The Scent of Roses
The Scent of Roses
A short piece on the suicide of Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
‘You've finally done it...’
It was raining on the morning of July 24, a gentle and quiet rain that broke the heat of Tokyo. Like mist, steam rose from the slate that paved the narrow, tree-lined streets of Tabata. Ryūichi Ōana arrived alone, dressed in mourning clothes, with his sketchbook and paints. He had painted this man's portrait on numerous occasions, although never under such circumstances. Still, Ōana had been anticipating this dreaded day for two years. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa had killed himself at last.
‘You've finally done it,’ he repeated, to no one in particular.
The coroner had not yet arrived, and the two-storey house was quiet, subdued, even. Only the sound of the rain broke the silence, along with the sound of the clock. No one could be surprised by Akutagawa's death, yet it felt somehow unexpected. For two years, he had meticulously planned his voluntary death. During that period, he had attempted to hasten his demise three or four times. Ōana had been there to halt his efforts on every occasion. This was not to say that he had had any intention of prolonging the miserable existence of the man who was closer to him than any brother could ever have been.
Fumi Akutagawa led him up the stairs to the modestly sized study where the body lay. Their two eldest sons were not yet awake in these somber hours that preceded the dawn, and the baby still slept, as well. The widow seemed numb, and Ōana would later learn that her first words upon realizing that her husband had poisoned himself were, ‘I'm so happy for you, darling.’ Anyone would have called her a cold woman, she said, although no such uncharitable thoughts crossed Ōana's mind. Presently, he could only recall the final words he had spoken to Akutagawa, and the anger that had colored his own voice, normally so soft in the presence of his tortured friend.
‘You want to die? Then go ahead and do it.’
He had then pushed Akutagawa away from him.
‘Please, for the love of God, take care of the children,’ was all that Akutagawa said in response as he grasped his wrist.
Ōana recalled, too, the startling clarity in Akutagawa's eyes, appearing as vulnerable as ever, perhaps even moreso. Yet in that moment, it had been Ōana who was frightened. It was as though the whole of Akutagawa's formidable intellect was concentrated in a single gaze. Ōana knew very well that his words, so carelessly spoken, had done nothing to influence Akutagawa's choice to die. No, the suicide note had been written weeks ago. Akutagawa had written a lengthy testament entitled ‘A note to a certain old friend’ to Masao Kume, as well as a similar note to Ōana, which Fumi retrieved from the austere rosewood desk in the corner of the study where his prone body lay.
‘Now that my eyes are in their last extremity, nature is more beautiful than ever. I have seen, loved, and understood more than any other...’
Ōana held the note, with its beautifully flowing script, in his hands. He had seen several drafts of this note, which read more like a prose poem than a suicide note. It was written as finely and elegantly as any of Akutagawa's fiction. Ōana saw nothing contradictory in his friend's simultaneously loving nature and desiring death; Akutagawa was charmed by paradox more than any. With little trepidation, Ōana approached the body, whose state more closely resembled dreamless sleep than death. The high, aristocratic brow, the sharp cheekbones, the full lips - Akutagawa would forever remain thirty-five, Ōana realized, to always be remembered at the height of his beauty and talent. Those features would never be troubled by the agony of consciousness again. While Ōana was not a Christian, as Akutagawa had been, he could not help but imagine that his friend was at last in Paradise, freed from the nightmares that had all but consumed his waking life. He was surely at peace as he lay in the softly diffused light of the rising sun, thinly veiled in mist. The air still held the familiar scent of his tobacco.
Listening to the lonely sound of the rain on the tile roof, Ōana sat down to begin the preliminary sketch for the watercolor portrait. Akutagawa's complexion appeared pale, as it had always been, although discoloration had yet to set in. Fumi stood in the corner of the room, hidden in shadow and crying silently. Ōana, too, had tears in his eyes, although he continued to sketch. It had been Akutagawa's wish that Ōana paint his death mask long before he made the decision to poison himself. Death had, in fact, been a favorite topic of conversation. It was this that had led to their final argument.
‘Let's talk about death,’ Akutagawa had said. ‘You recall that night in the Tokyo Imperial Hotel, when Masuko abandoned me?’
Ōana nodded, gesturing for him to come in. Of course, he would never forget that night, the ‘Platonic double suicide’. Akutagawa took a seat, his shoulders trembling and his complexion ashen. Compulsively, he lit a cigarette.
‘It's happened again. That night, before you arrived, when I entered the room, I couldn't believe my eyes. The room was just as it had always been. There was a shadowy, dark figure sitting on the chair. The return of the prodigal son, it said to me. The voice was my own. Looking at the emaciated face, which also bore a striking resemblance to my own, I thought that my ego had finally split or else gone insane. I was so frightened that I couldn't find the words to say anything else. Enough of your haughty façade, it said to me. You have abandoned your family and are about to die. You pretend to be a man of honor, but you are no better than a man of the street, dying with a woman. Which of you, within a week of your marriage, went to Hokuriku to buy a geisha, unable to resist the temptation? You say a lot of beautiful things with your mouth, but in reality you are a prisoner of sin. Art? Faith? Beauty? You have a weakness for the charms of the flesh. It's all that you care about... That's what it said to me, and all manner of other things. And then this afternoon, just before I came here, a man said he saw me at the Kabuki-za with a woman. But, I'd been in my study the entire night, writing. At that moment, I was horrified. I had no recollection of any of this. However, despite the fact that I had no recollection of it, the scene flashed through my mind as if it had actually happened. And as soon as I stepped out into the street, a butterfly with raven-black wings and a terrible purple color flew past me at an angle. The moment I saw it, a word flashed in my mind. Alter ego. Yes, I, who have seen the alter ego, will soon die, will I not? No, perhaps I am already dead. So, has my soul left my body without my realizing it?’
Ōana was speechless. Akutagawa regularly visited him in such frenzied states, but he had rarely seen him so unhinged.
‘Let's talk about death.’
Several times that night, Akutagawa had repeated that phrase, his painfully thin silhouette appearing ghostly in the lamplight of Ōana's library as he smoked one cigarette after another. On nights when he could not sleep, Akutagawa often visited Ōana; for the past year, such nights had been many. Ōana enjoyed the company of this kind and frightfully intelligent man, who was usually so erudite. Indeed, he was famously eloquent, speaking with a low, pleasant voice, be it in English, French, or Japanese. His speech was invariably without flaw. After several nights without sleep, however, and plagued by visual and auditory hallucinations, Akutagawa could speak only of death, namely, how he was to go about killing himself. Always the aesthete, he had no desire to throw himself in front of a train or from a roof. His vanity, too, was the reason for having decided against hanging, although he had attempted to do so on more than one occasion. Akutagawa was a strong swimmer, which precluded drowning; as his hands shook from the sleeping pills that he took even in the daytime, seppuku was not an option, despite his prowess as a martial artist. Ōana knew very well that Akutagawa had long ago decided on poison as his method of self-deliverance, yet he continued to discuss, and even press the matter. That had been the moment when Ōana snapped at him.
‘You want to die? Then go ahead and do it.’
‘Please, for the love of God, take care of the children.’
Ōana knew that Akutagawa had not said such a thing lightly. As a man of faith, he never would. His own harsh words had driven Akutagawa out of his nearly manic state, and all that he could think of had been his wife and sons. Ōana had promised to act as a father to the three young boys, and had also purchased the house in Tabata for near nothing so that Fumi would never be compelled to remarry for money; as a suicide had occured in the home, it was rendered largely worthless. Even at the height of his madness, these had been Akutagawa's greatest concerns. As Ōana was feeling ill and lightheaded, he did not see Akutagawa on the day that followed their argument. He could make no apology.
‘Are you going to put some paint on that?’
The sound of the rain was broken by a small voice. It was Hiroshi, Akutagawa's eldest son, a mirror image of his father. The seven year old boy held a sketchpad as he knelt beside his father's body. Calmly, he folded the dead man's arms over his chest before beginning to draw his face in profile, just as Ōana had.
‘Yes, yes I am’, Ōana said softly.
___
Three days passed, along with a steady stream of mourners, their spirits waning in the summer heat. The smokestack of a distant crematorium pierced the hazy sky in the distance. Within hours of his death, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's suicide had become national news, and within the next day, the death of Japan's most famous writer was reported throughout the world. ‘Tokio Novelist, tired of life, poisons himself’, the New York Times reported. His body was secured in a casket, already prepared for for cremation; the nails had already been pounded into the oblong pine box.
Ryūichi Ōana could not forget Akutagawa's face during those last moments, his large, frightened eyes gleaming in the dim lamplight. Ōana could not fathom the prospect of never seeing this man's face again. He stood beside the casket, alone in the room, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief from time to time. At once, he was struck by a thought that he could only describe as monstrous. Ōana knew very well that the dead man in the casket would be quite unrecognizable after four days, when dry ice was in such short supply. There was no doubt in his mind that, if he were to see such a face, he would remember it with horror until the end of days. And yet he could not overcome the desire - no, the need - to see Akutagawa one last time. With a strength beyond himself, he pried the lid from the casket, holding his handkerchief to his nose.
Ōana was indeed startled. The face before him remained unchanged from the day he had painted the death mask, pale and at peace, his lips slightly parted, as though he had at last seen eternity and found himself in a state of grace. Sin and death were no more, as though purified by the summer rain. The scent of roses pervaded the room.
Chōkōdō Shujin, a Japanese artist of the Shirakaba-ha tradition, embraces aesthetics, pessimism, and skepticism towards modernity. He is a poet, essayist, novelist, and short story writer, devoted to art for art's sake. Shujin resides in Aomori, Japan, where his hobbies include smoking cigarettes and thinking unpleasant thoughts.