The Silver Spoon

by Kansuke Naka

  My aunt also had all the poems of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets57 committed to memory and, after we lay down in bed, would recite them in her uniquely sorrowful tone, patiently making me memorize one or two every night.

  “Tachiwakare,” she would say.

  “Tachiwakare,” I would follow.

  “Inaba no yama no.”

  “Inaba no yama no.”

  “Mine ni ouru.”

  “Mine ni ouru.” 58

  In a while, I would fall asleep. If I memorized a poem well, she would stroke me to sleep, saying, “I’ll give you a reward. Now you may sleep.”

  Because I memorized the poems rather quickly, my aunt thought I was a great child.

  “Last night he memorized two poems in no time,” she would proudly tell my mother the next morning.

  Without understanding much, I would gather together only the words I knew in each poem and imagine its overall meaning, dimly. Along with the feeling generated by the way it was recited, I was deeply affected by it all. In those days I had an old set of poem cards, each with a poem and a painting. Though the cards were frazzled and the paintings faded, I could still make out, however vaguely, the snow piled on a pine tree59 or a deer standing below maple leaves.60 There was also a book of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets.

  My liking and disliking of poems was also determined by the picture on the card, the figure and the face of the poet. Among the poems I liked were Sue no Matsuyama,61 Awaji-shima,62 and Ōe-yama.63 The Sue no Matsuyama poem conveyed to my ear an indescribably gentle, lonesome sound, with beautiful waves rolling on the piney shore in the picture on the card. The Awaji-shima poem invited tears. There was a boat on the sea, with plovers flying. Each time I heard the Ōe-yama poem, I couldn’t help remembering a story from a picture book in which a princess, captured by a demon, was taken into the depths of that mountain.64 I intensely hated the wrinkled-up monks such as Abbot Henjō65 and Former Archbishop Gyōson,66 but I thought Semimaru cute partly because of his name.67

  19

  On snowy nights my aunt, stirring up the charcoal-balls in the foot-warmer, would frighten me by saying that the Snow Monk in a white robe was standing right outside the door. When it was hot, she would fan me because I had a hard time falling asleep. I had preferences even for the pictures on the fan. Inside the fragrant mosquito net, listening to the mosquitoes flying about outside, I would sometimes break a rib of the fan just for the fun of it. A horned owl might come to the bush in the next-door temple and hoot. Then my aunt would say, “I hear the hooter is an evil bird and spits out a thousand mosquitoes in one hoot. We’ll have plenty of mosquitoes tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  SANGOJU, SUZUME: “CORAL TREE” AND SPARROWS

  As the cool winds rise, crickets begin to chirp. Once I thought of taking good care of them and put some in a firefly-cage, but after chirping a couple of times they fell silent. I looked in and saw they had all escaped through a hole they made in the silk gauze around the cage. Listening to them, even a child senses that the solitude of autumn has arrived. My aunt said they were saying, “It’s gotten cold, now mend the tatters,” while the wet-nurse told my sister they were saying, “Suckle me, suckle me, suckle me, and I’ll bite you.”

  At times, I would wake early enough in the morning to hear the cawing of crows nesting in the black pines in the Shōrin temple. When that happened, my aunt wouldn’t allow me to get out of bed.

  “They’re the first risers. You must sleep more.”

  She would allow me to get out of bed only after the second or third risers cawed. That was her way of keeping me in bed until an appropriate time.

  Come evening, a great many sparrows returned to nest in the mound-shaped growth of the “coral tree”68 that was in front of my bedroom and made a din, shaking their heads, sharpening their beaks, and pecking at each other as they vied for better branches. When the sun hid itself and the lingering light faded, even the one or two who, slow to sleep, were still chirping, would fall silent and become quiet. I thought they were my good friends, and when I found myself still in bed even after the third risers among the crows cawed, their chirps as they left their nests sounded as if they were laughing at me for being lazy, and I would hastily get up.

  The “coral tree” does not betray its name and bears scarlet seeds. It is a pleasure to pick them after they’ve fallen and are lying on the soft moss.

  20

  The space behind our house, about fifty square yards, was half for growing flowers, half for vegetables. In early summer a seedling vendor used to walk by our fence hawking his wares in a cool voice. From time to time my aunt called him in and bought some vegetable seedlings. The boxes he carried were made of straw and stuffed with moist, crumbly earth in which various plants were lively sprouting pairs of leaves. The vendor, a man wearing a sedge hat, scooped them out as if he were handling something very valuable. Each time, my aunt bought a few seedlings of things like eggplants and melons and planted them in the vegetable patch. As the purplish seedlings of eggplants and the seedlings of pumpkins and dishcloth gourds with fine white powder on them stirred their sprouting oval leaves, the two of us sprinkled water on them mornings and evenings. Each time I looked, they had grown, putting out vines and leaves, finally thrashing all over the place, dangling huge fruit. I liked to go out to inspect them.

  My aunt, who loved to take care of them, while complaining, put up bamboo sticks to help the vines. Then they spiraled up the sticks one or two twirls a day, and soon among their coarse leaves they put out yellow and purple flowers. Roundish horseflies would come and fly about as though the world were all theirs, before diving into them.

  While abortive flowers tumbled down, the bases of the real ones swelled, becoming flat or long and thin, in the end taking the shapes of the so-called “Chinese eggplants” or pumpkin. Eggplants grew like pouches, dishcloth gourds shaped up like blind snakes. Cucumbers had hateful grainy bumps. How happy I was when I brushed aside the leaves and found pods with unexpected seeds in them. Sword beans, kidney beans, scallion flowers resembling a worn-out brush tip.

  Once, the “Chinese eggplants” seedlings she bought and planted gradually took on a different appearance, and they finally grew into gourds. I was overjoyed to see the gourds dangling in countless numbers, but my aunt was angry that she’d been duped by the seedling vendor and she would not take proper care of them. So, eventually all of them dropped to the ground. From then on, she decided to get seedlings at a downtown vegetable store. But no matter what the seedling was, she suspected everything was a gourd and would declare to the storekeeper that if it grew into gourds, she’d come back with it, roots and all.

  On the mound along the cedar hedge surrounding the vegetable patch, grandmother’s chestnuts and the walnuts I’d picked up some place and thrown out there were sprouting up. Also, the impatiens she loved and had planted had scattered their seeds and bloomed on various parts of the lot. Though they are not particularly attractive wildflowers, I too like the impatiens. For the fun of it I used to take a few flowers and dye my fingernails with them. It was amusing to crush the seeds of four-o’clocks and get white powder.69 Apricot flowers, scarlet peach blossoms. There was an old almond tree that put out pale blue blossoms like a puff of cloud. My older brother and I looked forward to them above all else and were very eager to chase away the crows. Its large fruit grew in such clusters that the lower branches bent and touched the ground. Picking the ones we could reach, knocking down the higher ones, we’d carry home the heavy basket between us.

  In the flowerbed bloomed tiger lilies and white lilies. Bright or overrich colors used to oppress me. In the case of flowers, one example was the dark-brown pollen thickly covering the heads of the lily stamens.

  21

  Very close by there was a temple for the Lord Emma.70 When the day the lid of Hell’s Cauldron71 and the gloomy bell started to toll as though to lure people, my aunt would dress me—how reluctant I was—in a light blue hemp kimono, tie a
sash made of Chinese silk crepe high around my chest, and take me out to offer prayers. Since she dressed me in the same kimono at each Bon,72 eventually the light-blue color itself came to depress me. The space between the narrow precincts and the main gate was closely packed with stalls selling a cup of ice for a nickel, oden stew, and sushi. The peepings of balloons and the calls of vendors created an unbearable din in the dust. The shop boys in aprons shrieked as if the Lord Emma were their own. They were the kind of humans I especially disliked.

  You went up the few stone steps and entered the red gate that had “thousand-shrine bills”73 pasted all over it. There on the right was a small Emma hall in which the Lord Emma with a rustic face presided as he was expected to. Inside, the incense was stifling, and the constant clanging of the gong that the town children struck was so painful that I felt my head might shatter. But my aunt had to make me strike the gong a couple of times with a wooden hammer, and would not leave until she had made me look closely at the Lord Emma’s face. Then, scarcely giving me pause for breath, she would take me to the main hall where there was the Old Woman of the Three-way River.74 The pale old woman, eye sockets hollow like copper pots, sat with many folds of red and white cotton on her head. The unpleasantness of it all and the exposure to the burning sun never failed to give me a terrible headache. But my aunt was superstitious and every year found one excuse or another to take me to the temple.

  On the day of the Nirvana Rite,75 my aunt hung a sooty picture scroll of the Shakyamuni lying on his side and in front of it put a small desk with incense and flowers on it. This worm-eaten scroll and the statue of the black Lord Daikoku on the altar were the only two possessions left to her. As she sat in front of the desk and offered prayers, she would make me light a stick of incense and then would tell me various stories about the Lord Shakyamuni. Those who gathered around him were elephants and lions, asuras, kimnaras, dragons,76 and heavenly beings, all of whom, through the skillful narration of this venerable, superstitious woman, would come alive and start shedding tears. The beautiful person who was looking down from the cloud floating above the paired sāla trees77 was called Lady Maya, the Lord Shakyamuni’s mother. The medicine bag she threw down from the Heavens caught on one branch of the sāla trees but no one noticed it, my aunt told me. The Lord Shakyamuni’s entrance into nirvana sounded as if it were a parting with a parent, and I wept, feeling sorry for him.

  22

  Unless it rained my aunt never failed to take me out on the fête day of the Lord Dainichi that was held three times a month. Because I walked clinging to her sleeve, her haori78 often became lopsided and she had to stop in the middle of the road to adjust it. Sometimes, especially on a crowded street, my grip was so desperate she had to loosen my fingers one by one. I would tie the strings of her haori lightly, and she mine somewhat tightly.

  At the Lord Dainichi’s she would make me throw in coins, and call inside, “May we offer a candle?”

  From a glittering corner of the hall would come a response, “Yes, ma’am,” and a young monk would light a candle and put it before the principal image. After mumbling her prayers devoutly, my aunt would announce, “Now we’re done,” and make me hold onto her sleeve before we came out of the gate.

  What she asked of the Lord Dainichi were things like “May this child be cured of his sickly body” and “May he not get hurt on the road,” which she would think of in advance for each date bearing the number eight.

  On the fête day a host of beggars appeared and lined up along the temple fence. At the early hour we arrived, not all of them would be out; only a couple of quick ones among the cripples and the legless would be getting out thin straw mats and such. Slowly influenced by my aunt, I came to feel a vague but profound satisfaction with my childish compassion after giving them alms. Among the beggars was a good-looking blind woman who played the koto. Unlike now, not many people owned a koto back then, and my aunt and our wet-nurse often gossiped about her, saying that she must be what was left of someone who had once served a shogunate aide-de-camp or else a daimyo in the old days. She sang koto songs in a voice so crushed as to be almost inaudible. The way her plectrums skimmed and rolled over the strings with a light susurrus, and the way the bridges shaped like wild geese scattered over the wooden koto showing its cloud-like grain, were all new to me and beautiful.

  23

  If you went a little early, you could see the showmen setting up booths like spiders. Around them lay tools and boxes containing the creatures for the shows, which you looked at full of curiosity. Soon the picture boards would be put up. Most of them were eerie affairs like a goggle-eyed merman swimming in the sea and a large snake with a forked tongue about to swallow a chicken. But sometimes you saw a picture showing, on the blue board, numerous mice in kimono of different colors performing various tricks, holding in their hands fans with the rising sun painted on them. I liked that picture very much and went in to see the show each time it was put up. Many Nanjing mice came out to pull a cart and operate a well pulley. At the very end they carried tiny rice bags out of a papier-mâché storehouse and made a neat pile of them. The brown-mottled ones and snow-white ones scurrying around pell-mell were so cute. The trainer was a woman of about thirty, dressed like a female Westerner, with her hair bundled up and wearing a hat, still a very rare sight in those days. Every time a mouse carried out a rice bag, she would say rhythmically,

  “Heave ho! Little one, bring it out!”

  When a rice bag tumbled down from the paws of a hasty mouse toward the spectators, one of the children would pick it up at once and throw it back. The woman would say, “I thank you,” with a gracious smile and bow.

  A rice bag often tumbled down toward me. I wanted to pick it up for her, but each time, though agitated, I could never put my hand out. The mice tricks done, the woman would produce a parrot from a red and blue striped cage and make him mimic her words. Usually the parrot would sit tamely on her palm and say whatever she wanted him to say. But when he was in a bad mood he would bristle his crown feathers and do nothing but screech. When that happened the woman would cock her head, looking lost, and say, “I don’t know what’s the matter with my dear Tarō today.”

  It was with regret that I would leave the booth, thinking about the picturesque parrot, his hooked beak, and his clever eyes.

  24

  Among the night stalls, the hōzuki79 vendor was one thing that drew my heart. He would swivel a bamboo tube with a cogwheel attached to it, making a dull squeak.

  MUSHIKAGO: INSECT CAGES

  “Hōzuki yaa-i! Hōzuki!” he would call.

  On the coralline leaves spread upon a lattice lay red, blue, white, and various other hōzuki dripping water. Round, fan-shaped hōzuki, soul-shaped Korean hōzuki, goblin hōzuki, halberd hōzuki—these were all hōzuki from the sea, each leathery bag carrying bilge that smelled of the beach. Tanba hōzuki, thousand-cluster hōzuki. The old man would swivel his bamboo tube and call out: “Hōzuki yaa-i! Hōzuki!”

  Since I couldn’t make a sound with any of the plant hōzuki, I always had them buy me the marine ones, which I would carry home, carefully clutched in my palms. The Tanba hōzuki looks like a monk clad in a scarlet robe. When she peeled one and found a mosquito bite, my older sister would get mad and dash it to the tatami. The mosquito is an evil fellow. While the plant is still green, he secretly sucks out its sweet juice. One so damaged has a tiny star on its head, and while you knead it, its skin breaks.

  In summer the stalls of insect vendors bewitched me. In cages shaped like fans, boats, and waterfowl, each with a scarlet tassel dangling beneath it, they kept pine insects80 and bell insects81 chirping, trilling. The katydid82 chirps like someone pulling a sliding door, and the horse-bit insect83 like a rustle of dead leaves. I wanted a pine insect or bell insect, but my aunt always bought me a katydid. Once to spite her I bought a rattler84 which she hated, and she didn’t sleep a wink that night. Rattlers came in a coarse bamboo cage, the four corner bars painted red and blue. I
f you put a slice of melon in the grille, they’d nibble on it, shaking their long antennae. They have puzzled expressions, and their incongruously long legs attached backward are funny.

  Sometimes we bought pots of wildflowers. When bedtime came, my aunt would put them out under the eaves to expose them to the night dew. How can I describe a child’s feelings as he looked at those flowers? It was a pure, innocent joy never to be felt again. Incited by the flowers, I would get up early the next morning and, still in my nightrobe and rubbing my eyes at the dazzling light, I would have a look. With tiny dewdrops lodging on the flowers and leaves, the velvety flowers of China pinks, heart’s-ease with hairdo-shaped flowers, and pot marigolds were wide awake.

  If you bought a picture book, they used to roll it and tie the middle with a strip of paper. Carrying it as if it were something fragile, I would take an occasional peek into the tube on my way home. Everyone would insist on seeing how beautiful the book was, and how important I felt as I slowly unrolled it for them. Everyone would marvel and say, I want it! I want it! Outside the picture frame on the cover, and in red ink, something like Animals: New Edition would be written. The smiling elephant with a long nose, the rabbit with pursed lips, the deer, and the sheep were all lovely. Though most of them were alone and looked quiet, the bear wrestled with the red Kintarō,85 and the wild boar whose snout thrust out like a bamboo shoot was held down by Shirō, of Nitan.86