After all that, he ended the long missive with these words:
This is all I have to say. Or no, this is not all I want to say, but if I tried to say it all, even if I lived 150 years it wouldn’t be enough, and I would use up so much paper they would need to cut down every tree in the rain forest, so I will rest my pen here.
I would be very grateful if after reading this you would let me know what you think. Whatever your response, I am prepared. I will take it solemnly to heart.
Do take care of yourself.
After undulating waves of hyperbole, beseeching, and declamation, the letter ended abruptly with a plea for her to take care of herself. Asked what she thought, Kaguya must have been at a total loss.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kishibe saw Majime get up. Hastily she shoved the pages into the space between her knees and the desk.
“Miss Kishibe, there’s something I forgot to tell you.”
“Yes?”
He came around her desk and stood beside her chair. She looked up at him, scarcely able to keep from going into convulsions at the thought of that love letter.
He seemed at a distance from the world, as if he’d lived for centuries in the Dictionary Editorial Department, as far removed from love and lust as a withered tree or a dried-up sheet of paper. And yet even he had once fallen in love, had yearned and written a love letter that didn’t hold anything back, like some kind of midnight diary. And now look at him, a language expert immersed in the task of compiling a dictionary. To hide the spasm of laughter that came over her, she awkwardly pretended to go into a fit of sneezing. Judging from that letter, he was the last person who should give people language advice. He was certainly no master of language. His turns of phrase were clumsy; his ardor spun in circles.
Having got that far in her thinking, Kishibe experienced a revelation. Majime seemed unapproachable, but maybe when he was young he’d been much like her. Maybe he still was, for that matter, in his worries about his relationships with other people, his worries about whether he could properly edit a dictionary, and his general floundering about. She could imagine him upset at his inability to express himself or communicate with others, yet he was forced in the end to put his heart clumsily into words and trust that the other person would understand what he meant. Maybe his linguistic anxieties and hopes were the very thing driving Majime to make a dictionary chock full of words.
In that case, I can make a go of it here, too. I also want to know how to dispel my fears. If I can, I’d like to communicate with Majime in words, pass the time pleasantly with him at work.
Gathering a huge number of words together with as much accuracy as possible was like finding a mirror without distortion. The less distortion in the word-mirror, the greater chance that when you opened up to someone and revealed your inner self, your feelings and thoughts would be reflected there with clarity and depth. You could look together in the mirror and laugh, weep, get angry.
Dictionary making might actually be fun and important work.
Thanks to the love letter, Kishibe felt somewhat closer to Majime. For the first time since coming to the Dictionary Editorial Department, she felt optimistic.
Majime, unaware of Kishibe’s inner transformation, was completely taken in by her theatrical sneeze.
“Caught a cold?”
“Maybe. What is it that you forgot to tell me?”
“Starting tomorrow, we’ll be entering the final stage of editing The Great Passage. We’ll use both floors of the annex. Mobilize everyone we can to check all the usage examples, and send material to press as we go.”
“Really?” Surely you didn’t wait till the day before to tell me something so important . . .
“Let’s move the desks around and get ready,” said Majime.
Ignoring her stupefaction, he rolled up his sleeves, black covers and all.
It took them all day to move desks and transfer materials. The custodian helped. Mrs. Sasaki copied instructions and laid out writing materials for the staff, which was expected to grow considerably.
By the time everything was ready, Kishibe’s entire body ached.
“Nice to be young,” said Majime enviously. “Right now all I can feel is back pain.”
He shuffled off like an actor on the Noh stage, holding his back erect and sliding his feet along the floor. Actually, it looked to her as if that posture might put extra strain on the back.
After seeing Majime off, Kishibe composed a quick e-mail to Nishioka: “I found the document, and thanks to you I do feel better now. Starting tomorrow, the editing of The Great Passage moves into the final stage . . . but right now my muscles are so stiff I don’t know if I’ll be able to come to work.”
Thanks largely to Majime’s determination, work on The Great Passage had continued bit by bit over the past thirteen years. He, Araki, and Professor Matsumoto were 90 percent finished with definitions of general words. The remaining 10 percent consisted of neologisms that had been coined in the intervening thirteen years and words whose inclusion was still under debate. Majime and Professor Matsumoto would go over these together, and Majime would write definitions for those to be included.
Certain other words that had originally been marked for inclusion were now out of date. Kishibe and Mrs. Sasaki would go over these and decide which should stay and which should go.
“Once a word makes it into a dictionary,” explained Araki for Kishibe’s benefit, “it tends not to get cut. That’s because it’s better to have as many words as possible, including archaic terms. But if you’re not careful, by the time of publication you can end up with a dictionary full of obsolete words.”
“But including some obsolete words is okay.” She nodded, looking at the bundle of draft definitions written according to the guidelines. Encyclopedic entries and technical terms were the province of college professors, who wrote drafts as requested. “I wondered why we were including the word getabako.” Literally “geta box,” the word referred to shelves in an entranceway for storing footwear; geta were wooden clogs formerly worn with kimonos or other traditional wear.
“Are you saying no one uses getabako anymore?”
“At the school I went to it was called kutsubako.” (Shoe box.) “Ah, but come to think of it, our definition of getabako doesn’t say, ‘Same as kutsubako.’ And kutsubako should be an entry word in its own right, meaning ‘shelves or a box for storing shoes.’”
“Times do change,” mused Araki. Then he shouted, “Majime! We’ve got trouble! An extra entry word!”
Gradually Kishibe became more used to reading dictionary entries. These were all now on hand. Majime had gone around to the various universities and research institutes to collect them in person.
“Mr. Majime, did you ever by any chance take a look at the top-secret file?” Kishibe asked.