“That does sound interesting. Then I wish you would tell me something of what you are reading. I should like to know how interesting it really is.”
“To tell you would not do. Don’t you see, the charm of a picture would all be gone, if you simply made a narration of it.”
“Ho, ho, ho, read it to me, then, please.”
“In English?”
“No, in Japanese.”
“It would be a job to read English in Japanese.”
“It would be lovely, being so unhuman.”
A fun for the while, I thought, and began to read the book in Japanese, with stops and pauses. If there was an unhuman way of reading, mine was certainly it, and the woman was listening also unhumanly.
“ ‘An aura of tenderness rose from the woman—from her voice, from her eyes, from her skin. The woman went to the stern helped by the man. Did she go there to have a look at Venice, now enshrouded in the evening dusk? And the man, did he help her to feel lightning flashes in his blood on his side?’—Mind, it is all unhuman, and don’t look for accuracy. I may make skips, too.”
“I won’t mind a bit, Sensei; you may add in something of your own if you like.”
“ ‘The woman was leaning against the gunwale by the side of the man, with a distance between them narrower than her ribbons, which the wind was playing with. The Doge of Venice was now vanishing in light red like the second sunset. …’ ”
“What is the Doge, Sensei?”
“It doesn’t matter what that means. However, it is the name of the man who long ago ruled over Venice. I don’t know how many Doges succeeded one another. Anyhow their palace has outlived them and may still be seen in Venice.”
“Who are that man and woman?”
“God only knows, and that is why it is so interesting. You need not bother yourself about what their relations have been. I find them together just like you and I here. There is something interesting, don’t you see, just for the occasion?”
“As you please. They seem to be in a boat.”
“On land or in water, it is just as it is written. You will make a detective of yourself, if you press for ‘why.’ ”
“Ho, ho, ho, I will not ask you then.”
“Ordinary novels are all inventions of detectives and denuded of unhumanity they are all so insipid.”
“Good, then, tell me more of unhumanity. What follows next, please?”
“ ‘Venice is sinking, sinking to a faint single streak of line. The line dwindles into dots. Here and there pillars stand in an opal sky, last of all the highest towering belfry sinks. It has sunk, says the friend. The woman, who has come away from Venice is free like the wind of the sky in her heart. But the thought that she must come back to Venice, which has disappeared, fills her heart with the anguish of bondage. The man and woman direct their eyes toward the darkening bay. The stars are increasing. The sea is softly undulating without any foam. The man took the woman’s hand in his, feeling like one holding a bowstring that has not yet stopped vibrating.’ ”
“That does not seem to sound very unhuman.”
“But you can hear it as unhuman. If you don’t like it, I shall skip a little.”
“Oh, no, I am all right.”
“If you are all right, why, I am a great deal more all right. Now, let me see—it is getting so bungling—it is so awkward to trans—I mean, to read.”
“You may cut it out, if it be so bothering.”
“No, I shall go it rough—‘This one night, says the woman. One night? asks the man. Say, many, many nights; it is heartless to limit it to a single night.’ ”
“Who says that, the man or the woman?”
“The man, O-Nami-san, I think the woman does not want to go back to Venice, and the man is saying this to console her—‘In the memory of the man, who lay down on the midnight deck with his head on a coil of halyard, that instant—an instant like a hot drop of blood—that instant in which he tightly held the woman’s hand in his, tossed like a great wave. Looking up into the black night, he resolved, come what may, to save the woman from the brink of forced marriage. With his mind made up, he closed his eyes. …’ ”
“The woman?”
“ ‘Lost on the road, the woman seemed not to know whither she was wandering. Like a man sailing in the sky a captive, unfathomable mystery. …’—the rest is so awkward to read, you see, it does not complete the sentence—‘only the unfathomable mystery’—isn’t there any verb?”
“Never mind a verb. Sensei, you don’t want any verb; that is quite enough.”
“Eh?”
All of a sudden a rumbling sound came, and all the trees on the mountain spoke. We looked at each other, not knowing why, and saw a solitary spray of camellia in a small vessel on my desk swinging.
“An earthquake!” Nami-san brought herself right up against my desk, with a break in her pose, as she said this, and our bodies were oscillating, almost touching each other. A pheasant—a bird credited with superhuman sensitiveness for seismic phenomena—flew out of the bamboo bush, making a sharp noise with the flapping of its wings.
“A pheasant,” I said looking out of the window.
“Where?” said the woman with another break in her posture, bringing herself closer to me. She was so near me that our heads were almost in contact with each other. I felt on my moustaches breaths coming out of her gentle nostrils.
“Remember, all unhumanity!” said the woman unequivocally as she quickly corrected her pose.
“Of course,” I responded promptly.
A pool of water in the hollow of a rock in the garden was agitating in alarm; but that body of water moving from the very bottom as a whole, there was no break in the surface but irregular curves. If there be such an expression as moving “full roundly,” it fitted exactly, I thought, the condition of this pool of water.
