Sherlock Holmes and Basho

After leaving the castle town of Broken Skulls, perched high above a pine forest gorge, I crossed a rope bridge to the ancient caves of the potters. I had intended to stop there only briefly, for some miles ahead in the next valley the season of a rare green butterfly had begun, which I wanted to experience for myself. But the beauty of the mountain landscape with its slender waterfalls, dwarf trees, and numerous pools so enthralled me and busied my hands with poems that I didn’t start down the mountain until deep into the afternoon. By nightfall, I was still in wild country, far from any village or farmhouse. The rising spring mists chilled to fog at dusk; so, I spread my paper coat on the reeds to block the wind, and I prepared to rest there at the side of the road until first light.

A short while after moonrise another wanderer appeared through the luminous haze on the road. He was an enormously large and ugly man in high spirits, with the tails of his clothes cut short and tucked up in a most strange way. He greeted me heartily, and at my invitation spread some dead reeds on the ground and sat down. He remarked on the great beauty of the mountain terrain from which I had just descended, though he had come from the opposite direction. He also inquired how I found the energy to write so many poems and yet journey so far at the same time – this without me once having mentioned that I was other than the priest that my black robe declared. I told him that I was indeed a poet, and I recited this verse for him:

Finally, after he commented on my constipation of the last two days, recommending endive, leeks and radishes, I had to ask him how he knew so much about me. He laughed in a hideous manner, and the smoky fragrance of him wafted stronger. He replied that he had trained himself to observe people and could read their lives in their appearances.

Impressed, I wondered aloud if he had ever employed his extraordinary skills in linked verse. That thought actually troubled him, and he answered me that, though poetry stirred profound feelings in him, he had little use for it in his life. The melancholy of this ugly man moved me to direct his attention to the moon among the hemlocks. He frowned, bewildered at first, until I pointed out how like us the differences were between the distant moon and the approachable trees. He questioned me for some while about this perception, until the weariness of my arduous journey overcame me and I slept. At first light, he was already gone. I put him out of my mind, for the road ahead was treacherous and full of poems.

“I experienced the oddest dream, Watson,” Sherlock Holmes declared one afternoon when my entrance to his study roused him from a fitful slumber. He lay still, it seemed to me, half asleep, his lanky form folded into the recesses of his armchair, voice drowsy: “I was out on the moors, alone, at night, wishing I had brought my pipe, when I came upon this strange Oriental fellow sitting in the gorse. I hailed him at once, for even in the dark I could see that he had traveled a far distance and might need assistance. He wore straw sandals, patched trousers and a gray robe that I noticed from the seams had once been black. Hook-tined thistle burrs, the kind that flourish only at alpine altitudes, had snagged at the frayed hem of his rob, high at the elbow where he had obviously reached up for purchase, a motion one makes in climbing not descending. In the dream, I knew there were mountains ahead of me. It must have been that there was a cool, glacial feel to the wind. Anyway, since I had found him down in the moor with alpine thistle burrs at his elbow, I knew he had descended, and I assumed he had paused during his descent to climb for a better vantage. The kind of thing bird-watchers do. Yet he was obviously no bird-watcher, rather some kind of primitive aesthete. He had gone out of his way to admire the view. That interested me in the man. After sitting down beside him, I noticed ink on his fingers and knew at once he was a poet.”

“Why not a botanist, wandering like Linnaeus?” I interjected, rather bored by all this. The Eskimo are right to infer that there is nothing more boring than someone else’s dream.

“The motley freckling of ink presented a pattern I recognized from those who write frequently and in awkward positions. So, indeed, he could have been a naturalist. But then he would have his notebooks and sample portfolios, wouldn’t he? All this man had was a paper coat, a roll of clothes, and a small packet that I presumed held his brush, inkstone, and short poems. I announced the conclusion of my observations to him, and he confirmed by composing a verse right then –

Holmes, who had leaned his head back in the chair and half-lidded his eyes as he recited the ditty, seemed ready to doze off again. I felt somewhat amazed, since this was not at all like him to go on about a dream. “Is that all?” I asked, expecting him to sigh or nod.

Instead, he turned his earnest face toward me and responded: “No. You see, the dream possessed exquisite details, Watson. I even observed by the puffiness under this old man’s eyes that his body retained water. I recommended several natural diuretics that even a man of his humble means could easily procure. By his reaction I knew that my diagnosis had been accurate. He inquired about me, and I told him a little. Then he wanted to know if I ever wrote poetry. Imagine that.”

I muttered something or other about the queerness of dreams, though I could see by his languid expression that he was not listening to me. I fretted to myself then that perhaps his strenuous investigative work, his extreme alternations of mood, as well as his tendency to rely on narcotics when not working had finally taken their toll.

“You know how much I admire Goethe,” he went on. “But I had to tell this Oriental poet, ‘The deed is so rich it pities my hand.’ I couldn’t find the words to explain how the predatory tyranny of the criminal will has precluded the writing of poetry in my life. He took pity on my reticence. Perhaps with his developed intuition he sensed my devotion to the narrow road of my work. He sensed that, and though he obviously felt quite uncomfortable talking about his poetry, some kind of sympathy for me made him do so anyway. He spoke about the moon and how, like the moon, everyone’s underlife glimmers with the truth – whether we live it or not.”

“’Pon my word, Holmes,” I blurted. “Is any of this germane?”

A black sadness glowed in him, and I wished I had held my tongue. Then, in the very next instant, as was his wont, his long face lit up with an eager grin, and he unfolded from his armchair. “Excuse me, Watson,” he said crisply, proceeding to his desk and to the work at hand. “I have carried on about this, haven’t I? It’s at times like this that I do believe that Viennese psychiatrist is right after all. Dreams have their way with us.”