The Silver Spoon (13 page)

Having declared our names to each other as formality required and exchanged the greetings of a first meeting, O-Kei-chan said, “I'm going to school soon. Let's go to the same school.”

I was happy to hear that. So I wracked my tiny brain enumerating how nice my school was, how wonderful the stories for ethics were, how gentle the teacher of my class was, and so forth, in my attempt to attract O-Kei-chan to my school. O-Kei-chan was spirited and not at all shy, and had clear, round eyes and jet-black hair. In her pale, smooth cheeks I could see a beautiful color of blood. And with her strong temperament and precocious mind she had the tendency, I sensed, to behave like a queen toward me, timid, slow-witted, and young for his age. But I decided with satisfaction to yield myself to the beck and call of this queen, who had newly appeared to reign over me.

42

One day, when I saw O-Kei-chan come into the school accompanied by her grandmother, my heart pulsed as if anew. From the next day on she came to the one classroom holding her wrapping cloth and, being a newcomer, was seated in the front row, right next to me. I couldn't devote myself to the lesson under way and gave her a sidelong glance. She kept her eyes down steadily, in modesty. During playtime she, still with no one to be friendly with, looked absentminded. I wanted to talk to her but kept my mouth shut, afraid that everyone would make fun of me. She must have known how I felt but, feigning ignorance, looked unconcerned. It was with a chaotic feeling that I finally waded through the day's lessons. On my way home I thought, I'll talk about this, I'll ask her about that. As soon as I returned home I went around to the back where I found her playing with a ball, all alone.

“O-Kei-chan!” I called out and ran up to her, as if ready to pounce on her. O-Kei-chan, however, said, with obvious contempt, “I'm not playing with the class dummy,” and quickly went inside her house. Expectations thwarted, I went back into my house crestfallen and told my aunt about it.

That evening, when my family gathered as usual in the dining room, I was told for the first time, in no uncertain terms, that I was indeed truly the class dummy. At first I insisted, stubbornly, that I was number one. But when I heard that my teacher had recently warned my family that, even though he didn't want to be unreasonable to me, their feeble-brained child, the way I'd been doing so far he wouldn't be able to promote me, so he hoped I'd pay a little more attention to the next tests—when I heard this, I burst out crying. All at once I felt the indignity of having been the class dummy all this time. So my teacher, believing that I had a feeble brain, had allowed me to take the day off as often as I wanted, and didn't scold me no matter how little I seemed to learn. I had been regarded as an idiot after all. Even I knew it was shameful to be the class dummy. But I hadn't worked because I knew I was number one however lazy I was. Had they told me all this earlier, I would have reviewed my lessons, I wouldn't have played hooky. As I thought about it, I resented everybody. My thoughts excited to boiling point, I remembered this and cried, remembered that and cried, until my aunt, now crying herself in sympathy, took me to the bedroom saying, “You don't have to cry, you don't have to cry.”

From then on, I was given a small desk and was made to review each day's lessons precisely, prepare for the next day, and periodically recapitulate what I'd learned. My aunt took care of the abacus, calligraphy, and whatever else she could do for me, and my older sisters took care of the rest. It was both painful and infuriating to come face to face with O-Kei-chan in class every day. But from that time on I never took a day off from school. O-Kei-chan was utterly unconcerned about all this as she played with her friends. Nervous among my classmates, I tended to be withdrawn, but the pain of going home and being forced to sit in front of my desk was something else. I'm ashamed to say this but I had not comprehended any of the things I'd learned up to then. So, disheartened, I was tempted to give up on all of it often enough, but I was deceived with cookies and other rewards until finally I began to see, as though peeling away one onion skin after another. As I learned one character, then two, in the reader, as I solved one arithmetic problem, then two, my knowledge made a geometrical progression, in the end enabling me to gain self-confidence. And with my own curiosity added to it, I started to take out my desk upon coming home before anyone told me to. Needless to say, the motive was to be complimented. Even though the tests were coming up soon, thanks to my studying, I came second in the class in the next semester. O-Kei-chan was fifth among the girls.

43

As I suddenly gained knowledge and the world became fresh and bright as if it had sloughed off one layer of its skin, my feeble body visibly grew capable. I soon began to find myself among the two or three strongest in everything—wrestling, “flag-taking,” what have you. By the time I became class leader, succeeding the kid named Shōda, who was tops in the class but left, my regret and fury about O-Kei-chan had long disappeared. As a result, I hoped that the young herb of friendship that had sprouted the very first day, ready to open its leaves, but had begun to wither at its roots even before coming into flower, would sweetly revive again in the spring sunshine. And I could see that O-Kei-chan felt the same way. But for some reason there was no proper graft and both of us waited for an appropriate opportunity.

In children's society, as among dogs, the single strong one beats the rest into submission. With Shōda gone, the whole world became mine alone, and I took advantage of everyone's obedience and to some extent wielded willful power, although I'd like to allow that I was the most understanding among the “generals of brats” of my own age.

Once, Choppei, ostracized for some incident and being taunted with his sobriquet Monkey-faced Footman, dashed back and forth, his face red hot, scratching at everybody—until finally, overwhelmed, he started to cry, putting his face down on his desk. Having watched this, I suddenly plunged into the middle of the noisy crowd and issued a stern injunction against calling Choppei Monkey-faced Footman. After that he was freed from that dirty name. By this I returned a small part of the favor he'd done in giving me red berries when I first came to school, which I had never forgotten.

Iwahashi remained the leading bully, playing dirty tricks on the girls. One day, when our teacher led us all to the sorrel hill for exercise, as he often did, I saw Iwahashi in a bush, alone, intently collecting “dog lice.”
¹³⁰
I guessed he was going to play some trick again. Sure enough, he emerged clutching lots of dog lice in each hand, his eyes glinting as if he were playing Takechi Mitsuhide.
¹³¹
The girls were always frightened of him and none of them was around. Unfortunately, O-Kei-chan happened to come his way. Iwahashi wasn't about to let this chance go by: he at once blocked her way and threw a couple of dog lice at her.

“No, don't do that!” O-Kei-chan ran, shielding herself with her sleeves, but Iwahashi chased her and persisted in throwing dog lice at her. Trying to dodge, she fell on her knees and burst out crying. I dashed forward, knocked the victorious Iwahashi down, and, watching his furious face over my shoulder, walked up to O-Kei-chan. She had gotten up on her feet but was hiding her face in her sleeve, without even dusting herself off. I walked up to her and removed, one by one, all the dog lice that clung to her hair and kimono. At first O-Kei-chan continued to sob in frustration, not knowing who it was that was being nice to her even while abandoning herself to their care. Finally, though, she peeked out from her sleeve, as if to find out who that person was, and when our eyes met, she smiled a pleased smile. Her long eyelashes all wet, her large eyes shone beautifully. After that the friendship between us unfurled and thrived, just like the swollen bud of a peony that, pregnant with fragrance and ready to bloom, begins to open up at the tickling breeze stirred by a butterfly's wings.

44

Coming home from school we could hardly wait to finish reviewing the day's lesson and preparing for the next day before running out into the memory-filled backyard. When I was out first, I would play hopscotch or jump rope, alone, impatiently waiting for her. When she was the first out, she would bounce a
temari
ball as if she wanted me to hear the sound. The ball was prettily wrapped in stripes of red and blue woolen yarn. The moment we saw each other, we would do “rock, paper, scissors” before anything else. O-Kei-chan had the habit of shaking her shoulders as if exasperated when she lost.

MARITSUKI:
TEMARI-BALL PLAYING

I was good at playing ball and seldom let it get away. O-Kei-chan, scarcely able to wait for her turn, would throw a piece of rope at the ball or thrust a stick out to make me drop it.

O-Kei-chan, her face hot with excitement, would nod along with her bouncing ball, turning round and round as best she could. Each time she turned, her long hair would play around her shoulders, her feet twirling after each other like mice. Trying not to lose her turn, she would sometimes hold the ball with her chin or hold it up against her chest, until she would begin to totter.

At times she would be so carried away she wouldn't notice that the lower hems of her kimono were dragging on the ground. Like playful rabbits, her hands, left and right, jumped around above the ball even as her peeping voice tumbled out from inside her round, open lips. Those innocent songs sung in her beautiful voice still remain in my ear as a fond echo. As the evening sun set beyond the field and in its place the moon began to rise somewhat unsteadily, small moths that had been hiding in the leaves of the flower garden danced up, tremulously beating their gray wings. In the black pines of the Shōrin temple crows flocked, vying for branches, and in the “coral tree” in my garden sparrows chirped, chirped, chirped. Then we would look up at our dear moon, whose yellow was finally fading, and sing the “Rabbit Song”:

Hands on our closed knees, the two of us, bent over, would jump about. Our legs, by then tired out, would utterly lose their spring after a couple of jumps, and we would fall on our bottoms. We would find that hilarious, too, and laugh and laugh. We would be so engrossed in our games as to be oblivious of everything else, until someone from one of our houses called us in. No matter what we were doing, O-Kei-chan, ever obedient, would respond with a simple “Yes!” when there was the call, “Missy, time to come home.” And though her face showed reluctance, she would quickly go home.

At such partings we would hook our small fingers in pledge to play the next day and shake them so hard that they felt like they'd drop off our hands. We'd say that if we'd told a lie, our fingers would rot. I knew no such thing would really happen but would still feel slightly afraid.

OTEDAMA:
PLAYING WITH HAND BALLS

45

As days passed and whatever reserve we may have had faded, trivial quarrels would sometimes occur between us—I, who was loath to lose in anything we did, and O-Kei-chan, who'd easily become exasperated when she did. One day, when we were playing with the ball as usual, the longer we played, unfortunately, the bigger the “debts” that O-Kei-chan accumulated, until in the end she claimed I was cheating and, weeping, buffeted me with both her sleeves. As she did so, the
o-tedama
¹³⁵
in her sleeves fell on the ground. She wouldn't even try to pick them up.