“What’s the midget granddaughter waiting for?” I asked Hori.
“She wants you to go to bed,” said he from under his quilt.
I jumped into the soft centre of my mattresses as requested. Then the butterfly dropped on her knees and crept backward around our beds. Out of a box she was pouring a train of powder until she had us each enclosed in a magic circle.
“Why?” I demanded.
Kenjiro laughed at me.
“It’s nomi-yoke,” he said. “Insect powder—what do you say in America? Bug medicine?”
I insisted that I had not seen the sign of a bug or an insect or a flea or anything looking like a marauder.
“Of course not,” Hori stopped me as if I should have known better. “It’s just courtesy to honoured guests, to show you that they would wish to protect you if there were any. If there were crawlers,” he concluded with some scorn, “do you suppose they’d make such an effort to call attention to the fact?”
That bushido explanation satisfied Hori but I was doubtful. For the sake of verification I carefully destroyed the integrity of the rampart around my bed by opening up passages through the powder. I was willing to display a few bites in the morning to prove the truth. I went to sleep dreaming about two-sworded samurai who looked like pinch bugs, and they were swaggering around a wall of insect powder. However, the morning proved that Hori was quite correct. The delicate attention had been born of pure courtesy.