The Silver Spoon (7 page)

I always thought that the Lord Jizō was a Buddha who looked exactly like the stone buddha who stood at the roadside with his staff.

Brought up solely by my aunt who was born Buddhist, I made no discrimination between animals and humans, and I heard the story of the pitiable baby fox whose parents were skinned alive as if it were happening to myself. The white parent foxes cried out, “Our poor baby! Our poor baby!” even as they were being skinned, I was told. This was the most pitiful of the three stories about a drum that I knew. It was not the drum that fell from heaven, wrapped in a mysterious cloud,
⁵⁴
or the soundless drum that a cruel person is said to have made from brocade,
⁵⁵
but an ordinary drum made from the skins of foxes living in a field of Yamato Province that cried out of love for their child. Even now, when I think of this story, the feeling that I had then stirs my heart.
⁵⁶

My aunt also had all the poems of
One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets
⁵⁷
committed to memory and, after we lay down in bed, would recite them in her uniquely sorrowful tone, patiently making me memorize one or two every night.

“Tachiwakare,”
she would say.

“Tachiwakare,”
I would follow.

“Inaba no yama no.”

“Inaba no yama no.”

“Mine ni ouru.”

“Mine ni ouru.”
⁵⁸

In a while, I would fall asleep. If I memorized a poem well, she would stroke me to sleep, saying, “I'll give you a reward. Now you may sleep.”

Because I memorized the poems rather quickly, my aunt thought I was a great child.

“Last night he memorized
two
poems in no time,” she would proudly tell my mother the next morning.

Without understanding much, I would gather together only the words I knew in each poem and imagine its overall meaning, dimly. Along with the feeling generated by the way it was recited, I was deeply affected by it all. In those days I had an old set of poem cards, each with a poem and a painting. Though the cards were frazzled and the paintings faded, I could still make out, however vaguely, the snow piled on a pine tree
⁵⁹
or a deer standing below maple leaves.
⁶⁰
There was also a book of
One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets
.

My liking and disliking of poems was also determined by the picture on the card, the figure and the face of the poet. Among the poems I liked were
Sue no Matsuyama,
⁶¹
Awaji-shima,
⁶²
and
Ōe-yama.
⁶³
The
Sue no Matsuyama
poem conveyed to my ear an indescribably gentle, lonesome sound, with beautiful waves rolling on the piney shore in the picture on the card. The
Awaji-shima
poem invited tears. There was a boat on the sea, with plovers flying. Each time I heard the
Ōe-yama
poem, I couldn't help remembering a story from a picture book in which a princess, captured by a demon, was taken into the depths of that mountain.
⁶⁴
I intensely hated the wrinkled-up monks such as Abbot Henjō
⁶⁵
and Former Archbishop Gyōson,
⁶⁶
but I thought Semimaru cute partly because of his name.
⁶⁷

19

On snowy nights my aunt, stirring up the charcoal-balls in the foot-warmer, would frighten me by saying that the Snow Monk in a white robe was standing right outside the door. When it was hot, she would fan me because I had a hard time falling asleep. I had preferences even for the pictures on the fan. Inside the fragrant mosquito net, listening to the mosquitoes flying about outside, I would sometimes break a rib of the fan just for the fun of it. A horned owl might come to the bush in the next-door temple and hoot. Then my aunt would say, “I hear the hooter is an evil bird and spits out a thousand mosquitoes in one hoot. We'll have plenty of mosquitoes tomorrow, I'm afraid.”

SANGOJU, SUZUME:
“CORAL TREE” AND SPARROWS

As the cool winds rise, crickets begin to chirp. Once I thought of taking good care of them and put some in a firefly-cage, but after chirping a couple of times they fell silent. I looked in and saw they had all escaped through a hole they made in the silk gauze around the cage. Listening to them, even a child senses that the solitude of autumn has arrived. My aunt said they were saying, “It's gotten cold, now mend the tatters,” while the wet-nurse told my sister they were saying, “Suckle me, suckle me, suckle me, and I'll bite you.”

At times, I would wake early enough in the morning to hear the cawing of crows nesting in the black pines in the Shōrin temple. When that happened, my aunt wouldn't allow me to get out of bed.

“They're the first risers. You must sleep more.”

She would allow me to get out of bed only after the second or third risers cawed. That was her way of keeping me in bed until an appropriate time.

Come evening, a great many sparrows returned to nest in the mound-shaped growth of the “coral tree”
⁶⁸
that was in front of my bedroom and made a din, shaking their heads, sharpening their beaks, and pecking at each other as they vied for better branches. When the sun hid itself and the lingering light faded, even the one or two who, slow to sleep, were still chirping, would fall silent and become quiet. I thought they were my good friends, and when I found myself still in bed even after the third risers among the crows cawed, their chirps as they left their nests sounded as if they were laughing at me for being lazy, and I would hastily get up.

The “coral tree” does not betray its name and bears scarlet seeds. It is a pleasure to pick them after they've fallen and are lying on the soft moss.

20

The space behind our house, about fifty square yards, was half for growing flowers, half for vegetables. In early summer a seedling vendor used to walk by our fence hawking his wares in a cool voice. From time to time my aunt called him in and bought some vegetable seedlings. The boxes he carried were made of straw and stuffed with moist, crumbly earth in which various plants were lively sprouting pairs of leaves. The vendor, a man wearing a sedge hat, scooped them out as if he were handling something very valuable. Each time, my aunt bought a few seedlings of things like eggplants and melons and planted them in the vegetable patch. As the purplish seedlings of eggplants and the seedlings of pumpkins and dishcloth gourds with fine white powder on them stirred their sprouting oval leaves, the two of us sprinkled water on them mornings and evenings. Each time I looked, they had grown, putting out vines and leaves, finally thrashing all over the place, dangling huge fruit. I liked to go out to inspect them.

My aunt, who loved to take care of them, while complaining, put up bamboo sticks to help the vines. Then they spiraled up the sticks one or two twirls a day, and soon among their coarse leaves they put out yellow and purple flowers. Roundish horseflies would come and fly about as though the world were all theirs, before diving into them.

While abortive flowers tumbled down, the bases of the real ones swelled, becoming flat or long and thin, in the end taking the shapes of the so-called “Chinese eggplants” or pumpkin. Eggplants grew like pouches, dishcloth gourds shaped up like blind snakes. Cucumbers had hateful grainy bumps. How happy I was when I brushed aside the leaves and found pods with unexpected seeds in them. Sword beans, kidney beans, scallion flowers resembling a worn-out brush tip.

Once, the “Chinese eggplants” seedlings she bought and planted gradually took on a different appearance, and they finally grew into gourds. I was overjoyed to see the gourds dangling in countless numbers, but my aunt was angry that she'd been duped by the seedling vendor and she would not take proper care of them. So, eventually all of them dropped to the ground. From then on, she decided to get seedlings at a downtown vegetable store. But no matter what the seedling was, she suspected everything was a gourd and would declare to the storekeeper that if it grew into gourds, she'd come back with it, roots and all.

On the mound along the cedar hedge surrounding the vegetable patch, grandmother's chestnuts and the walnuts I'd picked up some place and thrown out there were sprouting up. Also, the impatiens she loved and had planted had scattered their seeds and bloomed on various parts of the lot. Though they are not particularly attractive wildflowers, I too like the impatiens. For the fun of it I used to take a few flowers and dye my fingernails with them. It was amusing to crush the seeds of four-o'clocks and get white powder.
⁶⁹
Apricot flowers, scarlet peach blossoms. There was an old almond tree that put out pale blue blossoms like a puff of cloud. My older brother and I looked forward to them above all else and were very eager to chase away the crows. Its large fruit grew in such clusters that the lower branches bent and touched the ground. Picking the ones we could reach, knocking down the higher ones, we'd carry home the heavy basket between us.

In the flowerbed bloomed tiger lilies and white lilies. Bright or overrich colors used to oppress me. In the case of flowers, one example was the dark-brown pollen thickly covering the heads of the lily stamens.

21

Very close by there was a temple for the Lord Emma.
⁷⁰
When the day the lid of Hell's Cauldron
⁷¹
and the gloomy bell started to toll as though to lure people, my aunt would dress me—how reluctant I was—in a light blue hemp kimono, tie a sash made of Chinese silk crepe high around my chest, and take me out to offer prayers. Since she dressed me in the same kimono at each Bon,
⁷²
eventually the light-blue color itself came to depress me. The space between the narrow precincts and the main gate was closely packed with stalls selling a cup of ice for a nickel,
oden
stew, and sushi. The peepings of balloons and the calls of vendors created an unbearable din in the dust. The shop boys in aprons shrieked as if the Lord Emma were their own. They were the kind of humans I especially disliked.

You went up the few stone steps and entered the red gate that had “thousand-shrine bills”
⁷³
pasted all over it. There on the right was a small Emma hall in which the Lord Emma with a rustic face presided as he was expected to. Inside, the incense was stifling, and the constant clanging of the gong that the town children struck was so painful that I felt my head might shatter. But my aunt had to make me strike the gong a couple of times with a wooden hammer, and would not leave until she had made me look closely at the Lord Emma's face. Then, scarcely giving me pause for breath, she would take me to the main hall where there was the Old Woman of the Three-way River.
⁷⁴
The pale old woman, eye sockets hollow like copper pots, sat with many folds of red and white cotton on her head. The unpleasantness of it all and the exposure to the burning sun never failed to give me a terrible headache. But my aunt was superstitious and every year found one excuse or another to take me to the temple.

On the day of the Nirvana Rite,
⁷⁵
my aunt hung a sooty picture scroll of the Shakyamuni lying on his side and in front of it put a small desk with incense and flowers on it. This worm-eaten scroll and the statue of the black Lord Daikoku on the altar were the only two possessions left to her. As she sat in front of the desk and offered prayers, she would make me light a stick of incense and then would tell me various stories about the Lord Shakyamuni. Those who gathered around him were elephants and lions, asuras, kimnaras, dragons,
⁷⁶
and heavenly beings, all of whom, through the skillful narration of this venerable, superstitious woman, would come alive and start shedding tears. The beautiful person who was looking down from the cloud floating above the paired sāla trees
⁷⁷
was called Lady Maya, the Lord Shakyamuni's mother. The medicine bag she threw down from the Heavens caught on one branch of the sāla trees but no one noticed it, my aunt told me. The Lord Shakyamuni's entrance into nirvana sounded as if it were a parting with a parent, and I wept, feeling sorry for him.

22

Unless it rained my aunt never failed to take me out on the fête day of the Lord Dainichi that was held three times a month. Because I walked clinging to her sleeve, her
haori
⁷⁸
often became lopsided and she had to stop in the middle of the road to adjust it. Sometimes, especially on a crowded street, my grip was so desperate she had to loosen my fingers one by one. I would tie the strings of her
haori
lightly, and she mine somewhat tightly.

At the Lord Dainichi's she would make me throw in coins, and call inside, “May we offer a candle?”

From a glittering corner of the hall would come a response, “Yes, ma'am,” and a young monk would light a candle and put it before the principal image. After mumbling her prayers devoutly, my aunt would announce, “Now we're done,” and make me hold onto her sleeve before we came out of the gate.