from http://maruchan.sandwich.net/lemon.txt
previously posted on nattocake.blogspot.com, c. Spring 2006
?? / Lemon
from Lemon
by Kajii Motojiro
Translation accuracy: 75%
(Comprehension 80%, adaptation accuracy 70%)
An indeterminate evil weighed down on my heart. How shall I describe my feelings
of irritation and disgust?-- they were like a hangover, but a lasting hangover
from continuous, daily drinking. They came. Now, they would not go away. It
was not the tuberculosis or the nervous breakdown that kept them here, nor was
it my ever-increasing debt. These feelings remained with me only because of the
weight on my heart.
In the past I had found joy in music and poetry, but within one season, my
patience for these things was gone. I had gone out expressly to listen to music,
but upon hearing the first two or three bars of the piece, I abruptly felt I had
to get up and leave. Somehow, something made it unendurable, and I took to
wandering the streets continuously, like a vagabond.
In those times, I remembered, I had been strongly attracted to beautiful,
wonderful things. These days I preferred to walk in the dilapidated back
alleyways, among the dirty laundry, the drifting, ubiquitous trash, and the
hints of squalid apartments. I felt a stronger sense of intimacy with these
sights than the ones I saw on the main streets. On these streets, with their
crumbling plaster walls and the sloping lines of houses, I felt a sense of
transience, as if the wind and the rain would soon return them all to the earth.
The only things that survived well here were the plants, and I was sometimes
surprised by a sunflower or some blooming canna flowers.
Sometimes as I walked this path, I'd try to imagine and convince myself on a
whim that I was no longer in Kyoto-- that I had come to a city like Sendai or
Nagasaki, hundreds of li away. I wanted to leave Kyoto and escape to a place
where not one person knew me. There, I could finally find some rest: a deserted
inn, a quiet mattress, the fragrant smell of a mosquito net, and a starched,
well worn yukata. I'd stay for a month, lying in bed and not thinking of
anything. Unfortunately, I could not.
Instead, I wished for Kyoto to quietly transform into this place-- and as I
began to slip into this illusion, I'd paint my imagination with wide swaths of
color which, like a double-exposure photograph, became one with the dirty
streets. In this way I would lose myself in that dream world, and find what
little enjoyment I could.
In those days, I had developed an attraction to fireworks: the second-rate
explosives stuffed into bundles of red, purple, yellow, and blue stripes; the
autumn festivals, the wilting pampas grass. The pinwheel fireworks meant to
expand and blossom at the touch of a flame, packed neatly into boxes. These
strange things stirred my heart.
In the same way, I was fond of stained glass beads and marbles with flowers and
fish trapped within them. Placing these baubles on my tongue gave me an
undescribable pleasure, a faint taste of coolness. I had often done this as a
child, only to be scolded by my parents, but this sweet childhood memory brought
some refreshment to my indigent adulthood. The faint but clear flavor, like
poetry, drifted along my tongue.
Though I tried to spend frugally, I had absolutely no money. That is to say, I
could not keep myself from buying little luxuries when they stirred my interest.
Two to three yen at a time-- those kind of luxuries. Beautiful things-- things
that seemed call me out of my lethargy, flirtatiously asking to be known, as
would an unknown object in an insect's feelers-- these things consoled me in
older, more natural times.
Among the places I had loved before this evil began eating into my heart, the
Maruzen department store had been a particular favorite. Red and yellow bottles
of eau de cologne, amber and jade perfume bottles of elegant Rococo or
fashionable kiriko cut glass. Pipes for smoking, small knives, soaps, cigarettes.
In the past I could have whittled away an hour looking at all these things, and
end up buying just one good-quality pencil, one small bit of luxury. Now, I only
felt dirty when I looked at the displays. Textbooks, students, charge accounts-
- these things appeared to me only as ghostly omens of debt.
One morning, I received news that my best friend was currently living as a
transient in a friend's boarding home. The last time I'd seen him was when he'd
graduated from the school we both attended, and after he had left I'd remained
in that quiet, empty atmosphere, alone. When I heard this, I was compelled to
go and wander over-- I was chasing after something, I suppose.
Walking from street to street, I again began to walk through those dirty back
alleys I'd loved before, pausing slightly in front of cheap candy shops and
grocery stores to look at the piles of dried shrimp, boudara cod, and yuba tofu.
Slowly, I made my way onto Teramachi in the direction of Nijou - and then
stopped, flat-footed, in front of the fruit grocery there.
Though I was not well-acquainted with this particular shop, I had already come
to love it in the few times I'd been there. It was by no means an elegant shop,
but it had the kind of beauty, characteristic of fruit shops, that felt honest
and open. A few fruits were lined up on a quickly sloping makeshift pedestal,
which appeared to be an old, black-lacquered plank. A showy, energetic melody
flowed out of the shop. Anyone who saw the shop and its line of fruit
automatically turned into stone, as if they'd been struck by the sight of a
gorgon - they could not continue past, as if their muscles has suddenly
stiffened. Such was the brilliance of those colors, those volumes and shapes.
Inside, of course, were burgeoning piles of yet-unripened globes of fruit,
ginseng, and barrels of beans and arrowroot soaking in water.
The store also held beauty at night. Although Teramachi Avenue was nowhere
nearly as busy as other streets in Tokyo or Osaka, it was usually bustling with
activity. However, the rest of the street here seemed strangely subdued as the
abundant light of the shop's window decorations streamed out into the darkness.
One end of the street intersected with Nijou Avenue, such that the street should
have naturally seemed dark in comparison, but it did not seem clear that the
darkness should have overwhelmed the lights of the neighboring houses. I
probably wouldn't have been attracted to the sight if it weren't this way,
though. The eaves of these houses jutted out into the night, then blended in
the darkness-- the pitch-black sky pressed down on these buildings, weighing on
their roofs, as the store's own crown seemed to sink frightfully lower. A
string of electric bulbs adorned the storefront in a shower of light, stubbornly
displaying their brilliance in a yet-unmet challenge to vandals. The light from
these naked, tightly spiraling helices pierced my eyes, and I preferred to look
at it filtered through the glass of the second floor of a nearby weighing shop.
Even so, this fruit store was one of the rare places in Teramachi where I could
sometimes still enjoy myself.
On this day, I bought a lemon. Lemons were common, and while the store was not
shabby, it was really no different from any other grocery shop, and I'd never
bothered to take a look. This lemon was special, though: simply and purely
yellow, as if it had been squeezed directly from the tube of "lemon yellow"
paint, and perfectly shaped, like a shortened spindle. I loved it immediately--
of course, in the end I bought only one.
After this, I wondered where to walk next. I walked down the street for a long
time, then realized that for the first time in a long while, I was happy. From
the moment I'd grasped the lemon, it seemed that the evil in my heart had begun
to lighten and fade. Perhaps I should have been suspicious that this one small
object had distracted me from my persistent depression, causing such a
paradoxical reality-- then again, perhaps not. The heart, that rascal, is
always so full of mystery.
These days my body was always hot with fever from the tuberculosis, and the
coolness of the lemon, the goodness of this sensation, was beyond comparison. I
used to show off how hot my skin was, actually, by comparing temperatures with
my friends. I tried them all many times, grabbing their hands to compare and
feel them with my own. Nobody ever beat me. The memory and comfort of those
hands returned as the lemon in my palm seeped a clear coldness into my body.
I brought the lemon to my nose again and again, and the fruit orchards of
California stretched before me in my imagination. Abruptly, a line from the
Chinese classic "Baikansha Shigen"* surfaced in my mind: the smell struck his
nose. I inhaled the atmosphere as deeply as I could, gasping it down into
my feeble lungs. My blood rushed up through my face and body, leaving a
lingering warmth and a far-off memory of health before it passed.
The sensation of cold, the feel of its weight, the color and appearance of this
simple lemon: I began to feel that this, this lemon, held everything I had been
searching for in those days. This was from those days, I thought-- and
was overcome with mystery.
---
Footnote: I don't know if this is the correct romanization. I'll ask a neighbor
about the correct pinyin soon, and hopefully be able to find more information by
searching for the romanized name. In the meantime, I googled this explanat
ion:
From Chinese literature. This is a story about a person who, after
buying a dried citrus fruit at a very high price, cuts it into pieces. A smoke-
like substance is released from inside the fruit, and the stench of decay enters
his nose and mouth. "The smell struck [your] nose" is a line from this passage,
and has become an expression used to accuse someone of having a very sharp sense
of smell.
Until I confirm this by finding a translation of the Chinese story, this section
of the translation may be less accurate than usual.
---
Already I was stepping lightly down the street with excitement and a certain
feeling of pride - the image of a stylish, swaggering poet or something like
that, I thought. I cradled the lemon in my ragged hand towel, tried to gauge
the lustre of its peel, suspended it in the folds of my manteau. I could think
of only one thing.
-- This weight! --
The ordinary me would have already tired of playing with an object's weight, of
all things. But though it sounded like foolishness, I knew without a doubt that
the heaviness of this lemon was the tangible conversion of everything good,
everything beautiful into one small weight.
I guess I was happy.
Where to walk next? I looked up and front of the Maruzen Department
Store. I normally did my best to avoid this place, but today, I easily made the
decision to go in.
"Just this once, today I'll chance a look," I thought, and with that I tromped
through the doors.
---
But as I stepped over the threshold, for reasons unknown, the happiness that had
filled my heart began to trickle and drain, little by little. My heart could
not attach itself to the perfume bottles and tobacco pipes. An awakening
depression seemed to close in around me, like a basket entrapping a fish, and as
I wandered through the store, a fatigue began to spread through my body.
I walked towards a shelf of picture copybooks and struggled to pull one out -
one needed ever-growing strength to extract those massive tones! I thought. I
pulled out one, then another, cracking them open to flip through pages, but felt
nothing - the feelings I'd expected to bubble up were nowhere to be found.
Though it seemed cursed, I reached up to grab another book. It was the same as
the others. Restless, I placed this one on the pile. Now it was intolerable -
I could not go back outside yet.
I returned to what I'd been doing, stacking book after book on the counter.
Finally, I came to the end: a large, burnt-orange book filled with angles I'd
loved. This, too, I dropped on the pile. What kind of curse was this? The
muscles in my arms were still sapped by fatigue. Depressed and empty, suddenly
seeing what I'd done, I stared at my tower of books.
What had I done? The feelings I'd once felt as page after page washed
over my eyes, the ones that seemed strangely inappropriate when I looked back up
at my ordinary surroundings, were feelings I'd loved and savored...where had
they gone?
Ah yes, of course. I remembered the lemon in my sleeve. The stack of
books was a jumble of colors, and I tested the lemon against it, comparing the
hues. Of course.
The excitement and lightness I'd held on the street had returned. I began to
grab volumes haphazardly, tearing them down, building them up. I tore new books
down from the shelves and added them to the mix, arranging them quickly until it
emerged: a weird, fantastic castle of red and blue. At last, I had raised it.
My heart leapt, but I quieted it for one last task. Slowly, timidly, I set the
lemon on the castle rampart as an offering. And with that, it was done.
As I surveyed my work, the yellow of the lemon appeared to absorb, then
completely silence the racuous melange of canvas covers. In the dusty interior
of Maruzen, all else but the lemon held a feeling of tension, and I stood there,
momentarily entranced.
Suddenly, I had a second idea - a strange plan, one that startled me.
--I'll act like I haven't eaten anything, and walk outside.--
I could not contain my amusement. I'd better go. Yes, I'll go. And I
walked out briskly.
Back on the road, that ticklish feeling intensified, and I began to smile.
Perhaps it was crazy, but where I had placed a lemon, I imagined something quite
different. There is a terrible golden bomb glittering on the shelf of the
Maruzen Department store, I thought, and I am the scoundrel who placed it
there. In ten minutes there will be a large explosion in the middle of the
Maruzen Fine Arts Department. I followed this gleefully, imagining the
explosion. By now, the stuffy Maruzen has exploded into dust.
And as I began to paint the street into a mural of an action photograph, I
passed down into Kyogoku.
-October 1924