A-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh!
Yasukichi had known the owner of this shop by sight from a long way back.
A long way back—or perhaps from the day he had transferred to that naval school. He had unexpectedly gone into the shop to buy some matches. In the shop there was a small display case, and in the window was a model of the battleship Mikasa with its rising sun flag hoisted, enclosed in a Curaçao bottle. There were also tins of cocoa and boxes of raisins arranged. But because of the overpowering red sign upon which “TOBACCO” was written hanging from the eaves, naturally there should have been no reason he could not buy some matches. Peering into the shop, he said, “Gimme a pack of matches.” At the front of the store a young, cross-eyed man was behind the tall counter, standing in a bored fashion. In fact, when he looked at his face, he replied without so much as a smile, his abacus still standing on end.
“Please take this. Unfortunately we’re all out of matches.”
‘This’ was the smallest size match attached to a pack of cigarettes.
“That’s a shame. Well then, give me an Asahi.”
“No problem. Here.”
“No, I said I to give me an Asahi.”
“Here you go. If that’s all—there is no need to purchase unnecessary things.”
There was no mistaking that what the cross-eyed man had said was kindness. But, that voice and face went beyond mere bluntness. Meekly receiving his purchase would be irritating. But his rushing out of the store would be something of a pain for his partner. Yasukichi reluctantly placed a copper sen coin upon the counter.
“Then give me two of those matchbooks.”
“Here’s two or three. But you do not need to pay.”
A young helper stuck his head out from behind a Kinsen Cider poster hanging fortunately there in the doorway. An indistinct expression was on his pimple-covered face.
“Master, I have some matches here.”
A song of triumph in his heart, Yasukichi bought a large box of matches. The price was of course one sen. However, he had not ever felt the beauty of matches such as this until now. So much that he could put the trademark, a sailboat upon a choppy sea, in a frame. After dropping those matches into the pocket of his pants, he went in triumph out of the store…
For half a year since then, Yasukichi had dropped by on his way to or from school to shop. By this point, even with his eyes closed he could clearly recall this store. Hanging from the rafters were surely Kamakura hams. The colored glass above the door cast a green shine on the stucco walls. Condensed milk ads littered the floor. On the pillar in front a calendar hung below the clock. In addition there was the model of the battleship Mikasa in the display case, the Kinsen Cider poster, chairs, phones, bicycles, Scottish whiskey, American raisins, cigars from Manila, cigars from Egypt, smoked herring, Yamatoni beef… there was hardly anything he could not remember. Above all he was so used to seeing the sour face behind the tall counter he was sick of him. No, he was not just used to seeing him. Whether it was the way he coughed, or the way he ordered the young helper around, or even when he bought a tin of cocoa—“This is better than Fry’s. This is Droste from the Netherlands”—or something like that, how he made his customers worry: he understood entirely the clerk’s every move. This understanding was not bad. However, it was true that it was boring. Sometimes when Yasukichi came to this shop, he thought his teaching was a long-ago thing. (And yet, as he had said previously, he had not even been living the life of a teacher for a year!)
However, it was inexcusable that the change in controlling the many laws should not occur in this store. One early summer morning, Yasukichi entered the store to buy some cigars. The store was the same as usual. The condensed milk ads littered on the water-speckled floor were no different. However, instead of the cross-eyed clerk, behind the counter was a seated woman with her hair done up in a Western style. She was probably about nineteen. En face she resembled a cat. Her eyes were long narrowed against the sunshine, she looked like a completely white cat. “Oh!” thought Yasukichi, striding to the counter.
“Gimme two Asahis.”
“Just a moment.” Her reply seemed embarrassed. And furthermore, what she produced was not Asahi. Both of them were Mikasa, with rising suns on the obverse side of the box. Yasukichi’s eyes drifted unconsciously from his cigar to the woman’s face. At the same time he imagined long cat’s whiskers beneath her nose.
“Two Asa—this isn’t Asahi.”
“Oh, you’re right. I’m so sorry.”
The cat—no, the woman was blushing. The change in her emotions in that moment was that of a true lady. And she was not a modern lady. She was a woman of the Kenyūsha writers’ society long gone for these fifty-six years. As Yasukichi fumbled for change, he recalled Takekurabe, a swallows’ mouth bag, the rabbit-eared iris, Ryōgoku, Kiyokata Kaburagi, and other various items. The woman was, of course, at this moment still peeping beneath the counter, searching frantically for Asahi.
Then, from within came the usual cross-eyed clerk. Looking at the Mikasa with one eye, he seemed to surmise the situation. With his usual sour look, he put his hand below the counter and before Yasukichi knew it, he passed him two Asahis. And yet in his eyes, something like a faint smile stirred.
“Matches?”
Were the woman a cat, her eyes, too, would have a purring flattery to them. The clerk, instead of replying, just nodded his head. The woman—right away!—produced the smallest matchbox on the counter. Then, once more, she smiled in embarrassment.
“I’m so sorry.”
The sorry thing was not just that she had produced Mikasa without any Asahi. Looking over the two of them, Yasukichi felt a smile come to his lips.
After that, no matter when he came, the woman was sitting behind the counter. But now she did not have her hair done in a Western style as she did originally. She had changed to a large traditional bun. However, her attitude towards customers was as green as always. Her service was halting. Her products were mistaken. And to make matters worse she blushed occasionally: an expression not at all befitting a woman. More and more, Yasukichi felt some sort of friendliness towards this woman. This was not to say he had fallen in love with her. He just had some faint nostalgia for this woman completely unaccustomed to human contact.
One oppressive afternoon in late summer, on his way back from school Yasukichi entered the store to buy some cocoa. As usual, the woman was behind the counter, reading an issue of Story Club or something. Yasukichi asked the pimply assistant if there was perhaps any Van Houten.
“At the moment all we have is this.”
What the assistant handed him was Fry’s. Yasukichi looked over the store. Between cans of fruit there was a single tin of Droste mixed in, with its trademark European nun.
“Isn’t that Droste over there?”
The shopboy glanced over there, and then made a predictably vague face.
“Yes, there’s cocoa there, too.”
“So it’s not just here.”
“Yes, but really, it’s just here. That’s right, isn’t it, ma’am?”
Yasukichi turned to the woman. Her eyes half-shut, she had a beautiful green face. But this was not unusual. This was the effect of the afternoon sun coming through the colored glass above the door. Her magazine under her elbow, she gave the usual awkward reply.
“Yes, I think it was just there…”
“The thing is, this Fry’s sometimes has bugs in it, so…” Yasukichi began seriously. But in truth he had no reason to remember encountering insects in his cocoa. But if believed that if he just said any only thing like this, on top of confirming the existence or the non-existence of the Van Houten, it would be effective.
“They were pretty big fellows, too. About as big as my pinky finger…”
As if somewhat surprised, the woman raised half of her body over the top of the counter.
“Aren’t there any there? That’s right, in the cupboard behind there.”
“They’re all just red. The ones in here, too.”
“Then how about here?”
The woman slipped on her wooden sandals, and then worryingly searched the store. Aimlessly, the assistant tried peeking behind the canned goods. After lighting his cigar, Yasukichi, as if he had contributed a riding crop, began to speak his thoughts.
“When I let my kids drink the stuff that had the bugs in it, he got a stomachache. (He lived alone in a rented room at a summer resort.) No, not just my kids. My wife went through it, too. (Of course, he had not had a wife.) Anyway, I wasn’t particularly careful, so…”
Yasukichi suddenly shut his mouth. Wiping her hands on her apron, the woman looked at him with a lost expression.
“It seems like we cannot find any…” Her eyes trembled. She had also forced a slight smile. The funniest thing that he could see was that her nose, too, was dappled with beads of sweat. The instant he met eyes with her, Yasukichi felt as if he had been possessed by the devil. This woman was what was meant by a wallflower. Without doubt, he could always get the reaction he expected with so much as applying a fixed input. But, the input is simple. Stare at her face. Or poke her with your fingertip. The woman would surely receive Yasukichi’s hints in those stimuli. What she would do with the received stimuli was of course an unknown problem. However, the fortunate thing was that if she did not resist—no, it is okay to have a cat for a pet. But, selling the soul of the woman with the cat-like face to the devil was a rather minor problem. Yasukichi tossed aside the devil inside him along with the cigar he was smoking. The abruptly displaced devil pivoted and perhaps leapt into the shopboy’s nostrils. He hunched his neck and then in succession let out a large sneeze.
“There’s no avoiding it. Give me the Droste.” A strained smile on his face, Yasukichi fished in his pocket for change.
Afterwards, Yasukichi had numerous like encounters with this woman. But, his recollections of the demonic possession were only happy. No, there was even the feeling once that an angel had come on a whim.
One afternoon late in autumn, Yasukichi, already at the shop to buy some cigars, took the opportunity to use the phone. The clerk was in front of the sun-struck store, working an air pump and preparing to begin repairs on a bicycle. The shopboy was also out there to be of use, it seemed. The woman was, as usual, behind the counter filing receipts or something. There was never a dull moment in this sort of shop. It was enveloped in the quiet happiness typical of paintings of daily life somewhere in the Netherlands. With his ear pressed to the received right behind the woman, Yasukichi thought of his beloved De Hooghe print.
However, no matter how long he spent on the phone, it seemed he could not easily connect to the other party. Also, for some reason, after the operator asked, “To which number?” a couple of times, she stayed completely silent. Yasukichi rung many times over, but the only sound that came to his ear was a tinny rumbling. If this happened, this was not a situation in which he would think about De Hooghe anymore. First he took Spargo’s The Common Sense of Socialism from his pocket. Fortunately, there was a box with a tilted lit he could use as a bookrest. After placing the book on that box, while scanning the characters, Yasukichi rung the bell stubbornly as slowly as his hand would allow. This was one of the strategies he used on lazy operators. Once, when he entered a phone booth in the Owari neighborhood in Ginza, he had, of course, rung over and over, and had at last completely finished Mori Ōgai’s “Sahashijin Gorō.” Today, too, while the operator was absent, Yasukichi resolved to not let off the bell.
After a brutal fight with the operator, Yasukichi finally hung up the phone about twenty minutes later. He turned to the counter behind him to say thanks. When he turned, there was nobody there. At some point she had gone and was in the doorway, talking to the clerk. He seemed to be continuing his bike repairs in the remaining autumn light. Yasukichi tried to head over there, but without thinking he stopped. With her back turned to Yasukichi, she asked a question of the clerk.
“You know, honey, before, we had a customer asking for Bryce Coffee. Is there any Bryce?
“Bryce Coffee?” The clerk’s voice, towards his wife or towards his customers, was blunt. “He probably said rice coffee and you misheard.”
“Rice coffee? Oh, the stuff made from brown rice. I think that’s sort of funny. So they probably have Bryce at the grocer’s?”
Yasukichi stared at the pair’s backs. He again felt the appearance of an angel. There was no mistaking that the angel, flying among the hanging hams, had granted a blessing to the unsuspecting couple. But then he frowned a bit at the smell of smoked herring—suddenly he remembered that he had forgotten to buy smoked herring. The herring made a miserable wreck of the tip of his nose.
“Hey you, give me some of that herring.”
The woman turned around quickly. It was just when she had guessed that the grocer’s had Bryce Coffee. She of course definitely knew that they had been heard. As soon as the woman with the cat-like face raised her eyes, an embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks. As Yasukichi had said before, he had met the woman’s red face from time to time. However, he had never seen it so crimson until now.
“Um, herring?” The woman asked in a small voice.
“Yes, herring,” Yasukichi repeated in turn, exceedingly grandiose just this once.
After this happening, about two month passed—it was definitely the new year. The woman had abruptly hidden herself away somewhere. This was not just for three or five days, either. No matter when he went into the shop with the old stove, there was only the usual cross-eyed clerk, sitting in boredom. Yasukichi felt somehow unsatisfied. Then he imagined various reasons that he could not see the woman. But he had no thought of expressly asking the blunt clerk, “How’s the wife?” And the truth was that of course, besides, “Give me one of those,” he had never even exchanged a greeting with him.
Before long, the signs of one or two days of warm sunlight began to become apparent even on the snow-dusted roads. However, the woman did not show her face. A desolate atmosphere hung in the shop around the clerk, naturally. Yasukichi, at some point, came to forget the woman’s absence…
Then, on a night at the end of February, Yasukichi had finally concluded a seminar on British English at school. A warm south wind blowing, Yasukichi headed towards the store without any particular intention of buying something. Imported alcohol and canned goods were arranged marvelously in the light of the electric lamp. This, of course, was not strange. However he suddenly noticed that in the store was a woman. She had a baby in her arms, and she was talking to it without a care for anything else. Outside of the store, lit by broad electric lamps, Yasukichi suddenly discovered who the young mother was.
“A-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh, buh!”
The woman was pacing outside of the store, cuddling the baby earnestly. As she was rocking the baby she happened to match eyes with Yasukichi. He at once imagined signs of hesitation in her eyes. Then, he imagined her face getting red in the dark. But the woman was unfazed. If her eyes were smiling, no embarrassment came to her face. Besides, after that unexpected moment, she lowered her eyes to the rocking baby, and, without regards to passersby, continued.
“A-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh, buh!”
Behind the woman, Yasukichi, without realizing it, was grinning broadly. She was no longer “that woman.” She was a courageous mother. She was the terrifying “mother” who would for the time, since time immemorial, commit any sort of crime for her child. It was good that for this change, the woman would receive all manner of blessings. But seeing this shameless mother instead of a young wife tinged with the essence of a maiden… Still walking, Yasukichi stared up at the sky above the houses. In the sky crossed by the southern winds was hanging a round spring moon, faint and pale…
(November 1923)