Natsume Soseki - Kusamakura

“Eh? A fine massage like that gives everyone a lift.â€​

“I feel as if my head’s about to fly off.â€​

“Feeling limp and feeble, are we? It’s al to do with the weather. Spring sure does make the old body go al floppy, doesn’t it? Ah wel , have a smoke. You’l be feeling bored, al alone there at Shioda’s. Drop over for a chat. We old Tokyoites, we got lots in common the others wouldn’t understand, eh? So that girl comes along and says hel o to you, does she? No sense of right and wrong, that’s the trouble with her.â€​

“Weren’t you just going to tel me something about her when suddenly dandruff was flying around and my head almost went with it?â€​

“True enough, true enough. Can’t keep a story together in this sil y head of mine. Right, so then that priest fel er gets al funny for her . .

.â€​

“What priest is that?â€​

“That useless underling of a fel ow at Kankaiji temple.â€​

“I haven’t come across any priest in the story yet, underling or otherwise.â€​

“That so? Sorry, I’m a bit hasty. Fine figure of a fel er he was, sort of priest who’d be hot for the ladies, bit of you-know-what. Ends up he sends a letter—hey there, hang on a moment. Did he come after her? Nah, it was a letter right enough. And then—there was, um—gone’n gotten a bit muddled here. Ah, right, yes, that’s it. Big surprise, right?â€​

“Who got surprised?â€​

“She did.â€​

“She got a surprise when she received the letter?â€​

“Wel , it’d be another matter if she was the modest sort who’d get surprised, wouldn’t it. Dear me, no, not her, nothing’d surprise that one.â€​

“So who got surprised, then?â€​

“The fel er what came after her.â€​

“But you said he didn’t come after her.â€​

“Right. Got it around my neck a bit, too impatient. Gets a letter.â€​

“So it was the woman, then.â€​

“No, no, the man.â€​

“You mean the priest.â€​

“Sure, the priest.â€​

“So why was the priest surprised?â€​

“Why? Wel , he’s in the hal saying sutras with the abbot when suddenly in she rushes.†The barber snickers. “She’s a loony right enough.â€​

“Did she do something?â€​

“‘If you love me so much, let’s make love right here in front of the Buddha,’ says she, just like that, and she throws herself around Taian’s neck.â€​

“Good heavens.â€​

“Real y shook ’im up, it did. Goes and sends a letter to a loony, and now just look at the shame she’s caused him. So that night away he creeps, and puts an end to ’imself.â€​

“He died?â€​

“Must’ve. How could he live after a thing like that?â€​

“How bizarre.â€​

“Darn right. Stil , if the other party’s a loony, you’d be pretty depressed if you’d put an end to yerself, so maybe he’s stil alive, who knows?â€​

“It’s a fascinating story.â€​

“Fascinating? Why, the whole vil age was laughin’ fit to bust. But as for her, she’s crazy of course, so she just went about calm as you please, didn’t turn a hair. Wel , a fine sensible gentleman like yerself, sir, there’d be no trouble of that sort, but bein’ who she is, you’d only have to tease her a bit, say, and who knows what mightn’t happen.â€​

“Perhaps I’l tread a bit careful y, then,â€​ I say with a laugh.

A salty spring breeze wafts up from the warm shore, and the barbershop curtain over the door flaps drowsily. The reflection of a swal ow flashes across the mirror as the slanting shape comes diving in beneath the curtain to its nest under the eaves. An old man of sixty or so is squatting under the eaves of the house across the road, quietly shucking shel fish. Each click of his knife against a shel sends another red sliver of flesh tumbling into the depths of the bamboo basket, fol owed by a sudden glitter as another empty shel flies across a shimmering band of light to land two feet or so away. Is it oysters, or surf clams, or perhaps razor clams, lying there in that high mound of empty shel s? Here and there the midden has col apsed, and some of its shel s have slipped down to lie on the floor of the sandy stream behind, carried out of the transient world to a burial in the realm of darkness. No sooner is a shel ’s burial completed than a fresh one is added to the pile beneath the wil ow. The old man works on, tossing shel after shel through the shimmering sunlight, never pausing to ponder their fate. His basket seems bottomless, his spring day an endless tranquil expanse of time.

The sandy stream runs beneath a little bridge a bare twelve feet or so long and bears its waters on toward the shore. Out there where its spring flow joins the shining spring sea, fathoms of fishing nets are looped up to dry in an uneven jumble of lengths. Perhaps it is these that impart to the soft breeze, blowing in through the nets to the vil age, a warm, pungent smel of fish. That sluggish silver visible beyond the nets, like a dul sword melted to a shimmering swim of molten metal, is the sea.

This scene is utterly at odds with the barber beside me. If his character were more forceful, able to hold its own in my mind against the bril iance of the scene that lies al about him, I would be overwhelmed by the wild incongruity between the two. Fortunately, however, the barber is not so strikingly impressive. However overflowing he is with the old Tokyoite’s bravado, no matter how he might bluster and swagger, the man is no match for the vast and harmonious serenity of the circumambient air. This barber, who does his best to shatter the prevailing atmosphere with his display of self-satisfied garrulousness, has swiftly become no more than a tiny particle floating deep in the far reaches of the felicitous spring sunlight. A contradiction, after al , cannot arise where the relative strength, substance, or indeed spirit and body of the two elements are irreconcilable; it can be felt only when two things or people are on a similar level. If the discrepancy between them is too vast, al contradictory relationship may wel final y evaporate and vanish, and the two instead come to play a single part in the great life force. For this reason the man of talent can act in the service of the great, the fool can be an assistant to the man of talent, and the ox and horse can support the fool. My barber is simply enacting a farce against the backdrop of the spring scene’s infinity. Far from destroying the tranquil ity of spring, he is in fact achingly augmenting the sensation of it. I find myself savoring my chance encounter with such a happy-go-lucky pantomime buffoon on this vernal day. This ebul ient braggart, al puff and no substance, provides in fact the perfect touch to set off the day’s deep serenity.

In this state of mind, it strikes me that my barber is a fine subject for a picture or a poem, so I remain squatting there companionably, chatting about this and that, long past the time I should have left. Then suddenly a little priest’s shaved head slips in between the shop curtains.

“Excuse me, could you do me a shave?†he says, and in he comes. He’s a very jol y-looking little priest, in a white cotton gown with a padded rope belt and a black priest’s robe of coarse gauze draped over it.

“RyÅ​nen! How’s it going? I’l bet the abbot told you off the other day for dawdling, huh?â€​