the tofu seller or to one side of him?"
"Well—on the first floor."
"The first floor of what?"
"The tofu shop."
"You don't say! Fancy that!" Roku exclaims in stupefaction.
"I am the tofu seller's son."
"No, really? The tofu seller's son?" Roku repeated in ever-growing astonishment.
"Then, in the season when the convolvulus was fading and turning brown on the hedge, rustling when one tried to pull their interwoven tendrils apart, and when a white sheet of mist came down everywhere and the street lamps began to gleam, the bell sounded once again. Ding-dong! The clear echo rose from the bamboos. And then the tofu seller near the temple, on hearing the sound of the bell, closed the sliding doors."
"You say 'the tofu seller near the temple'—but you are referring to your own house?"
"Yes—that is to say, at the tofu seller's near the temple they were closing the sliding doors. And you could hear the ding-dong! I went up to the first floor to lay out my futon and lie down. The yoshiwarage3 we had was very good. The people in our district appreciated it."
The "forearm" and the "saber" of the next room have calmed down; on the veranda on the other side a heavily built old man of about sixty years of age, resting his bent back against a pillar and seated like a tailor, is pulling out the hairs on his chin with a pair of tweezers. He seizes the root of each hair firmly and gives it a sharp pull, the tweezers moving apart towards the bottom and his chin moves convulsively as in a somersault. It is like a machine.
"How many days does it take him to get rid of all the hairs?" That is the question that Roku asks Kei.
"If he makes an effort, he can do it in half a day."
"I don't believe it!" Roku protests.
"Don't you? Well, let's say a day."
"It would be too simple to be able to finish in one or two days."
"True enough. Perhaps he will need a week. Look how carefully he feels his chin while pulling out the hairs."
"If he goes no faster than that, he won't have had time to pull out the hairs before others have grown in their place."
"Well, anyway, it is bound to be hurting him," says Kei, by way of changing the subject.
"It certainly must hurt him. Should we not give him a piece of advice?"
"What advice?"
"To stop it."
"What business is it of yours? We shall ask him how long it will take him to pluck all the hairs out."
"All right. You'll be the one to ask him."
"I can't. You do it!"
"I can if you want me to, but it's not really important, is it?"
"Well, no. Let's give up the idea, then."
Kei generously retracts his own suggestion.
The noise made by the farrier, who had paused in his work for the first time, again resounds beneath the clear sky—bang! clang!—aiming, perhaps, to crush under innumerable claps of thunder autumn's arrival in the mountain village.
"When I hear that noise I cannot help feeling homesick for the tofu shop of the old days," says Kei, his arms crossed.
"But has the son of the tofu seller got like that?"
"What do you mean by like that'?"
"There is nothing of the tofu seller about you."
"Tofu seller's son or fishmonger's son—to become what one wants to be, it's enough to want it."
"True. Basically, everything is in the mind."
"It's not only the mind that counts. Who knows how many tofu manufacturers in this world have anything in their heads? That does not prevent them from remaining tofu manufacturers for the whole of their lives! The poor creatures!"
"What does count, then?" Roku innocently asks.
"What counts is—well—to want it."
"Even if one wants them, there are lots of things society does not allow, aren't there?"
"That's why I said 'the poor creatures!' If one is born into an unjust society, it can't be helped. Whether it permits it or not, is of not much importance. The main thing is to want it oneself."
"And what if one wants to be something and still does not become it?"
"Whether or not one becomes it, is not the problem. One has to want it. By wanting it, one causes society to permit it," says Kei in peremptory tones.
"Yes, of course—if everything goes like clockwork! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"But up to now, I've always conducted my life along those lines."
"That is exactly why I said there was nothing of the tofu seller about you."
"Perhaps I am about to become like one. Ha ha ha ha!"
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