A Strange Story

One winter night I was walking the Ginza with my old friend, Murakami.

"A letter came from Chieko the other day. She sends you her regards."

All at once, as though he had just remembered, Murakami gave me this news of his younger sister, who now lives in Sasebo.

"Chieko-san is well, I hope."

"Yes, she has been for some time now. When she was in Tokyo she suffered severe nervous exhaustion-- but you knew about that."

"I knew about it. But whether it was actually a nervous breakdown or not . . ."

"Then you didn't know? When she came home that day it was as if she were completely out of her mind. When I thought she was crying, she would laugh. When I thought she was laughing-- it was a strange story."

"A strange story?"

Before answering, Murakami pushed open the glass door of a cafe. Then he sat down, facing me, at a table where we could watch the crowd passing by.

"A strange story. I must not have told you before. But she told me before she went to Sasebo."

As you know, Chieko's husband, the naval officer A_____, was stationed in the Mediterranean area during the European war. She had come to my place while he was away. When the time came that the war made its mark, her nervous exhaustion flared up suddenly. Until that time a letter had come from her husband each week, so it may have been because they stopped all at once. In any case, Chieko had been parted from her husband within six month of her marriage, so she got so much joy out of his letters that even I wasn't cruel enough to tease her about them.

One day right around that time-- I remember, it was Empire Day [now National Foundation Day , 11 February]. It had been raining since morning, and was a bitterly cold afternoon, but Chieko told us she was going to enjoy a visit in Kamakura after a long absence. A school friend of hers, the wife of a businessman, lived in Kamakura. My wife and I told her repeatedly that even though she had said she would visit, there was no need to go all the way to Kamakura in all that rain, and tried to get her to wait till the next day. But Chieko stubbornly insisted on going that day. Finally she got irritated, threw her things together and started out.

"Depending on how things go, I may spend the night and come back tomorrow morning," she said as she left. But a little later she came back home, pale-faced and thoroughly soaked by the rain for some reason. When we asked, she said she had walked from the Central Railway Station to the Horibata streetcar stop without putting up her umbrella. Then she told why she had done so-- that is the strange story.

When Chieko got to the Central Railway Station-- no, it was before that. She had gotten on the streetcar, but unfortunately the seats were packed. So as she was hanging on a strap, she said she could see an ocean scene dimly reflected on the window glass in front of her. Just then the streetcar was passing through Jinbocho, so of course there was no way anything like the ocean could be reflected on the glass. Still, she could see the people on the street outside through the rise and fall of waves. And when the rain was blown hard against the window glass, she could dimly make out the horizon in the distance. Judging from her description, Chieko's nerves may already have been a problem at that point.

Then, as she entered the Central Railway Station, a redcap at the entrance suddenly bowed to her. Then he said, "Is your gentleman still well?" That was certainly strange. But stranger yet, Chieko didn't see anything strange about the redcap's question. She even replied, "Thank you for asking. But I don't know what has happened lately, since his letters have stopped coming." And the redcap answered, "In that case, I will go see the gentleman." Whatever the redcap said, her husband was far off in the Mediterranean-- only as she had that thought did it occur to Chieko that there was something crazy about the words of this unfamiliar redcap. But before she could ask him anything, the redcap bowed slightly and disappeared into the crush of people. Hard as she looked for him, Chieko couldn't spot the redcap again. Or rather than not being able to spot him, she was strangely unable to remember the face of the redcap who had been standing right in front of her. So at the same time that she couldn't spot that redcap, all of the redcaps seemed to be him. Though she couldn't understand why, Chieko felt like this suspicious redcap was still close by, watching her. Far from wanting to go to Kamakura, she felt uncomfortable even being where she was. In a daze, Chieko escaped from the train station and returned through the downpour, not putting up her umbrella. For the next three days or so she maintained a high fever and said nothing except phrases apparently addressed to her husband: "Please forgive me, dear," or "Why haven't you come back?" But that wasn't the only penalty for her trip to Kamakura. Even after recovering from her cold, if she so much as heard the word "redcap," Chieko would be subdued the rest of the day, and hardly open her mouth. It was ridiculous-- once she happened to see a picture of a redcap on the signboard of a shipping agent, and came back home with no more thought of wherever she had planned to go.

After about a month of this, however, her fear of redcaps receded considerably. According to my wife, she laughed and said, "Sister, there was a redcap with the face of a cat in that Kyoka story [Izumi Kyoka, Red Snow, published in New Stories, March 1902]. Reading that must have made me see things strangely." But one day in March, I think, she was frightened by a redcap again. From that time till her husband came home, Chieko never went to the train station for any reason. The reason she didn't go see you off when you left for Korea was, of course, her fear of redcaps.

It was a day in March, I think, when a colleague of her husband's returned from two years in America. Chieko left the house in the morning to be there for his arrival, but our neighborhood, as you know, is one where you seldom pass people, even in the daytime. A pinwheel seller's pack was sitting, as though abandoned, beside the lonely path. It was a cloudy day with a little wind, so the colored paper windwheels stuck into the pack were all spinning dizzily. Even this scene caused Chieko anxiety, for some reason, and as she looked along the path, she suddenly saw a man wearing a red cap squatting with his back to her. It was, no doubt, the pinwheel seller having a smoke or something. But when she saw the red color of the cap, Chieko had a premonition that something unusual would occur when she got to the train station. It was enough that she wanted to turn around right then.

But once she got to the station, fortunately, everything went as usual until the welcome was completed. As the group filed through the wicket with her husband's colleague in the lead, someone behind her said, "The gentleman says he was wounded in the right arm. That is why he cannot write letters." Chieko spun around to look, but there was no redcap behind her. There was no one but a naval officer's wife she knew by sight. There was no way this officer's wife would suddenly have said such a thing, so that voice was strange if anything can be called strange. In any case, Chieko said she was glad that there wasn't a redcap in sight. She went through the wicket and joined the others in seeing her husband's colleague into an automobile waiting at the carriage entrance. At that time, she again clearly heard a voice behind her say, "Madame, the gentleman says he will return next month." Again, Chieko turned to look, but there was no redcap-- just the group she was with. But while there were no redcaps behind her, there were two in front of her, transferring luggage into the automobile. For some reason, one of them looked up at her just then and grinned strangely. When she saw that, Chieko's color changed enough that those around her noticed, she said. She calmed herself, however, and saw that there was only one redcap handling luggage where she thought she had seen two. And that one was not at all like the one who had just smiled at her. Even though she had just been looking at him, the face of the redcap who smiled at her was again vague in her memory. However hard she tried to remember, all that came to her mind was a featureless face topped by a red cap. That is the second strange story I heard from Chieko.

About a month later-- it was around the time you went to Korea, I believe-- her husband really did come home. It was true, interestingly enough, that he had not been able to write for a while because his right arm was wounded. At the time, my wife and others teased her saying, "Chieko-san thinks of her husband so much that of course she understood what had happened." Just a few weeks later Chieko and her husband went to his new assignment in Sasebo; when I read a letter she wrote en route, I was surprised to find a third strange story.

That is, while Chieko and her husband were at the Central Railway Station, the redcap who had handled their luggage poked his head in the window of the train, which had already started moving, as a final courtesy. Her husband suddenly made an odd face as he glanced at the redcap and then, rather embarrassed, told her this story-- While ashore in Marseilles, he went to a cafe with some colleagues when suddenly a Japanese redcap came up to the table and asked him, in a familiar way, how he had been. There was, of course, no way a Japanese redcap would be loitering in the streets of Marseilles. But for some reason, her husband didn't think it particularly unusual, and had told about his wounded arm and his imminent return. Just then one of his inebriated colleagues overturned a cognac snifter. Startled, the husband looked over, and the Japanese redcap immediately disappeared from the cafe. What was the explanation, he wondered. Considering the matter, even with his eyes wide open it was difficult to say if it had been a dream or reality. Moreover, his companions gave no indication that they had noticed the redcap come. And so he had finally decided not to mention the incident to anyone. Returning to Japan, however, he learned that Chieko had twice encountered a suspicious redcap. He wondered if it had been the redcap he met in Marseilles, but that sounded too much like a ghost story. He also thought he would be ridiculed for thinking about his wife so much while on a mission of honor, and so he had remained silent. But now, when he had seen the redcap poke his face in, it was not a hair different from that of the man who had entered the cafe in Marseilles. But after he finished his story, her husband sat silent for a moment, then spoke uneasily, in a low voice. "Isn't it strange? Although I know it wasn't a hair different, I can't clearly remember the redcap's face, no matter what. But as soon as I saw it through the window, I knew it was him. . ."

When Murakami reached that point in his story, three or four men who seemed to be friends of his entered the cafe; they approached the table and greeted him aloud. I stood up.

"I'd better excuse myself now. I'll call on you again before I return to Korea."

When I was outside the cafe, I drew a long breath. That was because I finally understood why, just three years ago, Chieko had twice broken promises to meet me secretly at the Central Railway Station, then sent me a simple note saying she would always remain a chaste wife.