The Silver Spoon (9 page)

Slowly the children responded to her and began singing in whispers. Prompted by my aunt, I too started to follow the song secretively, while eyeing all the faces.

As soon as the small ring began turning, my aunt doubled her effort. The song grew louder, the ring turned faster. I'd not yet done any normal walking, and my heart began to pound, I felt dizzy. I wanted to let go, but everyone was absorbed and kept pulling me round and round. At long last the children said,

and all at once closed around my aunt. My aunt said,

and got out of the ring.

Hands thrust forward, still linked, they shook them in rhythm with the song.

The closed lotus flower suddenly opened, jerking my arms apart, almost taking them off. After this was repeated several times, I was tired out by the unaccustomed exercise and the mental exertion. My aunt had to loosen my fingers before taking me home.

27

O-Kuni-san was my first real friend. At first, I couldn't play unless my aunt stayed with me, and stay she did, fully aware I'd been plopped down into that place, as it were. But having made sure that the neighborhood was, unlike Kanda, a world created for a child like me, quiet and safe, she began to leave me alone, after telling me in detail, over and over gain, to go inside the gate when the cart came by, not to go near the ditches, and so on.

When O-Kuni-san and I were face to face, she followed the usual children's formalities on becoming acquainted and asked questions, starting with my father's name, my mother's name, down to the year, the month, and the day of my birth. And when she asked my zodiacal year, I obediently said the Year of the Rooster.

“I was born in the same year,” she said.
⁹³
“Let's be good friends.”

Then we walked about, fluttering our sleeves like wings, saying, “Cluck-a-cluck! cluck-a-cluck!” There's something gratifying about sharing the same birth year, as if you were reliving the past together. O-Kuni-san also complained that her family called her Skinny or Longlegs and I, being sour myself about my family calling me Octopus, sympathized with her. As we talked about various things, we agreed on everything, and it didn't take long for us to become good friends. O-Kuni-san was tawny and thin, with a distinct, shapely nose, and she had bangs, her hair neatly gathered behind and tied with a red piece of cloth.

Sometimes leaning on the worm-eaten gate post, sometimes squatting to play with mud, our faces so close as to make our heads almost touch each other, we chatted away about silly nothings, such as the tooth one of us lost yesterday and a finger pricked on a thorn. And when we became totally content with each other, we just laughed out loud. One of her eyeteeth, I think that was it, was missing, and whenever she laughed, the spot looked like a cave. Having had only my aunt as my companion at home, I quickly began, after I became O-Kuni-san's friend, to acquire ideas about things like what was good and what was bad. But since I, though of the same age, was far behind her, I followed her every word in everything.

In the neighborhood was a girl called O-Mine-chan who was one year older than us. She was not only mean but extremely jealous, so everyone disliked her. But since we met every day, children's courtesy sometimes made it necessary to let her join us. One day O-Kuni-san and I again talked about the Year of the Rooster and were fluttering about, cock-a-cocking, cock-a-cocking. When O-Mine-chan saw this, she declared, “Oh, I was born in the Year of the Monkey!” and, squealing like one, she scratched us.

28

O-Kuni-san's comb was painted red and had a chrysanthemum design lacquered on it. She also had a hairpin with a scarlet and aquamarine crepe ball at its end. Every time she got something new, she showed it to me boastfully. But if I tried to look at it closely, she teased me by hiding it in her sleeve. At such times I regretted I wasn't born a girl, and wondered why boys didn't make themselves as pretty as girls.

When we played Hide-and-Seek, O-Kuni-san would first scare me with stories like “Yesterday the Three-eyed Boy appeared in the bush in the backyard” and “I saw a coiled rock snake.” Then she would make me close my eyes under a damson plum and hide herself. I had to go around the house to the backyard to look for her. Near the corner toward the garden, inside a bamboo fence, they kept two geese that I was intensely afraid of. I tried to sneak by, but they always saw me and, pushing up their heads like the Lord Ebisu's crown, guacked after me. I would finally pass them and walk toward the tea bush, but then there was the next-door neighbor's milk cow, who would stick her head over the fence and moo. Since I was afraid of her too, I would only look halfheartedly in the tea bush and go on to search in the garden. There were many big trees there and it was difficult to find my friend. Looking around, I couldn't see anyone, and I knew the cow and the geese were waiting for my return.

“Are you ready?” I would call tentatively.

In the utter silence, there was only the sound of my voice and nothing else. Did she cheat and go off somewhere? I would begin to wonder, my sense of loneliness increasing. I'd wish that my aunt would come to get me.

“Are you ready?” I would call again. I knew my voice trembled with tears. Then, somewhere near the bamboo bush, a small voice would say, “Ready.”

There she is, I would think, and go near the bush. But just behind the fence the ginkgo trees of the temple rose up black, and among the bamboo stood a confusion of camellias and honey locusts ominously dark. As I stood stiff with fright, wondering if it was true that the Three-eyed Boy had appeared, I would hear a giggle in the depth of the bush. Encouraged, I would go in. But bamboo stumps and roots stuck up everywhere and “it-hurts-it-hurts” grass
⁹⁴
grew all over the place. So for me, whose aunt meticulously cleared the way of every pebble, it was like the Needle Mountain of Hell, impossible to walk. Besides, I imagined snakes coiling all around me. And it was all so eerie. Step by fearful step I pushed myself forward. When I went near enough, O-Kuni-san would jump out of the dark corner, rolling her eyes and crying, “Boo!”

O-KUNI-SAN'S COMB AND HAIRPIN

I knew it was O-Kuni-san, but all the same I would get gooseflesh all over and run away desperately, shouting, “Stop it! Stop it!” That amused her, and she would chase me as if to the end of this world.

Then it would be my turn to hide. But I couldn't hide in the bush, and she knew her grounds well, so she would find me in no time. Sometimes, though, when for some reason she couldn't locate me, she would go into the house and eat cookies. I didn't know that, so, after waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, I would go out and say, “O.K., it's daybreak now!” Then, she would say, “I found you!” and come out munching.

“Here's something for you, too,” she'd say and give me the crumbs of her
kinkatō.

29

We were both very fond of decals. Their oily smell was indescribable. Racing to get the pictures, we would spit on them stickily and, while rubbing them with our fingers, say, “Hurry up and stick, hurry up and stick!”

Then we would place our hands side by side and enjoy stretching and pinching up the skin on the backs of our hands now tattooed with variously colored birds and animals. In a while the decals became dry and our skin itchy, but we would carefully scratch around them. Once we put the same picture on our upper arms to see which of us could keep it on longer. I took care lest my sleeve wear out the picture, but the next morning I saw only the incoherent fragments of it. Breakfast over, I went to see O-Kuni-san with much trepidation.

“I'm sorry, mine's become like this.”

O-Kuni-san indignantly tucked up her sleeve as if to show she was different, only to discover that hers was a mess, too. Widening her eyes, she said, “So has mine!” and laughed merrily.

When the cherry blossoms scattered, we competed in stringing as many petals as we could on a thread.

One day we were playing house in front of O-Kuni-san's foyer with bowls of red bean rice, pretending that wood-sorrel leaves were cucumbers, when O-Mine-chan appeared and said, “Let's play.” At once O-Kuni-san whispered to me, “I don't like her. Let's be mean to her.”

She sneakily collected the catchweeds growing by the fence and suddenly threw some of them at O-Mine-chan, shouting,

“Catchweeds, catchweeds, catch the devil!”

O-Mine-chan wasn't about to be beaten so readily, and threw some back at us. O-Kuni-san gave me half of the ones she was holding, and I threw them at the girl as best I could in retaliation for the daily ill feelings.

“Catchweeds, catchweeds, catch the devil!”

“Catchweeds, catchweeds, catch the devil!”

“Catchweeds, catchweeds, catch the devil!”

Because it was a surprise attack and her force was inferior in number, O-Mine-chan began to run. We chased her and continued to throw wildly. In no time the catchweeds were stuck all over her back. She turned around angrily and glared at us before starting home with the catchweeds hanging onto her. I watched her go, fearful that she might tell her parents, but then she turned back again, stuck out her chin hatefully, and ran away.

Broad-bean leaves swell like a tree frog's belly when you suck on them. This was fun and I kept plucking them in the garden, though I was scolded each time. If you put a petal of the sasanqua flower on your tongue and draw in your breath, it makes a sound like a
hichiriki
flute.
⁹⁵

Come spring, the damson plum
⁹⁶
in front of the foyer emulated a Confucian scholar and put on blossoms like a puff of cloud, and the clear fragrance of the pale blossoms, dazzled by the sun, lingered around it. The children of the neighborhood would gather below and play various games. When we heard them, my aunt would take me out to them and, after whispering instructions in their ears, go home. Though they were all three or four years older than I, they became attached to my aunt, who loved children, and took to calling her Kan-chan's Aunt. They often played with me, protectively, and looked after me like the children that they were. It was odd that, though much bigger than I, they easily lost any game they played with me. When we played tag, no one could catch me, and when we played with tops, mysteriously, no one's hit mine. Before I knew it, I would find myself a winner. When I went home and talked about it proudly, my family would praise me, saying, “Attaboy! Attaboy!”

It took a long time before this dimwit realized they'd treated me like a ninny.

30

Nearby lived a man who peddled millet jelly half the time and did farm work the other half. If the weather was fine, he always came along pulling his cart, blowing his
charamela
⁹⁷
every now and then. The sound of that instrument, which seems to shatter the harmony of everything, was strangely exciting to children, prompting those at home to rush outside, and those playing to stop playing and come, running. An assortment of kids, some sporting sticks on their hips as swords, some with muddy tops pushed into the front of their kimono, would noisily surround the cart. Besides millet jelly, the man carried lucky draws and cheap sweets, so for a while the children would be busily occupied with the red and blue tickets. The man would squish a wooden stick around in the amber-colored jelly stagnating in the tub and bring it up with a shiny ball of jelly on the end. You put it in your mouth and turn the stick, and the dense sweetness melts in your saliva and the ball gets smaller and smaller.