The Great Passage

by Shion Miura

  Majime was nibbling peanuts one at a time, squirrel-like. Mrs. Sasaki tapped a finger lightly on the table to draw his attention. Only then did he realize that the question had been addressed to him. Flustered, he shook his head.

  “A dictionary is a ship that crosses the sea of words,” said Araki, with a sense that he was laying bare his innermost soul. “People travel on it and gather the small points of light floating on the dark surface of the waves. They do this in order to tell someone their thoughts accurately, using the best possible words. Without dictionaries, all any of us could do is linger before the vastness of the deep.”

  “We need to build a ship suitable for an ocean crossing,” Professor Matsumoto said quietly. “With that thought in mind, Araki and I decided on this title.”

  It’s in your hands now. As if he had heard these unspoken words, Majime lowered his hands to the table and straightened his back. His eyes were shining. “How many entries will there be? What will set The Great Passage apart from other dictionaries? I want to hear all about it.”

  Professor Matsumoto put down his chopsticks and picked up his pencil. Mrs. Sasaki took out a notebook from her briefcase and laid it open.

  Araki said, “Okay, here goes,” and opened his mouth to relate his conception of the new dictionary.

  “Wait!” interrupted Nishioka. “There’s something else we need to do first. This calls for another toast.” With one hand he refilled Professor Matsumoto’s glass with Shaoxing wine, and with the other he gave the lazy Susan a spin so that the beer traveled around the table and everyone had something to drink.

  “Allow me to do the honors.” Nishioka held his glass high. “May there be smooth sailing ahead for the Dictionary Editorial Department! Kampai!”

  “Kampai!” everyone echoed.

  Laughter broke out. Majime cheerfully clinked glasses with Professor Matsumoto.

  Make it a good stout ship, Araki thought, closing his eyes. One that many people can travel on safely for a long time. One that will be a comforting partner throughout their journey, even on days of crushing loneliness.

  I know you people can do it.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I’m back,” Mitsuya Majime announced to his empty room upon his return.

  He set down his heavy briefcase and opened the wood-frame window, humming a line from a popular song: “Under the window, the River Kanda.” Except that in his case it wasn’t the River Kanda but a narrow canal. He sang anyway, out of habit. The Ferris wheel in Korakuen Amusement Park loomed high in the evening sky.

  He felt worn out.

  Leaving the light off, he sprawled on the floor in the middle of the six-mat room. It had been nearly three months now since his transfer, but he still wasn’t used to his new job. The hours were nine to six, with none of the usual obligatory drinking with colleagues afterward. It should have been many times easier to handle than his old job in sales, yet he was always worn out.

  Today he’d taken the long way home, transferring on the subway line even though it was an easy walk from Gembu to his lodging house. He’d wanted to watch passengers ride the escalator, but the sight hadn’t cheered him the way he’d hoped. He’d been a little ahead of the evening rush hour, so the passengers were mostly old people and housewives. Perhaps unused to station escalators, they had fumbled and ridden in chaotic fashion, with none of the orderly beauty he craved.

  All at once he felt a heavy warmth on his stomach. He lifted his head and checked. Yes, it was the cat, Tora. Whenever he came home and opened the window, Tora dropped in to say hello.

  There was nothing on hand to eat, and Majime didn’t have the energy to go out shopping. He could make do with instant ramen noodles, but what about Tora?

  “Dried sardines okay with you?” he asked, stroking the cat’s head. Tora purred and flicked his bobtail, striking Majime on the chest. The pressure of the cat’s weight was uncomfortable. Tora was getting tubby.

  Majime had been living in this lodging house for nearly ten years. A college freshman in the beginning, he was now pushing thirty. Tora, once a bedraggled kitten mewing piteously in the rain, had grown into this oversized specimen of a ginger tabby. Only the two-story wooden building in this quiet residential neighborhood was unchanged. Maybe it had already been so old when he’d moved in that it couldn’t look any older.

  With Tora still curled up on him, he reached up and pulled the long cord hanging from the fluorescent light overhead. He called it his “lazycord.” There was a small gold bell attached to the tip, and he tapped it to rouse Tora’s interest. When the big cat finally jumped off him, he stood up.

  Looking around the brightened interior, Majime sighed. The first-floor room was pretty drab. All his clothes and everyday items were shelved in the built-in closet, behind sliding doors. A small writing desk and wall-to-wall bookshelves were the only other pieces of furniture in the room. Still more books lay piled—or spilled—on the tatami mats.

  In fact, this was only part of Majime’s collection; his books occupied the entire downstairs floor.

  Nowadays nobody wanted to live in a lodging house. Like maple leaves leaving a branch, the other lodgers had gradually drifted away, leaving only him. He’d been quick to take advantage of the opportunity, moving books first into the room next door, then the one two doors down. Finally his landlady, Také, had vacated her first-floor room by the stairs to live on the second floor. She was a good-hearted soul and readily accepted the new arrangement. “Those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves of yours are like extra pillars. This way I don’t have to worry about earthquakes.”

  The weight of the “pillars” threatened to push the lodging house off its foundation, but neither of them worried about such details. She never raised the rent, and Majime was so absentminded that he went right on paying for the one room without stopping to think that his rent didn’t cover the extra space he had appropriated.

  And so he and his books occupied the downstairs, and she had the upstairs to herself.

  What if the interior of a room mirrors the interior of its inhabitant? he wondered. That would make him someone who stored up words but couldn’t put them to use, a dry-as-dust bore.

  He took out a pack of Nupporo Number One, soy sauce flavor, from the cupboard. A nearby discount shop sold this instant ramen by the case at a bargain price, but it seemed suspiciously fake. The instructions were full of obvious mistakes: “Five hundred liters of water will reach the boiling point.” “You should break noodles after throwing them in.” “Enjoy eggs, green onion, ham, and so forth.” Five hundred liters of water seemed altogether too much, but Majime liked the earnest tone of the instructions, and lately he’d been eating a lot of Nupporo Number One.

  With the packet of noodles in hand, he opened the ill-fitting door and headed to the communal kitchen, with Tora padding behind him. With every step, the wooden floor creaked like the hull of a ship.

  As he was hunting on the shelf below the sink for Tora’s dried sardines, a voice called from upstairs. “Mitsu, is that you?”

  “Yes, I’m back,” he said, turning and looking up.

  Také’s face appeared at the top of the stairs. “I made too much for one person. It’s suppertime, so won’t you join me?”

  “Thank you. I’d be happy to.”

  Instant ramen in one hand and dried sardines in the other, he climbed the stairs, Tora at his heels.

  Také’s living room was the first room at the top of the stairs. The next room was her bedroom, and the one next to that she called the guest room. Not that she ever had any guests. The guest room served as storage space.

  Both floors had a toilet, but the upstairs was a bit more compact, having no kitchen, bath, or laundry area. Instead, just outside the window there was a clothes-drying platform with a fine view. It might have been called a veranda or a balcony, but it was made of unfinished wood and looked like a slatted drainboard with a railing. There was no more fitting term for it than clothes-drying platform.

  “M
ay I come in?” Majime said politely.

  He stepped into the room and stopped short. Out on the clothes-drying platform stood a display of silver pampas grass and round white dumplings, the traditional accompaniments for autumn moon viewing. Ah—so tonight was the harvest moon. All the while he’d been struggling to fit in at his new job, the seasons had continued their stately progression.

  Tora nibbled some dried sardine from Majime’s hand and meowed at the still-invisible moon. Majime opened the window a crack for him, and he slipped outside.

  Také invited Majime to sit down, and he joined her at the little table covered with dishes: steamed spinach, boiled chicken and taro, cucumber salad, and more.

  “I’ve got some of these, too,” she said, setting out croquettes she must have picked up at the store. “Young people need to eat.”

  She served him miso soup with tofu, then piled a generous mound of rice in his bowl. All the dishes (except the salad, of course) were piping hot. She must have timed her preparations to his arrival and then casually invited him up.

  “It looks delicious,” he said gratefully, and for a time occupied himself solely with filling his stomach. She said nothing while he ate. He finished munching the cucumbers and then asked, “Did you feel that I needed cheering up?”

  “You do seem pretty glum these days.” She sipped her soup. “Is it your job?”

  “I have too many things to decide. I feel like my head’s going to explode.”

  “Oh, dear. And your brains are your one strong suit.”

  Ouch, he thought, but it was true. Apart from studying and thinking, he really wasn’t good at much else.

  “That’s the trouble.” He looked at the plump grains of rice, lit by the overhead light. “Back in the sales department, my job was clearly defined. All I had to do was go around to bookstores. The goal was clear, and I only needed to apply myself, so it was comfortable in a way. Making a dictionary’s not like that. Everybody has to put their heads together to come up with ideas, and all the tasks have to be divided among us.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Thinking is no problem, but conveying my thoughts to other people is hard for me. The simple truth is, I just don’t fit in.”

  “Mitsu, be honest. When in your life did you ever fit in? You’ve always got your nose in a book, and you’ve never brought a single friend or girlfriend here.”

  “I don’t have friends or a girlfriend.”

  “Then why let it bother you now all of a sudden, if you don’t fit in?”

  Why, indeed.

  All his life, he’d been pegged as a weirdo. Both in school and at work, people had kept their distance. Occasionally, out of curiosity or goodwill, someone would speak to him, but his response would be so off the mark that they would disappear with a slight smile. He always thought he was responding honestly and openly, but people never seemed to warm to him.

  The pain of such encounters had driven him to the pages of books. No matter how poor he was at communicating with people, with books he could engage in deep, quiet dialogue. There was an added benefit: if he opened one during free time at school, his classmates would leave him alone and not try to strike up a conversation.

  Reading did wonders for his grades. He grew interested in words as a means of communicating thoughts and feelings, and majored in linguistics at college. But however knowledgeable about language he became, he was no better at using it to communicate. Sadly, he couldn’t seem to do anything about this, so he’d given up and more or less accepted his lot. Being transferred to the Dictionary Editorial Department had given him hope.

  “Mitsu, you want to get along with your colleagues, don’t you?” Také asked. “You want to get along with them and make a great dictionary together.”

  Majime looked up in surprise. He did long to communicate, to connect. The maelstrom of emotions he felt boiled down to that desire, he realized. “How did you know?”

  “Mitsu, you and I are tsu-ka. We’re in perfect sync.” She pushed the lever on top of the electric kettle and filled the teapot. “But what are you doing fretting about something so childish at your age? You’re a silly Billy who thinks too much.”

  Chastened, he fell quiet and concentrated on polishing off his croquette. While eating, he thought about that expression, tsu-ka. Why should the idea that two people were on the same wavelength be expressed that way? The full expression was “one says tsu, the other ka.” He’d read about the etymology once in some book, but as he recalled there was no definitive answer. Dictionaries were better off staying away from etymologies unless they could be proven beyond all doubt. Words mostly just sprang up without any how or when, anyway.

  Still, it bothered him. Why not “one says ‘good,’ the other ‘morning’” or “one says ‘horse,’ the other ‘carriage’”? What did tsu and ka mean anyway? The first one resembled tsuru (crane), and the second one sounded like the cawing of a crow. Maybe a woman changed into a crane and flew up into the sky, as in the folktale, and a crow said hello?

  “You change lightbulbs for me when I ask you to, don’t you, Mitsu?”

  “Of course.” Pulled back to reality, he took a quick look around. Which bulb was out? He tried to change them before she asked, but he must have missed one.

  “And if I invite you to supper, you come up without any hesitation.” She was watching the thin steam rise from her teacup. “That’s all you need to do. Rely on people and let them rely on you. Do it with the people at work, not just me.”

  He realized there was no burned-out bulb, that she was being tactful and warmly sympathetic.

  He thanked her for the meal and then, as a token of gratitude, offered her the packet of instant ramen.

  Majime offered to clean up and took the dishes downstairs to the kitchen to wash. Také, having already taken her bath, retired to her bedroom for the night. He generally showered before leaving for work. Tonight he decided to turn in early, rather than staying awake to think about the dictionary or how to be more socially outgoing.

  He poured fresh water in Tora’s saucer, then piled more dried sardines in the cat’s food dish and set it on the kitchen floor. Tora never did more than snack in the lodging house. Také often wondered aloud who else might be feeding him, but Majime had an idea that Tora was self-sufficient in that area. Despite his bulk, he was a crackerjack hunter. Time and again Majime had seen him triumphantly strolling along the canal with a sparrow or a dragonfly in his mouth.

  He went back to his room and laid out his futon, then called softly for Tora. He waited a bit, but Tora didn’t appear. Usually the big cat spent the night curled up at Majime’s feet. Where could he be?

  He lay down and pulled the lazycord to turn off the light. Thinking Tora might yet come, he stayed awake, staring at the ceiling. The window was slightly open.

  There in the darkness, the lapping of the water in the canal became the murmur of a limpid brook. The wind blew away the clouds, and on the window were the shadows of leaves in the moonlight.

  Suddenly he heard Tora. Somewhere he was emitting low sounds that might have been either threatening or placating. Majime sat up in the bluish-white moonlight and listened. Definitely Tora. Where was he? What was he doing?

  Worried, Majime crawled out of bed and put on his glasses. The air had chilled. He picked a pair of socks off a nearby stack of books, gave them a quick sniff, and put them on. He went to the window and peered down at the canal, but to his surprise, Tora’s meows were coming from overhead. Také must have shut her window before going to bed. Of course she had. Tonight was cold.

  Majime tiptoed up the stairs to rescue Tora. The second-floor hallway was dimly lit. The sound of Také’s deep breathing filtered from her bedroom. She was unaware of Tora’s faint cries. Fortunately, every upstairs room had a window that opened to the clothes-drying platform, so there was no need to wake her up.

  He slid open the door to the room where earlier they’d eaten supper and went in. Neither of th
em bothered to lock their doors anymore, since it was only the two of them. He entered the room, which was unexpectedly bright in the moonlight. He went to the window and looked out. The silver pampas grass and dumplings were gone. Had she cleared them away? Or had Tora eaten them? Wondering, he opened the window, and Tora’s cries became more distinct.

  “Okay, don’t worry.” He swung his legs through the window and out onto the platform. “I’m coming to get you.” Intending to call the cat by name, he looked toward the far end of the platform, where for some reason the pampas grass and dumplings had been moved. A young woman was standing there with Tora in her arms.

  Surprise made Majime’s throat constrict, and he emitted a strange “urk.” Slowly the young woman, who had been gazing up at the full moon, turned her head to face him. She’d been beautiful in profile, and she was no less beautiful seen straight on, he thought irrelevantly—and froze. As if by sorcery, his muscles and heart went rigid. He was incapable of speech.

  The young woman smiled, her long black hair swaying in the breeze. “Oh, I’m so glad. You’ve come to get him.”

  The easy, faintly mischievous tone sounded familiar. Was this Také, rejuvenated by the moonlight? His mind reeling with age-old stories involving shape-shifting and apparitions connected to the moon, Majime staggered over to the bedroom window and looked inside. Také was fast asleep, mouth agape.

  Then who was this? He fell back on his rear.

  Tora twisted out of the young woman’s arms, leaped down on the platform, then came over and rubbed against Majime’s shins.

  “So sweet!” she said. “Got a name?”

  “Majime.”

  “Funny name for a cat.”

  “No, I’m Majime. The cat is Tora.”

  His mother, who saw him in the most favorable light possible, might conceivably call him sweet, but who else in their right mind would? He turned red at his mistake and then at his excessive self-consciousness. She tilted her head, clearly puzzled.