九 1

The master has a pockmarked face. They say that before the Restoration pockmarks were quite the fashion, but seen from the vantage of today’s Anglo-Japanese Alliance, such a face gives a somewhat out-of-season impression. The decline of pockmarks is in inverse proportion to the increase of population, and the precise conclusion drawn from medical statistics is that in the near future their traces will vanish entirely—a fine argument so flawless that even a cat such as myself has not the slightest room for doubt. I know not how many pockmarked humans now live upon the earth, but within my circle of acquaintance I count not a single cat so afflicted. Among humans there is exactly one. And that one is the master. It is most pitiable.

Every time I see the master’s face I ponder: by what karma does he, with such a strange visage, breathe the air of the twentieth century without shame? In former times he might have cut some figure, but now that all pockmarks have been ordered to vacate the forearms, for them still to occupy the tip of the nose and the cheeks, stubborn and immovable, is not only nothing to boast of but rather a disgrace to the pockmarked estate. If possible he ought to have them removed by now. The pockmarks themselves must feel forlorn. Or perhaps, with their faction in decline, they are resolved not to restore the setting sun to the meridian until they die, and so occupy the whole face against the wind? If so, these pockmarks are by no means to be viewed with contempt. They are a collection of eternal holes resisting the torrent of vulgar custom, and may well be called bumps worthy of our deep respect. Their only fault is their filthiness.

When the master was a child there lived in Yamabushi-chō, Ushigome, a famous physician of Chinese medicine named Asada Sōhaku. They say that when this old man went to visit patients he always rode in a palanquin and proceeded at a slow, sedate pace. But when Sōhaku died and his adopted son succeeded him, the palanquin at once turned into a rickshaw. Thus when the adopted son died and his adopted son again followed, the kakkōtō might well transform into antipyrine. Even in Sōhaku’s day, parading through Tokyo in a palanquin was nothing handsome to behold. Those who put on such airs were only hidebound corpses, pigs loaded onto trains, and old Sōhaku.

In its lack of prosperity the master’s pockmarks are just like Sōhaku’s palanquin; from the side it is pitiful, yet the master, as stubborn as a Chinese-medicine doctor, still exposes his lone-fortress-sinking-sun pockmarks to the world and goes to school daily to teach Riddle.

Stamping the memorial of the last century upon his whole face as he stands at the podium, he must be imparting to his students, beyond his lessons, a great admonition. Rather than repeating “the monkey has hands,” he effortlessly expounds the great problem of “the influence of pockmarks upon the face,” and silently gives its answer to his students. If men like the master ceased to exist as teachers, the students would have to rush to libraries or museums to study this problem, expending effort comparable to ours in conjuring Egyptians from mummies. From this angle the master’s pockmarks bestow a curious merit in the dark.

Of course he did not seed his whole face with smallpox to bestow this merit. He actually was vaccinated. Unfortunately, what he thought was seeded in the arm somehow infected the face. Being a child then, with no such concern as now, he scratched his whole face madly crying “itchy, itchy.” It was as if a volcano burst and lava flowed over his face, ruining the visage his parents gave him. The master sometimes tells his wife that before the smallpox he was a jewel of a boy. He even boasts that at Asakusa’s Kannon he was so beautiful a foreigner turned to look back at him. Perhaps so. Only it is a pity none can vouch for it.

Filthy is filthy, be it merit or admonition, and since coming to his senses the master has greatly worried over his pockmarks, exhausting every means to rub out this disgrace. But unlike Sōhaku’s palanquin, they are not so quickly abandoned because one tires of them. They remain distinct to this day. Apparently bothered by this distinctness, the master counts pockmarked faces each time he walks abroad. How many pockmarks he met today, whether male or female, whether at a bazaar in Ogawamachi or Ueno Park—all is entered in his diary. He is confident none surpasses his knowledge of pockmarks. The other day when a friend returned from the West visited, he even asked, “Do Westerners have pockmarks?” The friend tilted his head and after much thought said, “Rarely, I suppose.” The master pressed, “Rarely, but a few?” The friend replied indifferently, “If any, beggars or street urchins. Educated people seem not to.” The master said, “Is that so? Japan is a bit different.”

Advised by the philosopher, the master thought better of his quarrel with Rakungakkan and since then has confined himself to the study, deep in thought. Perhaps he means to heed the advice and negatively cultivate a nimble spirit through quiet sitting, but being by nature timid, such gloomy folding of arms can yield no good. It would be far better to pawn an English book and learn a hornpipe from a geisha, but such a eccentric would never heed a cat’s counsel, so for five or six days I kept away.

Today is exactly the seventh day since. Zen monks sit in lotus with awesome zeal to attain great enlightenment in one week, so perhaps the master has changed; dead or alive, something settled—thus I crawled from the veranda to the study door to spy within.

The study is a six-mat room facing south, with a large desk in the sunny spot. Merely “large” may not convey it: six feet long, three feet eight wide, and commensurately high. Of course not ready-made. He negotiated with the local joiner to make a rare piece serving as both bed and desk. Why he ordered such a desk, and why he thought to sleep atop it, I know not, never having asked. Perhaps a moment’s whim brought in this nuisance, or like the associations we often see in the mentally ill, he linked two unrelated ideas and arbitrarily joined desk and bed. At any rate a bizarre notion. Its only fault is being bizarre and useless. I once saw the master napping on it roll over and tumble to the veranda; since then it has never been reused as a bed.

Before the desk lies a thin merinos cushion with about three holes burned by cigarette ash clustered together; the cotton within is dingy. On it, facing away, sits the master in formal pose. His mouse-colored, soiled cotton sash is tied in a small knot, its ends dangling to his soles. I was swatted on the head for teasing that sash not long ago. Best not approach it.

Wondering if he still thinks—though they say a fool’s thoughts are slow—I peered from behind and saw something strangely glittering on the desk. I blinked two or three times, then bore the glare to stare: it was a mirror moved upon the desk. But why wield a mirror in the study? A mirror belongs in the bath. Indeed I saw this very mirror there this morning. “This mirror” specifically, for the master owns no other. He uses it each morning after washing to part his hair.—Some may ask if such a man parts his hair; truth is, idle in all else, he tends his head diligently. Since my arrival he has never cropped to a half-inch even on the hottest day, but keeps two inches, parting grandly to the left and flipping the right end up—perhaps another sign of illness. Such affectation ill suits the desk, but harms none, so none complains. He is pleased. Aside from the modern part, why grow it long? Because his pockmarks ate not only his face but long ago bored to the crown. Crop short and dozens appear at the roots; no smoothing removes them—like fireflies on a withered field, maybe poetic, but hardly to the wife’s taste. Long hair hides them; no need to flaunt his fault. He’d grow face hair too if he could, so why pay to cut free-growing hair and advertise “smallpox reached my skull”?—Thus long hair, thus parting, thus the mirror, thus its bath location, thus the fact of only one mirror.

A mirror that belongs in the bath, and the only one, being in the study—either it has left its body or the master brought it. If brought, why? Perhaps a tool for negative cultivation. An old tale: a scholar seeking knowledge met a priest baring his shoulders to polish a tile. Asked, the priest said he’d make a mirror. The scholar cried impossible; the priest laughed, “Then I stop; reading books won’t teach the way either,” and scolded. Maybe the master heard this and brought the mirror to flourish smugly. Things grow alarming; I watch quietly.

Unaware, the master stares at the lone mirror with fervor. A mirror is eerie; they say one needs courage to gaze alone by candle in a large night room. When the young mistress first shoved a mirror at my face I bolted around the house thrice in shock. Even by day, such staring must make one fear his own face. And his is no pleasant sight. After a while he muttered, “Indeed, a filthy face.” Confessing his ugliness is admirable. Likely madness, but true. A step further, he’d fear his ugliness. None is a sufferer who has not felt to the bone that he is a frightful rogue. Without that, no liberation. The master, having come this far, might say “oh fearful,” but does not. After “filthy face,” he puffed his cheeks, slapping them two or three times—some incantation? I felt a resemblance: to O-San’s face. She is puffed like a blowfish lantern from Anamori Inari—so puffed her eyes are lost. A blowfish swells round, but O-San’s polygonal frame swells accordingly, like a waterlogged hexagonal clock. She’d rage, so back to the master: having puffed with all his air, he slapped and said, “With skin this taut, pockmarks don’t show.”

Next he turned sideways, mirroring half-lit. “From here they stand out. Front-lit looks flat. Strange.” Then stretched his right arm far with the mirror, gazing. “At this distance not so. Too near is bad—not just faces, everything.” Then tilted the mirror, scrunching eyes, brows, forehead around the nose bridge. “No good,” he quit. “Why so venomous?” He drew the mirror three inches off, stroked a nostril with his index, pressed the finger on blotting paper; the nose grease rounded on it. Then he flipped his right lower lid inside out—a fine squint—studying pockmarks or dueling the mirror, unclear. The fickle master varies as he watches. In goodwill one might read it as Zen gestures for self-realization. All human study is self-study; heaven, earth, rivers, suns, stars are but aliases of self. Outside self none can study; if one leapt out, self would vanish, yet none else can study you. Thus heroes self-made. Proxy beef cannot tell if tough or tender. Sutras and books only provoke self-proof; no self exists in others’ words or worm-eaten pages—only its ghost, which may beat none. Following shadows may meet the body; most shadows cling. If so the master is worth talk; better than swallowing Epictetus to pose scholar.

The mirror brews conceit and disinfects pride. Faced with vain glory it is the worst goad; two-thirds of old arrogance’s harms are its doing. Like the French doctor’s guillotine, its inventor must regret. But when sick of self, shrunken, the mirror heals. Ugly or fair, clear: “With this face you dared live!”—that realization is life’s blessed hour. Nothing nobler than knowing one’s folly. Before self-aware fools all proud men bow. Even if he thinks he scorns himself, we see him bowing. The master may not be sage enough to see his folly via mirror, but he reads his pockmarked inscription fairly. Admitting ugliness stairs to grasping a low soul. Promising, maybe the philosopher’s doing.

While I watched, the master, after ample eye-rolls, said, “Quite bloodshot—chronic conjunctivitis,” and rubbed the lids with his finger side. Itchy, but rubbing so red will rot like salted sea-bream eyes soon. He opened them to the mirror: dim as a northern winter sky. Usually not bright; in grand terms, murky, black and white indistinguishable. As his spirit is vague and incoherent, his eyes drift dim in their sockets. Called fetal poison or smallpox’s echo, as a child he met willow-worm and red-frog ills, but his mother’s care left him as at birth, blank. I suspect not poison but his brain’s opaque substance, its action dark, showing on form and worrying his mother needlessly. Smoke means fire; cloudy eyes prove folly. His eyes symbolize a heart holed like a Tempō coin—thus likewise useless.

Now he twisted his beard. Ill-mannered from birth, the hairs take free postures. Even in individualist times, such license troubles the owner; the master, noting this, trains them systematically. His zeal bore fruit: lately they fall in step. Once “had beard”; now he boasts “wears beard.” Zeal grows with success; seeing promise, he whips it morn and eve. His ambition: a Kaiser-like upward beard. Regardless of pore direction he grabs and pulls up. The beard suffers; even he feels pain. But that is training. Outsider sees a hobby; he sees right. Like an educator bending pupils for his glory, blameless.

As the master trained his beard with full fervor, polygonal O-San thrust from the kitchen a red hand: “Mail, sir.” Mirror in left, beard in right, he turned; seeing her beard ordered upright at the八字 tail, she yanked back laughing on the kettle lid. The master calmly lowered the mirror, took the mail. First, letterpress, solemn:

“Dear Sir, we congratulate your prosperity. Reviewing the Russo-Japanese War, our forces rode victory to peace; loyal warriors now sing triumph amid ten-thousand cheers; public joy is unmatched. When the imperial rescript declared war, our soldiers, answering the call, endured foreign climes and climate, devoted to battle, offering lives to the state—their sincerity we engrave forever. Their return ends this month; thus our society, on the 25th, hosts a grand welcome for over a thousand district officers and men, representing citizens, to comfort bereaved families, with sincere thanks. We seek your aid and donations for this auspicious rite. With utmost hope, we remain, respectfully.” }

“Stories of the world, in your language.”