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there was an old woman who would repeatedly ask me how tall i was, and what did my family eat for breakfast. she was a farmer and neighbor in the mountain village where we lived for several years. these two questions seemed of particular interest to her – at least, she never tired of asking them, and i answered her each time as though it were the first time. apparently she could not reconcile my looks and eating habits with some other facts. these facts were that year after year she’d seen me carry my children on my back as she had her children and then grandchildren. that we planted and picked at the same time of year. that in summer we both donned our cotton kimono to dance in the bon festival. and that we’d sat side-by-side at the recitals at the kindergarten, and stood side by side at the funerals of neighbors. in any case, i continued to answer her questions about my height and diet, and with the respect her age demanded. eventually she stopped asking. i suppose she came to realize that 170 cm wasn’t all that tall, and the fact that i enjoyed miso soup more for the evening meal than for breakfast didn’t make that much difference – as far as she could see. i came to realize that it was very probable that i was tallest person she’d ever met, and that in her world, miso soup, rice and pickles was the only possible breakfast. i realized too that the simple people i lived among were no more accustomed to seeing someone who looked like me than i was to seeing tigers roaming. i learned to announce my coming with a cough or an audible footstep when i walked on back roads and the narrow paths that cut across tea fields – it seemed unfair to appear all of a sudden in front of some old farmer tending his fields and minding his business. i seriously considered i might be the unwitting cause of a heart attack! the first time i met the old woman i’d gone to her home to return a shovel i’d borrowed from her son the day before. expressing my gratitude and uttering the ordinary politenesses, i left. much later she confided that she’d seen me coming and had actually wanted to hide – simply because she didn’t know what she would, or could, say to me. after our brief and uneventful encounter she said she’d felt relieved, and thought to herself that she must be “just an ignorant old country woman.” however, the ignorance of my old neighbor, a farmer who knew only farmers, was hardly greater than that of more educated and supposedly more sophisticated folk who would continually ask the usual questions: “can you sleep on futon, hold chopsticks, eat sushi, drink green tea?”
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Ultimo aggiornamento 2013-07-21
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