トロッコ English

Construction work on a light railway between Odawara and Atami had begun in the year Ryohei turned eight.

Every day Ryohei went to the edge of the village to watch the construction.

The construction — to put it plainly, it was simply the sight of a trolley hauling earth — that was what drew him there to watch.

On the trolley stood two laborers, motionless behind the load of earth.

Since the trolley ran downhill, it came rolling along without any human help.

The cart lurching as though tossed by the wind, the hem of the laborers' happi coats fluttering, the slender rails flexing — gazing at such scenes, Ryohei sometimes wished he could be a laborer himself.

At the very least, he sometimes wished he could ride the trolley just once alongside the laborers.

When the trolley reached the flat ground at the edge of the village, it came to a natural stop there.

At that same moment, the laborers leaped nimbly off the trolley and lost no time in dumping the earth from the car at the end of the line.

Then, pushing the trolley as they went, they began climbing back up toward the mountain they had come from.

Ryohei thought that even if riding was out of the question, he at least wished he could push.

One evening — it was the beginning of February.

Ryohei went to the edge of the village where the trolley was kept, along with his brother who was two years younger and the neighbor's child who was the same age as his brother.

The trolleys stood in the dim light, still caked with mud.

But looking around everywhere else, there was not a laborer in sight.

Timidly, the three children pushed the trolley at the very end of the row.

When the three of them pushed together, the trolley suddenly gave a rumbling turn of its wheels.

Ryohei felt a chill at that sound.

But the second turn of the wheels no longer startled him.

Rumble, rumble — with just such a sound, pushed by the three children's hands, the trolley slowly made its way up along the track.

Before long, after they had come about ten ken, the gradient of the track began to steepen.

With the three of them pushing, the trolley would not move no matter how hard they tried.

At times it seemed as though they might even be pushed back along with the cart.

Ryohei decided that was far enough, so he signaled to the two younger children.

"All right, let's ride!"

They all let go at once and leaped onto the trolley.

The trolley set off slowly at first, then faster and faster before their eyes, and in one rush descended along the track.

At that instant, the scenery straight ahead split to either side as if parting, and spread rapidly before their eyes.

The twilight wind against his face, the jolting and swaying of the trolley beneath his feet — Ryohei was nearly beside himself with delight.

But after two or three minutes, the trolley had already stopped back at its original terminus.

"Come on, let's push it up one more time."

Ryohei, together with the two younger children, set about pushing the trolley up again.

But before the wheels had even begun to move, the sound of someone's footsteps suddenly rose up behind them.

And no sooner had those footsteps been heard than they abruptly changed into a voice shouting like this.

"You little brats! Who gave you permission to touch the tro?"

There stood a tall laborer in an old printed happi coat and an out-of-season straw hat. —

The moment that figure came into sight, Ryohei, along with the two younger children, had already fled five or six ken away. —

After that, even when Ryohei passed a trolley at a deserted construction site on an errand, he never once felt the urge to try riding one again.

Only the figure of that laborer from that day remained, even now, clearly preserved somewhere in Ryohei's memory.

The small yellow straw hat that had glimmered in the dim light — yet even that memory seemed to fade in color with each passing year.

More than ten days later, Ryohei stood alone again at the construction site in the afternoon, watching the trolley come.

Then, in addition to the trolley loaded with earth, another trolley carrying railway ties came up the heavier main-line track.

The two men pushing this trolley were both young.

From the moment Ryohei laid eyes on them, he felt somehow that they were easy to approach.

"These fellows won't scold me."

Thinking this, he ran up alongside the trolley.

"Mister, shall I give you a push?"

One of them — a man wearing a striped shirt — kept his head bent down, pushing the trolley, and gave back a cheerful answer just as Ryohei had hoped.

"Sure, give us a push."

Ryohei stepped in between the two and began pushing with all his might.

"You've got some real strength there, kid."

The other man — the one with a cigarette tucked behind his ear — praised Ryohei like this too.

After a while, the grade of the track began gradually to ease.

"You don't need to push anymore."

— Ryohei had been inwardly bracing himself to hear those words at any moment.

But the two young laborers merely straightened up a little from before and kept on pushing the cart in silence.

Unable to hold back any longer, Ryohei timidly ventured to ask.

"Can I keep pushing as long as I want?"

"Sure you can."

Both of them answered at the same time.

Ryohei thought, "They're kind people,"

and felt glad.

After they had pushed for some five or six cho, the track became steeply graded once more.

On both sides, mandarin orange groves bore clusters of yellow fruit drinking in the sunlight.

"Uphill is better — they let me push as long as I like."

— Thinking such thoughts, Ryohei threw his whole body into pushing the trolley.

After they had climbed all the way up through the mandarin orange groves, the track suddenly became a downgrade.

The man in the striped shirt said to Ryohei, "Hey, hop on,"

and Ryohei climbed right on.

Ryohei jumped on at once.

The moment all three had climbed aboard, the trolley shot straight down the track, fanning up the scent of the mandarin orange groves.

"Riding is far better than pushing."

— Ryohei, his coat billowing with wind, reflected on this obvious truth.

"The more you push on the way there, the more you get to ride on the way back."

— He thought this as well.

When they reached a place with a bamboo grove, the trolley quietly rolled to a stop.

The three of them began pushing the heavy trolley again as before.

The bamboo grove had somewhere given way to a mixed woodland.

Here and there on upward slopes, there were places where fallen leaves had piled so deep that the rust-red rails lay invisible beneath them.

After they had at last climbed that path to the top, this time on the far side of a high cliff, the sea spread open before them, wide and bleakly cold.

At the same moment, it came suddenly and clearly home to Ryohei that they had come far too far.

The three of them boarded the trolley again.

The cart ran on with the sea to their right, beneath the branches of the mixed wood.

But Ryohei could no longer feel the delight he had felt before.

"If only they would turn back now."

— He willed it earnestly.

But of course he understood perfectly well that neither the trolley nor the two men could turn back until they had reached their destination.

The next time the cart came to a stop was in front of a thatched-roof teahouse that backed against a cut-away hillside.

The two laborers went into the shop and, with a woman carrying a nursing infant on her back for company, began leisurely drinking tea.

Ryohei walked restlessly by himself around and around the trolley.

On the trolley's sturdy platform boards, splattered mud had dried and caked.

After a while, as they were coming out of the teahouse, the man who had had the cigarette tucked behind his ear — it was no longer there by then — gave Ryohei, who was standing by the trolley, some cheap sweets wrapped in newspaper.

Ryohei said a cool "Thank you"

and left it at that.

But then he thought better of it and felt that it was wrong of him to be so cool toward someone who had been kind to him.

To make up for his coolness, he put one of the wrapped sweets into his mouth.

The sweets had absorbed a smell of kerosene that must have been on the newspaper.

The three of them pushed the trolley up a gentle incline.

Although Ryohei kept his hands on the cart, his mind was occupied with other things.

Once they had come down the other side of that slope, there was another teahouse of the same kind.

After the laborers went inside, Ryohei sat on the trolley, thinking of nothing but getting home.

In front of the teahouse, the light of the westering sun was fading on a plum tree in full blossom.

"It's almost dark."

— Thinking this, he could not sit still any longer.

He kicked at the trolley wheels, and despite knowing that he could not move it alone, he put his weight against it and strained — doing such things to take his mind off his anxiety.

But when the laborers came out and laid their hands on the railway ties in the cart, they told him offhandedly:

"You head home now. We're staying the night out that way today."

"If you get back too late, your folks'll be worried."

For an instant Ryohei was dumbfounded.

All at once he understood: that it would be dark soon; that the road today was three or four times as long as the road to Iwamura he had traveled with his mother at the end of last year; and that he now had to walk home alone from here. — All of this struck him at the same moment.

Ryohei was on the verge of tears.

But he told himself there was no use crying.

He also told himself this was no time for tears.

He gave the two young laborers a stiff, awkward bow and then set off running along the track.

For a while Ryohei ran on in a desperate frenzy along the edge of the track.

Soon he noticed that the parcel of sweets in his breast pocket was getting in the way, so he tossed it to the side of the road and at the same time pulled off his wooden sandals and left them there too.

Then the small stones bit directly into the thin soles of his tabi socks, but his feet felt far lighter.

With the sea to his left, he ran up the steep road.

Now and then when tears welled up, his face would naturally contort. —

Try as he might to suppress it, his nose kept making a constant whimpering sound.

After he ran past the bamboo grove, the glow had already begun to fade from the sky above Higane-yama in the afterglow of the sunset.

Ryohei was growing more and more frantic.

Perhaps because the way there and the way back were reversed, the unfamiliar landscape also filled him with unease.

Then his kimono began to trouble him too, soaked through with sweat, so even as he kept running desperately, he tore off his haori coat and left it at the side of the road.

By the time he reached the mandarin orange groves, the darkness around him was steadily deepening.

"As long as my life is spared —"

Thinking this, Ryohei ran on even when he slipped or stumbled.

When the construction site at the edge of the village finally came into sight in the distant dusk, Ryohei wanted with all his heart to burst into tears.

But even then, though his face crumpled, he kept running without actually crying.

When he entered his village, electric lights were already shining back and forth between the houses on both sides.

In the light of those electric lamps, Ryohei could clearly feel for himself the steam rising from his own sweat-soaked head.

Women drawing water at the well and men coming back from the fields, seeing Ryohei run by gasping for breath, called out to him: "Hey, what's the matter?"

and words to that effect.

But he ran on without a word, past the bright fronts of the general store and the barbershop.

When he came running in through the gate of his own home, Ryohei could not help but burst into loud, wailing sobs.

His crying drew his father and mother all at once to his side.

His mother in particular said something and moved to hold him in her arms.

But Ryohei, thrashing his arms and legs, went on sobbing and sobbing without stopping.

Perhaps because his crying was so fierce, three or four of the neighborhood women also gathered at the dimly lit gate.

His father and mother and those women all asked him in turn why he was crying.

But no matter what was said to him, all he could do was cry.

When he looked back on the desolation he had felt running all the way down that long road, he was seized by a feeling that no matter how loudly he cried and cried, it was not enough. …………

At the age of twenty-six, Ryohei came to Tokyo together with his wife and child.

Now he sits upstairs at a certain magazine company, holding a red proofreader's brush.

But now and then, for no particular reason at all, he finds himself thinking of the boy he had been then.

For no particular reason at all? —

Before him now, weary from the dust and toil of life, just as it was in those days, a road with dim groves and slopes stretches on and on, thin and broken. …………