Tales grotesque and curious

the hardships of life themselves. But though our laughter did not grow louder, after a moment the jujitsu champion sitting beside me suddenly put aside his “Chivalrous World” and stood up with the fierceness of a tiger. And as I wondered what he was going to do, he said, “Sensei, we attend this class to be taught English. So if you don’t teach it to us, there’s no need of our staying in this class-room. If you go on talking like that, I shall go at once to the gymnasium.” With that, he made as sour a face as he could and took his seat again most fiercely. I have never seen a man look so strange as Mōri Sensei did then. With his mouth still half open as if he had been struck by lightning, he simply stood like a poker by the stove for a minute or two gazing into that impetuous student’s face. But finally that imploring expression rushed into his animalish eyes and set them alight, and he suddenly put his hand to that purple necktie of his and lowering his bald head two or three times, said, “Yes, I’m at fault. I’ve done wrong, so I apologize sincerely. To be sure, you’re all here to study English. I did wrong not to teach you English. Since I’ve done wrong, I apologize sincerely. You understand, don’t you? I apologize sincerely.” And he repeated the same sort of thing over and over again, smiling such a smile that he seemed almost to be weeping. Through the door of the stove, the fire cast a red light aslant across his figure, making the worn places on his coat at the shoulders and waist stand out more clearly. At the same time, his bald head, every time he ducked it, shone with a fine coppery gloss and looked even more like an ostrich egg. But this pitiful scene then seemed to me but the exposing of this teacher’s essential inferiority. Now he was trying to escape the danger of losing his job even by humoring his students. So he was a teacher because he had to be to make a living and not because he had any interest in education itself. While hazily making such criticism, I now felt contempt not only for his clothes and scholarship, but for his character as well, and I rested my chin in my hands on my “Choice Reader” and hurled at him one impertinent laugh after another, as he stood in front of the blazing stove being burned at the stake, as it were, both in spirit and in the flesh. Of course I was not the only one. The jujitsu champion who had cornered him, when he turned red and apologized, cast a momentary glance my way and, smiling a cunning smile, promptly began again to “study” that adventure story of Oshikawa Shunro’s under his reader. And until the bugle sounded for recess, our Mōri Sensei, more confused than ever, went on trying desperately to translate poor Longfellow. Deep down in my ears still rings his shrill, almost choking, voice, as with the perspiration beading his sallow round face and his eyes constantly pleading for something unknown, he read, “Life is real, life is earnest.” But the cry of millions of miserable human beings hidden in that shrill voice was too deep to stimulate our ear drums in those days. So there were many besides myself who even yawned brazenly aloud as we grew more and more weary during that hour. But Mōri Sensei, holding his small body erect in front of the stove, and utterly oblivious of the flying snow coating the window panes, went on brandishing his reader incessantly and shouting desperately as if a spring in his head had suddenly unwound. “Life is real, life is earnest! Life is real, life is earnest!” * * * * * Consequently, when the school term for which he had been employed was over and we could see Mōri Sensei no more, we were glad and never felt the least regret. No, I might better say that we were so indifferent to his going that we did not even feel glad. I, especially, was so entirely lacking in graciousness that, as I grew to manhood during seven or eight years, passing through the middle school, the high school and the university, I practically forgot the very existence of such a teacher. Then in the autumn of the year of my graduation from the university,--I say the autumn, but it was the night of one of those rainy days toward the beginning of December when dense mist often comes down in the evening, and when the willows and plane trees along the avenues had long since shed their yellow leaves. After diligently searching at the second-hand book stores in Kanda for some German books, which had become most scarce since the beginning of the European war, and finally buying one or two, suddenly as I was passing the Nakanishiya, keeping out the all but motionless chill night air of late autumn with my turned-up overcoat collar, I somehow felt a longing for noisy human voices and warm drinks and stepped casually into a café there. But when I once got in, I found that the room, though small, was bare-looking, and there was not a single customer. On the marble-topped tables sitting in rows, only the gilding on the sugar bowls reflected the electric light coldly. With a lonely feeling, as if I had been deceived by some one, I went over to a table in front of a built-in mirror on the wall and sat down. Then I ordered a cup of coffee from the waiter who came to me and, taking out a cigar abruptly, finally, after striking many matches, got it lighted. And soon there stood on the table before me a steaming cup of coffee, but still my spirits, having once fallen, seemed, like the low-hanging mist outside, not easily to be dissipated. The books I had just bought at the second-hand book stores were books on philosophy printed in fine type, and here it would have been painful for me to read a single page even of such distinguished discourses. Wherefore, because I could do nothing else, I rested my head on the back of my chair and, sipping Brazilian coffee and puffing my Havana by turns, allowed my purposeless gaze to stray at random into the mirror just in front of my nose. In it were reflected distinctly and coldly just like a part of a stage setting, first of all the side of a staircase leading up to the second floor, then the opposite wall, a door painted white and the advertisement of a concert hung up on the wall. Yes, and besides, the marble-topped tables. And there was a big potted pine, and an electric lamp hanging from the ceiling. A big gas heating stove of porcelain was also visible. And I could see in front of the stove in a circle three or four waiters talking together earnestly. And then,--it was just as, inspecting the objects in the mirror one by one, I came to these waiters in front of the stove. I was startled by the sight of a guest who, surrounded by the waiters, was seated at a table. The reason he had not attracted my attention up to that time was probably that, with the waiters all around him, I had unconsciously taken him for a cook of the café or something. But what startled me then was not only the fact that I had found a guest where I had thought there was none. It was that although only the profile of the man in the mirror was visible, from the shape of that bald head like an ostrich egg, the look of that green and rusty morning coat and the shade of that everlasting purple necktie, I knew at a glance that he was Mōri Sensei. As soon as I recognized him, the seven or eight years that had passed since we parted came suddenly into my mind. A class monitor in a middle school studying the “Choice Reader” and myself there then calmly blowing the smoke of a cigar through my nose,--for me, those years could by no means be thought short. But could it be true that the current of time, which sweeps away all things, had not been able to do anything to this Mōri Sensei, who had already risen above time? He who was now sharing a table with these waiters in a night café was unmistakably the teacher who had in days long past taught reading in that class-room into which the westering sun never shone. Nor had his bald head changed. And his purple necktie was the same. And then that shrill voice,--even now, was he not lifting that shrill voice up and busily explaining something to the waiters? Smiling unconsciously and forgetting all unawares the melancholy I had not been able to escape, I listened attentively. “Look, this adjective here modifies that noun. You see, Napoleon is the name of a person, so it’s called a noun. You see, don’t you? Then if you look at that noun, directly after it,--do you know what this is directly after it? Eh? You, what do you think?” “It’s a relative--a relative noun,” ventured one of the waiters stammering. “What, a relative noun? There’s no such thing as a relative noun. It’s a relative--er--a relative pronoun? Yes, that’s it, a relative pronoun, you see. It’s a pronoun, so look, it stands for the noun ‘Napoleon!’ Doesn’t it? The word ‘pronoun’ means ‘for a name’, doesn’t it?” From the talk, it seemed that Mōri Sensei was teaching English to the café waiters. Then I edged my chair over and looked into the mirror at a different angle. As I expected, a book that looked like a reader lay open on the table. Mōri Sensei, busily pointing with his finger to the page, seemed never to get tired of explaining. And in this, too, he was the same as of old. Only the waiters now standing around him, different from the students of that time, were listening attentively to his excited explanations, all with their eyes shining and their shoulders crowded together. While I looked for a few minutes at the scene in the mirror, a warm feeling for Mōri Sensei floated gradually to the surface of my consciousness. Should I go to him and compare notes with him after our long separation? But he probably would not remember me, whom he had seen only in a class-room during one short term. Even if he did remember me,--I suddenly recalled that malicious laughter which we had showered upon him in those days and thought it would be showing more respect for him not to introduce myself after all. So having finished my coffee, I threw away the stub of my cigar and got up stealthily, when, though I had tried to move quietly, I seemed after all to have attracted his attention. At the moment I left my chair, all at once he turned that sallow round face, that slightly soiled turn-down collar and that purple necktie my way. At that instant his animalish eyes met mine in the mirror. But as I had expected, there was no sign in them that he had met an old acquaintance. The only thing glittering in them was that same old sorrowful glance that seemed always to be pleading for something. With my eyes cast down, I took the bill the waiter brought and went silently to the desk by the door to pay it. There the head waiter, with whom I was slightly acquainted, was sitting languidly with his hair sprucely parted. “There’s a man over there teaching English. Is he employed to teach in this café?”, I asked as I paid my bill, and he, gazing out into the street and looking bored, replied, “No, he’s not employed. He only comes every night and teaches like that. They say he’s an old has-been English teacher whom nobody will employ anywhere, so he probably comes here to kill time. He orders a cup of coffee and sits in on us all evening, so we’re not over-pleased.” When I heard this, Mōri Sensei’s sorrowful glance always pleading for something unknown came suddenly before my eyes. Ah, Mōri Sensei! At that moment I felt that I had been able for the first time dimly to understand him, to understand his sturdy character. If there is such a thing as a born educator, he was surely one. It was as impossible for him to stop teaching English as to stop breathing. If he were forced to stop, his splendid vitality would droop instantly just like a plant