Mandarins by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa Page A

“When I’m alone . . .” They struck me as ever so much more human than the wailing voice of the girl. Gripping the hand strap as I looked out through the lingering light of day at the electric lamps burning in the houses of K ō jimachi, I could not but be reminded of the term charactres 1 and of the sheer diversity of human personality.
    Thirty minutes later I stood in front of the house, pressing the button of the bell on the concrete wall. I heard a faint ringing sound and saw the glass door at the entrance illuminated. An elderly maid opened it a crack, let out an exclamation, and then led me up to a room on the second floor, which looked out on the street.
    As I threw my overcoat and hat on the table, I felt myself yielding to the fatigue that for the time being I had forgotten. The maid lit the gas stove and left me there in the room alone. Being a bit of a manic collector, my cousin had two or three oil and watercolor paintings hung on the walls. As I gazed absentmindedly at them, Iwas again reminded of the various ancient words that point to life’s vicissitudes.
    My blood relative and her husband’s younger brother had arrived within a few minutes of each other. Even she appeared to be in a calmer frame of mind than I had anticipated. I explained as accurately and precisely as I could what my cousin had told me and launched into a discussion of what measures might be taken, a subject in which she showed no burning interest. As I was speaking, she picked up my Astrakhan hat:
    â€œQuite unusual. Foreign, I should think.”
    â€œThis? It’s the kind of hat that Russians wear.”
    For his part, my younger cousin had proved to be more “enterprising” than his imprisoned sibling in foreseeing obstacles in our way.
    â€œAnyway, some sort of friend of his recently sent round a journalist in the society department of The X News, entrusting him with his calling card, on the back of which he’d written: ‘I’ve paid half the hush money out of my own pocket. You pay the rest.’ We looked into the story. It was, of course, the friend himself who had talked to the journalist in the first place. And naturally there hadn’t been any hush money paid. He was merely trying to trick us out of the sum, with some newsman as his confederate . . .”
    â€œBeing a journalist myself, I’ll thank you to spare me such hurtful comments.”
    I was resorting to levity as a means of rousing my own spirits, but the younger brother went on talking, as though delivering a speech, his eyes bloodshot from drink. He had a menacing look that would allow for no trifling.
    â€œAnd to boot, my brother has a friend who, just to set the examining judge’s teeth on edge, cornered him in order to offer his own rousing defense.”
    â€œPerhaps if you had spoken to him . . . ,” I ventured.
    â€œOf course, I did just that. I went bowing and scraping to him to say that while we are so grateful for his consideration, any remarks that antagonize the judge will, for all his good intentions, have a most adverse effect.”
    My cousin was sitting in front of the gas heater, playing with my Astrakhan hat, and it was to this, I must honestly say, that my attention was now solely directed, even as her brother-in-law was speaking. I could not bear the thought that she might drop it into the fire . . . I had already sometimes imagined that. A friend had searched the Jewish quarter in Berlin for such a hat and then, quite by chance, on a trip to Moscow, had at last been able to find it.
    â€œAnd I take it that that was not to his liking . . . ,” I remarked.
    â€œThat’s not the word for it! He told me: ‘I’ve gone to great lengths to help the two of you and find it most annoying to be treated rudely.’ ”
    â€œSo it really does seem that nothing can be done.”
    â€œI’m afraid not. It’s a matter of neither legality nor morality.