THE BUYER OF AMÉ

_Amé_, a sweetmeat made from wheat gluten, very nourishing and wholesome for children.

Old man Genjiro was sitting over the last coals in his _hibachi_, warming his hands and blinking sleepily. The shutters of the little sweetmeat shop were closed for the night. The street outside was quiet. Even the footsteps of the few belated wayfarers who were still abroad were muffled by the soft, heavy snow that had wrapped the city as in a garment.

The old man nodded over the dying embers, jerking himself awake from time to time to poke the few coals together with the iron fire-sticks, or to rake and pick over the mound of ashes. His worn old face was seamed and crisscrossed with wrinkles, but they were the tracks of kindly emotions, not of the fiercer passions. His wadded blue cotton garments were wrapped tightly about his small, withered body, and his rough, red, bare feet were doubled up under him as he sat on the matted floor. He shivered a little as the red coals grew smaller and smaller.

“What a cold night it is!” he said to himself. “I am glad I do not have to be out pulling a jinrikisha;” and he laughed cheerfully, as he looked about with some pride on his little shop, and his stock in trade spread out in the front of it in small glass showcases.

Genjiro felt that he was living like a lord in his old age after his years of toil, first in the rice-fields, then in the shafts of a jinrikisha. He had lived honestly always, and had brought up three sons, who were now his pride and joy,--strong men all,--two, pullers of jinrikisha like their father before them, and one, the baby, serving his time in the army. When he grew old his sons had set him up in the little shop, and he managed to make a comfortable living off of the small coins that the children in the neighborhood paid him for his wares.

Genjiro’s old wife, Fusa, was pottering about the back room, making the bed for the night. He could hear her snort and snuffle about her work, for she was asthmatic, and the heavy winter comfortables that she was handling were almost too much for her strength.

“Put on all the comfortables that we have,” he called to her; “I am coming to bed in a minute. No one will come to buy _amé_ on such a night as this.”

Fusa grunted in response and went on with her work. Genjiro sat still over his fire, too sleepy and warm to leave it for the cold little back room, even with the prospect of all the comfortables in the house to lure him to his bed. He heard the great bell of the temple close by boom out the hour, but he was too sleepy to count the slow strokes.

It was Fusa’s voice from the next room that roused him with the words, “Some one is at the door!”

He jumped up with a start and heard a very thin, weak voice calling, “Excuse me,” just outside the shop. He pushed open the shutter in surprise that any one should come at that hour for _amé_. A woman stood in the street. He could not see her clearly in the darkness and amid the falling snow, which covered her dress and lay upon her disheveled hair and seemed to whiten even her face. She glided rather than stepped into the shop.

Genjiro hardly knew what to say, but he bowed politely, on all fours, lifting his head at intervals from between his hands to remark that it was a cold night, that it was the first time that he had had the pleasure of seeing his visitor, and that he hoped he might be able to serve her.

The woman’s face was very sweet and sad, as she bowed in response to Genjiro’s greetings. “I would like to buy a little of your _amé_,” she said, and she pointed to a long, bright-colored paper bag of the confection, such as is sold to mothers when they bring their babies to the temple for the _miya mairi_.[43] Genjiro handed it to her, and received in return a curiously blackened and mouldy coin. Then the customer glided out into the street, and the old man closed his shutter and retired to the back room.

“What was it?” said Fusa, for Genjiro was shaking all over.

“Only a woman who wanted to buy _amé_,” he said; but he shuddered as he crept into bed, and it was a long time before he was warm enough to sleep.

The next day the old man was pale and distraught. When the baby of the clog-seller across the street came toddling over, holding out a rin[44] piece with a square hole in the middle, he was so absorbed in thinking of his strange customer that he did not see her at all, and her dirty round mouth began to pucker, and her fat little bosom to heave up and down under its red wadded gown, before he turned his abstracted gaze upon her. To be sure, he comforted her with a beautiful long piece of _amé_ jelly and a little paper flag with a round red sun in the middle; but her faith in him was only partially restored, and she trotted home so depressed that she nearly ran under the wheels of a passing jinrikisha, and wailed loudly when the runner threw her aside as if she had been a pillow. And when the boys came home from school at noon, they were surprised to see that their friend Genjiro, instead of sitting in the front of the shop, bowing and smiling over his tempting wares, was hugging his _hibachi_, smoking gloomily, and staring into the street with vacant eyes. It took two shouts and much jingling of small coin to wake him from his reverie.

That night, Genjiro and his old wife went to bed early, and the shop was closely shuttered and quite dark when the temple bell sounded ten. Genjiro was not asleep, however, and he lay listening to the sounds in the street, with Fusa wheezing and snoring beside him. And then, again he heard the weak, pleading voice.

“Excuse me for troubling you,” it said.

Genjiro lay and shivered, but his kind heart at last got the better of his fears, and he rose and went into the shop. Softly he slid open the shutter, and his last night’s visitor stood before him.

“I am making you great trouble,” she said, “but I would like some more of your nice _amé_,” and she bowed, and pointed as before to a bright-colored paper bag.

Genjiro gave it to her, she slipped into his hand again a rusty coin, and glided away. Trembling, the old man closed the shutter, crept back to bed, and lay cowering with cold and fear.

Every night for five nights the same thing happened, and Genjiro, what with fear and bewilderment, was a changed man. His business suffered, for the boys now patronized the itinerant sweetmeat vender who came into the street every noon and stood close to Genjiro’s shop with his little cart of sweets, blowing a bubbly brass horn and dancing at intervals for the crowd of children that flocked about him. Genjiro was too forlorn to make an effort to hold his trade. He only sat in the back of the shop and watched the small coins that ought to be his drop into his supplanter’s money-box.

At last Genjiro forced himself up to a high resolve. He would follow the stranger and see what became of her. He never went to bed now until his weird customer had made her nightly purchase, but sat and shivered over his _hibachi_ until she came. Fusa was sure that the visitor was a fox-woman, and that her husband was bewitched; and when he told her that night that he was going to follow the stranger, the poor old woman groveled on the floor, entreating him not to be so rash.

“She will only lead you into some great danger. You will never come back if you follow that fox-woman,” she cried; but though Genjiro shuddered, he remained firm, and all day Fusa mourned him as one already dead.

When the woman came that night, she looked paler and sadder than ever, and she bowed very low and wept as she handed Genjiro the rusty rin in payment for her purchase. When the old man saw her distress, he was firmer than ever in his resolve to follow her and discover her home and her grief. He had put on a clean pair of jinrikisha-man’s shoes, so that there should be no sound from his footsteps. As he stepped down from the shop platform to draw the shutter, he closed himself out into the street, and glided along in his soft foot-gear almost as silently as the retreating figure that he followed. He had to run at a dog-trot to keep up with her, so quickly did she move. They passed the temple, the great curves of its roof throwing dark shadows in the moonlight, then on into the graveyard beyond.

There was a faint smell of incense in the air, and a few coals burned dimly on a tombstone. Genjiro hesitated,--a graveyard is not a pleasant place to enter so late at night,--but his strange guide seemed to feel his hesitation, and turning, looked at him sadly and beckoned to him. Genjiro followed manfully. “Poor thing! She wants something of me!” he said to himself. They came to a great tree girdled with a straw rope, under which was a grave, and there the woman disappeared.

So he had been selling _amé_ every night to a ghost! Surely Genjiro’s fears were justified! He was weak and trembling when he reached home, and it was only after several cups of saké, which Fusa brought him when she saw his condition, that he could speak connectedly enough to tell his story.

Far into the night they talked the matter over, but they could not tell what to do next. At last Fusa said, “You must go to the priest to-morrow, and he will know who is buried in that grave. Then, perhaps, we can find out what the ghost wants.”

Very early the next morning Genjiro and Fusa went to the temple, taking with them the six rusty coins that their ghostly visitor had paid. They found the place alive with worshipers, for it was a feast day. The priests were almost too busy to attend to the humble pair, but at last a gentle old ecclesiastic took pity on their evident distress, called them to the priests’ house close by the shrine, and asked them kindly what their trouble was. They told the story, passing it from one to the other in their excitement over its details, and handed over to the priest the coins, neatly folded in a piece of white paper.

The holy man looked grave. “Where is the tomb?” he said. “Can you show it to me now?”

“Surely, your reverence,” answered Genjiro eagerly; “it is just under the sacred cedar tree,--the great tree with a rope around it.”

“Show it to me,” said the priest, and together they went to the graveyard. The grave was a new one; only a wooden post bearing the posthumous name of the deceased marked the spot.

“This is the grave of Kiku,” said the good man, and tears of pity stood in his eyes. “She was the wife of Chokichi Sato, and she died less than ten days ago. I myself performed the ceremony when we laid her and her unborn child here under the sacred cedar. Without doubt the gods have sent her to you with a message.”

Then Genjiro and Fusa stood, awestruck, before the grave, while the priest returned to the temple to tell what had come to pass. And when the priests and the people heard the story of the woman ghost that had come nightly to Genjiro’s shop to buy _amé_, they came in a great crowd and stood about the grave.

And one who heard the story went to Chokichi, the husband of Kiku, and told him, and he hastened to the place just as he was, in his white-lettered carpenter’s blouse and blue tights. And when he saw the priests and the people standing, he said, “Will you permit that we open the grave, and learn whether there is any reason why my wife has visited the _améya_[45] every night for a week?”

And the priests answered, “We will permit it, and we will, ourselves, watch the opening and say prayers for the repose of O Kiku San’s spirit.”

Then picks and hoes were brought, and the earth, wet and heavy with melted snow, was moved from the grave, until at last they came to the great cask in which the dead had been placed for burial.

And Chokichi said, “If it please your reverences, I will open the coffin, that I alone may be polluted by the touch of the dead.” And he opened the coffin, the priests chanting a mass for the repose of the young wife’s soul.

And when the cover was removed, a little gurgle came from within the coffin, and all the people saw the dead mother sitting within, and at her feet a tiny living baby, smiling and gurgling, and sucking a piece of _amé_. And Chokichi lifted out the baby, all naked as it was, and folded it from the winter air in his bosom. “My little son!” he said, and he wept.

Then said the old priest to all the people as they stood amazed, “Now ye can see how great is mother love, that will, even from the grave, watch over and feed its offspring. Behold how for her baby’s sake this poor mother hath given to the _améya_ the six rin[46] which she needed to keep her from entering naked into the spirit world,” and he placed reverently in the coffin the paper containing the six rusty coins that Genjiro had given to him.

Then he turned to Genjiro, and said, “The kindness of this man, opening his door night after night to the mother’s ghost, has given back to Chokichi his son.” And Genjiro and Chokichi returned to their homes, each followed by a wondering crowd.

From that time on everything that Genjiro did prospered. From all the city people came to buy _amé_ of him, and to hear his story. Mothers sent their children to spend their stray coins at his shop, for they said, “He is a kind man, and will always give you good _amé_.” And the rival _améya_ with his bubbly trumpet came no more into the neighborhood, but danced and played in the next ward, where there was no Genjiro to hold the trade of all the street.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] The presentation of a baby at the parish temple, a ceremony that takes place when the child is about a month old.

[44] A coin something like the Chinese “cash,” worth about half a mill.

[45] One who sells _amé_.

[46] On the banks of the River of Death an old hag waits to strip the souls of their clothing as they pass by. Therefore with the dead must always be buried six rin, with which to propitiate the old woman.