Morning Mist 293
“Nishikata-machi—6E. Itō Shōtarō. Class of 1919, is it? You know him?”
“1919. That was some years ahead of me.”
“I see. Nishikata-machi. Here. Konuma Haruo. Was he near you?”
“I don’t remember a Konuma in the neighbourhood.”
“I see. Nishikata-machi, 96A. Kawakita Chigusa.”
So it went. I was offered name after name from Nishikata-machi, and when one of them aroused a flicker of a memory, I took my stand. I said I knew him. I thought I had seen the shingle of a doctor by that name.
“I believe he was a doctor.”
At last satisfied, X took his spectacles by the bow and smiled at me. “That’s right. That’s quite right. Tokyo Imperial University Medical School, class of 1928, it says.”
“Was he one of your students, sir?”
I though the question might interest him, but he answered: “Never met the gentleman.”
He returned the register to its place, reached for the black briefcase in the window, and let it fall heavily at his knee.
“Something very, very good in here,” he said, opening the briefcase as if it contained rare treasures, and taking out several bundles of postcards. “I suppose you know the famous novelist Ōmichi Saburō?”
“I’ve read his things in newspapers and magazines, I believe.”
“Of course you have. This one is 1941. This one is 1938. And here—here is Ōmichi Saburō’s New Year’s card for this very year. His real name is Noguchi Kunihiko—here, in parentheses. And here is Takahashi Goichirō. You must know him. He was elected to the Diet from Chiba last year. He was a hard one to manage, but he’s done well for himself.”
He shot them at me like the names in Nishikata-machi. I had to view card after card after card from his students. In the case of Ōmichi Saburō I saw cards for the last five years.
“I take them to school with me. To the lectures in Kanda
