The Great Passage Read online

  As Araki stood lost in thought, the employee sitting nearest to him came up and asked, “Are you looking for someone, sir?” She tried to lead him back toward the entrance, apparently mistaking him for an outsider who’d wandered in without first stopping at reception. Despite Araki’s thirty-seven years next door in the annex, many veteran employees at Gembu had never laid eyes on him.

  “Ah, no, that is . . .” He tried to explain the nature of his errand and stumbled over his words. His eyes were drawn to a young man in a corner of the room.

  The young man was standing with his back turned, facing a row of shelves along the wall. He was tall and thin, with hair that was awfully unkempt for someone in sales. He’d taken off his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves, getting ready to rearrange the shelves. Araki watched as he took boxes, large and small, and whisked them around from one shelf to another until they fit together snugly in apple-pie order. His movements were deft, like those of someone assembling a complicated jigsaw puzzle in the blink of an eye.

  Araki held back a low cry of exultation. Such dexterity was crucial for anyone involved in compiling a dictionary. In the final stages of editing, the number of pages was fixed and immutable, as any change would affect the printing and price. Fitting the contents into the allotted number of pages meant making swift decisions in a short time—eliminating illustrative quotations, however reluctantly, or condensing definitions. Exactly the sort of puzzle-solving knack that the young man had just displayed.

  This was the one! The very one suited to becoming the next head of the Dictionary Editorial Department!

  “Tell me something.” Unable to contain his excitement, Araki turned to the woman standing beside him. “That young man over there—what’s he like?”

  “What do you mean?” She sounded wary.

  “I’m Kohei Araki, from the Dictionary Editorial Department. What can you tell me about him? He’s twenty-seven and this is his third year here after grad school, is that right?”

  “I think so, but you’d better ask him. He’s majime.”

  Majime, eh? Serious, diligent. Araki nodded in satisfaction. This was very good. Lexicography was slow and steady work—exactly the sort of work that required someone majime at the helm.

  The woman turned toward the man, who was now double-checking his handiwork, and called, “Majime! You have a visitor.”

  He’d told her he was from the Dictionary Editorial Department, not a visitor—didn’t she get it? Araki was peeved, but persuaded himself that she may have used the word in the simple sense of a “caller,” without any nuance of “outsider.” More worrisome was the fact that she’d actually called the fellow Majime. Just how serious would a person have to be to earn such a nickname? This wasn’t a schoolyard where kids scattered after school let out, or a police department overrun with detectives in jeans. It was a dignified publishing company. Yet here was somebody whose very nickname was Majime. He must be megaserious. Proceed with caution, Araki told himself as he eyed his prospect with greater intensity.

  In response to the woman’s summons, the man looked back. He was wearing silver-framed glasses. And yet his nickname wasn’t Megane (Specs) but Majime. As Araki braced himself, the bespectacled young man came over slowly, seemingly ill at ease in his lanky frame.

  “Yes? I’m Majime.”

  Whoa. Did the guy pride himself on his seriousness, or what? Araki was taken aback but managed to recover without betraying his shock. He felt his eagerness to recruit this man rapidly melting away. To brazenly declare oneself Majime showed a total lack of majime. Somewhere inside he was making light of the virtue of diligence; he probably had no idea of its true importance. In any case, this was not somebody to whom he could entrust the making of dictionaries.

  As Araki stood silently glaring, the young man seemed baffled. He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up still more. Then, apparently hitting on an idea, he pulled out a card case from his shirt pocket. With a slight bow, he held a business card out in both hands. His movements were slow and clumsy.

  Araki felt let down, indignant. Didn’t this greenhorn know better than to hand out his card to strangers? Besides, they worked for the same company! Keeping his irritation under wraps, he glanced down at the card in the young man’s hands. The nails at the tips of his long fingers were round edged and neatly trimmed. The business card bore this inscription:

  MITSUYA MAJIME

  SALES DEPARTMENT

  GEMBU BOOKS, INC.

  The characters for Majime were not what Araki had assumed them to be. The meaning was not “diligent” but “horse dealer.”

  “Mitsuya Majime . . .”

  “Yes, that’s right. I am Majime.” He smiled. “You must have gotten the wrong idea from the sound of my name.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Hastily, Araki retrieved one of his own business cards from his back pocket. “I’m Araki, from the Dictionary Editorial Department.”

  Majime politely studied the business card. Behind the silver frames his eyes were clear and calm. The cut of his shirt was a bit out of fashion. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to his personal appearance, but his skin was taut. He was still young—young enough to have decades ahead of him to devote to dictionaries. Araki felt a twinge of jealousy but did not, of course, let on.

  “That’s a very unusual surname. Where are you from?”

  “Tokyo, but my parents are from Wakayama. Apparently majime was the word for ‘wholesale dealer’ there.”

  “Ah—as in a person who controls horses, supplies them to travelers.” Araki searched his pockets, but unfortunately he hadn’t brought his notebook. He scribbled a note on the back of Majime’s business card.

  MAJIME—“WHOLESALE DEALER”

  NOT IN WGW OR GFW. MUST CHECK GDJL.

  Though not as dedicated as Professor Matsumoto, Araki had a habit of recording unfamiliar words on the spot. Afterward he would check the index cards in the office. If there wasn’t an index card for the word he’d written down, he would track down the source (if possible, the earliest recorded occurrence) and add another card to the growing collection. The office contained a vast number of index cards. In compiling a dictionary, deciding which of the words listed on these cards to include took careful consideration. Electronic data was playing an increasingly prominent role, but the card stacks were the department’s heart and soul. Long before the movement to divide workplaces into smoking and nonsmoking areas, smoking had been strictly forbidden in the room where the card stacks were stored.

  The sight of Araki suddenly jotting down a memorandum on the back of his business card seemed not to surprise or upset Majime in the least. “People are always asking me about the origin of my name,” he said, “but nobody’s ever written it down before.” He peered with calm interest at what Araki had written.

  That’s right, you’re here to recruit this fellow. Distracted by the man’s unusual family name, for a second Araki had forgotten his purpose in coming. He tucked the card and pen in his breast pocket and cleared his throat. “If someone asked you to define the word migi, ‘right,’ what would you say?”

  “‘Right’ as in the direction, or ‘right’ as in politics?”

  “The former.”

  “Let me think.” He tilted his head pensively, swinging his long hair. “Defining it as ‘the hand used to hold a pen or chopsticks’ would ignore all the left-handed people in the world. ‘The side of the body that doesn’t contain the heart’ wouldn’t work, either, since a few people do have their heart on the right side. Maybe something like this would be the safest: ‘when facing north, the side of the body that is to the east.’”

  “Okay. Then how would you explain shima?”

  “‘Stripes’ . . . ‘island’ . . . the place name . . . the suffix in words like yokoshima”—evil—“and sakashima”—upside down—“‘conjecture,’ as in the four-character phrase shima okusoku”—conjecture and surmise—“. . . the four devils of Buddhism . . .”

  As
Majime reeled off possible candidates, Araki hastily cut him short. “Shima as in ‘island.’”

  “All right. Something like ‘a body of land surrounded by water’? No, that wouldn’t do. Enoshima is connected by a bridge with the mainland. In which case . . .” Majime muttered to himself with his head still pensively tilted to one side, seemingly oblivious to Araki as he considered the meaning of the word. “Maybe something like ‘a comparatively small body of land surrounded or set off by water.’ But wait, that’s no good, either. It doesn’t include the sense of ‘gangster territory.’ Then how about ‘land set apart from its surroundings’?”

  He was the genuine article. Araki looked on with admiration. It had only taken seconds for Majime to work out the underlying meaning of shima. Back when he’d put the same question to Nishioka, the results had been dismal. Nishioka had never considered any possible meaning but “island,” and his answer had been “something sticking up from the sea.” Appalled, Araki had yelled, “Idiot! Then the back of a whale and a drowned man are shima, are they?” Nishioka had looked flustered and then laughed foolishly. “Oops. You’re right. Gee, that’s a tough one. What should I say, then?”

  Majime stood, nodding intently to himself, and then swiveled toward the bookcases. “Let me go look it up.”

  “Never mind.” Araki grabbed him by the arm. Looking him straight in the eye, he said, “Majime, I want you to give all you’ve got to Daitokai!”

  “Daitokai?” said Majime. “Okay.” The next moment he let out a kind of yodel. Everyone turned and stared. Araki was perplexed, but as Majime went on singing it dawned on him. This was the hit song “Daitokai”—“The Big City”—by Crystal King! Sung totally off-key.

  Quickly he yanked Majime out into the corridor, midwarble. “No, no, that’s not it. Forget it.”

  “No?” Majime broke off, looking disconsolate. “Sorry about that. I’m not really up on the latest songs.”

  Where the hell did he get the idea he’d been asked to sing? The fellow’s thought processes were mystifying. Araki decided to tell him what he’d come for.

  “Listen to me. Daitokai—The Great Passage—is the name of a new dictionary, one that’s still in the planning stage. The title is written with the characters for ‘crossing the ocean.’ And I want to entrust the job to you.”

  “A dictionary?” Majime’s eyes and mouth went round with astonishment. He stood frozen.

  Like a pigeon hit by a peashooter, mused Araki. This was exactly the look of thunderstruck astonishment the phrase referred to. Yes, and just the other day he’d read that in a row of chanters for certain scenes in bunraku, the traditional puppet theater, the last one is called a mamegui (pea-eater), supposedly because of the way he moves his mouth while trying to keep up, as if munching on peas. I wonder if any dictionaries carry that word. I’ll have to check it out and then decide whether or not to include it in The Great Passage . . .

  The two men stood silent, each absorbed in his private rumination, while others passed by them with strange looks.

  At last Majime unfroze. “Actually—I’m sorry. Today I’m scheduled to make the rounds of Shibuya bookstores, starting at one thirty.”

  “I see.” It was already one fifteen. He couldn’t possibly make it to Shibuya on time. Would he be all right?

  Majime checked his watch, then scrambled back to his desk with that same ungainly gait, grabbed his suit coat and a black briefcase, and was back. “I’m really sorry,” he said again with a bow, managing to muss his long hair still more. Then he dashed off, twice tripping over his own feet on the way.

  Watching Majime go, Araki wondered again if he would be all right—in more senses than one. Majime seemed to be under the impression that he’d been asked to work on the dictionary just for today. Why would he think such a thing? Shaking his head, Araki got into the elevator to sound out the head of the sales department.

  After patient negotiations, official permission was finally granted for the making of a new dictionary to be entitled The Great Passage. At the same time, Majime was transferred out of sales to join the dictionary editorial staff, bringing with him a small cardboard box packed with his things. There were two months remaining until Araki’s retirement. Seeing Majime standing in the office doorway, Araki breathed a sigh of relief. This was cutting it close, but he had pulled it off.

  No negotiations had been necessary to pry Majime from the sales team. The department head had been delighted—“Majime? Yeah, we’ve got someone by that name. Seriously? You’ll take him?” The personnel manager was merely mystified: “Who?”

  Araki felt he understood why. When he’d first approached Majime, the young man’s reaction had been off-the-wall. He must never have expected anyone to take him seriously. He’d languished in such obscurity that if Araki hadn’t asked for him by name, his immediate superiors never would have taken note of his existence.

  Araki also sensed just why Majime’s profile had been so low. Beyond the admitted oddity of his ways—who else would burst into a loud, off-key rendition of a popular song on company time?—he was a square peg in a round hole. The firm had failed to assess him properly, breaking its own rule—“the right person in the right place.” His strengths were many: an uncanny feeling for words; a conscientiousness that had led him to marshal every scrap of knowledge he possessed to answer Araki’s questions. Conscientiousness that went overboard, which was what made him such an odd fish—and would make him a great lexicographer.

  Responding to Araki’s body language, Nishioka got up and greeted Majime cheerily. “Welcome to the Dictionary Editorial Department!” He snatched the cardboard box from Majime’s hands and led him inside the office. “We’re shorthanded right now, so there are plenty of desks to choose from. How about this one?”

  Majime glanced around the room with its rows of tall bookcases as he proceeded to the desk beside Nishioka’s. “Sure,” he said, nodding meekly.

  “So, Majime,” said Nishioka. “Got a girlfriend?”

  Nishioka had the notion that talking about girls was a good way to break the ice. From his desk, at a remove from theirs, Araki silently observed Majime’s reaction.

  “No.”

  “Then let’s organize a mixer. I’ll set it up. Let me have your cell number and address.”

  “I don’t have a cell phone. I returned the company one I was using before.”

  “How come?” Nishioka looked as shocked as if he’d seen a walking mummy. “Don’t you want a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. Never really thought about it. Whether I want a girlfriend or a cell phone, either one.”

  Nishioka shot Araki a pleading look.

  Stifling a laugh, Araki managed to smooth things over and maintain his dignity. “Majime, there’s a welcome party for you tonight. We reserved a table at Seven Treasures Garden for six o’clock. Nishioka, go get Mrs. Sasaki.”

  At Seven Treasures Garden, Professor Matsumoto was already seated at a round red table, drinking Shaoxing wine. Once a week he allowed himself to enjoy a drink, or two or three. Even while drinking, he was never without his cards and pencil.

  Araki sat down and began the introductions. “Masashi Nishioka here, you already know. Next to him is Mrs. Kaoru Sasaki. She mostly keeps track of the index cards and classifies them for us.”

  As her name was spoken, Mrs. Sasaki, a woman in her early forties, nodded without changing her expression. What she lacked in warmth she made up for in efficiency, Araki thought. She was an indispensable member of the team. At first she’d been a part-time employee, but now, her children nearly grown, she was a full-time contract employee.

  What would Professor Matsumoto think of Majime? Araki was tense. The professor greeted him with a light, unreadable smile.

  Majime bowed his head awkwardly to each person in turn.

  Someone proposed a toast, and then the food started to arrive.

  With his usual tact, Nishioka first served Professor Matsumoto from the array of appetizers, making
sure to skip the preserved duck eggs, which he knew the professor disliked. Ah, but what about the all-important Majime? Araki glanced toward him in time to see him pour beer into Mrs. Sasaki’s glass with such exuberance that the froth overflowed. Nice try. You almost had it. Araki was beginning to feel as if he’d taken on a kindergartener. Mrs. Sasaki seemed to share the impression. Still impassive, she was tolerantly filling Majime’s glass in return.

  “What’s your hobby, Majime?” Nishioka boldly asked, searching for a friendly overture.

  A bit of wood ear mushroom was sticking out of a corner of Majime’s mouth. He swallowed it and considered the question before answering. “If I had to pick something, I guess it would be watching people get on the escalator.”

  Silence descended on the table.

  “Is it interesting?” Mrs. Sasaki asked evenly.

  “Yes, it is.” Majime leaned forward slightly. “After I step off the train onto the platform, I make a point of walking slowly. People rush past me to get on the escalator, but there’s never any struggle or confusion. You’d think somebody was controlling them, the way they line up in two rows and get on the escalator. Not only that. The people on the left stand still and are carried up, while the ones on the right walk. They divide up neatly, even at rush hour. It’s beautiful.”

  “Sorry, boss, but isn’t he kind of a weirdo?” Nishioka whispered in Araki’s ear.

  Ignoring this, Araki looked over Nishioka’s head and locked eyes with Professor Matsumoto, who nodded comprehendingly. They both understood what it was that Majime sought to convey. People swarming onto the train platform, lining up at the escalator as if controlled by a puppet master, and then whisked neatly upward—just as vast numbers of sprawling words were codified and connected, ending up arranged in orderly fashion on the pages of a dictionary. Majime’s perception of beauty and joy in that process marked him beyond all doubt as a born lexicographer.

  “Do you know why we decided to call our new dictionary The Great Passage?” Araki asked, unable to contain himself.