by Неизвестный
“As I see things, this is what happened,” said Grandpa. “The thief must have come during the night. It must be someone who knows this place well. That’s how I see things.”
“Right, right,” said Myōkendō. “They almost certainly came while I was banging the drum. Must know how the land lies, eh?”
The former priest and Grandpa followed the tracks left by the bulls in the soil. Here and there on the surface of the red clay, hoofprints were visible.
“There were two of them!”
Myōkendō and Grandpa followed the tracks to the back of the shed. On the narrow road leading down from the garden, there were confused imprints of cattle hooves. At the very bottom of the road, there were footprints of rubber-soled socks and military boots, left in the sand that had been washed down by the rain.
“Three of them must have worked together. Perhaps as many as four. Odd way to go about things,” said Myōkendō peevishly.
The hoofprints disappeared after crossing the earth-covered bridge over the river in the valley. An embankment covered with green grass led along the river from the end of the bridge. The culprits seemed to have taken the bulls along it, but the grass grew too thickly for footprints to be distinguishable.
“We have to report it at the police station at any rate, so I’ll go downstream,” said Myōkendō. “You go and look upstream.”
“I don’t think the thieves will have got very far. If a cow in heat bellows, Wild Cherry bellows back, doesn’t he? So keep your ears open for any cow that calls.”
Grandpa was just setting off along the path by the river when Myōkendō added: “And don’t forget—it’s important to ask around for any information likely to be useful.”
The green grass that covered the path was wet with morning dew. From time to time, he noticed that the grass had been trodden down, hut it seemed unlikely that cattle had passed that way. He hurried along the track straight along by the river. Eventually, it gave onto the main road. The question was whether or not there were any signs of cattle having passed that point.
The sun had not yet risen. The raised path along the river had been constructed to prevent flooding. The righthand side, overlooking the river, was faced with stones, while on the left a row of plum trees stretched for a good three or four hundred yards. The path led onto the main road at the point where the trees ended. Here, there was another earth-covered bridge, and at one end of the bridge stood a water mill, now deserted and tumbledown. Grandpa went back and forth across the bridge, hoping to find any tracks left by the bulls on the road, but found nothing that looked at all likely. He even opened the wooden door of the water mill. Once there had been an incident in which a young man from another village stole a cow from our village, slaughtered it secretly in the water mill, and discarded the bones at the back of the building.
Grandpa went inside and struck a match. The earthen floor was empty save for three millstones, on one of which lay a bunch of withered plum branches, left there, probably, by children at play. He looked out at the back and found a man there, fishing.
“Well, good morning!” said the other, looking up at Grandpa. It was the Tsuruyas’ visitor again.
“Good morning,” said Grandpa politely.
“You’re an early riser, Grandpa. I was here fishing before it got light this morning. Caught quite a lot. Nice river you’ve got here in this valley.”
“Glad you like it. . . . By the way, have you seen anybody go by with some bulls?”
But just then, someone came across the bridge on a bicycle, calling to Grandpa as he came. It was Uchida, who was wearing a cotton night kimono that stopped at his knees, plus high rubber boots.
“I just got the alarm from Myōkendō,” he said. “Dreadful shock. No idea, he says, where the bulls have gone. We split up and rushed off in different directions to look for them. If we get wind of the criminal, the signal is two strokes on the fire bell.”
“No sign of the bulls going along the main road, I suppose?”
“Nothing,” said Uchida. “Nor where the path on the downstream side leads into the main road. Not so much as a chicken feather, let alone a hoofprint.”
If the thief had made his escape along the main road with the bulls, he could only have taken them by truck, but there were no truck marks on the road either. The thief, Uchida said, might have fled into the hills. But the hills surrounding Kasumigamori slope up steeply from the back of the village, and it would be hard going to take refuge in them with cattle on one’s hands. Even the road upstream came to a dead halt at Yaburodani.
“If they fled into the hills, they must still be lying low there. I wish a cow in a stall somewhere would give a call for a bull.”
Cupping his hands, Grandpa imitated the sound of a bull lowing. The Tsuruyas’ visitor gave up his fishing and produced a similar imitation. He gave his imitation with great gusto, in a much louder voice than Grandpa, then said:
“No reply. . . . You know, Grandpa, you really shouldn’t have left home. Just supposing, now—only supposing, of course—that it was your own son Tōkichi who’d stolen the bulls. It would make a nice ending to the story, wouldn’t it? If Tōkichi were back home with the bulls now, it would mean an end to your wanderings, wouldn’t it, Grandpa? Or perhaps I’m a bit indiscreet to go making such predictions. Not that it’s anything more than my wishful thinking, of course. . . .”
Grandpa could not have cared less whether it was indiscreet or not. Without even replying he made off at once, leaving Uchida to follow after him, pushing his bicycle as he came.
INOUE YASUSHI
Inoue Yasushi (1907–1991) was one of the most distinguished postwar novelists, well known both in Japan and abroad for his poetic and often austere historical novels, particularly The Roof Tile of Tenpyō (Tenpyō no iraka, 1957), which deals with the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. Less well known abroad are Inoue’s works of fiction set in the modern period, such as “The Rhododendrons of Hira” (Hira no shakunage, 1950), translated here and one of his finest.
THE RHODODENDRONS OF HIRA (HIRA NO SHAKUNAGE)
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
How quickly time passes. It is five years since I was last here at Katada. Five years have gone by since that spring, the spring of 1944, when we had begun to see that the war was not going well. It seems like many years ago, and it seems like yesterday. Sometimes I think I am less sensitive to time than I once was. When I was young it was different. In the Anatomy Magazine last month someone called me a vigorous old gentleman of eighty. I am not, though. I still have two years to go, but I suppose I must strike people as an “old gentleman.” I don’t like that expression. There is something a little too warm and mellow about it. I would much rather be called an old scholar. Miike Shuntarō, old scholar.
“There are more famous spots for viewing Lake Biwa than you can count on your fingers,” the owner of this inn used to say, “but there is no place along the entire lake shore that is better than Katada for viewing Mount Hira.” In particular, he liked to boast that no view of Hira could compare with the one from the northeast room of the Reihōkan Inn itself. Indeed the Reihōkan, “Inn of the Holy Mount,” takes its name from the fact that Hira viewed from here looks its grandest and most god-like. The view is not like that from Hikone, with Hira sweeping the horizon east to west, the very essence of the great mountain mass; but from here it has a dignity and character you do not find in ordinary mountains. Calmly enfolding those deep valleys, the summit more often than not hidden in clouds, it sweeps down to plant its foot solidly on the shore of the lake. There is no denying its beauty.
How long has the old innkeeper been dead, I wonder. Twenty years?—no, longer. The second time I came here, over the Keisuke affair, he was already paralyzed and had trouble speaking, and it must have been very soon afterward, possibly two or three months, that I had notice of his death. He seemed like a worn-out old man to me then, but he could not have been over seventy. Already I have lived almost ten years l
onger than he did.
Nothing in the inn has changed. I was twenty-four or twenty-five when I first came here. Fifty years have somehow gone by since I first sat in this room. It is strange for a house to have gone unchanged for fifty years. The young owner is the image of his father, and he sits in the same dark office off the hall, his expressions and his mannerisms exactly like the old man’s. The landscape painting in the musty alcove here and the statue under it might for all I know be the ones that were here then. Everything has changed at home. Furniture, people, the way people think. I know of nothing that has not changed. A steady change, from year to year, from month to month—from moment to moment and from second to second, it might be better to say. There cannot be many houses where change is so constant. It is intolerable. I put a chair out on the veranda and I can be sure that in an hour it will be facing another direction.
What a calm, quiet place this is! And how many years has it been since I was last able to relax so completely? The scholar’s hour. I sit on the veranda with no one watching me. I look at the lake. I look at Hira. No one runs a malicious eye toward me, no brassy voices jar on my nerves. If I want a cup of tea I clap for the maid. Probably if I were not to clap I would see no one until time for dinner. I do not hear a radio. Or a phonograph or a piano. I do not hear that shrill voice of Haruko’s or the voices of those wild grandchildren. Or Hiroyuki’s voice—he has become a little insolent these last few years.
In any case, they must be quite upset by now, probably in an uproar because I disappeared without a word. I have stopped going out alone as I have grown older, never knowing when the worst might happen. And now I have been missing for more than five hours. Even Haruko will be upset. “The old man has disappeared, the old man has disappeared,” she’ll be saying in that shrill voice as she hunts around the neighborhood and asks whether anyone has seen me. Hiroyuki will have been called home from the office, but, being Hiroyuki, he’ll not have wanted to call the police or tell the relatives. He’ll have telephoned people and found not a trace of me, and he’ll be pacing the floor with a sour expression on his face. But he’s a worrier. Maybe he’ll have called at least his brother and sister. Sadamitsu will have come from the university, and he’ll be at my desk drinking tea and scowling to show how much he resents having been bothered. Kyōko will have hurried over from Kitano. Sadamitsu and Kyōko never show their faces unless something like this happens. I suppose they are busy, but it wouldn’t hurt them now and then to come around and bring a little candy or fruit to the only parent they have left. For six months or a year on end they would forget all about me if I didn’t remind them, that’s how little the two of them know of their duty as children.
Let them worry until tomorrow. Tomorrow at noon I’ll be back as if I had never been away. I still have my rights, even if I am seventy-eight. I can go out alone if I want to. I have the rights that are so fashionable these days. I don’t see why it should be wrong for me to go out without telling everyone. I used to be a good drinker in my younger days, and I would spend a night here and a night there without saying a word to Misa. Sometimes I would stay away for three or four nights running, and not once did I call up the house, as Hiroyuki is always doing, to say I wouldn’t be home. Haruko has him under her thumb. He’s too soft with her and he’s too soft with the children. I don’t like it at all.
I don’t suppose, though, that we’ll get by without a quarrel when I do go back tomorrow. This is what I mean, this is why it wears me out so to take care of him, Haruko will say in a voice loud enough for Sadamitsu and Kyōko to hear. And since Haruko is Haruko, she might even throw herself down and weep for them, just to make herself amply disagreeable. The others will have to tell me too how they stayed awake the whole night worrying. But I won’t say a word. I’ll just look quietly from face to face, and I’ll march into my study. Hiroyuki will follow me. He’ll put on a sober expression, and tell me that they’d rather not have any more of my perverseness in the future. “How old do you think you are?” he’ll say. “Think of your age. We can’t have you doing this sort of thing. It doesn’t look good.” And he’ll tell me how peevish and irritable I’m becoming. Let him talk. I won’t say a word. I won’t say a word, and I’ll look at the photograph on the wall of Professor Schalbe, at those quiet eyes, filled with gentleness and charity. When I have calmed myself, I’ll open my notebook and go to work on Part Nine of Arteriensystem der Japaner. My pen will run on.
“Im Jahre 1896 bin ich in der Anatomie und Anthropologie mit einer Anschauung hervorgetreten, indem ich behauptete . . .” (“In the year 1896 I came forth with new views in anatomy and anthropology. I held that . . .”) They won’t have any idea what I’ve written. None of them will understand that in this preface shines the immortal glory of Miike Shuntarō, scholar. Hiroyuki couldn’t understand a word of it if he tried. I don’t know how many years of German he had in school, but there are few who are as good at forgetting as Hiroyuki is. Sadamitsu is translating Goethe, and I suppose he might be able to read it. But then maybe he can’t read anything except Goethe—he’s been that way since he was very young. You can’t be sure even about his Goethe. I know nothing of Goethe the writer, but I suppose Sadamitsu has succeeded in making his Goethe hard to live with. Goethe the poet can’t have wanted as much as Sadamitsu does to have everything his way, refusing even to see his father and his brother and sister. All Sadamitsu knows about is Goethe, and he doesn’t care whether his own father is alive or dead. He can have no idea, not the slightest, of the meaning, the scholarly value, of this study of the Japanese circulatory system, this modest but important work in non-osseous anthropology. When it comes to Hiroyuki—the others too, Haruko, Kyōko, Kyōko’s husband Takatsu—I suppose the view is that a hundred-yen bill is more important than a line of my writing. They’re proud enough for all that of the vulgar prestige that goes with my name, member of the Japan Academy, recipient of the X Prize, Dean of the Q University Medical School. They haul my name out in public so often that I’m almost ashamed for them. That is very well. Let them, if they like. But if it is such an honor to be my children, they might make an effort to understand me, they might be a little more considerate.
Possibly Yokoya and Sugiyama at the university have been told that I’m missing. They’ll wonder if I’ve gone away to die. Will they think I’ve decided to kill myself out of disgust with the times, or will they think I don’t want to live any longer because my research is not going as well as it might? If Keisuke were living, he at least might understand. Looking at me with those clean, gentle eyes, he would come nearer than anyone to understanding. He was my eldest son. He grew up when I was living in a tenement, and he was sensitive to things as the others have never been. Even to his father it was plain that he was unusually subtle and discerning.
If pressed, though, I would have to admit that I did not like Keisuke as well as the others. He never was near me, he never climbed on my knee, maybe because I was studying in Germany during the years when he began to take notice of the world. I can’t help thinking, though, that if Keisuke were alive he would understand. He would eye me coolly, but he would arrange somehow to make me feel a little less unhappy.
But I won’t kill myself. The Arterial System of the Japanese has yet to be finished. The work that I shall not finish if I live to be a hundred, the arduous and thankless work that no one can continue when I die, is waiting for me. My life is irreplaceable, and only I in all the world know its value. Very probably—I may be the only person in the world. In 1909 at the Anthropological Congress in Berlin, Professor Cracci said he placed a higher value on Miike the scholar than even Miike did, and he hoped that Miike would be kind to himself. The calmest and cleanest words of praise I have ever heard, and they were for me. But Professor Cracci is dead. So are Sakura and Iguchi. Sakura and Iguchi saw the value of my work, it seemed, but they were remarkable men themselves. It’s been a very long time now since the academic world last heard of them, splendid though their work was. Probably I’m th
e only person left who can see it for what it was.
Why did I suddenly want to come to Katada? The impulse seems strange indeed. I wanted more than I can say to be in the northwest room of the Reihōkan looking at the lake. I wanted so much to look up from the lake to Hira that I could not control myself. It was the matter of the money that set me off, of course, but my real reason had nothing to do with such trivia.
Yesterday I asked Hiroyuki for the twelve thousand yen they had from selling part of the stock of paper I had stored in the basement at the university. Hiroyuki gave me a sour, twisted look. He sees to most of my expenses, and, life not being easy these days, it no doubt seemed natural that the money from my paper should go to him. But I couldn’t agree. The paper was for publishing Volume Three of what is literally my life’s work, Arteriensystem der Japaner. It is paper that I would not trade for anything in the world, paper that I bought during the war with money I somehow managed to scrape together, and stored at the university when it seemed that we would be bombed. It is not like paper that would go into publishing worthless novels or dictionaries. The result of fifty years’ labor by Miike Shuntarō, founder of non-osseous anthropology, printed, and, if the times were but normal, distributed to every university and every library in the world. It is not just ordinary paper. It is paper on which my life, turned to several million words of German, should be printed. I wanted to put the money away in my desk, so that I could go on with my work feeling at least the slight repose it would bring. Though I have been poor all my life, I have never let myself feel poor. I have had to borrow, but I have bought what I wanted, and eaten what I wanted, and I have drunk each day as though saké were meant to swim in. Is it really possible to be poor and at the same time a scholar? People who have never been scholars cannot judge.