Mandarins by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa

much as glancing at me, he gave no reply and walked away, followed by the gambler and two or three others.
    I stood in the middle of the bare earthen floor and mechanically lit a cigarette. As time passed I felt my loathing for the sullen guard growing stronger. (I am constantly surprised at my lack of immediate anger in response to such insults.) He returned about five. Doffing my hat, I tried to pose my previous question once again. He turned his face aside and briskly walked away. This was clearly the moment in which I sensed that enough was enough. I gave a toss to my cigarette butt and walked toward the prison entrance at the other side of the waiting room.
    Several guards dressed in traditional Japanese clothing were on duty behind a glass window to the left of a stone staircase. I opened the window and spoke as softly as I could to a man wearing a crested jacket of black pongee. I was quite conscious of looking pale and nervous.
    â€œI am here to visit T. Will that be possible?”
    â€œWait your turn.”
    â€œI have been waiting here since about ten o’clock.”
    â€œYou’ll be called in due time.”
    â€œAm I to wait even if I am not called, even though it is already nightfall?”
    â€œWell, in any case, wait until you are called. Just wait.”
    He seemed to be worried that I might cause a disturbance. Though quite annoyed, I felt a measure of sympathy for him. I was also not unaware of an ironic similarity: I was the family representative, he the prison representative.
    â€œIt is already past five. Please try to allow me a visit.”
    With this as my parting shot, I decided to return for the time being to the waiting room, which by this time was already dark. The woman who had been reading the magazine now had it placed facedown on her lap and was looking straight ahead. Her hair was arranged in the fashion of one already married; her face somehow suggested a Gothic sculpture. I sat down in front of her, still filled with the antipathy that the powerless feel toward penal institutions as a whole.
    It was nearly six o’clock before I was finally summoned. I was led to the interview room by a round-eyed, seemingly quick-witted guard. The “room”—such that it was—measured no more than a few square feet. There were other similar enclosures as well, each with its own painted door, giving one quite the feeling of being in a public lavatory. At the end of a narrow passageway was a half-moon window; it was through this opening that visitors showed themselves.
    Through the dim light of the window I could see my cousin’s plump, round face. It was heartening to see that he had undergone surprisingly little change. With no pretense of sentimentality, we had a terse and businesslike discussion. To my right, apparently there to see an elder brother, was a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl, whose ceaseless weeping we could not help noticing.
    â€œPlease tell everyone that I am entirely innocent of the charge.”
    My cousin spoke with stiff formality. I looked back at him in silence, my very lack of reply overwhelming me with a suffocating feeling. To my left, an old man with bald patches on his head was talking through the half-moon window to a prisoner who, it seemed, was his son:
    â€œWhen I’m alone and haven’t seen you for a while, I remember all sorts of things to say, but when I come here, I forget what they were . . .”
    As I left the interview room, I felt that I had somehow failed my cousin—but also that in this there was a measure of shared responsibility. Again I was led by a guard and now found myself striding down the corridor toward the entrance in the bone-piercing cold.
    At my cousin’s house uptown, his wife, my blood relative, would be awaiting my arrival. I walked through the squalid streets to Yotsuya-Mitsuke Station and got on a crowded train. The words of the strangely enfeebled old man rang in my ears: