Yasushi Inoue - Bullfight

Still, as two o’clock neared, a crowd began to gather. Elderly people, students, children, married women holding bundles wrapped in furoshiki, young men back from the war, young couples in flashy clothes… in short, a perfectly random mix of ticket buyers. From the office window, they could be seen passing in small groups through the plaza outside the stadium.

Tsugami stood on the top level of the infield stands, gazing with a cold and dispassionate eye, as though none of them had anything to do with him, at the crowds of spectators streaming through the dozens of passageways into the vast bowl of the stadium and then scattering in all directions. He checked his watch and calculated that people were pouring into the stands at a rate of about a hundred every ten minutes. The speed seemed to be increasing, but even so they weren’t going to have much of an audience by two. The game was over. They had reserved the stadium for as long as it was available, so there was no possibility of extending the tournament even a single day. There could be no rain check. Today, tomorrow, and the day after — they had three days to fight this battle, and that was it. One black spot made it clear almost beyond any doubt how things would turn out.

From where Tsugami stood at the top of the stands, he could see the paddies and fields stretching all the way to the foot of the Rokkō mountains, and the clumps of factories and small houses that lay strewn across that bleak expanse under a canopy of heavy, dark gray rainclouds. The landscape had a cold, frozen look that made him feel as though he were regarding a landscape painted on a ceramic dish. Close to the peak of Mount Rokkō there were a few white streaks of lingering snow. Those few unmelted patches were the only thing that offered Tsugami any relief from his weariness. It seemed to him that something pure had managed to hold on there, something that had otherwise vanished from this defeated nation, little traces gathering, huddling together, talking quietly among themselves about who knew what. Omoto and five or six of the paper’s employees were walking around near the seats that had been prepared for the judges in a corner of the field. Someone had planted the banners dyed with the bulls’ names in front of the ringside hitching posts, where they hung limp and heavy, utterly still, as though they had agreed amongst themselves to do this. Not once during all the hectic running around of these past three months had Tsugami imagined the bullfight being like this, so bleak and sad. How enormously different reality was. And yet still he kept everything at arm’s length, himself included, turning a detached gaze on all he saw. He didn’t even feel the tenacious determination, the urgency that had inspired Omoto to try and find some way, any way to lessen the staggering losses it was already clear the company would suffer. All he felt was an unbearable sense of desolation at the miscalculation he had made, the enormity of which was becoming ever more apparent. He had gripped his opponent as hard as he could, pushing him to the edge of the ring, only to have the tables turned on him at the last second, and find himself being flipped lightly outside. It disgusted him that he had made such a blunder. All morning he had been fighting instinctively against the loss of his self-esteem, his confidence. Never before had his eyes looked so cold and haughty.

In the end, at two o’clock, about five thousand spectators sat spread out around the inside stands. Then, just as Omoto’s opening remarks boomed out from the thirty-six speakers mounted throughout the stadium, echoing hollowly through every corner, the rain started again. By the time the first two bulls were led out to the center of the ring, it was falling harder.

T. came over to Tsugami, who was sitting in the judges’ area, a look on his face like he just couldn’t take it anymore. “Listen, we can’t do this. People are starting to leave. Let’s call it off.”

“I agree,” Tsugami said briskly. “Make the announcement.” And with that he stood up and strode away, sopping wet, his feet pressing firmly into the earth with each step. He cut diagonally across the field and started climbing the stairs that led into the infield stands. A thousand or so spectators were still standing there, holding umbrellas or with overcoats pulled over their heads, looking fidgety, staring down at the ring, unwilling to give up and go home.

As Tsugami entered the crowd, he began for the first time to despair. No one was sitting on the wet benches, but he did: he lowered himself on to one at the edge of the stands and sat without moving in the pelting rain. When the announcement that the tournament had been suspended came over the loudspeakers, everyone began moving at once, filling the air with the noise of their voices. Tsugami sat stiffly among the heaving masses, struggling desperately to keep something in him from crumbling.

At some point he realized that someone was holding an umbrella over him, protecting him from the rain. Sakiko, he thought immediately, and sure enough, it was her standing beside him.

“Silly, you’ll catch cold out here. Come on, get up,” she said, her tone commanding. She trained her eyes on him, unmoving, half pitying and half unnerved. Tsugami obediently stood up.

“I think you should just go back to Nishinomiya, don’t you?”

Tsugami looked blankly in Sakiko’s direction for a moment, his gaze unfocused. Then, coming to himself, he said, “Come wait for me, will you? I’ve got a few things to take care of.”

The next instant he was heading down toward the field, against the crowd. His gait as he descended from one step to the next struck Sakiko as dangerously unsteady. He was totally exhausted. When they reached the field, he led her over to the main exit on the first floor and asked her to wait there while he went alone to the office. By the time he entered the room, he looked like a different man: his face was still pale, but he had regained his usual imposing air. Omoto wasn’t there. Tsugami asked after him, and someone said he had taken a car back to the company. Tsugami dried his rain-soaked hair with a handkerchief, combed it, retied his necktie, put a cigarette in his mouth, and then, with a sense of decisiveness so intense it seemed almost abnormal, set about running through one item of business after another with extraordinary speed. He put Tashiro in charge of the bulls and issued orders even more detailed than usual about how the article in the next day’s paper should be handled. Finally, in a sort of rebellion against the consideration the paper’s employees were showing him, trying to speak as little as possible, he gathered everyone around him and addressed them in a forceful tone that left it unclear whether he was just making an announcement or issuing a command.

“Okay everyone, listen up. If it rains again tomorrow morning, we’re canceling the day’s fights, even if it clears up in the afternoon. We’ll just have to make this thing fly the day after tomorrow!”

About an hour had passed by the time he sent all the remaining employees away and went back out to where Sakiko stood alone and cold at the now deserted exit. They got into the only car still left. Once they were inside, Tsugami leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes. The collar of his wet overcoat had drooped over, covering half his face, and his hat was about to slip off, but he made no move to adjust either. He looked as if he was in terrible pain. Every so often he would bite his lip and groan quietly as he endured it. When Sakiko said something he would nod or shake his head in response, but that was it; he never spoke. She gazed intently at the face of her wounded lover as the taxi rocked him roughly this way and that. For the first time, she saw him — this living being beside her, so badly injured he even couldn’t speak — as her own. Like a dissolute son who had gone out and lived it up until everything fell to pieces, leaving him with nowhere else to turn, he had come back to her — yes, to her. An almost maternal sense of victory flickered within her. She felt a strange love for him, paired with a kind of cruel pleasure, and the feeling made her both cold and gentle. She cradled his head in her arms and caressed him freely, as much as she wanted; his expression did not change. Even if she were to withdraw her hands and push him away, his expression would remain the same. Never before in their three years together had she been in a similar position. Until now he had always been pushing her away, pulling her back, then pushing her away again. She wiped his face with her handkerchief, conscious of the driver’s eyes. The peculiar, completely unfamiliar desire she felt as she looked down coldly at Tsugami had turned her into a different, much bolder woman.