The Silver Spoon (11 page)

Soon the lesson was over. Brats avalanched out of the classrooms around ours and, under the wisteria trellises covering the entire playground, leapfrogged, played tag, played commander games. To me, who hadn't known any world other than the tiny one of O-Kuni-san's, the whole affair was unbearably dizzying. So I stood there looking this way and that like a nervous bird, when my sisters' friends ran up to me, as if to say, “So this is the brother we've heard so much about!” and in no time completely surrounded me. And showering me with pert ingratiating remarks, they assailed me from all sides with the usual questions: how old was I, what was my name, and so forth. A poor timid thing, I was as frightened as a donkey attacked by a pack of female leopards and could only nod or shake my head, unable even to look up.

Unfortunately, at that moment, a teacher showed up, suddenly grabbed my sash, and lifted me into the air with a shout. The tears that had been hiding behind my eyes all morning gushed out, and kicking my legs feebly, I burst out crying. He was taken aback.

“Oh my goodness! I'm so sorry!” he said and, putting me down, wiped my tears with his handkerchief. Later I learned that he was my older sister's teacher and had done it to please me. I was told not to cry if he did it again. I got the point finally, and was determined not to cry next time, but it seems that once was more than enough for the teacher. He never tried to pick me up again.

The commotion during the following hour of calligraphy was extraordinary. Here a kid upset his ink pot and began crying. There another drew nothing but dumplings in his exercise book and was scolded. Mr. Furusawa went among the children, attending to each problem as if he didn't know what the word trouble meant, and taught each child, occasionally stretching up to rub his back. When his hand all covered with white chalk dust grabbed my brush-holding hand, my whole being stiffened and my brush tip trembled so badly that he had to go over my
i-ro-ha
¹¹²
again and again.

That day the too violent stimulation and totally unfamiliar tasks gave me a headache and nausea, so when the session was over I went home. My aunt cooled my head with water.

“You did fine! You did fine!” she repeated as she gave me a cinnamon stick from the drawer in my wooden pillow, and my sister made me an amulet bag from Nanjing beads as a reward. My headache was gone in no time. All the other members of my family also praised me. “You did fine! You did fine!”

About the time school was over I went to O-Kuni-san's to play with her. There too, they said, “You did fine!” So I thought I had done a fine job and was proud of myself.

35

After a few days I could stay by myself though my aunt had to accompany me to and from school. Every day she would put my favorite cookies in clam shells, seal them with red pieces of paper, and take them out for me from the altar drawer the moment I returned from school and got rid of my satchel. I liked to choose a few from among them, unable to easily decide which to take.

Soon I was transferred to Class A. The pupils in the class surrounded this newcomer promoted from Class C and whispered among themselves, apparently sizing me up. Soon one of them saw the German letters my brother had written on my satchel and approached.

“Look, he's got English on his bag.”

The others edged in, exclaiming, thrusting their faces up close to me. When one of them asked me what the writing meant, I said it was my name, as I'd been told at home. For a while they looked at it enviously.

“Damn it!” said one. “He's Japanese, right? But he has a darn foreigner's name!”

Then another found my amulet bag with its tiny bell and began fingering it with his grubby hands. I didn't like that but I was afraid and didn't dare stop him. The bag was woven with aquamarine and white Nanjing beads to make a checkered pattern, and on the bell was embossed a bell insect. A glass gourd was attached to the other end of the purple string. What the hell do you have to carry a bell around for? the same kid asked. I said it was for my aunt to hear and come to get me when I was lost. They looked at each other with obvious contempt. Soon their fumbling proved too much for the bag; the weak threads stringing the beads together broke and the beads scattered on the floor. I began to snivel. At once the children drew back, looking as though they had done something terrible.

“I didn't do it! A third-year crow did it!” they chorused while watching me worriedly from a distance. I didn't know what to do, with no one coming to my rescue, unable to cry even if I had wanted to. I was just staring at the scattered beads, sniffling, when fortunately my sister arrived. All at once my sorrow overcame me and I burst into tears. The kids feared my sister might scold them. Keeping time with their feet and calling, “Weeping worm, hairy worm! Pinch him up and throw him away!” they hurried out of the room.

My sister consoled me with a promise that she would make me another bag. Spoiled as I was, I insisted on going home at once. Eventually she calmed me down and was helping me wipe the tears and blow my nose, when the bell rang. She left, saying she'd come again during the next recess. In came the evil kids who were watching the whole scene secretly from outside the room.

“Weeping a minute ago! Now laughing like a crow!” they chanted and danced around me.

The teacher in charge of the new class was a bearded man called Mr. Mizoguchi. Like Mr. Furukawa, Mr. Mizoguchi was a good person born to take care of children. He saw that I was withdrawn, and treated me with special kindness.

The kid who shared the double desk with me was called Iwahashi; the son of a roof-tile vendor, he was reputed to be a bully. He drew a line with a pencil at the middle of the desk and if my elbow intruded into his territory he elbowed me sharply or smeared his snot on me. He talked to me during one lesson, and though I didn't like it I responded without paying much attention. When Mr. Mizoguchi spotted this, he wrote our family names on the blackboard side by side and drew large black marks above them. The moment he saw this, Iwahashi leaned forward onto his slate and began to cry. But I didn't know what it was all about and just kept looking at the teacher, puzzled.

When the lesson was over and my sister came, she said with a smile that I must have talked during the lesson. Who had already told her, I wondered, but sensing I'd done something wrong, I said I hadn't. She said I didn't have to hide it because my name was marked with a black mark on the blackboard. When I learned that the circle was put there when you misbehaved, I was suddenly overcome with sadness.

36

Iwahashi's books were smeared with red pencil. In an illustration that showed a patrolman coming away from a house on fire, leading a lost child by the hand, shafts of light ran wildly in all directions from the child's head, and the patrolman's eyeballs bulged as if about to burst. Once he drew things like a One-eyed Boy and a Three-eyed Boy on his slate and showed them to me:

“Look! Look!”

Remembering the black mark from the other day, I ignored him. This prompted him to make a fist under the desk and, flexing it, he glared at me sideways. As soon as the lesson was over and our teacher went away, he breathed on his fist and came toward me, so I went out into the hall and stood alone in a spot where he was unlikely to find me. An older member of the same class, a red-faced, dirty kid came by.

“I'll give you something nice.” He had something in his hand and asked me to hold out mine. I was afraid he'd trick me, but I also feared him, so I held out my hand without fuss. He dropped a couple of red berries into it. I didn't want anything like that but, happy that somebody was being kind to me, I smiled.

“Thank you.”

It was only five or six years later that I learned they were the berries of “handsome-man's vine”
¹¹³
at the back of the school. Because of his red face, the student was nicknamed Monkey-faced Footman; also because his name was Chōhei, he was called Choppei as well. He was the son of a fishmonger in front of the Denpō-in.
¹¹⁴

After this Choppei became my only companion and, though I wouldn't have even spoken to him if that had been possible, he must have found something in me, for he often talked to me. One day he said to me:

“During the next lesson let's go and piss together.”

“I don't want to. The teacher will scold us,” I said. At once he chanted, making a fearsome face.

“I will, I will.” I hastened to say. He at once recovered his good humor and said, “It'll be all right if you do what I do.”

Soon after the lesson started, he raised his hand. “Mr. Mizoguchi, may I go to do number one?”

“Do you really need to? I'll find out soon enough if you've lied to me,” the teacher said. This didn't deter Choppei. “Yes, I really need to.”

Mr. Mizoguchi had to be concerned about a pupil losing control in the classroom. “All right then, go. Come back as soon as you're done. Dawdle on the way, and I'll give you a black mark.”

Several others raised their hands, asking to be allowed to go to the bathroom in a group. As he was leaving the room with them, Choppei gave me a quick glance. Startled, I fearfully raised my hand and, copying what the others had done, said, “Mr. Mizoguchi, may I go to do number two?”

Mr. Mizoguchi, not knowing that Choppei had instigated it, gave permission on the spot.

The bathroom was some way off from the classrooms, located as it was right under a thicket of bear bamboo
¹¹⁵
belonging to the next-door building, the Lord Hachiman's. Choppei was waiting for me there.

“Let's wrestle,” he said.

I looked around. The other kids had climbed over the railings of the passageway and were digging for sweet-roots
¹¹⁶
on the embankment or making balls out of crumbly mud and throwing them at one another. For them, number one was an excuse to have a break. Choppei pressed me: “Come, come on.”

I, who until that very moment had done only the Shiōten versus Kiyomasa's combat scene with my aunt as my opponent, didn't know what to do, but there was no getting out of it.

“It's dangerous. Please be gentle,” I said plaintively and unthinkingly grappled Choppei. Choppei, who was strong, pulled me round and round while calling out lustily, “Fight! Fight!”

Alas, this was too much for the reputable Kiyomasa; stepping on the hem of his own hakama, he fell right on his haunch.

“You're weak. We'll do it again,” Choppei snottily said, and started back. I adjusted my twisted kimono and followed him.

As he entered the classroom, he gave a quick bow with an innocent air.

“Sir, I'm back.”

I bowed without saying anything. The others also returned, one after another. The kid who'd dug sweet roots kept chewing on one for so long that he was made to stand in a corner. Worse, the sweet root he had in the chest of his kimono edged out and was spotted, eliciting a fine rebuke. I decided not to go to the bathroom again.

37

Among the subjects for study the one that pleased everyone the most was ethics. This was because our teacher hung a scroll of pretty pictures on the wall and told us interesting stories. One picture showed a mother bear who had been shot with a bullet and had died while still holding up a rock to enable her cub to keep looking for crabs underneath it; another showed a general watching a spider make a cobweb, chin in hand. Enchanted by the beautiful pictures and fascinated by the stories, the pupils always asked for more. Mr. Mizoguchi would turn the pictures one by one and say:

“As long as you behave, I'll tell you any number of stories.”

Most times he would end up going through the whole scroll of pictures. Strangely, though, he always skipped the picture that was at the very beginning, which showed a foreign woman fallen in the snow with a child in her arms. The pupils, though they saw that it was there, never asked to be told its story, either. But I, especially attracted by that picture, each time waited expectantly, in vain.

When the bell rang, the pupils would noisily surround the teacher in his chair, one climbing on his knees, another holding on to his shoulder, and so forth, crying, “Tell us that story again! Tell us that story again!” forcing him to tell the same stories over and over again. Unable to be as bold as they were, I would stand a little apart, vaguely looking at the pictures. But once, Mr. Mizoguchi turned toward me and asked, “Naka-san, shall I tell you a story, too? Which is your favorite?”

I merely blushed, so he urged, “You must tell me.”

Feeling as if my life were about to end, I finally mumbled, “This one,” pointing at the picture in question. No one seemed pleased, for they all said, “It's no good.”

“That's not interesting,” Mr. Mizoguchi said, adding, “Is that all right?” I nodded in silence.

Mr. Mizoguchi realized that I didn't know the story yet. So, persuading the other pupils who complained, he told the story for the newcomer. It concerned a mother who, lost in the snow, kept taking her clothes off to cover her child until she finally froze to death. The picture was not colorful enough to delight children, and that was all there was to the story, so they weren't excited by it, which was why Mr. Mizoguchi had skipped it. But to me, it was more than interesting. I listened to it with as much pity as I felt when my aunt told me the story of Lady Tokiwa.
¹¹⁷

When the story was over, Mr. Mizoguchi asked, “It wasn't interesting, was it?” In all honesty, I nodded yes. The teacher looked surprised, and the pupils giggled contemptuously.

38

It was around that time that I often felt the desire to escape people's eyes and be alone and hid myself under a desk, in a closet, wherever it might be. While withdrawn into such a place and thinking about various things, I would feel an indescribable peace and sense of satisfaction. Among the hiding places I liked most was the space by a chest of drawers. It was in our gloomiest room, illuminated only by the light that shone in through the north window facing the storehouse. Between that window and the cabinet there was just enough space for me to install myself, knees tucked up. Squatting there, I looked at the radiating cracks on a windowpane, the
kaya
tree
¹¹⁸
right next to it, the
“
handsome-man's vine” entwining a dead tree, its red vines
,
and the aphids sucking the sap at their tips.