Yasushi Inoue - Bullfight

The whole time he was conversing with Miura, Tsugami had felt a certain tension in his heart. A coldness entered his speech and his attitude, and he found himself stiffening, slipping naturally into a defensive posture. What was it that this man had inside him? What made Tsugami feel such antipathy toward him? Once again, he found himself confronting the same questions that had entered his head at their first meeting. But he remained oblivious. He had not realized that the thing Miura possessed that got his back up had nothing to do with that egoistic refusal to display any emotion, focusing only on the negotiations at hand; nothing to do with his inimitably rational approach, which enabled him to separate business from personal issues with an almost insolent clarity; and nothing to do with that ambitious, arrogant gleam in his eyes — no, it was something altogether different. It was the luck that dogged Miura in everything he did, a sort of destiny that was his birthright, and that stood in perfect contrast to Tsugami’s own relentless tendency toward ruin. This was what set them in irreconcilable opposition. Tsugami hated this man who would always defeat him.

Shortly afterward, Tsugami glanced over toward the hitching posts and was surprised to recognize Okabe’s diminutive figure among the crowd of spectators. He was walking slowly along with Tashiro in tow, stopping before each bull for a while and then moving on to the next, as if he were assessing them. Okabe and Tashiro were being followed at a slight distance by a small group of men. Tsugami kept losing sight of Okabe as passing spectators blocked his view, then seeing him again, but even so he sensed in the back of that small, suited figure, bathed in the slanting afternoon sunlight, a solidity that was entirely unfamiliar, that he had never before seen in Okabe, as the man made his way calmly, at his leisure, among the crowds. Not all those twenty-two bulls would be returning to W., Tsugami realized. Here he had been foolish enough to think the matter of Okabe’s buying the bulls had been settled — all of a sudden, he was struck by the comedy of his own obliviousness. How many bulls would never see W. again? Five? Ten? Or none of them? Tsugami stared at Okabe’s small figure as he stood there with his arms folded before a bull, listening placidly as someone told him about the animal, and he felt not rage, exactly, but a sort of self-lacerating satisfaction.

The main attraction of the tournament, the match between the Mitani bull and the Kawasaki bull, had been going on for an hour already and had yet to be decided. The two bulls simply moved from one place to another every so often, from the center of the ring to the edge, then back to the center, their horns locked, the ferocity of their breathing sending ripples across their tremendous frames — it seemed impossible that the balance of power would ever be broken. The match was dull and it had been going on so long that one judge had suggested calling it a draw. In the end Tsugami proposed asking the audience members to show by their applause whether they wanted to let it end in a tie or to let the bulls keep fighting until one of them won. His plan was adopted.

Before long, Mitani Hana, who must have heard the officials discussing the matter, came running over to Tsugami, a hand towel wrapped around her neck. “Please let them keep fighting!” she pleaded. “Even just ten minutes more! You can’t let it end in a tie!” Her face was pale from the tension of the long match. “Please, anyone can see which bull is going to win!”

Just then, the loudspeakers announced that the organizers wanted the audience to clap to decide whether the match should be declared a draw, or whether the bulls should keep fighting to the end.

“Those in favor of calling it a tie, let’s hear you now!”

Clapping broke out on every side of the field, but surprisingly fewer than a third of the spectators were in favor of ending the match. When the announcer cried out, “And now those in favor of letting them fight!” a much louder wave of applause filled the stadium. The match would continue, as Mitani Hana had hoped.

Tsugami told the judges he was going to take a walk, then left and started climbing into the infield stands behind third base. He had remembered that Sakiko had promised to come this afternoon; she would be sitting in the infield stands, in the top row. In fact, she had been sitting for over an hour in the stands behind first base, near the judges’ seats. The bullfighting did not interest her. She found it incomprehensible that Tsugami had put himself through so much for such a boring, slow sport that was also not at all modern, no matter how you looked at it. Her gaze tended to be focused less on the ring than on Tsugami where he sat with the judges. He was no longer the man he had been two days earlier, the man who lay despairing in her arms, as though it were up to her whether he lived or died. His profile, the way moved when he talked with others or issued instructions — everything about him radiated the same restless energy he had always had. Even this far away, she was dazzled by his vibrancy, so typical of a young newspaper director. The day before yesterday, he’d had a place in his heart for her, there was no question of that — an emptiness that only she could fill. Now, thinking back on the certainty she had felt then of his need for her, it seemed oddly tenuous, like a dream. There he was, the same old egoistical Tsugami who could probably have forgotten all about her a year from now, if he wanted to. It was all over now. He would never come back to her. For some reason, this feeling had taken form within her, becoming an unshakable conviction.

Sakiko went up after Tsugami, climbing into the infield stands behind third base. They sat down beside each other on the last bench.

“Nice of you to come. I’m impressed that you remembered me.”

This was not irony. He seemed so far away today that such words came naturally.

“That applause just now, when the audience chose to let the Kawasaki and the Mitani bulls fight until one wins — I’d say about seventy percent of this crowd was clapping,” Tsugami said suddenly. “Think about that. Seventy percent of the people in this stadium don’t find this long, tedious match boring.” Until he spoke, his eyes had been roaming around the ring, a look in them that might have been either hostile or disdainful. Now he glanced up and into Sakiko’s eyes. “In other words, that’s how many people here have placed bets on this competition. It’s not which bull wins and which loses that they want to see decided, it’s whether they themselves have won or lost.”

A faint smile hovered around his mouth. Sakiko thought it looked terribly cold. Sure they’re betting, she thought, but didn’t your paper make the biggest bet of all? You gambled its whole future on this. Tashiro had placed his bets, too. Omoto had placed his. So had Mitani Hana.

“Yes, everyone is betting. Everyone but you.” These words slipped out before Sakiko knew what she was saying.

Tsugami’s eyes flashed. They looked proud, but somehow sad.

“It’s true. I’m not sure why, but I feel it, seeing you here today.” She meant this as an explanation, an attempt to dull the razor-like edge she herself had come to perceive in her earlier comment, but as she spoke a sudden, fierce burst of emotion, half sadness and half anger, came at her out of the blue, making her want to hurl herself bodily against him. When she spoke again, the hatred in her tone was unmistakable. “You’ve never taken a gamble on anything. You’re not a man who ever could.”

“And you?” Tsugami had said this casually, but Sakiko caught her breath.

She smiled, the blood draining so completely from her twisted face that even she could feel it. “Yes,” she said, cutting each word apart from its neighbors, “I have placed my bets.”