The cherry blossoms were almost ready to bloom, but a cold rain was falling. She could just see her breath. Opening her plastic umbrella, she walked past the cherry buds, their color deepening in the rain, and headed for the subway.
She had spoken confidently to Majime just now, but in fact she was still far from sure of her abilities as a dictionary editor. Her insight about limiting the meaning of love to members of the opposite sex was based on a fluke. A boy in her college seminar had confessed at a drinking party shortly before graduation, “Know what? I’m gay.” She and all his friends had suspected as much. Everyone who happened to be present when he said this had felt like saying, “Yeah, we know.” They bit back the words, however, realizing that considerable anguish and courage had led up to the admission. So instead of “We know” they’d said things like, “Oh, yeah? Here, drink up,” and continued their friendship as before. That experience was what had led her to question the definition. She was appalled to think that she had accused Majime of being a member of the elite, with no struggles or complexes of any kind. She turned red at the thought.
Just because I’ve finally started getting a little used to dictionary editing doesn’t give me the right to sound off like that! She knew perfectly well that Majime suffered and agonized over his work at the helm of The Great Passage. She frequently saw him in the throes of anxiety. She wasn’t a member of the elite in any sense, but she, not he, was the one who had lived oblivious to her own emotions, without cares or complexes to speak of. She had pursued her life and her career without thinking, drifting along like someone who comes to a fork in the road and unhesitatingly takes the easier way.
Working on the dictionary, delving into words the way we do, has changed me, she thought. Awakening to the power of words—the power not to hurt others but to protect them, to tell them things, to form connections with them—had taught her to probe her own mind and inclined her to make allowances for other people’s thoughts and feelings.
Through her work on The Great Passage, she was seeking and gaining access to the power of words as never before.
The Akebono Paper Company building faced a main street in Ginza. Kishibe was shown into a conference room on the eighth floor. Besides Miyamoto, four other men were present in the conference room: the head of the sales department and his deputy, the head of development, and the project chief. The presence of this executive team made it painfully clear to Kishibe that developing paper for a dictionary was a major undertaking that Akebono took seriously. She greeted them in a flurry, afraid they were thinking, “What? This kid is the only one who came?” She cursed Majime for his lack of consideration.
Her fears notwithstanding, the faces in the room were friendly, if a bit tense, as they returned her greeting. Lying on the table in the center of the room was a sheaf of paper.
“This must be the paper for The Great Passage,” she said, taking a step toward the table. Immediately the men fell back on either side, opening the way for her. She felt like Moses at the Red Sea.
“We devoted all our efforts to the creation of this paper.” Miyamoto was the group spokesman. “We gave full consideration to waxiness.”
The others were nodding. She sensed how hard this team must have worked, night and day, to satisfy Majime’s demand.
Cautiously she slid her hand across what Miyamoto had called “the ultimate paper.” It was thin and smooth, pleasant to the touch. It felt cool against her skin, and yet it had a warm yellowish tinge. She held a sheet up to the light and saw it had a touch of red. This was the coloration that Miyamoto was so proud of, that only Akebono could produce.
“We did a test run,” he said cautiously. “It takes the ink very well with no show-through.” Everyone nodded vigorously to back him up.
After Majime had forced Akebono back to the drawing board, Miyamoto had brought four other samples, produced by trial and error, visiting the office time and again to get a fix on their wishes. Each time, Kishibe had received him, and together they had exchanged opinions and contemplated the whys and wherefores of dictionary paper.
Kishibe was an employee of Gembu Books, but at the same time she and Miyamoto had become colleagues. She had no intention of toning down any criticism she might have on his behalf, and yet for his sake she hoped with all her heart that this was indeed the ultimate paper.
To help Miyamoto if she could, and to create the finest paper possible for The Great Passage, she had spent the last year and eight months exploring a variety of dictionaries. Before, she had never noticed, but it was definitely true that depending on the dictionary and the publisher, the paper differed in color, feel, and texture. Again and again she had turned the pages of the office dictionaries, getting to know them through her fingertips. In the end, she could touch a dictionary with her eyes closed and guess its publisher and title. She was hardly ever wrong. Mrs. Sasaki marveled that if there were a test for such ability, Kishibe would surely qualify at the highest level.
The paper in front of her was impeccable in color, thickness, and feel. The big question was its waxiness—the quality Majime valued over all else. How would that be?
Silently she swallowed and slowly turned a page. As if leafing through a dictionary, she went on, page after page.
Painfully loud silence enveloped the room. Finally the project chief, his nerves apparently stretched to the limit, spoke up. He was a thin, bespectacled man in his midthirties. “Well?” He looked at Kishibe with mingled confidence and anxiety.
It’s wonderful, she meant to say, but her voice caught with emotion. She coughed once before she could get the word out. “Wonderful.”
Cheers erupted. The project chief raised both arms in triumph, and the head of development shook hands with the head of sales. Miyamoto and the deputy manager of sales were hugging, overcome with emotion. Kishibe had never seen grown men behave like this.
“I’m really glad.” Miyamoto let go of the sales division manager and gave his face, moist with perspiration or tears, a wipe with his sleeve. “We thought this would do the trick, but it’s so good to hear you give the thumbs-up.”
He trusts me. Even though I’m a total amateur where paper is concerned. The thought made Kishibe happy. She reflected back on all the times they had met to discuss paper. Now this “ultimate” paper had been created, and everyone in Akebono Paper Company was full of joy. She, too, was overcome, on the edge of tears.
She looked down at the sample before her. This paper was truly superb. When she turned the page, it clung naturally to the ball of her thumb, but never more than a page at a time. Nor did she feel any static electricity. It left her hand with the ease of dry sand slipping through the fingers. Majime was sure to be pleased.