Light and dark

[74]

SHORTLY THE maid conveyed to O-Nobu an invitation to stay for dinner, and she left her seat together with Tsugiko once again. The cheerful faces of the entire household were assembled in the bright room. Even Hajime, who had been sulking about something under the engawa and had had to be coaxed out, was engaged in a good-natured conversation with his father. Yuriko had already come in to report that her younger brother had opened his mouth wide and snapped at a rice cookie dangled from above in front of his nose “just like a dog.” Smiling, O-Nobu tuned in to the rambling of her canine cousin.

“When Mercury appears in the sky something bad happens, right, Father?”

“People thought so a long time ago. But now that science has advanced, nobody thinks that anymore.”

“How about in the West?”

O-Nobu’s uncle appeared not to know whether the same superstition had prevailed in Western antiquity.

“In the West? Never in the West.”

“But don’t they say that Mercury came out before Caesar died?”

“You mean before Caesar was murdered—” It appeared that Uncle’s only choice was to camouflage his ignorance.

“You’re talking about the Roman Empire — that’s a different story from the West.”

Persuaded, Hajime lapsed into silence. But he posed another question almost at once. This one, quirkier than the first, he presented as a splendid syllogism. A hole in the ground called a well filled with water; the ground must therefore be on top of water; ergo the ground should sink. Why didn’t it? Uncle’s response was such confabulated nonsense that everyone was amused.

“There’s no way it will sink.”

“But if it’s on top of water it has to.”

“It doesn’t work out that neatly.”

The women burst into laughter, and Hajime swiftly shifted to his third subject.

“Father, I wish our house was a battleship. How about you?”

“Your dad prefers a plain old house to a battleship.”

“But in an earthquake a house would be crushed.”

“But an earthquake wouldn’t disturb a battleship, is that it? I never thought about that. Well done.”

O-Nobu observed with a smile the genuine admiration on her uncle’s face. His earlier suggestion that Fujii should be invited for dinner seemed to have slipped his mind. Her aunt appeared oblivious, as if she had also forgotten. O-Nobu found herself wanting to question Hajime.

“Hajime-san, Makoto is your classmate, right?”

Hajime grunted affirmatively and proceeded to satisfy O-Nobu’s curiosity. His account, which could only have been delivered by a child, abounded in observations, interpretation, and facts. For a while the power of his narrative enlivened the table.

Among the episodes that had everyone laughing was something like the following.

One day on their way home from school, Hajime and Makoto had peered into a deep hole. Dug by the department of public works smack in the middle of the road, the hole was bridged by a cedar plank. Hajime offered Makoto 100 yen if he walked across the plank. Whereupon the reckless Makoto, exacting a promise, had started across the narrow, slippery-looking plank in those same shoes of shaggy dog hair, his knapsack on his back. At first it looked to Hajime as if his friend would fall, but as he watched him slowly approach the opposite side, step after careful step, he began to worry. Abandoning his companion teetering above the deep hole, he ran. Makoto, who was obliged to keep his eyes on his feet, had no idea until he was all the way across that Hajime had disappeared. When he had accomplished his feat and at last raised his eyes, thinking to receive his 100 yen, his friend was nowhere in sight, so the story went.

“It appears that Hajime outsmarted his friend in this case,” Uncle observed.

“It appears that Fujii-san hasn’t been over to play much recently,” said Auntie.