Pretty good, indeed! How could he sit there playing dumb? Assigned to be my guide, he had not only abandoned me but purposely taunted me with that “Da da da da da” of his, after which I had run around in circles until I was ready to bash my head against the rocks. But then I was saved in the nick of time by Yasu, through whose kindness I had found my way out, only to hear this nonsense from Hatsu. In spite of what he had done, though, he was afraid of the boss, which is why he had been clever enough to wait for me so that we could arrive at the boiler together. When I saw him on his rock, smiling his lame smile, I wanted to let him have it on the head with a gob of spit. I had decided against dying, however, only moments before. For a while, at least, I would have to stay in this place. If I spit on him, we’d have a fight. If we had a fight, I’d lose. And not only that, I’d be thrown into the pit, and my decision against death would be wasted. Which is why I replied, “Oh, I managed one way or another.”
This only seemed to increase his puzzlement.
“Good goin’! Did you make it alone?”
Considering my age, I think I handled the answer to this pretty well. All I mean is that my answer didn’t work to my disadvantage, nothing more praiseworthy than that. For a nineteen-year-old, though, I think I was rather sly. What I’m proud of is the fact that, while Yasu’s name was on the tip of my tongue, I managed to stop myself from saying it. That’s a ridiculous thing to be proud of, I know, but here is what was on my mind. Yasu of the Yamanaka Gang was undoubtedly one of the more influential miners. If word got around that such a man had kindly taken the trouble to bring a total stranger all the way to Checkpoint No. 1, then my official guide would lose face. Once it was proven that Hatsu had not only abandoned his responsibilities by hurrying out ahead of me but had actually done so with malicious intent, there would be no way for him to maintain his innocence with the boss. And if that happened, he would take his revenge. I would have loved to have the truth come out (I’m no Christian hypocrite restrained by some notion of forgiveness), but revenge would have caused me a lot of trouble. To tell the truth, it was this notion of trouble that restrained me.
“Yes, by asking directions along the way,” I replied peaceably.
Hatsu looked both disappointed and relieved. Eventually, he lifted himself from the rock and said, “Let’s go see the boss.”
He started off, and I followed him without a word. I had met the boss in the boiler the day before, but he lived in another place. You had to climb some fifty feet up from the side of the boiler to a two-story house on a leveled-out plot with stone retaining walls on two sides. The house itself was not bad-looking, but it had no trees, no yard, nothing. As with the other buildings, it had a devil thrusting its head out a second-story window. We approached the front door and Hatsu called his greetings. A downstairs window rattled open and the boss showed his face. He had obviously been lounging around in his dotera and knit undershirt, which he didn’t bother to change for us.
“Oh, you’re back, I see. Thanks, Hatsu. Go take a load off.”
Hatsu disappeared without a moment’s delay, leaving me alone with the boss, who spoke to me from the window while I stood outside.
“How was it?”
“I got a good look.”
“How far down did you go?”
“Tunnel 8.”
“Tunnel 8?! Well, now! See how awful the mine is? I don’t suppose—” he began to say, leaning toward me just a bit.
“I’d like to stay,” I said. “Even so.”
“Even so,” he echoed, looking hard at me for some time as I stood before him without speaking. The head in the upstairs window was still there. In fact, it had been joined by two others. I could hardly stand to look at them. A shudder ran through me to think that I would be surrounded by such faces when I got back to the boiler. For all that, I was determined to stay. I would stay no matter what I had to put up with—though this didn’t prevent me from feeling sorry for myself when I glanced upstairs after making my declaration to the boss. “Have I fallen so low that I must beg on hands and knees to be kept with animals like that?” I thought, feeling as helpless in body and soul as a slug doused with salt. Finally, the boss began to speak again, crisply and clearly.
“All right. You’re hired. But the doctor’ll have to look you over first. It’s a rule. You need a health certificate. Today … never mind, it’s too late today. Go tomorrow morning. What? His office? It’s south of here. You must have seen it on your way up. The blue house. Anyhow, that’s it for today. You must be tired. Go back to the boiler and have a good night’s sleep.”
With that, he closed the window. I dipped my head to him slightly just before he closed it, and then I went back to the boiler. The boss’s kind suggestion that I have a good night’s sleep was a welcome one, but if that had been a real possibility, I wouldn’t have been in such agony in the first place. Awake, I had the savages to contend with; asleep, it was the bedbugs. If I happened to open the lid of a rice tub, what would come out was wall mud that couldn’t pass through my throat. But I would stay here. Having decided to stay, I was determined to show them I could do just that. I would stay at least as long as Yasu was alive. As long as Yasu was alive and working, I, too, would stay alive and working, even if every last human being in the hole turned into a bedbug. With such thoughts in my head, I retraced the fifty yards to the boiler and went upstairs. There they were, sitting around the hearths, waiting for me. My heart sank, but I tried to look as indifferent as possible, taking my seat in an unobtrusive place. Then it started—the digs, the jeers, the taunts, the jokes—without a let-up. I remember each and every one of them. They pricked my tender mind with such ferocity that I’ll remember them for the rest of my life. But there’s no need for me to repeat them here. You can assume they were pretty much the same as those of the day before. Now I wanted to see Yasu. I forced myself to eat another one of those suppers, including two bowls of rice, and then I quietly slipped out of the boiler.
To reach the boiler of the Yamanaka Gang, I walked down the stonewalled road where the jangle had passed, climbing to the right at the bottom of the gradual slope, where some large pagoda trees leaned overhead. The boiler was in behind the trees. Peering into the front entrance in the dusk, I saw one digger cleaning his jacket in the light of a lantern. The place was surprisingly quiet inside.
“Excuse me,” I asked the digger politely, “would Yasu be back from work by any chance?”
The man looked up, glanced at me, then turned to the interior. “Hey, Yasu!” he called. “Somebody here to see you!”
I heard footsteps, and Yasu came out right away, almost as if he had been waiting for me. “You’re here!” he cried. “Good! Come in.”
He wore a navy blue kimono with bright vertical stripes of red and yellow and a sash of some sort of speckled toweling—the kind of thing a Tokyo stableman might wear. I was a little taken aback at this. Meanwhile, Yasu was studying my outfit. Cocking his head, he said, “I see what you mean—nothing but the clothes you ran away from Tokyo in. Brings back memories. I used to dress like that. Now, I’m like this.” He held his arms out wide. “What do I look like? A rickshaw puller?”
Unable to answer honestly, I forced a grin.
Yasu laughed aloud. “Deep inside, I’m even more degenerate than this! Don’t be shocked!”
I went on grinning, at a loss for words. This was how I handled embarrassing situations at that stage of my life. When it came to such things, Yasu was far more worldly than I. He saw what was troubling me and came to the rescue with a few simple words. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Come in, come in!” I felt a surge of admiration. Here was a man who exploited his experience of the world in order to help those less experienced than himself. Having suffered only the opposite here—the endless ridicule—I was all the more appreciative of Yasu. Now I followed him inside. This boiler had a large, open room like mine, though not quite as large. Here, too, electric lights were burning, and there were hearths in
the floor. The number of men was smaller, maybe five or six all together. And since they were gathered in a group at the far end of the room, Yasu and I could talk in private.
“When are you going home?” he asked.
“I’ve decided not to go,” I replied.
The look of disgust on his face all but branded me a fool.
“Everything you said to me made perfect sense,” I explained, “but I didn’t come here on a whim. Even if I wanted to go home, I’ve got no place to go home to.”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “What did you do? Can’t you show your face in the world, either?” He seemed more shocked to be asking the question than I was to hear it.
“No, it’s not that I can’t show my face. I don’t want to.”
When I said this, Yasu, who had been observing my every gesture and expression and my tone of voice, suddenly burst out laughing.
“Not a whim, huh? Stop your joking! You don’t want to show your face? What’s that mean? I wish I could afford such a luxury—even for a day.”
“I know,” I said gravely. “I would trade places with you if I could.”
Yasu burst out laughing again.
“You’re hopeless! Think about it for a minute. How can someone who doesn’t want to show his face in the world want to show his face in this hole?”
“I don’t. Not at all. They badgered the hell out of me last night and today. But what else can I do?”
Yasu laughed again.
“The bastards,” he said. “Who did it? Taking advantage of a kid … Anyhow, I’ll get even for you—if you’ll go home.”
I found his words tremendously reassuring. Now I was all the more determined to stay. With Yasu on my side, I wouldn’t have any need to fear even those savages. Eventually I’d have the guts to curse out the whole bunch of them. I told Yasu he wouldn’t have to get even for me, and I pleaded with him to let me stay. The sheer stupidity of this brought a look of disgust and pity to his face.
“All right,” he said. “Stay. It’s entirely up to you. You don’t have to ask my permission—or my advice.”
“But I can’t stay unless you say it’s all right.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel about it, all right. Stay for a while. But only for a short while.”
I solemnly swore to heed his counsel. Nor was I simply being polite. This was exactly what I had been planning to do. We talked a lot after that, but most of what he had to say was on the order of his effusions in the mine. I was especially moved to hear that his elder brother was a senior civil official stationed in Nagasaki. The whole affair must have been very painful for both of them, I thought, which set me to thinking, with a touch of sadness, about my parents and myself. When it came time for me to leave, Yasu saw me to the door and encouraged me to come and see him anytime I needed advice.
Outside, I found that the overcast sky had cleared and a partial moon had risen. The road was surprisingly bright, but there was a deep chill in the air. The moon was shaped like the mine entrance—rounded at the top, flat at the bottom, and I felt as if its clear, cold light were seeping through my kimono, through my undershirt, and into my skin. I folded my arms across my chest and set off down the road, burrowing my nose and chin into my arms and raising my shoulders as high as I could manage. My flesh was stiff with the cold, but deep inside I felt far richer than I had before. A short while, hell! Once you get used to this place, there’s nothing to it. Over ten thousand men had come together here, working together, eating together, sleeping together day after day. With a week’s practice, I, too, should be able to become as degenerate as any of them. The word “degenerate” came into my head at that moment just like this. At the time, however, it was nothing but a verbal convenience, representing none of the word’s concrete meaning, so it was not particularly frightening to me. I arrived at my boiler in a fairly good mood. Some thirty feet from the entrance, I heard voices raised in a commotion. Here, outside, the solitary moon hung in the sky. I stood for a time, listening to the voices and looking up at that solitary moon. I hated the thought of going inside. But standing outside, bathed in the moonlight, was also hard to bear. I thought of going back to Yasu and asking him to put me up for the night. I stepped back a pace but reconsidered. No, that would be asking too much. I wandered into the boiler. To one side of the entrance was a large room cut off from the entryway by shoji doors. The electric lights hanging from the ceiling inside cast no shadows on the paper, but the commotion was definitely coming from in there. Stepping out of my geta, I tiptoed past the shoji and up the stairs. At the top, I surveyed the big room and breathed a sigh of relief. No one else was there.
The only exception was old Kin, stretched out flat as a rice cracker. And the man dangling in his canvas sling. Both, however, were so quiet they might just as well have not been there; the room was simply big and empty. Arriving at the very center of the room, I stood still, thinking. Should I spread a quilt and go to sleep? Or should I just stretch out in my kimono? Or, yet again, should I spend another night propped against a pillar? Without a quilt, I’d be cold. The pillar would be painful. I really did want to have a quilt under me if possible. Perhaps I was so tired I would be able to sleep even with the bedbugs. And if I chose a clean quilt, there shouldn’t be any problem. Maybe the number of bedbugs changed from day to day and this was a light day. Grasping at such frail straws, I pulled out a couple of quilts and eased myself in between them.
If I were to write down that night’s experience exactly as I recall it, it would be of no interest to anyone and would serve no purpose other than to promulgate my own stupidity. Suffice it to say that I suffered the same kind of torture as the night before—only worse. Almost as soon as I was down, I leapt up. After all the bedbug bites I had suffered the night before, I asked myself, how could I have been so stupid as to sleep on those quilts again? I know they say you have to lie in the bed you’ve made, but this was ridiculous! Anybody with an ounce of common sense could—and should—have avoided making such a bed. I was sitting cross-legged on the quilts, fuming at myself, when I felt another violent stab. Buttocks, thighs, and knees all shot up. I stood atop the quilts on one leg, like a heron. Then I looked at my surroundings. Then I burst into tears. All I could do was untie my blue sash, fold it four layers thick, and use it to smash every square inch of flesh on my naked body. Then I put my kimono back on. Then I went to the pillar where I had slept the night before. I leaned against it. I thought about home. What I missed most of all—more than my father, more than my mother, more than either Tsuyako or Sumie—was our six-mat room. I hungered for that room—the muslin quilt in the closet, the quilt and its handsome sleeved coverlet with the black velvet collar attached. Oh, I thought, what I would give for half an hour of warm, comfortable sleep on that quilt and under that coverlet! Who’s sleeping in the six-mat room now? Or could it be that, since my departure, the room has been left empty, the only furniture in place my low writing desk? The quilt, the coverlet remain folded in the closet, unused. What a waste! And how I envy my father, my mother, Sumie, and Tsuyako, sleeping soundly one and all, unbitten! Or are they tossing and turning, unable to sleep? Father especially. Whenever he can’t sleep, he throws a fit and loudly knocks the ashes from his pipe in the middle of the night. He says he’s up for a smoke, but I sometimes think the smoking is an excuse. The knocking is what he really wants, as a way to deal with his anger. He’s probably knocking his pipe against the bamboo ash cylinder right now. But what is he thinking as he knocks? Is he disgusted with his son, or is he too worried about me to sleep? Poor Father! On the other hand, since I’m not thinking about him all that much, maybe he’s not all that worried about me. Then there’s Mother. Whenever she can’t sleep, she goes to the toilet. Then she opens the little window to the garden and washes her hands. But she forgets to lock it and Father yells at her the next morning. I’m sure that’s what happened last night, and it’ll happen again tonight. Sumie is another matter. She’s sound asleep. Of th
at I have no doubt: I can prove it. But that’s all right. It’s just the way she is. When she had me nearby, she’d make herself round and square and use every trick she knew to trap me, but I’m sure she forgot about me as soon as I left. She’s eating three meals a day and sleeping just fine. She seemed so mysterious to me at first because I had never seen anyone like her in a newspaper novel. Some pretty powerful destiny must be at work if I had to fall for a woman like that. I know exactly what she’s up to, damn her, but I guess I’m still crazy about her. What a bind! I can still see her white face hovering before my eyes—that infuriating face! Meanwhile, Tsuyako is awake. And she’s probably crying, poor girl. But what can I do? I’ve never been in love with her, never tried to make her fall in love with me. I can feel sorry for her, but that won’t change anything. I’ll just have to stop caring. Finally, though, what I want more than anything is to be given some unbroken sleep. Sure, I’d like to stuff myself with ordinary white rice, but even more than that, I’d like a bed without bugs. I want to fall fast asleep, if only for half an hour. After that, I could do anything … slit my stomach open …
While thoughts like this were going through my head, the morning came. I guess I must have fallen asleep while thinking, and when I woke up I wasn’t thinking any more. I won’t go into detail about what happened after that—wandering downstairs, washing my face, eating wall mud—since it was the same as the day before. I waited impatiently for nine o’clock, when the infirmary would open, then left the boiler. Having been told that the infirmary was the bluepainted building I had seen two days before on my way up, there was no mistaking the road or the place. I found it a couple hundred yards from the boiler, right next to the road—a wood frame house, but an imposing building nonetheless, certainly far too grand for the savages. That such primitive men became sick at all was amazing in itself, but to think that the mine supplied the sick with the instruments, the medicines, the doctors, and the building to make them well again, I could not help feeling what a strange place the world is. It was as if thieves had pooled their spoils to erect a grammar school and regularly sent their children to it. The two extremes of civilization and barbarism came together in this painted house of blue, and when one had finished influencing the other, it was the barbarism that emerged fitter and more barbaric than ever. Talk about unintended consequences! Such were my thoughts as I approached the infirmary, though from windows along the way, the usual monsters were poking their heads out and staring down at me. The sight of these grotesque faces was enough to shatter my hard-won thoughts. If there had been even one among them like Yasu’s, I would have been revitalized with joy, but every single one of them, as if in a conspiracy, strove to bring savagery to new heights. Men like that didn’t need an infirmary, I concluded.
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