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I can hear a smothered laugh from the walls. Late at night I toss in my bed.
Do not humiliate me.
My sister!”
Having read that much, I shut the “Moonflower Journal” and returned it to the wooden crate. I walked to the window, threw it open, and looking down on the garden smoky with white rain, I remembered the events of those days.
Six years have already passed since then. Naoji’s drug addiction eventually led to my divorce. No, I shouldn’t say that. I have the feeling that my divorce was settled from the moment I was born, that even if Naoji had not been addicted to drugs the divorce would have occurred sooner or later for some other cause. Naoji was in difficulties about paying the pharmacist and frequently importuned me for money. I had just been married and could not be entirely free about money. Besides, I felt strongly that it was most improper for me to slip furtively into the hands of my brother money I had received from my husband. After talking the matter over with my maid Oseki, who had come with me from my mother’s house, I decided to sell my bracelets, necklaces, and dresses. Naoji had sent me a letter concluding, “I feel such anguish and shame that I can’t bear to meet you or even to talk to you over the telephone. Please send the money with Oseki to the apartment [he gave the address] of the novelist Uehara Jiro, whom I’m sure you must know, at least by name. Mr. Uehara has the reputation of being an evil man, but he is not actually like that at all, and there is no need to worry about sending me the money at his address. I have arranged with Uehara to let me know immediately by telephone when the money arrives, so please do it that way. I want to keep my addiction from Mama, at least. Somehow I intend to cure myself before she learns of it. If I get the money from you this time, I will pay back the pharmacist all that I owe him. I may go afterward to our villa in the mountains to recuperate. I really mean it. The day I pay back my whole debt I intend to give up drugs completely. I swear it to God. Please believe me. Please keep it a secret from Mama, and send the money to Mr. Uehara’s.”
That is more or less what was in the letter. I followed his directions and had Oseki take the money secretly to Mr. Uehara’s apartment, but the promise in Naoji’s letter was, as always, false. He didn’t go to the villa to recuperate. Instead, his drug taking seems to have turned into a kind of poisoning and grown steadily more serious. The style of the letters he sent imploring me for money took on an anguished tone which was all but a shriek. Each time I read his words “I promise to give up drugs now,” followed by an oath so heart-rending that it made me want to turn my face away from the paper, I realized perfectly well that he might be lying again, but I would nevertheless send Oseki out to sell a piece of jewelry and to take the money to Mr. Uehara.
“What sort of man is Mr. Uehara?”
“He’s a short, dark, disagreeable man,” Oseki answered, adding, “but he’s seldom at home when I call. Usually there’s just his wife and a little girl about six years old. His wife is not particularly pretty, but she seems a sweet, intelligent person. You don’t have to worry about entrusting your money to a lady like her.”
If you were to compare what I was like then to what I am like now—no, I was so different that no comparison is possible—I had my head in the clouds and was always very easy-going. All the same, I began to be terribly worried what with one sum of money after another being extorted from me, and the whole thing gradually assumed the proportions of a nightmare. One day, returning from the theatre, I sent back the car and walked by myself to Mr. Uehara’s apartment.
Mr. Uehara was alone in his room reading a newspaper. He was dress
ed in a Japanese costume which made him look old and young at the same time. I received a strange first impression as if from a rare beast that I had never before seen.
“My wife has gone with the child to collect the rations.” His voice was slightly nasal, and he clipped his words. He seemed to have mistaken me for a friend of his wife’s. When I told him that I was Naoji’s sister, Mr. Uehara barked a laugh. A cold shiver went through me; I don’t know why.
“Shall we go out?” Scarcely had he uttered these words than he threw on a cloak, stepped into a new pair of sandals, and dashed out ahead of me into the hallway.
An early winter’s evening. The wind was icy. It felt as if it were blowing in from the river. Mr. Uehara walked in silence, his right shoulder slightly raised as if against the wind. I followed behind him, half running.
We entered the basement of a building behind the Tokyo Theatre. Four or five groups of customers were sitting around tables in a long narrow room, quietly drinking.
Mr. Uehara drank his sake from a tumbler, instead of the usual little cup. He asked them to bring another glass and offered me some. I drank two glass-fuls but did not feel anything.
Mr. Uehara drank and smoked, still without uttering a word. This was the first time in my life that I had ever come to such a place, but I felt quite at home and rather happy.
“Liquor would be better, but still….”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, your brother. It would be a good thing if he switched to some kind of alcohol. I was once a dope addict myself, a long time ago, and I know what a poor view people take of it. Alcohol is the same sort of thing, but about that they’re surprisingly indulgent. I think I’ll make an alcoholic of your brother. How does that suit you?”
“I once saw an alcoholic. I was about to set out on New Year’s calls when I noticed a friend of our chauffeur’s with a hideously red face asleep in the car and snoring loudly. I was so surprised that I screamed. The driver told me the man was a hopeless alcoholic. He dragged the man out of the car and slung him over his shoulders. The man’s body flopped about as if he hadn’t any bones, and all the while he kept mumbling something. That was the first time I ever saw an alcoholic. It was fascinating.”
“I’m also an alcoholic, you know.”
“Oh, but not the same kind, are you?”
“And so are you, an alcoholic.”
“No, that isn’t true. I’ve seen a real alcoholic, and it’s entirely different.”
Mr. Uehara for the first time gave a genuine smile. “Then perhaps your brother won’t be able to become an alcoholic either, but at least it would be a good idea for him to take up drinking. Let’s go. You don’t want to be late, do you?”
“It doesn’t make any difference.”
“To tell the truth, this place is too crowded for me. Waitress! The bill.”
“Is it very expensive? If it isn’t too much, I have a little money with me.”
“In that case, you take care of the bill.”
