• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

All along I had been keenly aware that the man had been gazing at me from the moment I had risen from my seat. And then suddenly, before I had even recovered my breath, he spoke in a dry voice.

"Is this what you want to see?" he asked, nodding his head casually toward the flat parcel beside him.

I was so taken aback by the suddenness of his question that I found myself completely tongue-tied. The tone of his voice had been natural enough—so completely natural, in fact, that it further disarmed me.

"I'm sure you're dying of curiosity to see this," he said again, calling me back to my senses with a jolt.

"Yes—yes, if you would permit me," I stammered, feeling my face flushing.

"It would be a great pleasure," the old man replied with a disarming smile. Then he added: "I've been expecting you to ask me for some time."

He unwrapped the large cloth covering carefully with his long fingers and stood the tablet against the window again, this time facing me.

Unconsciously, I closed my eyes, although why, I could never explain. I simply felt that I had to. But finally, with a supreme effort, I forced my eyes open, and for the first time I saw—the thing!

It was just an ordinary wooden tablet, with a picturesque scene painted on its surface. The scene showed a suite of rooms, their floors covered with mats of pale-green straw, and their ceilings, painted in assorted colors, seemed to stretch far away into the distance, like the backdrops of the Kabuki theater. In the left foreground there was a classical window, painted with bold brush strokes, while beneath it there reposed a low, black writing desk, which seemed utterly out of place.

Against this background, there were two figures, each about one foot high, looming in bold relief, having been fashioned out of cloth and pasted on the tablet. One was a white-haired old man, garbed in a well-worn, black velvet suit of an obsolete European cut, sitting stiffly on the floor. And, strangely enough, this figure bore a striking resemblance to the old man sitting beside me. Shifting my gaze, I examined the other figure, which was that of a strikingly beautiful girl no older than seventeen or so. Her coiffure was of the classical style, while her intricately designed kimono was a long-sleeved affair of crimson artistically blended with other lighter hues, held together with a gorgeous black satin sash. Her posture was delicately amorous, for she was leaning shyly against the lap of the old man, as in a typical Japanese love scene on the stage.

In sharp contrast to the crudeness of the setting, the elaborateness of the pasted rag dolls was astonishing. The faces were fashioned out of white silk, with uncannily realistic wrinkles. As for the girl's hair, it was real, affixed strand by strand, and dressed with intricate skill. The old man's white hair too was no less real. As for his clothes, I noticed that even the seams were faithfully sewn. The buttons too, small as millet seeds, were there.

To add to all this, I also saw the swelling of the girl's breasts, the bewitching line about her thighs, the scarlet crepe of her undergarments showing from beneath her kimono, the natural fleshy texture of her white skin, the shell-like nails on her fingers. . . . In fact, all was so perfect and true to life that I even thought I could have found pores and downy hair if I had continued my scrutiny through a magnifying glass.

The tablet itself appeared very old; the colors of the background had peeled off here and there, and the costumes of the pair were faded in color. Despite these flaws, however, the two figures were so uncannily real that one would have expected them to come to life at any moment.

In the classical puppet theater I have often experienced the sensation of seeing a doll, manipulated by a real master of the art, momentarily come to life. But the two rag figures pasted on the tablet had not just a fleeting aliveness, but a permanent one.

Lost in my wonder, I