“The police captain have sent me,” he announced, with a conciliatory smile, “to say that you are not the man which he think and that you can go when you are care to.”
I caught the fourth train and reached Kyoto in the early afternoon—and was immediately arrested. In short, not a day passed during the rest of my stay in the country, except in the open ports, that I was not taken into custody several times. Every officer to clap eyes on my khaki-clad figure was sure to demand my surrender, convinced that to his eagle eye his country owed its preservation. It was never difficult to shake off a pair of officers, a few slaps always sufficed; but, unlike other Orientals, they did not run away. They dogged my footsteps into temples and bazaars, through shrieking slum sections, down alleyways reeking with refuse, until an interpreter came to establish my nationality.
Japanese canal-boats and coolies of Kioto
I spent a day in Kyoto and could have spent many more with pleasure. At the station next morning four yen more than sufficed for a ticket to Tokyo, with unlimited stop-overs. At Maibara a squad of Russian prisoners, garbed in Arctic cloaks and fur caps, huddled in a sweltering group on the platform. As long as the train halted not the hint of a jeer rose from the surrounding multitude, and the townspeople came in continual procession to offer the stolid fellows baskets of fruit, packets of tobacco, and all manner of delicacies. I left the train at Nagoya, third city of the kingdom, in which the chief point of interest is a great castle, at that season the residence of hundreds of Russian prisoners.
Among the few guests at the inn to which I turned at nightfall was an invalided sergeant, nearly recovered from two bullet wounds received in Manchuria. A paper panel separated his room from my own. We pushed it aside and shared a double-sized chamber. From the moment of our meeting the sergeant was certain that I was a Russian. Gestures of protest and innumerable repetitions of the word “Americajín” did not alter his conviction in the least. Too well he knew the czar’s uniform and the cast of features of the “Moosky!”
We conversed almost uninterruptedly for three hours, during which time barely a word passed our lips. Certainly the sergeant must have been an actor in his preliminary days, for there was no thought nor opinion so complex that he could not express it clearly and concisely in pantomime. Rendered into English his gestures and grimaces ran as follows:—
“Well, you are a nervy fellow, yes, indeed! I suppose you’re only an escaped prisoner; but you’ll be shot as a spy the moment you’re found out. You’re not a Russian? Nonsense! Don’t spring any such yarns on me. I’ve seen too many of you fellows. You may fool these unsophisticated stay-at-homes, but I know you as I should know my own father. So would any of the boys who have been to the front. Oh, come, stop it! It’s no use telling me you’re an American. Tell that to the civilians and the policemen, the blockheads. It’s a mighty fine joke on them. But we’re alone now; let’s be honest. You needn’t be in the least afraid of me. I’m on, but I wouldn’t peach for the world. But I’m afraid your scheme won’t work. There is not another man besides myself in Nagoya who would keep your secret. The first schoolboy or old woman to find you out will run his legs off to tell the police. You can bank on that. A year ago, before I’d seen the world, I was as big a tattle-tale as the rest; but I take a more cosmopolitan view of life since I got these scars, and I can sympathize with a man now even if his skin is white.”
The police interpreter came at this point to take my deposition, and the sergeant preserved a noncommittal gravity during the interview, though he winked twice or thrice as the policeman bent over his notebook. When the visitor was gone, the soldier took up the story of his army life. It was a gesticulatory epic, rich in detail, amusing in incident. From the parting with his parents he carried me along with him through the training camp of recruits, across the Sea of Japan on a crowded transport, into the winter-bound bivouac in Manchuria, on cruel forced marches to the northward, into many a raging battle, to the day when he fell helpless in the bottom of a trench. His musket stood in a corner of the room. He used it often in the story and took great delight in assuring me that it had sent many of what he considered my fellow-countrymen to their final reckoning. He imitated their death throes with striking realism, rolling about the floor with twitching limbs and distorted features, choking and gasping as a man does in the last struggle. In comedy he was as effective as in tragedy. His caricature of a Russian at his prayers was a histrionic masterpiece; his knowledge of the “Moosky” service as exact as that of a patriarch.
We turned in towards midnight and parted in the morning the best of friends. From Nagoya the railway turned southward, and, following the old royal highway along the coast of the main island, gave us frequent glimpses of the ocean. The country grew less mountainous, often there were miles of unbroken paddy fields in which uncountable peasant women wallowed in the inundated mire, clawing with bare hands the mud about the roots of the rice plants. On the slopes, too steep to be flooded, long rows of tea bushes stretched from the railway line to the wooded summits.