The Setting Sun

The company continued to roar the drinking song, “Guillotine, guillotine, shooshooshoo,” without any let-up even during this conversation.

“How is Naoji?” the madam asked Chie with an earnest expression. I was taken aback.

“How should I know? I’m not his keeper,” Chie answered in confusion with a pretty blush.

The madam went on unperturbably, “I wonder if something unpleasant hasn’t happened of late between him and Mr. Uehara. They always used to be together.”

“I’m told he’s taken up dancing. He’s probably got a dancer for his sweetheart now.”

“Naoji’s not a very economical type—women on top of liquor!”

“That’s the way Mr. Uehara planned it.”

“Naoji’s character must be bad. When that kind of spoiled child goes bad—”

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting with a half smile. I thought it would probably be more impolite to keep silent than to speak. “I am Naoji’s sister.”

The madam, obviously startled, looked again at my face. Chie said in even tones, “You’re very much like him. When I saw you standing outside, it gave me quite a turn for a minute. I thought it might be Naoji.”

“Oh, indeed?” said the madam, her voice taking on a note of respect, “And for you to come to such a dreadful place! But you knew Mr. Uehara before?”

“Yes, I met him six years ago.” I choked over my words and looked down.

The maid entered with the noodles. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

The madam offered me some. “Please eat before it gets cold.”

“Thank you.” I thrust my face in the steam rising from the noodles and began to suck them in quickly. I felt as if now I were experiencing what extreme misery is involved in being alive.

Mr. Uehara entered the room, humming faintly, “Guillotine, guillotine, shooshooshoo.” He plopped down beside me and without a word handed a large envelope to the madam.

The madam, not so much as glancing inside the envelope, thrust it into a drawer. She said with a laugh, “Don’t think you’ll get away with just this. I won’t be tricked out of the balance.”

“I’ll bring it. I’ll pay the rest next year.”

“Am I to believe that?”

Ten thousand yen. How many electric bulbs can you buy with that? I could easily live for a year on that.

There was something wrong about these people. But perhaps, just as it is true of my love, they could not go on living except in the way they do. If it is true that man, once born into the world, must somehow live out his life, perhaps the appearance that people make in order to go through with it, even if it is as ugly as their appearance, should not be despised. To be alive. To be alive. An intolerably immense undertaking before which one can only gasp in apprehension.

“At any rate,” said a gentleman’s voice in the next room, “if people like us living in Tokyo cannot henceforth greet one another in the lightest possible way, with the merest suggestion of a hello, life on a civilized plane will be finished. For people nowadays to insist on such virtues as respect or sincerity is like pulling on the feet of a man hanging by the neck. Respect? Sincerity? Rubbish! You can’t go on living with them, can you? Unless we can say hello, really casually, there are only three possible courses left—return to the farm, suicide, or becoming a gigolo.”

“A poor devil who can’t do any one of the three still has a final alternative,” said another gentleman. “He can touch Uehara for a loan and get roaring drunk.”

Guillotine, guillotine, shooshooshoo. Guillotine, guillotine, shooshooshoo.

“I don’t suppose you have anywhere to spend the night, have you?” Mr. Uehara asked half under his breath.

“I?” I was conscious of the snake with its head lifted against itself. Hostility. It was an emotion close to hatred which stiffened my body.

Mr. Uehara, paying no attention to my obvious anger, mumbled on, “Can you sleep in the same room with all the rest of us? It’s cold!”

“That’s not possible,” interpolated the madam. “Have a heart.”

Mr. Uehara clicked his tongue against his teeth. “In that case she oughtn’t to have come here in the first place.”

I remained silent. I could tell at once from something in his tone that he had read my letters and in that instant I knew that he loved me more than anyone else.