Illusion
Takeo Arishima
Illusion
Takeo Arishima
He had certain ambitions.
As he welcomed the spring and autumn months with the exception of the first thirteen or fourteen years of his life, when he was still unsteady, this mysterious temptation of his mind, which had originally made him friendly, gradually led him down an unexpected and solitary path. When he looked back at his surroundings, he found that something had happened to him that surprised and frightened him. This life - this one life - was the only life he had left to live, and he could not help but fear for his shifting self as he was pulled along by his ambitions. He was afraid that he would become a plaything of some rootless fantasy and rot away. Wasn't his ambition, so to speak, a desperate measure that he had devised, without realising it, to escape the weariness that came from a lack of fulfilment in his life? There are plenty of people out there who put up such ambitions on their foreheads and look unconcerned. It was not uncommon for him to be troubled by this faint reflection.
Nevertheless, Ambition did not abandon him. He, too, counted ambition as the most important thing. Even when people criticised him for the incoherence of his life, if he drew a circle around his ambition, his life was never outside that circle. When he realised this, he suddenly became courageous and gladly welcomed his isolation. The more docile he became, the more he drifted away from his parents and siblings. The fact that his wife and friends did not understand him was no longer a problem. Considering his own lack of understanding towards others, it seemed despicable to expect others to understand him. There was nothing like the satisfaction of gradually regaining the freedom of mind that he had gradually lost.
The sky was overcast and had not seen the light of day for three days, so he looked from upstream to downstream, expecting a chilly light rain like an autumn shower today. The green grass on the banks was sprouting a milky misty colour and the willows on the riverbanks were rustling in the breeze, but the rain was still nowhere to be seen. A melancholy mood seemed to be quietly and quietly trying to overpower him. He walked steadily over the embankment. Behind him, a small town with a long, narrow bridge like a skinny arm stretched across the river in a lonely manner.
Behind the embankment at the end of the road was an awkwardly huge, blackened building, clustered together in a flat barley field. As he approached, he saw that it was a slaughterhouse. At the gate stood a fat, forty-something wife and a slender girl of twelve or thirteen, looking at him. The girl's apron was frighteningly white. Against a large, tightly closed gate, they watched him approach, hand in hand. He stared at them from a distance as he walked away. As they got closer and closer, and when they could make out each other's faces, they realised they had mistaken each other for someone else and left quickly through the wooden door.
He looked straight upstream again, regretting that he had focused his attention on something he had no use for. The white apron he had been staring at turned into a black blotch that flickered in front of his eyes for a while. But it eventually disappeared.
He thought that his beautiful heart was very lovely. When he thought of the old people who consciously demanded sacrifices for the sake of their own ambitions, yet never regretted it in the slightest, the fine taste of human life reverberated through the depths of his heart. He had compassion and respect for those who could confidently sacrifice even a single insect for their own sake. To what could he compare this feeling of staring at a subtle compass while being swept along by the great waves of business?
He was moved by the thought of someone waiting for him in a different way. He was able to imagine the small conversation of disappointment that had taken place between the mother and the child as they walked through the door. Then he thought of his newly married wife. "I'm going to sacrifice you one day," he murmured sadly.
That side of the river was the site of last year's flood. The straw from the bale had turned to dirt and there were clumps of radish flowers blooming in light purple in places amongst the sand that had risen up all over the field. Even in this small sign, he felt the power and strength of nature. Then he stood still and looked around. On the sand of the peasants' abandoned fields, the angry river waves were still there as they had been last year. The waves had mercilessly snatched the farmer's only son from his boat, who lived near here. The sand that had settled on the beach was so thick that it looked like potato starch and there was no sundry grass growing on it. They looked as if they had never seen anything like it. A feeling of something very different from the nature he was used to struck him.
He had not forgotten that he had to fight against nature as well. But he thought of man and nature as separate. He did not think that to be isolated from the understanding of man was also to be separated from nature. Until that moment, he thought that what he had lost from man, nature would be able to make up for.
He stood there and looked around, but there was not a soul in sight. The town, with its long, narrow bridges stretching across it like a skinny arm, was only faintly visible downstream.
He looked at it intently, his heart heavy with emotion. He also remembered how he had tried to take a rickshaw in that town, but had not done so for fear of running out of coins in his pocket.
He thought more and more that he had been lured there by the power of his ambition.
What is ambition?
A will.
No, it is himself.
Then why does he hesitate before himself?
Is it God?
He shrugged his shoulders as if he had received a blow on the head and looked around again.
The memory of his disappointment when he had gone out to get camellias in the field came back to him. The day after he had returned with more than he could hold, it rained for three days, so he stayed out and went out to see what had happened to all the camellias. What would he do if Ambition were to become distracted? He turned his head toward the river, muttering in his mind, and a bitter feeling of bitterness filled his heart.
After a while, he came across a tributary where the water flowed only slowly and he had to part from the main stream of the river. Along the tributary, a small bank had been newly built. The red soil on the stone walls had not yet weathered and was still red under a dark sky. He walked on the hardened red clay, stepping over the work of others who were not him.
There were deciduous pine trees planted on the bank, about one meter apart from each other. There was a sign on the bank telling people not to pass on the bank. At the end of the road, there was a small bridge across a tributary, and a simple peasant house stood beside it. He looked in through the hedge. Along the hedge he could see flowering beans being planted.
He, too, had planted flowering beans in the corner of his garden. His own beans had just developed leaves, but these had already developed three large dark green leaves.
He walked on, feeling sharply isolated. His walk was, however, firm and striding. He seemed to be rightly encouraged by his ambition.
The bridge was crossed.
The view in front of him gradually narrowed, and to the right of the road the mountains began to tighten up in parallel with the road.
He had already realised that he would be thrown into prison for the fulfilment of his ambitions. Fantasies of prison life were often brewing in his head. It was his most pleasant dream to imagine that his isolation, which no prison could do anything about, and his freedom, which was to be his reward, would flow and drift of their own accord through the dark, cold, thick prison walls.
But then he saw a small well by the roadside with such familiarity that he could not doubt his dream. The well was less than three feet deep and half coagulated, but it had been cleaned and there was not a speck of dust in the bucket made from a piece of apple box. He had a strong feeling that people lived there, in a way he had never felt before. The prison would keep such a familiar scene from his sight.
Could he use his solitary freedom to come from the prison to this well?
At last the rain had come. From far away, the wind ruffled the leaves, and the rain came closer.
The rain was coming towards him. He quickened his pace in the direction of the rain. The dusty white street turned reddish-black as he looked at it, and soon there were puddles of water in the potholes, which began to pour out slowly.
Without an umbrella, he went on his way soaking wet. Suddenly he heard birds singing and stopped again to look up towards the mountains. The mountain near the road was very high. As he looked up, he felt a strange fear. The mountain was overgrown with forests of trees from the foot to the top. As the rain drifted between the trees, all the trees were gathered together in a crowd, signifying their individuality. All of them called out to him in strange words. The crows, in response to his words, were attacked by the rain and cried out in a terrible cry.
The mountain speaks. The mountain speaks in a strange language, incomprehensible, terrible, never heard before.
He heard it in his ears.
His whole body trembled with fear.
For the first time he felt himself becoming more and more accustomed to being alone. Then, with an inexpressible nostalgia, he thought of the beans in the hedge and the shallow well.
After a while, drenched by the rain, he started walking along the road again towards the upper reaches of the river. On the muddy, rain-swept road, he was the only shadow moving.