Tōru knew nothing of the hard calluses built by outrage at poverty, like lumps of amber hardening from sap that oozes through wounded bark. His bark had always been hard. A thick, hard bark of contempt.
The joy of seeing, where everything was self-evident and given, lay only at the invisible horizon, far beyond the sea. Why need there be surprise? Despite the fact that deceit was delivered at every door every morning without fail, like the milk.
He knew his own workings to their smallest parts. His inspection system was flawless. There was no unconscious.
“If I had ever spoken or moved from the smallest subconscious impulse, then the world would have been promptly destroyed. The world should be grateful for my awareness of myself. Awareness has nothing to be proud of but control.”
Perhaps, he sometimes thought, he was a hydrogen bomb equipped with consciousness. It was clear in any case that he was not a human being.
Tōru was a fastidious boy. He washed his hands any number of times every day. Constantly scrubbed at, they were white and dry. To the world he seemed no more than a clean, tidy boy.
He was indifferent to disorder outside himself. It seemed to him a symptom of illness to worry about wrinkles on another’s trousers. The trousers of politics were a sodden, wrinkled mess, but what did that matter?
He heard a soft knock on the door downstairs. The superintendent always opened the badly fitting door as if crushing a matchbox and came stamping up the stairs. It would not be he.
Tōru slipped into sandals and went down the wooden stairs. He addressed the pinkish form at the undulant window, but did not open the door.
“It’s still early. He might be as late as six. Come back after dinner.”
“Oh?” Frozen for a moment in contemplation, the undulant form moved off. “I’ll come back, then. I have lots of things to talk about.”
“Yes, do.”
Tōru shoved the stubby pencil he had for no reason brought with him behind his ear and ran back upstairs.
As if he had forgotten his caller, he gazed into the gathering dusk.
The sunset would be behind clouds, but it would come at six thirty-three, still more than an hour away. The sea was turning gray, and the Izu Peninsula, for a time out of sight, came dimly back, as if outlined in ink.
Two women made their way among the plastic houses, baskets of strawberries on their backs. Everything beyond was the sea, like unwrought metal. Just in line with the second pylon a five-hundred-ton cargo ship had been at anchor all afternoon. It had left early to save dockage, apparently, and then lowered anchor for a leisurely cleaning. The cleaning evidently finished, it was once more weighing anchor.
Tōru went into the kitchen, which contained a small washstand and a propane burner, and warmed his dinner. The telephone rang. Harbor Control. A message had come from the Nitchō-maru, confirming that it would arrive at nine.
After dinner he read the evening paper. He became aware that he was waiting for his caller.
Seven ten. The sea was enfolded in night. Only the white of the plastic houses, like a coat of frost, seemed to resist.
A pounding of light engines came through the window. The fishing fleet had put out from Yaizu to the right, making for the sardine banks off Okitsu. Green and red lights amidships, perhaps twenty of them, moved past, fighting for the lead. The quivering of the lights upon the sea gave visual manifestation to a primitive beating of hot-bulb engines.
The night sea was for a time like a village festival. It was like a roiling mass of festival-goers, each with a lantern in hand, pushing noisily for a dark shrine. Tōru knew that the boats would be talking to one another. Rushing, fighting for the threshold of the sea, dreaming of a huge take, vital and aggressive, fish-scented muscles shining, they would be talking to one another through speakers, out there on the sea.
In the quiet after the stir, the automobiles on the prefectural highway kept up a steady drone. Tōru heard a knocking on the door. It would be Kinué again.
He went down and opened the door.
Kinué, in a pink cardigan, stood in the light. She had a large white gardenia in her hair.
“Come in,” said Tōru, with manly vigor.
Giving him a smile of delicate reluctance such as a great beauty might permit herself, Kinué came in. Upstairs she put a box of chocolates on Tōru’s desk.
“For you.”
“You’re too good to me.”
A crackling of cellophane filled the room. Tōru opened the oblong golden box and, taking a chocolate, smiled at Kinué.
He always treated her as if she were a great beauty. She took a seat beyond the signal light. Tōru seated himself at the desk. At a fixed and discreet distance, they took up their positions as if prepared to flee down the stairs.
When he was at the telescope he turned out all the lights; but otherwise it was bright from fluorescent ceiling lights. The gardenia in Kinué’s hair took on a lustrous white glow. The ugliness beneath was rather splendid.
It was an ugliness that no one could miss. It cut off comparison with mediocre ugliness that could, given the right time and place, become beauty of a sort, or ugliness that revealed a beauty of spirit. It was ugliness, and could be described as nothing else. It was a bounty from heaven, a perfect ugliness denied to most girls.
But Kinué was constantly troubled by her beauty.
“The good thing about you,” she said, worried about her knees and tugging at her short skirt, “the good thing about you is that you’re the only one who never makes a pass at me. Of course you are a man, and I can never be too sure. I must warn you. If you ever do make a pass at me I won’t come and see you any more. That will be the end. You promise that you at least never will?”
“I vow it most solemnly.”
Tōru raised a hand in pledge. He had to be very earnest in such matters when he was with Kinué.
Every conversation was preceded by the pledge. Once it was made, her manner changed. She threw off uneasiness, her seated figure relaxed. She touched the gardenia in her hair as if it were breakable. She smiled from its shadow, and, with a sudden, deep sigh, began talking.
“I’m so unlucky I could die. I doubt if I can ever expect a man to understand what it means for a woman to be too beautiful. Men do not respect beauty. Every man who looks at me has the most contemptible urges. Men are beasts. I might have more respect for them if I hadn’t been born so beautiful. The minute a man looks at me he turns into a beast. How can I respect a man? A woman’s beauty is tied right away to the ugliest things, and for a woman there is no worse insult. I don’t like to go downtown any more. Every man I pass, every last one of them, looks at me like a slobbering dog. There I am walking quietly down the street and every man that comes up to me has a look in his eyes that says I want her I want her I want her. Every one of them with a look in his eyes that can only be put into those words. Just walking through it all wears me out.
“On the bus just now someone made a pass at me. I hated it.” She took a little flowered handkerchief from her cardigan and dabbed elegantly at her eyes.
“He was a good-looking boy, right beside me. From Tokyo, I’d imagine. He had a big Boston bag on his knee, and he was wearing a visor cap. From the side he looked a little like ———” and she mentioned the name of a popular singer. “He kept looking at me, and I said to myself, Here it comes again. The bag was all soft and white like a dead rabbit. He poked his hand in under it so no one else could see, and then stretched out a finger and touched my leg. Right here. On the thigh, and high up on it too. I was surprised, let me tell you. And it was worse because he was such a clean, nice-looking boy. I screamed and jumped up. The other passengers were all looking at me and my heart was beating so, I couldn’t say anything. A nice lady asked me what was wrong. I was going to say to her this man made a pass at me. But he was all red and looking at the floor, and I’m too good-natured. I couldn’t tell them what had happened. It wasn’t any duty of mine to cover up for him, but I said I thought there must be a nail, people should be careful about this seat. Everyone said it was very dangerous and looked very bothered and stared at the cushion. It was a green one. Someone said I should turn in a complaint, but I said it didn’t matter, I was getting off at the next stop. And I did get off. My seat was still empty when the bus pulled away again. Nobody wanted to risk it. All I saw was black hair shining under the visor cap. That’s my story. I can congratulate myself on not having harmed anyone. I was the only injured party, and I’m glad. That’s the fate of a beautiful person. Just accept all the ugliness in the world and hide the wound and die without letting out the secret. That’s enough. Don’t you suppose a beautiful, well-shaped girl has the best chance of getting to be an angel? I’m telling you, no one else. You can keep a secret.