Читать книгу No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai - Страница 1

There are three photos of him. He is ten years old in one of them. A boy, wearing a striped hakama[1] made from coarse material, is depicted in a garden next to a pond, surrounded by numerous sisters (perhaps, his siblings and cousins). He is bowing his head hard on the left and making an ugly smile. I used the word “ugly” just now, but there are people who cannot tell the difference between ugliness and beauty, and they would probably say, after looking at the picture, “What a nice boy!” And it is not because they want to be kind: there was something in his smile that could be usually characterised as nice. On the contrary, people who know at least something about beauty would grumble, “What an unpleasant child” and probably throw away the picture as if they were holding a worm.

Indeed, the longer you look at this smiling boy the more unpleasant it feels. It is not even a smile. The boy is not smiling at all. Let's look more closely. His fists are clenched. A smiling person does not clench his fists. A monkey. It is a monkey's face with a grimaced smile. Disgusting wrinkles are making an illusion of a smile. You want to call him “a child with wrinkles”. The picture makes a strange impression that there is something very obscene in this boy, something that makes you feel sick. Never in my life have I seen a child with such a weird face.

The second picture impresses as well. Is it possible to change so much? He is a student here, probably a high-school student. You cannot be certain, but it is evident that he looks nicer. However, no matter how strange it may sound, he looks as if he is not alive at this picture. He is wearing a student (or high-school) uniform, a white handkerchief is showing from a pocket on his chest. He is sitting in a wattled arm-chair with his legs crossed, smiling. Only this time, it is not a monkey's grimace, I would say that his smile is exquisite. Still, it is different from a usual smile. You can't feel any sanguinity, the young man does not have taste for life and there is no sense of reality. However you can feel that his smile is as light as not even a bird, but as a feather, a piece of paper. He is kind of artificial. A great character? It doesn't seem so. He is not a hypocrite. Not a soft creature. And, of course, he is not a fopling. Something unpleasant, something from a werewolf or a ghost, can be seen in his face if you look closely. I have never seen any young man with such a weird but beautiful face.

Finally, the third picture is the most fascinating. It is completely impossible to tell his age. His head is grey. He is sitting in a corner of a dirty room (wallpaper, torn in three places is noticeable in the picture) and warming his hands over a small hibachi[2]. He is not smiling any more in this picture. There is no expression on his face. It seems that the young man, who is warming his hands over a hearth, is slowly dying away. Something ominous, calamity-like breezes from this picture. But there is also something mysterious that impressed me. It was a close-up picture of his face so I could study it in detail-a very usual forehead, nothing stunning about the wrinkles, eyebrows, eyes, a common nose, a mouth, a chin. That's where it is, this face is not only lifeless but also not noticeable, it does not leave any imprint in memory. Just now I glanced at the picture, I close my eyes-and I can't remember anything. I recollect the walls, the hearth, but I can't see the man within these walls. It is impossible to make a portrait or cartoon of such a face. I open my eyes, look again-no, there is nothing in my head, I can't remember the face. It makes you feel very uncomfortable, you become irritated and want to withdraw your eyes.

It was either a seal of death or something else, which replaced his facial expression and hung over the impression it made (imagine a saddled horse's muzzle fixed to a human body). Anyway, there was something in this man that made everyone, who was looking at his picture, startle unintentionally, it was disgusting.