Free Mandarins by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa

rainy evening at the Ikuine. Miura immediately continued: ‘That was the first blow. Having largely lost whatever grounds I had for approving of their relationship, I naturally found it impossible to maintain my previous air of benignity. That must have been about the time you returned from Korea. I was daily tormentedby the question of how to separate my wife from her cousin. However false might be his love for her, there was no doubt in my mind that her feelings for him were sincere . . . Such was what I believed. At the same time, for the sake of her happiness as well, I thought it necessary for me to act as a negotiator. But when they—or at least she—perceived my state of mind, she seemed to have reasoned that I had just become aware of their relationship and was now overcome with jealousy. She thus began to keep a wary and hostile watch over me; perhaps she even exercised the same wariness toward you.’
    â€œâ€˜Now that you say that,’ I replied, ‘she was standing outside your study, listening to our conversation.’
    â€œâ€˜Yes,’ he remarked in return, ‘she is the sort of woman who is quite capable of that.’ For several moments we remained silent, staring at the dark surface of the water. Our boat had already passed under what was then Oumayabashi, leaving a faint wake in the night water as we edged toward tree-lined Komakata.
    â€œMiura spoke in a subdued voice: ‘Even then I did not doubt my wife’s sincerity. Thus, the knowledge that she did not grasp my true feelings or rather that I had only earned her hatred caused me all the more anguish. From the day I met you at Shinbashi until today, I have constantly been in the throes of that distress. But then about a week ago, a maid or one of the other servants carelessly allowed a letter that should have gone to my wife to find its way to my desk. I immediately thought of her cousin . . . Well, I eventually opened the letter and found to my astonishment that it was a love missive from yet another man. In a word, her love for her cousin was no less impure. Needless to say, this second blow was of vastly more terrible intensity than the first. All my ideals had been ground to dust. At the same time, I was sadly comforted by the abrupt lessening of responsibility.’
    â€œMiura ceased speaking, and now from above the rows of grainstorehouses along the opposite bank we saw just beginning to rise the immense, eerily red globe of the autumn moon. When just a few minutes ago I saw Yoshitoshi’s ukiyo é of Kikugor ō in Western dress and was reminded of Miura, it was particularly because that red moon was so similar to the lantern moon mounted on the stage.
    â€œMiura, with his thin, pale face and his long hair parted in the middle, gazed at the rising of the moon and then suddenly sighed, remarking sadly even as he smiled: ‘Once, some time ago, you dismissed as a childish dream the cause of the Jinp Å« ren rebels and their willingness to fight to the death. Well, perhaps in your eyes my married life too . . .’
    â€œâ€˜Indeed, perhaps so. But then it may also well be that in one hundred years our goal of achieving modern enlightenment will likewise seem no less a childish dream.’ ”
    Just as the viscount had finished speaking these words, an attendant appeared to inform us that the museum was about to close. We stood up slowly and, giving one last look at the ukiyo é and copperplate prints all around us, silently walked out of the darkened display hall, quite as though we ourselves had emerged from those glass cases as phantoms from the past.

AUTUMN
1
    From the time she began her studies, it was well known that Nobuko was a gifted young writer. There was scarcely anyone who doubted that sooner or later she would make her way into the literary world. It was even widely reported that while yet a student at her women’s university she had written more than three