一房の葡萄 English

I

When I was small, I loved to draw pictures.

The school I attended was in a part of Yokohama called the Bluff, a neighborhood where only Westerners lived, and all the teachers at my school were Western as well.

On the way to and from school, I always passed along the waterfront street lined with hotels and Western trading companies.

Standing on the seaward side of the street and looking out, one could see the deep blue water crowded with warships and merchant vessels — some with smoke rising from their funnels, others strung with flags of all nations between their masts — and it was beautiful enough to make your eyes ache.

I would often stand on the shore gazing out at that scene, and when I got home I would try to paint from memory as beautifully as I could everything I had seen.

But that transparent indigo of the sea, and the crimson painted near the waterline of the white-sailed ships, were simply impossible to capture with the paints I had.

No matter how much I painted and repainted, I could never get colors that looked anything like the real scene.

Then one day I thought of the Western watercolors that a classmate of mine owned.

This friend was also a Westerner, and two years older than me besides, so he was a boy I had to look up to quite literally.

Jim's paints were a fine imported set — twelve colors molded into small rectangular cakes like pieces of ink, arranged in two rows inside a light wooden box.

Every color was beautiful, but the indigo and the crimson in particular were astonishingly lovely.

Jim was taller than me, yet his drawings were far worse.

Even so, when those paints were applied, even a clumsy picture somehow looked strikingly beautiful.

I had always envied him for that.

If only I had paints like those, I told myself, I could paint the sea scene so that it truly looked like the sea — and I brooded over my own inferior paints with resentment.

From that day on, I wanted Jim's paints so badly I could hardly bear it.

Yet for some reason I grew timid and could not bring myself to ask Papa or Mama to buy them for me, and so day after day I did nothing but think about those paints in my heart, and the days slipped by.

I no longer remember exactly when it was, but it must have been autumn.

Because the grapes were ripe.

It was the kind of day common in autumn before winter comes — the sky cleared so completely that you felt you could see all the way to the very depths of it.

We ate lunch together with our teacher, but even during that pleasant meal my heart was unsettled and dark, in spite of the day's bright sky.

I sat lost in my own thoughts.

If anyone had noticed me and looked, my face was probably pale.

I had come to want Jim's paints so badly I could not stand it.

I wanted them so much it hurt in my chest.

Certain that Jim must know what I was thinking in my heart, I stole a glance at his face — but Jim, as if he knew nothing at all, was laughing cheerfully and talking with the student sitting beside him.

Yet that laughing seemed to me as though he were laughing because he did know about me, and whatever he was saying seemed to be: "Just you wait — that Japanese boy is sure to steal my paints."

That is how it seemed to me.

I felt sick with myself.

And yet the more Jim seemed to suspect me, the more desperately I wanted those paints.

II

I may have had a pretty face, but I was a child weak in body and in spirit.

On top of that I was a coward, the sort who would swallow what he wanted to say rather than say it.

Because of that, I was not much liked by others, and I had few friends.

When lunch was over, the other children went out to the schoolyard in high spirits and began running around at play, but that day in particular I felt strangely heavy at heart, and I went into the classroom alone.

The brightness outside only made the inside of the classroom darker, and it was like the inside of my heart.

Even as I sat in my seat, my eyes kept darting toward Jim's desk.

If you lifted that lid, all carved over with various idle scratchings from a knife and black with the grime of many hands, you would find inside — among the books and notebooks and a slate — a paint box the color of amber-colored wood.

And inside that box, the small cake-shaped pieces of indigo and crimson paint... I felt my face flush, and I would look away in spite of myself.

Yet almost immediately I could not help glancing sidelong toward Jim's desk again.

My heart was pounding so hard it was painful.

Though I sat perfectly still, my nerves were as agitated as when, in a dream, some demon is chasing you.

The bell clanged to signal the return to the classroom.

I started involuntarily and rose to my feet.

Through the window I could see the students heading out toward the washroom, laughing loudly and shouting.

I felt an eerie chill spreading through my head as if it were turning to ice, and I drifted, half as if in a dream, over to Jim's desk, and lifted the lid.

There, just as I had imagined, mixed in among notebooks and a pencil box, was the familiar paint box.

For reasons I did not understand myself, I looked around in all directions, and deciding no one was watching, I quickly opened the box's lid, and almost before I had picked up the two colors — the indigo and the crimson — I had thrust them into my pocket.

Then I hurried off to the place where we always lined up to wait for the teacher.

Our young woman teacher led us into the classroom and we each took our seats.

I desperately wanted to see what expression Jim had on his face, but I simply could not turn to look in that direction.

Even so, since no one seemed to have noticed what I had done, I was in a state somewhere between unease and relief.

Though what my beloved young woman teacher was saying entered my ears, it made no sense to me whatsoever.

The teacher, too, seemed to glance toward me from time to time with a puzzled look.

That day, however, for some reason I found it particularly unpleasant to meet the teacher's eyes.

In this way an hour passed.

An hour passed while I had the feeling that everyone was whispering to one another.

When the bell rang to dismiss the class, I breathed a sigh of relief.

But once the teacher had gone, I was seized by the elbow by the biggest and cleverest student in my class, who said, "Come over here for a moment."

He had grabbed me by the elbow.

My heart gave an involuntary lurch, the same as when a teacher calls your name after you have neglected your homework.

Yet thinking I had to pretend as well as I could that I knew nothing, I forced myself to appear calm, and was marched reluctantly off to a corner of the schoolyard.

"You have Jim's paints, don't you. Hand them over."

Saying this, the student thrust out his large open hand before me.

At those words, strangely enough, my heart grew calm, and

"I have no such thing,"

I said, and just like that I had told a lie.

Then Jim, who had come to my side along with three or four other classmates, said,

"I checked my paint box properly just before the lunch break. Nothing was missing. Then after the break, two things were gone. And you were the only one in the classroom during the break."

He said this in reply, his voice trembling slightly.

The moment I thought it was all over, blood seemed to rush into my head and my face went bright red.

Then someone who was standing there — I don't remember who — suddenly thrust his hand into my pocket.

I did my best to stop him, but it was many against one, and there was no chance.

In no time, along with some marbles (what we now call glass beads) and lead menko coins, two cakes of paint were pulled out of my pocket.

"There, you see" —

their faces said as much, and the children glared at me with hateful, contemptuous looks.

My body trembled on its own, and it felt as though everything before my eyes was going dark.

It was fine weather, and everyone was running around the schoolyard happily enjoying their break — but I alone was utterly, genuinely crushed.

Why had I done such a thing?

It had become something that could not be undone.

I was finished.

With those thoughts, I — weak child that I was — became lonely and sad, and burst into quiet sobbing.

"Crying won't get you out of it."

The big clever boy said this in a contemptuous, thoroughly scornful voice, and then all of them together seized me as I tried not to move, and began dragging me upstairs.

I resisted with everything I had, but in the end I was hauled by brute force up the staircase.

That was where my beloved homeroom teacher's room was.

Presently Jim knocked at the door of that room.

To knock is to tap on the door to ask whether one may enter.

From inside came the teacher's gentle voice: "Come in."

Her voice could be heard saying it.

There was no moment I dreaded more than entering that room.

The teacher, who had been writing something, looked a little surprised when she saw all of us tumbling in.

But, with the ease of a man despite being a woman, she smoothed back with her right hand the hair that was cut bluntly at the neck, and turned her usual gentle face toward us, tilting her head just slightly, as if to ask what we wanted.

Then the big clever boy stepped forward and told the teacher in detail that I had taken Jim's paints.

The teacher's expression grew slightly clouded, and she looked gravely from face to face among the group and then at mine — for I was on the verge of tears — and she asked me, "Is that true?"

She asked me that.

It was true, but what I could not bear was having my beloved teacher know that I was such a wretched person.

So instead of answering, I broke into real tears.

The teacher gazed at me for a while, and then said quietly to the students, "You may go now."

And with that she sent them all away.

The students trooped downstairs, looking a little unsatisfied.

For a little while the teacher said nothing and did not even look at me, but sat gazing at the nails of her own hands; then presently she rose quietly, came to me, put her arm around my shoulders in a gentle embrace, and asked in a small voice, "Have you returned the paints?"

She asked it in a small voice.

Wanting the teacher to know clearly that I had returned them, I nodded deeply.

"Do you feel that what you did was wrong?"

The second time the teacher asked me this quietly, I could bear it no longer.

No matter how hard I bit my trembling lips, sobs kept escaping me, and tears streamed endlessly from my eyes.

I felt as though I wanted to die right there in the teacher's arms.

"Now, no more crying. If you understand, that is enough — let us stop crying, all right? You don't have to go to the classroom for the next period; stay here in my room. Sit here quietly. Stay here until I come back from class. All right?"

Saying this, she sat me down on the sofa, and then — for the bell for the next lesson had already rung — she picked up her book from the desk, looked back at me, and then, reaching up to the grapevine that had climbed all the way to the second-floor window, she plucked a bunch of Western grapes, placed them on my lap as I sat there quietly weeping, and gently left the room.

III

The students who had been so noisy all at once went into the classroom, and the surroundings fell so suddenly quiet it was startling.

I became terribly, unbearably lonely and sad.

When I thought that I had caused such suffering to a teacher I loved so much, I truly felt that I had done something wrong.

I could not bring myself to eat the grapes at all, and I went on weeping.

Suddenly I felt my shoulder shaken gently, and I opened my eyes.

It seemed that without realizing it I had cried myself to sleep in the teacher's room.

The teacher — slightly slender and tall — was looking down at me with a smile.

Sleep had made me feel better, and for a moment I had forgotten what had happened; I smiled back a little shyly, and hastily reached down to catch the bunch of grapes that was sliding off my lap — but the sad memories came rushing back at once and my smile vanished.

"Don't look so sad. Everyone has gone home by now, so off you go. And tomorrow, whatever happens, you must come to school. I will be sad if I don't see your face. You must come without fail."

Saying this, the teacher quietly slipped the bunch of grapes into my bag.

As always, I walked home along the waterfront, gazing at the sea and the ships, feeling low.

And I ate the grapes, and they were delicious.

But when the next day came, I could not bring myself to go to school.

I wished I might get a stomachache, or a headache, but that particular day not even a single toothache troubled me.

With no other choice, I reluctantly left the house, but walked slowly, lost in thought.

I felt as though I simply could not pass through the school gate.

But when I remembered the teacher's parting words, I found that no matter what, I desperately wanted to see the teacher's face again.

If I did not come, the teacher would surely be sad.

I wanted to be looked at once more with the teacher's gentle eyes.

It was that single thought alone that carried me through the school gate.

And what do you think — the very first thing that happened was Jim came running up as though he had been waiting eagerly for me, and took my hand.

As though yesterday's matter were entirely forgotten, he kindly took my hand and led the bewildered me to the teacher's room.

I had no idea what was happening.

I had been sure that when I came to school, everyone would look at me from a distance and say, "Look, the thieving liar of a Japanese boy has come"

— and had expected to be spoken of badly — so to be treated this way left me feeling almost unsettled.

Perhaps hearing our footsteps, the teacher opened the door before Jim had a chance to knock.

The two of us entered the room.

"Jim, you are such a good boy — you understood what I said so well. Jim says he doesn't need an apology from you. If the two of you become good friends from now on, that is all that matters. Shake hands nicely, both of you."

Saying this, the teacher smiled and brought us face to face with each other.

I felt it was all too easy and stood there fidgeting, but Jim eagerly drew out my dangling hand and gripped it firmly.

I had no idea how to express my joy, and could do nothing but smile with embarrassment.

Jim too was smiling, looking pleased.

The teacher smiled and said to me,

"Were yesterday's grapes good?"

She asked me that.

I turned bright red and said, "Yes,"

and could do nothing but confess it.

"Then I shall give you more."

Saying this, the teacher leaned her body — wrapped in a pure white linen dress — out of the window, plucked a bunch of grapes, held the dusty purple cluster on her pure white left hand, and with a long slender pair of silver scissors cut it cleanly in two at the middle and gave one half each to Jim and to me.

That beautiful sight — the deep purple grapes piled up on the white palm of her hand — I can call to mind clearly even now.

From that time on, I became a slightly better person than before, and a somewhat less timid one, it seems.

Even so, I wonder where that dear, wonderful teacher of mine has gone.

Knowing that I will never meet her again, still even now I think: if only that teacher were here.

Every autumn the grape clusters ripen to a beautiful purple and bloom with their powdery bloom — but the lovely marble-white hands that once held them are nowhere to be found.