The Silver Spoon

by Kansuke Naka

  “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.

  7

  My brother tried to educate me intently, exactly, and sternly, but one unexpected incident severed with complete finality the relationship that was hard on both of us.

  I don’t know when but at some point my brother ceased to be satisfied only with the carp in the fishpond and began to practice net-casting; making me carry the creel as he’d done before, he would take me again and again to a river nearby. If you walked just four or five hundred yards and crossed a bridge, there was a field that sloped into the river where frames for mizuhiki, dyed red and white,28 were lined up like shields. Soon there was a water-wheel. Looking at the water coming down the trough pushing and shoving madly, I almost thought it was alive and got goose flesh. The large water-wheel exhaled breaths of spray, dripping splatters of sweat, as it clattered round and round terrifyingly. In the pounding place inside, which was filled with bran dust, countless pounders, like one-legged dancers, pounded rice, making dull, thud-thud noises. Going there, I didn’t know why, I would taste bitterness at the root of my tongue and feel oppressed.

  Walking lazily upriver from there, you came to a dam, beyond which the blue, stagnant water parted in three directions: one down the trough, one into the forest on the other bank, and the rest tumbling out of the mouth of the dam with earth-shaking boom-booms. Splashes of water dancing upward, boiling foam, the flow crawling up the bank, the water skittering away—looking at all this, I was invariably assailed by an unbearable loneliness and terror, my only thought being, I must go home as soon as possible.

  The master of the basin at the waterfall, some said, was a kappa. He was, others said, a carp six feet long. And everyone said he’d heard it from someone who had actually seen one or the other. Every year, singled out by the master, one or two children lost their lives. So, for those pitiful ones a single memorial marker had been erected, I don’t know when, on the meager pebbly beach. How are those children doing? Looking at the great expanse of green paddies making wavy motions in the wind, I would get a sudden lump in my chest, tears quickly forming under my eyelids. These tears having welled up from a deep, deep part of my heart, I had no way of stopping them. To hide my weepy face I would desperately glue my eyes to my feet until we walked into one of the four or five thatched huts that stood in a row, set apart from one another. This was where they rented nets and sold fishing gear, and on the tatami discolored by the sun floats shaped like sake bottles, acorns, and round plates, and fishing poles were on display. At the end of the yard flowed a ditch in which minnows and shrimp swam, the paddy ridge was lined by scrawny young oak trees,29 and at the far end of the green paddies rose a mountain covered by a black forest that seemed to continue forever.

  My brother with his net, I with the creel, both now barefoot, would climb down the bank by the side of the waterfall and walk about the dented area below the other bank, fishing. My brother was all happiness because he, who until only recently used to tangle his net into the shape of clustered gourds, could now spread it into a round shape. But to me that wasn’t at all interesting. Listening to cicadas, thinking of the milk vetch in the paddies, I would stand in the dark shadow that the forest cast into the river. My brother would occasionally come along with one or two gebachi 30 and dace he’d caught, and saying, “I’ve gotten so much better at it now,” he would put them into the creel that I was holding.

  I’d dunk the creel in the water so the fish might breathe. Then, feeling they’d become my friends, I would peer into it. They were so timid, the slightest noise would startle them into bumping their snouts against the side of the creel. In the meantime my brother would complain aloud that I wasn’t looking at the way he cast his net.

  One day, while all this was going on, I was standing in the river when I happened to bend down to pick up a snow-white stone I’d spotted near my feet. My brother noticed this at once.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m picking up a stone.”

  “Don’t be so stupid!”

  But I was no longer afraid. I had thought about this for some time now.

  “May I ask you a question?” I quietly addressed him from behind. “What’s wrong with my p
icking up a stone while you’re catching fish?”

  “Don’t be so fresh,” he barked.

  I smiled coldly and, looking him right in the face, said, “Tell me if I’m wrong in what I said.”

  “I’ll hit you,” he said and raised his hand.

  Without saying a word, I hung the creel at the end of a drooping branch and climbed up the bank to go home. But then I saw him squatting in the dark shadow of a tree, as if cringing, and I suddenly felt sorry for him. He says things like that but he must be lonesome, I thought, and from the top of the bank called to him with all the energy I could muster.

  “Shall I stay with you?”

  My brother ignored this, now arranging his net.

  “Goodbye,” I politely raised my hat and went home alone. After this we never went out together again.

  8

  Because there were some mulberry trees left uncut around our house, we once had some silkworm “seeds” from someone in our neighborhood and raised them, following father’s idea that it would be a diversion as well as a practical education for the children. Mother and my aunt protested, and kept protesting, that it was too much trouble, even as they enjoyed themselves, happily slicing up mulberry leaves. In truth, they were somewhat proud, remembering the one hardship of the past that would not, no, never come back again, they trusted.31

  At first, the silkworms simply hid themselves under the leaves, but every day they grew larger as they nibbled and chewed the leaves from the edges, flipping back their monk-heads. I, too, was given several of them, in a small yōkan32 box. And because my aunt told me that silkworms were originally princesses, I made it a rule to say “Be well and happy” to them before going to bed, “Good morning” when I got up and, when I left for school, earnestly asked that good care be taken of them. And when I came home, my older sister would wrap her head in a towel, tuck up the two ends of her apron into her sash, and go to pick mulberry leaves, with me carrying a basket. And turning our fingers black, we would compete in picking the most delicious-looking leaves as far up as our hands could reach.

  These worms, which, on account of the beautiful luster of the thread they spin out of their cold lips, have been raised by humans over a long time, do not seek food on their own, but with their heads laid on a straw mat, obediently wait for mulberry leaves to be scattered over them.

  “They were once princesses, they say, and look how well-behaved they are,” my aunt would say as though it was all true.

  Their greenish smell, and their cold bodies, were creepy at first. But once I decided they were princesses, I didn’t mind any of that, and I came to think that the crescent-shaped marks on their backs were their lovely eyes.

  These princesses, after coming out of the fourth round of Zen meditation, become so clean and clear that their bodies grow almost transparent and, not even eating the mulberry leaves, looking around here and there, they seek a place for nirvana. You then gently transfer them to cocoon shelves where they settle down in a spot of their choice and, moving their heads quietly, begin weaving white curtains to hide themselves. At first they seem merely to be shaking their heads, but before you know it they cease to move. The only thing you see are rolls of curtains like tube-shaped bags hanging from the cocoon shelves that they’ve woven with a divine power, without even a shuttle. Feeling left behind, I insist on keeping them forever, but mother and aunt quickly pick them up and boil them in a pot. And as the wet, yellowish threads are wound around a frame, the curtains cruelly unravel, in the end producing corpses shaped like which-way-is-wests.33 My brother puts them in his bait box and dashes to his fishpond. Thus was I awakened from my dreams of princesses, while the threads, sent off to a weaver, were woven into a cloth with odd-looking “country-stripes.”

  Some of the cocoons that formed in the yōkan box were left as “seeds.” But perhaps because my heart reached into the depths of their curtains, or perhaps because those princesses were unable to abandon the world of the shining summer, they soon revealed lovely figures suggestive of what they had once been in the past—with beautiful eyebrows raised above their black eyes, wings trembling with fresh joy. Then, they walked about to the right, to the left, as if drawing circles, looking for their spouses to mate with. I watched them with greater fascination than I would have felt for the person born from a bamboo.34 Silkworms grew old and became cocoons, the cocoons unraveled and turned into butterflies, and when I saw the butterflies lay eggs, my knowledge was complete. It was a truly mysterious cycle of puzzles.

  I want always to look at my surroundings with such childlike wonder. With many things, people stop really seeing them simply because they are used to seeing them. When you think of it, though, the tree buds that flare out every spring should astonish us afresh each year. If you say you do not know this, that is because we do not even know as little as what is wrapped up in this tiny silkworm cocoon.

  By the time those “seeds” hatched, the number of mulberry trees had been further reduced and we did not have enough people to raise so many silkworms. So, with the silly notion that sparrows would eat them up in no time, my family secretly threw out half of them in the backyard while I, who had become the brother of those princesses, was not home. Startled to find them there when I went out to pick mulberry leaves, I rushed back and asked the reason why. But everyone evaded my question, refusing to deal with me directly. I finally sensed the reason myself and almost groveled before them, pleading with them to pick them up and feed them. But they wouldn’t listen. Still, seeing that their wily sophistry could not deflect an innocent child’s compassion, they in the end tried to scare me by the conventional means of raising their voices. Overwhelmed by chagrin and hate, I glared at them, madly cursed at them, dashed out back, and wept. If at that moment I’d had strength enough to grab and crush those people, I would have chain-ganged them and fed them to sparrows. After this, I would leave school early every day with the excuse of a headache and pick mulberry leaves for my sisters who were shaking their heads to show their hunger. But those were weak ones who could not bear the cold of the night or the heat of the day, and every day some of them succumbed to the mud.

  It happened one evening when it had begun to rain. I would not come in no matter how many times I was called, so my aunt came out only to find me standing with an umbrella held over the abandoned silkworms. And the moment I saw her face I burst out crying and clung to her apron. A true Buddhist by nature, my aunt wanted to do something about it but there was nothing she could do. In the end, repeating prayers, she managed to take me inside by coaxing and humoring me. Later my family found a small tablet of tuffaceous sandstone erected at the spot with “The Grave for Oh Loyal Subject Kusunoki”35 written in my hand.

  9

  Partly because of circumstance, partly because of my character, I tended to suffer a lot. But I had one incomparable consolation, painting. I had a scroll of model paintings given me by my father. He said he’d received it from his lord, who was skilled in the Shijō School of painting.36 It was at once what I treasured the most and, for my aunt, the panacea which, like the Divine Dog and the Rouge Ox, she could bring out hastily to calm my temper and suppress my demon. This scroll—a scroll that beautifully assembled only beautiful things, presented in beautiful figures, in beautiful nature, such as egrets, cranes, pine trees, and the sunrise—would readily fill my heart that was, after all, still empty and clear with the intoxication of inexpressible dreams and longings.

  By that time, however, I was no longer content to merely look at the pictures. Knowing full well that it would destroy the mood of my brother, who disliked such things above all else, I managed to have my family buy me a cheap painting set—a dark-blue, shoddy cardboard box, which had only about eight paints and a single brush, with a trademark of a leaping lion attached to the upper end. With these, and the brush-washer that my older sister handed down to me, as my friends, I began to paint, first tracing directly from picture books and then copying easy pictures from the model scroll. Still, h
aving no one to teach me, confining myself in my own room, I had all sorts of trouble, making mistakes repeatedly because I had to figure out on my own how to draw a line, how to produce a particular color. Nonetheless, it was for me all a process of free creation. Was the Jewish God, in creating all those myriad things, able to savor as much satisfaction as I did in being able to paint a single bird, a single flower? Simply obtaining orange from red and yellow made me leap with joy.

  As expected, my brother was unhappy about all this. At times when I put up on my desk a painting particularly well made and was admiring it he would come by and dump horribly on it. But that did not quash the courage of this small creator as he was filled with joy and power. I would add my preferences in various ways, such as by changing the colors of the kimono of a courtesan or a princess in a picture book or by putting a line under her chin or drawing a different eyebrow and, like a god of the past, I would turn my creations into my lovers, storing them carefully in my drawers. Still, in the meantime, I was irritated by the thought that I would never be able to find in the real world those beautiful things I created on paper.

  I was also fond of school songs. Again I was not allowed to sing while my brother was around, so I would snatch bits of time in his absence. On clear nights especially, when I sang a quiet, quiet song while gazing at the translucent face of the moon, tears would form under my eyelids and the moon would begin to sparkle with a halo. A friend of my older sister’s who had a good voice came to visit from time to time and taught me. Though I may have been the best at school, I would simply feel cowed by her mellifluous voice and could only follow her in a small voice. It was at the elbow-high window where I used to play with O-Kei-chan. Many a night the leaves of a sultan’s parasol would rustle in the wind, insects cry, and a flock of night herons fly by, guacking. . . .