The Miner

by Sōseki Natsume

  Unable either to lie, stand, or sit, I remained in motion, though I can’t say for how long. Exhausted to begin with, I managed to tire my legs and arms even more, only falling asleep, probably, when I was so tired that not even bedbugs could bother me. When morning came, I had slid to the bottom of the pillar, back curled against it, legs stretched out on the floor.

  It’s odd that after so much suffering, it took only two or three nights for the bedbug bites gradually to stop hurting. In fact, after a month, the bedbugs could be crawling all over me but were of no more concern than so many grains of rice, and I slept soundly every single night. Of course, as the others told me, the bugs for their part become more restrained as time goes by. They go crazy over newcomers and swarms of them torture you all night at first, but if you stand it for a while, they lose interest and leave you alone. One fellow told me it was because they get sick of eating the same human flesh day after day, but someone else said it’s because the flesh itself improves in quality; it takes on the smell of the mine, which is too much for the bugs. Viewed in this light, bedbugs and miners have a lot in common. And not just miners. Bedbugs and the greater part of humanity in general seem to be controlled by the same psychology. In its equal applicability to both insects and humans, this is an attractive theory, the beauty of which would surely be pleasing to philosophers, but I myself don’t subscribe to it. I would say that it’s not a matter of the bugs’ acting out of restraint or surfeit, but rather a loss of sensitivity on the part of the human beings who are eaten by them, entirely as a result of habit. The bugs go on eating as before but the humans no longer mind. Of course, there is a significant difference between not feeling it when you are eaten and not feeling it when you are not eaten, but since, in effect, the two are indistinguishable, there can be little practical purpose served in debating this point. So I’ll stop.

  I opened my eyes to find that the night had ended. Downstairs there was a babble of voices. Good. I stuck my head out the window and saw that it was raining again. Though not exactly. The thick clouds couldn’t quite manage to turn themselves into raindrops, sending only those few drops that did form down to earth in slim streaks. Which is why the air was not thick with fog. The clouds were turning themselves into rain very very gradually, and as this happened you could see clearly through the transparent spaces between the few threads that fell from the clouds. Not that there was anything to see through those gaps but mountains—mountains almost bare of trees and grass, and wholly devoid of moisture. All around me were hills so red and barren you knew that even their inner depths must become hot under the summer sun. Without exception, they were wet with rain. Since the mountains themselves contained no moisture, this was rather like spraying a fine mist on an unglazed vase to deepen its color: you could never wet it enough. Despite all this, I was feeling cold and was about to draw my head in when something caught my eye. Below the far stone wall appeared a few men in jackets. With towels draped over their heads and some straw things on their buttocks, they were walking up the road down which the jangle had passed the day before. They looked pathetic from a distance—frail and unsteady. It suddenly occurred to me that, starting this morning, I would be one of them, and as their shadowy, towel-draped forms moved off in the distance, I could not help feeling a twinge of pity, as much for myself as for those rain-soaked forms. Then an old hat came out of the rain. After it appeared another jacketed form. I guessed it was time for the men of the morning shift to head for the mine. Finally, I drew my head in. At that point, a half dozen men came barging up the stairs. “Here they come,” I thought to myself, but there was not much I could do about it besides lean against the pillar with my hands shoved up my sleeves. They quickly changed into the same outfit and went downstairs again. More men came. They, too, put on jackets and went down. Soon it appeared that all the men on the morning shift had left the boiler.

  If the whole boiler was going to be active like this, I couldn’t just hang around. But no one came to tell me to wash my face or eat breakfast. Even for a pampered youth, there was such a thing as having too much time on one’s hands. I forged boldly downstairs. I was by no means calm, but I behaved like a big tipper at an inn. However intimidated I might feel, it was the only way my parents’ son knew how to behave. At the bottom of the stairs I ran into the old woman, who had come galloping out of the back with her sleeve cords on and holding a pair of straw sandals.

  “Where do I wash my face?” I asked.

  “Over there,” she said, barely glancing at me and continuing on to the front door. I had no idea where “over there” was, but figured it must be where she had just come from. Walking in that direction, I came to a large kitchen, in the middle of which sat a huge rice tub that looked like a barrel cut in half. When it occurred to me that this thing must be crammed full of that awful rice I had eaten last night—more in this one tub than I could possibly consume in a month of eating it for three meals a day—my appetite died on the spot.

  I found the place for washing. Stepping down from the kitchen, I approached a long sink and patted a little water on my cheeks. In my situation, there was no point in doing a proper face wash. (Keep this attitude up, and next I’d be saying to hell with washing my face at all. The others the day before—the red blanket, the boy—had probably passed through this evolutionary stage.)

  At last, unaided, I managed to wash my face. Eating was another matter. I found my way back to the kitchen, wondering how that was to be accomplished. Luckily, the old woman came back in just then and put together a meal for me. I was pleased to see that this one included miso soup, which I proceeded to dump over the rice before shoveling it down, concealing the taste of wall mud that way.

  “Don’t take too long,” the old woman said to me. “Hatsu is waiting outside to take you into the mine when you’re finished.”

  She started rushing me like this before I had a chance to rest my chopsticks. In fact, I had just been thinking that I’d better have another bowl of rice, at least, if I was going to make it through the day, but now there was no point in asking for seconds.

  “Oh, really?” I replied, standing. Out front I found a man sitting on the edge of the raised wooden floor with his feet down in the entryway.

  “You the one that’s goin’ down?” he demanded with all the force of someone smashing chips from a rock.

  “That’s right,” I replied.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Excuse me, but will these clothes do?” I asked politely.

  “Hell, no! You can’t go into the mine dressed like that. You gotta wear this stuff,” he said, flinging down one of those jackets I had seen. “I borrowed ’em from the boss for you. That’s the top, and these’re the pants,” he added, throwing a pair of those tight-fitting pants at my feet.

  Picking them up, I found that both pieces were damp and had bits of mud clinging to them. They seemed to be made out of plain duck cloth. So now my turn had come, I thought, to wear the miner’s uniform. I took off my kimono with its blue-and-white splashed pattern, replacing it, top and bottom, with solid navy blue. At a glance, I looked like a cabinet member’s errand boy, but I felt a lot worse than the time I served as one. Assuming my preparations were now complete, I stepped down into the dirt-floored entryway.

  “Hold it, hold it,” Hatsu yelled at me again.

  “This goes on your ass,” he said, holding out an odd-looking object: a kind of straw quilt, round, like the cap of a charcoal bale, with a couple of strings attached to it. Following his instructions, I tied it over my buttocks.

  “That’s your seat-pad,” he said. “Got it? Next, your chisel. You stick it in your sash like this …”

  The thing he called a chisel was a sharp-pointed steel rod a good foot-and-a-half long. I slipped it under my belt like a sword.

  “You wear this the same way,” Hatsu said, holding out a hammer. “Watch it, it’s kinda heavy. Get a good grip on it or you’ll hurt yourself.”

  He was right. The hammer was heavy
. How did they manage to walk through the mine with such things hanging from their belts?

  “Heavy, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And that’s a light one. The really heavy ones go six, seven pounds … Got it now? OK, shake your hips. OK? Now, this.”

  He started to hand me a lantern, but then said, “Hold on. Get your sandals on before you take the lantern.”

  There was a new pair of straw sandals on the threshold by the entryway. These were probably the ones I had seen the old lady carrying. I fit my bare feet into them, but when I strung the cord behind my heel and gave a tug, Hatsu yelled at me.

  “Not so tight, stupid! Loosen it up between your toes.”

  I managed to fasten them on my feet while he went on yelling.

  “OK,” he said, handing me a coolie hat and the lantern. “That does it.”

  The hat was the kind worn by prison laborers, round on top, like a manjū cut in half, but I obediently put it on and took the lantern, letting it dangle by my side. The lantern was made expressly for hanging down like that. The body was a kind of oil can holding maybe a cup and a half, with a filler spout and a hole for the wick. Over the hole was a long, narrow tube, the top of which bent somewhat to the side and then spread out into a cup. You stuck your thumb into the cup and let the lantern dangle from your thumb—an extremely practical design that allowed one digit to do the work of five.

  “You put it on like this,” explained Hatsu, shoving his thumb—as hard and brown as a dried chestnut—into the hole. It fit perfectly.

  “Now, watch.”

  He swung his arm a few times like the pendulum of a clock, and the lantern showed no sign of falling from his thumb. I gave it a try, with the same results.

  “That’s it. Pretty good,” he said. “OK, ready to go?”

  “I believe I am.”

  I followed him out front. It was raining. The first thing the rain struck was my hat. When I looked up at the sky, the drops hit my chin, my mouth, my nose. Then I felt them on my shoulders. My legs. As I walked along, my whole body became damp, and the moisture that soaked through my clothing was turned to steam by the energy of my skin. The rain was cold, though, and I felt as if it was gradually reducing the warmth of my body, but Hatsu went so quickly up the slope that by the time we reached the mine entrance, my pores were expelling the rain that had soaked through.

  The entrance looked like an extra-big train tunnel. Arched at the top like a cake of fish paste, the opening must have been a good twelve feet high. The rails emerging from it also gave it the appearance of a train tunnel. Hatsu said this was where the electric trains ran. Standing outside, I tried peering into the depths of the tunnel. It was dark inside.

  “This’s the door to Hell,” Hatsu said. “Got the guts to go in?”

  He spoke with a hint of ridicule. Abuse had been showering down on me all along the road from the boiler to the mine as heads poked out of windows growling, “That guy from yesterday is still here,” or “It’s the new one.” The way they looked at me, I couldn’t believe their attitude came from sheer curiosity as a result of being closed off in the mountains. Deep down, their words were meant to mock me. In one sense, they were saying, “So now you’re in this hole with the rest of us. Good! Serves you right!” And in another sense, their words meant, “It won’t do you a damn bit of good to come here. A weakling like you won’t last a minute.” Their curses reflected their pleasure at the fact that I had fallen so low as to taste the suffering that they themselves must taste, plus their contempt for me as one who would never be able to endure the pain. Not only did they exult at having dragged someone down to their own level, but they seemed to enjoy kicking him once again after they had him down by hinting at their superior ability to endure the fall. Each time I had heard their curses on the road to the mine, I had lowered the brim of my coolie hat and passed by with my face half hidden. Which is why, when Hatsu added his own contemptuous remark, I answered him a little testily.

  “Of course I can go in. Look, they’ve even got streetcars running here.”

  “Think you’re tough, huh? We’ll see about that.”

  Of course, if I had said I was afraid to go into the mine, he would have heaped curses on me for being a coward. I had to lose either way, so I wasn’t sorry for my answer. Hatsu charged into the mine and I followed. It became dark more quickly than I had expected it to. The most frightening thing was the suddenly uncertain footing. Even with the rain falling, the outside now came to seem bright and cheery. To make matters worse, the tunnel on either side of the roadbed was a mass of mud. Apparently still smoldering from my remark, Hatsu forged ahead. I forged on after him, determined to keep up.

  “You gotta behave yourself in the hole,” he said, suddenly coming to a stop in the dark, “or they throw you down the pit.”

  At his waist I could see Hatsu’s chisel and his seven-pound hammer. Shriveling up in the dark, I said, “All right. I’ll be careful.”

  “OK, got it straight? If you’re plannin’ to come out alive, you’re better off not goin’ into the hole to begin with.”

  Hatsu spoke these words—as much to himself as to me—after he had turned away and begun walking again. I was more than a little taken aback. Because of the strong echo in the tunnel, his voice bounced off the rock walls, ringing in my ears. If what he said was true, I had gotten myself into a terrible place. I had decided to become a miner precisely because of the work’s similarity to death, but if I was now actually going to die—if it was such a frightening job—if I was going to be killed—if I was going to be thrown into the pit … the pit. What was the pit?

  “Pardon me, but what’s the pit?”

  “How’s that?” asked Hatsu, swinging around toward me again.

  “I said, ‘Pardon me, but what’s the pit?’”

  “It’s a hole.”

  “What?”

  “A hole! A hole! We throw the ore in and take it down in loads. You get thrown in with the ore and …”

  Cutting himself short, he hurried on again.

  I came to a stop and stood there for a moment. Glancing back, I saw that the tunnel opening now looked like a tiny moon. Upon entering, I had thought to myself, “Well, if this is all there is to the hole, it’s not as bad as they say.” But after Hatsu’s frightening comments, this otherwise very ordinary tunnel had begun to take on an entirely new air for me. I longed for the tapping of cold raindrops on my prisoner’s hat. Then I glanced back toward the tunnel entrance and realized I had come so far inside that the entrance looked like a tiny moon. Cloudy as it might be outside, that was where I longed to be. I found it disturbing the way the pitch-black tunnel ceiling pressed down on me. And it seemed to be coming lower and lower. No sooner had these thoughts struck me than we cut across the tracks and turned right. The road began to slope gently downward. I couldn’t see the entrance anymore. There was nothing behind me but solid darkness. The tiny moon, the window to the world of men, had been slammed shut, and Hatsu and I moved steadily downward. As we walked, I stretched out my hand and touched the wall. It felt as wet as if it had been rained on.

  “Still with me?” Hatsu asked.

  “Yes,” I replied meekly.

  “Wait. Pretty soon we get to the Main Street of Hell.”

  With that, our brief exchange ended. Just then a point of light appeared somewhere up ahead. It shone like one eye of a black cat in the darkness. If it was a lantern, it should have been flickering, but it moved not at all. Neither could I judge its distance or direction, which was not in a straight line from here. The only sure thing was that I could see it. If the tunnel was a single, straight road, both Hatsu and I would proceed ahead toward this light. I didn’t bother to ask but continued in, assuming that up ahead must be what he called the Main Street of Hell. Soon, the gentle slope gave out. The road curved ahead on a level. The light was shining where the road came to a wall. The light had appeared to be somewhere below nose level at first, but now it was exa
ctly at eye level and very close.

  “We’re here,” Hatsu said. “Main Street.”

  Now the tunnel broadened into an area about ten feet square, and there was a small shed not much bigger than a police box. An electric lamp was shining inside. Seated on opposite sides of a table, their chairs facing each other, were two officials in Western suits. Over the door hung a sign, “Checkpoint No. 1.” Later, I heard that this was where they checked the comings and goings of the miners, the length of time they put in at work, and such, but not knowing what this setup was for at the time, I found it unsettling the way half a dozen miners with blackish faces were standing in front of the place without speaking. They were waiting for the change in shifts. I, too, had a chisel and hammer in my belt and carried a lantern, but Hatsu led me quickly past the checkpoint. Apparently, since I was just a job applicant come to inspect the mine and not even a newly hired trainee, there was no need for me to wait with the others. Hatsu paused for a moment to stick his head in the shed window and say something to the officials, neither of whom bothered to look at me. Instead, the assembled miners looked. But, perhaps because of the presence of the officials, none of them said a word.

  The appearance of the mine changed as soon as we passed the assembly point. Up until now, the ceiling of the tunnel had been high enough so that you could walk upright—you could stretch if you wanted to—without touching it, but suddenly it dipped down and gave you the feeling that your head might graze it now and then if you walked upright. An inch or two lower, I thought, and I’d probably slam into the rock and have blood gushing out of my forehead, which meant I couldn’t walk along with arrogant strides, stretched to my full height, as in the pine grove. Frightened, I ducked my head down as far as possible between my shoulders and followed close behind Hatsu. Of course, I had lit my lantern earlier.