"That wonderful, large tablet over there was written by Ono Kurobei."
"Is that so?" admired N, "And who is Ono Kurobei…"
"You've probably heard of him. He is one of the Loyal Retainers."
I think she said loyal retainer.
She said, "He died on this ground at the age of forty-seven and was a man of deep faith and often made huge donations to this temple."
At this moment, M rose and went over to stand before the old woman and held out an object wrapped in white paper from his inner pocket, and bowed without speaking a word. He turned to N and whispered, "We must say good-bye."
"Oh, yes, we must be going," said N with a generous heart and complimented the old woman, "Your talk was excellent," and finally stood to leave.
Later when I asked N if he recalled one thing told to him by the woman, he said no. We were amazed.
I said, "You fired off questions with so much passion."
"Oh, I wasn't paying the least bit of attention. I was terribly drunk. I thought you two wanted to learn more. I forced myself to keep speaking," he said, laying bare his empty sacrifice.
We arrived at the Minmaya inn after sunset and were escorted to a small, clean room on the second floor in the front. All the inns in Sotogahama were high class, unlike the town. We could see the sea from our room. Light showers began, and the white seas calmed.
"This isn't bad. We have the sea bream and can leisurely eat while gazing at the rain on the sea," I said while retrieving the wrapped fish from my backpack.
I handed the package to the housemaid and said, "This is sea bream. Please salt and grill it then bring it back."
The maid looked slow-witted and only said, "Yes." She seemed distracted when she took the package and left the room.
"Do you think she understood?" asked N who seemed to have the same concern. He called to stop her and to give further instructions but not clearly.
"Salt and grill this as is. There are three of us, but there's no need to cut it in three. Most importantly, three equal pieces are not needed. Do you understand?"
Of course, the maid replied with a casual, "Yes."
Finally, the meal arrived. The unsmiling, obtuse maid said, "The fish is salted and grilled, but we don't have sake today."
"Well, we'll have to drink the sake we brought with us."
"It seems so," said N and drew a water bottle closer, "Excuse me, please bring two sake bottles and three cups."
We were joking about three not being enough when the sea bream arrived. N's caution about no need to cut the fish into three pieces led to a foolish result. The head, the tail, and the bones were gone. Only the salted and grilled flesh of the fish cut into five pieces was placed on an inelegant, faded plate. I'm never particular about food. I didn't buy the two-feet-long sea bream because I wanted to eat it. Dear reader, you probably understand. I wanted the fish with the tail intact to be grilled and placed on a large plate as a vision for me to gaze at. The predicament was not whether to eat the fish or not. I wanted to enjoy the fine feeling of drinking sake while gazing at the fish. N's explanation to keep the fish intact was peculiar, but the callousness of the inn worker who decided to slice up the sea bream into five pieces was aggravating and despicable. I was provoked.
"No one asked for this."
I glared at the five pieces of grilled fish (no longer sea bream, just grilled fish) dumped on the plate, and I wanted to cry. Even if the fish had been prepared as sashimi, I still would have been disappointed. What happened to the head and the bones? Did they throw away the splendid, huge head? An inn in a land with an abundance of fish creates an unimaginative dish and knows nothing of cooking techniques.
"Don't get mad. It's good," said N with his well-rounded personality and selected a piece of grilled fish with chopsticks, "All right. You can eat all of it by yourself. Eat. I'm not eating. Can you gobble this up? As usual, I made a mistake. There was no need for three equal pieces. That idiot maid was confused by my extraneous comments in the pretentious words used in a budget meeting of the Kanita Town Council. I was wrong and am sorry."
N gave an easy laugh and said, "But isn't this amusing? I said not to cut into three pieces, so they cut it into five. The people here are smart. Elegant. Let's toast. A toast."
I was keen for a meaningless toast. Was it resentment over the sea bream? I got dead drunk, reached a vague agitation, and dropped off to sleep. Even now as I remember, I'm still upset over that sea bream. Usually, I'm insensitive.
I woke the next morning to rain. I went downstairs to ask about the boats, but the inn attendant said they were canceled for the day. We had no choice but to walk along the coast to Tappi and decided to leave when the rain cleared. We crawled back into our futons and chatted.
"Once upon a time, there were two sisters," I began a fairy tale, "The sisters were given the same number of pinecones by their mother and ordered to make rice and miso soup. The stingy and cautious younger sister carefully placed each pinecone in an oven and burned them up. She was unable to simmer a satisfactory miso soup or rice. The older sister had a gentle, carefree nature and dumped all her pinecones to feed the oven. With that fire, she made rice and, with the leftover charcoal, made the miso soup.
"Do you know that story? Let's have a drink. Isn't there one more bottle of the sake we were going to take
