To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (3 page)

The man's attitude did not seem that ridiculous to Keitaro, but caused him to wonder whether his friend had deliberately chosen his words with an awareness of their philosophical implications or whether he was unable to express himself in words other than these because of ignorance.

Suddenly Morimoto, holding his head upright, continued, "Well, if you like, how about a railway job? If you have no objection, should I talk to someone?"

Romantic as he was, Keitaro could not imagine that a good position could be obtained through the influence of this man. On the other hand, Keitaro was not that sophisticated to feel that a kind-hearted suggestion dropped so casually was made merely to poke fun at him. He did not know what answer to give, so he merely smiled and called the maid to tell her to bring in Morimoto's lunch together with his own and some sake too.

At the start Morimoto said he had been abstaining from drink recently because of his health. Nevertheless, he emptied his sake cup as soon as Keitaro filled it. And when he finally said, "Let this be the last," he took up the sake container and helped himself. He was usually a quiet man with an easy, careless air about him. But as he drank one cup after another, his quietness took on an ardor, and his carelessness seemed to swell out larger and larger.

"Now I'm equal to anything," he began bragging. "I wouldn't be the least bit worried if they fired me tomorrow." When he noticed Keitaro, who was a poor drinker, keeping him company by taking a sip every now and then as if he only just remembered the cup before him, Morimoto went on, "You really can't drink, can you, Tagawa-san? Strange, you don't like sake, and you love adventure. Yet all adventure begins with drink and ends with a woman."

A few minutes before, he had been disparaging his past life as worthless. But now elated with drink, he changed radically and began talking big, a halo, as it were, reflecting back on himself. And most of his bragging was about his failures.

"Why, my friend," he dared to say as if in defiance of Keitaro, "let me tell you—you're fresh from school and know nothing of the world yet. Let anyone display his M.A. or Ph.D. as much as he wants. I wouldn't be cowed in the least. I know better—I'm all practice and experience." He spoke in a challenging and rude way, as though he had completely forgotten the deep respect he had paid a moment earlier to education. But suddenly with a sigh as loud as a belch, he began to complain about his ignorance.

"In a word, I've gotten along in this world like an ape. I flatter myself that I know ten times as much of the world as you do, yet I'm still bound to earthly passions. That's because of my ignorance, my total lack of education. Though you know, of course, an educated man wouldn't be allowed the kind of varied life I've had."

Since Keitaro had for a while been looking upon Morimoto as if he were a pitiable pioneer, he had been listening to him with considerable attention. But whether or not it was the effect of the sake Keitaro had treated him to, Morimoto's talk, to his listener's regret, tended toward bombast and complaint rather than to those characteristic stories of his which usually excited in Keitaro a pure interest in listening. Keitaro eventually brought the drinking to an end, but Morimoto's talk still remained ungratifying. So Keitaro made some fresh tea and, offering the other a cup, said, "I always find stories of your experience quite interesting. Not only that, but they're profitable to someone as inexperienced as I am. So I'm grateful to you. But of all the things you've done, what do you think was the most exciting?"

Morimoto, remaining silent, blew on the hot tea, his bloodshot eyes blinking a few times. "Well," he said at last after he emptied the deep cup, "looking back on those things I did, all of them seem both interesting and worthless at the same time, so I can't tell which is which. Now, when you say exciting, do you mean something with a woman in it?"

"Not necessarily, but I have no objection to a woman's having something to do with it."

"Now I see that you prefer such a story—but to be serious, Tagawa-san, whether exciting or not, I once had a life that seemed to me more carefree than any I know of in the world. Shall I tell you something to gossip about over tea?"

Keitaro's response was immediate.

"Then let me go to the toilet first," Morimoto said rising, "but I warn you—there's no woman involved. In fact, there are few human beings."

With these words behind him, Morimoto left the room. Keitaro, his curiosity aroused, waited for him to return.

Five minutes passed while he waited and then ten, but the adventurer failed to reappear. Getting impatient, Keitaro at last went down to the toilet, but Morimoto wasn't there. Just to make sure, he went upstairs again to try Morimoto's room. The
shoji
was open a few inches, and Morimoto was lying in the middle of the room, his head resting on one bent arm, his back toward the entrance. Keitaro called out two or three times, but the other gave no sign of moving. Good-natured as Keitaro was, he was annoyed, so entering without permission, he grabbed Morimoto by the neck and shook him vigorously. Morimoto half jumped to his feet with a cry, as though he had unexpectedly been stung by a wasp. But no sooner did he look back at Keitaro's face than he lapsed again into dreamy eyes, saying, "Is it you? Perhaps I drank too much—I felt a little sick. So I came back to rest a few minutes and dozed off."

Since the excuse had no mockery in it, Keitaro could no longer be angry. But he realized that the story he was so eager to hear was as much as brought to a halt, so he decided to return to his room alone. Morimoto, however, came after him saying, "Sorry. Thanks for coming in."

Back in Keitaro's room, Morimoto sat up straight with knees folded squarely on the same cushion he had been sitting on before. "Now then," he began, "shall I start my story of the world's most unique, carefree life?"

The story he termed the most carefree life involved an experience that he had had more than a dozen years ago while he was traveling through the interior of Hokkaido as a survey engineer. Night after night his party pitched its tent in places devoid of human habitation. As soon as work at a particular region was finished, the tent was carried to the next site. As Morimoto had said earlier, it was only natural that no women appeared in the story.

"Imagine the difficulty of making your way by cutting a path through bamboo twenty feet high!" He held his hand above his head to show how high the bamboo grew and then proceeded to tell about seeing coiled adders lying on either side of the newly cut path, enjoying the morning sun shining on their scales. From a safe distance, one of Morimoto's companions would hold down an adder with a long stick while another man beat it to death. "Then they'd broil the flesh and eat it."

"How did it taste?" asked Keitaro.

"I don't remember that well," he replied, "but it was sort of between fish and meat."

At night they would fling their exhausted bodies under thick piles of bamboo leaves and twigs with which they had covered the ground inside the tent. But sometimes they spent the night around a fire they had made outside, and on such occasions they often saw huge bears right before their eyes. The group always used a mosquito net to ward off the numerous insects. Once they took it down to a stream in a valley and caught fish with it. That night and some nights thereafter they were troubled by a fishy smell from the net. All this was part of what Morimoto had called his carefree life.

He also talked about trying every kind of edible mushroom. One called
masu-dake
was as big as a large tray, and when cut into pieces and boiled in
miso
soup, it tasted exactly like fishpaste; another called
tsukimi-dake
was a monster of a mushroom, huge as a circle made by two outstretched arms, but to the regret of the party inedible; and then there was one called
nezumi-dake,
which was pretty, like trefoil root. Of these mushrooms Morimoto gave detailed accounts. He also added that he used to pick wild grapes, put them in a large hat, and eat so many so often that he roughened his tongue to the point where he couldn't even eat rice.

Morimoto's story did not end with his episode of eating. He also recounted the miserable experience of his party's having no food for an entire week. This had occurred when the carriers had gone down to a village for rice. The route lay along the bottom of a ravine, and after the party had descended, heavy rains suddenly filled the valley with flood-like torrents, making it impossible for the carriers to ascend with heavy loads of rice on their backs. Almost starving to death, Morimoto lay stretched out, simply gazing upward at the sky until he became so dazed he could no longer tell day from night.

"When you don't eat or drink that long, you have no excrement, I suppose?" Keitaro asked.

"Well yes, I still had some," Morimoto answered in an easy tone.

Keitaro couldn't help smiling. But what was even more humorous was Morimoto's description of the heavy winds he had experienced. While on this surveying trip through a wild tract thick with pampas grass, his party had once been caught in a gale so violent they couldn't hold their faces against it. They had crept on all fours into a dense wood nearby. Huge trees measuring a few arm spans around were being whipped and swayed by these gusts, boughs and branches making tremendous sounds. The trees were shaking even to their roots, the result being that the ground the party was creeping along shook as if from an earthquake.

"Then you weren't able to keep standing even sheltered in the woods?" asked Keitaro.

"We were lying flat on the ground!" Morimoto replied.

Keitaro burst out laughing in spite of himself, for he could not believe that even such violent winds could have been powerful enough to cause an earthquake by moving the roots of huge trees extended deeply underground. Morimoto also began laughing aloud as if the story were someone else's, but when he finished laughing, he suddenly turned serious, his hand stretched out as if to stop Keitaro's mouth.

"It may sound funny, but it is true. I know I'm a crude person, one who's had some rather out-of-the-ordinary experiences—things that are not up to common sense— yet it's true, although I must admit that it might seem quite unbelievable to you with all your learning. But let me tell you, Tagawa-san, there are many odd things in this world besides the gale I just spoke about, and although you seem to be hankering after such things, you must give them up. You're a university graduate, you know. And when the time comes, in nine cases out of ten you'll only think of your own status anyway. Even if you are determined to lower it, none of you students nowadays have that much curiosity to throw away your positions to go wandering about in the world as they did in the old days to avenge a parent's murder or something. In fact, you're safe from such whims because the people around you won't allow you to carry them out."

To Keitaro, these words sounded like those of a man in exultation as well as adversity. He thought a life so removed from the beaten track might, as Morimoto had asserted, be impossible for an ordinary university graduate. But not content to admit it, he said in a deliberately contradictory tone, "Yes, I am a university graduate. Yet I haven't yet found any of those positions you make so much of. In fact, I'm tired of looking around for one."