三 4

I thought there was no way a baron could be an uncle on his side of the family." "Believing what some nobody whose background we don't even know says is bad too." "Bad, you say? That's going a bit too far in making a fool of people," she says, looking quite put out. Strangely enough, not a single word is said about Sneaze. Whether the review had concluded before I sneaked in, or whether he had already been rejected and was no longer on her mind, I have my worries, but there is nothing to be done. As I stand there a while, a bell rings from the room across the hallway. Ah, something is happening over there too. Lest I fall behind, I turn my steps in that direction.

When I arrive, a woman is alone, speaking in a loud voice. Judging by how much the voice resembles Nose's, this must be the very creature who drove Sneaze to attempt drowning. Alas, I cannot behold her jewel-like form through the sliding screen. Thus I cannot vouch whether a great nose is enshrined in the middle of her face. But considering the rough breathing heard in her speech, I would not say it impossible that she bears a lion's nose that draws all eyes. The woman chatters ceaselessly, yet no voice of a respondent is heard—surely this is the telephone of which I have heard tell. "Are you at Yamato? Now listen, I'm coming tomorrow, so set aside three quail for me, all right?—Do you understand?—What, you don't understand? Oh, bother. I said set aside three quail.—What?—You can't? There's no reason you can't, just get them.—Hehehehe, what a joke—What's a joke?—You're making fun of me in a horrible way. Now who are you anyway? Is it Chokichi? Chokichi wouldn't understand a thing. Tell the mistress to come to the phone.—What? You say you can handle anything?—You're impertinent. Do you know who I am? I'm Kaneda.—Hehehehe, yes, well acquainted, she says. What an absolute fool this person is.—I said I'm Kaneda.—What?—Thank you ever so much for your constant patronage?—What's there to be grateful for? I don't want to hear thanks—Oh, laughing again. You're quite the imbecile.—As you say?—If you make a fool of people like this I'll hang up. All right with you? Won't you be in trouble?—If you stay silent I can't tell, say something," she says. The phone seems to have been hung up on Chokichi's end, for there is no reply. The young lady flies into a rage and furiously rings the bell. The spaniel at her feet starts barking in alarm. Thinking this no place to linger, I leap down and duck beneath the veranda.

Just then footsteps approach along the hallway, and a sliding door opens. Listening with all my might to see who has come, a voice like that of a maid says, "Miss, the master and mistress are calling for you." "I don't know," the young lady snaps. "They said they have some business and told me to fetch you." "How annoying, I said I don't know," the young lady snaps a second time. "...It seems to be regarding Mr. Mizushima Sneaze," the maid says, trying to smooth things over. "Sneaze or Moonsneaze, I don't know them—I hate him, with a face like a loofah gone astray," the third snap is bestowed upon poor Sneaze in his absence. "Oh, when did you put your hair up?" The maid breathes a sigh of relief and answers as briefly as possible, "Today." "How presumptuous, for a mere maid," the fourth snap comes from another direction. "And you've put on a new half-collar." "Yes, you gave it to me the other day, and thinking it too fine to use I stored it in my trunk, but as the old one was so soiled I put this on." "When did I ever give you such a thing?" "This New Year, at Shiromoto, when you bought it—the one with the sumo rankings dyed in on a warbler-brown ground. You said it was too plain for you and gave it to me." "Oh, how dreadful. It suits you so well. How hateful." "I'm honored." "I'm not praising you. I said hateful." "Yes." "If it suits you that well, why did you take it without a word?" "Yes." "If it suits even you, surely it would suit me too, wouldn't it?" "It would surely suit you beautifully." "If you knew it would suit, why say nothing? And sit there so composed—how wicked," the snaps are dealt without cease. As I listen reverently to see how the situation will develop, from the other room Kaneda calls loudly, "Tomiko, Tomiko!" The young lady reluctantly answers "Yes" and leaves the telephone room. A spaniel slightly larger than myself follows, with a face as if eyes and mouth were gathered at its center. I, with my usual stealthy tread, slip out through the kitchen to the street again and hurry home to my master. The expedition has been a more than sufficient success.

Upon returning, having moved suddenly from a fine house to a filthy place, I feel as if I had stepped from a sunny hilltop into a dim cave. During my exploration I was so taken with other matters that I gave no heed to the room's decor, the sliding doors and screens, but now, feeling the lowliness of my dwelling, I grow nostalgic for that so-called mediocrity. I begin to think the man of business greater even than the teacher. Thinking this a bit odd of me, I consulted my customary tail, and from its tip came the oracle: precisely so, precisely so. Entering the room, I was surprised to find Meitei still not gone; cigarette stubs stood in the hibachi like a hornet's nest, and he sat cross-legged holding forth on something. Somehow Sneaze had arrived too. My master, using his arm as a pillow, gazed absently at a leak-stain on the ceiling. As always, it was a gathering of peaceful retired citizens.

"Sneaze, the name of the woman who spoke of you even in delirium seemed secret then, but surely you may tell it now," Meitei teases. "Even if I told, it concerns only me, but it would embarrass the other party—" "Still no good?" "Besides, I promised Dr. So-and-so's wife—" "Not to tell others?" "Yes," Sneaze twists the cord of his haori as usual. The cord is a purple unfit for sale. "That cord's color is a bit Tempō-style," the master says, lying down. The master is indifferent to the Kaneda affair. "Indeed, hardly of the Russo-Japanese War era. It's a cord that would only sit right on a slashed haori with a hollyhock crest on a war hat. When Oda Nobunaga tied his hair in a tea-whisk for his wedding, the cord he used was surely something like this," Meitei's speech runs long as ever. "Actually, my grandfather used this in the Chōshū expedition," Sneaze says seriously. "Why not donate it to a museum? For the presenter of 'The Mechanics of Hanging,' Bachelor of Science Mizushima Sneaze, to dress like an unsold hatamoto is a matter of dignity." "I might take your advice, but someone told me this cord suits me wonderfully—" "Who, to say such tasteless things?" the master cries out, rolling over. "One you know, perhaps not—" "No need to know, but who?" "A certain lady." "Hahahaha, quite the tea man. Shall I guess—it's the woman who called your name from the Sumida's bottom, isn't it? Why not put on that haori and play the Buddha once more?" Meitei cuts in. "Hehehe, she no longer calls from the water. In a pure world due north from here..." "Doesn't seem so pure—that venomous nose." "Eh?" Sneaze looks puzzled. "The nose from the next block came calling just now, here, and we two were quite startled, weren't we, Kusamori?" "Mm," the master drinks tea lying down. "Whose nose?" "Your eternal beloved's mother." "Eh?" "A woman named Kaneda's wife came to ask about you," the master explains solemnly. Watching to see if Sneaze would be shocked, pleased, or ashamed, he shows no particular reaction. In his usual calm tone: "She came to ask me to take that girl, no doubt," and twists the purple cord again. "Far from it. That mother is the owner of a great nose—" Meitei begins, but the master interrupts: "Say, I've been thinking of a comic poem about that nose since earlier." From the next room the wife titters. "You're awfully carefree. Done?" "A bit. First line: 'Upon this face, a nose enshrined.'" "Then?" "Next: 'To this nose, sake is offered.'" "Next line?" "Only that so far." "How amusing," Sneaze smiles faintly. "How about 'Two holes faint within' for the next?" Meitei supplies at once. Then Sneaze: "'Deep within, no hair is seen'—" as they toss out nonsense, near the hedge a street voice cries, "Imado ware badger, Imado ware badger," four or five voices in uproar. Master and Meitei start and peer through the hedge gap to the front; a "Wahahaha" of laughter scatters with retreating footsteps. "What's 'Imado ware badger'?" Meitei asks the master strangely. "No idea," the master answers. "Quite dashing," Sneaze remarks. Meitei suddenly stands, as if struck by something: "Having studied this nose from an aesthetic standpoint for years, I wish to unveil a fraction for your hearing." The master, taken aback, silently stares. "I would be honored," Sneaze says softly. "I have researched, but the origin of the nose is unclear. First doubt: if it is a practical tool, two holes suffice. No need for it to jut from the center into the crosswind. Yet it has come to protrude as seen." He pinches his own nose. "Yours doesn't protrude that much," the master says bluntly. "At any rate it does not retract. Lest you confuse it with two holes side by side, I caution beforehand.—In my humble view, the nose's development is the accumulation of our blowing it, a minute act, producing this marked phenomenon." "A candid view," the master inserts. "As known, blowing the nose requires pinching; stimulating this part by evolution's principle develops it disproportionately. Skin hardens, flesh hardens, finally congealing to bone." "That's a bit—flesh can't leap to bone so freely," Sneaze, as bachelor, protests. Meitei continues unperturbed: "Your doubt is fair, but proof over argument—here is bone, so nothing for it. Bone forms, yet mucus comes; one must blow. This wears the sides into a fine high ridge—a fearful action. As drips wear stone, as Pindola's head emits light, as the strange-scented parable, thus the bridge forms hard." "Yours is still blobby." "The speaker's own part I refrain from defending. That mother's nose I introduce as the most developed, most grand treasure." Sneaze inadvertently chuckles. "Yet at extremity it is awesome but fearsome, hard to approach. That bridge is splendid but too precipitous. Among ancients, Socrates, Goldsmith, Thackeray—structurally fine, but there lies charm. Not noble for height, nor for strangeness—perhaps. As the saying goes, dumplings over nose; aesthetically, a nose like Meitei's is apt." Master and Sneaze laugh "Fufufu." Meitei laughs merrily. "Now what I have said—" " 'Said' is like a storyteller, vulgar, desist," Sneaze takes revenge for earlier. "Then I shall wash my face and begin anew.—I wish to speak on nose-face balance. Alone, that mother's nose shames nowhere—at a Kurama exhibition surely first prize—but alas, it formed without counsel of eyes, mouth. Caesar's nose was great; cut it and set on our cat's face? On a cat's brow, a hero's bridge would be like a Nara Buddha on a chessboard, losing proportion and beauty. Her nose is Caesar's, a heroic rise, but what of the surrounding face? Not inferior as our cat, but factually with epileptic frown and narrow lifted eyes. Gentlemen, can we not sigh: this face, this nose?" As Meitei pauses, from the back: "Still on the nose? What stubbornness!" "The cartman," the master tells Meitei. Meitei resumes: "Discovering behind me a new异性 listener is my deep honor. Her gentle voice adds charm to dry lecture—I shall simplify for the ladies, but now enter mechanics; may the women bear with me." Sneaze smiles at "mechanics." "I prove this nose and face discord, breaking Zeising's golden ratio, deducible by strict formula. Let H be nose height. α the angle from plane intersection. W nose weight. Understand?" "No," the master says. "Sneaze?" "Hard for me too." "Trouble. I thought you, bachelor, would. This formula is the speech's core; omitting it voids all—but so be it. I skip to conclusion." "There is one?" the master asks. "Naturally, a speech without conclusion is Western meal without dessert.—Hear: considering Virchow, Weismann, innate form inherits; accompanying mental states, though acquired not inherited, to a degree inevitable. Thus a child of such disproportionate nose may bear anomaly. Sneaze, young, may not see anomaly in the daughter's nose, but such inheritance lurks long; with climate shift it may swell like the mother's. Therefore this marriage, by my scholarly proof, better abandoned now for safety; our host and the sleeping cat surely agree." The master sits up: "Of course. Who'd take such a daughter? Sneaze, don't." I meow twice in assent. Sneaze undisturbed: "If you wish, I'll abandon, but if she falls ill grieving—" "Hahaha, a pretty crime," the master warms: "Nonsense. Her kind is no good. First visit, she tried to put me down. Arrogant." He fumes alone. Again by the hedge three or four: "Wahahaha." One: "Proud blockhead." Another: "Wants a bigger house." Another: "Poor thing, a braggart only in shadow." The master steps to veranda: "Noisy, why come to my wall?" "Wahahaha, Savage Chee, Savage Chee," they jeer. The master, furiously, grabs his stick and dashes to the street. Meitei claps: "Amusing, go go." Sneaze twists his cord and smiles. I follow to the broken hedge; in the street the master stands with stick idle—not a soul about, like one pinched by a fox.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”