Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/37

 He would be so absorbed in these thoughts that he did not hear the hum of life in the little street beneath his windows; but one day something happened that at once brought him back to this world. Suddenly which he had carved for his garden; they sighed a response just as they had done when the newly-arrived cicada had lifted its song in the Garden of Desire  For a moment the lone man was struck motionless with wonder, and he felt as if his heart must burst with a great gladness, with unendurable happiness. Of a sudden the dream of not long ago returned to his memory and he comprehended who the old man had been and what his mysterious words had meant. He realized that from this very moment his was the, and that down there under his window in the little street she was passing whose voice had called forth the response from the strings of the little temple, strings which day and night remained dumb to thousands of voices and sounds continually penetrating from the outside into the quiet room. He knew that he had only to arise to see her whom ingwa had predestined for him, for nothing happens in this world that has not its cause in the acts, thoughts and longings of past incarnations, long since fallen to dust and ashes. This voice reverberating in this common street found a sweet echo in his heart. Perhaps they had been promised to each other at some long, long past time, and through no fault of their own did not attain the happiness for which they longed; and through long suffering having bought the right to meet again in some future incarnation, now at last they were to find the fulfillment of their desire.

“Amma kamishimo go hyaku mon,” sounded for the third time in the little street, the melodic and melancholy signal of the masseuse, the signal by which thousands of masseurs and masseuses all over Japan offer their services for the inconsiderable sum of five hundred mon or five sen. But all those thousands–tens of thousands–are stone-blind. Every one of those who sing or whistle the signal makes his way carefully through the middle of the street, feeling his way with a cane so as not to come upon an unexpected obstacle. Young and old, men and women, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, all of them are plunged in darkness from which there is no return.

He understood that she who was predestined to be his wife would never see his ugliness, that for her his voice would be his face; and getting up he called the young masseuse who was passing by his house, called her with a trembling, joyful voice. And she stopped, pressing her hand to her heart, and slowly turned to him her pale, sadly beautiful face.