The customer made of leaves

The new customer is nobody at all: an ordinary gentleman in an enormous coat, whose nose twitches at pastry, whose coat is leaking leaves, and whose tail — well. Ponta the tanuki has come down from the hill, and he has practised his disguise for a week.

The street rises to the occasion magnificently. Ume-san serves the gentleman without blinking. Ito-san wishes him good day. Hara-san moves her newspaper one polite inch. Nobody notices anything, with tremendous effort. We were all, I think, rather proud.

At the café he orders by pointing, pays in leaves, and drinks his matcha with both paws. Mutjo accepts the leaves gravely and returns his change: one biscuit. Beneath the counter, four small colleagues observe a master of stillness at work, and take notes.

He comes back every Thursday now. The disguise never improves, and is never mentioned. His leaves go into Hara-san's newspaper as bookmarks, one a week — and if you look at her crossword page in autumn it is full of small gold and crimson flags, marking, she says, “the good ones.”