The Silver Spoon (15 page)

She was good at faking crying. After exchanging a few trivial words she would suddenly pout, put her face on my lap, and cry ostentatiously. Feeling her heavy warmth, I would try various tricks to restore her good spirits, pulling out her hairpin, tickling her, and so forth. But if she continued to cry I could only apologize as best I could, even though I knew I'd done nothing wrong. After giving me a lot of trouble, though, she would abruptly raise her face, stick her tongue out at me, and, as if to say, “Serves you right,” triumphantly laugh and laugh. Hers was a slippery, slender tongue. I had this trick played on me so often that I finally learned to distinguish real crying from fake by seeing whether or not the veins on her forehead were bulging with tension.

She was also skilled at the glaring contest and always beat me at it. She could change her face freely, making any expression at will. Saying, “Eyes slanting up, eyes slanting down,” she would extend or shrink her eyes with her fingers as if they were made of rubber. I really hated the staring game. This was not because I was bound to lose, but because I was, to tell the truth, horrified to see her neatly arranged facial features brutally disfigured as she showed only the whites of her eyes or turned her mouth into an alligator's.

In a while I came to regard O-Kei-chan as one of my possessions, along with the Divine Dog and the Rouge Ox, and to feel keenly any praise or disparagement, any happy or unhappy incident, that befell her. I began to think she was a pretty girl. How proud I was of this! But at the same time my own face became a painful burden in a way I had never expected it to be. I wanted to be a prettier boy to attract her. I wanted only the two of us to be friends and play with each other forever. That was the kind of thing I began to think.

One evening we were sitting by the elbow-high window side by side, singing, bathed in the moonlight shining through the leaves of the crepe myrtle. I happened to look down at my arm hanging outside the window and was enchanted to see it was so beautiful, so pale as to be transparent. It was a momentary trick our dear moon played, but tempted by the thought that I could be more confident about myself if it were true, I put my arm before O-Kei-chan.

“Oh, it looks so beautiful.”

“It does,” my lover said and, rolling up her sleeve, she showed her arm.

“Mine, too.”

Her pliant arm looked like alabaster. Mystified by it all, we exposed our flesh to the chilly night air—the upper arms, then the legs, from the legs to the chests, oblivious of time in wonderment.

49

Around that time a family whose second job was brocade stitching moved to the house next door, to the west of us, and their son Tomi-kō
¹⁴⁶
became my new classmate. He was no good at class work but he spoke well and he was two years older and strong besides, so in no time he became the boss of my class rascals. Naturally I ceased to be able to wield my authority and as I couldn't just go to him and bow because of my own dignity, I ended up being left out of his circle. Because he didn't have any friend in the neighborhood, he would come to take me out to play in the backyard after coming home from school. Not liking him much and eager to play with O-Kei-chan, I was not at all willing, but I feared arousing his antagonism and, unable to think of anything better, I kept him company.

A born tomboy, O-Kei-chan at first watched us play from her side of the fence with an amused look on her face, but soon she came out and learned to do jump rope and hoop trundling just by watching us. Tomi-kō, who was a real smoothy, humored her by calling her Missy and showing her various tricks, standing on his hands, somersaulting. O-Kei-chan liked such things very much and followed him everywhere, calling him Tomi-chan. Having been brought up by my aunt alone and having played only with O-Kuni-san before then, I was in no way trained in such fabulous tricks and could only watch helplessly as Tomi-kō, who wasn't good-looking, monopolized the happy attention of the little queen.

O-Kei-chan continued to visit in the evening, but now only talked about Tomi-kō and paid no attention to the picture books and story books I'd take out to humor her. And when the three of us played together, if Tomi-kō in a triumphant mood called me clumsy or a weakling, she would join him in making fun of me. Belatedly I resented my aunt for bringing me up to be someone with no skills, standing on hands or somersaulting. All this made me dislike Tomi-kō intensely but I controlled myself, trying not to go against his wishes, until one day what he said was too much to take, my self-control snapped, and I talked back at him resentfully. Thereupon he threw a barrage of foul curses at me, capping them with a whisper into O-Kei-chan's ear; then, eyeing me knowingly, he called out, “See you soon, you big baboon!” and started to go back home.

O-Kei-chan copied him and went away after him, repeating, “See you soon, you big baboon!” Tomi-kō must have taken her to his home.

After this O-Kei-chan stopped coming to see me. When on the rare occasion she spotted me she would hide herself without showing me a smile. Tomi-kō gave her that willfulness, I thought, and in my small heart I couldn't help feeling a boiling jealousy and fury. At school, too, he incited everybody to get on my back in prickly ways. Not just in that ability but in brawn as well, I certainly had to defer to him. The only consolation was that I was the number-one pupil. Nonetheless, without O-Kei-chan, that was an empty position to occupy, wasn't it?

50

Maddening days continued. One day, when I had confined myself in my study again, suffering, I suddenly heard “plonk-clogs”
¹⁴⁷
going plonk-plonk, jingle-jingle. I was taken aback but, calming myself down, refused to open the window. In no time that lovely voice that I hadn't had time to forget was saying at the latticed door:

“May I come in?”

“May I ask who you are?” my aunt went out pretending not to know. In a while I could tell she was helping her up, saying, “Oh, oh, I was just wondering what kind of guest would visit us, and lo and behold, we have this lovely miss!” And she, apparently helping the girl up, went on to ask if she had had a cold or been away visiting someone because she didn't know the reasons behind her recent absence. O-Kei-chan came in obediently through the sliding paper-door that my aunt opened and put her hands on the floor elegantly.

“I'm sorry I've neglected to come and visit,” she said.

That did it. All the tensions I'd held under control till then broke, and as soon as I involuntarily called out “O-Kei-chan!” tears of mortification gushed down. O-Kei-chan, though, didn't seem troubled much by that and began to take her
o-tedama
out of her sleeve.

“Why didn't you come?” I asked.

She was unexpectedly unperturbed. “I was visiting Tomi-chan.”

I shot back accusingly, “Why didn't you go today?”

She was quite untroubled as she replied, “Mother scolded me saying I shouldn't be going to a place like Tomi-chan's.”

Flabbergasted though I was, I managed to express some of my resentment for what had happened some days ago.

“I'm sorry.” With this preface she offered an excuse by saying Tomi-chan had said she didn't need to play with someone like me because he had a lot of interesting things in his house.

“After mother scolded me,” she added, “I've come to hate Tomi-chan very much. Let's be friendly again.”

How could I express my feelings then? O-Kei-chan was mine after all. Not knowing this, Tomi-kō must have kept waiting for her the whole day. The following day, unaware that I was watching out for her, he stealthily went up to her and started to say something, but she peremptorily turned him down, declaring she no longer liked him. It appeared that she'd become truly contemptuous of him after she was scolded by her mother.

51

The cunning Tomi-kō, finding himself neglected, came up to me with a palpably fraudulent air of friendliness and, after humoring me in various ways, slandered O-Kei-chan and said that since he'd no longer play with her, I shouldn't either. I laughed to myself and gave him nothing more than vague responses.

Nevertheless, as soon as he perceived that O-Kei-chan and I had gone back to being as good friends, he plotted a horrible reprisal. Every day during recess he incited everyone to taunt us. When they got tired and slackened their taunting, he went around whispering into each one's ear outrageous things he had concocted to provoke them. Shunned by our friends and surrounded by knowing eyes we fell into a miserable circumstance. This made us even more intimate, however, and when, with the day's unpleasant school work done, we went home and played, we felt an indescribable joy and consolation overflow our hearts.

Tomi-kō's retaliatory acts grew nastier day by day, and my hostility intensified proportionately. I didn't think anything of his foot soldiers, and I guessed he himself couldn't be that strong. The evidence was that each time I got upset and started toward him, he ran away to avoid one-on-one combat and tried to torment me from a distance. In the end I made light of him even as I made a stirring decision to retaliate some day to my heart's content.

One day, just when school was over, Choppei stealthily came to me and said, “He says he's going to waylay you tomorrow,” and rushed away, fearful he might be spotted. I was happy with Choppei for his thoughtfulness. The following morning I hid a two-foot length of particularly knobby Hotei bamboo
¹⁴⁸
under my
haori
and went to school determined to take on anyone and anything.

When the last hour was over, Tomi-kō was the first to run out of the classroom, signaling for the others to follow. Three or four who were among his worst apple-polishers did so, scampering. Resolutely prepared, I chose to be the last to leave for home. As expected, they were waiting for me at a deserted spot near the bamboo-grass bush in the Lord Hachiman's, with the apple-polishers noisily clearing their throats for derisive effect. Not showing my determination to finally take him on, pretending not to notice, I tried to walk past them, when Tomi-kō issued a command.

“Now, get him!”

Most of them had nothing particular against me and were, besides, no match for me, so they just encircled me, babbling, except one, the bleary-eyed son of a priest who, out of what kind of loyalty he felt for Tomi-kō I don't know, suddenly grabbed me by the neck from behind. Tomi-kō, inwardly afraid, gained courage from this dependable ally's action and walked up to me.

“Hey, you snot!”

Suddenly I struck him smack on the forehead with the Hotei bamboo. To my surprise, this took all the air out of Tomi-kō.

“Nooo, you are too violent,” he said and started sobbing feebly, his hands on his forehead. Watching their general's sorry defeat, their faces saying they had sided with a terrible one, his foot soldiers sensed danger might soon fall on themselves and separately slunk away, mumbling things like “It's none of my business.”

What alarmed me, though, was the bleary-eyed bonze who wouldn't let go. Eyes shut, he heavily hung on to me as if resolved to be killed in battle along with his commander. However tough-minded I may have been, this was too much for me; when I finally managed to tear myself apart from this clinging bastard and made it home, I myself was on the verge of tears, to tell you the truth.

52

As we broke icicles and fished snow with hard charcoal,
¹⁴⁹
the Peach Festival
¹⁵⁰
came around. My family had a set of ancient dolls that was said to have mysteriously survived the Great Fire of Kanda;
¹⁵¹
it was in a terrible state with the five musicians reduced to three, the arrows of the arrow carrier mostly broken, and so forth. Nonetheless every year it was set out to soothe the children. My aunt would gather together all the junk from all over the house to make up for missing furniture and such, putting up a folding screen decorated with seashells here and piling roasted barley on origami paper on the ceremonial trays there, skillfully making the whole set appear wonderfully beautiful to a child's eyes. Nothing made me happier than when the beautiful people were lined up on the daises covered with scarlet rugs, with the uppermost dais designated to be mine, the next one to be my younger sister's, and the third one to be my youngest sister's. Then we were allowed to offer lozenge cakes and popped rice. I remember provoking mirth by expressing my fear that the turban shells might crawl away while I was asleep.

For each festival we made a point of inviting O-Kei-chan. She would come in a very fancy kimono, complete with an overcoat adorned with red tufts. When we sat cute and neat in front of the dolls' daises eating popped beans like the good friends that we were, my aunt would give the smallest of the set of three cups to our dear guest and the middle-sized one to me and pour gruelly white sake
¹⁵²
for us. The sake would dangle out of the spout of the dispenser like a stick, making a rising mound in the cup, and we would chew on it with our front teeth, our noses side by side like minnows, before swallowing it. My aunt, who doted on children, enjoyed nothing better than to delight small ones in this fashion and, all happiness, she would rub us on the back with her hands.

“Both of you are so lovely, so lovely.”

Our wet nurse would say, as she always did, “You are a husband and wife like the dolls,” which we didn't like.

Very fancily dressed as she was, O-Kei-chan remained all prim and proper and, even though she had brought the ball and the
o-tedama
, she would merely fiddle with them, not offering to play with them. When she became a little excited after we played Backgammon, “Water-flower,”
¹⁵³
“Sixteen by Six,”
¹⁵⁴
and competed in stringing together Nanjing beads, I finally succeeded in luring her out into the backyard, taking with us the battledore
¹⁵⁵
featuring Narita-ya's
Kanjinchō
¹⁵⁶
and Otowa-ya's
Sukeroku,
¹⁵⁷
which my older sisters had passed down to me about that time. But overdecorated like goldfish as we were, and with the battledores too large for us, we would drop the shuttlecock after hitting it a couple of times. And so, just for the fun of it, we took turns slapping each other's behinds.