sakaguchi - i want to be holding the sea

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ANGO SAKAGUCHI

I Wantto Be Holding theSea

A man who always passes through the gates of Hell despite having set out for

Heaven-that is me. I was a self-indulgent man, a man in whom the will to go to

Heaven could not be abandoned even when departing for the gates of Hell. I had

never been the least bit terrified by Hell and had laughed about it like an idiot. Still,

I couldn't help longing for the kingdom of God. I'd imagine that my defeat would

come, and it would be absolute-I'd be so beaten I'd be unable to utter a single

word. I'd simply slip and lose my footing and tumble straightdown on the ground.

You could say I was cunning because I hadn't forgotten the existence of God

behind the Devil and lived my life with the Devil behind God. I believed that soon

both God and the Devil would get their revenge on me, but I had lived this stupid

life for how many years.Yes, it was stupid enough, but I had managed to live like this

for decades, so I would not be defeated without putting up some resistance. When

the end comes, I'll take on the Devil and God together. I'll fight them until my

sword breaks and all my arrows are gone. I've lived my life imagining such a pathetic

end, knowing how self-indulgent it was, yet I'd never forgotten that there would bea time when I'd be pushed down, when my flesh would be stripped awayand all myhairpulled out, my soul laid bare.

The clever will say that all this is just so much cunning and that saying "I'm a bad

person" is more dishonest than saying "I'm a good person." I quite agree. Anyway,

saywhat you like, I've never believed a word I've said my entire life, either.

Lately, I have come to feel an occasional calm, believing that neither God nor the

Devil would knock me down or strip me bare. One day,the thought occurred to me

that I might even be able to live my life without difficulty.It was a woman who gave me this comfort. She thought too highly of herself,was

not very clever, and had no concept of morals. In fact, I did not love her in the least,

except for one thing: I loved her flesh. Only.

Yes, she had no concept of morals whatsoever. When she got upset, she would ride

off on her bicycle, and after a while, she would return bleeding, her knees skinned or

armsscraped. Being brash and unpredictable,she would crash into things or fall over

easily. I could figure out why she was bleeding, but I could not tell where or with

whom she made love-probably as violently as she shed blood. I couldn't tell, but I

could imagine it well and it was a fact.Once she had been a prostitute. Then she had run a bar. Now she lived with me.

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But I had no morals either, so at first I thought we'd live together as a game we

could play for a short time. But because of her past, she had become frigid;her flesh

felt nothing.I could not understandwhy this woman, whose flesh experienced not the least bit

of pleasure, could not stop playing games of the flesh. I might have understood had

there been somespiritualreason,

but because she had noconcept

ofspiritual

love at

all, her faithlessness was simply a way of toying with her frigid flesh.

"Whydo you waste your body like that?"

"Because I was a prostitute," she said darkly.

Always, after a while, she wanted to kiss me. I touched her cheek, and I felt her

tears. But the tears of a woman only bother me. I don't reallyfeel anything for them.

"But isn't it odd . . you are frigid, yet you still .. . " As I spoke, she clung to me

as if she wished to rob me of my words.

"Don't be cruel to me. Please forgive me. I am this way because of my past."She wanted to kiss me, wanted me to touch her. She cried out and clung to me in

a frenzy. But her excitement was only the violence of emotion; not even then could

she truly feel any pleasure.

My mind looked upon her coolly and callously observed her empty passion. Sud-

denly, her eyes opened wide: eyes full of hatred-a hatred like fire.

But strangely,I came to love her impure flesh, to have a dreamy attachment to it

that was bereft of truth. I felt my cold passion reflected in her flesh. When holding

her, I sometimes felt as if it were not her flesh I was holding but water in the shape of

her flesh.

"You know, I'm a freak. I don't care how my life will turn out," she said. After

making love, she was often full of self-contempt.Her flesh was so beautiful. Her arms, legs, breasts,waist-these at first appeared

thin, but they had such a fresh and sensual beauty that I was never bored looking at

them. And she knew that what I loved was her flesh.

Sometimes she resisted my caresses, but how she felt did not affect me. I passed

many hours toying idly with her body and gazing at its beauty.She often did nothingor else she laughed, got angry,or hated me.

"Pleasestop hating me. Can't you just lie there" I asked.

"Yourtouch upsets me."

"I don't understand. Are you human afterall, then?""What?What do you think I am?"

I didn't answer, because I knew that when I flattered her, she became haughty.

Sometimes, I would feel like a lake surrounded by deep woods in the mountains.

Holding something cold, beautiful, and empty, I felt, along with my dissatisfiedlust,a bitter grief.

Though I was sometimes dissatisfied,her flesh mysteriouslyseemed pure to me. I

could feel a childish pleasure, as if my lustful soul had been quietly forgiven by her

empty flesh. But I was still hurt that such empty and pure flesh couldn't stop having

brutal, possessed love affairs.I hated her lascivious blood. Still, I had to admit that itwas in this very blood that I sometimes felt purified.

222 Manoa · A PacificJournalofInternationalWriting







"You're right. You're a little smarter than the average person, aren't you? You

understandthe true nature of a couple after all."

My desire for her became more and more fierce after that, and her flesh seemed to

become more and more translucent. This was because she couldn't feel any pleasure.

Inmy passion,

I sometimes becameenraged

or hated and loved her much more than

before. But only I felt passion. She didn't respond at all. Still, I loved the solitude

that I experienced when holding this empty shadow.

I wished that she had been dumb, a mannequin, an infinite shadow picture blind

and dumb-one that corresponded only to my lust. With this wish, I suddenly real-

ized the true nature of my pleasure. I knew then that it was to be a bird and fly in the

sky,to be a fish and swim to the bottom of a lake, to be an animal and run free in a

field.

My true pleasure was not to love or to satisfy my sexual desire. What I always

wanted was to be possessed by love and bored by it at the same time, to be possessed

by my sexual appetite and simultaneouslyto detest it.

When I discovered that my sexual appetite was not my true pleasure, I wondered

if I should be glad about, grieve over, believe, or doubt this discovery.But to be a bird and fly in the sky,to be a fish and swim to the bottom of a lake, to

be an animal and run free in a field-what did that mean? It was simply a lie, a poorexcuse that disgusted me. I knew then that what I really sought was solitude.

I came to feel sure that her flesh would become completely translucent and that I

would then be filled with a solitary lust.

She liked to cook-that was why she wanted to eat good food. She liked cleaning our

room, too. In the summer she often poured water into the washbowl and leaned

against the wall, dipping her feet into the bowl. Or when I was going to sleep, she

gently placed a cold towel on my forehead. It was not something she ordinarilydid

due to her whimsy, but I loved her caprices.Her beautiful figure changed with her moods: as she cleaned the table, rested her

cheek on her hand, or leaned on the wall while dipping her feet into a washbowl of

water; as she, odd figure of a soul, gently placed a cold towel on my forehead in the

complete darkness when I was going to sleep. Things like that alwaysmade me stop

whatever I was doing at the time.The fact that my attachment to her was limited to these things brought occasional

satisfaction and occasional sadness.Yes, the spirit that is satisfiedis alwayssmall. It is

small and sad.

She liked fruit. She used to put whatever fruit was in season on a plate to give me

the impression she had been eating it. The way she ate made me hungry, but it also

gave me a lightness and reduced my greed. This clearlyreflected her frivolous charac-

ter while impressingme as beautiful.

I came to the realization that if she were to be impure no longer, she would be

boring to me: her beauty depended on her impurity.All of her beauty was capriciousbeauty.

224 Manoa · A PacificJournal ofInternationalWriting







She was afraidof her immorality.I was much less afraid of mine, simply because I

didn't devote myself to as many indiscretions as she did.

"I'm a bad woman," she said.

"Do you think so?" I asked.

"I want to be a good woman."

"What's agood

woman?"

Anger appeared in her face. She seemed to be about to cry. "What do you really

think?Do you hate me? Do you want to leave me and marrya regularwoman?"

"Do you reallythink I feel that way?""Tellme what you reallythink!"

"I don't want to marrya regularwoman. That's all."

"You'rea liar!"

The problem was not whether or not to marrya regularwoman. The problem was

that I had a lingering attachment to this woman's flesh.

I knew why she couldn't leave me: because other men wouldn't allow their lovers to

be unfaithful and couldn't be as accepting of it as I could. Besides, no one loved her

flesh as much as I did.

I couldn't help doubting whether my soul, which took a secret pleasure in her

frigid flesh, was deformed. I wondered if my soul itself, befitting her flesh, was

deformed, abnormal, and sick. But I could not be as courageous as Kankibutsu,a

disciple of the Buddha who transcendedall earthlydesires by trusting his fate to a life

realized through lust. I couldn't help but hate a lust that was both illusory and tran-

scendent.

Her inabilityto get any pleasure through her flesh-in this I found my birthplace.

Emptiness devoid of any satisfaction could alwayscleanse my soul. I could indulge in

my sexual pleasure simply because nothing corresponded to it. This cleanness and

solitude made her legs, arms, and waist more beautiful to me than ever.

Thus, I came to see that I would not need to look for happiness anymore! I

could take pleasure in looking for misfortune! A long time ago, when I had

doubted that happiness existed and grieved over its lack, I still had not been able to

refrain from longing for it. At last, I felt I was finally able to break away from this

longing.

I would begin to seek misfortune and agony and no longer yearn for happiness.

Happiness could not offer the soul any true consolation. No one should want to be

happy,even for an instant, because the human soul will alwaysbe solitary.With great

excitement, I began to think about attaining such an unpragmaticgoal.But when it came right down to it, I didn't know what misfortune or agony really

was. Furthermore, I didn't know what happiness was either. However, I was con-

vinced that my soul could not be satisfiedby anything else, so I simplified my goal: I

would not want to satisfymy soul.

Still, I loved women's bodies the same as ever-like a dog. I was no better than a

leech. I alwaysasked myself, Why is everything so boring?What an unbearableemp-tiness there was!

Sakaguchi· I Wantto BeHoldingtheSea 225







One day I took her to a hot spring.

The sea was raging at the beach. She took off her shoes, and barefoot, she picked

up a shell, then flung it into the water the instant the waves subsided. She was bold

and agile. She seemed to know the rhythm of the sea and moved freely,as if she were

conquering it. Struck by her freshness, I gazed at her figure, which unexpectedly

revealed a beauty I had not known before. Then suddenly, I saw a wave many times

taller than I rise up and she was washed away, her figure swallowed up. At that

instant, I saw a swell so dark and big it seemed to conceal the sea and half the sky.

Something inside me cried.

But it was a momentary illusion: the skyinstantlyrecovered its blueness, and I saw

her running along the beach, taking aim with a shell at the waves the instant they

subsided-just as before. Though I was still possessed by my beautiful illusion and

couldn't come out of it, I didn't want her figure to disappear.I gave myself over to

my desire to love her flesh, and I wanted her never to disappear.

Yet I was also startled by the enormity of the sea's pleasure, which hid the

woman's figure in its crest, rising suddenly from a deep and dark-greenhollow that

looked like the bottom of a ravine. I saw in it softer flesh, one even more merciless

and unresponsivethan hers. It was a flesh called "the sea."

What total and magnificent pleasure!I thought.I wanted my lust to be swallowed up in the sea's darkundulations.

I wanted to be thrown into those very waves and to sink in them. I wanted to sat-

isfy my lust by holding the sea.

I saw then how small my lust reallywas.

TRANSLATED BY SHOGO OKETANI

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sakaguchi - i want to be holding the sea

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