“They remind me of Mōri Sensei.”
“Who’s Mōri Sensei?”
“He was a teacher of mine in middle school. Haven’t I ever told you about him?”
In place of a negative answer, I silently pulled down the brim of my hat. What here follows is the story of Mōri Sensei then told me by that friend.
It was about ten years ago, when I was yet in the third year class of a certain prefectural middle school. During the winter vacation, Adachi Sensei, a young teacher who taught our class English, died of acute pneumonia brought on by influenza. It all happened so suddenly that there was no time to choose a suitable successor to take his place, so it must have been as a last expedient. At any rate, for the time being, our middle school gave the work Adachi Sensei had been doing to an old man called Mōri Sensei, who was at that time teaching English in a certain private middle school.
It was on the afternoon of the day he took up his work that I saw him for the first time. We students of the third year class were overcome with curiosity at the prospect of meeting the new teacher and, from the time his steps resounded in the hall, awaited the beginning of the lesson in unwonted silence. But when they stopped outside the cold and sunless classroom and the door finally opened—ah, even in these surroundings, the scene at that moment stands clearly before my eyes. Mōri Sensei, who opened the door and entered, first of all reminded me by his shortness of the spider men often seen in sideshows at festivals. But what took the gloom out of the feeling he inspired was his smooth and shining bald head, which might almost be called beautiful, and on the back of which there barely clung some slight wisps of grizzled hair, but which for the most part looked just like such ostrich eggs as are pictured in text books on natural history. And finally, that which gave him a mien distinct from that of ordinary men was his strange morning coat, which was literally so green and rusty as almost to make one doubt that it had ever been black. And I have even a surprising recollection of an extremely gay purple necktie showily tied just like a moth with outspread wings in his slightly soiled turndown collar. Wherefore it was of course not surprising that, the minute he entered, sounds of suppressed laughter suddenly arose here and there all over the room.
However, with a reader and the roll book clasped in his arms and with an air of perfect composure, as if not having the least regard for us students, he stepped up on to the low platform, returned our bow and, with an amiable smile on his very good-natured, sallow round face, began in a shrill voice,
“Gentlemen.”
We had never once during the past three years been addressed as gentlemen by the teachers of that school. So Mōri Sensei’s “Gentlemen” naturally made us all involuntarily open eyes of wonder. And at the same time, expecting that, now that he had already begun with “Gentlemen,” there would instantly follow a great speech on teaching methods or something, we waited with bated breath.
However, Mōri Sensei, having said “Gentlemen,” looked round the room and spoke not another word for some time. In spite of the calm smile on his flaccid face, the corners of his mouth twitched nervously. At the same time an uneasy light continually came and went in his eyes, which were clear and somehow like the eyes of a domestic animal. Although he did not express it in words, it seemed that he had something that he wished to beg of us, but unfortunately could not himself tell clearly what it was.
“Gentlemen,” he finally repeated in the same tone. And then this time, afterwards, as if he would catch the echo of the voice in which he said it, he added greatly flustered,
“I am hereafter to teach you the Choice Reader.”
Feeling our curiosity grow more and more intense, we became absolutely still and fastened our eyes on his face. But as he said this, he looked round the room again with that pleading expression in his eyes, and without another word, sat down suddenly in the chair, as if a spring had given way in him. And he began to look at the roll, which he opened beside the Choice Reader, already lying open. I probably need not tell you how this abrupt way of ending his greetings disappointed us, or rather how it went further and impressed us with a sense of its ridiculousness.
But fortunately, before we had begun to laugh, he lifted those eyes like a domestic animal’s from the roll and called the name of one of us, adding to it the title, “San.” Of course this was the signal to stand up and translate from the reader. So the student stood up and translated a paragraph of Robinson Crusoe or something, in the smart tone peculiar to Tokyo Middle School boys. And as he read, Mōri Sensei, putting his hand now and then to his purple necktie, went along carefully correcting his every wrong translation, of course, and even his slightest mispronunciation. There was something
