The Beggar Student

Not even the wisest reader knows the anguish of the writer who has sent a truly awful piece of writing to a magazine in order to survive. Here goes nothing, I told myself, pushing that heavy envelope into the mailbox. It hit the bottom with a thunk. And that was that. Another crummy story. On the surface, it pretends to be a mirror to my soul, although I know as well as anyone the slimy worms of compromise are wriggling in the muck at the bottom.

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It’s a work in which the work is far from done. How about that infantile depiction of women? It makes me so ashamed I want to scream and run around in circles. I promise you, it’s terrible. A lousy piece of trash. I have no right to call myself a writer. Such is my ignorance. No insights to impart. No illuminating views.

Among the literary set of nineteenth-century Paris, the poseur writers were called “weather vanes” as a term of derision. Embarrassments to their so-called art, much like yours truly, they struggled at the salons to say anything of worth, hazarding comment only on the weather, hence the nickname. Yet stultifying as they were, these conversations took great effort; the weather vanes were just doing their best. And who am I to judge? The story I just dropped into the mailbox does no better.

Yesterday it snowed. When I saw it, I was stunned. A stunning sight. Opening the shutters, I found the world was sparkling a certain shade of silver — however, as I write this, wiping the sweat from my brow, I recognize how idiotic this must sound. Sparkle a certain shade? What’s certain about that? All I do is stammer, incapable of making even one keen observation.

I am a shameful man. Honestly, I should’ve torn that lousy story into pieces and retreated to the mountains, never to return. But I’m so timid that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If I hadn’t sent the manuscript today, I would’ve broken a promise to my editor. You see, I made the dumb mistake of promising to send the story to him by today at the latest. He even left space in the magazine for my atrocious story. And now I could be certain he was watching the clock tick, waiting for the packet to arrive. As crummy as it was, how could I tear it up and start again?

This makes me sound as if I’ve done the right thing and fulfilled my obligations. Sadly, no. I merely acted out of cowardice, afraid my editor would beat me up. If I’d broken my promise, I could’ve wound up with a busted nose. So, like a dead man walking, I cast aside whatever artistic fortitude I had, shut my eyes, and dropped that hideous manuscript into the mailbox.And I call myself a man. Once the envelope went through the slot, it was all over. No amount of moaning could make things right. Soon enough, the story would be carried to my editor’s desk. He’d drop everything to read it, only to wish he’d never seen the thing, but he would need to send it to the printer anyway, where skilled laborers with eyes like hawks and stolid faces would set type for my disastrous record of ineptitude.

It scared me to imagine what those eyes would find. Sloppy sentences full of errors. Ah, even the errand boy would double over laughing at my amateurish style. To think of all the precious paper that would be defiled because of me. My work will disgrace bookstore windows all across the land. Critics will sneer; readers will give up. That hack writer has outdone himself again, they’ll say, setting a low bar for writers everywhere. Tough to beat.

One bogus line after another. Not one redeeming quality. I knew this all too well, and yet, resignedly, with trembling hands, I pushed that heavy envelope into the mailbox and heard it hit the bottom with a thunk. And that was that. But the misery that followed was beyond compare.

As soon as I had dropped that piece of garbage in the mailbox, the one by Mitaka Station, I found myself without the will to live. Head drooped, hands tucked into my sleeves, I kicked a stone down the path, lacking the discipline to go straight home.

Our house is in the middle of a stretch of farmland, about twenty minutes on foot from the station. Difficult to find; almost nobody ever visits. Most of the time, as long as there was no work to be done, I can be found wrapped in a blanket on the garden porch, too tired to read anything of substance, yawning my life away, maybe reaching for the newspaper to glance over the funny pages, where they run little quizzes, asking things like which of the following seven animals hatches from an egg: turtles, whales, rabbits, frogs, seals, ants, pelicans . . . I might give this a moment’s thought, but then I’ll yawn so hard that tears will be running down my cheeks. That’s when I’ll gaze without a care at the sun setting in the fields beyond the yard, enjoying the existence of a man excused from living.

Considering my sorry state, I couldn’t bring myself to make the walk back to our happy home. So instead, I headed in the opposite direction, toward the path along the banks of the Tamagawa Canal.

This was April, in the middle of the day. The canal was running deep and swift, while the cherry trees along the shore had given up their flowers, curling their green branches toward the water in a cool tunnel of leaves. A secret place, free of pretense. If only I could put that in a story. What a story it would be!

Here I paused, feeling a familiar urge to stop time and take in the scenery, but I was so ashamed of this onslaught of emotion that I allowed myself only a few brief glances down the bright tunnel of green as I clopped along the edge of the canal.

I started walking faster. Pulled downstream by the river. The dark water was dressed up with the rotting petals of the cherry trees. It rushed forth without a sound. Before I knew it, I was chasing the brown petals down the river. Trotting like a jackass. While the troop of petals might grow sluggish, or speed up, it never stopped, riding the stream with wily ease. At that point, I had passed Mansuke Bridge, at the entrance to Inokashira Park, but I continued following the water, utterly transfixed.

This was the part of the canal where once upon a time, a kind teacher by the name of Matsumoto Kundo drowned while trying to save one of his students. The river had always been narrow, but back then it was deep and had a mighty current. That’s why people in the area gave it the fearsome name Maneater Brook.

I was starting to get tired, so I gave up chasing petals and looked into the water. The troop drifted away, slipping off into the full glare of the sun, then out of sight. I let out a nihilistic sigh and wiped my palm across my brow, which is when I heard a voice down in the water.“Whew, that’s cold!”

You can imagine my surprise. This nearly knocked me off my feet. A pale-skinned naked boy was swimming in Maneater Brook. No, not swimming; he was being pulled downstream.

Lifting his face from the water, the boy grinned at me from ear to ear, as the current dragged him away.

“Whew, that’s cold! So cold.”

This is a disaster! He’s going to drown! So what if I can’t swim, I can’t just let him die! I’m going to die someday, may as well be now. There’s no choice but to try and rescue him. Even if it means the both of us will drown. I guess this is the end . . .

Such were the absurdities that buzzed around my brain as I ran like crazy down the riverbank. In a word, I’d gone hog wild. Barreling forward — not even wincing when I tripped over a tree root and nearly fell onto my face.

Normally, I avoid grassy areas at all costs, because they’re full of snakes, but in this case I made an exception, since why should I fear venom when I’m about to drown? I was on a mission, saving this boy’s life, but as

I tore through the tall grass of the riverbank, I heard a howl erupt behind me.

“Yow! My stomach. You practically stepped through me.”

The voice sounded familiar.

Stomping to a halt, I turned and saw the swimmer sprawled out naked in the grass.

I lost my temper.

“Watch out! This river isn’t safe,” I yelled, realizing my rebuke was rather late, then I smoothed the sleeves of my kimono, trying to regain my composure. “I’ve come to save you.”

The boy sat up, squinting his steely eyes so that his long eyelashes almost met.

“You’re crazy, you know that? Didn’t even look before you ran me over. Blowing steam out of your ears. Well, look at this. Your geta left two fat lines on my stomach. See? That’s where you stepped on me. Like a big equals sign. Look at me!”

“I can’t. You’re indecent. Go on, compose yourself. It’s not right for a boy your age to laze about with no clothes on. Have some manners.”

The boy put on his trousers and stood up.

“Are you some kind of a park ranger?” he asked.

I pretended not to hear this. What an idiotic question. Then the boy smiled, baring his white teeth.

“Can’t imagine what you’re so upset about,” the boy said evenly, then stuffed his hands into his pockets and walked over to where I stood. A single cherry blossom petal clung to the wet skin of his right shoulder.

“This river isn’t safe,” I told him. “You can’t swim here.”

I was repeating myself, only this time in a deeper voice, almost a growl.

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “That’s why it’s called Maneater Brook. On top of that, it feeds into the Tokyo waterworks. They’re gonna have to sanitize the whole thing now, because of you.”

“I know, okay?” the boy said, tightening his cheeks into a guilty smile.

Up close, his features were more striking than I’d originally thought. Tall, elegant nose, turned up slightly at the tip. Thin eyebrows. A pair of big, round eyes. Small mouth and modest chin. Even with that pale complexion, he was the picture of a handsome youth. Of average height and build. His hair cropped short, no peach fuzz on his face . . . while his narrow brow was marked by three stacked wrinkles, and his nostrils were embellished by deep grooves where his nose met his lips.

The result was that he resembled a monkey. Perhaps no longer a boy at all, but a young man. In any case, he sat down in the grass and looked me in the eye.

“Care to join me? Hey, when you get mad like that, you look kinda like a samurai. From another time. Maybe the Ashikaga period, or the Momoyama period. Centuries ago. Do you remember which came first?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

I crossed my arms behind my back and paced around, losing my composure.

“Well then, can you name the tenth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate?”

“I’m afraid I can’t!”

And I genuinely could not.

“You don’t know anything. Guess you must be a teacher?”

“I’m afraid that you’re mistaken. I’m —” I started, but I hesitated for a moment, then quit being such a wimp and spat it out. “I write stories. I suppose that I’m a writer.”

After the words had left my mouth, I wished I’d never said them.

“Writer . . .” said the boy, thoroughly unimpressed. “In that case, writers must be pretty dumb. Hey, you ever heard of Évariste Galois?”

“I think I’ve heard that name somewhere before.” “Bah. I’ll bet all foreign names sound the same to

you. You only think you’ve heard it before, but you haven’t. Proves how little you know. For your information, though, Galois was a mathematician, not that you’d appreciate his work. Now, that was one smart man. Shot dead at twenty. You might try reading a book sometime, since you don’t know doodly-squat. Okay then, so do you know about the tragic death of Niels Henrik Abel?”

“Is he another mathematician?”

“Lucky guess. Abel was even smarter than Galois.

He died at twenty-six.”

A wave of anguish nearly knocked me off my feet. This was too much. I left the boy behind and found my own place in the grass to lay down and be alone.

When I closed my eyes, I heard hibari tweetle in the sky:

Though cheeky as a younger man,
He never gets them laughing anymore.
Like a wrinkly old monkey
Nothing about him to adore.
If he keeps deathly quiet
They take him for a fool,
And if he opens up his mouth
They tell him to save his breath.

–François Villon

I opened my eyes and shouted to the boy. “My problem is that I lack conviction!”

“Who asked you about conviction?” the boy yelled from his own bed in the grass, cutting me down. “You’d have to be at least as smart as Galois to make a claim like that.”

This kid found fault with everything I said.There was a time when I was just like him. A time when a new fact or skill would burn a hole into my brain, and I’d need to show it off, or else the world would end. My guess was that the boy had spent the night before, perhaps even that morning, skimming through a book about great mathematicians who died young. If he told me that Galois had swum up a vicious current in the nude, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least.

“Did this Galois by any chance go swimming in the nude one April morning in some book you read?” I asked him, trying to get the upper hand.

“What are you talking about? You dummy. You’re hopeless, you know that? This is why I hate adults. All I was trying to do was teach you something new. Trying to do you a favor. But you’re convinced that being older means you’re always going to be right.”

I was incensed. This time, the boy had made himself an enemy.

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From The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai. Used with permission of the publisher, New Directions. Translation copyright © 2024 by Sam Bett.