“You were going to say something about O-Jo-san, and then you went about scrubbing my head and I felt as it was coming off.”
“That was so. My head is so empty and I skip about so. I was going to say that the priest fell head over ears in love with her.”
“The priest? What priest?”
“The priestling of Kaikanji, of course.”
“You haven’t said a word about a priest, full-fledged or half fledged.”
“Haven’t I? I am so hasty, Danna. The priest, that priestling, was good in looks, of a cast that girls like. This bozu41 became, I tell you, smitten by her of Shiota and at last wrote her a love letter. … Wait a bit, did he go at it himself? No, it was, he wrote. … Let me see. … I am getting mixed up. … No, I am all right, I’ve got it … so was in fright and consternation.”
“Who was in fright and consternation?”
“The woman, of course.”
“By receiving the letter?”
“That would be a saving grace if she were. But she is not of the kind to get scared.”
“Who was it really, then, that was in fright and consternation?”
“Why, he that spoke to her of his love.”
“I thought he did not go at it personally.”
“Oh, chuck it. It is all wrong. By receiving the letter, can’t you see?”
“Why then it must be the woman, who was in fright and consternation.”
“No, the man.”
“If man, then it must be the priest?”
“Yes, the priest, of course.”
“But what scared him so?”
“What scared him? Why, he, the priest, was in the temple assisting the abbot in the afternoon service. Then all of a sudden, the woman rushed into the temple. … Lord, she must be off a great deal.”
“Did she do anything?”
“ ‘If I am so dear to you, come let us make love before our all mighty Buddha,’ she said and hugged him by the neck!”
“Ho?”
“Consternation was no word, for poor Taian, the priest. He got all the shame he wanted by writing to a lunatic, and, disappearing that night, he died.”
“Died?”
“At least I think he must have killed himself. He could not have outlived the shame.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Maybe he is still living somewhere. Death would not have come out so well, the other party being a mad woman.”
“Very interesting, indeed.”
“Interesting is no word for it. Why the affair set the whole village a-roaring with laughter. But the woman, being off her mind, was all indifference as she still is. All will be well for a man so sober like you, Danna; but the party being what she is, you don’t know what mess you will get into, if you try to flirt with her.”
“I have got to be careful, eh? Ha, ha, ha!”
The Spring breeze came lazily wafting from the genially warm beach, and set the entrance curtain of the barber’s shop flapping sleepily, and a swallow cast its flitting shadow in the mirror before me, as it dived under the curtain with its body half turned. Under the eve of a house on the other side of the road, a sexagenarian sat squatting on a slightly raised seat, and was busy shelling bivalves in silence. Every time a small knife went in between shells, a small flabby lump fell into a basket, and the empty shells were thrown away, two feet across the gossamer, there adding to the height of a sparkling heap. Now and again the heap collapsed, sending the oyster, clam, and other shells down into a small brook, to be buried forever in its sandy bed. In no time the heap grew again under a willow tree; but the old man was too busy to think of a life beyond molluscs; he only went on throwing meatless shells upon gossamer. His basket seemed to be bottomless and his Spring day endless.
The sandy stream ran under a twelve yard bridge, carrying the warm water of Spring toward the sea shore. Down where Spring’s water joined the tide of the sea, numberless fishing nets were drying in the sun, hanging from erect poles of longer or shorter lengths and were giving, one might suspect, a fish-smelling warmth to the soft breeze wafting towards the village through their meshes. And one saw between them the placid face of the sea, undulating slowly like molten lead.
No harmony was possible between this scenery and my barber. If he were a man of strong personality, strong enough to impress me as powerfully as the scenery around, I should have been struck with a sense of great incongruity. Fortunately, however, my man was not so striking a character. However Tokyo-born, however high-spiritedly he might talk, he was no match for the all genial and all embracing influence of nature. My barber has been essaying to break up this all subjugating power of nature with all his caustic effervescences; but instead he has been swallowed up and was floating in the light wave of Spring, not leaving a trace of the loud-talking Tokyo-born barber. Inconsistency is a phenomenon to be found between persons or things of equal standing, but possessed of hopeless incompatibility in strength, spirit or physique. When distance is very great between the two, inconsistency wears out, and will, instead, assume activity only as part of a superior power. Thus it happens that cleverness becomes a willing servant of greatness; the unintelligent of the clever; and horses and cattle of the unintelligent. My barber is making a comic exhibition of himself, with the beautiful scenery of Spring for his background. He who tries to spoil the calm Springy feeling is only adding to the profundity of that feeling. This man of very cheap vaporing cannot but prove after all a colour in full harmony with the Spring
