“Studying?” asked a woman’s voice outside my door. On returning to my
room, I took out one of the books I had brought, tied to my tripod, and
was reading it.
“Go right ahead, Sensei, don’t mind me,” said the voice before I
gave any answer, and its owner walked right into my room with no
conventionality whatever.
A shapely neck, looking all the more fair because of the subdued colour
of the part of kimono protecting its lower half, it was this charming
contrast that struck my eye, as the woman sat before me.
“A foreign book? Full of hardy, knotty problems, I suppose, Sensei?”
“No, not quite.”
“Then, what is it all about?”
“Well, to be honest, I do not know well enough to tell you.”
“Ho, ho, ho, and yet you are studying?”
“I am not studying. I put it on the desk, open it at random, and just
skim the open page. That is all.”
“Does that sort of thing interest you?”
“Marvellously.”
“How?”
“How? Why, that is the most interesting way of reading novels.”
“You are so odd, Sensei.”
“Yes, I should say I am rather.”
“Why should you not read them from the beginning?”
“If you begin to read from the beginning, you will have to read to the
end, don’t you see?”
“How absurdly you talk. There can be nothing wrong in reading through a
novel?”
“No, of course not. If it is to read the plot, I, also shall do so.”
“What else is there to read, if not the plot?”
She is after all a woman, I thought, and felt like testing her.
“Do you like novels?”
“I?” She made a pause after the word, and then said ambiguously: “Well
in a way.” She seemed not to care much about novel-reading.
“Perhaps you are not sure yourself that you like or you do not like
reading-novels?”
“What difference does it make if one likes or not likes novels?”
Novels seemed to have no claim to existence in her mind.
“It would not matter, then, if one read them from the beginning or from
the end, or from any page one happened to open. I should think, you
need not be so curious about my way of reading.”
“But you and I are different.”
“In what way, please.” I looked into the woman’s eyes, thinking, I was
testing her. But they spoke nothing.
“Ho, ho, ho, you don’t see?”
“But you must have read a good many in your younger days?” I made a
little detour, instead of keeping straight to my point.
“I am still young—at least in heart—you unkind man.” The falcon I let
off was once more going astray to miss the prey: she would let me have
no chance. But I managed to bring her back on the track by retorting:
“Being able to say that sort of thing in the face of a man, you must be
counted among the not young.”
“Arn’t you, who say that, also well up in age? And you mean to say that
you still delight in reading of love, Cupid and all that kind of trash?”
“Yes, they are delightful and will not cease to interest me even
till my last hour.”
“Well I declare! That is how you can give yourself up to a profession
like yours, I suppose?”
“Precisely so. Because I am an artist, I have no need to read through
novels from the beginning to the end. But they interest me no matter
what part I read. It delights me to talk with you, so much so that
I should be glad to be all the time talking with you, while I am
here. If you would have it, I have not the slightest objection, on my
part, to falling incandescently, in love with you. That would be most
interesting. But, however intensely in love, there is no need that we
should become husband and wife. One must need read through novels from
the beginning to the end, as long as one feels the necessity of love
ending in a marriage.”
“The artist is, then, he who makes an inhuman love?”
“Not inhuman but unhuman. The plots of novels do not count at all,
because we read them unhumanly. You see, I open the book thus, as in a
lottery drawing, and I read the first page that lies flat before me.
And there is the charm of the thing.”
“That does sound interesting. Then I wish you would tell
me something of what you are reading. I should like to know how
interesting it really is.”
“To tell you would not do. Don’t you see, the charm of a picture would
all be gone, if you simply made a narration of it.”
“Ho, ho, ho, read it to me, then, please.”
“In English?”
“No, in Japanese.”
“It would be a job to read English in Japanese.”
“It would be lovely, being so unhuman.”
A fun for the while, I thought, and began to read the book in Japanese,
with stops and pauses. If there was an unhuman way of reading, mine was
certainly it, and the woman was listening also unhumanly.
“‘An aura of tenderness rose from the woman,—from her voice, from
her eyes, from her skin. The woman went to the stern helped by the
man. Did she go there to have a look at Venice, now enshrouded in the
evening dusk? And the man, did he help her to feel lightning flashes
in his blood on his side?’—Mind, it is all unhuman, and don’t look for
accuracy. I may make skips, too.”
“I ♦won’t mind a bit, Sensei; you may add in something of your own
if you like.”
♦ “wont” replaced with “won’t”
“‘The woman was leaning against the gunwale by the side of the man,
with a distance between them narrower than her ribbons, which the wind
was playing with. The Doge of Venice was now vanishing in light red
like the second sunset....’”
“What is the Doge, Sensei?”
“It doesn’t matter what that means. However, it is the name of the man
who long ago ruled over Venice. I don’t know how many Doges succeeded
one another. Anyhow their palace has outlived them and may still be
seen in Venice.”
“Who are that man and woman?”
“God only knows, and that is why it is so interesting. You need not
bother yourself about what their relations have been. I find them
together just like you and I here. There is something interesting,
don’t you see, just for the occasion?”
“As you please. They seem to be in a boat.”
“On land or in water, it is just as it is written. You will make a
detective of yourself, if you press for ‘why’.”
“Ho, ho, ho, I will not ask you then.”
“Ordinary novels are all inventions of detectives and denuded of
unhumanity they are all so insipid.”
“Good, then, tell me more of unhumanity. What follows next, please?”
“‘Venice is sinking, sinking to a faint single streak of line. The line
dwindles into dots. Here and there pillars stand in an opal sky, last
of all the highest towering belfry sinks. It has sunk, says the friend.
The woman, who has come away from Venice is free like the wind of the
sky in her heart. But the thought that she must come back to Venice,
which has disappeared, fills her heart with the anguish of bondage. The
man and woman direct their eyes toward the darkening bay. The stars are
increasing. The sea is softly undulating without any foam. The man took
the woman’s hand in his, feeling like one holding a bow-string that has
not yet stopped vibrating.’”
“That does not seem to sound very unhuman.”
“But you can hear it as unhuman. If you don’t like it, I shall skip a
little.”
“Oh, no, I am all right.”
“If you are all right, why, I am a great deal more all right. Now, let
me see—it is getting so bungling—it is so awkward to trans—I mean, to
read.”
“You may cut it out, if it be so bothering.”
“No, I shall go it rough—‘This one night, says the woman. One
night? asks the man. Say, many, many nights; it is heartless to limit
it to a single night.’”
“Who says that, the man or the woman?”
“The man, O-Nami-san, I think the woman does not want to go back to
Venice, and the man is saying this to console her—‘In the memory of
the man, who lay down on the midnight deck with his head on a coil of
halyard, that instant—an instant like a hot drop of blood,—that instant
in which he tightly held the woman’s hand in his, tossed like a great
wave. Looking up into the black night, he resolved, come what may, to
save the woman from the brink of forced marriage. With his mind made
up, he closed his eyes....’”
“The woman?”
“‘Lost on the road, the woman seemed not to know whither she was
wandering. Like a man sailing in the sky a captive, unfathomable
mystery....’—the rest is so awkward to read, you see, it does not
complete the sentence—‘only the unfathomable mystery’—isn’t there any
verb?”
“Never mind a verb. Sensei, you don’t want any verb; that is quite
enough.”
“Eh?”
All of a sudden a rumbling sound came, and all the trees on the
mountain spoke. We looked at each other, not knowing why, and saw a
solitary spray of camellia in a small vessel on my desk swinging.
“An earthquake!” Nami-san brought herself right up against my desk,
with a break in her pose, as she said this, and our bodies were
oscillating, almost touching each other. A pheasant—a bird credited
with super-human sensitiveness for seismic phenomena—flew out of the
bamboo bush, making a sharp noise with the flapping of its wings.
“A pheasant,” I said looking out of the window.
“Where?” said the woman with another break in her posture, bringing
herself closer to me. She was so near me that our heads were almost in
contact with each other. I felt on my moustaches breaths coming out of
her gentle nostrils.
“Remember, all unhumanity!” said the woman unequivocally as she quickly
corrected her pose.
“Of course,” I responded promptly.
A pool of water in the hollow of a rock in the garden was
agitating in alarm; but that body of water moving from the very bottom
as a whole, there was no break in the surface but irregular curves.
If there be such an expression as moving “full roundly,” it fitted
exactly, I thought, the condition of this pool of water. A wild cherry
tree, which had its shadow cast peacefully in the pool, now stretched
out of all shape, now shrivelled up, then wriggled and twisted. For all
those contortions, it was most interesting to observe that the tree
never failed to appear the cherry tree it was.
“This is delightful. There is beauty and variation. Motion must be of
this sort to be interesting.”
“Man will be all right as long as his motion is of this sort, no matter
how hard he moves.”
“You cannot move like this unless you are unhuman.”
“Ho, ho, ho, how deeply in love you are with unhumanity, Sensei!”
“Nor can you deny that you are not without partiality for it, after
your bridal gown show yesterday?” I made a lunge.
She parried by saying sweetly with a coquettish smile: “A nice reward
please.”
“What for, my young lady?”
“You wished to see, and so I took the trouble to get up the show for
you.”
“I wished?”
“A Sensei of painting who had come up crossing the mountain, took the
trouble, I am told, to ask the old woman of a humble tea house on the
mountain pass to let him see me in my wedding gown.”
This came so unexpectedly that I was out of a ready answer. Nor did the
woman give me any chance, she quickly came down on me:
“All obliging, however sincere, can only be lost on a man so
forgetful,” came in mocking reproach, like a frontal blow. I was
beginning to get the worst of it, being at her mercy, unable to catch
up with the start she had of me.
♦ “beginnig” replaced with “beginning”
“That bath tank show, last night, was then, also out of your kindness?”
I narrowly managed to regain my ground.
She made no reply.
“A thousand pardons for being so ungrateful. What would you command of
me in penance?” I went forward as far as I could in anticipation; but
in vain. She kept on looking up to the framed ♦calligraphy of the
priest, Daitetsu, as if she saw and heard nothing. Presently she read
it in a soft murmur:
♦ “caligraph” replaced with “calligraphy”
“Shadow of bamboo sweeping no dust rises.” Now she turned right round
to me and said as if she suddenly came back to herself:
“What did you say, Sensei?”
She said it with a studied loudness; but I was not to be caught.
“I met that priest a while ago.” I set myself in motion for her
benefit, imitating the “full round” movement of the earthquake shaken
pool of water.
“The Osho-san of Kaikanji? He is quite stout, isn’t he?”
“He asked me if I would paint in oil on his paper screen! Those Zen
priests are full of absurdities, arn’t they?”
“Probably that is why they get so fat.”
“I also met another, a young man.”
“Kyuichi, you mean.”
“Yes Kyuichi-san.”
“You seem to know so well.”
“No, I know Kyuichi-san only by name, but nothing else about him. He
seems to hate moving his lips.”
“No, he is little shy, that is all. He is a mere boy.”
“A boy? Isn’t he of about the same age as you?”
“Ho, ho, ho, you think so? He is a cousin of mine. He is going to the
front, and came to say good-bye.”
“Is he stopping here?”
“No, he is staying with my brother.”
“I see. He came to take a cup of tea, then?”
“He likes ordinary hot water better than tea. But my father would have
him. Poor thing, he must have had a hard half hour of it. I would have
let him go before the party rose, if I were there.”
“Where have you been? The priest was asking after you—if you were out
again on one of your lonely walks?”
“Yes, I was. I made a round of Kagamiga Ike pond and neighbourhood.”
“I should myself like to go and see that pond.”
“Do, by all means, Sensei.”
“Will it make a good picture?”
“It is a good place for drowning yourself.”
“I have no idea of ending my life in water for some time to come.”
“I may, before long.”
Too bold a joke for a woman, and I looked up into her eyes. She seemed
quite sound, more herself than I expected.
“Won’t you paint for me, Sensei, a picture of myself, drowned and
floating in water,—not struggling and in agony—but a nice little
picture of me floating in easy, painless eternal repose.”
♦ “Wont” replaced with “Won’t”
“Eh?”
“Thunder and lightning, you are astonished?”
Nami-san got to her feet lightly and three steps brought her to the
opening of my room. She turned back and threw at me the most innocent
of her smiles, as she walked out of it. For a long time I sat immobile
as one lost in reverie.