The Setting Sun

“Is this life you are leading the only relief you can get?”

“That’s about it.”

“But doesn’t it tell on your body? I’m sure you’ve coughed blood.”

“How do you know? As a matter of fact, I had a rather serious bout the other day, but I haven’t told anyone.”

“It’s the same smell as before Mother died.”

“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness—they’re heartbreaking. Whenever you can hear the gloomy sighs of woe from the four walls around you, you know that there’s not a chance of happiness existing just for you. What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger. There are too many pitiful people.—Is that a pose again?”

“No.”

“Only love. Just as you wrote in your letters.”

“Yes.”

My love was extinguished.

When the room became faintly light, I stared at the face of the man sleeping beside me. It was the face of a man soon to die. It was an exhausted face.

The face of a victim. A precious victim.

My man. My rainbow. My Child. Hateful man. Unprincipled man.

It seemed to me then a face of a beauty unmatched in the whole world. My breast throbbed with the sensation of resuscitated love. I kissed him as I stroked his hair.

The sad, sad accomplishment of love.

Mr. Uehara, his eyes still shut, took me in his arms. “I was all wrong. What do you expect of a farmer’s son?”

I could never leave him.

“I am happy now. Even if I were to hear the four walls all shriek in anguish, my feeling of happiness would still be at the saturation point. I am so happy I could sneeze.”

Mr. Uehara laughed. “But it’s too late now. It’s dusk already.”

“It’s morning!”

That morning my brother Naoji committed suicide.

CHAPTER SEVEN / THE TESTAMENT

Naoji’s testament:

Kazuko.

It’s no use. I’m going.

I cannot think of the slightest reason why I should have to go on living.

Only those who wish to go on living should.

Just as a man has the right to live, he ought also to have the right to die.

There is nothing new in what I am thinking: it is simply that people have the most inexplicable aversion to this obvious—not to say primitive—idea and refuse to come out with it plainly.

Those who wish to go on living can always manage to survive whatever obstacles there may be. That is splendid of them, and I daresay that what people call the glory of mankind is comprised of just such a thing. But I am convinced that dying is not a sin.