#The Closing (跋) — The Last Chapter of the Last Bundle
Authority. The main text is Fiction-Only — the record of one outsider, and the words of the editor who closes that record. Who the narrator is, is in The Narrator — the Nanban Brush; the promise of this whole book is in About This Book. This chapter has no §At the Table — the closing was given no tools. This volume has no Law (法) — if you need numbers, go to the canon
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#The Last Diary
From Pinto's diary — the last chapter of the sixth bundle. A harbor at the northern end.
The wind blows. Two years ago, on the night I wrote the first chapter of this diary, the wind had died. That day I waited for the tide to go ashore; today I wait for the tide to put out to sea. A ledger must have its first line and its last line balance. This diary, at least, keeps that one law.
I wrote "harbor," but it is a size that the people of the south would laugh to hear. One wharf, two warehouses, three ships. One of those three goes south on the tide, they say, and so I bought a single place aboard her. The day I came down from the Mountain of the Dead, I wrote that the road ended here. Coming to the wharf, I add one entry to that sentence — on the wharf now are being unloaded furs and dried salmon come from across the sea. As it is the last chapter, I set it down divided once more. This I saw. The place the south calls the end is, to the people here, a gate. That the end and the gate stand in the same place — this is the last of the things I learned in two years.
I count the paper. One leaf is left. It is this chapter. So, by the merchant's law, on the last leaf I set down the reckoning.
Did I see all of this country? It is the question I put off the whole two years, so I answer it here — I did not. This country has sixty-some old provinces, and I learned all their names, but my feet touched a little over half, and even in the half I touched, what I saw was only the roadside. Each time I crossed a pass I looked at the mountains on either hand — never to the last knowing what lay behind those mountains. My map has many blanks for that reason. A mapmaker who fills the blanks with plausible drawings of beasts is one I have despised all my life. So I hand it on left blank. Those blanks are the portion of one who walks farther than I.
The maps of my childhood set this country down as Jipangu (the name our old maps gave Japan) and painted gold on every roof. Now I think it is no longer a thing to curse that mapmaker for. He drew not a falsehood but a tale he was told — only, he did not set down that it was a tale he was told. I spent two years keeping that one notation. That is the whole of the difference in worth between this diary and that map, and for a merchant that difference is enough.
With the Sword I settled the reckoning yesterday. When I paid the wage that remained, he rose with the face of a man who has received what he was owed. I held out one more piece of silver and said, "The price of a name." He looked down at that silver a long while. And he took it, and spoke his name. I do not set it down here. Among the things I bought at a price in two years, the ones I could not enter in the ledger kept growing, and this is the last line of them. He stays in the north, he says. I did not ask why. A land where the Sword stays has the Sword's work, and what that work is in this north I have already set down. At parting, he bowed his head to me for the first time. Not a warrior's bow, but a nod between men whose reckoning is done.
The Tongue takes the same ship. As far as Sakai — that is his home. This morning he asked me. Not in the interpreter's quick speech, but slowly, choosing only the words I could follow. "How far do you go?" I answered in this country's tongue. With the words I gathered on the road over two years, as far as they made an answer. "The sea has no road. Where there is no road, there will be no place to end either." The Tongue laughed and said my turn of phrase was wrong, and said the meaning carried. As the reckoning of two years of trade, not bad.
Unlike us, the people of this country spare their words at parting — in their place the seeing-off is long. The old woman of the house where I lodged last night followed me to the wharf without a word, thrust two dried fish into my baggage, and turned her back. When I made to pay, her back was already far off. It is the last debt I incurred in this country. That one comes to incur only debts there is no way to repay — this is the end of a journey, and I learn it only at the end.
The reports to the trading house I sent off to the last bundle. The mountains that yield silver, the markets where goods gather, the waypoints where the price rises and falls — all I wrote and sent, so the house's ledger will balance. The reckoning of this diary — will be balanced in some other place. Which place, I too do not know. It took two years for a merchant to become able to write that he does not know.
The tide has come. The captain calls. The baggage is already loaded — lighter than when I came down two years ago. What I bought is much, yet the load has grown lighter, so whether it was a trade that gained or a trade that lost, the ledger of heaven will know.
The ink is spent. As it happens, the paper too is at its end.
I board the ship.
Editor's note: The diary ends here. Where the ship went, where the man came ashore, is nowhere in the six bundles. Even if he is still, under the eaves of some harbor at your table, writing something — this book will not be surprised.
#Editor's Afterword
The last chapter of the sixth bundle is written to the very end. The hand did not waver to the last line, and the glosses between the lines kept pace to the last line. As I set down in The Acquisition, the master of the Sakai paper shop said that paper is by nature a thing with long legs. On what legs the six bundles came from the wharf at the northern end to the scale of the back room in Sakai, we never did find out. Whether the owner came on the same ship — that, still less.
There are tales we were told. One says that he returned to the Nanban lands and bound a great book of his travels, but it was so full of uncanny tales that no one in his homeland believed it. One says that under the eaves of some harbor in a northern country, a white-bearded outsider was seen asking and listening and writing of those who passed. The editor does as he learned from the narrator — where accounts diverge, he sets down both.
The Closing Words of Sengoku Fudoki said to close the book and return to the table. That once you have read, close it, and once you have closed it, you are free to forget it — and that even if you forget, some evening at the table something will rise to mind. This book is a younger sibling shelved on the same shelf, but being a book of the land, it makes even its farewell in the words of the road.
"When you have read it, close it. When you have closed it, walk. When the road leaves the map — from there on, it is your own travelogue."
Together with the map the narrator left blank, we thank you, who walked this book to the end.
Let us meet on the road.
Where the ship went, only the wind knows, and the wind keeps no ledger.