of my own record of disgraceful conduct, I even took a faint pride in it. It was, in truth, a shameless, feeble-minded stretch of time. I still scarcely went to school. I hated every kind of effort, and lived on, gazing at H with an idle, untroubled face. I was a fool. I did nothing at all. Little by little I drifted back into helping, once again, with that usual work of mine. But this time there was no passion in it at all. The nihilism of an idle man of leisure. That was the figure I cut, when I first held a house of my own in one corner of Tokyo.
そのとしの夏に移転した。神田・同朋町。さらに晩秋には、神田・和泉町。その翌年の早春に、淀橋・柏木。なんの語るべき事も無い。朱麟堂と号して俳句に凝ったりしていた。老人である。例の仕事の手助けの為に、二度も留置場に入れられた。留置場から出る度に私は友人達の言いつけに従って、別な土地に移転するのである。何の感激も、また何の嫌悪も無かった。それが皆の為に善いならば、そうしましょう、という無気力きわまる態度であった。ぼんやり、Ｈと二人で、雌雄の穴居の一日一日を迎え送っているのである。Ｈは快活であった。一日に二、三度は私を口汚く呶鳴るのだが、あとはけろりとして英語の勉強をはじめるのである。私が時間割を作ってやって勉強させていたのである。あまり覚えなかったようである。英語はロオマ字をやっと読めるくらいになって、いつのまにか、止めてしまった。手紙は、やはり下手であった。書きたがらなかった。私が下書を作ってやった。あねご気取りが好きなようであった。私が警察に連れて行かれても、そんなに取乱すような事は無かった。れいの思想を、任侠的なものと解して愉快がっていた日さえあった。同朋町、和泉町、柏木、私は二十四歳になっていた。
We moved that summer. Dobocho, in Kanda. Then, in late autumn, Izumicho, in Kanda. Early the following spring, Kashiwagi, in Yodobashi. There is nothing worth telling of it. I took to calling myself Shurindo and grew absorbed in haiku for a while. An old man's pastime. On account of that usual helping work of mine, I was put into a police cell twice more. Each time I came out of the cell I moved, following my friends' instructions, to yet another place. There was neither any excitement in it nor any distaste. It was an attitude of the most utter listlessness: if it's good for everyone, then so be it. Vaguely, H and I, the two of us, saw one day after another in and out of our cave of male and female. H was cheerful. Two or three times a day she would rail at me with foul language, but after that she'd be perfectly composed again and set to studying English. I had made her a timetable and had her study by it. She does not seem to have learned very much. Her English got only as far as barely being able to read romanized letters, and before I knew it, she had given it up entirely. She was still poor at letters. She did not care to write them. I made the drafts for her. She seemed to like playing the elder-sister role. Even when I was taken off by the police, she never made much of a fuss over it. There were even days when she took that usual creed of mine for something chivalrous, and seemed to find it rather fine. Dobocho, Izumicho, Kashiwagi—I had turned twenty-four.
そのとしの晩春に、私は、またまた移転しなければならなくなった。またもや警察に呼ばれそうになって、私は、逃げたのである。こんどのは、少し複雑な問題であった。田舎の長兄に、出鱈目な事を言ってやって、二箇月分の生活費を一度に送ってもらい、それを持って柏木を引揚げた。家財道具を、あちこちの友人に少しずつ分けて預かってもらい、身のまわりの物だけを持って、日本橋・八丁堀の材木屋の二階、八畳間に移った。私は北海道生まれ、落合一雄という男になった。流石に心細かった。所持のお金を大事にした。どうにかなろうという無能な思念で、自分の不安を誤魔化していた。明日に就いての心構えは何も無かった。何も出来なかった。時たま、学校へ出て、講堂の前の芝生に、何時間でも黙って寝ころんでいた。或る日の事、同じ高等学校を出た経済学部の一学生から、いやな話を聞かされた。煮え湯を飲むような気がした。まさか、と思った。知らせてくれた学生を、かえって憎んだ。Ｈに聞いてみたら、わかる事だと思った。いそいで八丁堀、材木屋の二階に帰って来たのだが、なかなか言い出しにくかった。初夏の午後である。西日が部屋にはいって、暑かった。私は、オラガビイルを一本、Ｈに買わせた。当時、オラガビイルは、二十五銭であった。その一本を飲んで、もう一本、と言ったら、Ｈに呶鳴られた。呶鳴られて私も、気持に張りが出て来て、きょう学生から聞いて来た事を、努めてさりげない口調で、Ｈに告げることが出来た。Ｈは半可臭い、と田舎の言葉で言って、怒ったように、ちらと眉をひそめた。それだけで、静かに縫い物をつづけていた。濁った気配は、どこにも無かった。私は、Ｈを信じた。
In the late spring of that year I had to move again, once more. Once again it looked as though I would be called in by the police, and I ran. This time it was a somewhat more complicated matter. I told my eldest brother back home some cock-and-bull story, had him send two months' living expenses all at once, and took it and pulled out of Kashiwagi. I divided up our household goods a little at a time among various friends to keep for me, and, carrying only what I needed close at hand, moved into an eight-mat room on the second floor of a timber merchant's house in Hacchobori, Nihonbashi. I became a man named Ochiai Kazuo, born in Hokkaido. It was, I must say, an uneasy time. I took great care of what money I had. I papered over my own unease with the incompetent notion that things would somehow work themselves out. I had no bracing of mind at all for tomorrow. I could do nothing. Now and then I would go out to school and lie there silently for hours on the lawn in front of the auditorium. One day, a student from the economics department who had come out of the same higher school told me something disagreeable. It felt like swallowing scalding water. Surely not, I thought. I found myself, instead, hating the student who had told me. I thought that if I asked H, I would know. I hurried back to the second floor of the timber merchant's in Hacchobori, but it was very hard to bring myself to speak of it. It was an afternoon in early summer. The westering sun came into the room, and it was hot. I had H buy me a bottle of Oraga beer. Oraga beer was, at the time, twenty-five sen. I drank that one bottle and asked for another, and H shouted at me. Being shouted at put a certain resolve back into me, and, in a tone I did my best to make sound offhand, I managed to tell H what I had heard that day from the student. H said, using her country word for it, that it sounded half-baked, and, as though angry, knit her brow briefly. That was all; she went quietly on with her sewing. There was no muddied air about her anywhere. I believed H.
その夜私は悪いものを読んだ。ルソオの懺悔録であった。ルソオが、やはり細君の以前の事で、苦汁を嘗めた箇所に突き当り、たまらなくなって来た。私は、Ｈを信じられなくなったのである。その夜、とうとう吐き出させた。学生から聞かされた事は、すべて本当であった。もっと、ひどかった。掘り下げて行くと、際限が無いような気配さえ感ぜられた。私は中途で止めてしまった。
That night I read a bad thing. It was Rousseau's Confessions. I came up against the passage where Rousseau, too, over the matter of his wife's past, tasted a bitter draft, and it became more than I could bear. I found I could no longer believe H. That night I made her, at last, spew it all out. What the student had told me was entirely true. It was worse than that, even. As I dug further down, I felt as though there might be no end to it at all. I stopped myself midway.
私だとて、その方面では、人を責める資格が無い。鎌倉の事件は、どうしたことだ。けれども私は、その夜は煮えくりかえった。私はその日までＨを、謂わば掌中の玉のように大事にして、誇っていたのだということに気附いた。こいつの為に生きていたのだ。私は女を、無垢のままで救ったとばかり思っていたのである。Ｈの言うままを、勇者の如く単純に合点していたのである。友人達にも、私は、それを誇って語っていた。Ｈは、このように気象が強いから、僕の所へ来る迄は、守りとおす事が出来たのだと。目出度いとも、何とも、形容の言葉が無かった。馬鹿息子である。女とは、どんなものだか知らなかった。私はＨの欺瞞を憎む気は、少しも起らなかった。告白するＨを可愛いとさえ思った。背中を、さすってやりたく思った。私は、ただ、残念であったのである。私は、いやになった。自分の生活の姿を、棍棒で粉砕したく思った。要するに、やり切れなくなってしまったのである。私は、自首して出た。
Even I, myself, had no standing to reproach anyone else in that quarter. What, then, of the affair at Kamakura. And yet that night I seethed. I realized that up until that day I had cherished H, taken pride in her, as though she were a jewel held in the palm of my hand. It was for this woman's sake that I had been living. I had simply believed that I had saved this woman while she remained pure and untouched. I had, as simply as any hero, taken H at her word, just as she gave it. To my friends, too, I had spoken of it, proud of it. Because H had such strength of character, I would say, she had been able to keep herself intact right up until she came to me. Fatuous, or whatever you care to call it—there was no word for it. A foolish son I was. I had not known what sort of thing a woman is. I found not the slightest anger rising in me against H's deception. I even thought her lovable, confessing as she was. I wanted to stroke her back for her. What I felt was, simply, regret. I grew sick of it all. I wanted to smash the whole shape of my own life with a club. In short, it had become more than I could endure. I turned myself in.
検事の取調べが一段落して、死にもせず私は再び東京の街を歩いていた。帰るところは、Ｈの部屋より他に無い。私はＨのところへ、急いで行った。侘しい再会である。共に卑屈に笑いながら、私たちは力弱く握手した。八丁堀を引き上げて、芝区・白金三光町。大きい空家の、離れの一室を借りて住んだ。故郷の兄たちは、呆れ果てながらも、そっとお金を送ってよこすのである。Ｈは、何事も無かったように元気になっていた。けれども私は、少しずつ、どうやら阿呆から眼ざめていた。遺書を綴った。「思い出」百枚である。今では、この「思い出」が私の処女作という事になっている。自分の幼時からの悪を、飾らずに書いて置きたいと思ったのである。二十四歳の秋の事である。草蓬々の広い廃園を眺めながら、私は離れの一室に坐って、めっきり笑を失っていた。私は、再び死ぬつもりでいた。きざと言えば、きざである。いい気なものであった。私は、やはり、人生をドラマと見做していた。いや、ドラマを人生と見做していた。もう今は、誰の役にも立たぬ。唯一のＨにも、他人の手垢が附いていた。生きて行く張合いが全然、一つも無かった。ばかな、滅亡の民の一人として、死んで行こうと、覚悟をきめていた。時潮が私に振り当てた役割を、忠実に演じてやろうと思った。必ず人に負けてやる、という悲しい卑屈な役割を。
Once the public procurator's questioning had run its course, I was, without so much as dying, walking again through the streets of Tokyo. There was no place to go back to but H's room. I hurried there to H. It was a forlorn reunion. Both of us laughing abjectly, we shook hands weakly. I pulled out of Hacchobori for Sankocho, Shirokane, in Shiba ward. We rented and lived in a single detached room of a large empty house. My brothers back home, exasperated past all patience as they were, still quietly went on sending money. H had grown cheerful again, as though nothing had happened. But I, little by little, was somehow waking from my folly. I wrote out a testament. "Memories," a hundred sheets of it. Nowadays this "Memories" is counted as my first work. I had wanted to set down, without ornament, my own wickedness from earliest childhood. This was in the autumn of my twenty-fourth year. Gazing out over the wide ruin of a garden, rank with weeds, I sat in that one detached room and had, by now, quite lost the habit of laughing. I meant to die again. Affected, if you call it affected, it was affected. I was pleased enough with myself, all the same. I still, after all, took life for a drama. No—I took drama for life. By now I was of use to no one. Even H, the one person left to me, bore the fingermarks of other men. There was not a single spark left to make living worth the effort. I had made up my mind to die as one of a foolish, doomed people. I meant to play out, faithfully, the part that the tide of the times had assigned me. The sad, servile part of a man who would always, deliberately, let the other man win.
けれども人生は、ドラマでなかった。二幕目は誰も知らない。「滅び」の役割を以て登場しながら、最後まで退場しない男もいる。小さい遺書のつもりで、こんな穢い子供もいましたという幼年及び少年時代の私の告白を、書き綴ったのであるが、その遺書が、逆に猛烈に気がかりになって、私の虚無に幽かな燭燈がともった。死に切れなかった。その「思い出」一篇だけでは、なんとしても、不満になって来たのである。どうせ、ここまで書いたのだ。全部を書いて置きたい。きょう迄の生活の全部を、ぶちまけてみたい。あれも、これも。書いて置きたい事が一ぱい出て来た。まず、鎌倉の事件を書いて、駄目。どこかに手落が在る。さらに又、一作書いて、やはり不満である。溜息ついて、また次の一作にとりかかる。ピリオドを打ち得ず、小さいコンマの連続だけである。永遠においでおいでの、あの悪魔に、私はそろそろ食われかけていた。蟷螂の斧である。
But life was not a drama. No one knows what the second act holds. There are men who make their entrance in the role of "ruin" and yet never exit, to the very end. I had meant it as a small testament, and set down, as a confession, my own childhood and boyhood—here, too, was such a filthy child—but that testament, contrary to my intent, became a furious preoccupation, and a faint lamp was lit in my nihilism. I could not manage to die outright. That single piece, "Memories," alone, had somehow become unsatisfying to me, whatever I did. Having come this far with it, I might as well write it all. I wanted to spill out the whole of my life up to that day. This too, and that too. Things I wanted to set down came pouring out, more and more. First I wrote the affair at Kamakura, and it wouldn't do. There was some failing in it somewhere. I wrote yet another piece, and again I was dissatisfied. I would sigh, and take up the next piece after that. I could not manage to set down a full stop, only a string of small commas. I was, by degrees, being devoured by that demon forever beckoning me on. A mantis lifting its arm against the wheel.
私は二十五歳になっていた。昭和八年である。私は、このとしの三月に大学を卒業しなければならなかった。けれども私は、卒業どころか、てんで試験にさえ出ていない。故郷の兄たちは、それを知らない。ばかな事ばかり、やらかしたがそのお詫びに、学校だけは卒業して見せてくれるだろう。それくらいの誠実は持っている奴だと、ひそかに期待していた様子であった。私は見事に裏切った。卒業する気は無いのである。信頼している者を欺くことは、狂せんばかりの地獄である。それからの二年間、私は、その地獄の中に住んでいた。来年は、必ず卒業します。どうか、もう一年、おゆるし下さい、と長兄に泣訴しては裏切る。そのとしも、そうであった。その翌るとしも、そうであった。死ぬるばかりの猛省と自嘲と恐怖の中で、死にもせず私は、身勝手な、遺書と称する一聯の作品に凝っていた。これが出来たならば。そいつは所詮、青くさい気取った感傷に過ぎなかったのかも知れない。けれども私は、その感傷に、命を懸けていた。私は書き上げた作品を、大きい紙袋に、三つ四つと貯蔵した。次第に作品の数も殖えて来た。私は、その紙袋に毛筆で、「晩年」と書いた。その一聯の遺書の、銘題のつもりであった。もう、これで、おしまいだという意味なのである。芝の空家に買手が附いたとやらで、私たちは、そのとしの早春に、そこを引き上げなければならなかった。学校を卒業できなかったので、故郷からの仕送りも、相当減額されていた。一層倹約をしなければならぬ。杉並区・天沼三丁目。知人の家の一部屋を借りて住んだ。その人は、新聞社に勤めて居られて、立派な市民であった。
I had turned twenty-five. It was Showa eight. I was obliged to graduate from the university that March. But I, far from graduating, had not so much as sat for the examinations at all. My brothers back home did not know it. He's done nothing but foolish things, but as an apology for it he'll surely at least show us he can graduate from school—that much sincerity, at least, he has in him: so, it seemed, they had secretly gone on hoping. I betrayed them, splendidly. I had no intention whatever of graduating. To deceive those who trust you is a hell fit to drive one mad. For the two years that followed, I went on living inside that hell. Next year I will surely graduate. Please, forgive me one more year—so I would tearfully plead with my eldest brother, and then betray him again. That year it was so. The following year it was so as well. In the midst of a self-reproach and self-mockery and dread fierce enough to kill a man, without so much as dying, I went on, absorbed in a self-indulgent series of works I called my testament. If only this could be finished. In the end, that may have been nothing more than callow, affected sentimentality. But I had staked my life on that sentimentality. I stored away the pieces I finished, three or four at a time, in a large paper bag. Little by little the number of pieces increased. On that paper bag I wrote, with a brush, "Late Years." It was meant as the title for that series of testaments. It meant: with this, now, it is over. Word came that a buyer had been found for the empty house in Shiba, and, early that spring, we were obliged to clear out of it. Since I had failed to graduate, the money sent from home had been cut down considerably as well. I had to economize all the more. Amanuma San-chome, in Suginami ward. We rented and lived in one room of an acquaintance's house. That man worked for a newspaper company, and was a fine, upstanding citizen.
それから二年間、共に住み、実に心配をおかけした。私には、学校を卒業する気は、さらに無かった。馬鹿のように、ただ、あの著作集の完成にのみ、気を奪われていた。何か言われるのが恐しくて、私は、その知人にも、またＨにさえ、来年は卒業出来るという、一時のがれの嘘をついていた。一週間に一度くらいは、ちゃんと制服を着て家を出た。学校の図書館で、いい加減にあれこれ本を借り出して読み散らし、やがて居眠りしたり、また作品の下書をつくったりして、夕方には図書館を出て、天沼へ帰った。Ｈも、またその知人も、私を少しも疑わなかった。表面は、全く無事であったが、私は、ひそかに、あせっていた。刻一刻、気がせいた。故郷からの仕送りが、切れないうちに書き終えたかった。けれども、なかなか骨が折れた。書いては破った。私は、ぶざまにもあの悪魔に、骨の髄まで食い尽されていた。
For the two years after that we lived together, and I caused him real anxiety. I had, now, not the slightest intention of graduating from school. Like a fool, I was absorbed in nothing but the completion of that collection of my own writing. Afraid of being spoken to about it, I told that acquaintance, and even H, the makeshift lie that I would graduate the following year. About once a week I would put on my student uniform properly and leave the house. At the school library I would carelessly borrow this book and that, read them scattershot, doze off after a while, or draft out pieces of my own, and toward evening leave the library and go back to Amanuma. Neither H nor that acquaintance ever doubted me in the least. On the surface, everything was entirely quiet, but secretly, I was in a fever of impatience. Minute by minute I felt pressed for time. I wanted to finish writing before the money sent from home ran out. But it was, all the same, terribly hard going. I wrote, and tore up what I wrote. Unsightly as it was, I was being devoured, down to the very marrow of my bones, by that demon.
一年経った。私は卒業しなかった。兄たちは激怒したが、私はれいの泣訴した。来年は必ず卒業しますと、はっきり嘘を言った。それ以外に、送金を願う口実は無かった。実情はとても誰にも、言えたものではなかった。私は共犯者を作りたくなかったのである。私ひとりを、完全に野良息子にして置きたかった。すると、周囲の人の立場も、はっきりしていて、いささかも私に巻添え食うような事がないだろうと信じた。遺書を作るために、もう一年などと、そんな突飛な事は言い出せるものでない。私は、ひとりよがりの謂わば詩的な夢想家と思われるのが、何よりいやだった。兄たちだって、私がそんな非現実的な事を言い出したら、送金したくても、送金を中止するより他は無かったろう。実情を知りながら送金したとなれば、兄たちは、後々世間の人から、私の共犯者のように思われるだろう。それは、いやだ。私はあくまで狡智佞弁の弟になって兄たちを欺いていなければならぬ、と盗賊の三分の理窟に似ていたが、そんなふうに大真面目に考えていた。私は、やはり一週間にいちどは、制服を着て登校した。Ｈも、またその新聞社の知人も、来年の卒業を、美しく信じていた。私は、せっぱ詰まった。来る日も来る日も、真黒だった。私は、悪人でない！ 人を欺く事は、地獄である。やがて、天沼一丁目。三丁目は通勤に不便のゆえを以て、知人は、そのとしの春に、一丁目の市場の裏に居を移した。荻窪駅の近くである。誘われて私たちも一緒について行き、その家の二階の部屋を借りた。私は毎夜、眠られなかった。安い酒を飲んだ。痰が、やたらに出た。病気かも知れぬと思うのだが、私は、それどころでは無かった。
A year passed. I did not graduate. My brothers were furious, but I gave them the same tearful pleading as always. I said, flatly, in a lie: next year I will certainly graduate. There was no other pretext by which to ask for money. The real state of things was not something I could possibly have told anyone at all. I did not want to make an accomplice of anyone. I wanted to keep myself, alone, entirely as the wastrel son. If I did, I believed, the position of everyone around me would remain clear, and none of them would be caught up in it, even slightly, on my account. To ask for one more year in order to finish a testament was not the sort of outlandish thing one could bring oneself to say. What I hated more than anything was to be taken for a self-satisfied, so to speak poetic, dreamer. Even my brothers, if I had come out with anything so unrealistic, would have had no choice but to stop sending money, however much they might have wanted to send it. And if it turned out they had gone on sending money knowing the real state of things, people in the world would in time come to think of my brothers as my accomplices. That, I hated. I had, to the last, to go on deceiving my brothers as a cunning, glib-tongued younger brother—it resembled the thief's own three-tenths logic, but that is how earnestly I thought it through. I still went off to school, once a week, properly in my uniform. Both H and that acquaintance from the newspaper company went on beautifully believing in next year's graduation. I was driven into a corner. Day after day was pitch black. I am not a bad man! To deceive people is a hell. Before long, it was Amanuma Icchome. Since Sanchome was inconvenient for his commute, my acquaintance moved that spring to behind the market in Icchome, near Ogikubo station. Invited along, we went together and rented a room on the second floor of that house. I could not sleep, night after night. I drank cheap liquor. Phlegm came up endlessly. I thought I might be ill, but I was in no position to attend to that.
早く、あの、紙袋の中の作品集を纒めあげたかった。身勝手な、いい気な考えであろうが、私はそれを、皆へのお詫びとして残したかった。私に出来る精一ぱいの事であった。そのとしの晩秋に、私は、どうやら書き上げた。二十数篇の中、十四篇だけを選び出し、あとの作品は、書き損じの原稿と共に焼き捨てた。行李一杯ぶんは充分にあった。庭に持ち出して、きれいに燃やした。
I wanted, quickly, to gather together that collection of works in the paper bag. It was a self-centered, self-satisfied notion, perhaps, but I wanted to leave it behind as an apology to everyone. It was the very most I was able to do. In the late autumn of that year, I somehow managed to finish writing it. Of the twenty-odd pieces, I chose out only fourteen, and the rest I burned along with the spoiled drafts. There was enough to fill a wicker trunk. I carried it out to the garden and burned it clean away.
「ね、なぜ焼いたの」Ｈは、その夜、ふっと言い出した。
"Say, why did you burn them?" H suddenly said that night.
「要らなくなったから」私は微笑して答えた。
"Because I didn't need them anymore." I answered with a smile.
「なぜ焼いたの」同じ言葉を繰り返した。泣いていた。
"Why did you burn them?" She repeated the same words. She was crying.
私は身のまわりの整理をはじめた。人から借りていた書籍はそれぞれ返却し、手紙やノオトも、屑屋に売った。「晩年」の袋の中には、別に書状を二通こっそり入れて置いた。準備が出来た様子である。私は毎夜、安い酒を飲みに出かけた。Ｈと顔を合わせて居るのが、恐しかったのである。そのころ、或る学友から、同人雑誌を出さぬかという相談を受けた。私は、半ばは、いい加減であった。「青い花」という名前だったら、やってもいいと答えた。冗談から駒が出た。諸方から同志が名乗って出たのである。その中の二人と、私は急激に親しくなった。私は謂わば青春の最後の情熱を、そこで燃やした。死ぬる前夜の乱舞である。共に酔って、低能の学生たちを殴打した。穢れた女たちを肉親のように愛した。Ｈの箪笥は、Ｈの知らぬ間に、からっぽになっていた。純文芸冊子「青い花」は、そのとしの十二月に出来た。たった一冊出て仲間は四散した。目的の無い異様な熱狂に呆れたのである。あとには、私たち三人だけが残った。三馬鹿と言われた。けれども此の三人は生涯の友人であった。私には、二人に教えられたものが多く在る。
I began putting my affairs in order. The books I had borrowed from people I returned, each to its owner, and my letters and notebooks I sold to the scrap dealer. Into the paper bag holding "The Final Years" I secretly slipped two more letters besides. It looked, by all appearances, as though preparations were complete. Every night I went out to drink cheap liquor. Being face to face with H had become a terror to me. Around that time, a certain schoolfriend approached me about putting out a coterie magazine together. I was, I confess, half careless about it. I answered that if it were to be called "Blue Flower," I might go along with it. A joke turned serious. Comrades came forward from every direction to declare themselves. With two of them I grew close with startling speed. It was there, one might say, that I burned the last passion of my youth. It was a riot of dancing on the eve of death. We drank together and beat up the feeble-minded students. We loved defiled women as though they were our own flesh and blood. H's chest of drawers, without her knowing it, had gone empty. The pure literary pamphlet "Blue Flower" came out that December. Only a single issue appeared before the group scattered — appalled, I suppose, at a strange fervor with no object. Afterward only the three of us remained. People called us the three fools. But the three of us have been friends for life. There is much I have been taught by the other two.
あくる年、三月、そろそろまた卒業の季節である。私は、某新聞社の入社試験を受けたりしていた。同居の知人にも、またＨにも、私は近づく卒業にいそいそしているように見せ掛けたかった。新聞記者になって、一生平凡に暮すのだ、と言って一家を明るく笑わせていた。どうせ露見する事なのに、一日でも一刻でも永く平和を持続させたくて、人を驚愕させるのが何としても恐しくて、私は懸命に其の場かぎりの嘘をつくのである。私は、いつでも、そうであった。そうして、せっぱつまって、死ぬ事を考える。結局は露見して、人を幾層倍も強く驚愕させ、激怒させるばかりであるのに、どうしても、その興覚めの現実を言い出し得ず、もう一刻、もう一刻と自ら虚偽の地獄を深めている。もちろん新聞社などへ、はいるつもりも無かったし、また試験にパスする筈も無かった。完璧の瞞着の陣地も、今は破れかけた。死ぬ時が来た、と思った。私は三月中旬、ひとりで鎌倉へ行った。昭和十年である。私は鎌倉の山で縊死を企てた。
The following year, in March, graduation season was again drawing near. I sat, among other things, for the hiring examination at a certain newspaper company. To the acquaintance I lived with, and to H as well, I wanted to appear busily eager about my approaching graduation. I would say I was going to become a newspaper reporter and live an ordinary life to the end of my days, and make the whole household laugh brightly at it. Even though it was bound to be found out in the end, I wanted the peace to last one more day, one more hour, and I was so afraid, no matter what, of startling people, that I told this makeshift lie with all my might. I was always like that. And then, driven into a corner, I would think of dying. In the end it would come out, and only startle and enrage people many times more violently, and yet I could never bring myself to speak the sobering truth, and so, one hour more, one hour more, I deepened for myself a hell of falsehood. Needless to say I had no intention of joining any newspaper company, nor was there any chance I would pass the examination. Even my perfect fortress of deception had now begun to crumble. I thought: the time to die has come. In the middle of March I went alone to Kamakura. It was Showa 10. I attempted to hang myself in the hills of Kamakura.
やはり鎌倉の、海に飛び込んで騒ぎを起してから、五年目の事である。私は泳げるので、海で死ぬのは、むずかしかった。私は、かねて確実と聞いていた縊死を選んだ。けれども私は、再び、ぶざまな失敗をした。息を、吹き返したのである。私の首は、人並はずれて太いのかも知れない。首筋が赤く爛れたままの姿で、私は、ぼんやり天沼の家に帰った。
It was, as it happened, the fifth year since I had caused that commotion by throwing myself into the sea, also at Kamakura. Since I could swim, dying in the sea was difficult. This time I chose hanging, which I had long heard was certain. But once again I made a clumsy failure of it. I came back to life. My neck, perhaps, is unusually thick for a man's. With my neck still raw and red, I went home, dazed, to the house in Amanuma.
自分の運命を自分で規定しようとして失敗した。ふらふら帰宅すると、見知らぬ不思議な世界が開かれていた。Ｈは、玄関で私の背筋をそっと撫でた。他の人も皆、よかった、よかったと言って、私を、いたわってくれた。人生の優しさに私は呆然とした。長兄も、田舎から駈けつけて来ていた。私は、長兄に厳しく罵倒されたけれども、その兄が懐しくて、慕わしくて、ならなかった。私は、生まれてはじめてと言っていいくらいの不思議な感情ばかりを味わった。
I had tried to determine my own fate for myself, and had failed. When I came home, unsteady on my feet, an unfamiliar, strange world had opened up. At the front door H gently stroked my back. Everyone else, too, said how glad, how glad they were, and were kind to me. I was struck dumb by the gentleness of this life. My eldest brother had come rushing from the countryside as well. He rebuked me harshly, but I could not help how dear he was to me, how I longed for him. I tasted, one after another, feelings so strange that I might almost say I felt them for the first time in my life.
思いも設けなかった運命が、すぐ続いて展開した。それから数日後、私は劇烈な腹痛に襲われたのである。私は一昼夜眠らずに怺えた。湯たんぽで腹部を温めた。気が遠くなりかけて、医者を呼んだ。私は蒲団のままで寝台車に乗せられ、阿佐ヶ谷の外科病院に運ばれた。すぐに手術された。盲腸炎である。医者に見せるのが遅かった上に、湯たんぽで温めたのが悪かった。腹膜に膿が流出していて、困難な手術になった。手術して二日目に、咽喉から血塊がいくらでも出た。前からの胸部の病気が、急に表面にあらわれて来たのであった。私は、虫の息になった。医者にさえはっきり見放されたけれども、悪業の深い私は、少しずつ恢復して来た。一箇月たって腹部の傷口だけは癒着した。けれども私は伝染病患者として、世田谷区・経堂の内科病院に移された。Ｈは、絶えず私の傍に附いていた。ベエゼしてもならぬと、お医者に言われました、と笑って私に教えた。その病院の院長は、長兄の友人であった。私は特別に大事にされた。広い病室を二つ借りて家財道具全部を持ち込み、病院に移住してしまった。五月、六月、七月、そろそろ藪蚊が出て来て病室に白い蚊帳を吊りはじめたころ、私は院長の指図で、千葉県船橋町に転地した。海岸である。町はずれに、新築の家を借りて住んだ。転地保養の意味であったのだが、ここも、私の為に悪かった。地獄の大動乱がはじまった。私は、阿佐ヶ谷の外科病院にいた時から、いまわしい悪癖に馴染んでいた。麻痺剤の使用である。はじめは医者も私の患部の苦痛を鎮める為に、朝夕ガアゼの詰めかえの時にそれを使用したのであったが、やがて私は、その薬品に拠らなければ眠れなくなった。
A fate I could never have foreseen unfolded, one thing following straight upon another. A few days later I was struck by a violent pain in my belly. I bore it through a day and a night without sleep. I warmed my stomach with a hot-water bottle. I began to grow faint, and a doctor was called. I was carried, bedding and all, on a stretcher-car to a surgical hospital in Asagaya. I was operated on at once. It was appendicitis. Not only had I been slow to see a doctor, but warming it with the hot-water bottle had made things worse. Pus had spread into the peritoneum, and the operation was a difficult one. On the second day after the surgery, I brought up clot after clot of blood from my throat. The chest ailment I had long carried had suddenly come to the surface. I was reduced to a thread of breath. Even the doctors had plainly given me up, but I, so deep in my sins, recovered little by little. After a month the wound in my belly had at least closed over. But I was moved, as a case of infectious disease, to an internal medicine hospital in Kyōdō, Setagaya. H was constantly at my side. The doctor says even kissing is forbidden, she told me once, laughing. The director of that hospital was a friend of my eldest brother's. I was given exceptional care. I rented two large sickrooms, brought in all our household goods, and more or less moved house into the hospital. In May, June, July, when the wood-mosquitoes had begun to appear and white mosquito nets were being hung in the sickroom, I was sent, on the director's instructions, to convalesce at the town of Funabashi in Chiba Prefecture. It is on the coast. On the edge of the town I rented and lived in a newly built house. It was meant as a change of air for my health, but this place too was bad for me. A great upheaval of hell began. Ever since my time at the surgical hospital in Asagaya, I had grown familiar with a loathsome vice: the use of narcotics. At first even the doctors used it, morning and evening when the gauze was changed, to ease the pain of my wound, but before long I found I could not sleep without relying on that drug.
私は不眠の苦痛には極度にもろかった。私は毎夜、医者にたのんだ。ここの医者は、私のからだを見放していた。私の願いを、いつでも優しく聞き容れてくれた。内科病院に移ってからも、私は院長に執拗にたのんだ。院長は三度に一度くらいは渋々応じた。もはや、肉体の為では無くて、自分の慚愧、焦躁を消す為に、医者に求めるようになっていたのである。私には侘しさを怺える力が無かった。船橋に移ってからは町の医院に行き、自分の不眠と中毒症状を訴えて、その薬品を強要した。のちには、その気の弱い町医者に無理矢理、証明書を書かせて、町の薬屋から直接に薬品を購入した。気が附くと、私は陰惨な中毒患者になっていた。たちまち、金につまった。私は、その頃、毎月九十円の生活費を、長兄から貰っていた。それ以上の臨時の入費に就いては、長兄も流石に拒否した。当然の事であった。私は、兄の愛情に報いようとする努力を何一つ、していない。身勝手に、命をいじくり廻してばかりいる。そのとしの秋以来、時たま東京の街に現れる私の姿は、既に薄穢い半狂人であった。その時期の、様々の情ない自分の姿を、私は、みんな知っている。忘れられない。私は、日本一の陋劣な青年になっていた。十円、二十円の金を借りに、東京へ出て来るのである。雑誌社の編輯員の面前で、泣いてしまった事もある。あまり執拗くたのんで編輯員に呶鳴られた事もある。その頃は、私の原稿も、少しは金になる可能性があったのである。
I was extremely weak against the suffering of sleeplessness. Every night I begged the doctor. The doctors here had already given up on my body. They always kindly granted what I asked. Even after I moved to the internal medicine hospital, I begged the director persistently. About one time in three, the director grudgingly consented. By then it was no longer for my body's sake that I sought it from the doctors, but to blot out my own shame, my own agitation. I had no strength left to endure loneliness. After moving to Funabashi, I went to the town clinic, complained of my sleeplessness and my symptoms of addiction, and coerced them into giving me the drug. Later I made the weak-willed town doctor write me a certificate against his own judgment, and bought the drug directly from the town pharmacy. Before I knew it, I had become a squalid addict. Money ran out at once. In those days I received ninety yen a month for living expenses from my eldest brother. Beyond that, for extraordinary expenses, even my brother, understandably, refused me. It was only natural. I had made not the slightest effort to repay my brother's love. I only went on selfishly toying with my own life. From the autumn of that year on, whenever I occasionally appeared on the streets of Tokyo, I was already a squalid, half-mad figure. I know every one of the wretched shapes I cut in that period. I have not forgotten them. I had become the basest young man in Japan. I would come up to Tokyo to borrow ten yen, twenty yen. There were times I broke down and wept in front of a magazine editor. There were times an editor shouted at me for pestering him too persistently. In those days there was still some chance my manuscripts might bring in a little money.
私が阿佐ヶ谷の病院や、経堂の病院に寝ている間に、友人達の奔走に依り、私の、あの紙袋の中の「遺書」は二つ三つ、いい雑誌に発表せられ、その反響として起った罵倒の言葉も、また支持の言葉も、共に私には強烈すぎて狼狽、不安の為に逆上して、薬品中毒は一層すすみ、あれこれ苦しさの余り、のこのこ雑誌社に出掛けては編輯員または社長にまで面会を求めて、原稿料の前借をねだるのである。自分の苦悩に狂いすぎて、他の人もまた精一ぱいで生きているのだという当然の事実に気附かなかった。あの紙袋の中の作品も、一篇残さず売り払ってしまった。もう何も売るものが無い。すぐには作品も出来なかった。既に材料が枯渇して、何も書けなくなっていた。その頃の文壇は私を指さして、「才あって徳なし」と評していたが、私自身は、「徳の芽あれども才なし」であると信じていた。私には所謂、文才というものは無い。からだごと、ぶっつけて行くより、てを知らなかった。野暮天である。一宿一飯の恩義などという固苦しい道徳に悪くこだわって、やり切れなくなり、逆にやけくそに破廉恥ばかり働く類である。私は厳しい保守的な家に育った。借銭は、最悪の罪であった。借銭から、のがれようとして、更に大きい借銭を作った。あの薬品の中毒をも、借銭の慚愧を消すために、もっともっと、と自ら強くした。薬屋への支払いは、増大する一方である。私は白昼の銀座をめそめそ泣きながら歩いた事もある。金が欲しかった。私は二十人ちかくの人から、まるで奪い取るように金を借りてしまった。死ねなかった。その借銭を、きれいに返してしまってから、死にたく思っていた。
While I lay in the hospitals at Asagaya and at Kyōdō, through the exertions of my friends, two or three of the "testaments" from that paper bag of mine were published in good magazines, and both the words of abuse and the words of support that arose in response were, for me, too violent to bear; in my agitation and anxiety I grew half out of my mind, my drug addiction advanced still further, and out of sheer misery over one thing and another I went shuffling off to the magazine companies, sought audience with editors or even with company presidents, and begged an advance on my manuscript fees. I was too crazed by my own agony to notice the plain fact that other people, too, were living as hard as they could. The works in that paper bag as well, I sold off, every last one. There was nothing left to sell. Nor could I produce new work at once. My material had already run dry, and I could write nothing. The literary world of that time pointed at me and pronounced, "talent without virtue," but I myself believed it was, "the seed of virtue without talent." I have no so-called literary gift. I know no way but to hurl my whole body at the thing. I am a graceless man. Clinging badly to some stiff morality about the debt owed for a night's lodging and a meal, unable to bear it, I am the sort who instead turns, out of sheer desperation, to nothing but shameless conduct. I was raised in a strict, conservative household. Debt was the worst of sins. Trying to escape one debt, I made a still larger one. Even that drug addiction, I drove further and further, more and more, in order to blot out the shame of my debts. My payments to the pharmacy only went on increasing. There were times I walked through the Ginza in broad daylight, sniveling and crying. I wanted money. I ended up borrowing money from nearly twenty people, all but snatching it from them. I could not die. I meant to pay back every last debt cleanly, and only then to die.
私は、人から相手にされなくなった。船橋へ転地して一箇年経って、昭和十一年の秋に私は自動車に乗せられ、東京、板橋区の或る病院に運び込まれた。一夜眠って、眼が覚めてみると、私は脳病院の一室にいた。
People stopped having anything to do with me. A year after I had moved to Funabashi for my health, in the autumn of Showa 11, I was put into a car and carried to a certain hospital in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo. I slept one night, and when I woke, I found myself in a room of a mental hospital.
一箇月そこで暮して、秋晴れの日の午後、やっと退院を許された。私は、迎えに来ていたＨと二人で自動車に乗った。
I lived there a month, and on the afternoon of a clear autumn day, I was at last allowed to leave. H had come to meet me, and the two of us got into the car together.
一箇月振りで逢ったわけだが、二人とも、黙っていた。自動車が走り出して、しばらくしてからＨが口を開いた。
We were seeing each other for the first time in a month, and yet neither of us spoke. The car started off, and after a while H opened her mouth.
「もう薬は、やめるんだね」怒っている口調であった。
"You're done with the drug now, aren't you." Her tone was angry.
「僕は、これから信じないんだ」私は病院で覚えて来た唯一の事を言った。
"From now on I don't believe in anything." I said the one thing I had learned at the hospital.
「そう」現実家のＨは、私の言葉を何か金銭的な意味に解したらしく、深く首肯いて、「人は、あてになりませんよ」
"Is that so." H, practical as she was, seemed to take my words in some financial sense, and nodded deeply. "People can't be relied on."
「おまえの事も信じないんだよ」
"I don't believe in you either."
Ｈは気まずそうな顔をした。
H looked ill at ease.
船橋の家は、私の入院中に廃止せられて、Ｈは杉並区・天沼三丁目のアパートの一室に住んでいた。私は、そこに落ちついた。二つの雑誌社から、原稿の注文が来ていた。すぐに、その退院の夜から、私は書きはじめた。二つの小説を書き上げ、その原稿料を持って、熱海に出かけ、一箇月間、節度も無く酒を飲んだ。この後どうしていいか、わからなかった。長兄からは、もう三年間、月々の生活費をもらえる事になっていたが、入院前の山ほどの負債は、そのままに残っていた。熱海で、いい小説を書き、それで出来たお金でもって、目前の最も気がかりな負債だけでも返そうという計画も、私には在ったのであるが、小説を書くどころか、私は自分の周囲の荒涼に堪えかねて、ただ、酒を飲んでばかりいた。つくづく自分を、駄目な男だと思った。熱海では、かえって私は、さらに借銭を、ふやしてしまった。何をしても、だめである。私は、完全に敗れた様子であった。
The house at Funabashi had been given up while I was in the hospital, and H was living in a room of an apartment building in Amanuma 3-chōme, Suginami Ward. I settled in there. Requests for manuscripts had come in from two magazine companies. I began writing that very night, the night I left the hospital. I finished two stories, and with the fees from them I went off to Atami and, for a month, drank without any restraint at all. I had no idea what to do with myself after that. It had been arranged that my eldest brother would go on giving me a monthly living allowance for three more years, but the mountain of debt I had run up before entering the hospital remained just as it was. I did have a plan, of writing a good story at Atami and using the money it brought in to pay off at least the most pressing of the debts before me, but far from writing any story, I could not bear the desolation all around me, and did nothing but drink. I thought to myself, over and over, what a hopeless man I was. At Atami, if anything, I only added still more to my debts. Whatever I did, it came to nothing. I seemed to be a man utterly and completely defeated.
私は天沼のアパートに帰り、あらゆる望みを放棄した薄よごれた肉体を、ごろりと横たえた。私は、はや二十九歳であった。何も無かった。私には、どてら一枚。Ｈも、着たきりであった。もう、この辺が、どん底というものであろうと思った。長兄からの月々の仕送りに縋って、虫のように黙って暮した。
I went back to the apartment in Amanuma and laid down my grimy body, one that had abandoned every kind of hope. I was already twenty-nine. I had nothing at all. I owned one padded robe. H too had only the clothes on her back. I thought that this, surely, must be rock bottom. Clinging to the monthly remittance from my eldest brother, I lived on in silence, like some kind of insect.
けれども、まだまだ、それは、どん底ではなかった。そのとしの早春に、私は或る洋画家から思いも設けなかった意外の相談を受けたのである。ごく親しい友人であった。私は話を聞いて、窒息しそうになった。Ｈが既に、哀しい間違いを、していたのである。あの、不吉な病院から出た時、自動車の中で、私の何でも無い抽象的な放言に、ひどくどぎまぎしたＨの様子がふっと思い出された。私はＨに苦労をかけて来たが、けれども、生きて在る限りはＨと共に暮して行くつもりでいたのだ。私の愛情の表現は拙いから、Ｈも、また洋画家も、それに気が附いてくれなかったのである。相談を受けても、私には、どうする事も出来なかった。私は、誰にも傷をつけたく無いと思った。三人の中では、私が一番の年長者であった。私だけでも落ちついて、立派な指図をしたいと思ったのだが、やはり私は、あまりの事に顛倒し、狼狽し、おろおろしてしまって、かえってＨたちに軽蔑されたくらいであった。何も出来なかった。そのうちに洋画家は、だんだん逃腰になった。私は、苦しい中でも、Ｈを不憫に思った。Ｈは、もう、死ぬるつもりでいるらしかった。どうにも、やり切れなくなった時に、私も死ぬ事を考える。二人で一緒に死のう。神さまだって、ゆるしてくれる。私たちは、仲の良い兄妹のように、旅に出た。水上温泉。その夜、二人は山で自殺を行った。Ｈを死なせては、ならぬと思った。私は、その事に努力した。Ｈは、生きた。私も見事に失敗した。薬品を用いたのである。
But even that, still, was not rock bottom. In the early spring of that year, I received an unexpected, unlooked-for confidence from a certain Western-style painter. He was a very close friend. Hearing what he had to say, I felt as though I could not breathe. H had already, it turned out, made a sad mistake. I suddenly remembered how, in the car when I had come out of that ill-omened hospital, H had gone terribly flustered at some empty, abstract remark of mine. I had put H through a great deal of hardship, but I had meant, for as long as I lived, to go on living together with her. Because my way of showing love was so clumsy, neither H nor the painter had ever noticed it. Even hearing his confidence, there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to wound no one. Of the three of us, I was the eldest. I wanted, at least, to keep my composure and give some proper direction, but instead I was so overturned by the whole thing, so agitated, so flustered, that H and the others rather came to despise me for it. I could do nothing. Meanwhile the painter, little by little, began to draw back. Even in the midst of my own suffering, I felt pity for H. It seemed H had already resolved to die. When things become truly unbearable, I too think of dying. Let the two of us die together. Even God, surely, would forgive it. We went off on a trip, like a close and loving brother and sister. Minakami Hot Springs. That night, the two of us attempted suicide in the mountains. I thought H must not be allowed to die. I made every effort toward that. H lived. I too failed, splendidly. I had used drugs.
私たちは、とうとう別れた。Ｈを此の上ひきとめる勇気が私に無かった。捨てたと言われてもよい。人道主義とやらの虚勢で、我慢を装ってみても、その後の日々の醜悪な地獄が明確に見えているような気がした。Ｈは、ひとりで田舎の母親の許へ帰って行った。洋画家の消息は、わからなかった。私は、ひとりアパートに残って自炊の生活をはじめた。焼酎を飲む事を覚えた。歯がぼろぼろに欠けて来た。私は、いやしい顔になった。私は、アパートの近くの下宿に移った。最下等の下宿屋であった。私は、それが自分に、ふさわしいと思った。これが、この世の見おさめと、門辺に立てば月かげや、枯野は走り、松は佇む。私は、下宿の四畳半で、ひとりで酒を飲み、酔っては下宿を出て、下宿の門柱に寄りかかり、そんな出鱈目な歌を、小声で呟いている事が多かった。二、三の共に離れがたい親友の他には、誰も私を相手にしなかった。私が世の中から、どんなに見られているのか、少しずつ私にも、わかって来た。私は無智驕慢の無頼漢、または白痴、または下等狡猾の好色漢、にせ天才の詐欺師、ぜいたく三昧の暮しをして、金につまると狂言自殺をして田舎の親たちを、おどかす。貞淑の妻を、犬か猫のように虐待して、とうとう之を追い出した。その他、様々の伝説が嘲笑、嫌悪憤怒を以て世人に語られ、私は全く葬り去られ、廃人の待遇を受けていたのである。私は、それに気が附き、下宿から一歩も外に出たくなくなった。酒の無い夜は、塩せんべいを齧りながら探偵小説を読むのが、幽かに楽しかった。雑誌社からも新聞社からも、原稿の注文は何も無い。また何も書きたくなかった。書けなかった。
In the end we parted. I did not have the courage to hold H back any longer. It may as well be said that I threw her away. Even if I tried, in some sham of humanitarianism, to put on a show of forbearance, I felt I could see all too clearly the ugly hell of the days that would follow. H went back alone to her mother in the countryside. What became of the painter, I never learned. I remained alone in the apartment and began cooking for myself. I learned to drink cheap shōchū. My teeth began crumbling away, bit by bit. My face grew mean and low. I moved from the apartment to a boarding house nearby. It was the lowest sort of boarding house there was. I thought it suited me. If I stand at the gate as though taking my last look at this world, there is moonlight, the withered fields run on, and a pine stands waiting — some such nonsense of a song I would often mutter under my breath, half-drunk, having stepped out of the boarding house to lean against its gatepost, after drinking alone in my four-and-a-half-mat room. Aside from two or three close friends I could not bear to part with, no one had anything to do with me. Little by little, I came to understand just how the world looked at me. I was, so it went: an ignorant, arrogant good-for-nothing, or an idiot, or a low and cunning lecher, a fraud posing as a genius, living in reckless extravagance, who, whenever he ran short of money, staged fake suicides to terrify his parents in the country; who abused his chaste wife like a dog or a cat and in the end drove her out. Other such legends, too, were told about me by the world with mockery, disgust, and rage, and I was, altogether, buried away, treated as a ruined man. Once I realized this, I no longer wanted to set foot outside the boarding house. On nights without drink, it was a faint pleasure to nibble salted rice crackers and read detective novels. From neither the magazine companies nor the newspapers came any request for a manuscript. Nor did I want to write anything. I could not write.
けれども、あの病気中の借銭に就いては、誰もそれを催促する人は無かったが、私は夜の夢の中でさえ苦しんだ。私は、もう三十歳になっていた。
And yet, though no one pressed me over the debts from my illness, I suffered over them even in my dreams at night. I had already turned thirty.
何の転機で、そうなったろう。私は、生きなければならぬと思った。故郷の家の不幸が、私にその当然の力を与えたのか。長兄が代議士に当選して、その直後に選挙違犯で起訴された。私は、長兄の厳しい人格を畏敬している。周囲に悪い者がいたのに違いない。姉が死んだ。甥が死んだ。従弟が死んだ。私は、それらを風聞に依って知った。早くから、故郷の人たちとは、すべて音信不通になっていたのである。相続く故郷の不幸が、寝そべっている私の上半身を、少しずつ起してくれた。私は、故郷の家の大きさに、はにかんでいたのだ。金持の子というハンデキャップに、やけくそを起していたのだ。不当に恵まれているという、いやな恐怖感が、幼時から、私を卑屈にし、厭世的にしていた。金持の子供は金持の子供らしく大地獄に落ちなければならぬという信仰を持っていた。逃げるのは卑怯だ。立派に、悪業の子として死にたいと努めた。けれども、一夜、気が附いてみると、私は金持の子供どころか、着て出る着物さえ無い賤民であった。故郷からの仕送りの金も、ことし一年で切れる筈だ。既に戸籍は、分けられて在る。しかも私の生まれて育った故郷の家も、いまは不仕合わせの底にある。もはや、私には人に恐縮しなければならぬような生得の特権が、何も無い。かえって、マイナスだけである。その自覚と、もう一つ。下宿の一室に、死ぬる気魄も失って寝ころんでいる間に、私のからだが不思議にめきめき頑健になって来たという事実をも、大いに重要な一因として挙げなければならぬ。
What turning point brought that about, I wonder. I thought I must go on living. Was it the misfortunes of my family back home that gave me that natural strength? My eldest brother had been elected to the Diet, and immediately afterward was indicted for an election-law violation. I hold my eldest brother's stern character in awe. There must have been bad men around him. My sister died. My nephew died. My cousin died. I learned of these only through hearsay. I had long since fallen entirely out of touch with everyone back home. The misfortunes that followed one upon another in my hometown gradually, little by little, raised up my sprawled and prostrate upper body. I had been embarrassed by the largeness of my family's house. I had been driven to desperation by the handicap of being a rich man's son. The unpleasant dread of being unjustly favored had, since childhood, made me servile and misanthropic. I had held to a kind of faith that a rich man's child ought properly to fall into a great hell, as befits a rich man's child. To run from it would be cowardly. I strove to die splendidly, as the child of my own evil deeds. But then one night I realized that, far from being a rich man's child, I was a beggar without even a proper set of clothes to go out in. The money sent from home was due to stop within that very year. My household registry had already been divided off. And the family house where I was born and raised was itself, now, at the very bottom of misfortune. I no longer had, by birth, any privilege for which I need feel apologetic before others. If anything, there was only a deficit. That realization — and one thing more. I must also count, as a great and important factor, the fact that while I lay sprawled in a room of the boarding house, having lost even the will to die, my body had, strangely, grown steadily and remarkably robust.
なお又、年齢、戦争、歴史観の動揺、怠惰への嫌悪、文学への謙虚、神は在る、などといろいろ挙げる事も出来るであろうが、人の転機の説明は、どうも何だか空々しい。その説明が、ぎりぎりに正確を期したものであっても、それでも必ずどこかに嘘の間隙が匂っているものだ。人は、いつも、こう考えたり、そう思ったりして行路を選んでいるものでは無いからでもあろう。多くの場合、人はいつのまにか、ちがう野原を歩いている。
And beyond that, one could no doubt list any number of things — age, the war, a shaken view of history, a hatred of idleness, a new humility toward literature, the belief that God exists — but any explanation of a person's turning point somehow rings hollow. Even when such an explanation is made as scrupulously accurate as it can possibly be, there is always, somewhere in it, the scent of a gap where a lie is hiding. This is perhaps because people are not always choosing their road by thinking this, or believing that. In most cases, before a person knows it, he is walking through a different field altogether.
私は、その三十歳の初夏、はじめて本気に、文筆生活を志願した。思えば、晩い志願であった。私は下宿の、何一つ道具らしい物の無い四畳半の部屋で、懸命に書いた。下宿の夕飯がお櫃に残れば、それでこっそり握りめしを作って置いて深夜の仕事の空腹に備えた。こんどは、遺書として書くのではなかった。生きて行く為に、書いたのだ。一先輩は、私を励ましてくれた。世人がこぞって私を憎み嘲笑していても、その先輩作家だけは、始終かわらず私の人間をひそかに支持して下さった。私は、その貴い信頼にも報いなければならぬ。やがて、「姥捨」という作品が出来た。Ｈと水上温泉へ死にに行った時の事を、正直に書いた。之は、すぐに売れた。忘れずに、私の作品を待っていてくれた編輯者が一人あったのである。私はその原稿料を、むだに使わず、まず質屋から、よそ行きの着物を一まい受け出し、着飾って旅に出た。甲州の山である。さらに思いをあらたにして、長い小説にとりかかるつもりであった。甲州には、満一箇年いた。長い小説は完成しなかったが、短篇は十以上、発表した。諸方から支持の声を聞いた。文壇を有りがたい所だと思った。一生そこで暮し得る者は、さいわいなる哉と思った。翌年、昭和十四年の正月に、私は、あの先輩のお世話で平凡な見合い結婚をした。いや、平凡では無かった。私は無一文で婚礼の式を挙げたのである。甲府市のまちはずれに、二部屋だけの小さい家を借りて、私たちは住んだ。その家の家賃は、一箇月六円五十銭であった。私は創作集を、つづけて二冊出版した。わずかに余裕が出来た。私は気がかりの借銭を少しずつ整理したが、之は中々の事業であった。
That early summer of my thirtieth year, I resolved, in earnest for the first time, to devote myself to a life of writing. Looking back, it was a late resolve. In my four-and-a-half-mat room at the boarding house, bare of anything you could call furnishings, I wrote with all my might. When the evening rice was left over in the boarding house's rice tub, I would secretly make rice balls out of it and set them aside against the hunger of my late-night work. This time I was not writing as a testament. I wrote in order to go on living. A senior writer encouraged me. Even while the whole world despised and mocked me, that one senior writer alone, unwaveringly, quietly stood behind my worth as a human being. I had to repay that precious trust as well. Before long I produced a piece called "The Abandoned Old Woman." I wrote honestly of the time H and I went to Minakami Hot Springs to die. This one sold at once. There had been one editor who had not forgotten me and had gone on waiting for my work. I did not waste that manuscript fee; first, from the pawnshop, I redeemed a set of good clothes, and, dressed properly, set off on a trip. Into the mountains of Kōshū. I meant to make a fresh resolve there and take up a long novel. I stayed a full year in Kōshū. The long novel did not get finished, but I published more than ten short stories. I heard voices of support from every quarter. I came to think the literary world a place worth being grateful for. Happy indeed, I thought, is the man who can live out his whole life there. The following year, in the New Year of Showa 14, through the good offices of that senior writer, I had an ordinary arranged marriage. No — it was not ordinary. I held the wedding ceremony without a penny to my name. On the edge of the city of Kōfu we rented a small two-room house and lived there. The rent on that house was six yen fifty sen a month. I published two collections of stories, one after the other. A little margin appeared at last. I began settling, bit by bit, the debts that had weighed on me, and this proved to be no small undertaking.
そのとしの初秋に東京市外、三鷹町に移住した。もはや、ここは東京市ではない。私の東京市の生活は、荻窪の下宿から、かばん一つ持って甲州に出かけた時に、もう中断されてしまっていたのである。
In the early autumn of that year I moved to Mitaka, in the outskirts of Tokyo City. This place, then, is no longer Tokyo City itself. My life within Tokyo City had already been broken off the moment I left my boarding house in Ogikubo, a single bag in hand, and set out for Kōshū.
私は、いまは一箇の原稿生活者である。旅に出ても宿帳には、こだわらず、文筆業と書いている。苦しさは在っても、めったに言わない。以前にまさる苦しさは在っても私は微笑を装っている。ばか共は、私を俗化したと言っている。毎日、武蔵野の夕陽は、大きい。ぶるぶる煮えたぎって落ちている。私は、夕陽の見える三畳間にあぐらをかいて、侘しい食事をしながら妻に言った。「僕は、こんな男だから出世も出来ないし、お金持にもならない。けれども、この家一つは何とかして守って行くつもりだ」その時に、ふと東京八景を思いついたのである。過去が、走馬燈のように胸の中で廻った。
I am, now, a man who lives by his manuscripts. Even when I travel, I no longer hesitate, at the inn register, to write "man of letters" as my occupation. There is suffering, but I rarely speak of it. There is suffering greater than before, and yet I put on a smile. The fools say I have become vulgar. Every day, the sunset over Musashino is huge. It falls, boiling and trembling. Sitting cross-legged in the three-mat room where the sunset can be seen, I said to my wife over a meager meal, "Being the kind of man I am, I'll never rise in the world, and I'll never be rich. But I mean, somehow, to hold on to this one household." It was then that the idea of the Eight Views of Tokyo suddenly occurred to me. The past turned in my chest like the pictures on a revolving lantern.
ここは東京市外ではあるが、すぐ近くの井の頭公園も、東京名所の一つに数えられているのだから、此の武蔵野の夕陽を東京八景の中に加入させたって、差支え無い。あと七景を決定しようと、私は自分の、胸の中のアルバムを繰ってみた。併しこの場合、芸術になるのは、東京の風景ではなかった。風景の中の私であった。芸術が私を欺いたのか。私が芸術を欺いたのか。結論。芸術は、私である。
This is outside Tokyo City proper, but Inokashira Park, close by, is itself counted among the famous sights of Tokyo, so there should be no harm in admitting this Musashino sunset among the Eight Views of Tokyo. Meaning to settle on the remaining seven views, I turned the pages of the album in my own chest. But in this case, what became art was not the scenery of Tokyo. It was myself within the scenery. Did art deceive me? Or did I deceive art? My conclusion: art is myself.
戸塚の梅雨。本郷の黄昏。神田の祭礼。柏木の初雪。八丁堀の花火。芝の満月。天沼の蜩。銀座の稲妻。板橋脳病院のコスモス。荻窪の朝霧。武蔵野の夕陽。思い出の暗い花が、ぱらぱら躍って、整理は至難であった。また、無理にこさえて八景にまとめるのも、げびた事だと思った。そのうちに私は、この春と夏、更に二景を見つけてしまったのである。
The rains of early summer at Totsuka. Twilight at Hongō. The festival at Kanda. The first snow at Kashiwagi. Fireworks at Hatchōbori. The full moon at Shiba. The evening cicadas at Amanuma. Lightning over the Ginza. Cosmos flowers at the Itabashi mental hospital. Morning fog at Ogikubo. The sunset over Musashino. The dark flowers of memory danced about, scattering, and sorting them out was extremely difficult. And I thought it would be a coarse thing, too, to force them together artificially into eight views. In the course of that, this spring and summer, I found, further, two more views.
ことし四月四日に私は小石川の大先輩、Ｓさんを訪れた。Ｓさんには、私は五年前の病気の時に、ずいぶん御心配をおかけした。ついには、ひどく叱られ、破門のようになっていたのであるが、ことしの正月には御年始に行き、お詫びとお礼を申し上げた。それから、ずっとまた御無沙汰して、その日は、親友の著書の出版記念会の発起人になってもらいに、あがったのである。御在宅であった。願いを聞きいれていただき、それから画のお話や、芥川龍之介の文学に就いてのお話などを伺った。「僕は君には意地悪くして来たような気もするが、今になってみると、かえってそれが良い結果になったようで、僕は嬉しいと思っているのだ」れいの重い口調で、そうも言われた。自動車で一緒に上野に出かけた。美術館で洋画の展覧会を見た。つまらない画が多かった。私は一枚の画の前に立ちどまった。やがてＳさんも傍へ来られて、その画に、ずっと顔を近づけ、
On April 4th of this year I called on Mr. S, a great senior figure in Koishikawa. During my illness five years before, I had caused Mr. S a great deal of worry. In the end he scolded me severely, and it had become, more or less, a kind of expulsion, but at the New Year's this year I went to pay my respects and offer my apologies and thanks. After that I had again gone a long while without calling, and that day I came to ask him to serve as a sponsor for a publication party for a close friend's book. He was at home. He kindly granted my request, and after that I heard him speak of painting, and of the literature of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, among other things. "I have a feeling I've been rather hard on you, but now, looking back, it seems to have turned out well after all, and I find I'm glad of it," he said, too, in that heavy way of speaking of his. We went together by car to Ueno. At the museum we saw an exhibition of Western-style paintings. Most of them were dull. I stopped in front of one painting. Before long Mr. S came up beside me too, brought his face close to the painting, and,
「あまいね」と無心に言われた。
"It's sentimental, isn't it," he said, without any particular thought behind it.
「だめです」私も、はっきり言った。
"It's no good." I too said it plainly.
Ｈの、あの洋画家の画であった。
It was a painting by that Western-style painter of H's.
美術館を出て、それから茅場町で「美しき争い」という映画の試写を一緒に見せていただき、後に銀座へ出てお茶を飲み一日あそんだ。夕方になって、Ｓさんは新橋駅からバスで帰ると言われるので、私も新橋駅まで一緒に歩いた。途中で私は、東京八景の計画をＳさんにお聞かせした。
We left the museum, and after that, at Kayabachō, he had me join him for a preview screening of a film called "A Beautiful Struggle," and afterward we went out to the Ginza, drank tea, and spent the whole day amusing ourselves. Toward evening, Mr. S said he would take the bus home from Shimbashi Station, so I walked with him as far as Shimbashi Station. On the way I told Mr. S of my plan for the Eight Views of Tokyo.
「さすがに、武蔵野の夕陽は大きいですよ」
"The sunset over Musashino really is huge."
Ｓさんは新橋駅前の橋の上で立ちどまり、
Mr. S stopped on the bridge in front of Shimbashi Station,
「画になるね」と低い声で言って、銀座の橋のほうを指さした。
"That would make a picture," he said in a low voice, and pointed toward the bridge at the Ginza.
「はあ」私も立ちどまって、眺めた。
"Ah." I too stopped, and looked.
「画になるね」重ねて、ひとりごとのようにして、おっしゃった。
"It would make a picture," he said again, as if to himself.
眺められている風景よりも、眺めているＳさんと、その破門の悪い弟子の姿を、私は東京八景の一つに編入しようと思った。
Rather than the scenery being looked at, I thought I would enter, as one of my Eight Views of Tokyo, the sight of Mr. S doing the looking, and of that expelled, no-good disciple of his.
それから、ふたつきほど経って私は、更に明るい一景を得た。某日、妻の妹から、「いよいよＴが明日出発する事になりました。芝公園で、ちょっと面会出来るそうです。明朝九時に、芝公園へ来て下さい。兄上からＴへ、私の気持を、うまく伝えてやって下さい。私は、ばかですから、Ｔには何も言ってないのです」という速達が来たのである。妹は二十二歳であるが、柄が小さいから子供のように見える。昨年、Ｔ君と見合いをして約婚したけれども、結納の直後にＴ君は応召になって東京の或る聯隊にはいった。私も、いちど軍服のＴ君と逢って三十分ほど話をした事がある。はきはきした、上品な青年であった。明日いよいよ戦地へ出発する事になった様子である。その速達が来てから、二時間も経たぬうちに、また妹から速達が来た。それには、「よく考えてみましたら、先刻のお願いは、蓮葉な事だと気が附きました。Ｔには何もおっしゃらなくてもいいのです。ただ、お見送りだけ、して下さい」と書いてあったので私も、妻も噴き出した。ひとりで、てんてこ舞いしている様が、よくわかるのである。妹は、その二、三日前から、Ｔ君の両親の家に手伝いに行っていたのである。
After that, some two months went by, and I came into a still brighter view. One day I received a special-delivery letter from my wife's younger sister: "T is to leave at last tomorrow. It seems we can meet for a moment at Shiba Park. Please come to Shiba Park at nine tomorrow morning. Please convey my feelings to T well, from you, my brother. Since I'm a fool, I haven't told T anything at all." My sister-in-law was twenty-two, but being small of build, she looked like a child. The year before, she had had a formal meeting with Mr. T and become engaged to him, but just after the betrothal gifts were exchanged, Mr. T was called up and entered a certain regiment in Tokyo. I too had once met Mr. T in uniform and talked with him for some thirty minutes. He was a brisk, refined young man. It seemed that he was now, at last, to leave for the front tomorrow. Before even two hours had passed since that special-delivery letter arrived, another came from my sister-in-law. It said: "On thinking it over carefully, I realized that what I asked just now was a frivolous thing to ask. There's no need to say anything at all to T. Please just come and see him off" — and at this both my wife and I burst out laughing. One could see clearly how she was flustered, running about all on her own. My sister-in-law had, for two or three days before this, been going to help out at Mr. T's parents' house.
翌朝、私たちは早く起きて芝公園に出かけた。増上寺の境内に、大勢の見送り人が集っていた。カアキ色の団服を着ていそがしげに群集を掻きわけて歩き廻っている老人を、つかまえて尋ねると、Ｔ君の部隊は、山門の前にちょっと立ち寄り、五分間休憩して、すぐにまた出発、という答えであった。私たちは境内から出て、山門の前に立ち、Ｔ君の部隊の到着を待った。やがて妹も小さい旗を持って、Ｔ君の両親と一緒にやって来た。私は、Ｔ君の両親とは初対面である。まだはっきり親戚になったわけでもなし、社交下手の私は、ろくに挨拶もしなかった。軽く目礼しただけで、
The next morning we rose early and set out for Shiba Park. A great crowd of well-wishers had gathered in the precincts of Zōjōji. I caught hold of an old man in a khaki uniform who was bustling busily about, pushing his way through the crowd, and asked him; the answer was that Mr. T's unit would stop briefly in front of the mountain gate, rest five minutes, and then set off again at once. We left the temple grounds and stood before the mountain gate, waiting for Mr. T's unit to arrive. Presently my sister-in-law came too, carrying a small flag, together with Mr. T's parents. It was the first time I had met Mr. T's parents. We were not yet, strictly speaking, relatives, and being poor at such things, I hardly greeted them properly. I merely gave a slight bow of the head, and
「どうだ、落ちついているか？」と妹のほうに話しかけた。
"How is it — are you calm?" I said, turning to speak to my sister-in-law.
「なんでもないさ」妹は、陽気に笑って見せた。
"It's nothing at all," she said, and laughed cheerfully to show it.
「どうして、こうなんでしょう」妻は顔をしかめた。「そんなに、げらげら笑って」
"Why must you be like this," my wife said, frowning. "Laughing away like that."
Ｔ君の見送り人は、ひどく多かった。Ｔ君の名前を書き記した大きい幟が、六本も山門の前に立ちならんだ。Ｔ君の家の工場で働いている職工さん、女工さんたちも、工場を休んで見送りに来た。私は皆から離れて、山門の端のほうに立った。ひがんでいたのである。Ｔ君の家は、金持だ。私は、歯も欠けて、服装もだらしない。袴もはいていなければ、帽子さえかぶっていない。貧乏文士だ。息子の許嫁の薄穢い身内が来た、とＴ君の両親たちは思っているにちがいない。妹が私のほうに話しに来ても、「おまえは、きょうは大事な役なのだから、お父さんの傍に附いていなさい」と言って追いやった。Ｔ君の部隊は、なかなか来なかった。十時、十一時、十二時になっても来なかった。女学校の修学旅行の団体が、遊覧バスに乗って、幾組も目の前を通る。バスの扉に、その女学校の名前を書いた紙片が貼りつけられて在る。故郷の女学校の名もあった。長兄の長女も、その女学校にはいっている筈である。乗っているのかも知れない。この東京名所の増上寺山門の前に、ばかな叔父が、のっそり立っているさまを、叔父とも知らず無心に眺めて通ったのかも知れない等と思った。二十台ほど、絶えては続き山門の前を通り、バスの女車掌がその度毎に、ちょうど私を指さして何か説明をはじめるのである。はじめは平気を装っていたが、おしまいには、私もポオズをつけてみたりなどした。バルザック像のようにゆったりと腕組みした。すると、私自身が、東京名所の一つになってしまったような気さえして来たのである。一時ちかくなって、来た、来たという叫びが起って、間もなく兵隊を満載したトラックが山門前に到着した。
The people who had come to see Mr. T off were tremendously many. Six large banners bearing Mr. T's name stood in a row before the mountain gate. The workmen and the factory girls who worked at Mr. T's family's factory had taken the day off to come and see him off. I stood apart from everyone, off toward the edge of the gate. I was feeling sorry for myself. Mr. T's family was rich. My teeth were missing, and my clothes were slovenly. I had no hakama on, not even a hat. A poor writer. Mr. T's parents must have thought: here comes some shabby relation of their son's intended. Even when my sister-in-law came over to talk to me, I told her, "You have an important part to play today, so stay by Father's side," and sent her away. Mr. T's unit was a long time coming. Ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock came, and still it had not come. Groups of girls' school students on their school excursions went past, one busload after another, in sightseeing buses. On the doors of the buses were pasted slips of paper bearing the name of the school. There was even the name of the girls' school back in my hometown. My eldest brother's eldest daughter should have been enrolled at that very school. She might have been riding on that bus. She might, without even knowing he was her uncle, have gazed idly as she passed at the sight of her foolish uncle standing there planted before this famous Tokyo landmark, the mountain gate of Zōjōji — such thoughts occurred to me. Some twenty buses passed before the gate, one after another with gaps between, and each time the girl conductor would point straight at me and start some explanation. At first I pretended not to mind, but by the end I had even taken to striking a pose or two. I folded my arms grandly, like the statue of Balzac. Then I even began to feel as though I myself had become one of the sights of Tokyo. It was nearly one o'clock when a cry went up — they're here, they're here — and before long a truck loaded with soldiers arrived in front of the mountain gate.
Ｔ君は、ダットサン運転の技術を体得していたので、そのトラックの運転台に乗っていた。私は、人ごみのうしろから、ぼんやり眺めていた。
Mr. T had mastered the art of driving a Datsun, and so he was riding in the truck's cab. I watched vacantly from the back of the crowd.
「兄さん」いつの間にか私の傍に来ていた妹が、そう小声で言って、私の背中を強く押した。気を取り直して、見ると、運転台から降りたＴ君は、群集の一ばんうしろに立っている私を、いち早く見つけた様子で挙手の礼をしているのである。私は、それでも一瞬疑って、あたりを見廻し躊躇したが、やはり私に礼をしているのに違いなかった。私は決意して群集を掻きわけ、妹と一緒にＴ君の面前まで進んだ。
"Brother." My sister-in-law, who had come to my side before I knew it, said this in a low voice, and gave my back a hard push. Pulling myself together and looking, I saw that Mr. T, having climbed down from the cab, seemed to have spotted me at once, standing at the very back of the crowd, and was giving me a hand salute. Even so, for a moment I doubted it, looked about me and hesitated, but it was, after all, certainly me he was saluting. I made up my mind, pushed my way through the crowd, and went forward with my sister-in-law until I stood before Mr. T.
「あとの事は心配ないんだ。妹は、こんなばかですが、でも女の一ばん大事な心掛けは知っている筈なんだ。少しも心配ないんだ。私たち皆で引き受けます」私は、珍しく、ちっとも笑わずに言った。妹の顔を見ると、これもやや仰向になって緊張している。Ｔ君は、少し顔を赤らめ、黙ってまた挙手の礼をした。
"There's nothing to worry about, as for what comes after. My sister-in-law here is a fool, but she must know the one thing that matters most for a woman to keep in mind. There's nothing at all to worry about. All of us will see to it." I said this, unusually for me, without smiling in the least. When I looked at my sister-in-law's face, she too had her chin lifted a little, tense. Mr. T reddened slightly, and silently gave another salute.
「あと、おまえから言うこと無いか？」こんどは私も笑って、妹に尋ねた。妹は、
"Isn't there something you want to say too, now?" This time I laughed as I asked my sister-in-law. She said,
「もう、いい」と顔を伏せて言った。
"It's all right now," lowering her face as she said it.
すぐ出発の号令が下った。私は再び人ごみの中にこそこそ隠れて行ったが、やはり妹に背中を押されて、こんどは運転台の下まで進出してしまった。その辺には、Ｔ君の両親が立っているだけである。
At once the order to depart came down. I slipped back once more into hiding among the crowd, but again my sister-in-law pushed me from behind, and this time I found myself pushed forward right up under the truck's cab. Standing there were only Mr. T's parents.
「安心して行って来給え」私は大きい声で言った。Ｔ君の厳父は、ふと振り返って私の顔を見た。ばかに出しゃばる、こいつは何者という不機嫌の色が、その厳父の眼つきに、ちらと見えた。けれども私は、その時は、たじろがなかった。人間のプライドの窮極の立脚点は、あれにも、これにも死ぬほど苦しんだ事があります、と言い切れる自覚ではないか。私は丙種合格で、しかも貧乏だが、いまは遠慮する事は無い。東京名所は、更に大きい声で、
"Go, and go with an easy mind," I said in a loud voice. Mr. T's stern father turned suddenly and looked at my face. A flash of displeasure crossed that stern father's eyes, as if to say: what an absurdly forward fellow, who is this. But I, at that moment, did not flinch. Is not the ultimate foothold of a human being's pride this very awareness, that one can say outright: over this and over that, I have suffered nearly to death? I had passed my conscription physical as Class C, and I was poor besides, but there was nothing left now for me to hold back for. The Tokyo landmark, in a voice louder still,
「あとは、心配ないぞ！」と叫んだ。これからＴ君と妹との結婚の事で、万一むずかしい場合が惹起したところで、私は世間体などに構わぬ無法者だ、必ず二人の最後の力になってやれると思った。
"There's nothing to worry about, afterward!" it shouted. I thought that whatever difficulty might yet arise, from now on, over the marriage of Mr. T and my sister-in-law, I was an outlaw who cared nothing for appearances before the world, and that I could surely be, in the end, the last strength the two of them had to lean on.
増上寺山門の一景を得て、私は自分の作品の構想も、いまや十分に弓を、満月の如くきりりと引きしぼったような気がした。それから数日後、東京市の大地図と、ペン、インク、原稿用紙を持って、いさんで伊豆に旅立った。伊豆の温泉宿に到着してからは、どんな事になったか。旅立ってから、もう十日も経つけれど、まだ、あの温泉宿に居るようである。何をしている事やら。
Having gained this one view of the mountain gate of Zōjōji, I felt as though the conception of my own work had now, at last, drawn its bow fully taut, tight as the full moon. Some days after that, I set off in high spirits for Izu, carrying a large map of the city of Tokyo, along with pen, ink, and manuscript paper. What became of me once I reached the hot-spring inn in Izu? Ten days have already passed since I set out, and yet it seems I am still at that same inn. What I am doing there, who can say.