Early Light by Osamu Dazai

Author:Osamu Dazai
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811232111
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2022-08-16T00:00:01+00:00

VILLON’S WIFE

I was awakened by the sound of the front door being flung open, but I did not get out of bed. I knew it could only be my husband returning dead-drunk in the middle of the night.

He switched on the light in the next room and, breathing very heavily, began to rummage through the drawers of the desk and the bookcase, as if he were searching for something. After a few minutes there was a noise that sounded as if he had flopped down on the floor. Then I could hear only his panting. Wondering what he might be up to, I called to him from where I lay, “Have you had supper yet? There’s some cold rice in the cupboard.”

“Thank you,” he answered in an unaccustomedly gentle tone. “How is the boy? Does he still have a fever?”

This was also unusual. The boy is four this year, but whether because of malnutrition, or his father’s alcoholism, or sickness, he is actually smaller than most two-year-olds. He is not even sure on his feet, and as for talking, it’s all he can do to say “yum-yum” or “ugh.” Sometimes I wonder if he is not feebleminded. Once, when I took him to the public bath and held him in my arms after undressing him, he looked so small and pitifully scrawny that my heart sank, and I burst into tears in front of everybody. The boy is always having upset stomachs or fevers, but my husband almost never spends any time at home, and I wonder what if anything he thinks about the child. If I should mention to him that the boy has a fever, he says, “You ought to take him to a doctor.” Then he throws on his coat and goes off somewhere. I would like to take the boy to the doctor, but I don’t have any money. There is nothing else I can do but lie beside him and stroke his head.

But that night, for whatever reason, my husband was strangely gentle, and for once asked me about the boy’s fever. It didn’t make me happy. I felt instead a kind of premonition of something terrible, and cold chills ran up and down my spine. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I lay there in silence. For a while there was no other sound but my husband’s furious panting.

Then there came from the front entrance the thin voice of a woman, “Is anyone at home?” I shuddered all over as if icy water had been poured over me.

“Are you at home, Mr. Otani?” This time there was a somewhat sharp inflection to her voice. She slid the door open and called in a definitely angry voice, “Mr. Otani. Why don’t you answer?”

My husband at last went to the door. “Well, what is it?” he asked in a frightened, stupid tone.

“You know perfectly well what it is,” the woman said, lowering her voice. “What makes you steal other people’s money when you’ve got a nice home like this? Stop your inhuman joking and give it back.

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