Spring Miscellany by Soseki Natsume

Author:Soseki Natsume
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0 8048 3326 5
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

18

A Good Bargain

"Over there, you know, chestnuts are plentiful. As for the price, well, let's say it must be about a yen for four shō,37 more or less. Once it has arrived there—just imagine!—a shō is worth one yen fifty sen! Well, while I was there, along came an order for one thousand, eight hundred bags. If everything goes well, the price of a shō may rise to two yen and over, so I hastened to get in on the deal.

Once the one thousand and eight hundred bags were ready, I followed the order myself as far as Yokohama. The purchasers, I should say, were Chinese, and the whole lot was to be sent to their country. At this juncture, a Chinese arrived and stated that everything was in order. I was surprised that the formalities took up so little time, but now they were bringing up an enormous barrel about two meters in height and placing it in front of the depot, after which they filled it with water. 'Why?' you will ask. I myself did not understand their purpose in doing so. At all events, in view of its tremendous size, filling it was no simple task, believe me! Now I remember, yes, it took at least half a day!

I wondered what would happen next. Well, just think, they opened the bags and tipped all the chestnuts into the barrel. I was stupefied. No, really, these Chinese were up to all sorts of tricks! Because afterwards I realized what was going on. You see, when you put chestnuts in water, the good ones sink to the bottom while the damaged ones remain on the surface. Those crafty Chinese put them in bamboo panniers and rapidly deducted their weight from that shown on the labels! They got through the lot as quickly as possible. I saw it all myself, and was in a cold sweat! Consider that about one-seventh of the chestnuts were ruined! I was in a mess! The transaction left me with a serious loss. What about the wormy ones, you ask? Being in a rage, I sold those, too; yes, I flogged off the lot. As they were Chinese, they acted as if nothing had happened. They tied up the straw sacks with cord and—I suppose— dispatched most of them to China.

"And then again, I once had occasion to purchase sweet potatoes at four yen a sackful—a contract for two thousand sacks. But the order arrived in the middle of the month, on the 14th, and delivery was to be made on the 25th, and even if I had worked myself into the ground it would have been absolutely impossible to supply two thousand sacks by that date. To be frank, however, I was really very sorry to have to let this order go. But then the senior member of the firm's staff told me, 'You know, it is true the contract says the 25th, but the date is not something to which one must adhere too rigorously.

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