Majime watched the taxi speed off and then went back to the office, on fire with new determination.
Three days later, the sky was a deep blue. Even inside the office, where bookshelves hid the windows, Majime felt somehow refreshed.
As usual, he spent the day at his desk. Then all at once Araki came rushing in. “Majime, we’ve got trouble!” he cried. In his hand was a large sheet of paper, part of the fourth proofs they were currently going over.
Despite himself, Majime started up, but before he could get to his feet Araki spread the sheet of paper on Majime’s desk.
“Look at this.”
The page contained words starting with chi.
“Chishio is missing!” The word for “blood.”
“What?” Majime’s glasses had slid down his nose. He pushed them back up and bent over the page, where the words were lined up in order.
Chishi idenshi (lethal gene), chishio (repeated soaking in dye), chishiki (knowledge). But no sign of the compound written in different characters but also pronounced chishio.
“Well, this is a bloodcurdling state of affairs.”
“Majime, this is no time for levity!”
Majime had spoken from the heart, but Araki scolded him. He felt the blood drain from his face but managed to get hold of himself and think about what needed to be done.
“This is already the fourth proof,” he said, “but we’ll have to squeeze out enough space to insert ‘blood.’ We have no choice.”
Araki nodded, grim-faced. “You’re right. The question is, how did a mistake of this magnitude get by until the fourth proof without anybody noticing?”
“We’ll have to be especially meticulous checking the fourth proofs. We’ll start over from the beginning. Everyone will have to pitch in, including the students.” It made Majime’s head spin to think how far off schedule this would put them, but any delay was better than letting other possible omissions go unnoticed. “We also need to get to the bottom of this and find out how the word went missing.”
The others had picked up on the tension in the air. Miss Kishibe, Mrs. Sasaki, and the few part-time workers still in the office began to drift toward his desk.
“Mrs. Sasaki, you check the usage sample cards, will you please?”
She nodded and promptly scurried to the reference room where the cards were stored. After a bit she returned and reported that the card for blood was there. She held out all the materials relating to the word and gave them to Majime. “It’s marked as an entry word. You wrote the definition yourself.”
Maybe so, but somehow or other the word and its definition hadn’t been properly inserted. The first, second, and third proofs which Mrs. Sasaki had brought showed that the entry was missing in all previous proofs.
Majime stood up. “Everyone, I’m sorry, but this is an emergency. I need you to drop everything and help us check every last word in the fourth proof.”
The air crackled. Silently they gathered around as Majime explained the procedure. “All we can do is go through and make sure that the data on every sample card marked ‘use’ is actually there. Recruit as many more people as you can. We’ll divvy up the pages. Everyone, check the pages you are assigned with utmost care. However long it takes, let’s dig in and get it done.” He looked around at the faces surrounding him and added, “We mustn’t let The Great Passage spring a leak!”
Although now, in the final stage of making the dictionary, a major problem had arisen, no one appeared downcast. Araki, Mrs. Sasaki, and Miss Kishibe, as well as the students, all looked determined to weather this crisis.
“Before we begin I’d like you all to go home and bring back a change of clothes and whatever else you may need,” said Majime. “Starting tonight, we camp here.”
No shoulders slumped at this announcement. Miss Kishibe returned to her computer and started typing an e-mail. Probably letting Miyamoto know she wouldn’t be available for a while, Majime thought. The students varied in their reactions, some firing themselves up—“Okay, let’s go! Let’s do this!”—and others deciding to return to campus and see who else they could recruit. All were cheerful and positive. A state of emergency could induce temporary euphoria, he had heard. This might be something similar.
As he looked around at the eager, determined faces of his reliable crew, Majime couldn’t help but bow his head in gratitude and humility. From the time Nishioka had left until Miss Kishibe arrived, he had toiled alone for years in the Dictionary Editorial Department, the lone full-time employee, working on The Great Passage whenever he could. He had often grown discouraged and wondered if the dictionary would ever see the light of day. His labors had not been misplaced, he thought now, looking at the crowd of people willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to save The Great Passage from foundering.
As people started coming and going, the phone rang. Miss Kishibe swiftly picked up the receiver. Thinking it was probably Mr. Particle yet again, Majime paid scant attention. After a few words, however, her face grew solemn.
“Mr. Majime.” Having finished her conversation, Miss Kishibe drew near with a note in hand. “That was Mrs. Matsumoto. The professor is in the hospital.”
The note she handed him bore the name of one of the larger hospitals in Tokyo. The symptoms weren’t clear, but Majime felt a sense of foreboding. For a moment he couldn’t move.
The subsequent verification process would long be remembered by dictionary editors at other companies as “Gembu Books Hell Camp.”
Of course, in the midst of the turmoil Majime had no way of knowing this. All he could do was try his best to deal with events as they arose.
First, he and Araki went to see Professor Matsumoto in the hospital. The professor had just finished a round of morning tests. When they walked in, he was sitting up in bed watching television, scribbling on a file card.
What a man. Even in the hospital, he still gave the dictionary top priority. The professor’s color was better than Majime had expected, and this cheered him as well.
“Thanks for coming,” said the professor. He seemed embarrassed by the situation. “I’m sorry to drag you all the way here. My wife blew things out of proportion, I’m afraid. I’ll be here a week or so for routine tests, that’s all. Age has a way of catching up with you. I’ve started falling apart, and that’s just how it is.”
His wife bowed over and over to them. Majime had always assumed that the professor’s total commitment to the dictionary must have meant he was a failure as a family man, but no, the couple seemed devoted to each other. At the moment she was carefully arranging a cardigan over her husband’s shoulders.
“Sir, you mustn’t overdo it,” said Araki in a tone of concern. “This is a good chance for you to get some rest.”