第 十三 章 · IN CHOLERA-TIME

. IN CHOLERA-TIME

I

China's chief ally in the late war, being deaf and blind, knew

nothing, and still knows nothing, of treaties or of peace. It

followed the returning armies of Japan, invaded the victorious

empire, and killed about thirty thousand people during the hot

season. It is still slaying; and the funeral pyres burn

continually. Sometimes the smoke and the odor come wind-blown

into my garden down from the hills behind the town, just to

remind me that the cost of burning an adult of my own size is

eighty sen,--about half a dollar in American money at the present

rate of exchange.

From the upper balcony of my house, the whole length of a

Japanese street, with its rows of little shops, is visible down

to the bay. Out of various houses in that street I have seen

cholera-patients conveyed to the hospital,--the last one (only

this morning) my neighbor across the way, who kept a porcelain

shop. He was removed by force, in spite of the tears and cries of

his family. The sanitary law forbids the treatment of cholera in

private houses; yet people try to hide their sick, in spite of

fines and other penalties, because the public cholera-hospitals

are overcrowded and roughly managed, and the patients are

entirely separated from all who love them. But the police are not

often deceived: they soon discover unreported cases, and come

with litters and coolies. It seems cruel; but sanitary law must

be cruel. My neighbor's wife followed the litter, crying, until

the police obliged her to return to her desolate little shop. It

is now closed up, and will probably never be opened again by the

owners.

Such tragedies end as quickly as they begin. The bereaved, so

soon as the law allows, remove their pathetic belongings, and

disappear; and the ordinary life of the street goes on, by day

and by night, exactly as if nothing particular had happened.

Itinerant venders, with their bamboo poles and baskets or buckets

or boxes, pass the empty houses, and utter their accustomed

cries; religious processions go by, chanting fragments of sutras;

the blind shampooer blows his melancholy whistle; the private

watchman makes his heavy staff boom upon the gutter-flags; the

boy who sells confectionery still taps his drum, and sings a

love-song with a plaintive sweet voice, like a girl's:--

"_You and I together_.... I remained long; yet in the moment of

going I thought I had only just come.

"_You and I together_.... Still I think of the tea. Old or new

tea of Uji it might have seemed to others; but to me it was

Gyokoro tea, of the beautiful yellow of the yamabuki flower.

"_You and I together_.... I am the telegraph-operator; you are

the one who waits the message. I send my heart, and you receive

it. What care we now if the posts should fall, if the wires be

broken?"

And the children sport as usual. They chase one another with

screams and laughter; they dance in chorus; they catch

dragon-flies and tie them to long strings; they sing burdens of

the war, about cutting off Chinese heads:--

"_Chan-chan bozu no

Kubi wo hane!_"

Sometimes a child vanishes; but the survivers continue their

play. And this is wisdom.

It costs only forty-four sen to burn a child. The son of one of

my neighbors was burned a few days ago. The little stones with

which he used to play lie there in the sun just as he left

them.... Curious, this child-love of stones! Stones are the toys

not only of the children of the poor, but of all children at one

period of existence: no matter how well supplied with other

playthings, every Japanese child wants sometimes to play with

stones. To the child-mind a stone is a marvelous thing, and ought

so to be, since even to the understanding of the mathematician

there can be nothing more wonderful than a common stone. The tiny

urchin suspects the stone to be much more than it seems, which is

an excellent suspicion; and if stupid grown-up folk did not

untruthfully tell him that his plaything is not worth thinking

about, he would never tire of it, and would always be finding

something new and extraordinary in it. Only a very great mind

could answer all a child's questions about stones.

According to popular faith, my neighbor's darling is now playing

with small ghostly stones in the Dry Bed of the River of Souls,

--wondering, perhaps, why they cast no shadows. The true poetry

in the legend of the Sai-no-Kawara is the absolute naturalness of

its principal idea,--the phantom-continuation of that play which

all little Japanese children play with stones.

II

The pipe-stem seller used to make his round with two large boxes

suspended from a bamboo pole balanced upon his shoulder:

one box containing stems of various diameters, lengths, and

colors, together with tools for fitting them into metal pipes;

and the other box containing a baby,--his own baby. Sometimes I

saw it peeping over the edge of the box, and smiling at the

passers-by; sometimes I saw it lying, well wrapped up and fast

asleep, in the bottom of the box; sometimes I saw it playing with

toys. Many people, I was told, used to give it toys. One of the

toys bore a curious resemblance to a mortuary tablet (ihai); and

this I always observed in the box, whether the child were asleep

or awake.

The other day I discovered that the pipe-stem seller had

abandoned his bamboo pole and suspended boxes. He was coming up

the street with a little hand-cart just big enough to hold his

wares and his baby, and evidently built for that purpose in two

compartments. Perhaps the baby had become too heavy for the more

primitive method of conveyance. Above the cart fluttered a small

white flag, bearing in cursive characters the legend _Ki-seru-rao

kae_ (pipe-stems exchanged), and a brief petition for "honorable

help," _O-tasuke wo negaimasu_. The child seemed well and happy;

and I again saw the tablet-shaped object which had so often

attracted my notice before. It was now fastened upright to a high

box in the cart facing the infant's bed. As I watched the cart

approaching, I suddenly felt convinced that the tablet was really

an ihai: the sun shone full upon it, and there was no mistaking

the conventional Buddhist text. This aroused my curiosity; and I

asked Manyemon to tell the pipe-stem seller that we had a number

of pipes needing fresh stems,--which was true. Presently the

cartlet drew up at our gate, and I went to look at it.

The child was not afraid, even of a foreign face,--a pretty boy.

He lisped and laughed and held out his arms, being evidently used

to petting; and while playing with him I looked closely at the

tablet. It was a Shinshu ihai, bearing a woman's kaimyo, or

posthumous name; and Manyemon translated the Chinese characters

for me: _Revered and of good rank in the Mansion of Excellence,

the thirty-first day of the third month of the twenty-eighth year

of Meiji_. Meantime a servant had fetched the pipes which needed

new stems; and I glanced at the face of the artisan as he worked.

It was the face of a man past middle age, with those worn,

sympathetic lines about the mouth, dry beds of old smiles, which

give to so many Japanese faces an indescribable expression of

resigned gentleness. Presently Manyemon began to ask questions;

and when Manyemon asks questions, not to reply is possible for

the wicked only. Sometimes behind that dear innocent old head I

think I see the dawning of an aureole,--the aureole of the

Bosatsu.

The pipe-stem seller answered by telling his story. Two months

after the birth of their little boy, his wife had died. In the

last hour of her illness she had said: "From what time I die till

three full years be past I pray you to leave the child always

united with the Shadow of me: never let him be separated from my

ihai, so that I may continue to care for him and to nurse him--

since thou knowest that he should have the breast for three

years. This, my last asking, I entreat thee, do not forget." But

the mother being dead, the father could not labor as he had been

wont to do, and also take care of so young a child, requiring

continual attention both night and day; and he was too poor to

hire a nurse. So he took to selling pipe-stems, as he could thus

make a little money without leaving the child even for a minute

alone. He could not afford to buy milk; but he had fed the boy

for more than a year with rice gruel and cane syrup.

I said that the child looked very strong, and none the worse for

lack of milk.

"That," declared Manyemon, in a tone of conviction bordering on

reproof, "is because the dead mother nurses him. How should he

want for milk?"

And the boy laughed softly, as if conscious of a ghostly caress.

XIV