Nine

My master has a pockmarked face. Someone at some point gave him the nickname "Pockmark Sensei," and the appellation has stuck. The pockmarks in question are smallpox scars from childhood, not natural features of his complexion. My master maintains that before he contracted smallpox he was quite fair and rather good-looking, and that he has become what he is through sheer misfortune. I have no way of knowing what he may have looked like before the smallpox, but on present evidence I find the claim of fair good looks difficult to credit; I suspect it is largely wishful retrospection. My master minds this matter considerably. Whenever he goes out, he counts the number of pockmarked people he encounters, and on returning home notes the tally carefully in his diary. Maintained consistently, the monthly total reaches thirty or forty, which shows that pockmarked people in this world are not so rare as one might think. Additionally, my master has a friend who has been to the West, and he asked this friend how many pockmarked people one sees in the West. The friend said that in the West, pockmarks are found only among beggars and vagrants, and virtually never among gentlemen. My master heard this and fell into thoughtful silence, sighing privately that Japanese sanitation falls far short of the West.

　About seven days after the philosopher Dokusen's visit, my master shut himself in his study and refused to come out. Out of curiosity I slipped in to investigate. My master was sitting bolt upright at his desk, holding a mirror and scrutinising his own face with great attention. This mirror normally hung in the washroom — it hung in the washroom rather than on a dressing table because my master's pockmarks extend all the way to his scalp, and to conceal this he grows his hair long, requiring the use of a mirror every day to arrange it. On this occasion, however, my master had moved the household's only mirror into the study.

　Looking at his face in the mirror, my master puffed out both cheeks; the pockmarks, with the skin thus stretched taut, appeared somewhat shallower. My master nodded in what appeared to be a measure of satisfaction and tilted the mirror to a slightly different angle to continue his inspection. After a while he pulled down one lower eyelid and made a grimace — quite an absurd expression, though my master seemed entirely unaware of it, continuing to examine the mirror in all earnestness. He then produced a sheet of blotting paper from his desk drawer, pressed it firmly against his nose, and held the paper up to the mirror for examination; the paper showed a patch of oil. My master frowned and tossed the blotting paper aside.

　The mirror is a curious thing. In the narrow sense, it is a generator of vanity; in the broader sense, it is a disinfectant of self-importance. Before mirrors existed, a man who did not know what he looked like might have convinced himself he was the most handsome creature in creation. Once mirrors appeared, he could see for himself that he was simply another ordinary face among the multitude. This has been considerably beneficial to human humility. It follows that those who look in the mirror most often are also those most clearly conscious of themselves. Yet the mirror's effects are not one-directional. If repeated inspection only confirms to a man that he is very handsome, the mirror becomes an accomplice to vanity. Given my master's present appearance, the mirror must be producing rather complex sensations.

　During this period of self-sequestration, my master received three letters.

　The first was a solicitation circular from a person of aristocratic standing, collecting funds for a grand celebratory ceremony to mark Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War, and earnestly requesting my master's generous contribution. My master set the letter aside without comment and showed no sign of making any donation. He is in general a man who takes exception to donations; not long ago someone came to the door seeking only two or three yen for a charitable cause, and my master grumbled "this is nothing short of extortion" before reluctantly parting with the money. A more formal solicitation was even more certainly to be ignored.

　The second letter was from one Nuida Shinsaku, principal of the Dai-Nihon Joshi Saiho Saikoto Daigakuin — the Great Japan Women's Supreme Advanced Sewing Academy. The principal announced that he was publishing a work entitled the Secrets of Sewing: A General Survey, and earnestly requested that my master purchase a copy, with all royalties to be donated to the academy's building fund. My master crumpled this letter and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

　The third letter arrived in a striking envelope of red and white horizontal stripes. The name on the envelope read "Tendō Kōhei," and the sender's address was Sugamo. My master opened the envelope and unfolded the letter, and was immediately absorbed. The letter began with a peculiar epigraph: "The way of heaven is white; the way of earth is white; humanity between them is red as blood." The body of the letter then rambled at considerable length, touching on sea cucumbers, puffer fish, and Korean ginseng before shifting tone and addressing the proposition that the great powers of the world regard others as less than human, and that those who regard others as fully human and find themselves not so regarded in return naturally burn with righteous indignation and rise in revolt — this being the origin of revolution. The letter closed on a note of sudden warmth: "Kushami Sensei, your tea is very much to my taste; do please drink some." My master read this letter through once, then once more, and finally murmured: "This is truly a profound thinker — what he says is most searching and deep."

　A few days later, Meitei appeared with a visitor in tow. The visitor was Meitei's uncle, who had come up from Shizuoka expressly for a meeting of the Japan Red Cross Society. The old gentleman wore his white hair in an old-fashioned chonmage, and had dressed himself in a frock coat purchased from the Shirokiya department store in town — a coat clearly not tailored to his measurements and straining on his frame. He also carried a large iron war fan of the type used in ancient battles to split helmets, a kabuto-wari, which he claimed dated from the Kenmu period — quite a remarkable antique by any measure. Atop all this he wore a remarkably tall hat, so that his overall appearance suggested a character from some peculiar farce.

　The three of them sat down, the uncle graciously deferring about the question of precedence. After considerable deliberation over who should sit in the seat of honour, the uncle was eventually settled into the upper position. He told my master that he had come to the city for the Red Cross meeting, and had also paid a visit to Mr. Kangetsu's physics laboratory. He raised the iron war fan as he spoke: "I brought this kabuto-wari to show them, and promptly caused a great deal of trouble — as soon as any iron object comes near those instruments, all the needles go haywire. Most embarrassing. Kangetsu is polishing glass balls, and I told him that sort of thing is jeweller's work — menial labour in ancient China — real scholarship lies in cultivating the mind and spirit."

　At the words "cultivating the mind and spirit," my master perked up immediately and began to recite the teachings of the philosopher Yagi Dokusen — about keeping the mind unmoved, remaining at ease while external things do as they will, moving like a lightning flash cutting through the spring wind — repeating the whole doctrine faithfully. Meitei listened with a gleam of mischief gradually appearing in his expression.

　"And the gentleman who taught you all this — might that be Yagi Dokusen?" Meitei suddenly put in.

　My master looked startled. "You know Dokusen?"

　"Know him? Rather." Meitei said. "Dokusen and I are old acquaintances. That speech he gave you — he's been giving the same speech for ten years, word for word. But Dokusen is an entertaining character in his way. I once went to stay the night at his place, and he talked and talked until well into the night. I lay down and was trying to sleep, and still he talked. Then in the middle of the night a rat bit him on the nose, and he was terrified — said the rat's poison must be spreading through his body and he was going to die. Thinking quickly, I took some leftover rice from the kitchen, rolled it into a ball, and told him it was the latest imported German antidote. He gulped it down on the spot, said he felt much better, and was snoring within minutes. Next morning I noticed there was a thread stuck to his nose, caught in his goat beard — that was his rat-bite."

　The uncle burst into laughter, and my master laughed too, though with a certain discomfiture on his face.

　"Dokusen has actually," Meitei continued, "driven two people to madness. The first was a man named Rino Tōzen, who had taken up Zen practice. Tōzen once went to Kamakura and sat in meditation directly on the railway tracks, claiming his Zen power would stop the train — it took some effort to drag him off. Later he walked into a lotus pond, saying that a man of practice cannot drown; he nearly did drown, and had to be rescued by monks from the temple. Wandering about in this fashion, he eventually died of peritonitis from unsanitary temple food. The second was a man named Tachimachi Rōbai, also a disciple of Dokusen's. Rōbai fell into some sort of fixation and thought about nothing but food — sea cucumbers in particular — and would talk of nothing else to anyone. Do you know where he is now? He's in the mental hospital in Sugamo — well, the area is now called something else — and he loves to write letters, sends them to people constantly, in red and white striped envelopes. Those red and white stripes apparently have a particular meaning — something from a Chinese text: the way of heaven is white, the way of earth is white, humanity between them is red as blood —"

　My master's face went suddenly pale. He said, haltingly: "That Tendō Kōhei… is Tachimachi Rōbai?"

　"The very same," said Meitei. "You know him?"

　My master produced the red-and-white-striped letter and handed it to Meitei. Meitei glanced it over and burst out laughing: "Yes, yes — this is Rōbai's handwriting all right, this is Rōbai's style without question. And you said he was a great thinker? Ha ha ha — this is really rather marvellous."

　My master turned deeply red and was unable to speak.

　At this awkward juncture there came a knock at the door. The maidservant O-San came to report that a person from the police detective's office was asking for my master. My master went out to the entrance hall and found two people there: a uniformed detective named Yoshida Torazō, and a young man accompanying him who was strikingly handsome, well-dressed, and carried himself with considerable presence. My master, surveying the two at a glance, took the well-dressed young man for the detective and bowed deeply: "Thank you so much for coming, I'm very grateful for your trouble."

　The young man kept his expression neutral and gave a slight smile. The detective Yoshida cleared his throat and said: "That gentleman is… the suspect." My master came to himself with a start, deeply embarrassed. Looking more carefully, he saw that the young man's hands were tucked into the wide sleeves of his kimono — concealing the handcuffs. This was the habitual thief who, some chapters past, had entered the house while my master was away and made off with a cotton haori jacket and a box of mountain yam.

　The detective informed my master that he should present himself the following morning at nine o'clock with his personal seal at the police substation near Nihon Tsutsumi. Only then did my master think to ask what had been stolen. After considerable thought he said, haltingly: "…I believe… one box of mountain yam." The thief, on hearing "mountain yam," visibly suppressed a smile. My master had forgotten almost everything else that had been taken, remembering only the mountain yam — it had been a precious gift from Tatara Sampei, and evidently occupied a singular place in my master's heart.

　The detective turned to leave. Meitei could not resist asking: "Excuse me — what sort of area is Nihon Tsutsumi, precisely?" The detective replied briefly: "Near Yoshiwara." Meitei shot my master a look of gleeful mischief. My master flushed scarlet but held himself erect and declared: "Whether it's Yoshiwara or any other place — if I said I'd go, I'll go!" He delivered this with a posture of unbowed rectitude. In his own mind Meitei thought my master's stubbornness in this instance had done nothing to enhance his dignity, and had if anything lowered it further. My master, however, privately congratulated himself on having won the exchange.

　After Meitei and his uncle took their leave, my master ate his dinner alone and returned to the study to sit in solitary contemplation. The more he thought, the more uneasy he became: Dokusen's teachings had driven two people to madness; the letter from Tendō Kōhei — whom he had proclaimed a great thinker — had come from a mental patient; if he himself might be somewhat touched in that direction, then…? He began surveying the people around him, comparing them one by one in his mind: Meitei's uncle, whose behaviour was somewhat eccentric — hard to say he was entirely sound; Kangetsu, who polished glass balls all day — that in itself was rather suspicious; Meitei, a professional absurdist — obviously suspect; Madame Kaneda, all calculation and malice in pure form — that sort must certainly be mad; Kaneda himself, described by others as a "nonconformist," which was simply another word for mad; the students of the Rakuunkan, those wild-eyed fanatics — they too must be numbered in the ranks. Counting them all up, there seemed to be no sane person anywhere around him. Could it be that this world was fundamentally a world of madmen?

　He pressed deeper into his reflections, sinking further and further, until he arrived at a conclusion that was at once startling and frightening: perhaps dangerous madmen are not locked away at all, but run free and rise to power and become people of consequence; while it is the sane who are declared deviants and shut up in asylums. "A great madman with money and power uses many small madmen and is called a fine fellow." My master thought this and grew gradually bewildered, his mind sinking into chaos, until at last he murmured to himself: "What's what — I don't know anymore." And with that he slumped forward over his desk and fell fast asleep.

　I stood beside my master and, through a certain electrical current, had been sensing his thoughts one by one as they passed. How was I able to do this? On my belly I have a fine layer of downy fur, and by pressing this fur lightly against a human belly I can, through electromagnetic induction, read whatever is passing through that person's mind. On one occasion, my master entertained the following thought: "If I skinned this cat and made a padded waistcoat, how warm I would be this winter." The moment I sensed this thought I recoiled in horror and retreated from the vicinity of his belly.

　Everything my master thought this evening I have now faithfully reported to my readers. Tomorrow morning my master will wake and have forgotten every last syllable of it. Should he once again brood over the same questions on some future occasion, the conclusion he arrives at will be the same one he arrived at tonight: "What's what — I don't know anymore."