F-0022 A notebook that went around collecting the words for ready yet

(Said to be copied from a single ruled notebook. What is copied here is the last few leaves; the dates are as in the original.)

August 9. Fair.

From Kumagaya to Minano on the Chichibu line. Treated to watermelon at the shop by the bridge.

Asked an old woman (seventy-two) for the hide-and-seek words. Ready yet, is the same in this hamlet as anywhere. The reply they draw out long: not ye—t. There is said to be a separate song for changing who is it, but the old woman could not call it to mind, and her grandchild was out playing and could not be asked.

What the old woman said as I was leaving. As a child she counted the replies, and her elder sister scolded her hard for it. You do not count them, there are nights when there are too many. What that meant, the old woman says she has never known.

August 10. Overcast.

A hamlet in Agatsuma. Cheap lodgings. Many mosquitoes.

In this region, at the end of the game, the seeker turns toward the mountain and adds: ready now. I asked the innkeeper (fifty or so) the reason, and he said it is because if you leave it unsaid, the replies may not stop until night. Whose replies, I asked again, and the innkeeper laughed and said, the monkeys’, most likely. The subject did not come up again.

August 11. Fair.

While waiting for the bus back, watched the children’s hide-and-seek behind the shrine. Taking down the words, I found I had, out of habit, been keeping a tally of the replies. Five had hidden; the tally has one stroke too many. Thinking I had miswritten it, I counted again: six. The children finished their game and scattered, nothing amiss. The bus came and I left.

September 4.

At night, under the window, I heard: ready yet. A child’s voice. Past eleven. I did not answer.

September 7.

Again. It occurs to me that setting it down in this notebook may itself amount to answering. A song is a pair, question and reply. For years, in place after place, I have collected nothing but the questions.

September 12.

Again tonight. I write no more.

(The pages after this one are left blank.)