The Silver Spoon (12 page)

There I would spend half a day, even a whole day, mumbling to myself, acquiring, I know not when, the habit of writing with a pencil the hiragana representing the sound
wo
on the side of the cabinet; in the end countless
wo,
large and small, formed lines. Becoming suspicious about my proclivity to get into that corner, my father eventually looked in and in no time discovered those lines. But he just thought they were no more than idle graffiti and did not scold me much, merely saying that if I was doing writing exercises, I ought to do so in a notebook. But for me they were not, heavens, mere graffiti. The hiragana
wo
somehow resembles a seated woman. With my tiny heart, with my feeble body, whenever something happened, I sought consolation in that character, these characters surmised my thoughts well and consoled me with kindness.

Even after moving to the new place, I was assaulted by frightening dreams as often as once every three days and would run about the house in the dead of night. One such dream was that of a black swirl hanging in midair, about a foot in diameter, which pulsated like the spring of a clock. That was spooky enough, but even as I tried to hold myself in check, a monstrous crane would fly in from somewhere and hold the swirl in its beak. Another was something like intestines pushing against one another making a splat-splat noise. Then these would turn into a woman's face that kept its mouth wide open like a fool, suddenly opened its eyes and made a long, long face. Or else it would close its mouth, extend it sideways, crimping and shrinking its eyes and nose, turning itself into an extraordinarily flat face. It would go on extending and shrinking until I burst out crying.

The suspicion arose that I was assaulted only by such dreams because of my aunt's fairy tales. Also, the suggestion was made that I try a new bedroom, so it was decided that I ought to sleep by my father. Yet the tales of military exploits of such men as Miyamoto Musashi
¹¹⁹
and Yoshitsune
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with his Benkei
¹²¹
that he told me every night proved to be of no use, with the ghouls thinking nothing of a mere father and still visiting me as in the past. In the previous bedroom there was a demon in the ceiling of the alcove; in the new room the octagonal clock on the pillar turned into a One-eyed Boy and the four sliding doors scared me by becoming gigantic mouths.

39

Following our doctor's recommendation, my father decided to take me and my mother, both of us prone to being sickly, to a certain seashore for our health. On our way I was extremely happy to see nature unfold before my eyes exactly as I had longed to see it, child though I was, having only seen it in the pictures on poem cards and in picture copybooks. I saw the mysterious sea, which I could not possibly ladle into my small vat of imagination. It was transparent indigo, with sailboats running on it, their sails gleaming like silver. When we passed between steep cliffs, I felt an unbearable loneliness and pitied the straggly grasses that grew on them.

At a shrine for Chinese people that looked like the Dragon Palace,
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an old Chinese woman was praying for something, dropping a pebble on the pavement for each of her prayers. And a doll-like child with her hair parted with pomade, walking unsteadily on her lovely legs, was, I thought, pretty. A store selling trinkets made from seashells was packed with displays of treasures from the bottom of the sea. Father bought several hairpins as souvenirs for my older sisters and a bag of “vinegar shells”
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for me, but I wondered why he didn't buy all of them, everything being so beautiful. As we rode a carriage through a seashore pine grove, the pines were endless. Pines were in the hanging scroll of Takasago
¹²⁴
that we hung during the New Year and, because my aunt had often told me that the pine is a divine tree, I was superstitiously fond of pine trees.

In a while we arrived at our inn. I had just enjoyed a quiet pine grove, but here there was the hubbub of people, so I started crying, saying, “I want to go home.” At once the manager and maids rushed to me and, calling me “Little Master,” coaxed me into feeling that I was an old acquaintance of theirs. So, I was relieved and soon stopped crying. And for the rest of the day, smelling the fragrance of the salt wind, I remained entranced, watching the waves crashing noisily beyond the low pine trees, oblivious to everything else.

At night the lamp was lit. Its shade was a tubular bamboo basket with paper pasted on it, and it sat on a black-lacquered, elegant box. Longing for light, “side-crawlers”
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flew in and perched on it. Of a beautiful green and with a wide space between their eyes, they were terribly cute. When you tried to press on one with your finger, it suddenly crawled sidewise, escaping to the next segment of the basket. “Dove insects”
¹²⁶
also came.

One night I was out on the verandah watching the fireworks shooting up, when a beautiful woman came by with candies wrapped in paper.

“This is for you,” she said.

I'd heard that she was a “geisha,” that geisha are scary people who deceive you. The “geisha” came very close to me and said, “What a lovely child! How old are you?” She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face, her cheek almost touching mine. Enveloped in her fragrant sleeves I was unable even to respond, ears burning, as I clung to the rail, when I suddenly realized she'd come to deceive me. Terrified, I forced myself out from under her sleeves and ran back to my mother. When, my chest thumping, I told her about it, she chided me, with a little smile, on my bad manners. After that, each time I saw the fireworks, I would tell myself that the next time the geisha asked me something I'd reply to her, that if she gave me candies I'd thank her. But she must have been offended, for she wouldn't even come near me after that. I was truly sorry I did not have a chance to tell her of my regrets.

One day I went into the depths of a deep pine grove with father. There was the scent of pine, and pine cones lay everywhere. Father walked slowly, but since I was picking up pine cones, from time to time I had to rush to catch up with him. As I scurried after him while talking intimately in my mind with the gathered pine cones that filled my chest and sleeves, we came upon a gazebo and an old man with snow-white eyebrows raking pine needles. I was overjoyed, taking him to be the old man of Takasago—I really did—and, unusually for me, said various things to father. Back at the inn, father said to mother, with a laugh: “Today our Octopus Boy babbled quite a bit.”

40

Back from the trip I felt a loneliness resembling betrayal when I found out that while we were away O-Kuni-san and her family had moved to a distant place because of her father's assignment. From then on I ceased to be assaulted by terrible dreams and, besides, my body began to grow visibly. But my innate slow-wittedness and neglect of school remained unchanged. This was not only because of my feebleness, but also because school life, too complicated and filled with too much pain for an innocent child, made me dislike it. Except, happily, Mr. Nakazawa, who was in charge of our class at the time, was a good teacher whom I liked a great deal and, on top of that, my seat was right in front of his desk. No matter how often I failed to show up, he did not say anything and no matter how poorly I did in the class he merely giggled.

Still, he scolded me once, and that was when I had a fight with the kid seated with me, Andō Shigeta. For some reason we hated each other's guts and were always at odds. One day, during an hour on arithmetic, he insisted that I look at his slate on which he'd drawn a face with one of its eyes blinded and my name scribbled by it. So I drew a large wooden clog, attached eyes and a nose to it, wrote “Wall-eyed” next to it, and showed it to him. He suddenly kicked me on the shin. Not about to accept submission, I elbowed his side. We were engaged in this private fight for some time before our teacher noticed; when school was over, he made us stay behind. Looking angry as he seldom had, he asked, Why did you have a fight? I told the whole story, insisting that I wasn't to blame, but Shigeta lied by saying that I made fun of him first, so our teacher refused to let us go home, saying, It's a case of “the two parties in a fight are equally punishable.”
¹²⁷
All the others were happily going home holding their belongings wrapped up in cloths. Some of the more curious kids were looking in the door, laughing.

When all the pupils of the school were gone, everything turned quiet, which I didn't like. What would I do if it went on like this and night fell? I wouldn't be able to eat, and I wouldn't be able to sleep. When will aunt come to get me and apologize? Such thoughts swirled in my head, and tears slowly began to well up in my eyes. Our teacher from time to time looked at us, from one to the other, now both almost whimpering, while he pretended to read, giggling. This kid Shigeta, who'd been fingering the strings of his satchel hanging from his shoulder, obviously eager to go home, finally burst into tears and said, “I'm sorry, sir.”

“So you apologized. That's fine. I forgive you,” Mr. Nakazawa said, and let him go home.

I myself would have rather gone home too, but deeply offended as I was that I was made to stay though I wasn't to blame, I persisted, holding back the tears each time I started to sob. In the end, though, I had no choice but to sob. And once I started sobbing, I whimpered helplessly, for that was my habit, rubbing my eyes with my fists, even while slowly reflecting on the right and wrong, the fairness and the unfairness of it all. And whenever I decided that I was to blame, I would stop sobbing at once, while when I did not, I would sob audibly, bitter that I was unreasonably oppressed just because I was small and weak, and thinking, Wait until I get back at you all. There is also the fact that, after you've sobbed to your heart's content, you feel as if your chest were aired, a sort of unbearably pleasant sensation down in your windpipe.

Mr. Nakazawa in the meantime was at a loss.

“If you apologize, I'll let you go,” he would repeat, but I wouldn't, insisting that I wasn't to blame. As I slowly began to listen to what he had to say, however, I could finally see that, even though it was Shigeta's fault to start a fight, it was wrong for me to have responded to it during a lesson, so I bowed to him and said, “I am sorry, sir,” and he let me go.

Back home, on hearing that their timid Octopus Boy had had a fight, my family all laughed, as if it were a miracle.

41

The penalty for neglecting to study was direct: when the time for tests came I knew almost nothing. To be left alone in the classroom when everyone else quickly does the tests and leaves, it would be as uncomfortable as an octopus being boiled, even in a dream. Most painful of all was the reader. I was finally summoned to the teacher's desk. In question was the chapter called “Defending the Ulsan Castle.” I had never seen anything like “Ulsan” before. I just stood there without saying a word, so my teacher, thinking of nothing better to do, made me read, teaching me one or two characters at a time, but I was simply entranced by the illustration showing Katō Kiyomasa surrounded by Ming forces,
¹²⁸
while comprehending nothing of the book. My teacher, running out of patience, tossed the reader down in front of me and said, “Well then, read any part you can.”

“I can't read any part of it,” I said, as if nothing was wrong.

Even after the tests were over, I stayed on in the same seat. I had assumed that because I was in the very first row I was number one. That my name plate hung at the very end, that I was called last in the roll call, or that I was in fact the worst learner, did not raise the least suspicion in my mind. To be placed next to my favorite teacher and not to be scolded at all—if this didn't show I was number one, what else could? Besides, I had never been called to accept my diploma, and when I went home from school and boasted that I was number one, everyone would laugh, saying, You're fine! You're fine! So, as far as I was concerned, everything was all right.

Around the time that this semester was coming to a close, a new family moved in next-door. Between that house and ours, beyond the vegetable garden in our backyard, there was only a cedar hedge, allowing free passage between us. When I was out in the back spying on what was going on, a young lady about my age came out to the hedge, then suddenly hid herself behind it, evidently stealthily spying on our side from between two cedars. After a while she came out again and gave me a glance, so I gave her a glance back, too, then both of us looked away. While we were repeating such things over and over, I noticed she was skinny, with an air of sickliness, and I somehow came to like her. The next time our eyes met she showed the suggestion of a smile. So, I gave a smile, too. She, as if to avert her face, turned round on one foot. I did the same. She jumped. So did I. She jumped and I jumped. While we were jumping like that, I gradually moved away from the shadow of an almond tree, she away from the hedge, the two of us coming close enough to talk. But just then there was a call: “Missy, it's mealtime.” With “Yes!” she quickly ran away.

I went regretfully inside, finished my meal in a hurry, and went out again. She was already there waiting.

“Let's play,” she said, walking toward me in a friendly manner. Because I was all prepared to jump several more times before becoming more familiar, this unexpected turn of events made me blush, but I said, “Let's,” and walked up to her. She was no longer bashful and asked clearly, “How old are you?”

“Nine,” I replied.

“I'm nine, too,” she said, smiled a little, and said something you might have expected from a grown-up: “But because I was born in the New Year I am old for my age.”
¹²⁹

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Kei,” she said clearly.