The Miner Page 12

  I was on the verge of clasping my hands together and accepting some small bit of charity from this man I had never seen before in my life. That I was able, finally, to resist was owing to a vague awareness on my part that whatever money he might put together for me out of the goodness of his heart would be gone after I had endured a night or two in a flophouse somewhere, after which I would have to begin wandering aimlessly again. I gallantly declined his offered solatium. This appeared to be an act of great personal integrity—even to me. But close inspection leaves no doubt that it was based on a judgment of where my best advantage lay, as weighed on the scales of desire. The best proof of this is what I said to Mr. Hara as I was declining his offer:

  “Instead, let me become a miner. Since I went to all the trouble to come up here, I want to give it a try, no matter what.”

  “You’re really hung up on this aren’t you?,” he said, cocking his head and looking at me. Finally, almost sighing, he said, “And you’re sure you don’t want to go home?”

  “I can’t go home. I don’t have a home to go to.”

  “But—”

  “It’s true. If I can’t work in the mines, I’ll have to try begging or something.”

  In the course of this give-and-take, I began to find it tremendously easy to talk. The mood came upon me, probably, as a result of my forcing myself to say these things that I knew I shouldn’t say. I suppose you could view the change as a sort of mechanical transformation, but strangely enough, the mechanical transformation had a converse effect on my spirit. As these things I wanted to say began to flow out of me (and the tongue is such a mechanical device that in some situations, some people happily gush things they don’t want to say), as the device gained accelerating force through usage, I became increasingly bold.

  Anyone who wants to criticize me for putting it backward is free to do so: “You first started feeling bold, and that’s why you were able to blurt out what you wanted to say.” All right. But that’s too trite, and insisting on this order will often misrepresent the truth. Those who cannot be satisfied with lies and clichés will admit the justice of what I am saying.

  So I became bold. And the bolder I became, the more determined I was to live there as a miner. The more I chattered on, the more convinced I was that I could become a miner. Through all the complications leading to my flight from home, it had never once occurred to me to go to the mines. Far from it. If becoming a miner had been the fixed purpose of my escape, I would have been, in a way, embarrassed, and might have decided to put off my departure for a week or so until I had had time to think things over more carefully. I was going to run away. That much was definite. But I would do it like a gentleman, one who has never known want. Surely, in my mind, there hadn’t flickered the slightest shadow of a thought to run away for the purpose of becoming a lowly creature who digs in a hole in the ground, a man indistinguishable from a lump of earth. But, clenching my teeth with the cold and carrying on this inescapable give-and-take with Mr. Hara, I began to feel that it had become my predetermined fate—nay, my very calling—to work as a miner. Having conquered the mountains and the clouds and the rain to come this far, it would be inexcusable for me not to become a miner. If my candidacy should be rejected, it would be, for me, a complete loss of face. (The reader may find this comical, but I am describing my emotions at the time with utter sincerity. The funnier others find this, the sorrier I feel for my former self.)

  It remains unclear to me whether I was driven by a strange kind of determination, or a refusal to admit defeat, or simply a fear of collapsing by the wayside if I should dare to head for home. Whatever it was, I pressed Mr. Hara with all the zeal I could muster:

  “I understand your objections, but please hire me anyway. If it turns out I’m really unsuited to the job, I’ll have to face that fact, but I’ve never even tried the work. Give me one or two days, that’s all. Think of it as a trial period. Otherwise, what’s the point of my having come across the mountains? And if it turns out that I can’t handle it, I’ll leave. Just like that. I promise. I would never try to force myself on you if I couldn’t do my fair share of work. But I’m nineteen. I’m young. These are my best working years …”

  I let loose with everything I had, including the very words the woman at the tea stand had spoken to me the day before. Now I see that these were words more appropriate for others to say about me than for me to use in order to sell myself. Mr. Hara laughed a little when he answered me.

  “All right,” he said, “if you want it that badly, there’s nothing I can do. Maybe you were meant to come here. Give it a try. But I’m warning you, it’s going to be tough.” He glanced up toward the red mountain in back of the barracks. Probably checking the weather. I turned my gaze with his. The rain had stopped, but the sky was dark and overcast and almost frightening in its strangeness. Such was the moment my wish came true and I more or less became a man of the mountains. It was then, too, that Mr. Hara’s “It’s going to be tough” began to seem strangely disturbing. A reaction often sets in when people attain their present goals, and suddenly they begin to resent the very fact of the attainment. My feelings bore some resemblance to that when I was granted this oral certificate enabling me to settle here in accordance with my wishes.

  “All right,” Mr. Hara said, speaking somewhat more curtly now, “have a look inside the hole tomorrow morning. I’ll send somebody down to show you around. And then … let’s see … oh, yes! There are a few things I’d better get straight with you before that. People think there’s nothing much to being a miner, but it’s not as easy as you might hear on the outside. A man doesn’t just become a miner right off.” He stared at me for a moment. “With your build, you might not be able to manage it at all. Think you can be satisfied with some other kind of work?” he asked with a hint of pity. I now began to see that you needed a good deal of training and had to work your way up through several ranks before you became a miner. No wonder Chōzō was always making such a fuss, as if it were some great honor.

  “You mean there are other jobs here? Not everybody who works here is a miner?” I asked to confirm my suspicions. Giving no indication that he thought me a fool for asking, Mr. Hara proceeded to explain the organization of the mine.

  “You know, we’ve got ten thousand men in this place. They’re divided up into four groups: diggers, setters, chippers, and miners. A digger is somebody we can’t use as a full-fledged miner—a miner’s helper, you could say. A setter is a kind of carpenter who works in the hole. And then there are the chippers. All they do is chip away at rocks. They’re mostly kids—you know, like the one who came with you. We keep them around for a while until they learn to be miners. That’s pretty much it. A miner gets paid according to what he produces. On a good day, he can make himself one or two yen. A digger gets paid by the day, though. He goes on, year after year, making do with thirty-five sen a day. Out of that, his foreman takes five percent, and if he gets sick or something, his pay is cut in half to seventeen sen, five rin. Out of that he has to pay quilt rental of three sen (though of course he needs two when the weather is cold, for a total of six sen), plus fourteen sen, five rin a day for rice (that’s just rice; whatever goes with it is extra). So, what do you think? If you can’t make it as a miner, are you willing to work as a digger?”

  I didn’t have the energy for a resounding “Yes!” but having come this far there was no way I could refuse and still hold my head up. With as much energy as I could muster, I said, “Yes.”

  I can’t say for sure whether Mr. Hara took my answer for a firm resolution or forced enthusiasm born of false pride, but he responded warmly. “Well, then, come right in,” he said. “And have a look at the hole tomorrow. I’ll send someone to show you around. Anyhow, what with ten thousand men here, and all the gangs they’re divided into, just being in charge of one boiler gives me nothing but headaches from morning to night. They beg me to hire them, so I do, and then they run away … It’s true. Every day, maybe two or three men
. Then you get fellows who keep quiet and mind their own business, and the next thing you know some of them get sick and die. Nothing ever goes right. Hardly a day goes by we don’t have half a dozen funerals … Well, then, if you’re sure you want to work here, give it your best. Step up here and have a seat. Your legs must be tired.”

  Listening to his detailed account, I began to feel that I owed it to him to work with my whole strength at any job they gave me, be it digger or chipper or whatever. In my heart I resolved never to do anything that would cause Mr. Hara grief. (I was nineteen, after all, a simple age.)

  Following his instructions, I wiped my feet and stepped up to the raised wooden floor, where I was sitting when an old woman appeared from the back—so suddenly that she gave me a start.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  With a perfunctory bow, I followed after her. She was a little thing, and from the back she looked delicate, even fragile, but there was a lively spring in her step. She wore a narrow brown sash tied in a simple square knot, and her sparse hair came together in a bun at the nape of her neck, where it was held by a long pin the color of lead. The sleeves of her kimono were fastened with cords. Obviously, she had been hard at work in the kitchen—or, if there was no kitchen, somewhere else in the back—when she was called out to show me the way, which was why she hurried along like this, tail wagging. Or maybe it was because she had spent her life in the mountains. No, probably the boiler did this to everyone. You couldn’t take it easy here. And, starting today, the same would apply to me. As long as I was going to be eating the rice of this boiler, I couldn’t just sit around with my arms folded. Doing everything with this old woman’s energy would be an absolute must. Must. I must. The thought struck me with such force that the “must” charged into my wobbly arms and legs and I felt as though the very cells of my head and chest had changed to some extent. The momentum carried me pounding up the broad stairway after my guide. But no sooner had my head popped up a foot above floor level than my resolution fizzled.

  As my head and shoulders rose up to the second floor, the sight was a shock. Where I was expecting an ordinary room of six or eight mats, the size of this place would have to have been measured in the tens of mats, and they stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see, unobstructed by a single wall or partition of any sort. The place was like a judo gym or a variety theater where the audience crowds together on an unbroken expanse of floor mats, but it was two, maybe three times bigger than that. It felt not so much big as empty. I knew I was seeing floor mats, but I felt as if I were in some vast wilderness. That alone was enough to cause a shock, but into this field had been cut two large sunken hearths, around each of which were huddled some fourteen or fifteen human beings. Cowardly as this may sound, I think the withering of my resolve was owing entirely to these people. It’s true I always used to put on a bold front, but young as I was, I had rarely had the experience of appearing before crowds of complete strangers. Ceremonial occasions make me nervous at the best of times. But here I had suddenly been captured alive by a group of miners, and the sight of this black clump of humanity made me falter somewhat. Now, it would have been an entirely different matter if these had been ordinary human beings.

  Wait, that doesn’t make much sense. If it had been a matter of ordinary human beings having become miners, there wouldn’t have been any problem. But the second my head and shoulders came up through the floor, all parts of this clump turned in my direction as if at a signal. Their faces—well, I admit it, they scared me to death. By which I mean these were not ordinary faces. These were not ordinary human faces. They were pure, unadulterated miner faces. There’s no other way to describe them. People curious to know what a miner’s face is like would have to go and see for themselves. If you insist on more of an explanation, I’ll give it a try. Their cheekbones soared up and up, their chins thrust out, their jaws spread sideways, their eye sockets collapsed inward like caverns, sucking their eyeballs still deeper into their heads, and the wings of their noses dropped down. I suppose I could just say that every trace of flesh had gone into full retreat while every piece of bone had charged outward with victorious shouts. They were so craggy I didn’t know if I was looking at the bones of faces or faces of bone. One interpretation might be that they had aged prematurely as the result of harsh working conditions, but the sheer natural phenomenon of “aging” could never do that. Search all I might, I couldn’t find a hint of warmth or softness anywhere in these faces. In a word, they were savage faces. Mysteriously, the savage physiognomy appeared to be a communal possession of this entire body of men. When the blackened things seated around the hearth turned in my direction, a split second produced a perfectly uniform assemblage of fifteen savage faces. The bunch surrounding the hearth at the far end of the room must have had the same sort of faces—the kind of faces I had seen looking down at me from the barracks windows when I was coming up the hill. Which means the faces of all ten thousand men living in the barracks were probably savage. I was ready to shrivel up and die.

  Just then the old woman swung around and said to me impatiently, “Come over here.” I braced myself and moved toward the savages. When I neared the edge of the hearth at last, she said, “Have a seat,” by which she meant I should find a place to sit, not that there was already someplace designated for me. I avoided the black clump and sat on the open stretch of mats by myself. The savage eyes were glued to me this whole time. None showed the slightest restraint. And no one said a word. Until I could find an opening, there was no way for me to join the group, but sitting out there all alone just made me a target for savage stares. Instead of introducing me, the old woman mechanically ordered me to sit and then she disappeared down the steps, wagging her rear end with its square-knotted sash. I felt as if I had been abandoned in the middle of a variety theater to be ridiculed by a gang of ushers. Of course I didn’t know what to do with myself, which only served to increase my sense of helplessness. I was also freezing cold with nothing on but my kimono. If the savages had to sit around a hearth full of hot coals in May, you know it was cold! All I could do to hide my confusion was unbutton my undershirt and shove my hands in under my arms, draw up my knees and fiddle with my big toes, rub my thighs, and do whatever else I could think of to keep warm and busy. In preparation for times like this, you’re at a big disadvantage if you haven’t mastered the art of sitting with a relaxed expression on your face—or, better yet, with true, inward equanimity. Since there was no hope of attaining such accomplishments at the age of nineteen, I sat there going through the aforementioned catalogue of ridiculous gestures, when suddenly someone cried out, “Hey!”

  At that moment, I happened to be looking down, retying my cotton sash, but when I heard the cry, the cords in the back of my neck yanked my head up like some kind of electrical device. The same faces were assembled there, where they had been before, all eyes turned on me and shining. I didn’t know which face had been the source of the “Hey,” but that didn’t much matter. All were equally savage, and now I saw that all were clearly etched with contempt, derision, and curiosity. I discovered this fact the moment I raised my head, and no sooner had I discovered it than it gave me the most disagreeable feeling. There was nothing for me to do but wait, face raised, until the “Hey” came again. How many seconds this took, I don’t know, but I seem to have remained in this pose for some time in a state of anticipation. Then, unexpectedly, someone said, “Too good for us, huh?”

  The voice that said this was a little huskier than the voice that had said “Hey.” I figured it was a different person speaking. But since the remark itself was not exactly a question calling for an answer (on paper, the “huh?” could be taken for a challenge directed to me, but in fact it was spoken with the crudity of a tattooed gang member cursing me out to his buddies), I continued to remain silent. Inwardly, though, I was pretty shaken up. The only people I had spoken to since coming here had been Mr. Hara and the old woman. Being a woman, she used polite expressio
ns as a matter of course, but Mr. Hara was far more courteous in his speech than I had anticipated—and he was a boss. I had assumed that if even a boss was like this, the ordinary miners couldn’t be very rude, so when this crude language came flying at me out of the blue, I was not so much horrified as dumbfounded. The matter might have been settled right off if I had given tit for tat and either been beaten to a pulp or treated as an equal, but I didn’t try to come up with anything. As a Tokyo native, I should have had a good crack or two ready, but I responded neither in kind nor with a more ordinary retort. Why was that? Because I figured he was too far beneath me to bother with? Or because I didn’t have the guts to open my mouth? I like to think it was the former, but I’m pretty sure it was the latter. Probably it was a little of both. There are plenty of things in this world that you can despise and fear at the same time. There’s nothing contradictory about this.

  Whatever the reason, I didn’t respond to the curse, and the miners, taking this to mean that I intended to let it pass, burst out laughing. And the greater my restraint, the more their laughter must have echoed through the boiler. They were enjoying the chance to make fun of an ordinary person who had strayed into the mine. This was a way to get even with society for snubbing them when they themselves went out of the mine. I was acting as the lone recipient of these miners’ resentment toward society. Until coming to the mine, I had convinced myself that I could not fit into society. Here, in the boiler, the treatment I was receiving all but told me that a person like me would not be allowed to become one of the fellows. I was in a perfect fix, wedged between ordinary society and the society of the miners. When the laughter of these fourteen or fifteen men exploded so close to me, it brought a glow to my face; I felt not so much sad or embarrassed or awkward, but more sorry for myself that I had before me such a group of uniformly heartless brutes. Education was obviously not to be found among them, and I had no intention of making demands of a sort the uneducated could not hope to fulfill. But I assumed they at least possessed the human qualities they had brought with them from their mothers’ wombs. When I heard their outsized laughter, I thought to myself: animals. To me, they were not human. Nowadays, as a result of experience, the gap between the “human” and the “animal” has narrowed for me a good deal, and my considerably duller sensibilities would probably overlook such a minor affront, but the impact of this derisive laughter on a tender new brain that had only been in use for nineteen years was a painful one. Whenever I recall that moment, I feel enormous pity for that sweet, sad little boy, and I want to wrap his whole nervous system in cotton and put it away where it will be safe.