The Lie
Ni’imi Nankichi
I
Kyūsuke was out of school for five days with the mumps.
School had already started when he returned on the sixth day. Kyūsuke was ashamed to show his face to his classmates.
Just as he had feared, when Kyūsuke entered the classroom everybody turned around to look at him. His face red, he turned in his absence slip to Mr. Yamaguchi. Kyūsuke avoided walking through the rows of desks and instead sidled down the wall to his seat, knocking off three students’ hats as he did so. After he found his seat he opened up his textbook.
Kaichi, who was sitting next to Kyūsuke, pointed to Chapter 10 in the book. Chapter 10? On the day before he had taken ill they were only on Chapter 8, and it had seemed like there was quite a lot of pages left to read.
When he realized that everybody had not only finished the rest of Chapter 8, but also Chapter 9, he felt like he no longer knew his fellow students.
The teacher picked a student to begin reading out loud. “Chapter 10. ‘The Burning of the Rice Sheaves.’ ‘This is no laughing matter,’ grumbled Gohei as he emerged from the house…’”
Now that’s weird, Kyūsuke thought. He’d never heard that voice before. Who was talking? The desk next to the southern window. There, he could see in profile a pale-faced boy in an exquisite tweed uniform. Kyūsuke had never seen him before.
Kyūsuke started to feel like he was under some illusion, like he had accidentally ended up at the wrong school. No, this had to be the fifth-grade classroom at Yanabe Elementary. But come to think of it, the teacher was not acting like Mr. Yamaguchi, though he looked strikingly similar. And each and every one of the students, too, bore a close resemblance to his classmates, but they were as unknown to him as this school. Had he forgotten where his own school was after five days and ended up in a totally different one? That’s ridiculous, Kyūsuke thought. So the next most plausible explanation was that this was indeed his school. Kyūsuke was relieved.
In between classes Kyūsuke asked Tokuichi who the pale-faced boy at the window was.
“Him? That’s Tarōzaemon. He’s from Yokohama, I think.”
Kyūsuke laughed. “Tarōzaemon? What, is he from a hundred years ago?”
Tokuichi explained that the transfer student’s real name was indeed Tarōzaemon, but since that was a name straight out of the history books, Tarōzaemon’s mother had come to class the day before yesterday and asked the teacher and the students to call the poor boy by the name they called him at home, Tarō. Good thinking, mom, Kyūsuke thought.
That was how Tarōzaemon came into Kyūsuke’s life.
II
Yanabe was a country town, so a boy from the big city was bound to stand out at school. Kyūsuke was fascinated with Tarōzaemon from the moment he laid eyes on him, but the opportunity never arose for him to get to know the transfer student. The same was true for Kyūsuke’s gang of friends—Tokuichi, Kaichi, and Otojirō. Since each of them knew how the others felt, none of them tried to be the one to make the first move. And then one day in class, Kyūsuke realized that he had been staring straight at Tarōzaemon.
Tarōzaemon was in front of Kyūsuke, and beside the window, so what Kyūsuke could see of him was a single big eye and the spot on the back of his head where all of his glimmering hair came together. The transfer student’s eye was fixed for a long while on the letters in his textbook, but then he turned his gaze by degrees to Mr. Yamaguchi, who was lecturing. Perhaps he had grown tired of schoolwork and slouched down in his seat with a small sigh, then shifted his sharp gaze to the teacher in a single fluid motion. It was then that Kyūsuke realized that the beautiful boy hadn’t grown up kicking cans down a dusty road or playing hide-and-seek in the tall grasses like all the other kids he knew. Getting to know the transfer student might be a depressing experience indeed.
One day Kyūsuke was staring at the beautiful youth as he always did. What was his name again? Kyūsuke wondered for a moment. Oh, Tarōzaemon.
It was then that Kyūsuke recalled reading a story in some magazine about an eminent figure by the name of Egawa Tarōzaemon. He only remembered bits and pieces: a century ago, the gunsmith Egawa Tarōzaemon had designed something called a reverboratory furnace in Nirayama and was known for designing what were, for the time, cannons of extraordinary size. Visions of the blueprints for a tall brick furnace and of a man with a topknot and eyes frozen in perpetual surprise drifted through Kyūsuke’s mind.
And this boy had the same name as that feudal gunsmith. Maybe the name wasn’t all they shared. Might they not be the same person?
Immediately Kyūsuke realized that there was no way an adult a hundred years ago could be a child now. Not unless he was living in reverse.
Though he had dismissed the thought out of hand, Kyūsuke had still started to think of the gunsmith Tarōzaemon and this Tarōzaemon as the same person. There were a lot of people in the world, and there might be one or two out there, possibly, who had started out as adults in the feudal era and had grown younger over time. They could be the same person. Kyūsuke knew that if he told anybody else of his fantasy he would be met with laughter, so he kept it to himself.
That day, on his way home, Kyūsuke followed about ten feet behind Tarōzaemon. He did not mean to tail the other boy, but, as chance would have it, their paths and paces were just about the same. Or at least, that was how Kyūsuke rationalized it.
As they were passing by an empty field, Tarōzaemon abruptly turned to Kyūsuke and asked in a gruff but fluid voice, “Hey, do you know what these flowers are called?”
Kyūsuke had seen the flowers before. There were two or three of them in his own little corner of the family flower bed. They were reddish-brown and forlorn-looking. But Kyūsuke didn’t know what they were called, so he said nothing.
“Red sage!” The beautiful boy started towards Kyūsuke. Kyūsuke figured that it was okay to talk to Tarōzaemon since it was he who had gone first asked, and so he asked, a little excitedly, “Hail from Yokohama, you?”
Kyūsuke already knew from Tokuichi that Tarōzaemon was from Yokohama, but he couldn’t think of anything else to ask. He was so embarrassed that he was liable to break out in a cold sweat. Nobody said “Do you hail from Yokohama?” in Yanabe! You might hear “Didja come from Yokohama?” or “Ain’t you a Yokohama boy?” Kyūsuke felt as though such vulgar language would be out of place when talking to a refined boy such as Tarōzaemon. But Kyūsuke didn’t actually know how people talked outside of Yanabe, and so he had settled on a way of speech that was not used by anyone anywhere. If Tokuichi, Kaichi, or Heitarō had heard Kyūsuke’s garbled speech, he would have never heard the end of it. Thankfully, the only one around was Tarōzaemon. Being still unused to the area, he was probably making a mental note that that was how people talked in Yanabe.
“Mm-hm,” Tarōzaemon replied. Looking back to the red flowers, he continued, “My brother liked these. He was an artist.”
Kyūsuke was vaguely aware that an artist was someone who drew pictures, but, having never encountered one himself, he was at a loss for how to respond.
“He committed suicide the autumn before last. OD’ed on Veronal.”
Even Kyūsuke knew that to commit suicide meant to kill yourself, but neither Kyūsuke nor any of his friends had actually used the word, so he was a bit taken aback.
Tarōzaemon turned towards the gate of his house, but, thinking of something, doubled back to Kyūsuke. “Hold out your hand. I’ve got something for you.”
Tarōzaemon took out what looked like a fountain pen and shook it over Kyūsuke’s hand. A single tiny pellet fell out. Tarōzaemon dropped one into his own hand, tossed it into his mouth, and then headed inside.
Kyūsuke had taken the object for a pellet for an air rifle, but it didn’t have the lofty weightiness you would expect from such an object. So he did what Tarōzaemon had done and popped it in his mouth.
As he turned it over with his tongue, a sickly, bitter juice reached his taste buds as it dissolved. It tasted like the medicine he had to take when he got a cold. Just before Kyūsuke was about to spit it out, the bitterness abruptly changed to a cool, sweet flavor. It was so refreshing, that, alone on the street, he started to giggle. The heck is this? But then, with the tip of his tongue, he started to taste the bitterness again, turning his smile into a grimace. But Kyūsuke endured. Any minute it might turn sweet again. And sure enough, it did. Kyūsuke had figured out the trick of the little pellet. It alternated between being sweet and bitter. So the third time it turned bitter, he spat it out. It had dissolved, turning his spit red. He raised his head up and took in a deep breath of air. How refreshing it felt! It was like a blast of morning autumn air! Kyūsuke was so enamored with the pellet that he kept sucking in deep breaths the entire way home.
“Your breath smells fresh. Did you have a Jintan, Kyūsuke?” his mother asked him. This was the humiliating fashion in which Kyūsuke discovered breath mints. He had heard so much about them but never actually tried one.
Why had Kyūsuke found these commonplace little pellets so compelling? The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Tarōzaemon was a strange child indeed.
III
The gate to Tarōzaemon’s estate was about ten meters from the road. It was an old-fashioned gate, fitted with the sorts of rusted metal fixtures you’d see on the gates of an old temple. There was a small side gate which Tarōzaemon used when he was entering or leaving; besides that, it was always shut.
When Kyūsuke and Tarōzaemon would reach this point, Tarōzaemon would say “See ya!” or “Later!” or something, slip into the gate, and then latch it securely. And then all Kyūsuke could do was wonder what he was doing in there. Or to put it in grown-up terms, just what sort of life he was leading in there. However, Kyūsuke had never put much thought into going inside himself.
Kyūsuke was lost for words. The gate looked like something from another era. He didn’t like it.
The garden was smaller than you might expect. But something there grabbed Kyūsuke’s attention. It was a deep pond in the shape of a square filled with still, muddy-green water. Surrounding it was a stone wall so covered in moss no sign of the rocks remained. The water was green; the moss was green. Everything was green. And those occasional specks of red and white drifting in the green water? Those must have been koi fish. After several moments of looking in on the garden, a disagreeable, fishy scent started to invade Kyūsuke’s nostrils. The whole pond commanded some sort of atmosphere too austere for a child, so Kyūsuke put some distance between it and him.
Having already come this far, Kyūsuke made his way to the porch, where the wisteria was in bloom. The paper screen separating the porch from the inside had been left open when Tarōzaemon had gone inside, so Kyūsuke took a peek.
He saw a young lady in a yellow nightgown coming in from the other room, a fishbowl-sized lamp in one hand, the other shutting the sliding door behind her as she entered. She must have been Tarōzaemon’s older sister. Slim and pale, she looked like a porcelain doll. She groped around for a desk in the corner of the room and set the lamp down on it. Her eyes were wide open, but she was fumbling around. Was she blind? Kyūsuke was breathless as he watched her.
Next the young lady lit the lamp with a match. Then she sat down at the desk, and even though she was the only person in the room, started talking across from it.
“The first time Father voyaged to Marseilles, he found this lamp in a second-hand shop some ways from the harbor. It might be from the reign of Louix XVI!”
Kyūsuke was so struck motionless by this bizarre display. She wasn’t just blind; she was completely mad!
Afterwards, Tarōzaemon introduced his sister as “a loon” and explained, despite his laughter, what was going on. It all made sense to Kyūsuke. His sister was practicing for an art festival at her school. A storm had knocked out the power that night so Tarōzaemon’s sister was rehearsing her play by lamplight. It was some incomprehensible absurdity that involved a deceased brother, a lost toy, and a family dog which had gone missing one rainy night.
Kyūsuke now knew that the pale young lady was neither blind nor mad, and yet there was still something unnerving about her. He found himself drawn to her.
He watched as she continued speaking across the desk to her invisible, silent companion. “It was five, six years ago that little Aki died. It was a snowy night.” Here she appeared to pause so her partner could speak. She looked like she was listening carefully. “Oh? You didn’t know? It happened when we were playing hide-and-seek. We looked so long for him, but we couldn’t find him anywhere.”
The silent partner evidently made a joke, because the young lady started to chuckle. Then, unsatisfied with her laugh, she broke out into an all-out cackle.
This was more than Kyūsuke could take, and he went back home.
Whenever Kyūsuke passed by the gate to Tarōzaemon’s house, even if it was midday and the wisteria were in full bloom, he would always recall the eerie sight of the pale young woman in lamplight practicing her school play.
IV
Everybody got to know Tarōzaemon, though they were overly polite with him at first. But Tarōzaemon became more comfortable around his fellow students; before long, he was throwing down slang like a true hillbilly, and they dropped the formalities. Eventually Tarōzaemon was called neither that nor “Mr. Tarō.” (The only person who persisted in using “Mr. Tarō” was his homeroom teacher, Mr. Yamaguchi.) His fellow students had realized that there was nothing really special about Tarōzaemon after all. And also that he was a habitual liar.
“You can’t trust a word comes outta his mouth,” they would say. Kyūsuke was skeptical, but he also knew that there was a possibility that the rumors were true.
One day, Heitarō was acting stubborn and sullen towards his friends. Kyūsuke came to ask him why. Heitarō explained that Tarōzaemon had totally deceived him. Tarōzaemon had told Heitarō that there was a deep, deep valley carved into the mountains south of Umaga Pond. The cliffs on either side of the valley were perfectly parallel to each other. Tarōzaemon had told him there’s something fun you can do there. If you stand atop one cliff and yell “HEY!” facing the other, the echo will bounce off the first cliff, and then the second cliff, then return back to the first cliff, and then back to the second cliff. So, the “HEY!” will just keep echoing back and forth forever. (“He told me he read it in a science magazine! He had proof!”) So Heitarō took Tarōzaemon at his word and yesterday, when he had gone fishing at Umaga Pond, he had taken the opportunity to try this out. And what Tarōzaemon had said, in Heitarō’s words, was “bull!”
So Tarōzaemon is a liar after all, Kyūsuke thought. And then, for some reason, Kyūsuke thought about Tarōzaemon’s sister rehearsing her school play. The pale young woman who had replied to her partner’s words so naturally, even though nobody else was there.
A similar incident occurred later on. After a heavy thunderstorm had rained lightning down upon them, Tarōzaemon urged Shin’ichirō: “Let’s go look over there! A bird got hit by lightning and fell over there just now. Just about where they sell the cattle at the market.”
Shin’ichirō was doubtful, but he followed Tarōzaemon to the market grounds, where the grass was still wet. They trod over the ground looking in every nook and cranny, but they found nothing more than cow dung. Tarōzaemon had had them again.
V
“Check this out!” Tarōzaemon said. He had brought to school a round object about the size of a teapot lid.
Though Tarōzaemon was a well-known liar, this did not mean that his classmates were eternally vigilant. And with an unusual object such as this, it meant that many let their curiosity get the better of them.
Tarōzaemon claimed that it had been sold by a Chinaman in Yokohama. It was made of ivory, and if you held it up to your ear, you could hear music.
Each of the students tried it out in turn, starting with Tokuichi. They listened carefully and with great concentration, as if they were trying to hear a heartbeat through a stethoscope.
“You hear it, right?” Tarōzaemon asked. “It’s a mandolin—that’s like a Chinese string instrument.” Tokuichi gave a half-hearted nod of his head.
“It’s really quiet!” Tarōzaemon insisted, grinning.
“I can’t hear nothing!” Tokuichi shook the device and held it up to his ear again.
“Tarōzaemon’s just lying again!” Heitarō accused the boy. But this time, it was Heitarō whom nobody believed. This was because several days earlier, they had all seen Heitarō with something green, stinky, and unpleasant oozing out of his ear. They were all bitter that Heitarō had not tried to avoid the usual musical instruments.
Now it was Kyūsuke’s turn. The device he received was of smooth yellow ivory. One side was hollowed out, like the underside of a teapot lid. And in the center of that depression was a small protrusion, like an inverse belly button, with a tiny hole in it. That looked like the part you were supposed to put in your ear.
Kyūsuke heard something low and droning, like the humming of a motor. At first there was nothing else accompanying it. But as he listened on, sure enough, he was sure he heard, faintly, the plucking of strings.
“I hear it! I hear it!” Kyūsuke passed the object to the next person.
Some days passed, and soon the school was getting ready for the spring field trip. Kyūsuke had opened up the junk drawer in the cabinet looking for a compass. But what he found instead as he rummaged through the drawer was a round ivory object much like the one Tarōzaemon had brought to school. “I didn’t know we had one of these.”
Kyūsuke went to ask his father about the ivory object. He was told that it was used in smoking long ago, and it was called a bowl. It would use the still warm ashes to light your next bit of tobacco.
“So then what’s that little belly button thingy?” Kyūsuke asked angrily, and not a little foolishly.
When his father explained that it was just to run a string through, Kyūsuke had nothing to say. Tarōzaemon had gotten him hook, line, and sinker.
But why was Tarōzaemon going around lying his head off? It just made no sense.
Kyūsuke spent most of his days gazing discreetly at Tarōzaemon. One day, as he watched Tarōzaemon leaning comfortably on the window, he noticed something strange. Tarōzaemon eyes were different sizes: the right was bigger; and the left was smaller. And more bizarrely, the bigger one was beautiful and calm; while the smaller one held a devious, crafty twinkle.
As Kyūsuke pondered how strange this was, he noticed further distortions. Tarōzaemon’s ears were different in size and shape. Even his left and right nostrils were different sizes.
Kyūsuke’s mind was in overdrive. Maybe Tarōzaemon wasn’t one person at all, but two halves of two different people come together! Kyūsuke had seen how clay dolls were made. Each half of the doll was made in a different mold, and then at the end, both halves came together to form a complete doll. Perhaps humans were constructed the same way. Tarōzaemon might be a product of two unmatching halves of different sizes. Which would mean there were two people within him.
So, Kyūsuke reasoned, it might be understandable why Tarōzaemon would lie to everybody with no apparent motive.
VI
It was a clear Sunday at the end of May when all of Tarōzaemon’s fibbing finally caught up with him.
It did not begin under auspicious circumstances. Tokuichi, Kaichi, Heitarō, and Kyūsuke were out of their minds with boredom.
The wheat had already grown golden, and a frog’s croaking echoed from far-off. The untrodden road was white as a sheet of paper with reflected light.
All of the boys were fed up with this small-town living. Nothing exciting ever happened, like in books. They wanted to have their own adventure, or to do some deed that would cement them as heroes in the minds of the people.
As thoughts of heroic acts filled their heads, Tarōzaemon happened upon the boys and made a beeline for them, his eyes glittering. “Didja hear? There’s a great big whale just off the coast in Shin-Maiko! We’re talking like ten meters long.”
The boys put trust in Tarōzaemon’s words; after all, they had just been complaining that nothing happened in their area. And it might not be a total wash. Even if there was no whale in Shin-Maiko, everybody knew that in the summer there was plenty to see and do there.
They boys quickly decided to make the trip. Shin-Maiko was on the west coast of the peninsula, and the only road between there and here was a mountain pass. It was probably twelve or thirteen kilometers, but they were all full of energy, having nothing to expend it on. The longer the better.
Kyūsuke and friends departed with Tarōzaemon in tow. Not one of them thought to check in with their parents before they left. They felt lighter than air as they skipped cheerily down the road. Returning, they reasoned, would be just as easy.
After some time of galloping and chasing each other down the path, they advised one another to save some of their strength for the return trip, and so they fell into a more normal gait.
White roses were in bloom above the verdant green of the fields. Bees were buzzing between them. Clusters of pine buds stretched out from the trees.
They fell silent as they passed Handa Pond and began the long climb up through the pass. Any speech would be dismissed as a distraction. The weariness was starting to accumulate in their bones.
As the day wore on, the boys continued mindlessly along. It seemed like the light was starting to lessen. The sun was favoring the western sky, but none of the boys raised the idea of turning back. They marched on as if ordered.
As they passed the town of Ōno and at last reached the coast of Shin-Maiko, the sun had already slipped below the western sea.
The five of them were exhausted and unsightly. They bathed their feet on the shore. Absentmindedly, they looked out to sea. Not a whale to be found. Tarōzaemon had gotten them again!
But the matter at hand was not whether or not there was a whale off the coast. Even if there had been, none of the boys cared any longer to see it.
Exhausted from their long voyage, the only coherent thought in any of the boys’ heads was this: just how are we going to get home?
For the very first time, the children became aware of the fact that they had not yet reached the age of reason. Exhausted and unable to walk another step, they were all too keenly aware of the fact that they were impulsive children.
All of a sudden, Tokuichi, the most mischievous and rough-and-tumble of them, started to cry. As if in imitation, Heitarō, too, began wailing. Spurred on by his friends, Kyūsuke broke into a strange sort of weeping. Kaichi was next; he sucked in a deep breath and began an all-out bawling.
Surprised at the volume of their calamitous chorus, each of the boys stopped as abruptly as they had started, and the reality of their situation overtook them a second time.
Though four of the boys had had their cry, Tarōzaemon had not. He was just drawing shapes in the sand with a sea-shell he had found.
It was a troubling situation to have a non-crier seated right next to four criers. As Kyūsuke had cried himself out, he kept looking over at the other boy, hoping that he would start crying along with them. Yet again he thought about how impossible to understand Tarōzaemon was.
The sun completed its journey, returning the sea to its blue color. Kyūsuke was the first to exhaust his supply of tears. Then it went Kaichi, Heitarō, and Tokuichi, in reverse order, like cicadas ceasing to buzz.
After all the crying was done, Tarōzaemon spoke up. “Let’s go back to Ōno. I’ve got relatives there, and we can take the train back.”
All of the boys leapt to their feet, even this small hope enough to spur them on. But their energy vanished as soon as it was spurred when they realized that it was none other than Tarōzaemon who had voiced this idea. Anybody other than Tarōzaemon having such an idea would have replenished their courage.
By the time they got back to Ōno, the boys could no longer contain their anxiety and started pestering Tarōzaemon, “Are you for real? Is this a joke?” No matter how much Tarōzaemon assured them that it was, they couldn’t quite believe him.
Kyūsuke no longer had faith in Tarōzaemon. He was impossible to understand, an outsider whose way of looking at the world was totally different. He saw Tarōzaemon’s sharp visage from the side, surrounded by the other boys. It made him think of a fox’s.
“Um, I think it’s this way?” Tarōzaemon muttered to himself as they reached the center of town. As he looked down this alley, and that lane, the other boys started to feel like their savior was a false prophet. Or that he was just lying. Either way, the situation seemed hopeless.
But then all of a sudden Tarōzaemon started galloping down a path. “C’mon! It’s this way!” he called back at them.
Their faces were hard to see in the dim light, but it was as though life had poured back into the four boys. They forgot the stiffness in their legs and dashed off after Tarōzaemon.
Hold up a minute, Kyūsuke thought to himself. They were in such a state of ecstasy that he felt like they were running away from happiness. After all, it was Tarōzaemon. You couldn’t trust him. It was likely this was just another trick.
So when they came to a stop outside a small shop with clocks in its illuminated windows, Kyūsuke was sure that Tarōzaemon had pulled his greatest swindle yet. But it turned out that this was indeed Tarōzaemon’s relatives’ house.
When Tarōzaemon’s aunt heard the story, she said in astonishment, “My my! All of you… well, my, my!”
We’re saved, Kyūsuke thought. The strength went out of his legs and he collapsed onto the porch.
Tarōzaemon’s uncle took them to the station and got them on a train to Yanabe. They sprawled out on the seats, not saying a word to one another. Exhausted in body and spirit, all they wanted was to bask in the calmness.
This is the only time Tarōzaemon wasn’t lying, Kyūsuke thought as he crawled into his warm bed. When it came down to a life or death situation, he told the truth. He’s not totally impossible to understand!
No matter how oddly a person sees the world, or how impossible to understand they seem, everybody, when it comes down to it, thinks the same way. Kyūsuke realized that at the base of that common root of humanity, everybody can understand one another. This thought was terribly soothing to him, and he drifted off to sleep, the sound of the waves still echoing in his ears.