Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon/Futon/Chapter 1
Appendix A
Futon ("The Quilt"), a novel by Tayama Katai
Translated from the Japanese by Motoko B. Reece
I
As he started down the gentle slope which leads from Kirishitan Hill in Koishikawa to Gokurakusui, he reflected. That puts an end to the relationship between us. When I think of how I considered such a thing in spite of my thirty-six years of age and having had three children, I become disgusted. And yet....and yet....could this really be true? Could it be that all the affection she showed me was merely affection and not love?
Many passionate letters--the relationship between the two people was by all standards extraordinary. He had a wife, he had children, there were reputations to maintain, there was a mentor-pupil relationship between them, and for just these reasons they had not dared to fall into ardent love with each other but behind the throbbing of their breasts while they were talking, and the sparkling of their eyes when they looked at each other, there certainly lurked a violent storm. Had they but chanced upon the opportunity, it seemed that their storm deep within them would immediately have gained strength and in an instant torn away any concern for wife and children, reputation, morality, and the relationship between mentor and student. At least he had believed so. Yet even so, judging from the incidents of the last two or three days, she had definitely sold her emotions by false pretense. On several occasions he thought that she had deceived him. However, as he was a man of letters, he could afford to analyse his own mind objectively. A young woman's mind is not easily judged. Her warm pleasing affection was perhaps a natural development characteristic of the expression of her eyes which looked beautiful, her attitude which seemed gentle was perhaps all unconscious, and unintended like the kind of solace that the wild flowers give to the person who looks at them. To concede a point, even if she loved me, I am her teacher and she is my student; I am a married man who has a wife and children while she is a beautiful flower in her prime; then what good would it have done for us to be increasingly conscious about each other? Wait, going one step still further, when I received that passionate letter complaining implicitly and explicitly of her mental anguish, transmitting the last of her emotions, just as if the power of nature would oppress my person, I did not solve her riddles for her. With her modest woman's nature, how could she press more frankly for an answer from me? Having been disappointed from that kind of mental state, she might have created the recent affair.
"Anyway, the time has passed. She already belongs to another!" he inwardly screamed as he walked along, and he tore his hair.
He wore a striped serge business suit with a straw hat; and he went down the slope bending forward slightly and using a walking stick of wisteria vine. It was mid-September. Although the lingering heat was still unbearable, the sky was filled with a serene autumnal tinge, and the strikingly deep blue color stirred the man's feelings. A fishmonger, a wine shop, a variety store, and beyond them stood the gate of a temple as well as rear tenements, and in the lowland of Hisakata Machi, the smoke stacks of many factories were overflowing with black smoke.
An upstairs-room in western style in one of those factories was where he went in the afternoon every day. A big table was installed in the center of an approximately ten-mat room [each mat measures 3′ x 6′] and beside the table stood a tall European bookcase. In the bookcase various kinds of books on geography were tightly packed. He was engaged in assisting in the editing of geographical books as a part-time employee of a publishing company. A literary man editing geography books! Although he willingly engaged in this work by claiming an interest in geography, in his own mind, needless to say, he could not content himself with this kind of work. While he was aware that some day he would achieve his goal, he could not help but feel bitter when he reflected on his lagging literary career, his irritation at writing only short stories, and not yet having a chance to display his capacities to their fullest, and the pains from criticism of him that appeared monthly in a youth journal. Society progressed daily. The streetcars had completely changed the traffic conditions of Tokyo. Girl students had gained influence; there was no hope of seeing an old-fashioned girl like those of the days when he had been in love. Young men of today have also changed their attitude completely in regard to the manner they talk about love, literature, and politics; and he felt that it would be forever impossible for them to find rapport with those of his own generation.
And...everyday he went down the same road like an automated machine, entered the big gate, threaded his way through the narrow way where the shaking noise of the rotary machines and foul-smelling sweat of the workmen mingled in the building, nodded to the people in the offices, plodded up the long narrow staircase, and finally entered his office; but this room which opened on the east and on the south was indeed intolerably hot because of the strong afternoon sunlight. Added to this he felt uncomfortable on finding white dust covering the table as the apprentice was lazy and did not clean the room. Sitting down on a chair, he had a smoke, and then got up to take out a thick book on statistics, a map, a guidebook and a book on geography, and then calmly began to work from the place where he had left off on the previous day. However, he found it difficult to continue writing as his mind had been hazy these last two or three days. He would stop writing after one line and ponder over what had been passing through his mind. Again he wrote one line, and stopped, and so on--writing and stopping. In the meantime the thoughts which flashed through his mind were fragmentary, violent, precipitous, and full of desperate elements. By some chance association, he recalled Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen. Before things had turned out this way he had thought that he might use this play as a daily lesson for her. He wanted to teach her about the mental state and sorrow of Johannes Vockerat. Although it was three years ago when he had read this play, at a time when he had not the slightest notion that she even existed, he had been a lonely man since those days. Not that he was comparing himself with Johannes, but he was deeply moved by Johannes' love for Anna and thought that if there were such a girl as Anna, it would be a natural consequence to fall into such a tragedy. He heaved a sigh at the thought that from now on he could no longer play the part of Johannes.
Though he did not teach Einsame Menschen to her, he once taught her Turgenev's short story, Faust. In the well-lit four-and-a-half-mat study her expressive eyes glistened with ever deeper meaning, while her youthful heart filled with admiration when she listened to the colorful love story. The lamp threw its light upon her upper body, her fashionable low pompadour with its comb and ribbon, and when her face came closer to the book on the table, he smelled the indescribable scent of her perfume, the scent of flesh, her womanly scent--his voice trembled when he lectured on the passage in which the hero of the story read Faust to his sweetheart.
"But, everything is finished!" Again he said this tearing his hair.