Devils in Daylight by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (translated by J. Keith Vincent).
Title: Devils in Daylight.
Author: Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (translated by J. Keith Vincent).
Genre: Literature, fiction,
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 1918.
Summary: One morning, Takahashi, a writer who has been up all night working, is interrupted by a phone call from his old friend Sonomura. Barely able to contain his excitement, Sonomura claims that he has cracked a secret cryptographic code based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug and now knows exactly when and where a murder will take place-but they must hurry if they want to witness the murder, because it will be happening that very night! Sonomura has a history of lunacy and playing the amateur detective, so Takahashi is reluctant to believe him. Nevertheless, they stake out the secret location and, through tiny peepholes in the knotted wood, become voyeurs at the scene of a shocking crime.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ Sonomura made no secret of the fact that mental illness ran in his family. I had contracted an intimacy with him nonetheless, and associated with him in full awareness of how impetuous, how aberrant of mind, and how willful he could be.
♥ Like a mother listening raptly to her child tell a story, I encouraged Sonomura to go on with his, but inside I was thinking to myself that there are few things more insufferable than an overeducated lunatic trying to impress an ignoramus. I sat back and listened, wondering what sort of balderdash he would come out with next.
♥ At first I was inclined to disabuse him of this fantasy, which I could easily have done with a few well-chosen words. But being curious as to how far his madness would go, I kept my mouth shut and continued to observe him instead.
♥ But then I felt my curiosity surging uncontrollably in a new direction. There was something ludicrous about ending up in front of a scene like this after being taken on a wild ride all around Tokyo yesterday afternoon like the sidekick of some master detective, and yet this was not a laughing matter. It may not have been a murder, but some lesser crime was surely being committed. To be standing here in the dark of night peering through holes in the window shutters just as the scene was playing itself out before my eyes inspired an indescribable terror not unlike that of witnessing a tragic murder, and more than enough to give me a taste of intense anticipation. It was not a sense of normal propriety, then, but the sheer force of shuddering tremors that beset my entire body, that caused me, just barely, to avert my eyes.
♥ The woman still had her back to me, but now she was sitting down on her side, and I could clearly see her figure below the hips. From where the hem of her haori lay spread out on the tatami, a spotless white tabi-covered foot peeked out halfway, and a long sleeve draped languidly over it. I had only barely caught a glimpse of her upper body before, but now that I could see all of her I confirmed that she was indeed just as voluptuous as I had guessed. What a seductive and supple figure it was! She sat there demurely, without causing a single wrinkle in the thin garment she wore, but that seductive and supple quality somehow suffused every curve of her body with smooth ripples, like a coiling snake. The more I looked-with my eyes widened in surprise and my heart filled with strains of exquisite music-the more I felt flooded with ecstasy.
♥ If one were to go looking for imperfections in her face, there were a few: the sharp widow's peak on her forehead added a note of coarseness to an otherwise harmonious countenance, a slight cloud of meanness and short-temperedness seemed to hover in the space between the too-thick eyebrows as they crowded in from left and right, and those bitter creases round her mouth, tightly closed as if she were feeling nauseous after swallowing some bitter potion meant to prevent even a small leakage of kindness-such were the only flaws to be found. And yet these very imperfections seemed to fit the freakish scene rather wildly, to intensify her beauty and make it only more bewitching.
♥ The liquid in the man's right hand was of a light purplish color, while the fluid in his left was a clear peppermint green. Shot through with the bright light of bulb, they sparkled brilliantly and made for a truly beautiful sight.
"Oh my! What gorgeous colors! They look like amethysts and emeralds! With colors like that we will be fine! ..They are stunning, aren't they? With colors like these who could guess how frightening these chemicals are?"
The man brought the glass tubes up above his eye level and was gazing at them, enraptured.
"It's beautiful because it's frightening, silly! Don't they say that demons are just as beautiful as gods?"
♥ The more I thought about it, the more the whole affair seemed mysterious, as if some phantom were at work. And yet even for a mystery it was too mysterious; and the lights were too bright for phantoms. I had witnessed it all with my own eyes, but I could not banish the thought that I had somehow been deceived.
♥ Gradually he became more excited, and his pupils filled with an abnormal light. He may not have been completely insane, but there was no denying a certain madness in him. His nerves oscillated weirdly between dullness and overexcitement, and there was something pathological about the way his brain functioned with uncanny clarity in one moment only to revert to childlike ingenuousness in the next. It was no doubt this pathological quality in his brain tat had allowed him to sense in advance the horrific events we had witnessed this evening.
♥ "Something really is the matter with you! You may not be mad, but you do have a very severe case of neurasthenia. Please proceed with care, I beg you!"
"Thank you for these words of caution. I do appreciate them. But I must ask you to allow me to act as I see fit. Recently I have somehow lost interest in an ordinary life, and am no longer at home in my own skin. I have begun to feel that without some bizarre stimulus I cannot go on living. In fact, it's only seeing things like what we saw tonight that prevents me from going insane from sheer monotony."
♥ "If the man was the woman's lover, this is the only explanation that makes sense. Do you remember when she said. 'It really is a huge belly isn't it? He weighed close to 170 pounds, you know!' I think that line, 'He weighed close to 170 pounds, you know!' is more than we need to understand the relationship between these two people."
♥ "It all boils down to the fact that the woman is a cruel murderer."
"A cruel murderer... yes, that's right. And she is also a beautiful sorceress. And yet to me her wickedness seems somehow abstract. It is completely eclipsed by her beauty. As I recall the scene from last night, all I can think of is what a tremendously beautiful monster she is, so ravishing-as to seem otherworldly. What we witnessed through the knotholes last night was the scene of ghastly murder, and yet it's left me with no especially horrifying impression or unpleasant memory. A man was murdered, but there was not a drop of blood in sight, not a moment's struggle, not even any faint moaning. It was a quiet, seductive sort of crime, carried out as gently as a lover's whisper. I felt no stirring of conscience, and found myself transfixed by the sheer beauty of what seemed to flicker like a bright and colorful painting before my eyes. When the woman said 'frightening things are always beautiful,' and 'demons are as beautiful as the gods,' the words sounded to me like they were describing not just those gemlike test tubes, but the woman herself. She is a heroine ripped from the pages of a detective novel, a devil incarnate; a demon who has long been nesting in the fantasy world inside my head. She is the fantasy I have longed for, now manifested in the real world and come to comfort me in my loneliness. I believe she has come into existence for my sake alone. I can even imagine that the crime we witnessed last night was staged especially for my benefit. I must see her, even if it means risking my life. I will put all of my efforts into finding her and being near her... I appreciate your concern, but I ask you to keep it to yourself and allow me to do as I must. As I said before, my goal is not to expose this woman's secretes. I am in love with her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say: I worship her."
♥ Sonomura exhibited no surprise at my words. He simply continued to cast sidelong glances in my direction... he was willing to throw away his life for the love of a woman. How could the friendship of a single man begin to compare?... This is what the look in his eyes seemed to be saying.
♥ To summarize, they plan to use that same method, at that same place, to murder me, tonight, at 12:50 a.m. Upon being strangled by Eiko, I will have my photograph taken like the others. I will then be submerged in the chemical bath. And by tomorrow morning my body will have dissolved into nothing and vanished from the face of the earth. This strikes me as an infinitely better way to die than succumbing to a stroke or being blown to bits by cannon fire. All the more so, since the hand that does it will belong to the woman to whom I have willingly handed over my own life, I can say, without the slightest exaggeration, that I can thin of no greater happiness than to end my life in this way.
..But I must implore you never to yield to the temptation to use them as evidence in any plan to convict them for their crimes. That would be rash and ill-advised. I will, of course, also have the consideration for your sake not to utter a word about the knotholes. I want Eiko to believe completely that I died because I was bewitched by her charms and stepped into the trap that she laid. As someone who loves and worships her, this is all the more kind and faithful a thing to do.
From you, I ask only this: will you return to that alleyway in Suitengū, station yourself once again before that knothole, and look on as I breathe my last? Will you watch from the shadows as this person you see before you vanishes from the world? As I explained earlier, Eiko has already taken everything from me. I have not a single penny to bequeath, and no heirs to bequeath it to. Unlike you, I have no literary works to leave as a legacy. Once the chemical bath does its work, my very corpse will dissolve and with it, all traces of my existence will disappear, leaving neither shadow nor shape behind. The fact that I once existed will remain only as a memory in your head. It saddens me to think of this. But at the very least, I want to leave the strongest possible impression of myself on your brain while I am still alive. And I can think of no better way to accomplish this than to have you witness the scene of my death. Knowing that you are looking through the knothole will put my mind at ease and allow me to die without regrets. I know I have taxed your patience enough with my actions thus far, and this further demand no doubt seems the height of selfishness. But I implore you to acquiesce to the fate that has brought us together, and to grant my request.
I wanted to meet with you once more before I died, but those two have stuck very close to me and it was not easy even to find time away from them to write this letter. My only concern at this moment is whether this letter will reach you in time, so that you can be ready by 12:50 a.m. tonight.
I do have one additional, crucial request: you must resist the temptation to give in to your own kindness and attempt to save my life. My desire to die at her hands, I assure you, is not a case of sour grapes. Gratuitous interference on your part, however motivated by feelings of friendship, will only cause me to resent you. It will be the end of our relations. I see no point in maintaining a friendship with someone who is incapable of appreciating my nature.
♥ "So this is the end. The man called Sonomura is no more."
As my thoughts ran on in this way, I felt less sad than disappointed at how quickly it had all taken place. He was always an impetuous and twisted fellow, and now even in death he was perverse. And yet there was something magnificent, I thought, about depravity elevated to this level.