“Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?
Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?”
Snow falls day after day. But each day Ojii-san takes his search deeper into the bamboo forest. He’s like a man possessed. Thousands and tens of thousands of sparrows inhabit the forest. One would think it nearly impossible to find, among such numbers, one whose tongue is missing, but Ojii-san forges ahead with an extreme sort of fervor, day after day.
“Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?
Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?”
He has never before in his life acted with such reckless passion. Something that has lain dormant inside him would seem now, for the first time, to have raised its head, but what that something is, no one knows, not even the author (I, Dazai). A man who has always felt like a guest in his own home, constrained and ill-at-ease, suddenly finds the state of being that suits him best and chases after it. We could call that state “love” and have done with it, but the psychology expressed by the word “love” as it is commonly and casually used in daily life may perhaps be far from the wretched melancholy in this Ojii-san’s heart. He searches on relentlessly. For the first time in his life he’s taking decisive action and will not be deterred.
“Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?
Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?”
Not that he actually vocalizes these words as he wanders about in search of her, of course. But the wind seems to whisper in his ears, and at some point, as he tramps through the deep snow of the bamboo forest, this queer little ditty—not quite a song and not quite a chant—wells up in his heart in harmony with that whispering wind.
One night there descends a snowfall unusual in its scale even for the Sendai region. The following day the weather clears, and the sun rises upon a silver world of almost blinding brilliance. Ojii-san gets up before dawn, pulls his straw boots on, and makes his way to a new part of the snowy forest.
“Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?
Where dwells the sparrow who lost her tongue?”
An enormous accumulation of snow that has settled on the canopy of bamboo suddenly breaks through, falling directly on top of Ojii-san. It catches him just right and he falls face down in the snow, unconscious. Crossing the borderline to a dream-like, phantasmal world, he hears a number of whispering voices.
“Poor man! Dead—after all that.”
“He’s not dead. He’s just been knocked for a loop.”
“He’ll freeze to death for sure, though, lying out here in the snow.”
“True. We’ll have to help him somehow. What a mess. If that child had just gone to meet him right from the start, this never would have happened. What’s wrong with her, anyway?”
“O-Teru-san?”
“Yes. I understand that she hurt her mouth, but she hasn’t shown herself since.”
“She’s in bed. Her tongue was plucked out. She can’t speak, just weeps silently day and night.”
“They plucked out her tongue? That’s depraved.”
“I know. And it was this one’s wife who did it. She’s not a bad old girl normally, but she must’ve been in a nasty mood that day. Suddenly grabbed O-Teru-san and ripped her tongue right out.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes. It was horrible. Human beings are like that, though. They’ll do the most unbelievably cruel things when you least expect it.”
“I’ll bet it was jealousy. I know that house pretty well myself, and this old man is awfully hard on his wife—treats her with absolute contempt. Nobody likes to see a man fuss over his woman, but this fellow’s just too damn hard on his. And O-Teru, taking advantage of that antagonism, got much too friendly with the man. Hey, no one’s innocent here. Let it go.”
“Oh? Maybe you’re the one who’s jealous! You had a crush on O-Teru-san yourself, didn’t you? You can’t hide it from me. Didn’t I hear you sighing one day about how O-Teru-san had the most beautiful voice in the whole bamboo forest?”
“I’m not the vulgar sort of man who gets jealous of anybody. But she did have a good voice—better than yours, at least—and she’s good-looking to boot.”
“You’re mean.”
“Now, now, you two, don’t be fighting. Nobody needs that. What are we going to do about this man? If we leave the poor fellow here, he’ll die. Think how badly he wanted to see O-Teru-san! Tramping through the snowy forest looking for her day after day, and then, to have it end like this—you have to feel sorry for him. He has a sincere heart, at least. I can tell that much.”
“What? A damn fool, is what he is. A man his age chasing a sparrow around? Hopeless.”