The Miner Read online

  Now, it’s true that I was hungry, but not so hungry that I was about to collapse. I could tell there was a little manjū left in my stomach from before. I could walk if I had to. It was just that my sinking spirit had awakened with a start the moment it was hurled into the middle of that straight street upon leaving the train, at which point the chilly air of the mountain village assaulted my skin through the rays of the setting sun, giving rise to a mental turnabout that resulted in a sudden desire for something to eat. I could get by without eating if I had to. My hunger wasn’t so bad that I was willing to ask Chōzō to feed me. Probably my mouth needed something to chew on, and that made it hard for me to ignore the restaurant signs. When I saw that Chōzō was looking into the shops on both sides as if he had the same thing in mind, my hunger grew worse. In passing through this long, narrow town, I counted nine eateries that looked right for Chōzō and me. When I reached the ninth, I realized that, for all its length, the town was about to come to an end. Another hundred yards and we’d be through it. I was beginning to feel a tremendous letdown when I spotted one more sign on the right: DRINKS/EATS. “This is it,” I thought. “My last chance.” Perhaps the thought was responsible for the intensity with which the thick letters on the shoji beneath the sooty eaves burned themselves into my mind: DRINKS/EATS, SNACKS. And I can still see each word now, indelibly etched on my brain: DRINKS. EATS. SNACKS. Whatever senility may lie in store for me, I know that I shall never lose the ability to write these three words exactly as I saw them then.

  Incredibly, my own lingering glances at my last chance for drinks, eats, and snacks were matched by Chōzō’s concentrated gaze at the shoji. “At last,” I thought, “even the unyielding Chōzō will go in for a bite to eat.” But he did not go in. On the other hand, he did come to a sudden stop. Beyond the shoji, I saw something red moving. Judging from the expression on Chōzō’s face, he seemed to be staring at this red thing. Yes, the red thing was a human being. I had no idea why Chōzō had stopped to stare at this red human being. It was undoubtedly human, but its features were entirely obscure. It was just this gloomy, red thing. I, too, stopped to marvel at this phenomenon when a red blanket came flying out through the shoji door.9 There may be some readers who feel that a blanket should not have been necessary in May, however deep in the mountains this town might have been, but the fact is that this fellow had himself wrapped tightly in a red blanket. On the other hand, the only thing he had on underneath was a handwoven summer kimono, which meant that he wasn’t wearing much more clothing than I was. Of course I discovered only later that he was making do with a single, unlined kimono. At the time he came flying out through the shoji, he was just red.

  Chōzō walked right up to this red fellow and said, “Hey, kid, want a job?”

  Since “Want a job?” was the first question Chōzō had asked me, I thought, “There he goes again, putting somebody to work,” and I observed the two of them with considerable interest. This was when I realized clearly for the first time that Chōzō was a man who would approach anyone he judged to be a suitable young fellow and ask, “Hey, want a job?” It was simply his business to find work for others. He was not recommending me to become a miner because he found me uniquely qualified for the position. He was probably capable of tirelessly repeating “Hey, want a job?” in the same mechanical tone of voice to anyone anywhere. Come to think of it, it was amazing he could continue in this line of work year after year. Not even Chōzō could have been born with a natural gift for asking people, “Hey, want a job?” Like anyone else, he must have been repeating himself by force of circumstances. Viewed in this way, he was a perfectly innocent individual. He pursued this work because he didn’t know how to do anything else, but he gave no sign of anguish at his lack of ability. Indeed, he performed his chosen task with the confident air of a man convinced that there was no one else in the whole, wide world who would be capable of asking, “Hey, want a job?”

  It would have been fun if I had been able to formulate such a replete Theory of Chōzō back then, but having nearly been deserted by my soul, I could not have attained the necessary degree of detachment. No, my Theory of Chōzō has just begun taking shape now for the first time, while I look back at myself as a stranger and set down these recollections of my youth here on paper. It exists only on paper, and I suspect it’s very different from any Theory of Chōzō I had back then.

  As I stood there listening to Chōzō and the red blanket, I realized that Chōzō took absolutely no cognizance of my individuality. (Yes, I know it’s a little funny for me to bring up the question of individuality at this point, and that a ridiculous contradiction is involved when someone who’s just run away from Tokyo and sunk to the depths of becoming a miner starts insisting on his individuality. I almost burst out laughing when I wrote the word here. I’m in a far better position now than I was then if I can feel like laughing when I look back on my past. Back then, laughing was the last thing I wanted to do.) Clearly, Chōzō did not recognize my individuality.

  By which I mean that he had buttonholed this young fellow who had come flying out of the eatery and was urging him to become a miner as if the red blanket were simply another me, using exactly the same tone, the same attitude, the same words, and, I think I may presume to say, the same degree of enthusiasm. Somehow, I found this a little insulting. An explanation for this would go roughly as follows:

  Not even I, who at the time had placed my common sense in hock, could go along with Chōzō’s claim that being a miner was a wonderful profession. I knew full well that the miner ranked only above the ox and the horse among beasts of burden and that it was no honor for me to become one. I may have been thinking that I was the only candidate for a miner, but I had enough sense to know that it was nothing for me to get worked up about when another one suddenly materialized from the door of a tavern in the form of a red blanket. But when I saw that he and I were being treated in exactly the same manner, I felt not so much annoyed that the manner was the same as persuaded that he and I were the same person. I had arrived at the odd conclusion that if the manner of treatment were the same, those receiving that manner of treatment must be the same. (I seem to have stumbled onto that one.) Chōzō was now offering a job to the red blanket, and the red blanket was me. I couldn’t believe that some other person was standing there with a red blanket on. My soul had abandoned me, flown into the red blanket, and was being urged by Chōzō to become a miner. This started me feeling sorry for myself. As long as I was dealing directly with Chōzō, I could forget about my “individuality,” but how pitiful to stand aside and watch myself, as the red blanket, being promised by Chōzō that I would make “lots of money”! I looked hard at the red blanket and, with some disappointment, thought, “So this is the real me.”

  But what really struck me as odd was that the red blanket gave Chōzō the same kind of answer that I had. This young man was the same human being as myself, not just in the red blanket he had on, but down to the very bottom of his heart. I didn’t like this one bit. Another thing that bothered me was Chōzō’s disgustingly impartial manner. He gave no hint whatever that I was more suited to being a miner than the red blanket was. His approach was absolutely mechanical, to the point where I began to feel that I deserved at least a little special treatment as the one who had come first. (This just goes to show what a stubborn thing human vanity is. Here I was, in such desperate circumstances that I was on the verge of becoming a miner, and still I was vain enough to be bothered by something so trivial. This was probably the same sort of phenomenon as “honor among thieves” or “courtesy among beggars.”) I was a lot less bothered by this affront to my vanity, though, than by my realization that the red blanket and I were one and the same.

  The two quickly wound up their business as I stood there blankly, watching in annoyance. Not that Chōzō was so clever: the red blanket was a fool. I don’t mean to dismiss him as a fool by way of contrasting him to myself. In my readiness to go along with Chōzō, in the ease with
which I agreed to become a miner, and in all sorts of other ways, I was just as much of a fool as this young man. If I had to come up with a difference, about the only one I could name would be that he wore a red blanket and I had on my blue-and-white lined kimono. When I call him a fool, I mean it only in the sense that he was just as pitiful a creature as I was, and implying the sympathy of one fool for another.

  And so it came about that Chōzō headed for the copper mine with two fools in tow. The moment I started walking next to the red blanket, though, I noticed that my feeling of annoyance had disappeared. Human thoughts are the most changeable thing in the world. The minute you’re happy to have one, it’s gone. The second you’re pleased to be free of one, it’s back. Maybe a thought is there, maybe it isn’t; you can’t put your finger on it for sure. Once, I was staying at a hot spring, bored, so I borrowed a book from the inn and found it to contain a bunch of nonsense from the Buddhist scriptures. One phrase struck me, though: “The mind is unknowable in all three worlds.”10 The “three worlds” business is a lot of hot air, but I think the part about the mind being unknowable is the kind of thing I’m talking about. True, one person I told this to said I was talking about ideas, not the mind. I didn’t contradict him, since you can call it anything you like. Disputes of this sort are absolutely pointless; they arise because there are lots of people around who are very clever but who don’t know the first thing about the human heart. It frustrates me the way they think that, just because it’s a solid object, the heart stays the same (as long as the worms don’t eat it) year in and year out. And the shocking thing is they openly manipulate other people any way they see fit, educate them, and make them behave according to their own wishes, all based on this cheerful misconception. They don’t realize that water never comes back once it’s flowed away; while you’re dillydallying, it evaporates.

  In any case, you only need to remember here that my earlier annoyance had evaporated by the time I started walking with the red blanket. I was shocked to find myself actually pleased to be walking next to him. On the other hand, this fellow was a real bumpkin from Ibaraki or thereabouts. His pronunciation was funny, as though the words were escaping from his nose. He pronounced potato “p’tater,” but that belongs to a later anecdote. When we first started walking together, I wasn’t too thrilled with the noises he made. And his face was not fully formed. By comparison, Chōzō, with his square jaw and thick lips, was a man of regal presence. In addition, the boy had been running around all his life in the fields of Ibaraki, had never set foot in Tokyo. And his red blanket had a funny stink about it. Still, I was happy to have found a companion in this mountain village who would go with me to the mine. I was aiming to bury myself, but I preferred to be buried with company rather than alone. Going to ruin by yourself is far lonelier than going to ruin with someone else. Rude though it is of me to say this, I didn’t like one thing about the fellow, but I was tremendously pleased and grateful that he would be going to ruin with me. All it took was a few words between us when we started walking to draw us close together—which leads me to suspect that, if I were drowning in a river, I’d probably want to drag a boatman or two down with me. And if it turned out that I had to go to some kind of Hell when I died, I’d probably choose a Hell with demons over one where there was nobody besides me.

  In this way, I suddenly found myself liking the red blanket, and after walking a couple hundred yards, I noticed I was hungry again. It may sound as if I was constantly getting hungry, but this was just a continuation of the earlier hunger, not a new one. To review the order of events: First, my spirit had begun to diffuse and I had left the train when my sense of present reality was at its weakest; then, I had looked straight down the straight road to the mountain at the far end of town and finally returned to normal. This had led to my feeling of hunger, then my awareness that my individuality was being ignored and a strong accompanying feeling of annoyance, which had been followed immediately by the advent of a companion in mining and a partial recovery of my declining energies. This explanation should help you to grasp the sequence resulting in my return to hunger.

  In any case, I was hungry again, but we had already passed the last eatery and were coming to the end of the town. Ahead lay only the dark mountain road. My need was obviously not going to be fulfilled. And the red blanket from Ibaraki, having just eaten, bounded ahead energetically. I gave up. As a last, desperate measure, I spoke to Chōzō.

  “Could you tell me, Chōzō, are we going to cross that mountain?”

  “That one right there? Hell, no! We go left soon,” he said, hurrying along. There was only one thing for me to do.

  “Are we going far? I’m kind of hungry,” I said, confessing my need for food at last.

  “Oh, yeah? You need a sweet potato.” Before the words were out of his mouth he went flying into a potato shop on the left. Amazing: it just happened to be there. Call it (with some exaggeration) a Gift from Heaven. Even now, when I recall how perfectly that moment worked out, I’m not only tickled but downright happy. Of course, the place was not as nice as a potato shop in Tokyo. It was the blackest potato shop I’ve ever seen—almost indescribably so. And it wasn’t just a potato shop, though I couldn’t exactly tell you what they sold besides roasted sweet potatoes. Probably I was too busy eating to remember.

  A moment later, Chōzō emerged from this black potato shop balancing a pile of potatoes in his hands. Having no container, he simply held his hands out to me and said, “Here. Eat.”

  I said only, “Thanks,” and went on looking at these sweet potatoes that had been thrust before my eyes. Not that I was trying to decide which potato to choose. These were not the sort of potatoes that permitted one to indulge in such nice distinctions. They were red and black and emaciated and dampish, the skins were ripped in a few spots, and the exposed sections looked like nothing so much as verdigris. It wouldn’t make any difference which one I happened to grab. On the other hand, you shouldn’t get the idea that I was hanging back out of some queasiness induced by this gruesome potato spectacle. Judging from the condition of my stomach, I had more than enough appetite to appreciate even these pariahs among sweet potatoes. It’s just that, when I had them thrust before me with the command, “Here. Eat,” I felt somehow intimidated and couldn’t simply put my hand out for one. Probably there was something wrong with the way Chōzō had said, “Here. Eat.”

  Meanwhile, Chōzō looked a little frustrated watching me watch the potatoes, and again he said, “Here,” gesturing with that chin of his toward the potatoes and flexing his outstretched wrists as a signal to eat. Come to think of it, he had his hands full, and until I did something to change the situation, Chōzō would not be able to bring a potato to his own mouth, however badly he might want to eat it. His impatience was only natural. Finally, I realized what was happening and stretched my right hand toward the potatoes, arching my arm up and over in a strange sort of way. But as my hand was moving toward its destination, a potato rolled from Chōzō’s hand and fell to the street. Immediately the red blanket picked it up and announced, “This is a good p’tater. I’ll take it.” Which is how I learned that he pronounced potato “p’tater.”

  I recall that I took sweet potatoes from Chōzō twice: three the first time, two later, for a total of five. As I ate them with the pleasure of meeting an old friend, we finally reached the end of the long town, where another event occurred.

  At the end of the town was a bridge. Beneath the bridge was a stream, its blue waters flowing. While it had crossed my mind that the town was coming to an end, I was so taken up with eating the sweet potatoes that I didn’t notice the stream until I was actually on top of the bridge. Suddenly there was the sound of water, and with a start I found myself on the bridge. There was the stream. The water was flowing. (There’s something ridiculous about all this, but if I’m going to narrate things as much in accord with the actual facts as possible, this is probably the best way to write it out. I’ll leave it as is. These are not figu
res of speech, the kind novelists use that are seven-tenths hot air. And if they’re not figures of speech, then it becomes all the more obvious how much I was enjoying those potatoes.) When I was startled by the sound of water and looked over the railing, I saw why the stream made so much noise: it was full of big rocks. They were irregularly shaped and, lying down or thrusting upward, they seemed to be there for the express purpose of blocking the flow. The water was crashing against them, and it was running at an incline. It came dancing down as if it were being pursued, spreading out the force of its fall from the mountains in easy payments. So while it might be called a stream, in fact it was more like a broad waterfall paid out in monthly installments. For a stream with so little water, it was surprisingly turbulent. The water came rushing down with the reckless abandon of a pushy Tokyoite and flowed past, spouting white foam and twisting and turning like blue, sticky strands of candy. It was awfully noisy. Meanwhile, the sun was going down bit by bit. I looked up but couldn’t find anyplace it was shining. There was just a soft glow over where it had sunk down, and the mountains shouldering that portion of the sky stood out greenish-black. The time of year was May, but it was cold. The sound of the water alone made it seem like anything but summer. And the color of that mountain, with the setting sun on its back and its face in shadow—what could you possibly call that color? You could get away with purple or black or green if you simply wanted to give it a name, but how do you set down the way that color felt? The mountain looked as if at any moment it was going to lift up, float over my head, and crunch down on top of me. That was probably what was making me feel so cold. Vaguely aware that, in another hour or so, every last thing all around me was going to turn the same eerie color as that mountain over there, and that Chōzō and Ibaraki and I were going to be wrapped in that single, world-enveloping hue, I must have realized that the color that everything would be in an hour or so was the color of that one special place where the sun was going down, and sensed that at any moment the color of the mountain was going to spread from the one special place to take in everything, and this was what had made me feel as if the mountain was going to lift up and crunch down on top of me—which is the analysis of the situation that I came up with just now, sitting at my desk. I’ll have to stop this. Free time inspires a lot of pointless activity. I was just cold, that’s all—so cold that I began to envy Ibaraki his red blanket.