Pathway to Japanese Literature

1. Tanu Gives Konkichi a Trivial Scolding.

December 3, 1929—in keeping with northern customs here, with dusk already encroaching around four in the afternoon—Three Sisters Street, Number 3, in Paris’s 11th arrondissement: a tenement house.

On its sixth-floor balcony where a futon had been laid out lay Konkichi—a fox-faced, emaciated Oriental man coerced into semi-nudity—his burly muscles subjected to the lashing northwest wind as he quivered uncontrollably in complete disarray, splayed like a dried codfish before an Italian grocer’s stall. This bore no relation to the nudist movement then captivating Europe.

Whether willing or not, this constituted nothing other than compulsory daily sunbathing—one full hour—enforced to nourish his cerebral nerves.

Down in the distant streets below, the clatter of wooden-soled shoes from schoolchildren hurrying home in scattered groups, and even the voices of evening paper vendors hawking “Third Edition! Hardline Party News! Evening Paris!” sounded chilled and hurried—to make matters worse, the fierce wind now blowing directly from the north had suddenly intensified, mingling with great handfuls of sleet.
Even the usually insensitive Konkichi, driven to this point, now erupted in fury and began pounding mercilessly on the firmly shut glass door before him,
“Enough already!” he screamed desperately.
Then, from inside,

“Not yet,” came the supremely composed reply as there appeared an Oriental young lady of about eighteen or nineteen with charming eyes that resembled a raccoon’s more than a human’s. She wore a gray, pale amber indoor garment loosely, and her cheeks bore a hue somewhat overripe like an orange—this appeared to be due to the flush from the indoor warmth.

“How many seconds left?”

“Twenty more minutes! For a man, making such an undignified noise is shameful. Cut it out! Look—the tip of your nose has gotten much healthier!”

“The sun’s already set! And now it’s snowing!”

“Snow? What’s snow?! Take a lesson from that lively sparrow!”

“I’m sorry... But look—sparrows have such thick blankets, while I’m half-naked here...”

“Fine, I’ll give you a blanket. Endure fifteen more minutes—understood?” With that dismissive remark, the door was shut once more.

2. The Collision Between a Flower Pot and a Forehead Is a Matter of Life and Death.
Now, even after Konkichi—physically and mentally depleted by the “Beautiful Island” incident—had returned to his nostalgic Parisian nest, he remained as ever driven like an errand boy: from grocery shopping to bathhouse repairs, dusting clothes, accompanying choir rehearsals, mediating disputes with the doorman, dealing with beggars, winding the gramophone spring, distributing bird feed, handling correspondence—all part of his daily service spanning over ten hours a day, a harsh corvée granting no rest.
To Tanu, Konkichi was as limp as boiled macaroni—utterly spineless. In truth, however, he was seething with silent resentment.

And so it was that on an auspicious day in mid-November—in keeping with her characteristically inscrutable nature—Tanu suddenly conceived the idea of hosting a grand evening banquet at our shared residence. She invited her long-acquainted guests: Miss Needle the seamstress; Miss Specimen from the art research institute; Mr. Parchment of the official document archives; and Officer Club in charge of the Astronomical Observatory District’s 27th Subdistrict—all while decreeing that every space from dining hall to lavatory be indiscriminately filled with national flowers.
Having received his orders, Konkichi rushed around the Cour de la Reine flower market to purchase thirty-six large chrysanthemum pots. As he carried them one by one from basement to sixth floor—while hoisting the twenty-eighth pot up to the seventh step of the third-floor staircase—he unwittingly grew dizzy and plummeted down amidst a cascade of flowers.
Ever since being crushed unconscious beneath a massive thousand-bloom chrysanthemum pot, he had descended into an unhinged state—suddenly affecting grandiose airs, bursting into random song, willfully destroying objects Tanu treasured as rare keepsakes, and worst of all, directing such conduct toward his revered partner of four years: the beautiful Miss Tanu herself—she with whom he had traversed Europe’s farthest reaches and shared every hardship and joy in meticulous detail.

he had taken to addressing her as “Hey, you camel wench!”
“Bring the shark muslin! Bring the citron!”

“I won’t!”

“‘I won’t,’ you say? That’s sheer indolence!”
“Then this is how it’ll be!”

“Wait! Wait!”
“Don’t throw that doll.”
“Hand it over to me gently—please.”

“It’s nothing special.”
“Here—watch me toss it like this!”

“Oh no, this has turned into such a pitiful state!”

“If you don’t obey my orders, I can’t say what I might do!”

“Yes, yes. Then, how much do you want?”

“Don’t be stingy—bring plenty! Then replace the hot water bottle—it’s gone cold. While you’re at it, you may as well wash my long johns.”

“How infuriating!”
“You’ll remember this!”

“What is it?”

“No, right now.”

3. A Beauty of Profound Wisdom, With Obstacles Exceedingly Few.
Oh!
That you, Konkichi—ordinarily gentle and cat-like in your obedience—should act so wantonly violent could only mean one thing: when your cranial bowl, already harboring symptoms of nervous prostration, made contact with that variegated-bloom national flower’s pot, the exchanged mental derangement’s excess electricity had sparked at your cerebrum’s electrodes.
Therefore, first and foremost, we had to begin treatment for that condition.
Since neurasthenia arises from deficiencies in sunlight, heat, salt, phosphorus, physical strength, and vocal cords, all we needed was to compensate for those shortages.
Salt abounds in table salt, but phosphorus—ah, I’d just had an idea!
Look—take a squid beginning to rot and place it in the kitchen’s darkness.
The relationship between squid and phosphorus becomes perfectly clear then!
When you consider it this way, it’s elementary, isn’t it?
“Konkichi, do try to endure,” she said.
“Restoring you to normality may prove arduous, but I deem such physical therapies essential.”

“First,”

7:30 AM wake-up.

8:00 AM Nitrogen Therapy.
(Most Effective Deep Breathing Method)

9:00 AM Saline Solution 500g.

10:10 AM Bennett-Style Jumping Gymnastics.

11:00 AM Vocal Therapy.
(Therapy involving loud vocalization)

11:30 AM Calcium Biscuit (1 piece).
Red Wine 5g.

1:00 PM Contrabass performance.

2:00 PM Saline Solution 500g.
Raw Onions 3 pieces.

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Sunbathing.

5:00 PM Heat Therapy.
(Therapy involving pressing heated irons to the belly and back)

6:00 PM Saline Solution 500g.
Raw squid: one.

6:30 PM Play.

7:00 PM Bedtime.

“This is roughly how I plan to do it.”
“That’s settled then.”
“We start tomorrow.”

4. If there’s medicine for flatfish, even cats need purses.
The true greatness of Tanu’s newly devised “materialistic home remedy focused on nourishing brain nerves” became evident when Konkichi developed a fever of thirty-nine degrees at midnight on the very first day, suffered from irregular pulse and frequent bowel movements, and ultimately contracted a curious secondary ailment called *Daichō Katāji*—a condition of colonic hypertrophy caused by bronchiolitis asthma and putrid foodstuffs.
Even Tanu turned pale and cried out for a doctor!
“Medicine!”
After much frantic scrambling, they somehow preserved his life, but his subsequent condition remained far from fragrant; thus they found themselves compelled to follow the physician’s recommendation that they must flee Paris’s cold fog this winter and seek sunlight and salt through relocation to the southern French coast.

Having packed the necessary items into her bag and decided their destination as either the Saint-Raphaël cape—where crimson cliffs met azure seas—or the Villefranche coast blooming with mimosas and oleanders, Tanu went to Lyon Station early in the morning to reserve their seats; then, by evening, she stood on a paved road far below in the valley,

“Konkichi! Konkichi!” she shrilly called out.
“Another incident brewing, the genesis of calamity,” he thought while steadying his staggering legs; when he threw open the iron shutters to peer down at the fog-cloaked street from the balcony, there sat Tanu straddling some black object and letting out peculiarly delighted squeals.

“Konkichi!”
“Go on, guess what this iiiis!”

“Don’t play on trash cans—come up here this instant!”

“What’re you even talking about—
“This is a car, I tell you!”

“Whose is this?”

“I bought it!”

“How’d you get the money?”

“I bought it with your remittance.”

There, Konkichi—still not fully recovered—now faced with this sudden great shock abruptly lost his footing and fell flat on his backside with a loud thud.

5. The Paris winter sky, ever grumpy at dawn.

The mist-like sleet continued to dampen the atmosphere, and the tongues of the communal latrine’s gas lamps still flickered palely around seven in the morning.
After the milk company’s large wagon emerged from the nearby freight station and clattered thunderously over the cobblestone-paved road, the streets abruptly fell into hushed stillness.
The only sounds audible were distant calls of “Old clothes and scraps! We’ll take ’em off your hands!” echoing from a far-off dead end.

Konkichi—his entire body swaddled in a blanket, only the tip of his unremarkable nose protruding—had been dragged down to the sidewalk by Tanu to catch a glimpse of that dreamlike car with gold lettering, but there was nothing resembling a car in sight.
There, Konkichi, in a voice still thick with sleep,

“Where on earth is this car?”
“I can’t stand this cold any longer—if you’re going to show it to me, get on with it already!”
“Let’s just go to that so-called garage.”
“I’m holding this hot water bottle against my belly like this—I’ll slip right off any second!” Konkichi said, whereupon Tanu—her chin swaddled in a gaudy men’s muffler—brandished a box-like object in her right hand,

“It’s right here.”
“You need to wake up properly,” she answered.

Thereupon Konkichi cast his inherently restless, darting gaze over the front and back of that thin iron sheet tea caddy—and indeed, this must have been a proper automobile about ten years prior; faint traces of that fact still lingered here and there.
――There he crouched, back hunched like a sick cat cowering from some unseen threat, his posture a sight so pitiful it wrenches the heart—one could only think that even the Paanaaru petroleum-powered automobile which first strolled through Boulogne’s forest park in 1985 must have looked much like this.
The running boards were decayed, the headlights had broken necks, and only the rear wheel had a mudguard that could be called satisfactory.
Moreover, on the car’s back, within a frame of arabesque patterns, the following golden letters were splendidly written.

Steel-Reinforced Women’s Undergarments—Exclusive Sale

Aranbeer商会

No sooner had Konkichi caught a glimpse of this garish car than—overwhelmed by the sight—he

“Whoa!” he cried. Instinctively trying to flee—but Tanu gently held him back from behind,

“Konkichi, you’re happy, right? Happy, right?”
“You’re happy, right?” she said, lightly patting Konkichi’s back.

“I hate to be picky,” Konkichi timidly inquired, “but when we said we’d travel by car to Nice… you meant this car, right?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, casting a sidelong, loving glance at the car while...

“Anyway, get in the car.”
“If you keep dawdling there, you’ll catch another cold,” she tried to push Konkichi toward the car.

“But even if I get inside, it’s no different from being outdoors—this car has neither a roof nor any rain cover.”
“I can’t help feeling uneasy about being jostled all the way to Nice—1,088 kilometers—in this state.”
“If rain or snow falls along the way, what on earth are we supposed to do?”

“I know,” Tanu said. “Look—I’d prepared a big umbrella in that corner over there. If we open it up, it’ll block both rain and wind.”

“No thank you,” Konkichi replied. “But you see—I’ve ended up in my pajamas under this blanket, so I’ll just go back upstairs…”

His ulterior motive was to buy time through postponement and devise some proper emergency measures in the interim. Tanu slipped her arms into a three-quarter-length tailored coat while pulling on driving gloves.

“No, I don’t mind. Stay comfortable,” she said, assuming a posture ready to depart at any moment. Konkichi was in dire straits.

“Thank you very much… But really, a car like this is too good for someone like me,” he kept refusing.

“What do you mean, ‘too good’?”
“It’s much cheaper than going by train.”
“Now, the one-way train fare to Nice is four hundred francs per person, right?”
“Plus two hundred francs for the large trunk’s fare, twenty francs for the porter fee, and three francs for seat reservations.”
“If we calculate this as a round trip…”

There, Tanu picked up a fragment of spent charcoal and scrawled on the sidewalk.

“Now since we bought this car for just eight hundred francs—1246 minus 800 equals 446—we’ve saved four hundred forty-six francs while getting to drive through Nice’s dreamlike Promenade des Anglais and Fera’s cape blooming with agaves, slicing through the Côte d’Azur’s spring winds!”
“This came from Porte d’Orléans’s used automobile market, so I won’t claim it’s grand or luxurious—but this is the Côte d’Azur! Without at least one automobile, we’d never manage to socialize with Schneider or Coty.”
“Now Konkichi, press that hot water bottle against your belly!”
“Thrash around too much and you’ll put your foot through the floor—be careful.”
“Alright then—let’s go!”

6. The Leaping, Bouncing Marionette Rabbit Boy.
Stretching north from Paris to Menton on the Franco-Italian border in the south, this broad and level state highway ran vertically through four-fifths of France.
Upon this grand thoroughfare—where Peugeot “103” models gleamed like polished gemstones, Renault’s Les Stella slithered like sea bass, and Rolls-Royces and Hispano-Suizas streaked by like gusts of wind, leaving behind carefree horns and trails of perfume—there lumbered a patterned antique automobile. Under its great umbrella rode two Orientals, roaring with thunderous clamor akin to factory relocation machinery, veiled in billowing gasoline fumes, and lurching forward with the lumbering gait of a convalescent rheumatism patient. It was a spectacle of unparalleled solemnity.
The car lurched forward only to jerk back, staggered right then pitched left, bouncing up and down in a chaotic dance of twists and turns.
Thereupon Konkichi—like a sausage sizzling in a frying pan—rolled about on the seat while clamping his teeth onto the umbrella with leonine determination, seizing this moment.

Shortly after leaving the suburban outskirts of Paris—where cluttered factories and small houses resembling bonbon boxes jostled for space—they came upon the Bouvray quarry.
As Konkichi cautiously pried open his scouting eyes amid the violent shaking and peered out, the distant fields revealed frost-dampened wheat stubble, salad fields capped with glass bell-shaped hats, and unremarkable farmhouses with orchards in their front yards—all camel-colored and soot-stained, coalescing into a goosebump-inducing winter panorama.

Having lurched out through Paris’s Ivry gate over three hours prior—perhaps having reached the vicinity of Oozeru village by now?—when Konkichi casually glanced back toward Paris, lo and behold: the Eiffel Tower still stood towering nearby, tricolor flag aloft.
At this, even Konkichi was utterly dumbfounded,

“I wonder if we’ll gradually pick up speed from here on out.
You said you’d treat me to the famous omelet at Oozeru’s vegetable restaurant for lunch, but even though it’s nearly noon now, when I look, the Eiffel Tower is still right there below us.
At this rate, it’d be quicker to turn back to Paris for lunch.
Don’t you think?” he said, careful not to bite his tongue as he managed these halting words—whereupon Tanu...

“Even if you say we should go back to Paris, this car only moves forward,” Tanu retorted. “If you’re hungry, there’s bread and butter in this basket—make do with that,” she added, thrusting the basket over her shoulder without turning around.

Konkichi resigned himself to his fate and began unwrapping the package to spread butter on the bread when—

“Tanu,” he ventured cautiously, “do you think...could you possibly stop the car just while I spread this butter? The knife keeps jabbing toward my forehead and throat—it’s positively treacherous!”

Tanu frowned in the mirror in the driver’s seat while,

“Why don’t you take a bite of the bread first, then scoop the butter with your finger and lick it off?”
“You’re such an idiot.”
“Once this car stops, it takes forever to get moving again, so we can’t stop.”

“So if we’re leaving the butter situation as-is, couldn’t we get you to push the speed a bit more?”
“I’m thoroughly sick of seeing salad fields.”
“I’d like you to show me some slightly different scenery for a change, don’t you think?”

“But going any faster would be dangerous.”

“Nonsense, that can’t be right. Even the funeral carriage that just passed us was running faster than this car. At the very least, I’d like you to manage that much.”

“If you’re okay with it, shall we give it a try?” said Tanu as she forcefully shifted the gear—and in that instant, Konkichi went flying from his seat like a calico cat springing from a jack-in-the-box, landing in his pajamas amidst the salad fields.

After enduring countless hardships and ordeals, they finally arrived at the town of Morêt-sur-Loing along the Loing Canal, with the distant Fontainebleau Forest visible far to their left—sometime past nine o'clock at night.
The day's journey had amounted to a mere sixty-four kilometers.
Looking far ahead—a long road of 1,024 kilometers still stretched before them to Nice.
At this rate, whether they would reach Nice by year's end or end up taking until next spring—Konkichi hugged his chest in profound gloom.

7. The Mingling of Minnows and the Fishpond Fracas.

The next day’s departure was at 7:00 AM.
Konkichi—having been forcibly extracted from his bed by Tanu—had donned beneath his jacket a Japanese-made silk floss vest resembling a kendo chest protector and wrapped a small futon with floral patterns around his abdomen and waist, likely less for warmth than as precaution against being hurled into the streets again.
He had pre-buttered bread and prepared six bottles of wine labeled “Napoleon III” as a restorative—a remarkably timely idea.
As for Tanu, she had combed her hair, meticulously polished her nails, and even sprinkled her undergarments with Caron Company’s “Carnival Night” perfume—evoking tales of Eastern knights who burned incense in their helmets—her resolve rendering the scene both valiant and pitiable to the extreme.

The automobile from Aranbeer Shokai carrying its two desperate travelers lumbered across the Yonne Plain at a glacial pace until, nearing noon, it finally reached a point where Sens’s church spire became visible—floating in the pale sunlight atop a distant hill.
Konkichi, just as he began feeling somewhat buoyant at finally securing a proper lunch that day, discovered the Aranbeer Shokai automobile had thrust its front wheels into a layer of soft asphalt at the town’s entrance—precisely where road repairs were underway.
Like a silver fly ensnared on flypaper—the more it struggled, the deeper it sank—neither retreating nor advancing as desired, here it stood completely trapped with no escape.
Behind Aranbeer Shokai, dozens of luxury cars halted by this obstruction endlessly urged “Move aside! Move aside!” through shouts and horn blasts.
Road workers yelled; the supervisor stamped his feet in frustration.
Tanu too finally grew impatient, twisting here and pushing there, but Aranbeer Shokai—like an unbroken mustang on Arizona plains—merely bounced on its hind legs without budging an inch.
Exasperated gentlemen of distinction along with their wives and daughters each alighted from their vehicles, encircling the duo’s car tenfold deep while voicing protests from every direction.

Konkichi immediately flushed red, sweat beading on the tip of his nose to no avail,

“Pardon! Pardon!”—repeated a million times over.
In stark contrast, the more the crowd’s jeers multiplied, the more Tanu grew animated, lashing out in all directions.

“Hey, you there—that gentleman.”
“You just called my car a *touf-touf*, didn’t you?”
“Whether it’s a rattletrap or a trash can, that’s none of your business!”
“Go ahead and bring your car here.”
“I’ll let you see which one’s the real *touf-touf*.”
“What’s with that beard you’re sporting?”
“……And then, you there—madam. You just called this an insufferable *pouce-pouce*, didn’t you?”
“Sooo, why don’t you try pushing it as easily as a baby carriage? …Hey everyone, it’s not the car’s fault it won’t move.”
“It’s the asphalt’s fault.”
“It’s because they went and laid asphalt in a place like this!”
“If you still have complaints, why don’t you try voicing them?”
“……Come on out, anyone!”

Then, in response to her challenge, a fashionable gentleman who seemed to know what he was doing stepped forward from the crowd, opened the car’s front hood, and began earnestly inspecting every nook and cranny. But even he appeared unable to get a handle on this super-scientific engine, and before long gave up and withdrew.

The entire crowd had gathered around this gentleman, pressing their heads together in deliberation until they reached a unanimous decision.
Disregarding Tanu’s fiery protests, seven or eight men pushed their car onto a narrow muddy country path as if to say, “Get lost!”
Tanu raged like a blazing inferno,

“What nonsense! Who’d bother taking some pretentious path like that? Listen, Konkichi—the road to Nice isn’t the only one.”
“I’ve decided we’re taking this road straight ahead, no matter how far it goes,” she declared.
Konkichi, too, suddenly brimmed with vigor.

“Very well.”
“I concur.”
“There’s no need to take that sort of road.”
“That’s a path for philistines.”
“Let us continue our refined journey along this peaceful country lane—waving at fountains and playing with piglets by the wayside.”

Now that things had come to this, it no longer mattered whether they took until next summer or even winter.
Mountains and valleys held no terror for them—the two made a firm vow to follow this road all the way to Nice, then continued their staggering advance.

8. Moon and Village Clouds, Flowers and Wind; Even a Dog Will Catch a Bullet If It Walks.
Now, after crossing the Vanne River, passing the second-class fortress of Villeneuve-S-Y on their right, and pressing onward in search of a trackless path, they found themselves near the low embankment of a dried-up riverbed in a desolate area far from human habitation.
This area was a vast expanse of desolate withered reeds.
In the distance, the slopes of Pée d'Oth Mountain blazed in the sunset; quivering in the wind were withered grasses and wild rose branches; the only cries came from crows with crimson beaks.

Though the two had made grandiose declarations, as they gazed upon this winter-blighted evening scene, thoughts of the road ahead welled up within them, stirring a vague urge to weep. Having lost even the willpower to maintain their meticulous advance, they parked the car beside the embankment and wordlessly stretched out their legs on the withered grass.

Konkichi had just pulled out a cigarette from his nearly depleted case and was about to light it when a shell—trailing a whistle-like shriek through its trajectory—came flying in and exploded with a roar against the embankment’s flank, mere inches from the two of them.

“Agh!” They had no time to register shock before the second shell came screaming in.
Grazing the car’s rear wheel, it sent up a colossal plume of dust against the embankment’s flank.

Blast! The Franco-German War must have finally broken out here.
It would be truly regrettable to have journeyed all the way from the other side of the globe to the backwaters of Europe only to perish from a stray bullet.
In any case, deciding that fleeing was their only option, the two instinctively clasped hands and were about to dash off blindly when—from a trench-like depression to the right of the embankment—a single soldier in a steel helmet and sky-blue serge uniform leapt out clutching only a field telephone receiver, bellowing with a thunderous roar,

“Halt!” he barked in a voice so fierce it made one cower.
The soldier charged toward the two—now frozen stiff like Sèvres porcelain dolls—and then, for reasons unknown, suddenly—

“You idiots!” he bellowed.
“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Well, we’re heading to Nice, but...”

“Why are you passing through such a place?”

“Oh, is that not allowed?”

Then the soldier, looking thoroughly annoyed, stared intently at them before—

“What’s your nationality?”

“The Empire of Japan.”

“Travel permits!”

After Konkichi timidly presented his passport, the soldier once again scrutinized the photograph against their faces,

“Do you have a camera?”

“Yes, we do,” Tanu replied in a mid-toned voice.

“Did you take photographs around here?”

“We had no time for that!”

Tanu’s tone of voice was unbearably worrying to Konkichi.
If we angered this soldier—soldiers were terrifying by nature.

Timidly cutting in from beside him and forcing a strained smile,

"Soldier, that’s completely out of the question! We would never take photographs or anything like that…"

"Come with me to the fortress headquarters!"

“But…”

“Enough! Just come along!”

Their car turned back through the withered fields and eventually arrived before a bastion so high it made them crane their necks.
They were pulled from the car, led through an arched dark tunnel, taken into a narrow flank defense barracks where their camera was confiscated, made to wait on hard wooden benches for nearly an hour, and then guided to an even more secluded room.
At the far side of the large desk directly ahead sat a military officer of imposing stature—ruddy-faced and white-haired, his back to various blueprints and cross-sectional diagrams—who might have been a sergeant or perhaps even a general.

Oh no, this was bad.
At this rate, we might be suspected of espionage and quietly disposed of.
I had indeed heard such stories before.
This called for immediate apology—Konkichi decided even before sitting down—

“General, sir, please forgive us,” he pleaded, bobbing his head in an Eastern manner.
The General wore a thoroughly disgusted expression,

“What fools would lie down in front of a firing range marker?!” he spat out.
“If the observation soldiers hadn’t found you, who knows what would’ve become of you two by now!”

“I’m sorry,” said even Tanu—who found herself utterly unable to do anything when faced with the General.

After being relentlessly grilled about why we had taken this route, where we intended to go next, and so on—then having our dry plates confiscated and being earnestly admonished about our future conduct—we were finally released around six in the evening. When the General returned the camera,

“I hear only piglets showed up on the dry plates,” he added.

IX. If there’s a white rat at home, there’s a suited gentleman in the mountains.
When leaving the fortress, they had been told Saint-Florentin lay just ahead—yet after driving endlessly, there remained only mountains upon mountains.
They had clearly strayed into the notorious Pé-de-Dôt mountain path.
From this point the terrain rose sharply, leaving only a single faint trail that wound between rock obstructions and sudden hollows.
Decayed birches resembling bleached bones materialized from lacquer-black darkness.
The damp wind carried an otherworldly chill, as though blowing from hell itself.
What loneliness—navigating this dreadful pass with only feeble headlights! What terror!
Konkichi, ever timid and hesitant, felt his very soul detach from his body.
Then—from a side path in this frozen air—appeared a peculiar man around thirty years old, wearing neither coat nor hat,

“Yo,” he called out cheerfully to the two of them.
When the two, rejoicing at this divine aid, asked for directions to Saint-Florentin, the man, resting his hand on the car door and walking alongside them,

“Nah, you’ll be there soon enough,” he answered nonchalantly.

“So we just go straight along this road, right?” asked Tanu.

“Yeah, well, suppose so,” came the reply.

“Will it take another hour or so?”

“Nah, you’ll be there soon enough. Miss, are you in a hurry?” he said with a peculiar tone.

“Yes. Who on earth would want to stay in these dark mountains?”

Then, the Mysterious Man brushed this aside and turned to Konkichi,
“By the way, what time is it?” he asked.

Konkichi took out his watch and, flustered, answered that it was eight ten. The man glanced at the watch,

“Oh, what a fine watch,” he grinned slyly, then asked, “Are you Annamese or Chinese?”

“We’re Japanese.”

“Japanese, huh?”
“Hmm,” he said, pausing to think for a moment. “Y’see, I’ve been wantin’ to meet Japanese people so damn bad.”
“…Never thought I’d meet Japanese folks in these mountains.”
He then muttered to himself, as if speaking aloud, “What an outrageous twist of fate.”
“Yeah, this happened about six years back. My brother—see—he got put to sleep with a dagger by some Japanese sailor in a Toulon bar.”
“My brother was a spirited used-clothes dealer back then, but that night he was out drinkin’ at a bar with some woman—or so they say.”
“Then that sailor comes barging in and keeps insisting on dancing with her—or so they say.”
“That bastard brother of mine got angry and slapped him across the face, but then he suddenly pulled out a dagger and thrust it through my brother’s head.”
“My brother collapsed into a bloody pool, and while the barkeep was scrambling outside to call the cops, that bastard hopped into a hackney carriage and vanished somewhere… And that was that.”
“There’s just no helping it.”
“…So I’ve been wantin’ to meet some Japanese folks proper and give ’em my thanks,” he said with an air of utmost satisfaction, then—*Hwui!*—
he let out a short, sharp whistle.
Tanu, her face slightly pale,

“So what exactly do you intend to do?”
“If you try anything funny，I’ll sound the horn and call for help!”

Then, the man gave a strange forced smile,

“Only inn servants come running when they hear a car horn,” he said, then suddenly turned to Konkichi,

“Hey kid.
You’ve been damn quiet since earlier—the hell’s with that?
...Acting all high and mighty, huh!” He suddenly jabbed Konkichi in the side through the door.
Konkichi jumped up like a grasshopper,

“Please help me,” he pleaded, clasping his hands.

The Mysterious Man grinned slyly at Konkichi for a while, then eventually began whistling the ditty *Quand nous étions deux* as he disappeared down a side path.

How or by what path they had made their way in such a daze, they tumbled into Saint-Florentin’s "Ryokan Golden Cock" inn just before nine o’clock.
They had narrowly escaped death.—As they sat across the dining table exchanging glances and toasting their mutual safety, the man reappeared wearing a mustard-yellow apron draped from his chest and carrying a soup tureen.
Konkichi,
“Oh, he’s back!” Konkichi exclaimed, starting to rise to his feet—but the man set the tureen down on the table and—

“I’d heard Japanese people were barbaric and courageous, but your cowardice surprised me. Though I guess not all of you are like that…” he laughed with a sneer.

X. Lost items should be sought at the base of the chestnut tree in the southeast.

They passed Dijon and arrived at the town of Nuits-Saint-Jean just before Beaune Station three days later.

That very night, this beloved car—along with the "Napoleon III" bottles and indoor shoes crammed inside—was stolen by someone.
Feeling assured no one would take such things, they had carelessly left them thrown out in the square before the market—that was their mistake.
Whether it was a trash bin or a *touf-touf*, that was our property.
They immediately went to the town’s substation and complained to the police chief sitting calmly with arms crossed before his desk.

“Chief, last night our car was stolen.”

“Hmm, what sort of car was it?”
“Just a small thing—big enough for two people.”
“What was its registration number now?”
“Did that car even have a number?”

The Police Chief pulled out a large ledger and, licking the pad of his thumb again and again, flipped through the pages—
“What date did you say it was stolen?”
“Last night.”

“Last night? No—such a thing couldn’t be right.”
“It’s been six months already.”
“Your car has been properly registered as lost property.”
“Rest assured.”
“I’ll hand it over now, so wait here—understood?” he said as he went outside, then soon returned pushing what appeared to be a “two-person bicycle” likely used by a circus troupe.

“How’s this?”

“What is it?”

“So this heap counts as your ‘stolen car,’ does it? A two-seater with no registration number. You really can’t go around carelessly abandoning something like this. Take it and go quickly. Sign here in the ledger…”

They stayed at an inn in this town for two days, waiting for the unflappable police chief to bring them good news, but neither the car nor the Napoleon III bottles ever materialized. That car may have looked comical in appearance, but as they rode it, they discovered various merits. Now, attachments still lingered, and their nostalgia ran quite deep, but what was gone couldn’t be helped now. The unmistakable features of that car had been duly recorded in the French police’s sturdy theft ledger, so if fate willed it, they might yet cross paths with it again.

That evening, the two of them departed from Beaune Station aboard the PLM Express, bound for the eternally vernal Lapis Coast.