グスコーブドリの伝記 English

I. The Forest

Gusko Budori was born deep in the great forest of Ihatov.

His father was a renowned woodcutter named Gusko Nadori, a man who could fell even the largest tree as effortlessly as if he were lulling a baby to sleep.

Budori had a little sister named Neri, and the two of them played in the forest every day.

They sometimes wandered so far off that their father's axe, going choki-choki, choki-choki, could only just be heard in the distance.

There the two of them would gather wild raspberries and steep them in the spring water, or turn their faces to the sky and take turns imitating the call of the mountain dove.

And then, here and there, the birds would begin to answer, crying poo, poo, in their drowsy way.

When their mother was out sowing wheat in the little field before the house, the two children would spread a straw mat on the path and sit there, boiling orchid blossoms in a tin can.

Then all sorts of birds would come sweeping over their tousled heads, crying out as though in greeting, with a great rushing sound.

Once Budori began going to school, the forest grew very lonely through the daytime hours.

In exchange, in the afternoons Budori and Neri would go about the forest writing the names of the trees on their trunks with red clay or bits of charcoal, and singing loudly as they went.

On the white birch where hop vines climbed up from both sides and arched together like a gate, they once wrote:

"NO CUCKOOS ALLOWED THROUGH HERE"

and other things besides.

And so Budori turned ten, and Neri turned seven.

But that year, for some reason, the sun had shone strangely pale ever since spring; the magnolia trees, which always burst into pure white blossom as soon as the snow melted, scarcely flowered at all; sleet fell in wet, heavy showers again and again even into May; and since no real heat came even by the end of July, the wheat that had been sown the year before produced only pale, empty husks with no grain in them, and most of the fruit trees simply dropped their blossoms without bearing fruit.

And when autumn finally came, the chestnut trees still bore nothing but green, unripe burrs, and the oriza — that most important grain which everyone ate every day — did not yield so much as a single kernel.

Out on the moor, a terrible commotion had already broken out.

Budori's father and mother carried firewood out toward the moor again and again, and once winter came his father hauled great logs into town by sled time after time, but they always came home looking discouraged, bringing back only a little flour.

Even so, that winter somehow passed, and the next spring came, and the seed they had so carefully kept in store was sown in the field, but that year turned out to be exactly like the one before.

And when autumn came again, a real famine had set in at last.

By then not a single child came to school anymore.

Budori's father and mother had given up their work entirely.

They would confer together anxiously again and again, and go into town by turns, sometimes coming home with just a handful of millet grains, and sometimes coming home empty-handed with faces gone pale.

And so the family passed that winter eating acorns, kudzu and bracken roots, the soft inner bark of trees, and all manner of other things.

But by the time spring came, both father and mother seemed to be suffering from some terrible sickness.

One day their father sat clutching his head, lost in thought for the longest time, and then suddenly rose up and said,

"I'm going off to the forest to play."

and staggered out of the house, but even after full darkness fell he did not come back.

When the two children asked their mother what had become of their father, she only looked at their faces in silence.

The following evening, as the forest was already turning black, their mother suddenly got up, piled the hearth high with kindling, and made the whole house bright.

Then she said that she was going out to look for their father, and that they were to stay home and eat little by little from the flour in the cupboard, and staggered out of the house just as he had.

When the two children ran after her in tears, she turned around and said, as though scolding them,

"What disobedient children you are."

in a voice like a reprimand.

And then, almost at a run, stumbling as she went, she disappeared into the forest.

The two children went back and forth many times, wandering about in tears.

At last, unable to bear it any longer, they went into the pitch-black forest, wandering here and there near where the hop-vine gate used to be and near the spring, calling for their mother the whole night through.

Among the trees of the forest the stars flickered as though whispering something, and birds, startled again and again, flew through the darkness, but from nowhere did any human voice answer.

At last the two of them made their way home in a daze, and once inside they fell asleep as though dead.

It was past noon that day when Budori opened his eyes.

Remembering what his mother had said about the flour, he opened the cupboard to look, and found that it still held plenty of buckwheat flour and acorns in their sacks.

Budori shook Neri awake, and the two of them licked at the flour and built up a fire in the hearth just as their parents used to do.

After some twenty days had passed in a kind of daze, one day a voice came from the doorway, saying,

"Good day — is anyone home?"

someone said.

Thinking their father had come home, Budori sprang out to look, but it was a sharp-eyed man carrying a basket on his back.

The man drew a round rice cake out of his basket and tossed it down with a plop, saying,

"I've come to help this district through its famine. Now then, eat whatever you like."

The two children stood dumbfounded for a while, and then he said again,

"Go on, eat, eat."

he said once more.

As the two of them began to eat timidly, the man watched them closely and said,

"You're good children, the two of you. But being good children alone won't get you anywhere. Come along with me. Well, the boy's strong enough, and I can't take both of you along anyway. Now then, girl — there's nothing left for you to eat here anymore. Come to town with your uncle. I'll see that you're fed bread every day."

And with that he snatched Neri up in his arms, thrust her into the basket on his back, and just as he was,

"Oh-hoi-hoi. Oh-hoi-hoi."

shouting this, he went out of the house like the wind.

Out in the open, Neri burst into loud crying for the first time, and Budori,

"Thief! Thief!"

crying out through his tears, gave chase, but the man was already running through the meadow far beyond the edge of the forest, and from there only Neri's crying could be heard, faint and trembling.

Budori chased him crying and shouting all the way to the edge of the forest, but at last, exhausted, he collapsed in a heap.

II. The Silkworm-Gut Factory

When Budori suddenly opened his eyes, a strangely flat voice spoke right above his head.

"So you're finally awake. Still think you're in the middle of a famine, do you? Get up and lend me a hand."

Looking up, Budori saw a man wearing a brown mushroom-shaped cap, with a shirt on straight under his overcoat, dangling something he had fashioned out of wire.

"Is the famine over already? What do you want help with?"

Budori asked.

"Stringing nets."

"You're putting up nets here?"

"That's right, I'm putting them up."

"What are the nets for?"

"For raising silkworm gut moths."

Looking over, Budori saw two men had set ladders against the chestnut tree just in front of him and climbed up, and seemed to be working hard at throwing out something like a net and handling it, but no net or thread was visible at all.

"You can raise silkworm gut moths with that?"

"Of course you can. What a bothersome child you are. Hey now, don't say such an ill-omened thing. Why would anyone build a factory in a place where you couldn't raise them? Of course you can raise them. In fact a great many people, myself included, make their living at it."

In a hoarse voice, Budori finally managed to say,

"I see."

he said.

"Besides, this whole forest belongs to me now, bought and paid for, so if you'll lend a hand here that's fine, but if not, I'll have to ask you to go somewhere else. Though I don't suppose there's anywhere you could go and find anything to eat, is there."

Budori nearly burst into tears, but he held himself back at last and said,

"All right, I'll help. But how do you hang up the nets?"

"I'll show you how, of course. With this here."

The man stretched out with both hands the wire, basket-like thing he was holding.

"See here. If you do it like this, it becomes a ladder."

With long strides the man walked over to the chestnut tree on the right and hooked it onto a lower branch.

"Now then, this time you take this net and climb up. Go on, try climbing."

The man handed Budori a strange little ball-shaped thing.

Budori had no choice but to take hold of the ladder with it and climb up, though the rungs were so thin they cut into his hands and feet as if they might tear right through.

"Climb higher. Higher, higher. Then throw that ball I gave you — throw it so it clears the chestnut tree. Throw it up into the sky. What's wrong, are you trembling? What a coward you are. Throw it. Throw it. There, throw it."

Budori had no choice but to throw it with all his strength into the blue sky, and no sooner had he done so than the sun suddenly looked pitch black and he went tumbling headfirst downward.

And before he knew it, the man had caught him.

As the man set Budori down on the ground, he burst out in a fury.

"What a spineless creature you are. What limp, useless nerve. If I hadn't caught you, your head would be split open by now. I'm the one who saved your life. From now on, don't you dare speak rudely to me. Now then, climb that tree over there next. In a little while I'll give you something to eat too."

The man handed Budori a fresh ball.

Budori carried the ladder over to the next tree and threw the ball.

"Good, you're getting quite good at it. Now then, there are plenty more balls. Don't slack off. Any chestnut tree will do."

The man pulled about ten balls out of his pocket, handed them to Budori, and strode off briskly to the other side.

Budori threw about three more, but he grew so short of breath and his whole body ached so unbearably that he could stand it no longer.

Thinking he would go home at last, he headed that way, but to his astonishment the house now had a red clay-pipe chimney fitted to it, and over the doorway hung a sign reading, "Ihatov Silkworm-Gut Factory"

was what it said.

And out from inside, puffing on a pipe, came the man from before.

"There now, child, I've brought you some food. Eat this and put in a bit more work before it gets dark."

"I don't want to anymore. I'm going home."

"Home — you mean that place over there? That's not your home. That's my silkworm-gut factory. That house, and all the forest around here — I've bought every bit of it."

Budori, now quite desperate, said nothing and simply wolfed down the steamed bun the man tossed him, then threw about ten more balls.

That night Budori curled up small and slept in a corner of the building that had once been his own home and was now the silkworm-gut factory.

The man kept a fire burning by the hearth late into the night with three or four strangers, drinking something and talking.

Early the next morning Budori went out into the forest and worked just as he had the day before.

About a month later, once nets had been hung on every chestnut tree in the forest, the silkworm-gut man had five or six boards, each covered thickly with something like millet grains, hung from every tree.

By and by the trees put out buds and the forest turned a deep green.

Then, from the boards hanging in the trees, countless small, pale bluish-white worms climbed up threads in a line onto the branches.

Budori and the others were now made to gather firewood every day.

By the time that firewood had piled up around the house like a small hill, and the chestnut trees had covered their branches with pale bluish-white string-shaped flowers, the worms that had climbed up from the boards had taken on just the color and shape of the chestnut blossoms themselves.

And the chestnut leaves throughout the forest were devoured by those worms until scarcely a shape remained of them.

Not long after that, the worms began spinning large yellow cocoons in every mesh of the nets.

At this the silkworm-gut man went almost mad, driving Budori and the others on with shouted scoldings to gather the cocoons into baskets.

He then took them one after another and boiled them furiously in a pot, drawing out the thread while turning a wheel by hand.

Night and day the three spinning wheels went clattering round and round, drawing out the thread.

By the time the yellow thread made this way had piled up to about half fill the shed, large white moths began fluttering out one after another from the cocoons left outside.

The silkworm-gut man's face took on a look like a demon's; he threw himself into spinning thread with all his might, and brought in four more people from the direction of the moor to work as well.

But the moths kept emerging in ever greater numbers day by day, until at last the whole forest looked as though snow were flying through it.

Then one day six or seven horse-drawn carts arrived, loaded up all the thread made so far, and set off back toward town.

Everyone went off after the carts, one by one.

When the very last cart set out, the silkworm-gut man said to Budori,

"Hey — I'll leave enough food in the house to last you until next spring. Until then, you're to stay here and watch over the forest and the factory."

and, grinning strangely, he hurried off after the cart.

Budori was left behind in a daze.

The inside of the house was filthy, as though a storm had swept through it, and the forest lay wasted and ruined as if it had been struck by a forest fire.

When Budori began tidying up the house and its surroundings the next day, he found an old cardboard box in the spot where the silkworm-gut man used to sit.

Inside it were some ten books, packed in tight.

When he opened them, some were full of drawings of silkworm-gut and diagrams of machines, utterly unreadable to him, while others had pictures of various trees and plants along with their names written beside them.

Budori spent that whole winter earnestly copying the writing and tracing the diagrams in imitation of those books.

When spring came, the man returned once more, bringing six or seven new hands along with him, dressed very grandly.

And from the very next day the same work as the year before began all over again.

The nets were all hung up again, the yellow boards were suspended once more, the worms climbed up onto the branches, and Budori and the others were set to gathering firewood again.

One morning, as Budori and the others were gathering firewood, an earthquake suddenly began, shaking everything violently.

After that, a booming sound came from far off in the distance.

After a while the daylight turned strangely dark, fine ash came sifting down in great drifts, and the whole forest turned pure white.

As Budori and the others crouched dumbfounded beneath the trees, the silkworm-gut man came running up in a great panic.

"Listen, everyone, it's all over now. It's an eruption. The volcano's gone off. The silkworm gut is all buried in ash and dead. Everybody clear out at once. Hey, Budori — if you want to stay here you can, but this time I won't leave you any food. Besides, it's dangerous to stay here. You'd do better to go out to the moor and earn your keep somehow."

No sooner had he said this than he went running off as fast as he could.

By the time Budori went to look at the factory, there was no one there at all.

So Budori, treading forlornly through the white ash marked with everyone's footprints, set out toward the moor.

III. The Marsh Fields

Budori walked half a day through the ash-covered forest, heading toward town.

Every time the wind blew, ash came sifting down from the trees in great sheets, just like smoke or a blizzard.

But the closer he drew to the moor, the thinner and sparser the ash became, until at last the trees looked green again and he could no longer even see his own footprints on the path.

When at last he came clear of the forest, Budori could not help staring wide-eyed.

The moor stretched out before him, all the way to the pure white clouds in the distance, like a beautiful patchwork of pink and green and gray.

Drawing closer, he saw that the pink stretches were covered everywhere with low-growing flowers, over which honeybees busily flitted from blossom to blossom, while the green stretches were thick with grass putting out small ears, and the gray stretches were shallow marshes of mud.

Every one of these was bordered by low, narrow earthen banks, and people were at work with horses, turning up the soil and stirring it about.

As Budori walked on for a while among these fields, he came upon two men in the middle of the road, arguing loudly as though quarreling over something.

The red-bearded man on the right said,

"Whatever happens, I've made up my mind to gamble on it."

Then the other man, a tall old fellow wearing a white sedge hat, said,

"When I tell you to stop, you're to stop. Pile on all the fertilizer you like — you'll get plenty of straw, but you won't get a single grain of rice for it."

"No, sir. By my reckoning, this year's bound to be as hot as the last three years put together. I'll show you three years' harvest in one."

"Stop it. Stop it. I'm telling you to stop."

"No, I won't stop. I've already buried all the blossoms, so this time I'm putting in sixty bags of bean-cake fertilizer, and after that a hundred loads of chicken manure besides. Busy as I am, if I get any busier I'd be glad to hire on help, even a cowpea vine would do."

Budori could not help drawing near and bowing to them.

"In that case, won't you hire me?"

At this the two men looked up with a start, put their hands to their chins, and studied Budori for a while, until the red-bearded man suddenly burst out laughing.

"Well, well. I'll have you handle the horse's rein-pole, then. Come along with me right now. Well then, sink or swim, we'll see how it goes come autumn. Come on, let's go. Truly, this is just the time I'd be glad of help, even a cowpea vine."

The red-bearded man said this, speaking now to Budori, now to the old man, and strode off ahead briskly.

Behind them the old man,

"Not listening to an old man's word — he'll be sorry for it soon enough."

he muttered, and seemed to stand watching them go for a while.

After that, day after day, Budori went into the marsh fields and worked the horse, stirring up the mud.

Day by day the patches of pink and green were trampled down and turned into muddy marsh.

Again and again the horse splashed up muddy water with a great smack, striking everyone full in the face.

As soon as one marsh field was finished, they moved straight on into the next.

The days felt terribly long, until at last Budori could no longer tell whether he was even walking, and it felt as though the mud had turned to taffy and the water to soup.

The wind blew again and again, raising ripples like fish scales on the nearby muddy water and turning the distant water the color of tin.

Overhead, clouds that seemed sweet and faintly sour drifted slowly, slowly by every day, and they looked truly enviable.

After some twenty days had passed like this, the marsh fields were at last completely churned into mud.

From the next morning the master grew quite excited, and together with people who had gathered from all around, planted the whole field thick with oriza seedlings that stood up like little green spears.

When that was done in about ten days, he took Budori and the others along and went out every day to work at the homes of the people who had helped him.

Once that round of work was finally finished, they came back to his own marsh field and began weeding it day after day.

Budori's master's seedlings had grown so large they looked almost black, while the neighboring marsh field was a dim, pale green, so that even from a distance the boundary between the two fields could be seen quite clearly.

When the weeding was finished in about seven days, they went off again to help elsewhere.

But one morning, as the master was passing through his own marsh field with Budori, he suddenly cried "Ah!"

and stood there rooted to the spot.

Looking at him, Budori saw that even his lips had gone the color of water, and he stood staring blankly straight ahead.

"There's disease in it."

the master finally said.

"Does your head hurt or something?"

Budori asked.

"Not me. The oriza. Look there."

The master pointed at the clump of oriza in front of him.

Budori crouched down to examine it.

Sure enough, on every single leaf there were little red spots he had never seen before.

The master silently walked once around the marsh field, downcast, and then started for home.

Budori followed anxiously after him, and the master silently wrung out a cloth in water, laid it on his head, and lay right down on the wooden floor.

Before long the master's wife came running in from outside.

"Is it true there's disease in the oriza?"

"Yes, it's hopeless now."

"Isn't there anything to be done?"

"No use. It's exactly like five years ago."

"That's why I told you to give up your gambling, wasn't it. Didn't the old man warn you the very same way?"

His wife began to cry, helpless and distraught.

At this the master suddenly perked up and sat bolt upright.

"All right. Am I, one of the great farmers of the Ihatov moor you could count on your fingers, going to be beaten by a thing like this? No. Next year I'll do it for sure. Budori, ever since you came to my house you haven't slept a single full night, have you. Well then, five days, ten days, whatever it takes — go sleep like a log. Afterward I'll show you an amusing trick out there in the marsh field. In return, this winter the whole household will eat nothing but buckwheat. You like buckwheat, don't you."

Then the master briskly put on his hat and went out.

Budori meant to go into the barn and sleep as he had been told, but he could not stop worrying about the marsh field, so he trudged slowly over to have another look.

There, having arrived who knows when, the master stood alone on the embankment with his arms folded.

Looking at the marsh field, Budori saw it was full of water, the oriza plants barely showing their leaves above it, and on the surface floated a glistening film of oil.

The master said,

"Right now I'm trying to steam this disease to death."

"Does the oil kill the seeds of the disease?"

Budori asked, and the master said,

"If a person got oil poured clean over his head, he'd die too."

and, saying this, he drew a sharp breath and hunched his shoulders.

Just then, the owner of the marsh field downstream came running up, shoulders squared, out of breath, and shouted in a loud voice,

"What do you mean putting oil in the water? It's all flowing down and coming onto my side!"

The master answered with a desperate sort of calm.

"What do I mean putting oil in the water — the oriza's caught disease, that's why I'm putting oil in the water."

"Then why are you letting it flow onto my side?"

"Why am I letting it flow onto your side — the water flows, so naturally the oil flows along with it."

"Then why don't you shut your sluice gate so the water doesn't come onto my side?"

"Why don't I shut the sluice gate so the water doesn't go onto your side — because that's not my sluice gate to shut, that's why."

The neighboring man grew furious and could no longer speak; he plunged straight into the water and began piling up mud at his own sluice gate.

The master smiled a sly little smile.

"That man's a difficult one, you see. If I'd shut the water off myself, he'd have raged at me for shutting it. So I got him to shut it himself on purpose. Once that gate's shut, by tonight the water will rise right up over the heads of the grass. Now then, let's go home."

The master went ahead and set off briskly for home.

The next morning Budori went out to the marsh field with the master again.

The master took a leaf from the water and examined it over and over, but his face still would not brighten.

It was the same the next day.

It was the same the day after that.

It was the same the day after that.

On the following morning, the master finally spoke as though he had made up his mind.

"Now then, Budori, it's time at last to sow buckwheat here. Go over there and break open the neighbor's sluice gate."

Budori went and broke it open just as he was told.

The oily water went rushing into the neighbor's field with tremendous force.

Budori thought surely the man would come raging again, and sure enough, around noon the neighboring owner came striding up carrying a great sickle.

"Hey! What do you mean sending oil into another man's field?"

The master answered again, his voice coming from deep in his belly.

"What's so bad about oil flowing in, anyway?"

"Won't it kill all the oriza?"

"Whether it kills all the oriza or not — first go take a look at the oriza in my marsh field. It's been four days now since I started dousing it with oil, and just look how it's turned out. What's gone red is from the disease, and what's growing strong is from the oil. In your field the oil's only passing through around the roots of the oriza. If anything, it might do you some good."

"Does oil work as fertilizer, then?"

The other man's expression softened a little.

"I don't know whether oil makes good fertilizer or not, but in any case, isn't oil still oil?"

"Well, oil is oil, that's true enough."

The man's mood cleared entirely and he laughed.

The water drained away steadily, and the oriza plants came into view right down to their roots, before everyone's eyes.

They were covered all over with red blotches, looking quite scorched.

"Well then, in my field it's time to harvest the oriza."

the master said with a laugh, and then, together with Budori, cut down the oriza plants one after another, sowing buckwheat and covering it with soil right behind them as they went.

And that year, just as the master had said, the household ate nothing but buckwheat.

When the next spring came the master said,

"Budori, this year the marsh field is a third smaller than last year, so the work should be a good deal easier. In exchange, I want you to study hard from now on out of the books my dead son used to read, and figure out how to grow such splendid oriza that all those people who used to laugh at me for a gambler will be struck dumb."

and he handed Budori a whole pile of various books.

Budori read through them one after another in whatever spare time he found from his work.

Among them, a book teaching the way of thinking of a man called Kubo was especially interesting, and he read it over and over.

He also learned that this man ran a one-month school in the city of Ihatov, and he found himself longing very much to go and study there.

And already that very summer, Budori achieved a great feat.

It happened that, at about the same time as the year before, the oriza began to show signs of disease again, but this time Budori checked it using wood ash and salt.

By the middle of August the oriza plants all put out their ears together, small white flowers blooming along every branch of every ear, the flowers gradually turning into water-colored grains of rice, which rippled in waves whenever the wind blew.

The master was now at the very height of his pride.

To everyone who came by,

"Well now, I may have failed at my oriza gambling four years running, but this year I'll bring in four years' worth all at once. This too turns out to be no bad thing after all."

he would boast, saying things like that.

But the following year did not go so well.

Since scarcely any rain fell from the time of transplanting onward, the water channels dried up completely, cracks opened in the marsh, and the autumn harvest was barely enough to last through the winter.

They told themselves that surely next year would be better, but the year after that brought the very same drought.

After that too, telling himself again and again that surely next year, surely next year, Budori's master gradually found himself unable to buy fertilizer, sold off his horse, and little by little sold off his marsh fields as well.

One autumn day, the master spoke to Budori with a pained look.

"Budori, I was once a great farmer of Ihatov myself, and I earned my share too, but between the repeated cold spells and droughts, my marsh fields have now shrunk to a third of what they once were, and next year I won't even have fertilizer to put in. And it's not just me. Come next year, I doubt there'll be more than a handful of people left in all Ihatov who can afford to buy fertilizer and put it in. Things being as they are, there's no telling when I'll ever be able to properly thank you for your work. It would be too pitiful for you to spend the best years of your youth working away here with me, so I'm sorry, but please take this and go wherever you like to find your fortune."

And the master gave Budori a bag of money, a new suit of indigo-dyed hemp, and a pair of red leather shoes.

Budori forgot entirely how hard the work had been until now, and thought he wanted nothing else but to go on working there, but thinking it over, he realized there was not really enough work left for him even if he stayed, so he thanked the master again and again, and, taking his leave of the marsh field and the master he had worked for over six years, set out walking toward the train station.

IV. The Great Scholar Dr. Kubo

Budori walked for about two hours and came to the train station.

There he bought a ticket and boarded the train bound for Ihatov.

The train ran on at full speed, sending marsh field after marsh field flying away behind it.

Beyond them, many dark forests, changing shape one after another, were likewise left behind.

Budori's heart was full of all manner of thoughts.

Thinking of how soon he would reach the city of Ihatov and meet that kind man named Kubo who had written the book, and how, if it were at all possible, he wanted to work and study at the same time, and find ways so that no one would have to suffer so cruelly to grow crops in the marsh fields, and to find some means of guarding against volcanic ash and drought and cold — even the train felt unbearably slow to him.

The train reached the city of Ihatov past noon that day.

The moment he stepped outside the station, Budori stood stock-still for a while in a daze, struck by some rumbling sound that seemed to well up from beneath the ground, by the murky, heavy air, and by the many automobiles going back and forth.

At last he collected himself and asked the people nearby the way to Dr. Kubo's school.

No matter whom he asked, everyone looked at Budori's terribly earnest face as though about to burst out laughing, and said things like,

"Never heard of any such school."

or,

"Go on another five or six blocks and ask there."

and so on.

It was already nearly evening by the time Budori finally found the school.

On the second floor of the large, half-crumbling white building, someone was speaking in a loud voice.

"Good day."

Budori called out loudly.

No one came out.

"Good daaay."

Budori called out as loudly as he possibly could.

At once a great gray face appeared at a second-floor window right above his head, two eyeglass lenses flashing brightly.

Then,

"Class is in session, you noisy fellow. If you've got business here, come on up."

he barked, and pulled his face back in at once; inside, a great burst of laughter went up from the crowd, and the man went right on talking loudly, paying it no mind at all.

So Budori made up his mind and climbed the stairs as quietly as he could, and when he reached the door at the top of the staircase, which stood open, an enormous classroom appeared directly before him.

Inside it was packed tight with students dressed in all sorts of clothing.

Across the way was a great black wall marked all over with many white lines, and the tall, bespectacled man from before was pointing here and there at a model shaped like a great tower frame, explaining something to everyone in that same loud voice as before.

The moment Budori saw it, he thought: ah, this must be that model of the history of histories written about in the teacher's book.

The teacher laughed and turned a handle.

The model clicked and shifted into the shape of some strange ship.

He turned the handle again with another click, and this time the model changed into the shape of a great centipede.

Everyone kept tilting their heads as though they could not make sense of it at all, but to Budori it was simply fascinating.

"And so we get this diagram."

The teacher rapidly drew another intricate diagram on the black wall.

He held a piece of chalk in his left hand too, and drew briskly with both.

All the students earnestly copied him.

Budori too took out from inside his coat the grubby notebook he had carried all through his years at the marsh field, and copied down the diagram.

The teacher, having finished drawing, stood bolt upright on the platform, sweeping his eyes over the students' seats one after another.

Budori too finished copying it down and was studying the diagram from every angle when the student beside him

"Ahhh."

gave a yawn.

Budori quietly asked,

"Excuse me, what is this teacher's name?"

The student answered with a scornful little snort, as though mocking him,

"Why, the Great Scholar Dr. Kubo. Didn't you even know that?"

Then, looking Budori up and down,

"There's no way you could draw a diagram like that right off the bat. Even I've been listening to this same lecture for six years now."

he said, and tucked his own notebook away inside his coat.

Just then the classroom lights flicked on.

It was already evening.

The great scholar said from across the room,

"Now evening has arrived at last, and my humble lecture is likewise concluded for the day. Those among you who wish it should, as is customary, show me your notebooks, and after answering a few questions, have your standing determined."

The students all cried out at once and hurriedly closed their notebooks.

Most of them simply went straight home as they were, but fifty or sixty of them lined up and filed past the great scholar, opening their notebooks to show him.

The great scholar would glance at each one briefly, ask a question or two, and then write on the collar with chalk: "Pass"

or "Try Again"

or "Try Harder"

and so on.

All the while the students stood hunched with their necks drawn in, looking terribly anxious, and then would slip out quietly into the corridor, shoulders drawn up, and have a friend read them the mark, either delighted or crestfallen.

The examinations went on quickly one after another, until at last only Budori remained.

When Budori took out his small, grubby notebook, the great scholar gave a huge yawn, bending down and pressing his eyes so close to the notebook that it seemed almost about to be sucked right into him.

But then the great scholar drew a satisfied little breath and said, "Very good. This diagram is drawn exceedingly correctly. And what's this other part? Ah — something about fertilizer for marsh fields, and horse feed, is it? Well then, answer me this question. What kinds of colors does the smoke coming out of a factory chimney come in?"

Budori answered in a loud voice before he knew it,

"Black, brown, yellow, gray, white, colorless. And also mixtures of these."

The great scholar laughed.

"Colorless smoke is an excellent answer. Now tell me about its shape."

"When there's no wind and a fair amount of smoke, it forms a vertical column, but the top gradually spreads out. On days when the clouds hang very low, the column rises right up to the clouds and spreads out sideways from there. On windy days the column slants, and the degree of slant follows the strength of the wind. Waves, or breaking into several pieces, happen partly because of the wind, but also because of quirks belonging to the smoke itself or to the chimney. When there's very little smoke it can even take the shape of a corkscrew, and if heavy gases are mixed into the smoke, it may fall in a cluster from the mouth of the chimney, dropping down in one direction or even in all four."

The great scholar laughed again.

"Very good. What sort of work do you do?"

"I've come here to find work."

"There's interesting work to be had. I'll give you a card — go there at once."

The scholar took out a card, scribbled something onto it swiftly, and handed it to Budori.

As Budori bowed and turned to go out the door, the great scholar answered with a glance and muttered under his breath,

"Hm, is someone burning trash somewhere?"

and, tossing chalk stubs and a handkerchief and books all together into the bag on the table, tucked it under his arm and darted straight out through the window he had first put his face out of.

Startled, Budori ran to the window to look, and there was the great scholar already aboard a small, toy-like airship, gripping the controls himself, flying straight off into the distance over a town now filled with pale blue haze.

As Budori stared on in utter astonishment, before long the great scholar came down onto the flat roof of a large gray building across the way, moored the ship to something like a hook, and then popped straight into the building and disappeared from sight.

V. The Ihatov Volcano Bureau

Following the address on the card the great scholar had given him, Budori at last arrived at a large brown building, behind which a tall pillar shaped something like a cluster stood out sharply white against the night sky.

Budori climbed the entrance steps and rang the bell, and at once someone came out, took the card Budori held out, glanced at it once, and immediately showed Budori into a large room at the end of the hall.

There stood a table larger than any Budori had ever seen, and in the middle of it sat a distinguished, kindly-looking man whose hair had begun to turn white, sitting up straight with a telephone receiver to his ear, writing something down.

Seeing Budori come in, he pointed at once to a chair beside him, and went on writing without pause.

Covering the entire right-hand wall of the room was a beautifully colored large-scale model map of all Ihatov, showing at a glance every railway, town, river, and moor, and along the spine-like mountain range running through the middle, as well as the range that traced the coastline like a border, and the further line of mountains branching off from it to form a scattering of islands out in the sea — all of these were lit up with red, orange, and yellow lights, which kept changing color in turn, buzzing like cicadas, and displaying and clearing away numbers.

On the shelves along the lower wall stood something like black typewriters, lined up in three rows numbering easily a hundred or more, all quietly moving and clicking away.

Budori was gazing at all this, lost in himself, when the man set down the receiver with a click, drew a card case from inside his coat, and, offering Budori a card, said, "Are you Gusko Budori? I am this person here."

he said.

Looking at it, Budori saw it read: [Ihatov Volcano Bureau Engineer Pennennaam].

Seeing that Budori, unaccustomed to such greetings, stood fidgeting awkwardly, the man spoke again, kindly.

"Dr. Kubo telephoned a little while ago, so I've been expecting you. Well then, from now on, work here and study hard while you do. The work here only began last year, but it carries a very great responsibility, and half of it means working right on top of volcanoes that might erupt at any moment. And the habits of a volcano are not the sort of thing one can easily grasp through learning alone. We're going to have to work very hard indeed from here on. For tonight there's a place for you to stay over there, so rest well. Tomorrow I'll show you all around the whole building."

The next morning, old engineer Pennen took Budori around, showing him through the building one section at a time, and explaining the various machines and mechanisms in detail.

Every instrument in that building was connected to every one of the three hundred-odd active and dormant volcanoes throughout Ihatov, and not only the smoke and ash they spewed and the lava they flowed, but even in the case of old volcanoes that appeared perfectly still, the state of the lava and gases within them, and even changes in the shape of the mountains, all appeared as numbers or diagrams.

And every time a violent change occurred, each model would sound out with its own distinct note.

From that day on Budori studied under old engineer Pennen, learning how to handle every instrument and how to make observations, working and studying with all his heart both day and night.

After about two years had passed, Budori was sent out along with the others to install instruments at volcanoes here and there, and also sent out to repair instruments already installed that had gone bad, so that by now the three hundred-odd volcanoes of Ihatov and the way each of them behaved had become as familiar to Budori as the palm of his own hand.

In fact, in Ihatov there were seventy-some active volcanoes putting out smoke or flowing lava every single day, and fifty-some dormant volcanoes venting various gases or letting out hot water.

And among the remaining hundred and sixty or seventy extinct volcanoes, there were some that no one could say might not start up again at any time.

One day, as Budori was working alongside the old engineer, the instruments suddenly began registering violent activity from Sanmutori, a volcano on the southern coast.

The old engineer cried out.

"Budori — Sanmutori showed nothing at all as of this morning, did it."

"No, sir, I've never once seen Sanmutori active before now."

"Ah, this means an eruption is close at hand. This morning's earthquake must have set it off. Ten kilometers north of this mountain lies the city of Sanmutori. If it erupts now, it will likely blow off a third of the mountain on its northern side, and rocks the size of cattle or tables will come raining down on Sanmutori city along with hot ash and gas. Whatever happens, we must drill into the side facing the sea right away, open up a wound in it, and either bleed off the gas or draw off the lava. Let's go take a look at once, the two of us."

The two of them made ready at once and boarded the train bound for Sanmutori.

VI. Mount Sanmutori

The two of them reached the city of Sanmutori the next morning, and around noon climbed up near the summit of Mount Sanmutori to the hut where the observation instruments were kept.

That spot lay where the outer rim of Mount Sanmutori's old crater had broken away toward the sea, and looking out from the hut's window, the sea appeared as a series of blue and gray stripes, across which several steamships slid, trailing black smoke and silvery wakes.

The old engineer quietly checked over every observation instrument, and then said to Budori,

"How many more days do you think it will be before this mountain erupts?"

"I don't think it will hold for a month."

"Not a month — it won't even hold ten days. If we don't get the construction done quickly, it will be too late to undo. I believe the weakest point on this mountain's seaward face is over there."

The old engineer pointed to a pale green meadow above a ravine on the mountainside.

Across it, the shadow of a cloud slid quietly by in blue.

"Over there there are only two layers of lava. The rest is soft volcanic ash and cinders. And there's already a good pasture road running all the way there, so hauling in materials will be no trouble at all. I'll put in a request for a construction crew."

The old engineer set busily to sending word to the bureau.

Just then, beneath their feet, a faint muttering sound arose, and the observation hut creaked and groaned for a while.

The old engineer stepped away from the instruments.

"The bureau says they'll send out a construction crew right away. Though calling it a construction crew, it's half a suicide squad, really. I've never in my life undertaken work with such danger pressing so close."

"Do you think it can be done within ten days?"

"It certainly can be done. Three days for setting up the equipment, and five days to run the power line from the Sanmutori city power plant."

The engineer counted on his fingers for a while, thinking it over, and then, seeming reassured, spoke quietly again.

"Well, Budori, in any case, shall we boil some tea and have a cup? The view is simply too fine to waste."

Budori lit the alcohol lamp he had brought along and began boiling water for tea.

Clouds gradually gathered in the sky, and perhaps the sun had already set, for the sea turned a lonely gray, and countless white-capped waves came rushing all at once against the foot of the volcano.

All at once Budori spotted, right before his eyes, that same oddly shaped little airship he had seen once before, flying toward them.

The old engineer sprang up too.

"Ah, Kubo's come."

Budori too rushed out of the hut right after him.

The airship had already come to rest atop the great rock wall to the left of the hut, and from inside, the tall figure of the great scholar Dr. Kubo leapt lightly down.

The scholar searched about for a while among the rocks nearby for a large crevice, and, apparently finding one at last, quickly tightened a screw and moored the airship to it.

"I've come to get some tea. Is it shaking?"

the great scholar said with a grin.

The old engineer answered,

"Not that badly yet. But it does seem that rocks keep crumbling and falling from above."

Just at that moment the mountain suddenly began to roar as though enraged, and Budori felt as though everything before his eyes had turned blue.

The mountain shook and shook without stopping.

Looking around, Budori saw that both the great scholar and the old engineer had crouched down and were clinging to the rocks, and the airship too swayed slowly, like a boat riding a great wave.

The earthquake finally died down, and the great scholar got up and strode briskly into the hut.

Inside, the tea had spilled over, and the alcohol was burning with a pale blue, flickering flame.

The great scholar checked over every instrument thoroughly, and then had a long talk with the old engineer.

At the end of it he said,

"There's no way around it — next year we absolutely must finish building the tidal power plant, all of it. Once that's done, we'll be able to handle a case like this the very same day it arises, and we'll also be able to make it rain fertilizer over the marsh fields, the very thing Budori's always talking about."

"And droughts won't be the least bit frightening anymore either."

engineer Pennen added.

Budori's heart leapt with excitement.

It felt to him as though even the mountain itself were dancing with joy.

In fact, the mountain shook violently again just then, and Budori found himself thrown down onto the floor.

The great scholar said,

"We'll do it, we'll do it. That last one must have been felt quite strongly even in Sanmutori city."

The old engineer said,

"That last one — about a kilometer north of where we're standing, some seven hundred meters below the surface, a mass of rock roughly sixty or seventy times the size of this hut seems to have dropped into the lava. But before the gas finally blows off that last crust of rock, it will have to swallow up a hundred or two hundred such masses into itself."

The great scholar thought it over for a while, and then said,

"Well then, I'll take my leave now."

and, going out of the hut, was soon aboard his ship in one light bound.

The old engineer and Budori watched the great scholar wave his lamp two or three times in farewell as he went off around the mountain and out of sight, and then went back inside the hut and took turns sleeping and keeping watch on the instruments.

At dawn, when the construction crew arrived at the foot of the mountain, the old engineer left Budori alone in the hut and went down to that same meadow he had pointed out the day before.

Whenever the wind blew up from below, the voices of the workers and the clatter of the iron materials against one another could be heard as clearly as if right at hand.

Engineer Pennen kept sending word without pause about how the work down there was progressing, and also kept asking about the gas pressure and any changes in the shape of the mountain.

For the three days that followed, amid violent earthquakes and rumblings, both Budori up above and the crew below scarcely had a moment to sleep at all.

On the morning of the fourth day, a message came from the old engineer.

"Budori — everything's ready now. Hurry down at once. Check the observation instruments one last time and leave them as they are, but bring all the record charts with you. That hut won't be standing anymore by this afternoon."

Budori did exactly as he was told and went down the mountain.

There, the great steel materials that had been sitting in the bureau's storehouse were now fully assembled into a tower, and the various instruments only needed the electric current to reach them to start working at once.

Engineer Pennen's cheeks had grown hollow, and the members of the construction crew too were pale, their eyes alone shining brightly, yet every one of them smiled and greeted Budori.

The old engineer said,

"Well then, let's pull back. Everyone get ready and board the cars."

Everyone hurried aboard twenty automobiles.

The cars formed a line and raced off along the foot of the mountain straight toward Sanmutori city.

Right at the midpoint between the mountain and the city, the engineer had the cars stop.

"Pitch the tents here. Everyone's to sleep now."

Without a word, everyone did exactly as they were told and fell asleep as though collapsing where they stood.

That afternoon, the old engineer set down the receiver and shouted.

"Now the power line's connected. Budori, we're starting."

The old engineer flipped the switch.

Budori and the others came out of the tents and stared at the middle slope of Mount Sanmutori.

The field before them was covered everywhere with white lilies, and beyond it Mount Sanmutori stood blue and hushed.

All at once the left flank of Sanmutori shuddered violently, and just as pitch-black smoke shot up, it rose straight into the sky, taking on a strange mushroom shape, while golden lava came pouring glittering from its base, spreading in a fan before their eyes as it flowed down into the sea.

No sooner had this happened than the ground shook violently, the lilies swayed all as one, and then a tremendous roaring sound came at them, strong enough to knock everyone off their feet.

After that a great gust of wind swept past.

"We did it! We did it!"

everyone cried out loudly, reaching their hands toward the mountain.

At this the smoke from Sanmutori spread crumbling across the whole sky, and in an instant the sky turned pitch black, and hot pebbles came pattering down in a rushing shower.

Everyone took shelter inside the tents, anxious, but engineer Pennen, checking his watch, said,

"Budori, it's gone well. There's no more danger at all now. Toward the city it'll only mean a light fall of ash."

he said.

The pebbles gradually turned into ash.

Before long that too thinned out, and everyone dashed back outside the tents.

The whole field had turned a uniform mouse gray, ash lay piled about an inch deep, all the lilies had been broken and buried in ash, and the sky had taken on a strange greenish color.

And at the foot of Sanmutori a small new hump had formed, from which gray smoke was still rising steadily.

That evening, everyone climbed the mountain once more, treading through ash and pebbles, to install new observation instruments, and then went home.

VII. The Sea of Clouds

Over the four years that followed, exactly as the great scholar Kubo had planned, some two hundred tidal power plants were set up all along the coast of Ihatov.

On the volcanoes ringing Ihatov, white-painted iron towers rose up one after another alongside the observation huts.

Budori, now an assistant engineer, spent most of the year traveling from volcano to volcano, and doing construction work on volcanoes that had grown dangerous.

The following spring, the Ihatov Volcano Bureau put up the following poster in villages and towns.

"We Will Make Nitrogen Fertilizer Fall From the Sky.

This summer, along with the rain, we will be releasing ammonium nitrate over everyone's marsh fields and vegetable fields, so anyone who uses fertilizer should calculate their needs taking this amount into account.

The quantity will be one hundred and twenty kilograms per hundred square meters.

We will also cause a little rain to fall.

In the event of drought, we will in any case be able to bring enough rain to keep crops from withering, so this year please go ahead and plant, without worry, even those marsh fields you had given up planting until now for lack of water."

In June of that year, Budori was in the hut atop Mount Ihatov, the volcano standing right at the center of Ihatov.

Below him stretched a sea of clouds, gray as far as the eye could see.

Here and there across it, the peaks of every volcano in Ihatov rose up black, just like islands.

Just above that sea of clouds, a single airship, trailing pure white smoke from its stern, flew back and forth from peak to peak, as though laying a bridge between them.

That trail of smoke grew thicker and clearer as time passed, settling quietly down over the sea of clouds below, until before long a great net, glowing faintly white, was stretched from mountain to mountain across the whole sea of clouds.

Before long the airship stopped releasing smoke, circled for a while as if in farewell, and then, dipping its bow, sank quietly down into the clouds.

The telephone receiver buzzed.

It was engineer Pennen's voice.

"The airship's just come back. Everything down below is fully ready. The rain's coming down in sheets. I think it's about time now. Go ahead and start."

Budori pressed the button.

Before his eyes, that net of smoke lit up and faded again and again, blazing in beautiful pink and blue and purple, dazzling enough to take one's breath away.

Budori watched it as though in a trance.

As evening gradually fell and the light faded from the sea of clouds, it grew impossible to tell whether it was gray or mouse-colored anymore.

The receiver rang.

"The ammonium nitrate's coming down in the rain already. This amount looks just about right too. The spread seems to be going well. Four more hours of this and this whole region ought to be set for the rest of the month. Keep it going."

Budori felt so happy he could have leapt into the air.

Beneath this very cloud, the old red-bearded master, and even the neighbor who had asked whether oil could work as fertilizer, must all be listening happily to the sound of the rain.

And come tomorrow morning, they would surely be stroking with their hands oriza plants turned unrecognizably green.

Thinking it all felt just like a dream, Budori kept gazing at the clouds as they turned pitch dark, then blazed beautifully bright again.

But it seemed the short summer night was already drawing toward dawn.

Between flashes of lightning, the far edge of the sea of clouds to the east had begun to glow faintly yellow.

But it turned out to be the moon rising.

A great yellow moon was climbing quietly into the sky.

And whenever the clouds flashed blue they looked strangely pale, and whenever they flashed pink they looked as though they were laughing about something.

Budori had by now forgotten who he was or what he was doing, and simply stared at it all in a daze.

The receiver buzzed.

"Quite a lot of thunder's started up on this end. It seems the net's torn apart here and there. If we let it go on too long tomorrow's papers will have something to say about it, so let's stop after another ten minutes or so."

Budori set down the receiver and listened closely.

Here and there across the sea of clouds came a low muttering, over and over.

Listening carefully, he realized it was indeed the broken sound of thunder.

Budori switched it off.

All at once, lit now only by moonlight, the sea of clouds went on flowing quietly northward all the same.

Budori wrapped a blanket around himself and fell into a deep sleep.

VIII. Autumn

The harvest that year, partly owing to the weather, turned out better than it had in the past ten years, and letters of thanks and encouragement poured into the Volcano Bureau from every direction.

For the first time, Budori truly felt that his life had meaning.

But one day, on his way back from a trip to a volcano called Tachina, Budori happened to pass through a small village amid marsh fields that had already been harvested and lay empty.

Since it was around noon, he thought he would buy some bread, and stopped in at a shop that sold sundries and sweets, asking,

"Do you have any bread?"

he asked.

Inside, three barefoot men sat drinking with their eyes bloodshot red, and one of them stood up and said,

"We've got bread, but it's the kind you can't eat, y'know. Slate bread, that's what it is."

he said, this odd remark making everyone burst out laughing as they looked at Budori's face with amusement.

Feeling uncomfortable, Budori stepped abruptly outside, and a tall man with close-cropped hair came toward him from the other direction, saying suddenly,

"Hey, you're that Budori who made it rain fertilizer with electricity this summer, aren't you."

he said.

"That's right."

Budori answered without thinking much of it.

The man shouted out loudly.

"The Volcano Bureau's Budori is here! Everybody, come over!"

At this, eighteen farmers came running out of the house and the fields nearby, laughing raucously.

"Hey, you bastard — thanks to your electricity, every last one of my oriza plants has fallen over. What did you have to go and do that for?"

one of them said.

Budori said quietly,

"Fallen over? Didn't any of you see the poster we put out in the spring?"

"What was that, you bastard?"

One of them suddenly knocked Budori's hat off his head.

Then all of them crowded around and set upon him, beating and kicking him.

At last Budori lost all sense of what was happening and collapsed.

When he came to his senses, Budori found himself lying in a white bed in a room that looked like some hospital.

By his pillow lay get-well telegrams and a great many letters.

His whole body ached and burned with fever, and he could not move at all.

But after about a week had passed, Budori was already back to his old self.

And reading in the newspaper that the whole incident had come about because an agricultural engineer, having given the wrong instructions on how to apply fertilizer, had covered up his own mistake by blaming the Volcano Bureau for the fallen oriza, Budori burst out laughing loudly all by himself.

The following afternoon, a hospital attendant came in and said,

"A lady named Neri has come to see you."

he said.

Budori wondered whether he were dreaming, and before long a sunburned woman, looking just like a farmer's wife, came in hesitantly.

She had changed almost beyond recognition, but it was indeed Neri, the one who had been carried off by that man from the forest so long ago.

For a while neither of them could say a word, but at last Budori asked her what had become of her since then, and Neri, in the halting speech of an Ihatov farmwife, told him everything that had happened.

The man who had taken Neri away had, after about three days, apparently found her too much trouble, and had left her near a small pasture somewhere before wandering off himself.

As Neri wandered about there in tears, the master of that pasture took pity on her and brought her into his home, setting her to minding the baby, and little by little Neri grew able to do all sorts of work, until at last, three or four years back, she had married the eldest son of that same small pasture.

She also told him that, since fertilizer had fallen from the sky this year, they had been spared the great trouble of hauling stable manure all the way out to the distant fields as they usually had to, being able instead to put it all on the nearby turnip field, and that the corn in the far field had turned out well too, so that the whole household was overjoyed.

She also told him that she had gone back into that forest many times with her husband's son to look for him, but the house had been completely destroyed and there was no telling where Budori had gone, so they had always come home disappointed, until yesterday, when they read in the newspaper that her husband had heard Budori was injured, and so she had finally come to visit him here.

Budori promised that once he was well again he would surely visit her home to thank them, and sent Neri on her way.

IX. Carbonado Island

The five years that followed were truly happy ones for Budori.

He visited the home of the red-bearded master many times to give his thanks.

The old man had grown quite elderly by now, but he was still every bit as full of energy, this time keeping more than a thousand long-haired rabbits and growing nothing in his field but red cabbage, still gambling away at his farming as ever, but his household seemed to be doing much better than before.

A dear little boy was born to Neri.

When work grew slack in winter, Neri would dress the boy up in the full costume of a little farmer and come with her husband to visit Budori's house, sometimes staying the night.

One day, a man who had once worked alongside Budori for the silkworm-gut man came to visit Budori and told him that their father's grave lay beneath a great nutmeg-yew tree at the very edge of the forest.

He explained that, back when the silkworm-gut man had first come to the forest and gone about looking over every tree, he had found the cold bodies of Budori's parents, and, so as not to let Budori know, had quietly buried them and set up a single birch branch above the spot.

Budori took Neri and the others there at once, set up a gravestone of white limestone, and after that always stopped by whenever he happened to pass through that area.

It was just then that Budori turned twenty-seven.

It seemed that dreadful cold weather was coming around once more.

From the condition of the sun and the state of the ice in the northern seas, the weather observatory issued a forecast to everyone that February, warning of what was to come.

Step by step it began to come true, and when the magnolias failed to bloom, and sleet fell for ten days straight in May, everyone recalled the terrible famine of years before, and lived in a state of constant dread.

The great scholar Dr. Kubo too consulted again and again with weather and agricultural engineers, and put out his opinions in the newspapers, but it seemed that even he could do nothing at all about this fierce cold.

But when early June came and Budori still saw the oriza seedlings pale yellow and the trees still not budding, he could no longer bear to sit still.

If things went on like this, there would be countless people, in every forest and every moor, who ended up just like Budori's own family had that year.

Budori thought it over night after night, scarcely eating at all.

One evening Budori went to visit the great scholar Dr. Kubo's house.

"Sir, if the amount of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere increased, would that make things warmer?"

"It would, most likely. In fact, it's said that the temperature of the earth, ever since it first formed, has mostly been determined by the amount of carbonic acid gas in the air."

"Sir, if Carbonado volcanic island erupted right now, would it release enough carbonic acid gas to change this climate?"

"I've calculated that myself, in fact. If it erupted now, the gas would immediately mix into the upper winds of the great circulation and wrap around the whole earth. It would hold back the escape of heat from the lower air and the earth's surface, and I believe it would warm the whole earth by about five degrees on average."

"Sir, is there no way to make it erupt right away?"

"That could be done, I think. But among those who go to carry out that work, the very last man could never possibly escape."

"Sir, please let me be the one to do it. Please, I beg you, speak to Engineer Pennen and see that permission is granted."

"That won't do. You're still young, and there's hardly anyone who could replace you in the work you're doing now."

"There will be plenty more people like me from now on. People far more capable than I am, who will go on working and laughing far more splendidly and far more beautifully than I ever could."

"That's not a matter for me to decide. Go speak to Engineer Pennen about it."

Budori went home and consulted with Engineer Pennen.

The engineer nodded.

"Very well. But let me be the one to do it. I'm sixty-three years old this year. If I'm to die, there's no more fitting place for it than there."

"But sir, this work is still far too uncertain. Even if the eruption succeeds the first time, the gas might soon be washed away by rain, and things might not go at all as we hope in other ways too. If you were to go this time, I fear there would be no one left afterward to work out what to do next."

The old engineer fell silent and bowed his head.

Three days later, a ship of the Volcano Bureau set out in haste for Carbonado Island.

There, several towers were erected, and the power lines were connected.

Once everything was fully ready, Budori sent everyone else back on the ship, and remained alone on the island himself.

The very next day, the people of Ihatov saw the blue sky turn a murky green, and the sun and moon take on the color of bronze.

But after three or four more days had passed, the weather grew warmer by leaps and bounds, and that autumn's harvest turned out to be roughly ordinary after all.

And so it was that all those many fathers and mothers of Budori, who would otherwise have met the very fate with which this story began, were able, together with all those many Budoris and Neris, to spend that winter happily, with warm food and bright firewood.