“Yes, sir.”
“Who is she?”
“She is the young Mistress.”
“Is there any elder Mistress besides her?”
“She died last year.”
“And the master?”
“He lives here, and the lady is his daughter.”
“That young lady?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are there any other guests?”
“No, sir.”
“Only myself, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does the young Mistress do every day?”
“Sewing. …”
“And?”
“She plays samisen.”36
How unexpected! However quite interesting and so:
“What else?” I asked.
“She goes to the temple,” answers the girl.
Unexpected again. The samisen playing and the temple going are decidedly a curious conglomeration.
“Does she go there to worship?”
“She goes there to see the Osho-sama.”37
“Does the Osho-san take lessons in samisen?”
“No, sir.”
“What does she go there for?”
“She goes there to see Daitetsu-sama.”
It dawned on me that Daitetsu must be the priest who wrote the framed calligraphy on the wall. Judging from its wording Daitetsu must be a Zen priest, and Haku-un’s book in the closet must belong to him.
“Is this a living room for anyone of the family?”
“Yes, sir; the Mistress lives here.”
“Is that so? Well, then, she had been here till I came in, last night?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry, I have robbed her of her room. And what does she go to see Daitetsu-san for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything else?”
“Many other things.”
“What many other things?”
“I don’t know.”
This put an end to my catechism, and also to my tiffin. The girl took away the little table. As she pulled open the wallpapered screen, I saw through the opening the young woman of butterfly coiffeur, resting her chin in her hands that were supported by arms which had their elbows on the railing of the upstairs verandah, overlooking a inner court shrubbery. The “butterfly” was gazing downward with the pose of a modernised goddess of mercy. In contrast to how she struck me this morning, she was serenely calm. Looking downward as she was, I could not tell how her eyes were moving. I could only wonder if any change had come into her expression. An ancient says that nothing speaks better for a person than his pupils. He is right. How can a man conceal? There is, indeed, no organ in human body so alive as the eye. Two real butterflies flew upward twirling around each other from under the railing, on which the human butterfly was leaning quietly. It was just at this juncture that the girl opened the fusuma38 of my room, and the noise made the woman yonder lift her eyes from the butterflies, and direct them toward me. Her eyes shot through the space like a shaft of rays, and hit me between my own. My heart throbbed; but the same moment the girl closed the screen. The momentary spell broke and I returned to the noon tide of balmy Spring.
I again stretched myself full length on the matted floor, and soon I was reciting:
“Sadder than the moon’s lost light,
Lost is the kindling of dawn,
To travellers journeying on,
The shutting of thy fair face from my sight.”
Supposing I was in love with the “butterfly” and felt deeply the flash of joy or the pang of a sudden parting like the one I just had, at the very moment when I was dying to meet her, I should have unquestionably poetised in a strain something like the above. Furthermore, I may have added,
“Might I look on thee in death,
With bliss I would yield my breath.”
these two lines. Fortunately, I had long since left behind me the common glamour of love and amour, and could not feel pangs of this kind, even if I would. Nevertheless, the poetical significance of the event that had just happened was well brought out in the six lines. Not that there was any such heart’s anguish between the “butterfly” and myself. I felt it highly entertaining to think of our present relations in the light of these verses. Nor was it unpleasant to interpret the meaning of these lines as reflecting our present condition. There was, indeed, an invisibly thin line of cause and effect, binding us together, making real, at least, part of the conditions sung in these lines. The thread of cause and effect occasions no worry when as thin as this. Besides, it is no ordinary thread, but is like the rainbow spanning the sky; like the haze screening horizon; and like the spiderweb sparkling with dew. It may break at any moment if wanted to be broken; but it is exquisitely beautiful while it remains and is seen. But what if the thread should, all of a sudden, grow thick and stout as a halyard? No fear: I am an artist and she is not of a common kind.
Suddenly the fusuma opened again, and I rolled my body round to look that way. There was standing in the opening, the “butterfly,” the other end of cause and effect, holding up in her hand a celadon porcelain bowl on a tray.
“Lying down again? It must have been annoying to you to be disturbed so often, last night, ho, ho, ho,” she laughed. She betrayed not the least sign of having been impressed with fear or of fearing, still less with a bashful feeling. The only thing was, she got the start of me.
“Thank you, this morning,” I said my thanks again. This was the third time I made acknowledgment for the deshabille, and each time it consisted of the two words “Thank you.”
I made a move to sit up; but she was quicker; she had sat down on the matting close to where I was lying:
“Oh, please don’t stir. You can talk as you are, Sensei.”39
I thought her quite convincing and only changed my pose so far as to lie on my belly, with my chin on the ends of two arms, planted in on the tatami-mat.
“I have come to make tea for you, Sensei, thinking you must be tired of doing nothing.”
“Thank you.” I said it again. I saw,
