“My!” Behind me, a small cry showed that the girl, too, had been quick to notice. Before long the bride got back in the car with her escorts and left, to scathing reviews.

“She’s used to this, the hussy. Must be her second, no, at least her third time. The groom’s down at the foot of the mountain waiting for her, no doubt, but she has them stop the car and gets out to look at Fuji. Don’t tell me a woman getting married for the first time would have the nerve to do that.”

“She yawned!” the girl eagerly concurred. “Stretching open that big mouth of hers . . . She ought to be ashamed of herself. Whatever you do, sir, you mustn’t marry anyone like that.”

It hardly befitted a man of my years, but I blushed. My own wedding plans were progressing smoothly, thanks to a certain mentor of mine who was taking care of everything. The ceremony, a dignified if meager affair with only two or three close family friends attending, was to be held at this man’s house, and I, for my part, felt almost like a child inspired and encouraged by the affection of others.

Once November arrived, the cold at Misaka became hard to bear. A stove was set up downstairs.

“You must be freezing on the second floor. Why don’t you work down here, beside the stove?” the lady of the house suggested, but I find it impossible to work with people watching, and declined. She continued to worry about me, however, and one day she went to Yoshida and came back with a kotatsu for my room. Snuggling beneath the coverlet of that little footwarmer, I felt grateful from the bottom of my heart for the kindness of these people. But gazing at Fuji, which was already covered with two-thirds of its full winter cap of snow, and the desolate trees on the nearer mountains, I began to see the meaninglessness of enduring much more of the penetrating cold at Misaka Pass and decided it was time to head for the lowlands. The day before I left, I was sitting on a chair in the shop wearing two dotera, one over the other, and sipping cheap green tea, when a pair of intellectual-looking young women in winter overcoats—typists, I guessed—approached on foot from the direction of the tunnel. Shrieking with laughter about one thing or another, they suddenly caught sight of Fuji and stopped as dead in their tracks as if they’d been shot. After consulting each other in whispers, one of them, a fair-skinned girl wearing glasses, came up to me with a smile on her face and said, “Excuse me, would you snap a photo of us, please?”