The Silver Spoon (20 page)

Every day when there was no school, he would forcibly take me out, reluctant though I was, and make me carry the fishing gear, even though I was following him only because it was painful to ruin his mood—and because I had no choice. Then I had to plod after him all the way to Honjo where there were a great many fishponds that, in my brother's theory, were the ideal ones but, in my opinion, were exceptionally revolting. On our way I'd be the butt of his pettifogging criticisms—that my hat was crooked, that I held my head too low, that I was distracted far too long by the lanterns just put out for sale, that my arms weren't swinging back and forth evenly—in short, from the tip of my head to the ends of my toes, so that all the mental strain, coupled with the great distance, would completely exhaust me by the time we finally reached a fishpond. But no sooner had I ducked in under its flag and felt a whiff of relief than I would be made to sit on the dampish edge of the moat and forced to realize I'd have to spend the whole day there once again, and I'd feel as fed up as if all my energy and bones had deserted me.

The pilings driven into the muddy, bad-smelling moat were loaded with growths of green moss. In a stagnant pool in one corner, with red rust floating on it, water scorpions
¹⁸
caught water striders and giant water bugs
¹⁹
bobbed up and down. Watching such things alone made me sick, but there also were the uninterrupted banging, clanging noises of someone beating sheets of iron at a factory nearby that gave me a splitting headache. My brother might say to me, You've gotten better at cutting earthworms, I like that, but this wouldn't please me at all. Though I didn't even know what to do with the single rod given me, I nonetheless made the pretense of alertly watching my float while thinking one unpleasant thought after another, such as, Why do I have to learn to like fishing? Meanwhile, my brother, who was supposed to suffer from myopia, suddenly seemed to acquire several sharp eyeballs the moment he arrived at a fishpond. He would set up five to seven rods and before I knew it would be watching out for my float, too.

“Look, the fish is taking your bait!”

If I pulled the fish out of the water, he would bark at me for one reason or another—that I was too clumsy scooping it up or that I was no good unhooking it. So, hoping that the fish would get away quickly, I would lazily pull the thing in. Then, a muddy yellow belly and parts would show, and I'd just watch, thinking, That's a dirty carp. This would make my brother lose his temper and throw it at me. By then the fish would unhook itself and get away.

When the day's ordeal was finally over and the time came to go home the raw-smelling creel became a new burden. And, again for my education, my brother would deliberately make a detour, taking the route I didn't like—the road that had antique shops, warehouses, carts, and ditches, the road where power lines whined in the wind, the road lined with food stalls. I would trot after him, my feet deadly fatigued, all the while being scolded for this thing or that. And because we took a longer way, the sun would have set before we neared home. The unpleasantness and the complaints I had at such a time. . . . Once, as one star, then another, began to shine in the evening sky, I was so enchanted gazing at them—gaining strength from what my aunt had taught me, that stars are where gods and buddhas are—when my brother became angry that I had fallen way behind.

“Why are you being so damned slow?”

Startled, I said, “I was looking at our dear stars.”

Hardly understanding what I said, he barked, “Stupid, just say ‘stars'!”

Pitiful person! What was wrong with my calling the cold stones circling the sky “our dear stars” out of a child's longings, just as I called this person, who by some chance had become my companion in Hell, my dear brother?

5

Once, again in the name of education, I was taken to a certain seashore. Not knowing that my unusually good response to the idea of going there was on account of my memories of a trip some time back that I had enjoyed, and of a friend—my brother's—who had gone on ahead and was waiting for us, my brother was in very high spirits the night before we left, and took me to the fair of Lord Bishamon
²⁰
and bought me the magazine
Little Citizen
.
²¹
The next morning, accompanied by an unusually kind brother and relieved that things might work out all right, I left home with only
Little Citizen
for me to carry.

It happened to fall on Tanabata Day,
²²
and the peasants' houses everywhere had bear bamboo
²³
adorned with poem cards of five colors aloft, hare's ears
²⁴
coolly blooming on their thatched roofs. Enchanted and distracted by them, I wondered aloud, Why don't they do the same in towns?, and drew the first angry word from my brother. Buoyed by the green paddies, the sky, the sea, and white sails, I had many things I wanted to say and wanted to ask about, but because it was painful to be scolded, I just thought this or that, wondering if it wasn't a mistake after all to have come along, when I drew another, fresh angry word for not saying anything. Why did he get upset for no reason? As it turned out, he was in a foul mood because I didn't put to him the question, How does the train move?

TANABATA:
BAMBOO WITH POEM CARDS

The place we arrived at was a thatched hut in a fishing village surrounded by gloomy brushwood fences that had seashells and things strewn about, where, other than our friend who eagerly welcomed us, lived a very dark old couple and their daughter with the same coloring. It was just lunch time, and the mother and daughter, who looked like black cats, brought two grubby raised trays for the three of us. But, told to hurry because the tableware was what the family used themselves and they couldn't eat until we had finished our meal, I felt harassed and put down the chopsticks after finishing half my food.

The house being so small, it was decided that my brother and I would move to a cape about two miles away. Our friend, who offered to accompany us by way of taking a walk, and my brother said they'd catch up with me, so I was put in a rickety cart and went on ahead. The cart puller was a corpulent man who appeared to be simple and honest, and I didn't dislike him at all. But as we passed round and round those gloomy brushwood fences, loneliness welled up in me and before long I couldn't bear it any longer. I did my best to distract myself but only such things as the cedar hedge of our house and the way our dining room looked kept coming to my mind's eye. Thinking, I won't be going back there tonight or tomorrow night, my face turned weepy despite myself and tears dropped on my lap. Fishermen's children noticed this.

“Hey, look at that! He's crying! He's crying!” they called out and laughed among themselves.

The cart man turned to look from time to time and said something soothing, but his words were different and I couldn't understand him at all. As we went along, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of beautiful Benkei crabs
²⁵
coming out of the cracks of roadside fences and then, startled by the noise of the cart, dashing back into them, and I wanted the crabs. But before long we came out on the shore. The path meandered between a hillside and the water's edge. I was agitated that at any moment the tide might come in to block our way, but the cart man was unperturbed, apparently thinking about something else as he trudged along. When we reached a point where the path cut through a hill I happened to turn back to look and caught a glimpse of my brother and our friend. Just when I'd managed to suppress a sob struggling to rise in my throat, my brother hurriedly caught up and took me down from the cart.

Here and there formations of boulders serrated like dorsal fins jutted out of the rocky shore into the sea, and the waves, their paths blocked, rose up round-shaped like the shaven head of a sea monster and quickly crashed, splashes flying. Every time our path turned, the shore became smaller and narrower as it closed in into a cove, and the low waves at certain intervals rolled in, kaboom, kaboom. Hearing the sound, a lump formed in my chest for some reason and, though I had managed to stop sobbing, tears rolled out again. A wave crashed kaboom, its foam swished away, but even before I was relieved to think, That's gone, the next wave crashed kaboom. When we'd finally passed that cove, the next cove came along with more kaboom. Even though I was getting hungry and my feet were growing tired, the cape seemed to remain just as far away and the sound of waves never ceased, no matter how far we went. When we caught up with a string of several mares clop-clopping along being led, our friend noticed the tears filling my eyes and pointed this out to my brother in a whisper.

“Leave him alone, leave him alone,” he said, walking briskly ahead.

Our friend kept turning back to see, until finally he stopped and kindly asked, Are you tired? Are you feeling ill?

“I am sad about the sound of waves,” I said honestly.

My brother glared at me.

“Go back by yourself,” he said and quickened his pace. Our friend, surprised as he was by my unexpected response, nonetheless, tried to calm my brother down.

“A boy has to be a little tougher,” he said to me.

6

By the time we arrived at the quiet inn standing in isolation near the foot of the rocky cape, the sun was already setting, the flaming clouds wrapping it turning like a wheel. These gradually turned red, purple, then indigo, in the end becoming one with the color of the sky and fading. As I held on to the post on the porch and watched the waves crashing at the cape, radiating phosphorescence, my windpipe felt irritated and tears ceaselessly rolled down my cheeks. I kept rubbing the tears on the post, my only thought being, May tomorrow come as soon as possible.

Winds pregnant with rain began to make the pines sough, and insects started to cry as though they had crawled out of nowhere. A maid came to close the outer sliding doors. I had no choice but to go into my room and, trying to hide my teary face, took out
Little Citizen
and began reading it. One illustration showed Kidōmaru, his forehead pierced with an arrow, lifting the hide of the bull with one hand, holding his sword close to himself, aiming to kill Raikō.
²⁶
As I turned the pages one by one, I caught sight of the title, “The Boy Drummer,”
²⁷
and started to read it. The illustration showed the protagonist, the boy drummer, beating the drum hung on his chest, sticks held high, and advancing, paying no attention to the soldiers on his side being left behind. As I read on, the drummer—who had a large head, was clumsy, and was always made fun of by people—became me, and my tears pattered down on the book until I finally drew a bark from my brother.

The next morning the sea was entirely enclosed in fog. And the noise of a scull rowing through it pleased me terribly. The boat was invisible, only the noise sounding like some bird calling or the cry of some baby beast looking for milk.

Our friend came by, and we went out on the shore together. The sand, stones, and seaweed thrown up in the shapes of waves were all soaked with morning dew, and the insects, though so many of them had been crying last night, now remained only here and there chirping, chirping, in a lovely manner. The dune between the flatland and the sloping beach had weeds and black pines bent by the blowing winds clinging to it. There were a simply shaped fishing boat pulled up on it, the frames for sliding the boat, a creel like a bird nest, a bilge scoop, ropes, sea urchins, dead starfish, and other things.

After a while the fog cleared. About the time the morning sun, which rose red above a sea that gleamed indigo-blue deeply, was beginning to make me itchy, my sweat seeping out, fishermen, women, and children noisily came down the narrow paths on the dunes and began drawing in a dragnet. As they pulled it step by step with quiet yo-heave-ho's, the Ceylon moss, heaped up in many places and ignited, belched sputtering white smoke. Meanwhile my brother had swum away all by himself to a boulder beyond it all, so I waded into a pool that turned into a rivulet only when it rained and began picking up stones and seashells. There were a great many baby hermit crabs there, which, though at a glance they looked like ordinary seashells, would put out their hands if you left them alone for a while and crawl about in a wobbly fashion. They lived in whatever shells they found, pointed ones and round ones. The funny thing was they were all baby hermit crabs.

Our friend found a conch shell about two inches long and brought it over to me. It had two holes that could take a thin string. So I was thinking things like, Back home I'll attach to it the tuft of a Western umbrella my older sister gave me, when my brother came out of the water and told me to throw away all the seashells and stones I had in my hands. I had no choice but to throw them away, one at a time, with evident pain, in the end all of them, except the conch shell. Unable to part with it, I squirmed. My brother became angry at this and raised his fist, but our friend stopped him and persuaded him, extremely reluctant though he was, to allow me to take at least that one home. That conch shell, with the tuft attached to it, is still in my old toy box.