maid, urging me to visit.
“He’s come with a traveling troupe?”
“Well, he was acting in a play at a town nearby, and then he and our
panpan became friendly, so he left the company and stayed on here alone.
Now the panpan is supporting him. He’s a handsome man, after all. . . .
Everyone turns around to look when he walks outside.” Seeing that the ink
had dried, the maid closed the scrapbook. “When I say panpan I mean the
sort of person who used to be called a shakufu, of course—a certain kind of
waitress.”
I went downstairs with the maid. She stopped before one of the paper-
paneled doors in the hall, and called out,
“Mr. Uryu, Mr. Uragami has come.”
He came to the door and slid it open, and our faces met. For an instant I
felt as though I were looking at a large white flower. As we seated
ourselves, Uryu came to seem more like an artificial flower—one which
might easily be mistaken for a natural flower. After greeting me politely, he
said, “I was told that this used to be Mr. Kishiyama’s room, so I asked to be
allowed to stay here—to remember. I read Mr. Kishiyama’s Collected
Works with great pleasure when I was in high school. . . .”
I doubted that a traveling actor would have attended high school under
the old system, but I said nothing of these doubts. I said instead, “But to
come to an inn on the shore and stay in a room with no view of the ocean? .
. .”
“Ah—I have a terrible case of muscae volitantes… I can’t bear to look at
the ocean or the sky or anything like that. The entire sky seems to be filled
with flying ash-colored dots, they’re like mosquitoes, and—” Uryu broke
off. He squinted, as if dazzled. The look in his eyes was like that of a young
woman flirting without even meaning to. I was drawn irresistibly towards
those eyes. Hadn’t I once known a young woman somewhere, briefly,
