Quicksand by Junichirô Tanizaki Read Free Book Online

He treated me like a child, as if he was humoring me, and that always got on my nerves. Once I even said: “No wonder you think I’m childish, since you were so brilliant at college, but to me you’re a living fossil!”
    Did that man have any passion in his heart? I asked myself. Did he ever cry or show anger or astonishment, like other people? My husband’s cold nature didn’t just make me feel miserable and lonely; before long it stimulated a kind of spiteful curiosity in me. And that was what led to my earlier love affair, and to the one with Mitsuko, and to everything that happened afterward.

8
    ANYWAY , that earlier affair began right after we were married. I was an innocent young girl, still a little timid and naive, and I felt guilty toward my husband. But by this time, as my letter shows, I had no such feeling. To tell the truth, I’d gone through so much, all unknown to him, that I myself had become quite worldly and more than a little clever at concealing what I was up to. He was blind to that and kept on treating me like a child. At first I could hardly bear his condescending manner, but when I got annoyed he made fun of me even more, until finally I thought: All right, if I seem childish to you, I’ll encourage it, I’ll pull the wool over your eyes! I can put on a show of being a horribly spoiled little girl, and fret and coax whenever I want to get my own way. So just go ahead, if it pleases you to consider me a child, I said to myself, but aren’t you the gullible one? Getting around a man like you is the easiest thing in the world!
    Mocking him became more and more enjoyable, and I amazed myself by own own skill at playacting. After even a few words from him I would burst into tears or begin shouting angrily. . . .
    I’m sure you know this better than I, since you’re a novelist, but our state of mind does seem to change completely, depending on circumstances, doesn’t it? Before, I would have felt a pang of regret, and thought: Ah, I shouldn’t have done that. But by then I was rebellious enough to ridicule my own faintheartedness, asking myself why I was so weak, how I could be so easily intimidated. . . . And even if it was wrong to be secretly in love with another man, what was so bad about being in love with a woman, someone of my own sex? No matter how close we became, a husband had no right to interfere—that was the kind of argument I used to deceive myself. The truth is, my feeling for Mitsuko was ten times, a hundred times stronger than what I had felt for that other man.
    Another reason for my boldness was that from his student days my husband was such a dreadfully fussy, proper person that he had no trouble winning my father’s confidence. He was so devoted to “common sense,” so incapable of understanding anything the least strange or out of the ordinary, that I was sure he would never question my relations with Mitsuko. He would think we were just friends. That’s how it was at first—he had no idea how intimate we were—but as time went on he must have begun to be suspicious. No wonder, since I always used to stop at his office on my way home from school, but lately I’d go back alone, ahead of him. And then, about once every three days, Mitsuko would be sure to come over, and the two of us would spend hours closeted together in that upstairs room. It was only to be expected that he’d find it curious, what with the picture never getting done, although I said I was using her as a model. Of course I occasionally went to Mitsuko’s house, after I warned her that he seemed to suspect something.
    â€œWe have to be careful, Mitsu,” I’d say. “Today I’ll come to your place, shall I?”
    . . . No, Mitsuko’s mother didn’t have any qualms about me. She knew it was the city councilman who was behind those rumors at school. And I didn’t want to stir