The professor had always been indifferent to art, especially to drama. Even Japanese plays he had seen only a few times in his life. Once the name of “Baiko” appeared in a story by a certain student. Even this professor, who prided himself on his encyclopaedic knowledge, did not know what this name meant. So when he had an opportunity, he called the student to him and asked him.
“I say, what’s ‘Baiko’?”
“Baiko? Baiko is an actor at present attached to the Imperial Theatre at Maru-no-uchi and now taking the part of Misao in ‘Taikoki Judanme’.”
Thus politely replied this student dressed in a hakama of Kokura duck. Hence the professor had no opinions of his own at all on the various rules of stage presentation on which Strindberg pithily commented. Only, he was able to take some interest in it in so far as it reminded him of certain things he had seen in western theatres while studying abroad. There was, so to speak, not much difference between him and a middle school English teacher who reads Bernard Shaw’s dramas to hunt for idioms. But interest is interest anyhow.
The still unlighted Gifu lantern hung from the ceiling of the veranda. And Prof. Hasegawa sat in the cane chair reading Strindberg’s “Dramaturgy.” If I write only this, I believe the reader can easily imagine what a long early-summer afternoon it was. But by this I do not mean at all that the professor was overcome with ennui. If anybody should try to interpret it thus, he would be deliberately trying to give it a cynical and perverse interpretation.
Actually he was forced to leave off in the midst of his reading even Strindberg. For the maid suddenly interrupted his innocent amusement by announcing a caller. Be the day as long as it might, it seemed that the world would never stop working him to death.
The professor put down his book and glanced at the small calling card the maid had just brought him. On the ivory paper was printed small the name, Nishiyama Atsuko. He felt sure that she was no one he had ever met. But all the same, as he left his chair, the widely acquainted professor, just to make sure, ran over the name-list he kept in his head. But still no face that seemed as if it might be hers came into his memory. Therefore, putting the card into the book for a marker, he laid the book down on the chair and, ill at ease, adjusted the front of his unlined kimono of coarse silk, giving the while, another little glance at the Gifu lantern in front of his nose. It is probably always true in such cases that the host who keeps the visitor waiting is more impatient than the visitor who is kept waiting. Of course I need not go out of my way to explain that, since the professor had always been an austere man, this would be true in this case even if his visitor had not been such an unknown woman as had come this day.
Finally, calculating the time, the professor opened the door of his reception room. At practically the same moment that he entered the room and let go the knob, a lady who appeared to be about forty arose from a chair in which she was sitting. She went beyond his ability to make her out, being dressed in an elegant unlined garment of steel grey satin, with, where her haori of black silk finely striped in the fabric hung a little open at the front, a chrysoprase sash-fastener embossed in a chaste diamond-shaped design. Even the professor, who usually took no notice of such trifles, at once saw that her hair was done up in the coiffure of a married woman. With the round face and amber skin peculiar to Japanese, she seemed to be a so-called “wise mother.”
“I’m Hasegawa,” the professor said, bowing amiably. For he thought that if he spoke thus, she would probably say something, if they had ever met before.
“I’m Nishiyama Kenichirō’s mother,” said the lady in a clear voice, politely returning his bow.
At the name, “Nishiyama Kenichirō,” the professor remembered. Nishiyama was one of those students who wrote critical articles on Ibsen and Strindberg, whose special study, he seemed to remember, was German Law, and who, even after he entered the university, had often come to the professor’s house with problems of thought to discuss. In the spring, he had fallen ill of peritonitis and entered the university hospital, and the professor had taken advantage of some opportunities and inquired after him once or twice. It was not mere accident that the professor thought he had seen the lady’s face somewhere. That cheerful youth with heavy eyebrows and this woman were as surprisingly alike as the two melons in the Japanese popular saying.
“Ah, Nishiyama Kun’s,--is that so?”
The professor, nodding to himself, pointed to a chair on the opposite side of a small table.
“Please--take that chair.”
The lady, after first apologizing for her abrupt visit, again bowed politely and sat down in the chair indicated. As she did so, she took something white, which seemed to be a handkerchief, out of her sleeve. When he saw this, the professor quickly offered her a Korean fan that lay on the table and sat down in the chair opposite.
“This is a fine house,” said the lady, looking round the room a little unnaturally.
“Oh, no, it’s only big, and I don’t take any care of it at all.”
The professor, who was accustomed to such greetings, having the maid put the chilled tea she had just brought before his guest, immediately turned the subject of conversation toward her.
“How is Nishiyama Kun? Is there any change in his condition?”
“Yes.”
The lady paused for a moment modestly, putting her hands, one on the other, on her knees, and then spoke quietly. Her tone continued to be calm and smooth.
“In truth it was about my son that I came to-day; finally nothing could be done for him. While he was alive, you were very kind to him and--”
The professor, who had taken it for reserve in her that the lady did not touch her tea, was at this moment just going to put his cup to his lips. For he thought it would be better to set an example by sipping his own tea than to urge her repeatedly and importunately to take hers. But before the cup had reached his soft mustache, her words suddenly smote his ears. Should he drink or should he not? This question, entirely independent of the youth’s death, plagued him for a moment. But he could not go on holding the cup where it was forever. So he resolutely swallowed half his tea and, knitting his brows the least bit, said in a choked voice, “That’s too bad.”
“He often spoke of you while he was in the hospital, so though I felt that you must be busy, thinking that, by way of letting you know, I’d express my thanks,--”
“Oh, not at all.”
The professor put the cup down and, taking up a green waxed fan, said in a daze,
“So finally nothing could be done for him, you say. He was just at the promising age, but,--not having visited the hospital for some time, I never imagined anything but that probably he was just about well. Then when was it--his death?”
“The first seventh-day was just yesterday.”
“And at the hospital--?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed, this is a surprise to me.”
“Anyway, as we did everything that could be done, there’s nothing to do but be resigned, but nevertheless, when I think how we raised him, I can’t keep myself from fits of complaining.”
While conversing thus, the professor became aware of a surprising fact. It was the fact that in neither her attitude nor her demeanor did she seem in the least to be talking about her own son’s death. She had no tears in her eyes. Her voice was natural. Besides, a smile played about the corners of her mouth. So if anybody had simply seen her outward appearance without hearing her words, he surely could have thought nothing but that she was talking of ordinary everyday affairs. To the professor, this was surprising.
Once long before when he was studying in Berlin, it happened that Wilhelm I, the father of the present Kaiser, died. He heard of it at a café he usually frequented, and of course experienced no more than an ordinary impression. Then with a cheerful face and his stick under his arm, he returned to the boarding house as usual, but as soon as he opened the door, the two children who lived there suddenly threw themselves on his neck and burst out crying together. One was a girl of twelve in a brown jacket and the other a boy of nine in dark blue knickers. As the professor, who was fond of children, did not understand, he consoled them, patting their shining hair and eagerly asking them over and over what was the matter. But they simply would not stop crying. Then swallowing their tears, they sobbed, “Our grandpa Emperor is dead.”
The professor thought it strange that the death of the emperor of a country should bring so much sorrow even to the children. It was not only of the question of the relation existing between the imperial house and the people that he was made to think. The impulsive expression of their emotions by occidentals, which had impressed him ever since he came to the West, now surprised, as if it were something new, this professor, a Japanese and a believer in Bushidō. He had never forgotten the feeling, seemingly compounded of suspicion and sympathy, that he experienced at that time. Conversely, he now felt precisely the same degree of surprise at this lady’s not weeping. But a second discovery followed on the heels of the first. It was just as their conversation, after having gone from reminiscences of the dead youth into details of his daily life, was about to turn back again to more reminiscences. The Korean fan chanced to slip from the professor’s hand and fell of a sudden on the marquetry floor. The conversation, of course, was not so urgent as not to permit of a momentary interruption. So, bending forward from his chair and looking down, he stretched out his hand toward the floor. The fan was lying beneath the little table just beside the lady’s white tabi concealed in her slippers.