IV

With absolutely no thought of any kind in my head, I returned to my room, and found it dusted clean and tidied up carefully. Then I recalled last night’s apparition, and felt an irresistible curiosity to look into the closet. I went up to it and opened the paper screen. I found inside an undersized chest of drawers, with a woman’s obi draping down its side, suggesting that somebody had carried away in haste some clothes on the cabinet. One end of the obi was in a layer of folded kimono of feminine colour. Some books on shelves occupied one corner of the closet, one of the Zen31 priest Haku-un’s works, and the classical Isemono-gatari, standing out conspicuously among them.

Giving myself no reason, I resumed my seat on the cushion at the low teak wood table, which served as my desk. On the table was my sketch book, carefully placed in the centre, with a pencil between its leaves. I took up the book, wondering how the things I wrote in dreams would look in the morning.

“Kaidono tsuyuo furu-u-ya monogurui.”

Somebody wrote this under it: “Kaidono tsuyuo furu-u-ya asa-garasu.”32 Scribbled in pencil, the style of writing was not as clear as it might be; I thought it too stiff for a woman’s hand but too flaccid for a man’s. Anyway, it was another surprise to me. I went on reading the next piece:

“Hanano kage onnano kageno oborokana.”33

This had under it: “Hanano kage, onnano kageo kasanekeri.”34 The third piece:

“Shoichi-i onnami bakete oborozuki,” was revised beneath into: “On-zoshi onnani bakete oborozuki.”35 Were they meant to be imitations, or corrections, or a vindication? Was the party a fool, or was it an attempt to fool? I gave a puzzling shake to my head.

“Later,” she said, I told myself. She might put in her appearance, when the meal was brought in, and I might get some light, then. What time could it be? I looked at my watch, and it was past eleven o’clock. Such a long sleep I had, I thought. To do with only two meals would at this rate be good for my stomach!

I pushed open a paper screen on the right side of my room, and looked out for a sign of last night’s fantasy. What I took for an aronia was indeed a tree of that name in blossom; but the garden was smaller than I fancied. The whole place was grown over with dark-green moss, apparently so nice to walk on, and almost burying five or six stepping stones. On the left a red-barked pine tree, growing out from between rocks, some way up the slope of a mountain, stood slantingly overhanging. A little behind the aronia was a thicket and still further beyond, a grove of tall bamboos, scraping the sunny Spring sky. View to the right was shut out by a ridge of roof; but judging from topography, I should say the ground descended in a slow gradient towards the bathhouse.

The mountain had at its foot a hillock and the hillock was surrounded by a belt of level land, about half a mile wide. This belt glided on the outer side into the bottom of the sea, and rose sharply again forty miles away, forming the islet Maya of thirteen miles in circumference. This was the geography of Nakoi. The spa-hotel is built at the foot of the hill, with its back terraced as closely as possible against its steep side, taking in half of its craggy slope for the scenic effect of its garden. The building is two-storeyed in front; but only one at the rear, and sitting at the edge of my verandah, the heels touched the velvety moss. It was no wonder, I had thought last night, that the house was a strangely planned one, with so many steps to go up and down, and up and down.

I now opened the window in the left flank. A natural hollow, a couple of yards, both ways, in a big rock, had turned into a pool of water, one does not know how long since, and was reflecting calmly in it a wild cherry tree in bloom, while a bunch or two of giant-leaved creeping bamboos decked a corner of the rock. Yonder a hedge of what looked like boxthorns fenced in the garden. A road from the beach sloping upward, for climbing the hill, seemed to pass outside the hedge, and passers talking could be heard now again. Off the other edge of the road, orange trees covered the ground that fell Southward, the declivity ending in a great bamboo jungle, that flared white. I learned for the first time, then, that the bamboo leaves shine like silver, when looked at from a distance. Above the jungle, the hill on the other side abounded in pine trees, and five or six stone steps were clearly visible between their red trunks. Probably a temple stood on the hill.

I went out into the verandah and found that it turned square with its railing. An upstairs room across an inner court in the front section of the building filled up space, which should, as I judged from its bearings, give a view of the sea. It was jolly that leaning against the railing, I was upstairs as high. The bath tank being situated in the basement, and from the standpoint of taking a bath I might be said to be living on the third floor.

The house is quite large; but the living quarters and kitchen apart, shutters were down in nearly all the rooms, except the upstairs one in the front section, another next to mine by turning to the right along the verandah, and my own, of course. Evidently I was the only guest stopping there. The rain-doors were all closed; but judging from the look of things I might wager pretty safely that once they opened those doors they would not go to the trouble of shutting them again, even at night. One might even suspect they did not bother themselves about locking the entrance door. I should say, an ideal place for an unhuman sojourn.

It was almost noon by my watch, and I was beginning to feel somewhat empty. But there was no sign of any tiffin forthcoming. Imagining myself a wanderer in the familiar line of poetry, “Void the mountain, not a soul seen,” I thought I might do without a meal or so cheerfully. I felt too lazy to paint. As for the poetry, I have been living it, and it appeared to me decidedly unwise to try to compose one. I have brought with me a few books tied into my tripod; but even that I felt in no mood to untie and read. Lying with the shadow of flowers on the verandah, with my back basking in warm sunshine of Spring, I was in the height of worldly delectation. I shall fall off if I thought and a motion was dangerous. If I could help it, I did not want even to breathe, I felt like remaining immobile for a fortnight or so, like a plant growing out of the floor matting.

Presently I heard somebody walking along the passage, and then coming upstairs. As the footsteps neared, I judged there were two. No sooner had they stopped outside my room than one of them went back the way he or she came, without a word. The karakami opened and I expected to greet her of this morning. I felt as if I had missed something, when I saw that it was only the young maid of last night.

“Sorry, Danna-sama, we kept you waiting.” So saying the girl placed a portable dinner table before me, with not a word of reference to the missing breakfast. On the table was a dish of broiled fish with something green, and a lacquered bowl, which, on taking off the cover, revealed a clear soup with some young ferns and some red and white shrimps. The colours of shrimps, were so lovely that I kept looking at them a while.

“You don’t like that, Danna-sama,” asks the girl.

“Yes, I am going to take it,” I said; but in my mind I was loath to eat so charming a thing. I remembered reading in a book, that taking some salad into his dish, and looking at, Turner said to one sitting next to him at dinner, that its colour was refreshing and was the one he used. I wished very much that I could have let Turner see the shrimps and the ferns. In my opinion, there is nothing beautiful in colour in Western dishes, excepting perhaps salad and radishes. I cannot, of course, say anything from the nutritious point of view, but I must say that theirs is very uncivilized from the artist’s point of view. On the contrary the Japanese dishes are all superbly beautiful, be it the soup, the pastry or the sliced raw fish. You may come away without taking a single chopstickful of things set before you, but you may consider yourself fully repaid for having been at a teahouse, from the point of view of having feasted your eyes.

“There is a young lady, here?” I asked the girl, as I put down the soup bowl.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who is she?”

“She is the young Mistress.”

“Is there any elder Mistress besides her?”

“She died last year.”

“And the master?”

“He lives here, and the lady is his daughter.”

“That young lady?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are there any other guests?”

“No, sir.”

“Only myself, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What does the young Mistress do every day?”

“Sewing.⁠ ⁠…”

“And?”

“She plays samisen.”36

How unexpected! However quite interesting and so:

“What else?” I asked.

“She goes to the temple,” answers the girl.

Unexpected again. The samisen playing and the temple going are decidedly a curious conglomeration.

“Does she go there to worship?”

“She goes there to see the Osho-sama.”37

“Does the Osho-san take lessons in samisen?”

“No, sir.”

“What does she go there for?”

“She goes there to see Daitetsu-sama.”

It dawned on me that Daitetsu must be the priest who wrote the framed calligraphy on the wall. Judging from its wording Daitetsu must be a Zen priest, and Haku-un’s book in the closet must belong to him.

“Is this a living room for anyone of the family?”

“Yes, sir; the Mistress lives here.”

“Is that so? Well, then, she had been here till I came in, last night?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry, I have robbed her of her room. And what does she go to see Daitetsu-san for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anything else?”

“Many other things.”

“What many other things?”

“I don’t know.”

This put an end to my catechism, and also to my tiffin. The girl took away the little table. As she pulled open the wallpapered screen, I saw through the opening the young woman of butterfly coiffeur, resting her chin in her hands that were supported by arms which had their elbows on the railing of the upstairs verandah, overlooking a inner court shrubbery. The “butterfly” was gazing downward with the pose of a modernised goddess of mercy. In contrast to how she struck me this morning, she was serenely calm. Looking downward as she was, I could not tell how her eyes were moving. I could only wonder if any change had come into her expression. An ancient says that nothing speaks better for a person than his pupils. He is right. How can a man conceal? There is, indeed, no organ in human body so alive as the eye. Two real butterflies flew upward twirling around each other from under the railing, on which the human butterfly was leaning quietly. It was just at this juncture that the girl opened the fusuma38 of my room, and the noise made the woman yonder lift her eyes from the butterflies, and direct them toward me. Her eyes shot through the space like a shaft of rays, and hit me between my own. My heart throbbed; but the same moment the girl closed the screen. The momentary spell broke and I returned to the noon tide of balmy Spring.

I again stretched myself full length on the matted floor, and soon I was reciting:

“Sadder than the moon’s lost light,
Lost is the kindling of dawn,
To travellers journeying on,
The shutting of thy fair face from my sight.”

Supposing I was in love with the “butterfly” and felt deeply the flash of joy or the pang of a sudden parting like the one I just had, at the very moment when I was dying to meet her, I should have unquestionably poetised in a strain something like the above. Furthermore, I may have added,

“Might I look on thee in death,
With bliss I would yield my breath.”

these two lines. Fortunately, I had long since left behind me the common glamour of love and amour, and could not feel pangs of this kind, even if I would. Nevertheless, the poetical significance of the event that had just happened was well brought out in the six lines. Not that there was any such heart’s anguish between the “butterfly” and myself. I felt it highly entertaining to think of our present relations in the light of these verses. Nor was it unpleasant to interpret the meaning of these lines as reflecting our present condition. There was, indeed, an invisibly thin line of cause and effect, binding us together, making real, at least, part of the conditions sung in these lines. The thread of cause and effect occasions no worry when as thin as this. Besides, it is no ordinary thread, but is like the rainbow spanning the sky; like the haze screening horizon; and like the spiderweb sparkling with dew. It may break at any moment if wanted to be broken; but it is exquisitely beautiful while it remains and is seen. But what if the thread should, all of a sudden, grow thick and stout as a halyard? No fear: I am an artist and she is not of a common kind.

Suddenly the fusuma opened again, and I rolled my body round to look that way. There was standing in the opening, the “butterfly,” the other end of cause and effect, holding up in her hand a celadon porcelain bowl on a tray.

“Lying down again? It must have been annoying to you to be disturbed so often, last night, ho, ho, ho,” she laughed. She betrayed not the least sign of having been impressed with fear or of fearing, still less with a bashful feeling. The only thing was, she got the start of me.

“Thank you, this morning,” I said my thanks again. This was the third time I made acknowledgment for the deshabille, and each time it consisted of the two words “Thank you.”

I made a move to sit up; but she was quicker; she had sat down on the matting close to where I was lying:

“Oh, please don’t stir. You can talk as you are, Sensei.”39

I thought her quite convincing and only changed my pose so far as to lie on my belly, with my chin on the ends of two arms, planted in on the tatami-mat.

“I have come to make tea for you, Sensei, thinking you must be tired of doing nothing.”

“Thank you.” I said it again. I saw, in the sea-green cake-bowl she brought, some isinglass paste yokan. I love yokan. Not that I am eager to eat it, but to me it appeals decidedly as an objet d’art, with its fine, smooth surface, that glistens semi-transparently as the light strikes it. Especially pleasant-looking is the one of light-green, with its lustre and its appearance of being wrought with marble and gyoku-stone. In a celadon bowl, it looks as if just born out of it. It makes me feel like putting out my hand and feeling it. No Western cake, that I know of, produces such delicious impression as the yokan. Cream is agreeably soft in colour, but there is something heavy and thick about it, while jelly with all its look of a precious stone, trembles so that it is devoid of the weightiness of the yokan. It is an insuperable abomination when it comes to a tower of flour, milk and sugar.

“Oh, very nice.”

“Gembey has just brought it back from the town. I hope it is good enough for your taste.”

Gembey must have stopped overnight in the town, I thought; but I made no answer. It made no difference to me where the thing was got or by whom. The thing being beautiful, I should be content with thinking that it is beautiful.

“This celadon bowl is exquisite in shape and superb in tint. It makes a worthy match to the yokan.”

The woman smiled a smile that betrayed a shadow of contempt playing about her mouth. It was probable that she thought I was jesting. If that is the case, my words, I must confess, fully deserved contumely. When a witless fellow tries to be jocular, he generally lands himself on a sorry exhibition of this kind.

“Is this Chinese?”

“I have no idea.” The celadon had no place in her eyes.

“Somehow it appears Chinese to me.” I looked at its base by holding up the bowl.

“Do you take interest in things of that sort, Sensei? Would you like to see more?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Father is very fond of bric-a-brac and has quite a collection. I shall tell father about you, and let him invite you to a cup of tea.”

Tea? The word called up before me a picture I am not very enthusiastic about. In fact it made me shrink back. I am persuaded that there is no refined idler that so unwarrantably puts on airs as the frothing tea imbiber. He almost suffocatingly narrows the wide world of poetry and does things most self-importantly, most over-studiedly and most hair-splittingly. He drinks of foamy froth in altogether unnecessarily abject humility, and finds himself in the seventh heaven of joy. Such is the tea man. If there be any pleasure and interest in this intricate tangle of rules, then the denizens of the regimental barracks at Azabu must have joys and pleasures knocking about their nose. The “right-turn!” and “march-on!” lads must be all great tea men. Pshaw! They⁠—the so-called tea-men⁠—are, to tell the truth, merchants, tradesmen, and the like; with no real taste-culture, who have no idea of what makes nature-loving refinement, and swallow mechanically the tea-rules adopted since the days of the great tea-master, Rikyu, of three centuries ago, and delude themselves into being men of refinement. Theirs is a trick to make fools of real men of nature-loving refinement.

“Tea? You mean the tea drinking ceremony?”

“No, Sensei; but tea with no ceremony, which you need not drink if you don’t wish to, take a cup or even two.”

“If that is the kind, then, I may just as well.”

“Father is very fond of showing his collection.”

“Must I praise them to the skies?”

“Well, Sensei, he is growing old and compliments gladden him.”

“I may go about it lightly then.”

“You may be generous into the bargain.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha. Pardon my observing that you do not speak the countryside language.”

“Not in language, but in person, you mean?”

“In personality it is better for one to be of the countryside.”

“Then I may give myself airs?”

“But you have lived in Tokyo?”

“Yes, I have been there, and also in Kyoto. I am a bird of passage and I have been in many places.”

“Which do you like best, here or the capital?”

“It is all the same to me.”

“You feel more at home in a quiet place like this, don’t you?”

“At home, or not at home, the life in this world depends all upon how you train your mind. It would be of no use to move into a land of mosquitoes, when you got sick of the country of fleas.”

“It would be all well if you emigrated into a country, where there were neither mosquitoes nor fleas?”

“If there be any such country, just show it to me, please Sensei. Show it to me now,” says the woman earnestly.

“If you wish, I certainly will.” I took out my sketch book and let my brush spin out a woman on horse back, looking up to a mountain cherry blossom⁠—just an imaginary impression. A work of the instant, it hardly made a picture, but to give an idea. I speedily finished it and said:

“Now get in here, there is neither flea nor mosquito in this land,” putting it under her nose. Will she be seized by a surprise or by bashfulness? To judge by her looks, I felt sure that embarrassment would be the last thing she would allow to overtake her. I watched her for the moment.

“What a cramped up world! It is all width. You are fond of a place like this? You must be a regular crab.” Thus she got herself out, and I laughed out aloud:

“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

A sweet warbler that had come near the eve of the house, broke its note in the middle of its song and hopped to a tree a little way off. We purposely stopped our talk and listened in silence; but the little throat that lost its tune would not recover it easily.

“You met Gembey on the mountain, yesterday, Sensei?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“You made a detour to see the ‘five elements’ tomb of the Maid of Nagara?”

“Even like the dew drop, that when autumn comes lodges trembling on grass, must I roll off to die.” The woman recited the lines, just the words only, with no tune or intonation. I did not know what for, but volunteered the information:

“I heard that song at the tea stall.”

“The old woman told you then. Long ago she was with us as our servant here, before I.⁠ ⁠…” Here she looked at me, and I pretended to know nothing.

“It was when I was young. I used to tell her the story of Nagarano Otome, every time she called on us after leaving here. The song was very difficult for her to remember. But hearing if told her so often, she finally got everything by heart.”

“That accounts for it; I thought she knew a very literary sort of thing for a woman of her station⁠—however that song is a sad one.”

“Sad, do you think? If I were that maiden, I would have never sung like that. In the first place, what good will it serve to throw yourself into a river and die?”

“None whatever. What would you have done?”

“What would I have done? Why it is easy enough. I would have made sweethearts of both Sasada Otoko and Sasabe Otoko.”

“Both?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You are great.”

“Not great at all; but only natural.”

“Now I see, you can thus get along without flying into the land of fleas or the land of mosquitoes?”

“You see, you can live on without feeling like a crab?”

“Hoh ho-ke-kyo,” the warbler recovered its note, which it had almost lost, and vindicated the fact with loudness that was wholly unexpected. Once recovered, the song seemed to flow out of its own accord, as the bird held down its head, quivered its swelling throat, opened its mouth as wide as it could, and kept on:

“Hoh ho-ke-kyo. Hoh hokke-kyo.⁠ ⁠…”

The bird went on without stopping, and the woman took the trouble to tell me:

“That is the real poetry.”