The Miner

by Sōseki Natsume

  My legs felt as if they were going to fall off. I stopped and planted them like poles in the earth, listening, and from the distance to my ringing ears came the sound of rushing water. I grew increasingly passive.

  In this state, I covered a lot of ground—too much for me to guess how many miles it was. Walking at night, it would have seemed long under the best of conditions, but in negotiating the pits and bumps my calves began to swell, my knees were scraping against each other, and my thighs felt ready to fall to the ground. I was beyond worrying about distance. Yet as evidence that I was still alive, I managed to keep walking, never more than thirty feet or so behind Chōzō. This was not merely a result of the pathetic way I had passively resigned myself to submerging my individuality. Rather, it was Chōzō’s doing: as soon as the distance between us grew to much more than thirty feet, he would turn around and wait for me to catch up, then start walking again before I had actually reached him, urging me on little by little this way. It was amazing how Chōzō could see behind him—and at night! The path was so dark that only upon looking up did I sense how the black trees thrusting straight up into the sky on either side of us left a narrow, open band above our heads. People talk of “starlight,” but it doesn’t amount to much. And of course no one there happened to be carrying a lantern. For my own part, I kept my eye on the red blanket ahead. He wasn’t red at night, but somehow or other he seemed very much like the red blanket anyway. This was probably because I had fixed on him while it was still light and followed after him, concentrating on “that blanket, that blanket,” like repeated invocations to the Buddha. Eyes encountering him for the first time after dark would not know what they were seeing, but to me he looked exactly like the red blanket. No doubt this kind of thing is the source of what they call the power of faith. I had managed, one way or another, to find myself a guide in the darkness, but there was simply no way that Chōzō could tell how far behind him I was. And yet he did it all the same. As soon as I dropped back more than thirty feet, he would stop and wait for me. At least I think he was stopping for me. He might have been stopping because he felt like it. In any case, he was stopping. This was a feat beyond the powers of an amateur. In my misery, I still could not help admiring Chōzō. It was a skill he needed for his work, I felt, which he had brought to this level of perfection after long years of practice. Walking beside Chōzō, the red blanket stopped whenever Chōzō did. And as soon as Chōzō started up again, the red blanket did, too. Here was a man who functioned like a puppet. He was probably far easier to manipulate than I, who tended to fall behind. And the boy—the boy had disappeared. At first, I had assumed that he was falling behind because he was a youngster, and I even figured I’d give him a little encouragement if he tired, but after I’d seen the way he went skipping along the pitted road with his sandals flapping, I had abandoned any hope of keeping up with him. But that had been quite some time ago. For a while, I had climbed with the flapping right next to me. Now there was nothing left of him—not even a shadow. While he was next to me, he walked with almost too much vigor for such a little boy. This in itself wouldn’t have bothered me, but in addition, his silence was extreme, which gave me a very creepy feeling. Before you start laughing at me, imagine for yourself an extremely small, tremendously lively, and completely silent animal, and you’ll see what I mean. This was no ordinary creature. Anyone crossing a mountain at night with an animal like that would be scared. I feel strange just thinking about him even now. Earlier, I said he was like a bat, and that’s exactly what he was: a bat. I suppose I was OK because Chōzō and the red blanket were there. But honestly, if I had been alone with the bat, I wouldn’t have made it.

  Suddenly, out of the darkness, Chōzō shouted, “Halloo!”

  I don’t know if any of you have heard the sound of a human voice without warning on a lonely road at night, but let me tell you, it can make you feel very weird. An ordinary speaking voice might be all right, but a loud “Halloo!” is not going to do wonders for your nerves. There I was, on a mountain path, in the dark, passing no one, and to make matters worse, I was walking with some kind of bat. Chōzō picked just the moment of mounting terror to raise his voice as if there were something happening. “Halloo!” he cried, when nothing should have been happening in a place where anything could happen, bringing together the unexpected and the all-too-expected in a way that sent strange reverberations into my head. Had it been a cry directed at me, I would have been momentarily startled and nothing more: “Uh-oh, something’s wrong.” But his shout was so loud that it could not possibly have been meant for me, walking thirty-some-odd feet behind him. Besides, it was moving in the wrong direction. It wasn’t aimed toward me. It sped off to the right and left, but, blocked there by the trees, it fled far ahead down the narrow path until it sent back an echo from a long way off. There was definitely an echo but apparently no answer. Then Chōzō shouted, even more loudly than before, “Hey, you! Boy!”

  Now that I think of it, Chōzō seems a little stupid yelling “Boy!” to this boy whose name he didn’t know, but at the time he didn’t strike me as stupid at all. The moment I heard Chōzō’s cry, I thought to myself, “The bat’s gone into hiding.” The normal thing in a situation like this would have been to think, “He’s gone ahead,” or, at worst, to conclude that the boy had run off, but if the first thing that crossed my mind was that he had gone into hiding, there’s not much doubt that I was under the spell of the bat. The spell broke when the sun came up the next morning, and I kicked myself for being such an idiot, but in fact, when I heard that shout of “Hey, you! Boy!” it really shook me up.

  As before, the reverberations trailed off into the distance, meeting up with nothing. They faded away, like the tail of a shooting star, and, as if in response, the trees and hills and valleys fell silent. There was no answer. Nothing. In that interval while the reverberations, though still barely hanging on, were gradually fading away, and from the moment they disappeared completely until the entire world fell silent, the three of us, Chōzō and the red blanket and I, stood in silence, nose to nose in the dark. This was not a very pleasant sensation.

  Finally, Chōzō said, “If we go a little faster, maybe we can catch up with him.” To me, he added, “OK, kid?”

  No, of course, it was not OK, but there was nothing much I could do about it. I agreed and hurried after him. Now, I knew damn well I couldn’t “go a little faster” at this point if my life depended on it. I didn’t have it in me—I didn’t have it in my legs—to go faster, but, strangely enough, I said I’d do it. I probably had a funny look on my face at the time, but once I’d said I’d hurry, I hurried, whether I thought I could do it or not. How I managed the next part of the trip, and what kind of places we passed through, well, I suppose the best thing would be for me to say flat out that I don’t know. At some point, Chōzō stopped short, and that brought me around. We were standing in front of a house. There was a lamp lit inside. The light of the lamp spilled out onto the road. I was overjoyed. I could see the red blanket clearly. And the boy was there. His shadow cut across the road and fell into the valley on the other side. It was a long shadow for such a little fellow.

  Finding a human habitation in a place like this was the last thing I had expected. My head was swimming, my ears were ringing, I had been rushing along blindly with no idea of where I was headed and no hope of getting there, when all of a sudden we had come to a stop in the glare of lamplight. It was a shock, but at the same time it was tremendously moving to realize what a human thing the light of a lamp could be. To this day, I’ve never been so grateful for a lamp as I was at that moment. I learned afterward that the boy had beaten us to the lamplight and waited for us to catch up. He had heard both of Chōzō’s shouts, but he hadn’t bothered to answer. What an amazing little fellow!

  So now our group was back together again. Passive as ever, I stood there wondering what would happen next, when Chōzō, leaving us by the side of the road, entered the house alone. I keep calling the
structure a “house,” but really the word was more than it deserved. If it had had cows, it would have been a barn; for horses, it could have been a stable. They sold straw sandals there, I guess; I didn’t see anything but walls, straw sandals, and a lamp. The whole facade was six feet wide, and the door’s storm shutter was half closed. Probably they left the thing half open all night. Or maybe the shutter had eaten its way into the groove and couldn’t be budged. The roof was thatched, of course, and the straw was old and crumbling, probably from having soaked up rain, which gave it a vague sort of look. It was so mushy you couldn’t tell where the roof and the night met. This, then, was the “house” that Chōzō entered. You had the feeling more that he had crawled into a hole or something. He stayed inside, talking. The three of us stood outside. I don’t know what my own face looked like, but I could see the faces of the red blanket and the boy clearly in the light of the lamp that came streaming out of the shed at an angle. The red blanket’s face was as blank as ever. I was sure he would wear that same expression in any situation—in the midst of a massive earthquake with roof beams falling all around him or by the bed of a parent on the verge of death. The boy was looking at the sky. He was still frightening.

  Then Chōzō appeared. He didn’t come out to the road, though. Stepping up to the threshold, he stood facing our way, allowing only a narrow beam of lamplight to escape between his legs. It seemed as though the lamp had been moved to a lower position in the meantime. Of course, I couldn’t see Chōzō’s face very well.

  To me he said, “You’d never make it over the mountain if we tried crossing now, kid. We’ll stay here tonight. Everybody come inside.”

  The moment I heard this, my passivity blew apart, and the flesh sagged on my bones. Not even with this barn staring me in the face had the thought crossed my mind that spending a night here could give me such relief. We had found a place to rest, but I was probably still too passive even to think of resting. This goes to show that human beings are the easiest things there are to control. They’ll take the most outlandish orders with profound respect and, far from putting up a fuss, they’ll thank you for them. Whenever I recall those days, along with the memory comes the conviction that I was the most obedient, dutiful person imaginable. It has even crossed my mind that the way I was then is the way a soldier always has to be. And this has brought with it the realization that if one is able to ignore the use of an object, one is also able to forget the use of an object.

  This is how my thought came out on paper, but I don’t understand it myself now that I read it over. It’s actually much simpler than this, but it ended up looking difficult because I crammed it into too short a space. Here’s an example. Say you believe you have no right to drink sake and are therefore able to convince yourself that sake possesses no merits whatever. So then a whole row of sake bottles can be standing in front of you and it won’t even occur to you that sake is for drinking. Probably what saves us all from becoming thieves, finally, is the manner in which we are artificially acclimated to such a state of mind from childhood. On the other hand, a state of mind like this comes about as the result of anesthetizing a part of our humanity, so while they’re forging ahead feeling very pleased with themselves, people end up as idiots. Now, granted, you don’t want anybody turning into a thief, but it is my humble opinion that the most virtuous deed one can perform for another is to make it possible for him to exercise all his other psychological propensities in a suitable manner. If the old me had survived unchanged to the present day, I would be plenty obedient and hardworking, but I would also be an idiot—probably worse than an idiot—and it would be obvious to anyone who bothered to notice. Human beings are supposed to get angry now and then, they’re supposed to rebel. That’s how they’re made. Forcing yourself to become a creature that doesn’t get angry and never rebels is tantamount to happily educating yourself to be an idiot. First of all, it’s bad for your health. If it bothers you when people act out, you’d better arrange things so that nothing ever makes them angry or rebellious.

  Back then, I was following Chōzō’s instructions to the letter in every situation, and as far as I’m concerned that was the most natural thing for me to do. Given my present position in life, though, a hundred Chōzōs could yank at me for seven days and seven nights, and I wouldn’t budge an inch because that would be the most natural thing for me now. And I believe that for me to change like this is the very thing that makes me human. I mention Chōzō merely as an example to help you understand what I’m saying, but if you look at the matter closely, you’ll see that human character changes by the hour. The process of change is entirely normal, and it is just as normal for contradictions to arise as the process goes on. There are, in other words, many contradictions in human character—so many, in fact, that it makes no difference whether we conclude that character exists or doesn’t exist. If you think I’m lying, try an experiment. It would be wrong of you to experiment on other people, so try it first on yourself. You won’t have to stoop to becoming a miner for this to work. And you won’t obtain any better results if you try asking a god for the answer. The god that understands this kind of reasoning lives inside you—down in your gut.

  Sorry for these pseudo-academic noises I’m making without any academic background. I really wasn’t planning to go on huffing and puffing like this, but here’s what got me started. People often used to complain to me that I was full of contradictions. And every time they did it, I would put on a sour face and apologize. I found myself just as upsetting as they did. It worried me that I couldn’t pass for an ordinary human being. If I didn’t do something to reform myself, I might lose my credibility and end up on the streets. But then I started experimenting on myself, observing myself in different situations, and I realized there was no need whatever for me to reform. This was the real me, and it was all that made me human. I then tried my experiment on other people, only to find that they were made just like me. It was hilarious. The complaints they brought to me could just as well have been brought to them. When they got hungry, they’d eat; when they were full, they’d get sleepy; hard up, they’d turn bad; with their pockets full, they’d keep to the straight and narrow; falling in love, they would marry, and falling out of love, they’d divorce. It was as simple as that. They were playing it by ear, and this was all it took to be human.

  There. I was so impressed with my own ideas I just wanted to say them. I really shouldn’t be carrying on as if I know what I’m talking about. There are plenty of scholars, priests, and educators in the world, and each of these demanding fraternities examines such matters with its own professional expertise.

  That’s enough hot air for now. Back to the passive attitude and the story of what happened in the mountains.

  When, standing on the threshold and facing the road, Chōzō brought up the idea of spending the night in this place, I was so totally unprepared for the concept of spending the night anywhere that it only dawned on me at that moment, not so much that it was possible to spend the night in a hovel like this, as that the original purpose of all human habitation was precisely for spending the night. Meanwhile, I was so tired my body was as limp as a wet noodle. Ordinarily, every organ in my body should have been bursting with the need to stop and rest, but this fatigue of mine had occurred after I had resigned myself to the ego-submerging business of becoming a miner—that is, to this final degeneration as a kind of warm-up for letting myself die, which is why, in spite of its need for rest, my body did not put in a request to my soul for lodging. Then, suddenly, the order came from nowhere—first to my soul, which, in a somewhat confused form, sent the message on to my arms and legs, and when they reacted with extraordinary joy, my soul finally noticed that it was time to be grateful for Chōzō’s kindness. I know this sounds as though I’m trying to be comical, but I’ll never be able to describe my mental state at the time without adopting some such figure of speech.

  As soon as I heard what Chōzō had to say, my nerves went slack and I headed for
the doorway, dragging along my legs, which were no longer usable for standing. The red blanket plodded in after me, and the boy flew in. No, I suppose he didn’t fly in, but it seemed that way to me, what with the energetic flapping of his straw sandals against his heels.

  Inside, the place stank, though I had no idea what from. I saw the boy’s nose twitching, so I knew he was aware of the smell, but Chōzō and the red blanket paid it no mind. After a day on the road in geta without socks, I felt I ought at least to wipe my feet with a rag before stepping up from the dirt-floored entranceway to the tatami mats, but the boy slipped out of his sandals and hopped right up. This was particularly unforgivable in his case, I thought, since the tail ends of his sandals had been worn away and he had been as good as walking barefoot on the ground. I stood there, looking at his feet, when Chōzō urged me to “Step right up. You’ve been wearing geta.”

  I did as I was told, though I didn’t feel very good about it. When my foot came down on the tatami, it sank into the wavy straw. The boy was already sprawling on the rotten old mats. I carefully lowered just my bottom onto them and sat cross-legged inside, next to the shoji, of which there were two in the doorway, one having been slid open atop the other. I turned to see Chōzō and the red blanket stepping out of their straw sandals. Both took handkerchiefs from their sashes and swatted the dust from their feet, then immediately stepped up to the tatami. Apparently, washing their feet would have been too much trouble. At that point, the proprietor appeared from the next room, carrying tea and a tobacco tray.