Pathway to Japanese Literature

1 Haniyū Jūkichi quit his post in Hokkaido after less than a year and returned to Tokyo in the early summer of the year when the long-familiar numeral sequence of “192＊” changed—like two calculator tapes rotating in unison—and a new ‘3’ clicked into place at the second digit from the bottom. Not being in a position to live idly, he came to work at a certain Oriental studies-related library in Koishikawa—in a semi-remote capacity—relying on his modest grasp of Russian acquired through casual study. His role involved organizing and translating catalogs of Russian-language documents dealing with Mongolian folklore.

As he plodded through this work without much interest—the summer having crested on one such day—a telephone summons came from Mr. Obata, both his senior from school and in some respects his mentor, requesting an urgent meeting. As he waited in the designated room of a certain club in Marunouchi, a familiar crisp voice echoed from the hallway—exchanging farewells with two or three companions who seemed to include foreigners—before Mr. Obata in his white linen suit entered with his usual energetic stride.

To put it simply, Mr. Obata was a precise gentleman—somewhat rare among Japanese men. To speak of a British-style gentleman conjures an image of tall elegance tinged with an indefinable smoldering air—uncharitably put, somewhat fusty; charitably put, magnanimous—such qualities being the conventional ideal. Yet Mr. Obata’s strain of gentility inverted this template: compact in stature, cut from crisp fabric, and infused with a distinct variety of snobbery altogether his own. This variety of dandyism could never quite escape bearing traces of Southern European decadence. Mr. Obata possessed this quality as well, but through his innate impatience and unyielding spirit, he kept the reins taut on that precarious line.

Until then, Jūkichi had only known Mr. Obata as a teacher. Yet the man’s career—beginning at a Rome branch of a certain bank, then shifting diplomatic posts to serve for many years as consul-general in the Balkans—stood in such stark contrast to his circumstances during that disheartened period, when he eked out a living lecturing on languages and trade affairs at a private colonial institute, that his very appearance projected an incongruity so excessive it verged on absurdity. At the time—stymied by youthful restlessness and swept into the wave of linguistic vagrancy then fashionable among his peers—Jūkichi had capriciously enrolled in that institute’s evening division, where for about two years he received introductory Serbo-Croatian instruction from Mr. Obata.

The connection he had assumed severed on its own terms was swiftly reknit through Mr. Obata’s characteristically sharp memory. This very connection became the club meeting. In his prime—having once settled into the Kobe-bound express dining car with three fellow diplomats and proceeded from beer to whiskey’s final drop, literally drinking the shelves dry while earning certification from a steward with ten years’ service as their top record holder—Mr. Obata nevertheless abstained entirely from tobacco. He proclaimed his peculiar theory: “Once a man indulges in the trifecta of drinking, smoking, and buying, he’s finished.” A tightly disciplined, boundary-respecting practicality manifested itself there. For a young man like him, such a person was inherently daunting; yet there in that very presence—overwhelmed by the club salon’s oppressive atmosphere—Jūkichi received a proposal while puffing cheap cigarettes to mask his discomfiture. To put it plainly: would he consider employment at the J Country Commercial Office?

In a crisp, articulate tone, Mr. Obata pressed on with his explanation. “What you intend to become in the future—I do not know.” “That’s likely not my place to meddle.” “You’re said to specialize in French and seem quite proficient in Russian as well, but at least within the realm of that language I—in my limited capacity—provided you instruction, I know no other young man who has reached your level.” (How many men in this country, he wondered with a wry smile, would even think to dabble in such an eccentric language?) “In that field, I could guarantee you’d become Japan’s foremost authority—though I doubt you’re the sort to swallow such flattery.” “Sadly, I’ve grown unable to grasp the sentiments of young men your age—yet from what I observe, despite your nervous temperament, you strike me as having an audaciously ambitious air about you.” “That said, it’s no different from a rough wind sweeping across the wilderness—directionless and uncontained.” “I do not admire such youthful ambitions, but… I do intend to respect them.”

“Well, I suppose you’d likely claim you merely dabbled in that language study on a whim.” “Through that very whim, I’d advise you to leap through its window into the inner workings in one decisive move.” “The flaw of youth lies in having too many such windows—leaving them paralyzed at the threshold—wouldn’t you agree?” “If so, why not let me act as chance’s agent this once?” “Truth be told, the J Country Commercial Office is an institution I essentially established and opened.” “Indeed, until recently, its inaugural representative was a man I might well call a friend from my Tsara days.” “While I remain here, I believe you’ll find the environment tolerable enough.” “Naturally—as befits an emerging nation—the political climate remains unsettled.” “No—it may grow increasingly turbulent hereafter.” “Moreover—as you’re aware—though styled a Slavic state, it’s a patchwork household of disparate ethnicities.” “What lies ahead—I cannot guarantee.” “Nor do I care to guarantee it.” “For such assurances would only wound the pride of young men like yourself.” “Rather—for your present sake—I hope you prove the sort drawn to precisely that uncertainty and instability.” “I repeat—while I don’t admire such youthful ambitions—” Here Mr. Obata’s brow darkened as if brushed by some ancient regret “—I do respect them.”

The work was busy. Since the political upheaval of the year before last—whether of the country or the party—the policy had been shifting rapidly toward domestic industrialization. Japan’s low prices had begun functioning there as a significant factor. This trade held considerable promise. “On this point,” he said, “you may place some trust in my discerning eyes.” “Well, for now I’ll have you handle organizing documents, doing translations, and occasionally interpreting.” “Of course, as this concerns an international arena, I must have you act with strict punctuality and full responsibility.” “So—what do you say? Don’t you feel like giving it a try?……”

After two or three days, Haniyū Jūkichi went to visit the J Country Commercial Office located in Shirokane-Imazato-chō.

The story that this was the former residence of Baron N—a diplomat who had left significant footprints around the late Meiji era—was something Jūkichi had indeed heard beforehand from Mr. Obata. True enough, within that entire quiet estate district—particularly in its most arboreal quarter where an iron gate stood askew at the depth of a side street’s recesses—this exterior appeared indeed fittingly grand. To a man like Jūkichi, who would envision proper workplaces as nothing beyond the office clusters stretching from Marunouchi to Nihonbashi and quail without a second thought, it first struck him as an appealing daily place of employment. This seemed to be partly due to a certain aristocratic aesthetic.

Because it was still somewhat early for his appointment, he wandered awhile over the gravel of that side street. Though well past the hour when staff should have entered the building, foreigners still occasionally disappeared through the gate one or two at a time with unhurried strides. At length even these ceased. To fend off boredom, Jūkichi approached an ivy-choked old stone gatepost and began studying the horizontal brass plaque fastened there.

On the still-new brass-colored surface, the French words DÉLÉGATION COMMERCIALE D'ÉTAT DES...... were shallowly engraved in four or five lines of precisely molded lettering. After DES followed the names of three constituent ethnic groups, likely forming a lengthy national title. The three initials—S, C, and S—of each respective group were deliberately highlighted in red, exuding the very flamboyance one might expect of a newly emerged multiethnic nation. No—or perhaps this coloration might be a reflection of the political upheaval of the year before last—the overwhelming advance of the left-wing party that accompanied it……

As Jūkichi stood gazing at the gate plaque with strange admiration, there came from behind—as if conjured from thought itself—the new crunch of footsteps treading stealthily on gravel. When he casually turned around, a white-clad man had appeared beneath the eaves of the crown-topped gate at the neighboring estate some twenty paces ahead and was now approaching. From the man’s entire bearing, Jūkichi instinctively sensed something and spun around to slip through the gate into the compound. The man did not give chase.

"What the... Does this string reach even here?!"

It was a feeling that made him want to click his tongue in exasperation, yet at the same time left him strangely elated—a sensation resembling that thrill of the moment when one sets out on an unknown adventure. He deliberately crunched the gravel underfoot as he strode along. Inside the gate stretched dense woods on both sides all the way to the thickly grown carriage turnaround ahead. Japanese hackberry, zelkova, chinquapin, sawtooth oak, cherry... As he meticulously enumerated each tree species while walking through them, the woods eventually gave way until finally a pair of ginkgo trees stood like sentries on either side. He stopped there and checked his wristwatch.

Passing the carriage turnaround, he noticed the J Country emblem affixed to the gable on the second floor of the building’s facade. Catching the morning sun perfectly, it shone golden. Rummaging through his memories, he recalled that the design was indeed three lions encircled by ears of wheat. Now that he mentioned it, though the country’s name encircling those ears of wheat from the outside was of course indistinguishable at this distance, he had a sense—whether real or imagined—that those three initials alone were still tinged red. Jūkichi suddenly found himself thinking such thoughts and, for some reason, felt his body tense up.

A black-lacquered Cadillac came crunching through the gravel with vigor. When he looked, Mr. Obata’s face smiled in the window. After watching the car circle once around the carriage turnaround and vanish like wind (the emblem on its rear bearing “J Country Embassy” in stark white letters against plain ground—), Jūkichi met Mr. Obata at the porte-cochère.

“Oh, I’ve been bustling since rising this morning—visited two or three places already.” “……I was concerned you might not be waiting, you know.”

His naturally penetrating voice echoed thunderously through the entrance hall. It was a brazenly loud voice, as if he had returned to his own home. "The truth is, I haven't even had breakfast yet..." Even as he spoke, he spotted a young boy of apparent Eastern descent who had appeared there and ordered him to prepare tea; then, telling him to wait a moment, he vanished through the side door.

"This is Mr. Mitronik, the Import Department Manager." "If you're hired, you'll work in this department under him... He wants to assess your character firsthand." "I've already told him about you—he isn't so fearsome. Have a proper talk with him." "Don't tense up." "I'd best make myself scarce......"

It was a bright little veranda receiving morning sunlight through its curtains. In one corner stood a large desk completely blanketed with what looked like statistical tables. When Mr. Obata vanished into the neighboring room, Mr. Mitronik emerged in his place, walking to the central wicker chair set and seating himself. Then with a piercing upward glance from beneath his brows, he motioned for Jūkichi to sit too. In truth, I'd been steeling myself for demons or serpents to materialize. I was leaping into uncharted territory. I'd resolved to confront whatever might emerge. Contrary to all expectations, this first figure to appear was an urbane gentleman reminiscent of an Anglo-Saxon bureaucrat. He was still youthful. Though a shadow of gloom hovered about his slightly knitted brows, from sunken cheeks down to his jutting jawline shone the keenness befitting a true dynamo.

No sooner had he sat down than he raised his hips again, stretched his long arm toward the desk, rustled beneath those statistical charts, and retrieved a green Three Castles tin. He deftly used the lid to cut through the inner seal. The unassuming aroma of that tobacco—characteristic in its way of piercing straight to the heart—rose fragrantly in the morning sunlight. Mr. Mitronik’s long nose twitched sensitively as it caught the scent. After pulling one out, he refrained from lighting it and instead toyed with it between his fingertips,

“Mm, mm…” he seemed about to say something as he looked at Jūkichi. From the lower part of his mouth—which had fallen silent once more—down to his chin, the morning’s razor-sharp shave, so characteristic of a genuine razor, stood out vividly to the eye. It was an authentic sharpness—Jūkichi suddenly thought.

"Mm, mm." Once again faltering mid-sentence, he struck a match and lit it. The gaze that had been hesitant now fixed intently on Jūkichi. They were unexpectedly kind eyes, yet somehow skeptical. ……This man carries a shadow, Jūkichi thought. The oddly faltering speech—rather than resembling muteness, it reminded Jūkichi of Kōshirō’s speechless moments, which struck him as comical—yet this mannerism too undoubtedly served as a potent element in deepening the shadowy aura he carried.

"Do you speak Serbian?" "Yes, a little." Just as Jūkichi felt relieved that their conversation had finally found its thread—a relief that proved fleeting—in the very next moment they had already run aground on a hidden reef. It became clear that Jūkichi’s language skills—which should have allowed him to speak “a little”—were utterly useless, both for listening and speaking. Mr. Mitronik showed a smile mingling equal parts bewilderment and sympathy, then glanced through the glass toward Mr. Obata—who happened to be on the desk telephone while munching a sandwich or something that served as his belated breakfast—but seemed to reconsider that it wasn’t worth troubling him specially, and came to his rescue in Russian himself. Even so, for Jūkichi—who had no practical experience—it proved no small ordeal, but at least his intent had managed to get through.

"I hear you studied liberal arts, but can you cultivate an interest in commerce and economics generally?" "Yes, I believe I can cultivate one."

“The work at this office is quite busy, but… you must adhere faithfully to strict punctuality…” “I don’t mind being busy.” “How is your health? You look a bit pale…” “I have never been ill. This complexion is just how I was born…”

Mr. Mitronik smirked. When he turned serious, he suddenly— “What is your political stance?” he asked.

Jūkichi was startled. So thoroughly had he been caught off guard that at first he couldn’t even grasp the meaning of the question. But then he recalled how in Russia immediately after the revolution, the question "Which side are you on?" had become something of a fashionable trend among the general populace, and it occurred to him that in J Country too—now having undergone that revolutionary-like abrupt political upheaval—the same issue might be arising; yet this time he found himself at a loss for a reply. A youthful vanity had briefly raised its head.

Seeing Jūkichi at a loss for a reply—which he seemed to attribute to his own inadequate explanation—Mr. Mitronik repeated his characteristic “Mm, mm…” while adopting the manner of one urgently searching for words. He brought that morning’s delivered Japan Advertiser on the round table close to his eyes, spun the green tin in his palm, yet unfortunately no suitable phrases that might reach his interlocutor seemed to surface.

At that moment, Mr. Obata—having gauged the tide of the conversation—descended to the veranda while deliberately letting two or three sharp footsteps clatter. Upon seeing this, Mr. Mitronik began speaking at a terrifyingly rapid clip, launching into some earnest explanation. While Jūkichi sat blank-faced without comprehending a word, Mr. Obata soon commenced in his characteristically crisp tone— “What they’re asking about isn’t your personal convictions or such.” “Political leanings—be they rightist or leftist—are every individual’s prerogative.” “They simply wish you to exercise caution against introducing such matters within these office gates—to put it plainly, they desire your discretion.” “Since that political upheaval, this office has increasingly been viewed through tinted lenses—as though it were some political organ.” “There are even indications this might obstruct the sound development of trade relations.” “Among them exist Japanese nationals who’ve inconvenienced this Commercial Office over trifles.” “The embassy’s affairs aside—the Commercial Office remains strictly commercial.” “Maintaining clear demarcation there constitutes our institutional policy.” “In short, they’re requesting your utmost vigilance regarding these matters.”

Mr. Mitronik watched Jūkichi nodding at each point with apparent satisfaction, but soon—

“You do understand, correct?” he emphasized. “Yes，you must take full care.” “…But to be honest, at present I don’t have any particular political leanings…”

The two adults exchanged glances and laughed. Jūkichi’s face turned red. The rest of the conversation turned to trivial matters, and even the salary—a rough amount that took Jūkichi somewhat by surprise—was settled, with his start date set for next Monday. Office arrival at 8:30, departure at 3:30. Excluding the one-hour lunch break, this made for a six-hour workday. Jūkichi thought he understood.

The room adjacent to the veranda served as the Import Department’s office. It was likely used by the previous baron as a parlor—a stately Western-style room that easily spanned twenty tsubo, its old-fashioned grandeur undiminished. A fireplace was built into the wall, and with his back to it, a massive man sat upright before an antiquated grand desk adorned with Rococo-style carvings, busily flipping through documents. To eyes long accustomed to the veranda’s light, it felt as though they had suddenly plunged from an Impressionist world into one of Rembrandt’s.

Mr. Obata strode briskly over to the desk and whispered something. Whether he was being listened to or not, the face that had remained bowed without showing any reaction for some time startled Jūkichi when it finally rose leisurely. At last, the ogre has shown himself, he thought. That man’s countenance was so imposing. As formidable as his upper body, the thick base of his neck supported a face whose lower half was entirely shrouded in dark brown beard, its tip forming a slightly tapered J-shaped goatee. Reddened skin covered well-developed jawbones, while his temples were somewhat pale, leading to a closely shaven head. No, this goes beyond Rembrandt, Jūkichi thought. Even were this man to don a pointed helmet, clad himself in leather armor and shield, grasp a trident, and solemnly materialize upon the pages of the Nibelungenlied, he would likely suffer no disadvantage in stature. [...] With that face—neither smiling nor blinking once—he stared fixedly at Mr. Obata from directly across. This was Brauenberg—the Deputy Head of the Import Department with a German-sounding name. He was probably nearing fifty.

Suddenly, that face cleared its throat. A cough, then another—a cough so powerful it seemed to shake the very walls, one of perhaps imposing authority. No sooner had he done so than he nodded quietly, slowly turned his gaze toward Jūkichi, and broke into a broad smile… It was that smile with which grandfathers gaze upon a grandchild so dear you could hold them in your eye without pain. As Jūkichi stood rigid with shock at the utterly unexpected storm of activity before him, the other man rose from his chair and in one motion snatched up four or five file folders like an eagle seizing prey. Circling grandly around the desk, he tossed them into a document shelf before assuming a stance that loomed like a Nio guardian statue before Jūkichi’s eyes. And with one hand stroking his signature J-shaped beard and the other running up and down his chest,

“How fortunate… how fortunate…” He nodded vigorously—dividing his attention equally between Jūkichi and Mr. Obata—repeating this nearly ten times over. Thus did Mr. Brauenberg descend with dignity from his heroic throne where thunderclouds massed, now transformed into some carefree village elder from the Karamanken foothills. Here lay an expression of joy—archaic beyond measure, grand beyond compare, brimming with raw emotion that threatened to overflow—an expression likely dredged up only after traversing labyrinthine mental pathways. In this man’s soul, antiquity still slumbered.—Studying that imposing face now crumbling into a smile, Jūkichi suddenly thought. And he clasped in return the massive palm extended to him, wholeheartedly.

A light set of footsteps approached from the entrance in quick, small steps, then came to an abrupt halt as if startled. Mr. Brauenberg casually turned toward that direction, “Ah, Ririya!”

With that, he quickly shot Mr. Obata a meaningful glance urging him on. When Mr. Obata began introducing Jūkichi, the woman called Ririya—who had been sheltering behind Mr. Brauenberg’s massive frame as if taking cover—emerged in her petite entirety from his shadow. A girl with plump cheeks, her flaxen hair carelessly cropped into tousled tufts. In both her skin tone and expression lay a certain soft ambiguity suggestive of the East. "Ms. Iliriya, this is our new colleague—" Mr. Obata began, but before his introduction could conclude,

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said in fluent Japanese, smiling shyly—then hesitated briefly before extending her hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Jūkichi parroted the greeting and grasped her small, chilly hand. Gray eyes framed by friendly smile-lines blinked close at hand....

2

A certain friend once remarked of Jūkichi, "That guy has an overabundance of future." Another friend simplified this and dubbed him a "future excess syndrome" sufferer. In truth, it seemed that boundless revolt against the present and boundless yearning for the future formed the very essence of Jūkichi. If the latter functioned well, it would grant him a kind of ascetic endurance and tolerance. If the former functioned poorly, a fickle aspect would manifest itself strongly. In seeking to find a balance between these two aspects, he struggled in his own way. The place where this harmony would be found would likely become his "present." For now, this young man had yet to form what might be called a present.

For Jūkichi, this new workplace was the perfect outlet for his vitality. In the morning when he arrived at the office, Mr. Mitronik already sat with the look of someone who had been planted there for over an hour, a Three Castles cigarette tucked to one side as he typed away on the veranda. It was a fresh sound like a signal opening that day toward the future. Next came Mr. Obata arriving at the office with a dashing air that seemed to slice through the wind. Before long Mr. Brauenberg entered wiping sweat in a fluster, followed after an interval by Iliriya Raguzana taking her seat while muffling her footsteps like a mischievous child. Mr. Brauenberg called Jūkichi over and assigned him the day's work. The attendant bundled telegrams and letters into a stack and placed them on Miss Iliriya's desk. She was in charge of maintaining the incoming and outgoing register. Soon the telephone bell began ringing. Visitors too started appearing here and there.

This marked the commencement of daily life for the five-member Import Department. Time began to effervesce. It rapidly intensified in heat and noise until just when the steam pressure within the turbine seemed poised to reach its limit—precisely at noon. The round-faced attendant with Oriental features would walk about distributing large cups of hot tea alongside meat-filled pirogs, whereupon the machinery would abruptly cease its operations. And then would come an hour of profound stillness—where even a cat’s yawn might be audible.

1:00 PM. Once again, time's turbine began its rumble, though its timbre now differed from the morning's. From the outset it carried a cadmium-yellow resonance that gradually dulled until near three o'clock it shifted into arsenical yellow. All the while persisted the reception of visitors left unattended through the morning. By the time this was finally settled, telegram drafts had begun fluttering hand to hand. Morning applications delayed now brought relentless long-distance calls. Typists driven half-mad by fractured drafts and tangled communications shrilled their way through doorways. Miss Iliriya—sealing dispatches with an attendant's help—glistened with sweat at temples and knuckles. ...When this marked the weekly mail day, literal pandemonium erupted.

The frenetic daily rotations of those days folded within their creases truly unforeseen combinations of incidents and people, and even this future excess syndrome found himself so utterly consumed by the constant comings and goings that at first he scarcely had time to recognize his own satisfaction. Each passing moment effervesced while conceiving new futures—no sooner had it foamed than, in the next instant, it yielded its place to a fresh surge of moments rising anew—and he himself would vanish delightfully into the fulfillment of duty. There existed an endless succession of surprise and satisfaction, resembling the rhythm of music….

In the midst of this self-obliterating absorption, before one knew it the lingering summer heat had passed, and October arrived—its sunlight casting deep shadows that felt poignantly familiar. By that time, Jūkichi had begun to find some mental breathing room, gaining the leisure to occasionally close his eyes and listen intently to ambient sounds or open them to quietly survey his surroundings. As his vision acclimated—much like discerning shapes on a rapidly spinning lantern’s surface—his pupils gradually adjusted from the frantic transitions of days to the languid shifts between months. Beyond the fleeting bewilderments of each passing moment, shadows of seasons and history had at last begun to take root in Jūkichi’s mental landscape.

By that time, the human faces that swayed on time’s surface and darted within its shadows began emerging from the haze like moonlit flowers, growing distinct and recognizable. Thus did this workplace transform for Jūkichi into a “house in the forest” brimming with discoveries and Märchen at every turn. It might now indeed be called the cradle of his youth....

A corner near the entrance of the Import Department had been partitioned off with wooden boards, and this space had been assigned as the legal consultant’s cabinet. The legal consultant was a man named Yulman—another with a German-sounding name—whose age and build roughly matched Mr. Brauenberg's, though with a bullneck, hunched shoulders, and a head polished smooth by baldness, his glossy oval face perpetually wearing a roguish smile. His overall impression was vaguely walrus-like, but in truth, this was a man who had long since moved past mere smooth adaptability—one for whom habitual deviation from norms had become his normal state. Affectionately honored by the Import Department staff with the title “Tenant,” he was cherished even as he proved somewhat wearisome.

Not long after Jūkichi had started working there, one morning before everyone had arrived, Mr. Yulman lumbered over to his side and began in an awkward-sounding voice—

“Mr. Ani, sorry to trouble you, but I have one grave request.” he began (apparently finding “Haniyū” difficult to pronounce—most people called him “Hani-san,” but with someone like Mr. Yulman, even the initial “H” had vanished). As he bent his unyielding bullneck while persistently pointing to his nape, it became clear his collar button had come undone, leaving the collar protruding about an inch. It seemed he’d struggled mightily already—being too portly and wearing an old-fashioned starched upright collar—for his fingers couldn’t quite reach. From his flushed face and panting breath, Jūkichi could easily picture how Mr. Yulman must have stretched and shrunk in his efforts, and he couldn’t help but burst out laughing inwardly. When the button finally fastened, Mr. Yulman appeared greatly relieved, gave his shoulders an exaggerated shake to adjust the collar’s position, and stood there with both arms dangling in a penguin-like posture,

“Thank you kindly, thank you kindly!” he repeated in Japanese that seemed forced from his lips, his deadly earnest eyes of gratitude fixed unwaveringly on Jūkichi’s own as he retreated backward with the bearing of a musician summoned for an encore. Since this incident, Mr. Yulman had become one of those dearest to Jūkichi’s heart. This man’s telephone calls were dreadfully prolonged. During daytime’s bustling peak they drew little attention, but in the hushed early mornings, those booming exchanges—absurdly polite yet enunciating every syllable with razor precision—would ricochet across the Import Department’s ceiling until they became an outright nuisance to neighboring rooms. Mr. Brauenberg, buried beneath documents and sunk in contemplation, would occasionally click his tongue violently—his signature sudden grin flashing forth all the while—

“Good grief, here comes the Tatar’s weather greetings again!... ‘How dreadfully hot it is—and how fares your good wife?’... Look, still at it... still at it...” he interjected. Then Mr. Yulman immediately took notice and, leaving the phone aside, “Now wait, Konstantin! The German-style greetings are just about to begin. You must find it nostalgic—I’ll make sure you hear it well!” he counterattacked in such a manner. And so the booming seasonal greetings grew increasingly louder and continued at length. We found ourselves stripped of all vigor, compelled to listen in reverent silence. Thus it was that this “Tenant”—whose noise surpassed liveliness and bordered on nuisance—nonetheless, by his very presence, did in fact occasionally manage to skillfully loosen the Import Department’s otherwise solemn atmosphere at precisely the opportune moment....

Even amidst this, Jūkichi’s world gradually—if incrementally—transcended the microcosm of the Import Department, steadily expanding into the wider realm beyond.

Among those realms beyond, it was above all the typists' room with which Jūkichi first established close interaction.

There were three Japanese attendants, but two of them had become semi-dedicated to the Accounting Department and the Agricultural Department—the latter occupying an annex within the gate’s wooded grounds—so a seemingly frail young man named Nishikawa single-handedly handled everything in the main building, from guest reception and second-floor administrative needs down to the Import Department’s miscellaneous tasks. In the mornings he somehow managed to handle things, but once afternoon arrived, no matter how often they rang the bell, he would no longer appear. Therefore, particularly considerate individuals like Mr. Mitronik would take urgent documents to the typists themselves. Mr. Brauenberg seemed reluctant to stand up and kept patiently pressing the bell, but before long, unable to wait any longer, he too hurried out only to return shortly after panting heavily. At first Jūkichi had been cautious, but once he determined they weren’t confidential documents, he began performing the task with ease. Not only that, but there were also invoices Jūkichi himself prepared which absolutely had to go through the typists’ hands. Among them were documents that required persistent urging to have them typed on the spot. Especially on Mail Day afternoons, this was particularly so. And so before he knew it, Jūkichi had become one of that room’s regulars.

The typists were crammed together—five or six of them—in a north-facing Western-style room deep within the dark corridor at the hallway's far end downstairs. Poor lighting forced electric lamps to burn even at midday. However sweltering it grew, they kept the corridor doors sealed against drafts, so that upon entering, one's nostrils were stabbed by the rancid stench of young women's sweat and souring face powder. An indescribably sharp, acidic odor. In this peculiar warmth, the typists—their hearing numbed by machine gun-like clatter, only their eyes gleaming nervously—swayed crushed together, now wilted and limp, now garishly aglow. The place differed not at all from some tropical "poison garden"—one that not only instantly drained outsiders' nerves but visibly gnawed away at its young inhabitants' vitality.

In this garden of women, it was Nina—a young typist—whose cool crystalline radiance most caught the eye. A tall, beautiful blonde woman with features graced by finely sculpted lines and an elegant slender face, though her lips perpetually bore a faint smile tinged with something akin to mockery. With that mouth, skillfully holding a thin-rolled cigarette, she danced her ten fingers like blue snakes across the keys without so much as a glance elsewhere. A woman of fearsome speed and combative spirit at her work, whenever something happened to grate on her nerves, she would—with a voice like glinting metal—

“Shut up!”

She would mercilessly rebuke her colleagues and then disconcert any outsider who barged into the still-tense atmosphere before the echoes of her words had even faded—yet no one had ever seen her pause in her work. Yet paradoxically, this woman was also the most sensitive to comings and goings; even when someone like Jūkichi entered, she would inevitably furrow her brows with an expression that seemed to say “here we go again,” her clear eyes emitting an amethyst-like light as she looked at people as if piercing through them.…

The moment she perceived through my presence that the task brought to her wasn’t her own, her attention would swiftly be sucked back into the keys—but if I caught that instant and began to nod, she’d inevitably type five or six extra characters before, without a breath’s pause, leaning her bare arms forcefully against the machine’s tablet and thrusting her chin forward in a gypsy-like posture, lending an impatient ear to my faltering words. At times she would maliciously nitpick every mistake in sentence endings, each time letting out a hysterical laugh. Yet once convinced it was indeed urgent, she would snatch the manuscript from his hand as if seizing it, swivel around to the spare machine beside her, and clatter away to finish it on the spot…… Though an exceedingly difficult person to approach, her quick comprehension and above all her breathtaking speed meant that as Jūkichi came to understand her temperament, he increasingly resorted to bringing pressing matters to this Nina.

Upon closer acquaintance, she turned out to be a good-natured woman—gallant yet meddlesome, eager to please, and consequently the type who always ended up getting the short end of the stick. Gradually, Jūkichi began to feel that there was some misfortune in this woman’s past. Speaking of which, even though it was still the height of early autumn’s heat, she had already taken to wearing a yellowish woolen sleeveless jacket, sweating buckets all the while yet never once taking it off—a demeanor so quintessentially hers.

One such early autumn afternoon, as Jūkichi left the office with Mr. Obata and strolled leisurely toward the Hiyoshi-zaka bus stop, Nina came up from behind and—just as she passed them—flashed a perfunctory smile before hurrying away. He had not failed to notice it in daily life, but viewing her from a distance of twenty or thirty paces like this, he could see that one of her legs seemed to have some impairment. That faint limp—not only remained unconcealed by her brisk gait—but was even amplified through the sway of thin fabric at her waist and shoulders, until her entire petite figure—neatly turned out though it was—gave the impression of something angular and bony.…

When Jūkichi casually pointed it out to Mr. Obata, the man seemed to narrow his eyes and scrutinize her, but then—

"Hmm... She's a good girl, poor thing... Surely it's not lead poisoning..." he said something unexpected.

“Lead poisoning!...”

“Oh, come now! It’s a joke… That girl was apparently an opera singer in Fiume before the political upheaval. It seems she once performed in theaters as far as Budapest… Though she doesn’t show it, she must be quite advanced in years… Perhaps Japan’s humidity has brought on neuralgia or some such?” As Jūkichi became absorbed in watching her retreating figure turn the corner, Mr. Obata swung his cane in a brisk circle and—

“She too is one of the casualties of the political upheaval… A fine woman with such spirit!”

He muttered pensively, then abruptly shifted the topic to another typist. It concerned an elderly woman named Sofiya Verkhovetskaya, but it was at this moment, through Mr. Obata’s account, that Jūkichi first learned her former identity had been that of a Dalmatian countess. She had settled in Yokohama long before, but after being widowed by a husband who had operated a substantial trade business, losing her homeland assets in the political upheaval, and becoming permanently estranged from the only son she had sent to study in America, she had ultimately been reduced to typing at her age—so the story went.

“That old woman keeps coming to me with complaints and consultations, saying things like ‘You’re the only one who understands how the elderly feel,’ you know.” “……I do look after her piano students and try to help with her concerns as much as possible, but then she starts going on about how you must have so many connections in America—with consular officials and press circles—and insists I use those connections to somehow search every blade of grass for news of her son… It’s always such a predicament.” “As a parent myself, I deeply understand her feelings, but America is vast, you know!”

Following Mr. Obata’s words—deliberately joked and evasive—Jūkichi fondly recalled the elderly woman’s appearance in his mind. Her age must already have been nearing sixty. She always sat alone in the deepest part of that room, typing with a touch as delicate as if tending to something precious. Unlike Nina’s frantic clattering, hers was a smooth and rhythmically precise method—yet now that it had been mentioned, those very gestures seemed to retain faint traces of bygone elegance, as though she were quietly playing a clavichord alone by some dimming salon window in a Dalmatian noble estate. ...When Jūkichi first began working there—when his language limitations would send him floundering to that room only to be toyed with by Nina and others—it had been this elderly woman who rescued him from such predicaments by addressing him in gentle French from the shadows. Ever since then, though Jūkichi rarely dealt directly with this specialist in English documents, he made a habit of exchanging nods whenever their eyes met. She too would respond with a caring gaze and nod in return. During lunch breaks when the Import Department lay deserted, he had occasionally glimpsed her sidling up to Mr. Obata’s desk—constantly glancing over her shoulder while whispering some urgent plea—a sight witnessed once or twice.…

“The tides of the times are quite... how shall I put it... shameless things, aren’t they?…… It’s not that each person bears guilt—I do pity them—but there’s simply no remedy for it.” “…Yet paradoxically, there’s also something ineffably bracing about it.” “It may be an antiquated phrase, but… what buds after tempests—or rather, this transition from old to new.” “Don’t let appearances fool you—I’m still brimming with youthful mettle myself. While this new generation’s emergence strikes me as perilously unsteady, I can’t deny feeling a certain… unspeakable fascination with it.……”

“Even if you speak of a new generation… truth be told I too had steeled myself expecting to confront it head-on, yet hasn’t it failed to materialize at all? Whether we speak of Mr. Brauenberg or that Mr. Yulman…” “No no—your perspective remains too limited. In time the mists will part. Though not a Croatian saying—a mountain heralds another mountain… Unseen currents swell even now beneath the surface—I can nearly hear their roar myself. Moreover let me state plainly: this regime won’t crumble nor falter… You’ll simply have to trust my instincts there. Before long even timorous souls like yourself may find their knees knocking…”

“Will a specter appear?”

“Surely it’s not that dire... Though I do wish I were a full twenty years younger myself!”

He dissolved into laughter.

3

The girl called Iliriya was somehow inscrutable. Their desks faced each other at a right angle, so when he raised his eyes, her profile was right before his nose. There was not the slightest barrier in that space between them. And yet, he still couldn't quite grasp her. Not only that, but it was a face that grew increasingly incomprehensible the more he looked.

Now, if one were to ask whether there was anything complex about those features, that was not the case. Relative to her stature, her face was on the larger side, and her plump cheeks possessed rather an Eastern-style simplicity. Her skin color also had a slightly yellowish tinge. Her nose was a fleshy, obtuse-angled aquiline shape that verged on being a snub nose—and when she smiled softly (now that he thought of it, Iliriya never laughed aloud—), two or three vertical wrinkles would etch themselves along the bridge of her nose, exuding a kind of approachable, gentle charm. Her chin was small and neat, its tip slightly receding. As for her eyes—he had been secretly observing them from the side and thus knew them well—the skin of her upper eyelids formed folds that dangled down over the eyeballs, constituting a structure akin to what anthropology calls the Mongolian fold. That structure seemed to impart to her gaze a shadow of quiet meditation and warm benevolence.

When she stood up, her petite yet slightly plump figure—which could not by any courtesy be called svelte—was perhaps concealed by the perpetually loose-fitting clothes she wore. Her entire form gave Jūkichi an indescribable comfort and relief—no, more a sense of respite. Especially after clashing with that obstinate Nina, or being dispatched to the accounting department where he had to endure sweat-drenched exchanges—first with Stepanovich, the section chief who blended unhurried optimism with a surprisingly caustic tongue, then with Safronov, the hard-of-hearing accountant and avid angler who always leaned his full set of fishing gear against the wall behind his desk—this sense of respite grew all the more pronounced. It even felt something akin to having fled the West and returned to an Eastern sanctuary.

He liked to position Iliriya’s profile within the backlight of the autumn morning streaming in diagonally from the veranda behind her, occasionally lifting his eyes from his documents with feigned nonchalance to steal furtive glances. At such times, her long eyelashes—damp with shadow—made the Mongolian fold appear all the more meditative. Occasionally in the afternoon, when old man Brauenberg was away at a meeting or some such and work grew quiet, she would hesitantly take out a cigarette and quietly light it. That smoke, now translucent purple in the sunlight that had shifted diagonally forward, ascended while forming loose rings, grazing the thin earlobe that peeked halfway out from the edge of her bobbed hair. On the desk lay an open book. It was the thick volume with a soiled mouse-gray cover that she would occasionally pull out from the wooden file holder in front of her—where ledger books were kept—and read in secret. As he gazed at her profile fixed intently upon the page, he began to fancy that a smile had settled in her eyelashes. What a calmly composed, earnest woman she was, Jūkichi thought. The phrase “female university student” felt ill-fitting for her; one might rather anachronistically call her a “Meiji-era female scholar”—there was something strangely alluring about this conflict between her modest, earnest intellectual pursuits and the sentimental heart tucked beneath her breasts. Jūkichi pondered the youth of her country. And he pondered comparing her to types such as the female scholars depicted in Meiji-era novels, or to the visage of Anna Marr from *Lonely People*. Perhaps this was even an archetype of womanhood being born in this nascent country, he thought…… Yet beneath this imagining lay something unresolved, something that refused to cohere.

One day, after Iliriya had left her seat with a book still open, Jūkichi—having been summoned to Mr. Mitronik’s office and now returned—quietly picked up that book to examine it. To his surprise, it was a Russian-language edition of Pushkin’s complete works. Upon closer inspection, its pages were not only yellowed but also indiscriminately stained with what appeared to be spilled drink marks and hand grime. To make matters worse, the binding threads had loosened or snapped entirely—a relic so antiquated one could scarcely imagine how many generations’ hands it had passed through. Jūkichi could not help but feel a pang of poignant tenderness welling up in his chest.

Having returned and sat down quietly, he timed his moment to address Iliriya—who had once again lowered her eyes to the book—

“Do you like Pushkin?” he asked. She showed a flicker of agitation, but he—without turning toward her—creased the familiar wrinkles along his nose bridge into an enigmatic smile, “Well… I’m not really sure.” “...But I must study Russian.” She said this in Japanese as if soliloquizing, folded the page corner, and returned the book to its stand.

She was a girl of few words.… Iliriya was a woman of many changes. At certain moments, she would transform as if she were a completely different person.

At first, he had thought her hair was flaxen-colored. Yet depending on how the light struck it, the color could deepen dramatically, at times appearing nearly chestnut. Speaking in general terms, what had certainly been a light hue during summer gradually—without being particularly noticeable—took on a duller tone as autumn deepened from its onset, approaching darker shades, or so it seemed. In truth, her hair was rather tea-brown; it was simply that the interplay of light and shadow affected its appearance with particular sensitivity.

Occasionally, Iliriya’s complexion would blow away the dull haze that thinly veiled its surface in ordinary times, suddenly appearing translucent with a rosy hue. At such times, youth would radiate from her forehead, and Jūkichi found it truly beautiful. Yet conversely, there were moments when her complexion would cloud into an indescribably unpleasant loess-like yellow. That rosy hue would vanish without a trace within an hour or so, yet once it turned to a yellowish pallor, it stubbornly persisted for two or three days without fail. Her gaze grew dull, and all vitality seemed to vanish entirely. She, who was usually quiet, now stood out as sullen, even knitting her brows in displeasure. He found her ugly in such moments. He found himself drawn into an oppressive mood as well. At first, he thought she might have caught a cold or something. Or perhaps he wondered if it was due to quinine or some other medicine she had taken for that reason. Gradually, he began to notice that this phenomenon appeared almost regularly over the span of about a month. That said, Jūkichi was neither idle nor curious enough to verify this with any certainty…

Now that he mentioned it, he realized Iliriya's eyes were not the simple gray he had initially perceived. Rather, a color one might call grayish-blue seemed to form their base tone. They took on subtle nuances with each passing moment's interplay of light and shadow. What proved particularly strange was how, at certain moments, her eyes even appeared a deep brown. Then her face would transform almost completely into that of an East Asian. ...From her surname Raguzana, Jūkichi had connected her family home to that port of Ragusa in his mind—a beautiful mirage city facing the Adriatic Sea, surrounded by olive trees. When he noticed a streak of azure flowing in her eyes, it seemed to him as though it were the reflected sea light of her birthplace, making him feel his imagination had gained convincing validation. But thereafter came frequent betrayals of this image. Gradually he came imagining various paths for her family's bloodline—departing the Adriatic coast to migrate northward and mingle with local bloodlines, eventually crossing Slovenia's highlands to blend even with Hungarian heritage. The more he studied her skin tone, facial features, and especially those eyes, the more this imagined lineage seemed the closest approximation to truth. To put it plainly, what she possessed was the beauty of intricately blended mixed heritage—and might it not also contain its ugliness?...

Even in that year when the summer heat had lingered unusually long, by the end of October, mornings and evenings had grown distinctly chilly. On one such morning, when Jūkichi arrived at the office slightly late due to a train accident and was hanging his matching overcoat on the nail at the entrance to the Input Department, he noticed an unusual commotion inside the room. Peering out from behind the screen partition, he saw Iliriya standing in the open space at the room’s center—tapping her feet in a steady rhythm, swiveling round and round on her heels—just now concluding her movements as she faced forward.

Old Brauenberg stood blocking the still unlit fireplace, crossing his arms, his typically imposing features crumpling into a broad smile as he watched with solemn interest. As for Iliriya—being watched—she wore a brand-new navy blouse never before seen, her elbows slightly spread, hands placed at her waist. In that stance, she stamped her feet once more—tap, tap, tap—and though one could hardly call it nimble even out of politeness, for her physique she spun around with modest dexterity once, then again. Jūkichi recalled a Croatian folk dance said to resemble Cossack dancing.

When he thought she would continue and kept watching, she abruptly halted her movements, lowered both hands, and—withdrawing toward her seat in a bashful retreat—spoke in an uncharacteristically bright and buoyant voice: “How about this cut?… Doesn’t it look comradely and splendid?” and urged his critique. “Ha, ha, ha—comradely, is it?... I see... I see... Well now, it’s well made—very well made indeed...”

A hint of bitter smile crept into Mr. Brauenberg’s praise. Unaware of this, she—innocently and with apparent concern— “Does my back look strange?” “The view from behind is also quite excellent. Iliriya. ...Did you make it yourself?” “Yes, I did it myself. ...It took a week.” Having triumphantly declared this, she suddenly noticed Jūkichi’s presence and—her cheeks flushing honestly—silently took her seat without another word.

From that day onward, Jūkichi grew accustomed to seeing her in this amateurishly crafted, rather ill-fitting office uniform morning and evening. Yet each time he saw it, he found himself oddly impressed—"So this is comradely!"—while memories of that brief spinning dance from another morning resurfaced, making her increasingly incomprehensible to him.

However, such peaceful days were not meant to continue indefinitely. The office—just as Jūkichi had intuitively sensed on his very first day passing through its gate—faced considerable external pressures; while within its walls, storms both large and small ceaselessly brewed. It was simply that Jūkichi currently found himself in a relatively windless zone. Of course, even so, thunderstorms would occasionally erupt right before his eyes.

The Commercial Representative was a thin, mild-mannered gentleman named K who, since he also held a post at the embassy, seldom showed himself at this office. There were afternoons when one might catch sight of him alighting nimbly from his automobile with a racket in hand and ascending to the second floor—yet as for where precisely on that second floor the representative’s room lay, even this much Jūkichi did not truly know. The second floor remained for him both a realm of mystery and a species of taboo. (Regarding this matter, Mr. Obata had delivered him a particular warning beforehand.)

Since the Commercial Representative carried himself in such a manner, Deputy Director Zilkovich wielded full authority over the office’s daily affairs. A towering figure with medium build and receding hairline—veins of irritability perpetually bulging at his temples—his gaze held not piercing intensity but cold penetration; his resonant baritone voice matched an imperiously confident stride. According to Mr. Obata, he had been general manager of Agram’s renowned Nish Department Store before the political upheaval. Yet this background seemed incongruous with his bearing—visibly rugged resolve and military severity overflowing from every movement while enveloped in seasoned dignity that saturated both brow and gesture. That cabinet—a small north-facing room adjoining the typists’ domain—was one Jūkichi had entered two or three times to deliver documents. Each visit brought an icy chill he couldn’t suppress crawling up his spine.

On Saturdays, even past twelve o'clock when work remained unfinished—amidst offices starting with the Input Department seething under typists' shrill voices—this Mr. Zilkovich would make his rounds, a composed smile nestled within his trim mustache, hands fluttering as though herding cattle along,

“Alright, time to wrap up, wrap up!”

he would sometimes make rounds through every room and desk. At such times, Mr. Zilkovich was positively buoyant and cheerful—his voice never containing anything remotely threatening—yet he achieved the full effect of someone cracking a whip across every desk as he made his rounds. If anyone showed even the slightest hesitation, a glint would flash in his eyes—and even the formidable Mr. Brauenberg, once caught in this gaze, would rise with a forced grin and set about wrapping up for the day without delay.

It’s unlikely that Mr. Zilkovich truly loved discipline for its own sake. Rather, it might be more accurate to say he relished the exhilaration of seeing his autumn-frost-and-summer-sun commands being carried out without delay. In any case, after this man had passed through, there remained a freshness akin to that following a sudden downpour sweeping through.

This fierce autocrat, too, would sometimes reveal an utterly childish and comical side.

One day, Mr. Brauenberg—who had been away from his seat for some time—returned with an unusually excited expression, stomping on the floorboards as he came back. Then, after a brief interval, Nishikawa—the pale-faced attendant—entered hesitantly carrying a single chair and began earnestly pleading with Mr. Brauenberg in hushed tones. In the midst of this, the name Mr. Zilkovich was repeated over and over. The old man did not even glance his way. The fingers roughly flipping through documents trembled violently with anger, their agitation clearly visible even from a distance. Finally at a loss for words, Nishikawa placed his hand on the back of the chair in which the old man sat and made a gesture indicating he wanted to exchange it with the one he had just brought in. The moment he did so, the old man let out one of his resounding coughs and indignantly shook off Nishikawa’s hand. Nishikawa fled, panting and flustered.

After some time came Kuramoto—an older attendant who knew a smattering of Serbian. This quick-witted young man scattered amiable smiles about as he desperately tried to coax the old gentleman into compliance, yet Mr. Brauenberg’s fierce demeanor showed no sign of softening. At last, he gave his head a fierce shake to the side, “No, I absolutely refuse to move! I remain seated!” he solemnly declared. Exasperated by this, Kuramoto retreated while scratching his head and approached Jūkichi’s desk,

“This is troublesome, Mr. Haniyū. “Might you find some solution, I wonder?” “…Truth be told, Mr. Zilkovich’s hemorrhoids have acted up, and he’s been adamant since this morning that we fetch him that chair without fail.” Hearing this, Jūkichi could scarcely imagine intervening. The desk Mr. Brauenberg used was indeed a relic from the previous baron’s era—a substantial antique bearing Baroque-esque elegant carvings. The matching chair had been crafted with a high backrest and legs forming graceful curves—a design of considerable sophistication. “The Baron’s Chair” served both as a collective term for this desk-and-chair set and as an unofficial title for the Deputy Input Department Manager’s position, having become an object of mingled derision and covetousness among the entire office staff. Furthermore, the chair’s seat lacked any cushioning, its bare wooden surface proving cool and comfortable in summer—a feature that required no explanation regarding its particular allure to foreigners in humid climates like Japan’s, functioning as it did as a prophylactic charm against hemorrhoids. One might surmise that Mr. Zilkovich had seized upon this sudden affliction as the pretext to realize his long-nurtured ambition of territorial acquisition.

In the end, the attendants did not reappear, and Mr. Zilkovich himself never led the charge. The resolute struggle of our old man thus splendidly succeeded in keeping the Baron’s Chair in its proper place……

With such minor comedies as its prelude, a veritable hurricane would soon descend upon the Input Department. It was early November—a day so dim from morning that electric lights had to be lit—but by afternoon, a chilly drizzle even began to fall.

Mr. Brauenberg, having had the fireplace lit for the first time, remained in a state of solitary satisfaction while making frequent resounding coughs. Late that afternoon, with the room growing comfortably warm and the rain still pattering outside, even when closing time arrived nobody felt inclined to rise. Jūkichi himself was half-dozing as he entered numbers into last month's import statistics table when suddenly a loud voice erupted from the veranda.

Before anyone knew it, Mr. Zilkovich had come and was speaking with Mr. Mitronik. It’s possible no one in the room had noticed them. So drowsily immersed in daydreams were they all. By the time they became aware, it had already escalated into angry shouts. Mr. Zilkovich’s tall figure now stood pacing furiously across the narrow veranda’s stone pavement, his silhouette blurred against condensation-misted glass. Meanwhile Mr. Mitronik remained seated, neck stiffly erect as his gaze relentlessly tracked the other man’s face—his rebuttals continuing in low tones yet with unprecedented force, threading through gaps between the outbursts. It was an uncharacteristically resolute demeanor, one suggesting thorough mental preparation. Given the suddenness of it all, the dispute’s substance remained utterly obscure. In the room, everyone held their breath. The volley of restrained voices and furious shouts persisted a while longer.

Before long, Mr. Mitronik also stood up. He had placed one hand on the rattan table, bowed his head, and appeared to be repeating his characteristic "Mm, mm…" sounds, his chest heaving rhythmically. At that moment, Mr. Zilkovich snapped his shoes sharply—or so it seemed—when he suddenly crumpled the documents on the table into a ball with a crinkling noise and slammed them forcefully onto the floor. With that momentum, he nimbly leapt onto the threshold at the room’s slope and stood imposingly like a fierce guardian statue, looking down at everything below him,

“That’s why I... I can’t stand Jews!” “That’s why I... I can’t stand Jews!”

he hurled a barrage of invective, then turned on his heel and strode across the room to depart.

This time, the storm did not simply pass. In the awkwardly deflated air, for a time, not a single person stirred. Before long, Mr. Obata rose from his seat with an air of resolute determination and left with loud footsteps, as if pursuing Mr. Zilkovich. When he disappeared beyond the door, the room once more sank back into oppressive silence.

Suddenly, from beyond the wooden partition, the tenant’s shrill voice erupted. That voice—

“That’s why I... I can’t stand it!” “That’s why I... I can’t stand it!” Then—laying on the accent until it grated like a parrot’s mimicry—he repeated it once more before emitting a bizarre cry like “Hut!” and slammed the bureau’s roll-top lid shut with a clatter, presumably heading home. Then, peering out from behind the screen with eyes rimmed red, he offered a stiff “Goodbye!” and left with equally loud footsteps.

The room falls silent for the third time.

An increasingly suffocating, utterly unbearable silence. Amidst this, Mr. Mitronik stirred. Picking up the remnants of documents scattered at his feet, he placed them on the rattan table and sank heavily into his chair. He fumbled a cigarette from the can before him but kept it pinched between his fingers as he propped his cheek with that same hand…

At that moment, Iliriya—who until now had been sitting like a cat atop a hearth, eyes narrowed as she stared fixedly ahead—quietly rose from her seat without a sound. Jūkichi felt a jolt. She half-rose, gathered up the documents on the desk, and then descended to the veranda.

She placed the documents on the rattan table and, in a voice whose intonation and timbre were no different from usual, “Leonid, your signature.”

After saying this, she waited for him to lower his hand from his cheek, pulled the ashtray on the table closer, casually struck a match, and extended it toward Mr. Mitronik. The room had grown so dark that the firelight cast a soft red glow upon their faces. Jūkichi turned and, in the hazy gloom, discerned a look of relief surfacing on old man Brauenberg’s face as he too watched the firelight.…

4

The color of the sky cleared, and beautiful autumn days began to linger on.

The vast garden—estimated to be roughly a thousand tsubo—stretched endlessly as lawn, its mid-section containing only four Himalayan cedars spaced far apart to form the vertices of a slightly irregular parallelogram. Somehow, they brought to mind four noblewomen of the Middle Ages performing a paired dance—lifting the hems of their wide, hooped skirts ever so slightly, tilting heads crowned with high coiffures, exchanging courtesies across diagonals. The fifth cedar stood apart from this group, growing solitarily midway down the slope that soon became a steep descent at the garden's front. Beyond that point formed a steep cliff, so even standing at the garden’s center, nothing could be seen in that direction save the color of the sky.

From early summer through early autumn, during lunch breaks, the shade of the four Himalayan cedars was bustling with activity. Now everyone had come out from there, and the bustle of the tree shade had been usurped by the lawn. The cedars' shadows grew longer by the day, and autumn sunlight lay sweet across the lawn.

The staff of the Import Department all commuted from outside, but a considerable number of employees' families appeared to reside in the Japanese wing. This section was connected to the Western-style office building by a short covered walkway, structured almost entirely as two stories with what could be described as a third-floor keep-like structure crowning the center of its roof. Though an antiquated edifice, it seemed capable of housing about ten families if packed more tightly.

At nine in the morning—in the sunlit spot near the right-angled jut at the western end of the Japanese building—two bed mattresses would invariably be laid out to dry, as was customary. Arranged in an inverted V-shape and absorbing the light so dazzlingly, they stung the eyes when viewed from the veranda. He did not know which family lived in that room, but it must surely be a punctual and tidy wife. The pleasure evoked by good habits.

Ten o'clock—the wives, having finished their late morning tea and tidied themselves, emerged around the two Himalayan cedars on the western side. Some had children in tow. There were also those who came out pushing baby carriages. In their crisp morning dresses, the robust lines of their hips—whether standing still or sitting cross-legged—revealed themselves in their purest form during this hour. It was not tired. It was brimming with vitality. The savage vitality that followed deep sleep.

Twelve o’clock—the wives had all gone out, leaving the lawn nearly deserted. The sole exception was Mrs. Mitronik, though hers was no social visit. Yet every other day without fail, she would circle around to the veranda from outside. When met with closed French doors, she rapped slender fingertips against them. Then ensued whispered exchanges with Mr. Mitronik over his lunch. These dialogues often stretched long while he offered only disengaged half-replies. Eventually came the snap of her handbag clasp—shoulders lifting—before she retreated through the garden. The angle of those shoulders betrayed alternating satisfaction and discontent with striking clarity. A tall woman radiating rigid composure.

Three o’clock—the lawn, filled with wives returning from shopping, took on the lively splendor of a promenade. A cluster here, a cluster there—the splashes of color multiplied across the grass. Among them were those fresh from the beauty parlor, constantly fussing with their hats. Mrs. Brauenberg too would occasionally appear. Holding her children’s hands on either side, she would come to wait beneath the veranda as closing time approached. A relatively petite woman, her clean face unadorned by powder made her look strikingly youthful. Had she not been with children, one might have taken her for Mr. Brauenberg’s daughter. It seemed the gentleman either appeared older than his years or had married late—one or the other must have been the case.

When closing time came and everyone rose from their seats, the children would come up to the office. They were a girl and a boy. This time it was Mr. Brauenberg who took their hands on either side; chatting amiably with a relaxed expression, his hat tilted back in Amida-Buddha fashion, his figure strolling leisurely homeward made for an indescribably delightful spectacle. He had never seen Mr. Yulman’s wife. This person might be single.

Iliriya went on a two-week business trip to Kobe. Kobe was originally the birthplace of this Commercial Office, but now it remains in the form of a branch, primarily handling cargo loading and unloading as well as chartering-related work.

During Iliriya’s business trip, a portion of her duties naturally fell to Jūkichi’s shoulders, but as a major procurement had just concluded and preparations for the next task were soon to begin, mornings were quite quiet.

As part of these preparatory tasks came work such as organizing old documents and excerpting relevant sections. This involved flipping through document files accumulated since the office’s establishment to examine seasonal fluctuations in essential commodity prices; investigating past clients and transaction volumes; verifying whether domestic buyers had registered dissatisfaction following those deals; and assessing those shops’ current credit standings. Jūkichi, who had been entrusted with this work by Mr. Brauenberg, found himself spending increasing time in the document repository.

The document repository had been assigned to an earthen storehouse. The earthen storehouse stood at the westernmost edge of the Japanese building. To reach it meant traversing a long central corridor that wound serpentinely. The dim corridor—with its damaged floorboards and creaking planks—made these comings and goings rather unpleasant. Yet through his countless daily journeys, he gradually came to perceive the Japanese building's life from its hidden aspect. Though its interior remained shuttered all the same...

The scenery along the corridor (to Jūkichi, it felt precisely that way—) was indeed remarkably varied. First came a sprawling kitchen. When passing by with a sidelong glance, one might sometimes find an Asian portly cook building a mountain of sliced eggs with the usual round-faced boy. There were times when they were busily frying pirogi. At times, bread slices thickly smeared with caviar would be densely arranged on a serving table that looked large enough to cover three tatami mats. If it was late in the afternoon, the dishes became more complex and authentic. They were hardworking people. Though at times, the two of them could be seen goofing off together.

Apart from the kitchen, all the other rooms were closed off with walls and fusuma sliding doors. All were warped sliding doors, their gaps fitted with wooden planks and secured with five-inch nails in an exceedingly thorough manner. In the morning, from behind unexpected fusuma, the aroma of baking bread would sometimes strike one’s nose sharply. The fragrance of coffee would sometimes rise intensely. Was it some bachelor student? Or perhaps a group of late-rising wives? Come to think of it, even past ten o'clock, they seemed to have just woken up—their beds creaking at times. Occasionally, one could hear the sound of feet slapping down into slippers on the floor. At such moments, Jūkichi would startle at the thought that his own careless footsteps might have shattered someone’s peaceful dream, passing by on tiptoe. As he did so, he would feel the little demon nesting in his mind’s corner begin whispering absurdities—was the source of that noise fat or thin? A man or a woman? If a woman, then likely around...—and so on. With a wry smile, he found himself somewhat captivated by these imaginings. Moreover, day by day he sensed this discernment being honed within him—a development that filled him with an uncanny dread.

In the hallways, he rarely encountered people, yet before long he had come to recognize the faces of about two women. To put it more precisely, two necks had now been attached to the torsos of women whose distinguishing features he had previously discerned from afar among those strolling on the lawn. One had a fair-skinned plump face with eyes already large by nature opened impossibly wide. She possessed a compact rounded body and walked with rubber-doll precision—a blonde woman. The other was a woman with a jowled mature face always thickly painted in deep ochre, her chestnut hair forming truly magnificent coiled swirls. Had one exaggerated Louis XVI-era wigs beyond reason, they might have resembled this style. When passing in slightly brighter spots, he could see countless hair rings—each an inch thick—coiling into an eerie grandeur; yet every single ring remained taut and springy like wirework, never collapsing. Were this natural hair it would have been extraordinarily strange indeed; but upon later reflection, it appeared to represent the primitive form of what would later be called a permanent wave.

The ethnic groups forming the country of J were said to be broadly categorized into three types from east to west: those preserving the customs of Turkish military forces that had pillaged the Balkan Peninsula in medieval times; those combining Greek, Turkish, and Slavic traditions while wearing red-and-black Greek caps; and those donning Hungarian-style wide-brimmed hats over this synthesized culture—so the accounts went. Yet curiously, only the women stubbornly clung to the traditional Ukrainian-Slavic customs represented by garish formal attire and simple work clothes—a steadfastness that books praised as proper evidence of spiritual integrity. Be that as it may, the first task these people undertook upon landing at a Japanese port saw both women and men vying to order the latest Western fashions. If one were to mentally strip them of those Western-style garments and then, within that same imagination, have that gentleman and this lady don their original native attire—how fascinating it would be. ……In idle moments, Jūkichi would suddenly find himself thinking such things. At times, he actually carried it out for amusement.

Even as he sat alone in quiet solitude within the storehouse, battling scurrying hordes of mice while brushing away thick layers of dust and sorting through document binders one after another, fragments of those daydreams would occasionally resurface unbidden, coaxing an involuntary smile from him. Among the binders were many documents from the Kobe period. As he sorted through them, Iliriya naturally came to mind. Yet for some reason, whenever this happened, the image conjured in his mind was not of her adorned in a Ukrainian maiden’s traditional attire, but rather of the real her—wearing that plain work uniform—walking along the actual pier streets of Kobe.…

One afternoon, as Jūkichi returned from the storehouse carrying an armful of document binders, the telephone in the entrance hall suddenly began ringing shrilly. After setting down his load and picking up the receiver, the operator informed him it was a long-distance call from Shimonoseki. This telephone was directly connected to the second floor, and the switch should always have been flipped up. Jūkichi couldn’t make sense of it. However, with no attendants in sight, he had no choice but to listen intently when eventually someone on the other end answered. It was a foreigner.

Even with local calls, he already struggled when speaking to foreigners, but here the caller was terribly rushed—compounded by what seemed a heavy Croatian accent—so that at first he could hardly make out a single word. As he kept shouting back "More slowly! More slowly!", he finally grasped that the caller needed Secretary Kaumōvichi attached to the representative.

Since the second floor was originally off-limits, he called out for an attendant by name, but unfortunately no one came. Anxious about the call disconnecting, he dashed up the stairs. The large room at the entrance had been converted into the Export Department. When he asked about the secretary’s room, they told him it was at the end of the left corridor. He knocked on the door but received no response. Turning the knob, he found it locked. On his way back, he tried opening the door immediately adjacent to it, but inside was equally vacant. It appeared to be the representative’s cabinet—a spacious, splendid room. He scurried back down the hallway and knocked on the small room’s door beside the staircase. When no answer came, he tried opening it. Here too, there was no trace of anyone.

Suddenly noticing a door in the left-hand wall, he gathered his resolve, walked over, and knocked on it. After a brief pause, this time a response came from within. It was an unfamiliar man’s hoarse voice—when he thought back later, there had indeed been an unpleasant premonition. As soon as Jūkichi pushed open the door with force, he immediately stepped inside,

"Where is Mr. Kaumōvichi?" he asked and looked around the room. He recoiled in surprise and froze stock-still. The air inside held such palpable tension.

It was a small room. In the center stood a table covered in blue serge that occupied most of the floor. A ruddy-faced, stout man sat facing forward and stared sharply at Jūkichi's face—likely the owner of that voice from earlier. At the left edge of the table sat a slender-faced young man. Beside him stood a tall man in a bluish suit. They were all unfamiliar faces. And beneath the curtained window on the right—hunched into an armchair as if trying to press himself through it—sat a man with his face lowered. The moment Jūkichi saw the shape of that crown, he thought: This looks familiar. Sparse brown hair.…

At that moment, the man standing upright swung his hand forcefully outward—a signal urging him to leave. When Jūkichi regained his composure, he bowed once and shut the door. Inside, an electric light burned...... All of it had been but a fleeting glimpse. As he descended the stairs, he felt a dizziness as though struck in the forehead. He thought he'd witnessed something repulsive. Yet simultaneously—he'd finally seen it! That sensation lingered too. And still, as if fog shrouded that one detail alone, try as he might in that instant, he simply couldn't recall the face belonging to those sparse strands of hair.

Having reached the bottom, he noticed the receiver was off the hook. Silently, he returned it to its place. He had no desire to speak. As the receiver clattered into place, that man's face flashed vividly into his mind. It was accountant Safronov. That fishing enthusiast...

That day, until he went to sleep, the unpleasant aftertaste did not fade.

Jūkichi also had business with the accounting department two or three times a day. In most cases, Safronov sufficed for the matters. When he went to check the next morning, he still hadn’t come in. By afternoon, he still hadn’t appeared. The ever-optimistic accounting department head, “Mr. Safronov not here. Busy! Trouble! Trouble!”

With broken Japanese, he spread both hands exaggeratedly and put on a comical display. When Safronov wasn’t there, Jūkichi had to trouble this Mr. Stefanovich.

The accountant did not come the next day either. Nor the day after that.

After about five days, the fishing gear bag hanging on the wall behind the empty chair appeared peculiarly forlorn.

After about ten days, the faint accumulation of dust on the leather seat of that chair became visible, translucent in the winter sunlight.

By that time, whispers that Safronov had disappeared began to reach Jūkichi’s ears. There were even those who spoke as if they had witnessed it themselves—claiming his house had been boarded up with nails, or something of that sort. He had initially dismissed it as absurd, but given that he himself had chanced upon such a scene, it was none other than Jūkichi who now found himself least equipped to refute the rumors. Interrogation... punishment... Such ominous imaginings, though dismissed each time they surfaced, had in truth taken root somewhere within his chest since that day. But what could that man have possibly done? Though their work kept them apart and they had never shared any meaningful interactions, Jūkichi had unwittingly come to harbor something slightly beyond mere goodwill toward Safronov’s character—his unassuming honesty, his air of detachment, and his quiet demeanor, perhaps owing to poor hearing. Now that matters had reached this point, he found himself belatedly reflecting on that fact. If that afternoon’s scene had truly been an interrogation as suspected, then perhaps—at worst—they might have quietly repatriated him then and there. He couldn’t help but entertain this faint premonition. The fate that lay beyond... Yet that had not been the case. He had disappeared. Where to? What had been the cause?……

One winter morning, when Jūkichi remained alone with Mr. Brauenberg in the office, his back turned as he organized the bookshelves, he heard quick clicking footsteps crossing the room. The old man made his chair clatter, “Oh! What do my eyes behold! What do my eyes behold!”

he shouted hoarsely and sprang to his feet with vigor. When Jūkichi snapped the document clasp shut and turned around, there against a backdrop of morning light shimmering across the veranda glass—its entire surface misted pearl-gray by frost’s breath—stood Iliriya in her coat, her figure starkly outlined. The old man had spread his large hands and approached; she silently clasped them firmly between her own. In that crystallized moment, they became two silhouettes: one gazing down from above, the other looking up from below……

Thus she had returned to where Jūkichi and the others were. Having removed her coat and changed into a simple travel outfit adorned with a lace brooch at her chest, she now sat at her desk—holding a caviar sandwich brought to her seat between her fingertips while gently stirring the bottom of her glass of black tea with a long spoon; narrowing her eyes, her long lashes harboring a smile, gathering friendly wrinkles along the bridge of her nose as she gazed fixedly out the window; and when he spoke to her from the side, she kept her gaze unaltered—

“Kobe was a beautiful town.” As she offered terse replies like one entranced by recollection—gazing at her profile—Jūkichi felt as though he himself had returned home. With this, their former life would begin anew. He deeply felt that life in this room—busy yet composed, peaceful yet brimming with freshness—was recommencing. And since that Safronov incident, he sensed the dark shadows of his heart—shadows that had so often lured him—being gradually swept away, thinning and dissolving into nothingness.

As if he had been waiting for Iliriya’s return, Old Man Brauenberg called her and Jūkichi to give them an entirely new task. The first was to investigate Japan’s rayon industry; the second was to prepare for purchasing raw silk machinery—as there was an intention to equip a certain organization in their home country with such equipment. For this purpose, a sample of recently harvested raw silk had arrived from their home country in a package.

Naturally, this became a collaborative effort for the two of them. For the first task, gathering the necessary literature formed the fundamental requirement. Jūkichi would go out with Iliriya to Maruzen in Nihonbashi and Kanda’s used book district nearly every three days, hunting for Japanese and English reference materials. They visited research departments at major rayon companies to seek investigative advice and obtain documents like process manuals and business evaluation reports. Through arrangements by cooperative firms, they had also toured factories in Shizuoka Prefecture twice. On the second occasion, Mr. Mitronik joined them too, by which time they were already listening earnestly to explanations delivered in a more professional manner. But generally it remained desk work—their principal tasks being to summarize collected materials and translate them into Serbo-Croatian.

When it came to the second task—now involving both practical interest and responsibility in machinery procurement—Iliriya’s demeanor grew markedly more earnest. At times she displayed such obstinate curiosity, probing technical minutiae until achieving full comprehension, that Jūkichi—who had initially charged ahead under the illusion he was leading—found himself panting just to keep pace. At times they even rode the legation’s bicycle to Yokohama Raw Silk Inspection Office three times weekly.

When passing through the basement laboratory of that inspection office—navigating the brick-laid corridor with its perpetually squelchy puddles in a stepping-stone manner—or moving through the third-floor’s spacious examination room lined with precision instruments like Seriplanes, Serimeters, and Duplan-type cohesion testers, Jūkichi would suddenly find himself overcome by the illusion that he and Iliriya were touring some distant museum in America. The raw silk sent from their home country was a considerably low-grade product with an orange tinge. The young technician at the inspection office formed a wry smile after just briefly gripping it. And yet, while looking them over mockingly, he spoke of the two who showed interest only in high-end reeling machines like the Mikawashiki or Koiwaishiki types.

“Well, improving your silkworm eggs should be your first priority... For now, I would recommend more primitive machinery.” “Ah yes, there’s just the right one available.” “It’s called the Uchida-style, and since the factory in Tsurumi isn’t too far, why don’t you go take a look?” At that factory they had gone to with his letter of introduction, while gazing at the operation of machinery that somehow appeared terribly primitive and cumbersome, the two exchanged looks and were disappointed.

However, Iliriya was not discouraged. She immediately recovered and began earnestly researching silkworm eggs and cocoon varieties. She would corner Mr. Brauenberg and engage him in fervent discussions lasting until dusk approached. In this way their work kept straying down detours, and she would not resurface until each path had been confirmed as a dead end. There lay visible proof of her resilient character. Simultaneously, Jūkichi felt an indefinable envy toward this emerging nation's crisp intellectual curiosity and the boundless realm of possibilities preserved for its pursuit……

5

The ginkgo leaves had all fallen. Two mounds of golden leaves—swept up by the elderly gatekeeper during his spare moments—had been piled on either side of the gravel path. Most trees within the gate—the groves and those lining the carriage turnaround—had shed their foliage. On mornings when arriving at work, through bare branches from afar, one could see that familiar pedimental emblem glittering under the late-rising sun.

On a Saturday afternoon shortly past noon, as Mr. Obata and I were walking back along that gravel path together, we saw a tall man and woman—who appeared to be a married couple—enter through the gate and slowly approach. Five or six steps away, the man came to a halt, removed his hat to exchange greetings with Mr. Obata, and introduced the woman accompanying him.

She was a young woman with a plump, rose-tinted face. Though her height made it less conspicuous, her figure was full-fleshed, and she wore a long cream-colored fur coat over her stately frame. From beneath that, the hem of a white skirt with many pleats protruded three to six centimeters, and the tips of her flesh-colored stockings met white leather shoes that fit snugly. The hat pulled deep over her eyes was also pure white, from beneath which peeked tousled locks of blonde hair. All these white preferences—harmonizing with her tall stature, ample hips, and above all the rosy luster of her complexion—imparted an air of leisurely neatness. Yet upon closer inspection, her countenance still retained a distinctly schoolgirl-like quality, strongly emanating both in her demeanor and in the frank tone of her responses delivered in a slightly deep alto voice.

The man was equally tall; aside from a white silk scarf wrapped around his neck, everything from his hat to his overcoat was entirely black. His oblong face bore a complexion so swarthy it verged on jet-black, upon which first caught the eye were lips pressed together with an air of solemnity and a calm gaze. The flesh of his jaw was indented in two places, and upon closer inspection, it formed a rather rich and impressive countenance. Had his complexion not been so dark, Jūkichi would have undoubtedly detected in this young man’s face traces of Michelangelo’s sculpted David.

He spoke in a calm, weighty voice yet with exceedingly polite diction—informing Mr. Obata that with his wife’s recent arrival as the occasion, he had decided to vacate the embassy and take up lodging here—then folded his arms and departed.

As they walked out the gate toward the bus stop, Mr. Obata—as if suddenly remembering—

“Ah yes—we’ve discovered where that Safronov went. “…Where do you suppose he went?”

“Hmm…” “Shanghai, you see. Quite unlike himself—made an unexpectedly grand escape. Though to look at him, that fellow apparently had quite a talent for profitable ventures.” “Then the cause… Was it misappropriation? Embezzlement?” “No, nothing of the sort. At first even that easygoing Professor Stefanovich seemed worried about that angle. But when they looked into it, found not a trace of such intentions. …Strange business—a man who’d shoulder his fishing rod before dawn on winter Sundays, veritable master of night angling, yet turns out he had this knack for speculation too. Suppose being watched over that made his position untenable…”

Jūkichi deliberately kept silent about that scene on the second floor. "In any case—it feels like a leaf has fallen." “Hard to say whether that man counts among the leaves… But at this rate, we might surprisingly soon see leaf after leaf fall—even right here among us.” “…And thus one comes to know the world’s ‘spring.’” “I see—so it isn’t autumn after all?” “…Then for now, that young man we just met might be spring’s herald…”

“Ah, that Nesterenko… I’ve only met that man a few times recently at the embassy… But no—it might very well be so.” “It might very well be so.” “Even someone like me will soon find it hard to steer my course.” “Indeed, even now, I can’t say I don’t occasionally sense such signs in the air.” “…Having made my peace with departure, perhaps I should make a clean break here.” “That would be troubling!” “That was never part of our agreement!” Jūkichi protested in a fluster.

Mr. Obata waved his white chamois gloves, hailed a passing neat-looking empty rickshaw, then turned to Jūkichi with a somewhat enigmatic smile. “How about we head out to Ginza now? How about we have dinner together and take in a movie for the first time in ages?…”

After the New Year had begun, around mid-January, the opportunity finally came for Jūkichi to see up close that young man called Nesterenko. He had been sent by Mr. Brauenberg on an errand to his private room. He lived on that familiar castle-keep-like third floor. To reach there, one had to ascend a narrow, rickety staircase from the second-floor back corridor. Using the steeply inclined crude ladder, Jūkichi felt as though he were climbing up to some attic storage space.

Upon reaching the top, there was a small plank-floored hallway. The light streamed in only from the small east-facing window, leaving the space strangely dim. At the very front were two old sliding doors set into the walls, and the end of the hallway appeared to have a single-panel sliding door. It was profoundly silent. Jūkichi hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the sliding door at the very front. A forceful voice responded. He slid open the ill-fitting door and peered inside. There was a large north-facing glass window, and the interior was bathed in a cold, stark brightness. In the center of that brightness, Nesterenko sat with his long upper body towering over the small desk, staring solemnly in this direction. Upon seeing Jūkichi’s face, he showed a momentarily surprised expression but quickly softened his countenance,

“Please come in. Close the door behind you...”

and ushered him in. A small oil stove was burning, but Nesterenko kept his coat on. When he sat down on the indicated chair and was about to state his business, someone shifted position in the recessed area to his left. It was dark there, so he hadn’t noticed, but in one corner sat that young wife. She had draped her dark overcoat over her shoulders like a cloak; when she stood up, she gave Jūkichi a nod with her usual rosy-cheeked face and swayed out of the room.

Jūkichi handed over the memo he had brought from Mr. Brauenberg onto the desk. He had been told to come and get the reply. The young man took it in hand, frowned slightly with a look of suspicion, then nodded and began to read. It was a rather long memo. While he was reading, Jūkichi took another look around the attic room. On the desk were four or five large, temporarily bound books and several newspapers folded into quarters, all haphazardly piled up. One ink bottle, one pen, and one red pencil lay scattered. A notebook lay open, covered in haphazard scribbles. It appeared he had been in the midst of writing. On the side desk pushed to the left lay five or six brown rabbit pelts piled haphazardly. From the glimpse of a long, narrow label peeking out, this appeared to be a product sample or something similar. Further back, where it grew dimmer, coats and suits hung in disarray, and in their shadow could be seen the small unpainted bench where his wife had been sitting until moments before. On top of it lay a black leather handbag that had been left behind. Beside it lay a single tattered dictionary carelessly tossed aside as if out of place.

The right wall was entirely covered by a map of Asia, with five or six bromide photos of American film actresses pinned around Siberia. All appeared to be rather vintage items, and given the yellowed water stains visible here and there on the map, this seemed likely to be some previous occupant’s legacy. The front window had white curtains that had faded to a mouse-gray color; they were drawn completely to both sides, revealing the full expanse of a whitish, overcast winter sky....

“Ah, I see,” he said. “...I’ll write a reply.” With that, Nesterenko tore a page from his notebook, scrawled something in rough-handed strokes, folded it twice, and passed it to Jūkichi. As Jūkichi made to stand, Nesterenko thrust his sturdy hand across the desk to halt him—a gesture halfway between restraint and invitation—and fixed him with an earnest gaze from those brownish eyes that held a disarming warmth. “What are you studying?”

he asked.

As Jūkichi floundered somewhat, evasively mumbling something about economics or the like...

“Ah yes,” “You are remarkably proficient in Serbian.” “...I am studying Japanese.” “My wife is more proficient than I am, so she’s currently teaching me using the newspaper,” he said, spreading open the Asahi Shimbun on the desk to show the economics section densely marked with red lines. “But Japanese is terribly difficult.”

They parted ways for the day without further ado.

About a week later, Jūkichi was again asked by Mr. Brauenberg and went to this attic room on an errand. The request was to have the recent investigation documents fully completed by tomorrow.

When he had climbed about halfway up the ladder, a man's voice suddenly came shouting loudly from above. He found this awkward but climbed all the way up regardless, deciding to observe the situation for a while. At first he couldn’t tell, but soon he realized it wasn’t Nesterenko’s voice. It was shrill—a strangely high-pitched voice. The speaker seemed quite agitated. From the tone alone, Jūkichi could vividly picture the countenance of a young man—pale-faced, lips curled back as he argued vehemently. The expressions of young men who relish debate are mostly alike.

Before long, Nesterenko’s voice—still calm and composed—began to intermittently join in. In a soothing tone, he interjected short phrases. At times, his voice would carry a faintly ironic laugh. The other man’s voice also grew somewhat calmer, and the content of their conversation began to reach Jūkichi’s ears. “Now, Comrade N—though Jūkichi couldn’t catch the name—it’s not that I’m opposed to rural mechanization itself, you know.” “But that—when considered in light of my country’s actual conditions…”

This was Nesterenko’s voice. “So isn’t that precisely what I’m talking about—the present conditions? To work, there must first be food—before your so-called issues of national education or whatnot. Listen here. To eat, one must cultivate—you’ll agree with that, won’t you? Therefore, to cultivate—it comes down to machinery first. When you say that this year’s food shortage is merely a temporary phenomenon caused by the great drought in the Vojvodina region—well, perhaps that is indeed the case. That this emergency can be managed through imports is indeed exactly as you say. But you see, famines are indeed natural disasters, but they’re also a recurring force majeure. That is where science comes into play. Why must those vast wastelands along the eastern and southern coasts be left untouched as they are? Why do you oppose reclaiming those regions? That’s what I can’t understand. Given how cautious you are, are you even worried about a food surplus during an average harvest year? Then why aren’t you afraid of famine? I repeat, science will solve everything... Now—” (he pronounced each word with crisp enunciation) “agricultural products arise as the result of humanity applying metal and oil to the earth—this was the incisive declaration made by Comrade Yakovlev at the 16th Party Congress. Metal and oil, particularly oil—what to do with this oil is what I’ve been insisting on until I’m blue in the face!”

“Comrade Yakovlev is someone I respect as well. But I want to calmly acknowledge that behind his famous words lies Russia’s abundant resources... And given our country’s reality of producing mainly lignite when we speak of coal—that’s where I want to start my considerations.” “So you gasify that coal… then take it a step further and liquefy it…”

“Alright, understood,” said Hyacinth Nesterenko. “Now listen, Comrade N—you’re precisely the sort who conflates scientific potential with immediate practicality. By that logic, one might just as well lay an oil pipeline straight from Proeshti in one bold stroke—far more efficient than tinkering with coal liquefaction! Though of course,” he added dryly, “this assumes those oil fields actually belong to Romania... Being a farmer’s son myself... perhaps my thinking remains too unhurried for such grand designs.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Well enough—I’ll hear your advisements on that matter another time.” Leaning forward abruptly, he concluded: “Incidentally, Comrade N—I must take my leave now. Shouldn’t you be returning to the embassy yourself?”

“Ah! That’s right!” Sensing the young man hurriedly rising to his feet, Jūkichi deliberately stomped down the corridor as he approached and gave the sliding door a loud knock.

When he entered, sure enough, the man in question was a pale-faced youth whose jet-black hair and lips as red as rouged vermilion struck him with vivid intensity. With large moist eyes darting a glance at Jūkichi, he then tumbled down the stairs as though tripping over himself. “Infantile!” Nesterenko spat out while seeing off his departing friend, though when he turned his slightly flushed face toward Jūkichi, his tea-brown eyes stared fixedly with a composed smile. “What on earth are you going on about? I can’t make heads or tails of it!”

Nesterenko, who had been standing up, said in a low voice that seemed spat out while watching his friend depart. Then, turning his slightly flushed face toward Jūkichi, he stared fixedly at him with tea-brown eyes that held a gentle smile,

“Ah, good day, Mr. Haniyū. Is there something you need?” he said, reaching out his hand over the desk.

Jūkichi stared fixedly back into those eyes while ruminating anew on the phrase "farmer’s son" he had just overheard... Thereafter came occasional chances to meet with Nesterenko—though truth be told, since he dwelled solely in that Japanese-style building and scarcely appeared in the office proper, their encounters remained largely confined to his third-floor room. There Jūkichi would invariably find him sitting upright across the desk, either absorbed in reading or deep in contemplation. At times his rose-cheeked wife would be nearby, occupied with knitting or similar handiwork.

Beyond that vast lawn garden, at its western edge, there was a mixed grove. Jūkichi had never ventured there before, but one day in late February—lured by an unseasonably warm, springlike day—he found himself entering the grove during his lunchtime stroll.

When he entered, the grove was unexpectedly deep. Alder, chinquapin, and zelkova trees stood thickly clustered, most now bare-limbed, yet still unmistakably a woodland where sunlit clearings lay quiet and bright, carrying a subtle woody fragrance. As Jūkichi ambled along the path, he came upon an old well. It had a properly constructed frame with an old-fashioned counterweighted bucket. Perhaps this section of the garden preserved remnants of a former tea pavilion or similar structure. Indeed, even the path's winding course seemed artfully designed, and following one of these enticing trails deeper in, he felt he might soon encounter those hushed garden walkways of poetic seclusion. Though now, peering through the lattice of branches in every direction, no trace of any roof-like forms remained visible. ……

Sitting on the well frame and gazing at his surroundings for a while, he eventually saw a single black figure emerge from behind what appeared to be a Japanese nutmeg-yew thicket across the way, walking slowly along the path. With one hand half-raised and his head slightly bowed, he was unmistakably walking while reading a book. From the figure’s posture and the white muffler around his coat collar, Jūkichi immediately recognized it as Nesterenko out for a walk.

No sooner would the figure disappear into the thicket to the right than, after a short while, it would return along the same path. The same posture, the same unhurried gait. After watching this back-and-forth movement three or four times, Jūkichi—realizing it was nearly one o’clock—stood up and approached the path. At the corner where paths intersected diagonally, Jūkichi encountered Nesterenko. He didn’t notice even when coming within five or six steps. He appeared perfectly calm and composed, as though savoring the tranquility around him. In that long-coated figure, Jūkichi suddenly sensed something reminiscent of a Catholic missionary. If someone were to flatten that black hat from above, it would become exactly the same figure…

“Good day, Mr. Nesterenko! Are you out for a walk?” “Ah, Mr. Haniyū! Good day!” He looked at Jūkichi as if startled, though his eyes already held a friendly smile. Lowering the still-open book to his side, he said: “I’ve come to like how quiet it is here. No one else seems to visit.” “Yes, actually this is my first time here today too. And you?” “I’ve been coming since a week ago.”

Raising the book back to his chest, he gave a slight nod and turned to walk deeper into the grove. Jūkichi felt himself increasingly drawn to this young man—dignified yet gentle, courteous yet seemingly fond of solitude, whose calm eyes perpetually gazed into the depths of distant things……

On their way back from visiting the now thoroughly familiar research department of a certain rayon company in Marunouchi with Iliriya, Jūkichi resolved to ask her about this Nesterenko. She, who seemed entranced by the streaks of ice rain tracing line after line on the car window, cast a fleeting questioning glance at him before immediately lowering her eyes again, "Well, I don’t really know, but he must have come here on a student status... just like me."

The fact that Iliriya was an exchange student was news to Jūkichi. “Speaking of exchange students… would that be for something like literature or art research?...” “No, it’s still economics, I suppose. The term ‘exchange student’ does sound rather odd, but… well, it’s really just practical research in the field, so to speak. There’s simply a certain deadline attached…” She hesitated for a moment there, then suddenly murmured as if to herself, “Now that you mention it, my deadline is nearly here.”

"Oh dear, that's a problem. Hasn't this work been finished yet?" Iliriya—as if suddenly recalling the three rayon-manufacturing nozzles she'd been clutching since receiving them earlier—opened her palm where they lay glowing with a muted golden sheen like thimbles, staring fixedly at them.

“Well, I might stay until this work is finished.”

“So, what will you do when you return? Do you have any work arranged?”

“No, not particularly. The organization that sent me abroad will likely decide… As for me, there’s nothing particular…” She fell silent, gazing out the car window as they stopped at a crossroads, but when the vehicle began moving again, her voice suddenly brightened as she spoke in rapid Serbian—uncharacteristically so— “Ah, that’s right—I’d forgotten. “Today’s the day of the boxing match, wasn’t it? “It was that poster on the utility pole that reminded me… Horita vs. Gonzago twelve-round match… Do you dislike boxing?”

When she said this, he realized it was indeed Saturday, but the pairing of Iliriya and boxing left Jūkichi somewhat taken aback, "No, actually I’ve never seen one…"

“It’s quite interesting.” “The first time I saw it, Horita’s... I think they called it a double punch? That way of striking consecutively with one hand... It landed so cleanly that the opponent started bleeding from the nose.” “That blood...” she trailed off, gazing up at the ceiling as if lost in memory, “it splattered all over the opponent’s pure white chest—so much it was shocking.” “When I saw that, I suddenly felt nauseous and just got up and left my seat.” “I thought I’d never watch it again.” “But after a while, I found myself casually going out to watch again.” “And finally, I’ve come to think there’s nothing as interesting as that now.” “I generally watch whenever Mr. Horita fights... It seems people can’t truly come to love something unless they’ve once despised it, you know...”

Over these past few months, he had driven around with her quite frequently, but she had never once proactively initiated a conversation like this. And now this torrent of words—this topic! Jūkichi was nearly dumbfounded, his gaze vaguely fixed on her profile at the edge of his vision. Her long eyelashes seemed to retain their usual quiet smile. The way her eyes remained downcast was no different. Yet he fancied—or perhaps it was just his imagination—that her cheeks bore the faintest tinge of red.…

Some time later, when the car had passed in front of the Shirokane Legation, she abruptly recalled something— "That person called Nesterenko—his name is Hyacinth, you know." "Hyacinth... A flower’s name—isn’t it lovely?" "It’s almost too lovely for someone like him…" “Not really.” “What do you call the flower ‘Hyacinth’ in Japanese?” “It’s still ‘hyacinth’.” “In Chinese, it’s called Fengxinzi (and he wrote out the characters)—I believe.” “The flower that carries news on the wind...”

“That’s a lovely name.” “…Around my home, those flowers bloom profusely.” “It’s a small cape called Kavatat, much further south in Dalmatia... In just another half-month, it’ll be the season when those flowers begin blooming...”

*

Mr. Mitronik was suddenly transferred to New York and left.

On the morning of his departure, at the veranda exit, Mr. Mitronik—who had grasped Jūkichi’s hand—spoke in an uncharacteristically vigorous voice: “I wish you success!”

he said, shaking it with all his might. "Success to you!" The meaning of the character for "success" was progress. Therein lay a firm sensation of stepping up one solid step after another. In Japanese, he found himself fixating on the character for "achievement"—this emphasis on outcomes alone felt somehow distasteful... As these thoughts cycled through his mind, Jūkichi stood watching Mr. Mitronik's retreating figure, the man busily shaking hands with one staff member after another.

"Before long—here at this very threshold—will I too exchange farewell handshakes with Iliriya?" Jūkichi found himself suddenly thinking such thoughts before long, recalling once more to mind that silhouette of her—backlit by morning light flooding this veranda—where she had clasped hands with elderly Brauenberg. He scanned the area searching for Iliriya. She stood modestly at the very edge of the group by the wall, waiting her turn while following Mr. Mitronik’s gradually departing figure with a gaze that still held its quiet smile. Her face was as though—

*Still I am here,* as though she were whispering reassurance to her own heart.