The Silver Spoon

by Kansuke Naka

  The penalty for neglecting to study was direct: when the time for tests came I knew almost nothing. To be left alone in the classroom when everyone else quickly does the tests and leaves, it would be as uncomfortable as an octopus being boiled, even in a dream. Most painful of all was the reader. I was finally summoned to the teacher’s desk. In question was the chapter called “Defending the Ulsan Castle.” I had never seen anything like “Ulsan” before. I just stood there without saying a word, so my teacher, thinking of nothing better to do, made me read, teaching me one or two characters at a time, but I was simply entranced by the illustration showing Katō Kiyomasa surrounded by Ming forces,128 while comprehending nothing of the book. My teacher, running out of patience, tossed the reader down in front of me and said, “Well then, read any part you can.”

  “I can’t read any part of it,” I said, as if nothing was wrong.

  Even after the tests were over, I stayed on in the same seat. I had assumed that because I was in the very first row I was number one. That my name plate hung at the very end, that I was called last in the roll call, or that I was in fact the worst learner, did not raise the least suspicion in my mind. To be placed next to my favorite teacher and not to be scolded at all—if this didn’t show I was number one, what else could? Besides, I had never been called to accept my diploma, and when I went home from school and boasted that I was number one, everyone would laugh, saying, You’re fine! You’re fine! So, as far as I was concerned, everything was all right.

  Around the time that this semester was coming to a close, a new family moved in next-door. Between that house and ours, beyond the vegetable garden in our backyard, there was only a cedar hedge, allowing free passage between us. When I was out in the back spying on what was going on, a young lady about my age came out to the hedge, then suddenly hid herself behind it, evidently stealthily spying on our side from between two cedars. After a while she came out again and gave me a glance, so I gave her a glance back, too, then both of us looked away. While we were repeating such things over and over, I noticed she was skinny, with an air of sickliness, and I somehow came to like her. The next time our eyes met she showed the suggestion of a smile. So, I gave a smile, too. She, as if to avert her face, turned round on one foot. I did the same. She jumped. So did I. She jumped and I jumped. While we were jumping like that, I gradually moved away from the shadow of an almond tree, she away from the hedge, the two of us coming close enough to talk. But just then there was a call: “Missy, it’s mealtime.” With “Yes!” she quickly ran away.

  I went regretfully inside, finished my meal in a hurry, and went out again. She was already there waiting.

  “Let’s play,” she said, walking toward me in a friendly manner. Because I was all prepared to jump several more times before becoming more familiar, this unexpected turn of events made me blush, but I said, “Let’s,” and walked up to her. She was no longer bashful and asked clearly, “How old are you?”

  “Nine,” I replied.

  “I’m nine, too,” she said, smiled a little, and said something you might have expected from a grown-up: “But because I was born in the New Year I am old for my age.”129

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Kei,” she said clearly.

  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 hav
e 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.

  Miss Start-of-Year, O-Yone’s ten,

  Miss Start-of-Year, O-Yone’s twenty

  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.

  Onenjo sāma, oyonejo tō yo.

  Onenjo sāma, oyonejo hatachi yo.132

  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.

  Hō-hokekyo,133 bush-warbler,

  bush-warbler,

  as she happened to go up to the Capital,

  go up to the Capital,

  she took a nap on a little plum twig,

  dreamed of an Akasaka footman,

  and a letter came out

  from under her pillow,

  a letter came out

  asking O-Chiyo to come. . . .

  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”:

  Rabbit, rabbit,

  what do you see, you jump so?

  I see our dear fifteenth-night moon

  and I jump,

  leap, leap, leap! 134

  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-tedama135 in her sleeves fell on the ground. She wouldn’t even try to pick them up.

  “I don’t want to play with you any more,” she said, still covering her face. And without listening to my profuse apologies, she went away.

  Left alone, I could think of nothing but to pick up her o-tedama and take them home. But then this very act became a seed of worry. What would I do if O-Kei-chan became exasperated enough to say I took them? Should I quietly take them back and leave them where they were? Or should I take them to school and put them in her desk? Such scheming and plotting came and went, worried as I was that I had in my drawer someone else’s possessions. Thus passed an uneasy night.

  The next morning, half afraid of seeing her and half worried about not seeing her, I went to school before everyone else and, sitting at my desk crestfallen, I thought about what had happened yesterday, and before then, and so on, as the classroom gradually filled up with pupils coming in ones and twos, and grew noisy. But O-Kei-chan didn’t show up: Is she so angry she�
�s decided to take the day off? Well, but I can’t say that because it’s not yet time for her to come. I was growing frustrated, when Choppei, one of the group who were pretty late, arrived and the time was finally almost up. No longer able to stop myself, I went to the gateway and peered out around the doors and at last, to my great relief—at least for now—saw her come down the slope holding her wrapped belongings. O-Kei-chan, unaware of anything, came through the gateway. I stepped out of the door casually, and we looked at each other. She put on a little embarrassed smile but without saying a word, went on in. So she’s all right. She doesn’t seem that angry.

  O-Kei-chan spent that whole frustrating day playing lustily with her friends. Back home at my desk I was wondering if I should or should not go out into the backyard, when the latticed-door at the foyer quietly opened and a small voice said, “May I come in?”

  I jumped up and out and from behind the partition said, “O-Kei-chan!” and stood on the step-up space.136 Perhaps because this was her first visit, she looked a little shy, but she flashed such a radiant smile nonetheless that the burden I’d been carrying was lifted at once. I invited this rare guest into my study, which was right by the side of the foyer.

  O-Kei-chan was restless for a while, looking around the room, leaning on the elbow-high window to gaze at the stone lantern in the “light-stick azalea”137 shrubs, but when she had calmed down a bit, she placed both hands on the tatami and apologized with evident regret: “I am sorry I behaved so poorly yesterday.”

  Faced with such an adult-like, formal apology I felt a little confused and as I thought about all the trouble she’d given me I even resented the fact that I had apologized to her myself. O-Kei-chan said that when she had gone home yesterday she was scolded. And she begged to have her o-tedama back. So after tantalizing her for quite a bit, I finally brought them out of the drawer for her. The yūzen silk crepe138 of the sacks originally came from a kimono for special occasions, she said, and you could see fragments of paulownia blossoms and phoenix wings on them. This was the story of the o-tedama that the two of us played with. As they flew up and down like butterflies, O-Kei-chan’s face likewise nodded up and down, making the tufts of her hairpin dyed in red and white stripes flutter around her temples.