Whatever he made of the smile on Nishioka’s face, Majime returned it with a sunny yet rather abashed smile of his own.
Ever since Majime’s arrival in their office, Nishioka had had an uneasy feeling. A sense that he was going to get sacked. Over the years he’d done his best. Not that he had the least interest in or feelings about dictionaries, one way or the other. But as long as he’d been assigned to work on them, he’d applied himself to the task at hand. Work was work. He’d learned to put up with Mrs. Sasaki’s snippiness. He’d done his homework on Professor Matsumoto, taking note of his habits and food preferences. And he’d acquired the knack of taking in stride Araki’s singular fastidiousness about words. Yet Araki was always on his case.
“Nishioka, the word kodawari, ‘fastidiousness,’ can’t be used in a positive sense. People use it to refer to a craftsman’s pride and joy in his work, for example, but that’s an error. The original meaning is ‘finding fault, being a stickler.’”
A perfect description of you when it comes to dictionaries, so hey, my use of the word was right on target! Mentally he lodged this protest, but all he said was, “Yes, boss.”
Dictionary makers tended to spend their time holed up in the dimly lit office. He had tried to do what he could to lighten the mood so everyone could do their work and enjoy it. In the five years he’d been in the Dictionary Editorial Department, he’d found his place, his raison d’être. He’d felt a glow of affection for the department and for people who loved dictionaries beyond all reason.
Majime had changed everything. Araki had made no secret of his high hopes for the newcomer. Professor Matsumoto never said anything, but he seemed to take a positive view of Majime’s work. Even Mrs. Sasaki, who was curt with everyone else, treated him with a certain easy familiarity, like a mother or an older sister—completely unlike the way she treated Nishioka.
Not much he could do about it. Majime’s passion for dictionary work was nothing short of phenomenal. Less than a month after Majime arrived, Nishioka had been forced to admit it: the guy was made of different stuff.
Majime was no smooth talker, yet he had a keen sensitivity to words. Like the time Nishioka, in talking about his nephew, whom he’d just seen for the first time in a while, commented, “Kids today are sure precocious.” All of a sudden Majime had said, “Wait!” and reached for the nearest dictionary. Nishioka had used a word for “precocious,” omase, that could apply to either boys or girls, but a similar word, oshama, was for girls only. How to explain this difference in nuance, Majime wanted to know. He was always coming up with things like that, so conversations with him tended to get derailed. That day, too, Nishioka had ended up helping him make file cards for both omase and oshama, looking through dictionary after dictionary.
The file cards Majime wrote seemed to give off a light of their own on the shelves. He faithfully filled in gaps in the vast collection of cards written previously by Professor Matsumoto, Mrs. Sasaki, and the rest. His powers of concentration and endurance were prodigious. If Nishioka called out to Majime when he was writing guidelines or file cards, Majime didn’t hear. He would sit at his desk for hours, often skipping lunch. He worked with such energy the black sleeve protectors he wore might have given off sparks as they rubbed against the paper. His unruly hair seemed only to grow wilder, in defiance of the laws of gravity.
“Lately it’s gotten harder to pick up things,” Majime said one day with a wry laugh. He’d finally worn his fingerprints smooth, like the others. Only Nishioka’s fingerprints, despite his five years on the job, remained intact.
Majime seemed to live on a higher plane, unconcerned with his appearance and reputation, yet when it came to words and dictionaries, he was implacable. He would turn over a problem in his mind endlessly until satisfied, and at editorial meetings he gave his opinion forthrightly.
All of which spelled trouble, Nishioka felt. A dictionary was a commodity. Sure, you had to devote yourself to the making of one, but at some point you had to draw a line. Various factors shaped a dictionary: the company’s intentions, the timing of the release, the number of pages, the price, the team of contributors. And however perfectionist you tried to be, in the end words were alive, in constant flux. No dictionary could ever achieve true completion. If you got too attached to the work, you could never bring yourself to let it go and finally make it public.
Despite the envy and jealousy Majime aroused in him, Nishioka found him impossible to dislike. Majime’s zeal meant he needed someone to keep a watchful eye on him. Who but Nishioka could look out for him and see to it that all their work finally came to something, that the department delivered the goods?
After he left, what would become of the Dictionary Editorial Department, and of Majime? Anxiety lit a fire under Nishioka. He stayed in constant touch with contributors, collected manuscripts when he could, and urged those who had not yet made their submissions to do so by the deadline. Such tasks weren’t up Majime’s alley. Or maybe Nishioka was getting worked up over nothing. Maybe after he was gone the department would manage just fine. Just maybe Majime, with his burning passion for dictionaries and his finely honed sensitivity to words, would help The Great Passage see the light of day.
Thus ruminating, Nishioka fretted in solitude.
At Umenomi, the lovers’ behavior grated on Nishioka’s nerves, made him want to lurch for the door. Majime avoided Kaguya’s eyes more than ever, but should their fingertips happen to touch when one of them passed a dish to the other, he turned beet red. Kaguya called him “Mitsu” more often, but perhaps to avoid giving any impression of favoritism, the hors d’oeuvres she set before him were clearly smaller in quantity than those she served anyone else.
For crying out loud, what is this, junior high? Nishioka wondered. What the hell are they trying to prove?
Araki, Professor Matsumoto, and Mrs. Sasaki had also picked up on the new closeness between the lovers. “Tackle dictionary making with the same determination,” counseled Araki. “Too bad there won’t be a reenactment of Kokoro after all,” said Professor Matsumoto with a sigh. “When did all this happen, for heaven’s sake?” said Mrs. Sasaki. One by one they offered teasing congratulations, while Majime hunched over and made shy, noncommittal noises.
“So you weren’t making any headway with her after all, eh, Mr. Nishioka?” Mrs. Sasaki gave him a look.
He forced a smile. “Majime had the jump on me. Living under the same roof with her and everything.”
“You’re a big talker and that’s all.”
“That’s what’s good about Mr. Nishioka!”
Nishioka refilled Professor Matsumoto’s glass in gratitude. “Someone who understands me!”