The pipe-stem seller used to make his round with two large boxes
suspended from a bamboo pole balanced upon his shoulder:
one box containing stems of various diameters, lengths, and
colors, together with tools for fitting them into metal pipes;
and the other box containing a baby,--his own baby. Sometimes I
saw it peeping over the edge of the box, and smiling at the
passers-by; sometimes I saw it lying, well wrapped up and fast
asleep, in the bottom of the box; sometimes I saw it playing with
toys. Many people, I was told, used to give it toys. One of the
toys bore a curious resemblance to a mortuary tablet (ihai); and
this I always observed in the box, whether the child were asleep
or awake.
The other day I discovered that the pipe-stem seller had
abandoned his bamboo pole and suspended boxes. He was coming up
the street with a little hand-cart just big enough to hold his
wares and his baby, and evidently built for that purpose in two
compartments. Perhaps the baby had become too heavy for the more
primitive method of conveyance. Above the cart fluttered a small
white flag, bearing in cursive characters the legend _Ki-seru-rao
kae_ (pipe-stems exchanged), and a brief petition for "honorable
help," _O-tasuke wo negaimasu_. The child seemed well and happy;
and I again saw the tablet-shaped object which had so often
attracted my notice before. It was now fastened upright to a high
box in the cart facing the infant's bed. As I watched the cart
approaching, I suddenly felt convinced that the tablet was really
an ihai: the sun shone full upon it, and there was no mistaking
the conventional Buddhist text. This aroused my curiosity; and I
asked Manyemon to tell the pipe-stem seller that we had a number
of pipes needing fresh stems,--which was true. Presently the
cartlet drew up at our gate, and I went to look at it.
The child was not afraid, even of a foreign face,--a pretty boy.
He lisped and laughed and held out his arms, being evidently used
to petting; and while playing with him I looked closely at the
tablet. It was a Shinshu ihai, bearing a woman's kaimyo, or
posthumous name; and Manyemon translated the Chinese characters
for me: _Revered and of good rank in the Mansion of Excellence,
the thirty-first day of the third month of the twenty-eighth year
of Meiji_. Meantime a servant had fetched the pipes which needed
new stems; and I glanced at the face of the artisan as he worked.
It was the face of a man past middle age, with those worn,
sympathetic lines about the mouth, dry beds of old smiles, which
give to so many Japanese faces an indescribable expression of
resigned gentleness. Presently Manyemon began to ask questions;
and when Manyemon asks questions, not to reply is possible for
the wicked only. Sometimes behind that dear innocent old head I
think I see the dawning of an aureole,--the aureole of the
Bosatsu.
The pipe-stem seller answered by telling his story. Two months
after the birth of their little boy, his wife had died. In the
last hour of her illness she had said: "From what time I die till
three full years be past I pray you to leave the child always
united with the Shadow of me: never let him be separated from my
ihai, so that I may continue to care for him and to nurse him--
since thou knowest that he should have the breast for three
years. This, my last asking, I entreat thee, do not forget." But
the mother being dead, the father could not labor as he had been
wont to do, and also take care of so young a child, requiring
continual attention both night and day; and he was too poor to
hire a nurse. So he took to selling pipe-stems, as he could thus
make a little money without leaving the child even for a minute
alone. He could not afford to buy milk; but he had fed the boy
for more than a year with rice gruel and cane syrup.
I said that the child looked very strong, and none the worse for
lack of milk.
"That," declared Manyemon, in a tone of conviction bordering on
reproof, "is because the dead mother nurses him. How should he
want for milk?"
And the boy laughed softly, as if conscious of a ghostly caress.