A spring-time case

by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Shinsuké could not quite grasp what Kinzo was driving at by what he meant to be his advice. Had he not owned up everything on his conscience? And had he not shown penitence for the same? Why this unless he were clear and firm in mind about what he should and was to do? He could see no reason why there should be any fears about his going wrong. In all the earnestness of a true heart, he pledged his word, again and again, that he would never fail to surrender himself to the fate that was justly to claim him.

It was as if a beast, once aroused, had been tamed down again; Shinsuké was once more the being of gentle and peaceful habits that he was before. The happenings of that night were recalled as in a dream that had been dreamt in the hours of his mind preyed upon by the devil. He might flee, it was suggested, and seek shelter, until the thing should have blown over, with a gambler, living at Omiya, Bushu, with whom Kinzo was under pledge of brothers. But this would be foreclosing any chance of finding Tsuya. Besides, to give a happy turn to the situation, the affair had apparently passed off without causing any speakable stir in town. Early in the morning after Shinsuké came, Kinzo went in a casual way over the ground along the plaster wall enclosing the Lord Hosokawa’s mansion. He found neither blood which had evidently been washed away by the rain of the night, nor the umbrella which Shinsuké remembered of having left on the scene. The only thing visible was remains of the souvenir box from the restaurant Kawacho, trampled and mashed under feet. As for the boatman Seiji, he seemed to have been led to the theory that Santa, with the crime on his hand, stretched it a step and ran away with the money he took by killing his wife. Therefore, in the possible event of his falling in with Shinsuké, the boatman would certainly be dismayed, but never likely to think of turning him over to the law. That was also what Kinzo had gathered by secretly working through a certain boatman he was intimate with. As a next step, Kinzo had the young man shed off the clothes of unpleasant memory, and let him take a winter suit out of his own wardrobe. The old man’s care went so far in fitting him up as to have him paint mole marks on his face.

Disguised, by day, as a vendor of straw sandals and, by night, as a wandering macaroni man, Shinsuké was left much to himself to go about in the streets, chiefly of Fukagawa.

Soon, the year was at its end, and the new year opened, the eighth year of the Bunsei era[12]. Shinsuké made a point of prowling in the Takabashi way, every day, about the neighbourhood of the boatman’s house. A space of twenty or so days had scarce passed ere a third woman was taken into his home, and his business went on thriving, as before. That Tsuya had been sold off into bondage was patent beyond a doubt, Shinsuké considered. To leave nothing to chance, he went to the Tachibana-cho and furtively peered into the shop where he had once served. He found, or fancied to have found, the place filled with so much deserted stillness as he had never seen, and there were, of course, no signs of the young mistress being back. Instead, he stumbled upon the rumour that the master, broken-hearted over his daughter’s escapade, had been taken badly ill, kept his sick bed since the year before. Shinsuké was so unbearably grieved to hear it that he told himself he should never again turn his face that way.

The neighbourhood of the canal road was given up for the present. Each of those places in town quartering licensed or geisha houses, was taken up in order and looked into. He extended his range of search so far as Koume, Hashiba, Iriya, on the outward line of the city, and scoured even through such places as were known for the fashion and wealth of the town to keep their villas and mistresses. When the second month of the year drew to its close, he was little beyond where he had started. A little more spell of time, and the cherry trees began to come out in bloom along the riverside of Mukojima. A gauzy drape of mist was hung across the sky of springtime and peace. There came days of benign warmth which seemed to cast a spell of sleep even on him who was out and about the streets calling out his wares. The pendulum of time had swung to spring tide which had brought to his heart keen pangs of love and sorrow. And he longed so much to see Tsuya, to see her if only in the fleetest moments of dream.

“Shinsuké san, I am wondering if the girl you are looking for isn’t the same one that calls herself Somékichi, a geisha of the Nakacho quarters.”

Such was the glad tidings Kinzo brought home one evening in late April. Kinzo had treated, he explained, himself and a couple or so of his men at the tea house Obanaya, in Fukagawa, the same evening. One of the geisha called into the party happened to fit closely the description that had been given him by the young man. To begin with, she had eyelids of rather heavy appearance, though a girl of rare prettiness, and her eye brows full even to the point of masculine sternness, more or less. When she smiled, her eye tooth on the right side was slightly disclosed under the upper lip and, because of its appearance out of line with the other teeth, made her smiling face all the more attractive. Her habit of giving a slight twist to her lips and pressing her teeth on the lower lip when engaged in conversation. Her voice with a ring of exquisite richness that seemed to make a straight appeal to a man’s heart. These characteristics so coincided with what Kinzo had been told about Tsuya that he went so far as to make a sly inquiry into her case. It was learnt that a gambler named Tokubey, living at Sunamura, stood as her guarantor. He was also able to ferret out the information that this man Tokubey was a thimble-rigger, a mean character disliked even amongst his own professional people, and that there was most likely a friendship between this man and the boatman Seiji, though not in any open way. With so much raked in, there was scarce room for doubt. Shinsuké was also ready to concur in the same opinion.

“So, there seems mighty little chance of making a mistake about this. But there’s something I don’t quite understand. I’m afraid you will not like me for telling you this, in case this girl turns out to be the real one; nevertheless,—”

With this introduction, Kinzo went on to tell him about the girl in question what he had heard as being passed around as talk of the gay quarters. It was only about a month and a half ago that this girl Somékichi began to appear at the Nakacho; but the fame of the girl, what of her musical talent, her likeable personality and brightness, her beauty to match anybody in the whole of that part of town, was soon on everybody’s lips. She became the rage of the place. A young son of a rich cloth trader of down town, a certain military officer of the “Hatamoto”[13] class, and five or six other men about town had lost their heads over her, had been cleaned out of almost incredible amounts of money, whilst they were hotly making what had proved nothing but a wild goose chase. It was generally conjectured amongst people of the quarter that this man Tokubey, being infatuated with her himself, always put himself between the girl and whomever he had cause to be jealous of. The owner of the geisha house, under whose banner she listed herself was no other than Tokubey’s mistress who carried on the business with his capital. And not a day passed but there were squabbles or fights amongst these triangular figures. As the upshot of the thing, the mistress of the house had been packed off only about ten days since, and Somékichi was now the most important figure in the house, thus winning for herself a nitch amongst the leading, and most honoured of the geisha. And so, gossips had it that Tokubey was too heartless a man, of course, but Somékichi, yet so young, had a nerve as wonderfully distinct as her looks were.

However, it was quite open to question whether she had surrendered herself to Tokubey, as gossips seemed to make it out, added Kinzo his own opinion, as if he wished to inspire the young man with more cheerful hopes. It was quite probable, in his opinion, that Tokubey, too, should be faring exactly as badly as the other men, just exciting himself on a chase that was to take him nowhere. A woman who was a cynosure of jealous eyes was naturally exposed to shafts of slander, one half of which may generally be regarded as fiction. What had struck Kinzo as remarkable, however, from what he saw of her at his party, was that she displayed herself so sophisticated that he would scarce imagine that she had been brought up in a rich pawnbroker’s family till a few months ago. From the way she had carried herself off, there was seen nothing about her of distress that might be expected of one grieving over the loss of the man to whom she had given her body and soul. She laughed and was gay throughout, drinking so heartily as few women would. If she was taking it, and probably she was, to drown her sorrows, of course, it was not so difficult to understand.