銀河鉄道の夜 English

I. The Afternoon Lesson

"Now then, this hazy white thing that some of you have been told is a river, and others have been told is a trail of flowing milk — do you know what it really is?"

The teacher was pointing at a place on the great black star chart hanging on the blackboard, a place where a hazy white band ran from top to bottom like a belt of the Galaxy, and he put the question to the whole class.

Campanella raised his hand.

Then four or five others raised theirs.

Giovanni started to raise his hand too, but hurriedly gave it up.

He had certainly read once, in a magazine, that it was all stars — but these days Giovanni was so sleepy in the classroom every single day, and had no time to read and no books to read, that he felt as though he no longer understood anything very well at all.

But the teacher had already noticed.

"Giovanni. You know the answer, don't you?"

Giovanni stood up briskly, but once he was on his feet he found he could not answer clearly after all.

Zanelli, from the seat in front, turned around, looked at Giovanni, and gave a little snicker.

Giovanni was so flustered now that his face went bright red.

The teacher spoke again.

"If you look carefully at the Galaxy through a great telescope, what, roughly speaking, is it?"

Stars again, Giovanni thought — but once more he could not answer at once.

The teacher seemed troubled for a moment, but then he turned his eyes toward Campanella.

"Well then, Campanella."

he said, calling on him by name.

But Campanella, who had raised his hand so eagerly a moment before, only stood there fidgeting, and he too could not give an answer.

The teacher looked at Campanella steadily for a moment, as though surprised, and then quickly said,

"Well then, never mind."

and, saying this, he pointed to the star chart himself.

"When you look at this hazy white Galaxy through a good, large telescope, it turns out to be made up of countless tiny stars. Isn't that so, Giovanni?"

Giovanni, red as fire, nodded.

But before he knew it, his eyes had filled with tears.

That's right, I knew it, he thought — and of course Campanella knew it too. It was in that magazine they had once read together at Campanella's house, at his father the Doctor's.

More than that — the moment Campanella had read the magazine, he had gone and fetched a great book from his father's study, opened it to the place that said Galaxy, and the two of them had gazed for the longest time at a beautiful photograph, a jet-black page scattered all over with white specks.

There was no way Campanella could have forgotten it — and yet he hadn't answered at once, and Giovanni thought it must be because, lately, with work so hard for him both morning and afternoon, he no longer played cheerfully with the others even at school, and had come to speak hardly at all even with Campanella; Campanella must have noticed this and felt sorry for him, and held back his answer on purpose. Thinking so, Giovanni felt so unbearably sad, both for himself and for Campanella, that he could hardly stand it.

The teacher spoke again.

"So then, if we suppose this River of Heaven is truly a river, every one of its little stars would correspond to a grain of sand or gravel lying on its bed. Or if we suppose it a great stream of milk, that resembles the River of Heaven even more closely — in which case the stars would correspond to the tiny globules of fat floating fine throughout the milk. And what, then, would correspond to the river's water? That would be the vacuum which carries light along at a certain speed, and in which the sun and the earth alike are floating. In other words, we ourselves are living within the waters of the River of Heaven. And when you look around you in every direction from within those waters, just as water looks bluer the deeper it is, so the deeper and more distant parts of the River of Heaven's bed show more stars gathered together, and therefore look hazier and whiter. Take a look at this model."

The teacher pointed to a large double-convex lens with many shining grains of sand packed inside it.

"The shape of the River of Heaven is exactly like this. Consider each one of these shining grains a star, shining of itself just as our sun does. Suppose our sun to be somewhere near the middle of it, with the earth close beside it. Now imagine standing at night right in that middle and looking all around through this lens. In this direction the lens is thin, so you would see only a few shining grains, that is, stars. But in this direction, and this one, the glass is thick, so you would see a great many shining grains, that is, stars, and the far-off ones would look hazy and white. This, in short, is today's theory of the Galaxy. Now, as for how large this lens actually is, and about the various stars within it, it's time, so I will tell you in our next science lesson. Today, since it is the very festival of the Galaxy, I want you all to go outside and take a good look at the sky. That will be all for today. Close your books and notebooks."

For a while the whole classroom was full of the sound of desk lids opening and closing and books being stacked, but before long everyone stood up straight, bowed, and left the classroom.

II. The Printing Shop

When Giovanni went out through the school gate, seven or eight of his classmates had not gone home, but had gathered around Campanella at the cherry tree in the corner of the schoolyard.

It seemed they were making plans to go and gather snake gourds, to fashion into blue lanterns and set floating down the river, for tonight's Festival of the Stars.

But Giovanni swung his arms wide and strode straight on out through the school gate.

In the town, the houses were all making their preparations for tonight's Festival of the Galaxy — hanging up balls of yew leaves, or fixing lanterns to cypress branches, and all manner of other things besides.

Without going home, Giovanni turned three corners through the town and came to a large printing shop, where he took off his shoes, stepped up inside, and opened the big door straight ahead of him.

Inside, though it was still broad daylight, the electric lamps were lit, and many rotary presses were turning with a clattering din, while people with cloths tied around their heads or lampshades over their eyes worked busily away, reading and counting as though they were singing.

Giovanni went straight to the person seated at the tall table, third from the entrance, and bowed.

That person searched the shelf for a while, and then,

"Can you set this much?"

he said, handing over a slip of paper.

Giovanni took a small flat box from beneath the man's table, crouched down in the corner by the wall where many electric lamps were fixed, and began picking out with small tweezers, one after another, type as tiny as millet seeds.

A man in a blue chest-guard passed behind Giovanni and said,

"Well, if it isn't Mr. Magnifying Glass. Morning."

and four or five people nearby gave a cold little laugh, without making a sound and without even turning this way.

Giovanni went on picking out type, wiping his eyes now and again.

A while after six o'clock struck, Giovanni checked the flat box, now full of the type he had picked, once more against the slip of paper in his hand, and carried it over to the man at the table.

The man took it without a word and gave a faint nod.

Giovanni bowed, opened the door, and came to the accounting desk.

There a man in a white uniform, likewise without a word, handed Giovanni a single small silver coin.

Giovanni's face brightened at once, and he bowed briskly, then picked up the satchel he had left under the desk and dashed outside.

Then, whistling cheerfully, he stopped at a bakery, bought a loaf of bread and a bag of cube sugar, and set off running as fast as he could.

III. Home

The place Giovanni came running back to so briskly was a small house on a certain back street.

At the leftmost of the three doorways in a row, purple kale and asparagus were planted in an empty crate, and the awnings over the two small windows were still let down.

"Mother, I'm home. Weren't you feeling worse?"

Giovanni said, taking off his shoes.

"Oh, Giovanni, your work must have been hard today. It was cool today, so I've been feeling quite well the whole time."

As Giovanni came up through the entryway, his mother was there in the room just inside, lying down with a white cloth over her head.

Giovanni opened the window.

"Mother, I bought some cube sugar today. I thought I'd put it in your milk."

"Oh, you go ahead and have it first. I don't want any yet."

"Mother. When did Sister get back?"

"Oh, she got back around three. She did all sorts of things for me."

"Hasn't your milk come yet?"

"I wonder if it hasn't come."

"I'll go and get it."

"Oh, there's no hurry for me, so you eat first. Your sister made something with tomatoes and left it there for you."

"Then I'll eat."

Giovanni took the plate of tomatoes from by the window and munched away at it along with the bread for a while.

"You know, Mother. I'm sure Father will be home again soon."

"Yes, I think so too. But why do you think so?"

"Well, this morning's paper said the fishing up north was very good this year."

"Oh, but you know, your father might not even be out fishing."

"He's sure to be. Father could never have done anything so bad as to end up in prison. That huge crab shell and those reindeer antlers he brought back and gave to the school last time — they're still in the specimen room even now. The sixth-graders take turns bringing them into the classroom during lessons."

"Father said that next time he'd bring you a sea otter coat, didn't he."

"Everyone says that to me whenever they meet me. They say it to tease me."

"Say bad things about you?"

"Yes, but Campanella never says anything like that. Campanella looks sorry for me whenever the others say things like that."

"Campanella's father and your father have been friends since they were little, just like you two, they say."

"Oh, that's why Father used to take me along to Campanella's house too. Those were good times. On my way home from school I used to stop by Campanella's house all the time. Campanella's house had a train that ran on alcohol. If you joined seven rails together it made a circle, and it even had telegraph poles and a signal post, and the signal light only turned blue when the train went past. One time when the alcohol ran out and they used kerosene instead, the boiler got completely sooted up."

"Is that so."

"Even now I go by every morning to deliver the newspaper. But the whole house is always so quiet and still."

"Well, it's early, after all."

"They have a dog named Saul. His tail is just like a broom. When I go by he snuffles and follows along after me. He follows all the way to the corner of the street. Sometimes farther than that. Tonight everyone's going to float snake-gourd lanterns down the river. I'm sure the dog will go along too."

"That's right. Tonight is the Festival of the Galaxy, isn't it."

"Yes. I'll go and look while I'm out getting the milk."

"All right, go on then. But don't go into the river now."

"Oh, I'll only watch from the bank. I'll be back within the hour."

"Stay and play a little longer. As long as you're with Campanella there's nothing to worry about."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll be together. Mother, shall I close the window?"

"Yes, please do. It's turned cool now."

Giovanni stood up, closed the window, and put away the plate and the bread bag, then briskly put on his shoes.

"Well, I'll be back in an hour and a half."

he said, going out through the dark doorway.

IV. The Night of the Centaurus Festival

Giovanni came down the slope of the town, where the black cypresses stood in a row, with a lonely look on his face, as though he were whistling.

At the bottom of the slope a single great streetlamp stood shining, splendid and pale blue.

As Giovanni went striding straight down toward the light, his shadow, which had been trailing long and vague behind him like some kind of monster, grew gradually darker and clearer, lifting its foot and swinging its arm, and swung around to Giovanni's side.

(I am a splendid locomotive.

This is a downgrade, so I'm going fast.

I'm just passing that streetlamp now.

See, now my shadow has become a compass.

It swung right around like that, and came out ahead of me.)

So Giovanni was thinking, striding with long steps beneath the streetlamp, when all at once Zanelli, from that afternoon, wearing a new shirt with a sharp collar, came out from the dark side street across the way, and passed by Giovanni in a flash.

"Zanelli, are you going to float snake-gourd lanterns?"

Before Giovanni had even finished saying it,

"Giovanni, a sea otter coat is coming from your father!"

the boy shouted back over his shoulder, as though hurling the words at him.

Giovanni felt his chest go suddenly cold, and it seemed to him that everything around him rang out with a keen, high sound.

"What was that, Zanelli!"

Giovanni shouted back loudly, but Zanelli had already gone in through the door of a house with arborvitae planted in front, on the other side.

(Why does Zanelli say things like that, when I haven't done anything to him?

And he runs just like a mouse, too.

He only says things like that when I haven't done anything, because Zanelli is a fool.)

Thinking busily of all sorts of things, Giovanni passed on through the streets, all beautifully decorated with various lights and tree branches.

At the clock shop the neon lights were burning brightly, and every second the red eyes of a stone-carved owl went round and round, and various jewels, set on a thick glass disk the color of the sea, revolved slowly like stars, while from the far side a bronze horse and rider came slowly circling around toward this side.

In the middle of it, a round black star-finder disk was decorated with blue asparagus fronds.

Giovanni forgot himself, gazing intently at that star chart.

It was much smaller than the one he had seen at school that afternoon, but when you turned the dial to match the date and hour, the sky as it appeared just then would come circling up whole within the oval, and there too, running from top to bottom right through the middle, was the Galaxy, a hazy, smoking band, which lower down seemed to be faintly erupting, as though giving off steam.

Behind it stood a small three-legged telescope, gleaming yellow, and on the wall furthest back hung a great chart on which the constellations of the whole sky were drawn in the shapes of strange beasts and serpents and fish and jars.

Are there truly scorpions and warriors like this crowded all through the sky? Ah, I want to walk through the middle of it forever, he thought, and stood there for a while in a daze.

Then, suddenly remembering his mother's milk, Giovanni left the shop.

And, minding the tightness of his jacket across the shoulders but still deliberately throwing out his chest and swinging his arms wide, he went on through the town.

The air was perfectly clear, flowing through the streets and shops just like water, and every streetlamp was wrapped in deep blue fir and oak branches, while the six plane trees before the electric company, strung inside with countless little bean-lamps, made the whole place look truly like a city of mermaids.

The children were all wearing clothes with new creases freshly pressed in, whistling the tune of the star-round,

"Centaurus, send down the dew,"

shouting and running about, or lighting blue magnesium fireworks, playing there happily.

But Giovanni, his head hanging low once more, thinking of something quite different from all that liveliness around him, hurried on toward the dairy.

Before he knew it, Giovanni had come to where the poplar trees at the edge of town rose one after another, floating high against the starry sky.

He went in through the dairy's black gate, and standing before the dim kitchen that smelled of cattle, Giovanni took off his cap and said,

"Good evening,"

but the house inside was perfectly still, and no one seemed to be there.

"Good evening. Excuse me."

Giovanni stood up straight and called out again.

Then after a while an old woman came shuffling out slowly, as though something ailed her somewhere, and mumbled asking what he wanted.

"Um, the milk didn't come to our house today, so I've come to get it."

Giovanni said, with all the briskness he could muster.

"There's no one here right now so I can't say. Please come again tomorrow."

the woman said, rubbing beneath her reddened eyes and looking down at Giovanni.

"My mother's ill, so it has to be tonight or I'll be in trouble."

"Then please come again a little later."

The woman looked as though she were about to go back inside already.

"I see. Well, thank you."

Giovanni bowed and left the kitchen.

He was about to turn the crossroads at the corner of town when, in front of the sundries shop on the way to the bridge across the way, he saw black shadows and hazy white shirts all mixed together — six or seven students, whistling and laughing, each carrying a snake-gourd lantern, coming his way.

That laughter, that whistling — he knew it all well.

They were his own classmates.

Giovanni felt his heart give a start and almost turned back, but he thought better of it, and walked toward them even more briskly than before.

"Are you going to the river?"

Giovanni was about to say, when his throat seemed to catch a little, and then —

"Giovanni, a sea otter coat is coming!"

Zanelli, the same as before, shouted again.

"Giovanni, a sea otter coat is coming!"

at once all the others took it up and shouted too.

Giovanni went bright red, and hardly knowing whether he was still walking, hurried to get past them, when he saw that Campanella was among them.

Campanella looked sorry for him, and gave a small silent smile, watching Giovanni as though wondering whether he would be angry.

Giovanni looked away from those eyes as though fleeing, and no sooner had Campanella's tall figure passed by than all the others whistled, each in his own way.

When he turned the corner of the street and looked back, Zanelli was looking back too.

And Campanella, whistling loudly, walked on off toward the bridge, hazy in the distance.

Giovanni felt an indescribable loneliness come over him, and suddenly broke into a run.

Some small children who had been hopping on one foot with their hands over their ears, shouting whoop, whoop, thought Giovanni was running just for the fun of it, and shouted whoop after him too.

Before long Giovanni was running, hurrying toward the black hill.

V. The Pillar of the Weather Wheel

Behind the pasture rose a gentle hill, and its flat black summit could be seen stretching along beneath the Great Bear of the north, lying lower than usual, hazily.

Giovanni went climbing steadily up the path through the little wood, already damp with dew.

Among the pitch-dark grass and the thickets of bushes taking on all sorts of shapes, that narrow path lay illuminated in a single white line by the starlight.

Among the grass were tiny insects giving off a glimmering blue light, and here and there a leaf showed blue and translucent, and Giovanni thought it looked just like the snake-gourd lanterns the others had been carrying earlier.

When he crossed through that pitch-black wood of pine and oak, the sky suddenly opened wide and hollow before him, and he saw the River of Heaven running palely from south to north, and he could also make out, on the summit, the pillar of the Weather Wheel.

Bellflowers or wild chrysanthemums, whichever they were, bloomed all over that place as though giving off their fragrance out of a dream, and a single bird passed over the hilltop, crying on and on as it went.

Giovanni came to the foot of the Weather Wheel pillar on the summit, and flung his throbbing body down onto the cold grass.

The lights of the town burned in the darkness like the scene of some shrine at the bottom of the sea, and the children's singing voices and whistling, and their broken bursts of shouting, came drifting up faintly.

Wind sounded somewhere far off, the grass of the hill swayed quietly, and Giovanni's shirt, damp with sweat, was cooled through and through.

The sound of a train came drifting from the fields.

The windows of that little train showed in a row, small and red, and thinking that inside it many travelers were peeling apples, laughing, doing all sorts of things, Giovanni felt an indescribable sadness well up in him, and lifted his eyes to the sky once more.

(Five manuscript pages missing here.)

But no matter how long he looked, that sky did not seem to him at all the hollow, cold place the teacher had spoken of that afternoon.

Quite the opposite — the more he looked, the more he could not help thinking of it as a field with little woods and pastures of its own.

And Giovanni saw the blue star of the Lyre split into three, into four, flickering, its legs going in and out again and again, until at last it stretched long, like a mushroom.

And it seemed to him that even the town right below his eyes had come to look just like a hazy gathering of countless stars, or a single great cloud of smoke.

VI. The Milky Way Station

And Giovanni saw that the Weather Wheel pillar right behind him had somehow taken on the vague shape of a triangulation marker, and was flickering on and off for a while like a firefly.

It grew gradually clearer, until at last it stood perfectly still, planted in that field of sky of deep steel blue.

It stood there straight and sharp, in that field of sky like a sheet of blue steel freshly forged.

Then, from somewhere, a strange voice seemed to say, Milky Way Station, Milky Way Station, and the very next instant everything before his eyes flared brilliantly bright, as though a hundred million firefly squid had all been turned to stone at once and sunk deep into the whole sky, or as though someone had suddenly overturned and scattered abroad all the diamonds that the Diamond Company kept hidden away, pretending they could not be mined, just so the price would not fall — everything before him grew bright with a rush, and Giovanni found himself rubbing his eyes again and again.

When he came to himself, he realized that for some while now, with a rattling clatter, the little train he was riding in had been running steadily on.

Giovanni truly was sitting in a car of the night's narrow-gauge railway, strung with small yellow lamps, looking out through the window.

Inside the car, the seats upholstered in blue velvet stood entirely empty, and on the far wall, painted over in mouse-gray varnish, two great brass buttons gleamed.

In the seat just ahead, he noticed a tall child wearing a jacket black as though wet through, putting his head out the window to look outside.

And there was something about that child's shoulders that seemed familiar to him somehow, and once he thought that, he could not bear it until he knew for certain who it was.

Just as he was about to put his own head out the window too, the child suddenly drew his head back in and looked this way.

It was Campanella.

Just as Giovanni was about to say,

Campanella, have you been here all along? — Campanella spoke first.

"Everyone ran quite a long way, but they got left behind. Zanelli ran quite a long way too, but he couldn't keep up."

he said.

Giovanni thought,

(That's right, we set out together, we called each other out) — thinking this, he said,

"Should we wait somewhere for them?"

he said.

Then Campanella said,

"Zanelli's already gone home. His father came to fetch him."

For some reason, as Campanella said this, his face had gone a little pale, and he seemed somehow to be in pain.

Then Giovanni too felt a strange sensation, as though there were something somewhere he had forgotten, and he fell silent.

But Campanella, peering out the window, had already recovered his spirits entirely, and said briskly,

"Oh, no. I forgot my water flask. I forgot my sketchbook too. But never mind. It's almost the Swan station now. If it's swans, I really do love watching them. Even flying far off over the river, I'm sure I'll be able to see them."

And Campanella turned round and round in his hands a map that had become like a round board, looking at it eagerly.

Indeed, on it, following along the left bank of the River of Heaven, shown in white, a single line of railway track wound its way south and south again.

And how splendid that map was — on its disk, black as night, every station and triangulation marker, every fountain and forest, was set with beautiful lights of blue and orange and green.

Giovanni felt somehow that he had seen this map somewhere before.

"Where did you buy this map? It's made of obsidian, isn't it."

Giovanni said.

"I got it at Milky Way Station. Didn't you get one?"

"Oh — did I pass through Milky Way Station? Is this where we are now?"

Giovanni pointed just north of the station marked Swan.

"That's right. Oh, is that riverbed lit by moonlight?"

Looking that way, he saw that along the pale blue-shining banks of the River of Heaven, the silver-colored plumes of sky-pampas grass, over the whole stretch, were swaying and stirring in the wind, rustling and rustling, raising waves.

"It's not moonlight. It shines because it's the Galaxy."

Giovanni said, feeling so delighted he could almost have leapt up, tapping his feet, putting his face out the window and stretching himself up as far as he could, whistling the star-round tune loud and high, trying to make out clearly the water of that River of Heaven — but at first, no matter what, he could not see it distinctly.

But looking more and more carefully, he saw that the beautiful water was more transparent than glass, more transparent than hydrogen, and now and then, whether from some trick of the eye, it would raise fine purple ripples that flickered, or flash out brilliantly like a rainbow, all the while flowing on and on without a sound, and here and there across the plain stood the phosphorescent triangulation markers, standing beautifully.

The distant ones were small, the near ones large; the distant ones showed clear in orange and yellow, the near ones pale blue and slightly hazy, some triangles, some quadrilaterals, some shaped like lightning bolts or chains, arrayed variously, shining over the whole plain.

Giovanni's heart was pounding, and he shook his head hard.

And truly, all across that beautiful plain, the blue and orange and various shining triangulation markers seemed to catch their breath, flickering and trembling, each in its own way.

"I've come now, all the way, to the plain of heaven."

Giovanni said.

"And besides, this train isn't burning coal, is it."

Giovanni said, thrusting his left hand out and looking ahead through the window.

"It must be alcohol, or electricity."

Campanella said.

Then, just as though answering him, from somewhere far, far off within the haze of haze, a great booming voice like a cello came drifting.

"This train here is not run by steam or by electricity. It simply runs because it is fixed that it shall run. You think it is making that rattling sound, but that is only because you have grown used, until now, to trains that make sounds."

"That voice — I've heard it somewhere before, many times."

"I've heard it too, many times, in the woods, by the river."

Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, that small and lovely train went running on and on, without end, through the sky-pampas grass swaying in the wind, through the water of the River of Heaven, through the pale blue glimmer of the triangulation points.

"Ah, the gentians are in bloom. It's really autumn now, isn't it."

Campanella said, pointing out the window.

Among the short turf edging the tracks, splendid purple gentian flowers were blooming, as though carved out of moonstone.

"Shall I jump off, grab one, and jump back on again to show you?"

Giovanni said, his heart leaping.

"It's no good now. We've already left it too far behind."

Before Campanella had quite finished saying this, the next gentian flower went by, shining to the full.

And no sooner had he thought so than, one after another, countless yellow-bottomed cups of gentian flowers passed before his eyes, welling up like a spring, falling like rain, and the row of triangulation markers stood shining ever more brightly, as though smoking, as though burning.

VII. The Northern Cross and the Pliocene Coast

"I wonder if my mother will forgive me."

All at once Campanella said this, as though he had made up his mind to it, stammering a little, breathlessly.

Giovanni,

(Ah, that's right, my mother must be there, near that distant orange triangulation marker that looks like a single speck of dust, thinking of me right now) — thinking this, he sat there dazed and silent.

"I would do anything at all, if it would truly make my mother happy. But what, after all, is the greatest happiness for my mother?"

Campanella seemed to be holding back, with all his might, some urge to cry.

"There's nothing terrible about your mother at all, is there?"

Giovanni cried out, startled.

"I don't know. But whoever truly does something good, that must be the greatest happiness of all. So I think my mother will forgive me."

Campanella looked as though he had truly made up his mind about something.

Suddenly the inside of the car flashed white and bright.

Looking out, he saw that over a glittering riverbed of the Galaxy, as though gathering together diamonds and dew on the grass and every kind of splendor, the water flowed on without a sound and without a shape, and in the middle of that current he could see a single island, faintly bathed in a pale blue halo.

On the flat summit of that island stood a splendid white cross, dazzling to the eye, and it stood there quietly and forever, crowned with a clear, sharp golden halo — as though, one might say, it had been cast from frozen clouds of the North Pole.

"Hallelujah, hallelujah."

Voices rose up from both before and behind.

Turning to look, he saw that all the travelers in the car had let the folds of their garments hang straight, some pressing black Bibles to their chests, some wearing rosaries of crystal, every one of them modestly folding their hands together and praying in that direction.

Without thinking, the two of them rose straight to their feet as well.

Campanella's cheeks glowed beautifully, like the ripe red of an apple.

And the island and the cross went shifting little by little further behind them.

On the far bank too, a pale bluish light glowed and smoked, and now and then, as though the pampas grass there were likewise turning in the wind, that silver color would go smoking past all at once, as though someone had breathed on it, and the many gentian flowers, hiding and showing among the grass, seemed like gentle fox-fires.

That too lasted only a moment; the river and the train came to be cut off from each other by a row of pampas grass, and the island of the Swan could be seen only twice more behind them, but soon it grew far off and small, like something in a picture, and then the pampas grass rustled and rustled, and at last it could not be seen at all.

Behind Giovanni — though he could not say since when — sat a tall Catholic-looking nun in a black veil, her round green eyes cast steadily and straight down, as though she were reverently listening to some word or voice still reaching her from that direction.

The travelers quietly returned to their seats, and the two boys, each in his own quiet way, in words unremarkably different from each other, spoke together softly of a new feeling, one much like sorrow, filling their hearts.

"It's almost the Swan station now, isn't it."

"Yes, we'll arrive exactly at eleven o'clock."

Already the green light of a signal and a hazy white post flashed past the window, and then the dim, sulfur-flame-colored light in front of a switch passed beneath the window, and the train grew gradually slower, until before long a row of platform lamps appeared, beautifully evenly spaced, growing larger and spreading wider, and the two of them came to a stop right in front of the great clock of Swan Station.

On the clear autumn face of that clock, two hands of blue-forged steel pointed sharply to eleven.

Everyone got off all at once, and the inside of the car was left entirely empty.

[Stopping for twenty minutes] was written beneath the clock.

"Shall we get off and have a look too?"

Giovanni said.

"Let's get off."

The two of them leapt up at once, sprang out through the door, and ran toward the ticket gate.

But at the ticket gate there was only a single bright, faintly purple electric lamp burning, and no one was there at all.

Look wherever he might, there was not so much as a shadow of a stationmaster or a redcap porter.

The two of them came out into a small plaza in front of the station, ringed with ginkgo trees that looked like crystal work.

From there a wide road ran straight into the pale blue glow of the Galaxy.

Of the people who had gotten off before them, not a single one could be seen anywhere now.

As the two of them walked side by side along that white road, their shadows fell out in many directions at once, just like the shadows of two pillars in a room with windows on all four sides, or like the spokes of two wheels.

And before long they came to the beautiful riverbed they had seen from the train.

Campanella took a pinch of that beautiful sand, spread it out on his palm, and, letting it crunch between his fingers, said as though in a dream,

"This sand is all crystal. There's a little fire burning inside each grain."

"That's right."

Giovanni answered vaguely too, wondering where he could have learned such a thing.

The pebbles of the riverbed were all transparent — certainly crystal, or topaz, or some showing crumpled folds, or corundum giving off a misty pale blue light from their edges.

Giovanni ran down to the water's edge and dipped his hand into the water.

But that strange water of the Galaxy was even more transparent than hydrogen.

And yet that it was truly flowing could be told, for where it touched their wrists it seemed to float up faintly in the color of mercury, and the ripples made where it struck their wrists rose in beautiful phosphorescence, seeming to burn and flicker.

Looking upstream, beneath a cliff thick with pampas grass, he saw white rock lying flat along the river, just like an athletic field.

There, five or six small figures seemed to be either digging something out or burying it, standing up and crouching down by turns, and now and then some tool flashed brightly.

"Let's go and see."

The two of them cried out as if with one voice, and ran off in that direction.

At the entrance to that place of white rock stood a smooth porcelain signboard reading [Pliocene Coast], and on the far shore a slender iron railing had been planted here and there, and fine wooden benches had been set out as well.

"Oh, there's something strange here."

Campanella stopped, looking puzzled, and picked up something like a black, slender, pointed walnut from the rock.

"It's a walnut. Look, there are lots of them. They didn't wash up here. They're set right in the rock."

"It's big, this walnut, twice the size. And this one isn't damaged at all."

"Let's hurry over there and look. They must be digging something up."

The two of them, holding their jagged black walnuts, drew nearer to the place they had seen before.

On the shore to their left, the waves burned and washed in like gentle lightning, and on the cliff to their right, ears of pampas grass swayed everywhere, as though fashioned all of silver and seashells.

Drawing nearer, they saw a tall man who looked like a scholar, wearing thick nearsighted spectacles and tall boots, busily writing something in a notebook while giving all manner of eager instructions to three assistant-looking men who were swinging pickaxes and using shovels.

"Use the shovel there, so as not to break that projection, the shovel! There, dig a little further off. No, no, why are you being so rough about it?"

Looking closer, he saw that out of that soft white rock, the huge, huge pale blue-white bones of some beast, lying on its side as though it had collapsed there, had been dug out more than halfway.

And looking carefully, he saw that here and there in the rock, blocks bearing two-clawed footprints had been neatly cut out into squares, some ten of them, each marked with a number.

"Are you two here to view the work?"

The man who looked like a university scholar flashed his spectacles and spoke, looking their way.

"There were a lot of walnuts around, weren't there. Well, those are walnuts from roughly one million two hundred thousand years ago. Quite recent, as these things go. Right here, one million two hundred thousand years ago, just after the Tertiary period, was a seacoast, and shells come out from under here too. Right where the river is flowing now, salt water was once washing in and out, just the same. As for this beast — hey there, none of that with the pickaxe! Do it carefully with the chisel. This is called Bos — the ancestor of today's cattle. There used to be a great many of them, long ago."

"Are you making it into a specimen?"

"No, we need it as proof. To us, this looks like a fine thick stratum, and there's plenty of evidence besides that it was formed about one million two hundred thousand years ago — but the question is whether it would look the same way, this same kind of stratum, to beings quite unlike us, or whether it might look to them like nothing but wind or water, or empty sky. Do you understand? But there, there, not with the shovel there either. There ought to be a rib bone buried right beneath that."

The scholar hurried off running.

"It's time already. Let's go."

Campanella said, comparing the map with his wristwatch.

"Yes, well then, please excuse us."

Giovanni bowed politely to the scholar.

"I see. Well, goodbye then."

The scholar began walking briskly about again, busy with his overseeing.

The two of them ran with all their might along that white rock, so as not to fall behind the train.

And truly, they could run just like the wind.

Their breath did not grow short, nor did their knees grow hot.

If I can run like this, Giovanni thought, I could run the whole world over.

And the two of them passed by that same riverbed as before, and the lamp at the ticket gate grew gradually larger, and before long the two of them were sitting in their old seats in the car, looking out the window at the place they had just come from.

VIII. The Bird Catcher

"Might I sit here?"

A rough but kindly-sounding adult voice was heard behind the two of them.

It was a man with a stooped back and a red beard, wearing a slightly threadbare brown overcoat, carrying baggage wrapped in white cloth, divided into two bundles slung over his shoulders.

"Yes, of course."

Giovanni said, greeting him with his shoulders drawn in a little.

The man, smiling faintly within his beard, slowly set his baggage up on the luggage rack.

Giovanni, feeling somehow terribly lonely and sad, was gazing silently at the clock straight ahead, when, from far up front, something like a glass whistle sounded.

The train was already moving quietly along.

Campanella was looking here and there at the ceiling of the car.

A black beetle had landed on one of the lamps, and its shadow was cast large upon the ceiling.

The red-bearded man, smiling as though with some fond feeling, was watching Giovanni and Campanella.

The train was gradually picking up speed now, and pampas grass and river flashed by turns outside the window.

The red-bearded man, a little hesitantly, asked the two of them,

"Where might you two be going?"

"We're going all the way to the end."

Giovanni answered, a little embarrassed.

"That's fine, that's fine. This train, in fact, goes all the way to the end, wherever that may be."

"Where are you going?"

Campanella asked, all at once, as though picking a quarrel, so that Giovanni could not help laughing.

Then the man across the aisle, who wore a pointed cap and had a great key hanging at his waist, glanced over and laughed too, so that Campanella himself went red in the face and burst out laughing as well.

But the man did not seem angry at all, and answered with his cheeks twitching,

"I'll be getting off right there ahead. My trade is catching birds, you see."

"What kind of birds?"

"Cranes and wild geese. Herons and swans too."

"Are there a lot of cranes?"

"There sure are. They've been crying out since a while ago. Didn't you hear them?"

"No."

"Can't you hear them even now? There, listen closely."

The two of them raised their eyes and strained their ears.

Between the rattling clatter of the train and the wind in the pampas grass, a sound like bubbling, welling water could be heard, kolon, kolon.

"How do you catch cranes?"

"Cranes, is it, or herons?"

"Herons."

Giovanni answered, thinking either would do.

"Oh, that's no trouble at all. You see, herons are all made of the sand of the River of Heaven, hardened together into shape, and they're forever going back to the river, so you wait on the riverbed, and just when the herons are coming down like this with their legs out, before their feet even touch the ground, you snap them right down flat. Then the heron just goes stiff, relieved, and dies right there. After that it's plain sailing. All that's left is to press them flat like leaves."

"You press herons flat like that? Are they specimens?"

"Not specimens. Doesn't everyone eat them?"

"That's strange, isn't it."

Campanella tilted his head.

"Nothing strange about it, nothing odd at all. There, look."

The man stood up, took the bundle down from the luggage rack, and swiftly unwrapped it, round and round.

"There now, take a look. I only just caught these."

"They really are herons."

The two of them cried out without meaning to.

Snow-white bodies of herons, shining just like that Northern Cross from before, lay lined up like a relief carving, some ten of them, flattened out a little, their black legs drawn in close.

"Their eyes are shut."

Campanella gently touched with his finger the crescent-shaped, closed white eye of one heron.

The spear-like white plumes on their heads were still properly in place too.

"There, you see?"

The bird catcher folded the cloth wrapping back over them, wound it round and round again, and tied it with cord.

Wondering who on earth around here would ever eat herons, Giovanni asked,

"Are herons tasty?"

"Oh yes, we get orders every day. But wild geese sell even better. They've got much better looks, and above all, they're less trouble. There, look."

The bird catcher untied yet another bundle.

And there, mottled yellow and pale blue-white, shining like some kind of lamp, lay wild geese, their bills all aligned, flattened out a little just like the herons before, lying in a row.

"These you can eat right away. How about it, have a bite."

The bird catcher gave a light tug at the leg of a yellow goose.

And it came away cleanly, all at once, as though it were made of chocolate.

"How about it. Try a bit."

The bird catcher tore it in two and handed a piece over.

Giovanni took a little bite, and thought,

(Well, so it really is some kind of candy after all.

It's tastier than chocolate, but there's no such thing as wild geese flying around like this.

This man must be some sort of candy-seller from around these fields somewhere.

But here I am, laughing at him inside while I eat his candy — that's a shameful thing to do.) — and thinking so, he went on munching it down all the same.

"Have some more."

The bird catcher held the bundle out again.

Giovanni wanted more, but,

"No, thank you."

he said, holding back out of politeness, and the bird catcher then offered it to the man across the aisle, the one with the key.

"Oh, I couldn't take from your trade goods, that wouldn't do."

That man said, taking off his hat.

"No, not at all. So, how's the migratory bird business this year?"

"Oh, it's been marvelous. Round about the second period the day before yesterday, calls kept coming in on the telephone from every direction, complaining, why are you making the lighthouse beacon go dark against regulations — well, it wasn't us doing it at all, it's just that the migratory birds come through in one great black mass right in front of the light, so there's nothing to be done about it. I told them, blast it all, no use bringing complaints like that to me — go take it up with that fellow in the flapping cape, with the outrageously thin legs and mouth. Ha, ha."

As the pampas grass gave out, light suddenly came shining in from the field on the far side.

"Why is it so much trouble with herons?"

Campanella had been wanting to ask this for a while.

"Ah, well, to eat herons —"

The bird catcher turned to face them.

"you've got to hang them up in the water-light of the River of Heaven for a good ten days — or else bury them in the sand for three or four days. Then all the mercury evaporates out of them, and they become fit to eat."

"These aren't birds at all. They're just plain candy, aren't they."

Campanella, who had evidently been thinking the very same thing all along, asked this as though he had finally worked up the nerve.

The bird catcher, looking terribly flustered about something,

"Oh yes, that's right, I've got to get off here —"

he said, and no sooner had he stood up and picked up his baggage than he had vanished from sight.

"Where did he go?"

The two of them looked at each other, and then the lighthouse keeper, grinning, stretched up a little and peered out the window beside them.

The two of them looked that way too, and there was the bird catcher, just now, standing on a stretch of riverbed all covered in beautiful yellow and pale blue-white phosphorescence, his face perfectly serious, both arms spread wide, staring fixedly up at the sky.

"He's gone over there. It really is strange, isn't it. He must be about to catch some more birds. I hope the birds come down before the train pulls away."

Just as he said this, from the hollow bellflower-blue sky, herons just like the ones they had seen before came fluttering down thick as falling snow, crying kya, kya, filling the air.

Then the bird catcher, looking thoroughly pleased, as though everything had come exactly to order, stood with his feet planted apart at precisely sixty degrees, and with both hands seized one after another the black drawn-up legs of the herons as they came down, stuffing them into a cloth sack.

And the herons, like fireflies, went on flickering blue for a while inside the sack, on and off, but in the end they all turned a hazy white and closed their eyes.

But there were more birds that came down safely onto the sand of the River of Heaven without being caught than were caught.

Watching, he saw that the moment their feet touched the sand, they shrank and flattened out just like melting snow, and before long spread out over the sand and gravel like copper slag poured from a smelting furnace, and for a while the shape of a bird still clung to the sand there, but after brightening and dimming two or three times, it would blend completely into the color of the ground around it.

When the bird catcher had put about twenty of them into his sack, he suddenly threw both arms up, striking just the pose of a soldier struck dead by a bullet.

And no sooner had he thought this than the shape of the bird catcher had vanished from that spot, and instead —

"Ah, that's a relief. There's nothing better than earning just about as much as your body can carry, you know."

a familiar-sounding voice said, right beside Giovanni.

Looking, he saw the bird catcher, already there, neatly lining up and restacking, one by one, the herons he had just caught.

"How did you get here from over there all at once?"

Giovanni asked, feeling that it was somehow both perfectly natural and perfectly strange at the same time.

"How, you ask — I came because I meant to come. And where might you two be coming from, in the first place?"

Giovanni meant to answer right away, but try as he might, he simply could not think, in the first place, where they had come from.

Campanella too, his face gone quite red, seemed to be trying hard to remember something.

"Ah, from far away, I see."

The bird catcher nodded easily, as though he understood.

IX. Giovanni's Ticket

"This is about the end of the Swan District now. Look there. That's the famous Albireo Observatory."

Out the window, in the middle of the River of Heaven, which looked just as though it were filled with fireworks, four great black buildings stood, and on the flat roof of one of them, two great transparent spheres, a dazzling sapphire and a topaz, revolved slowly and quietly in a circle.

The yellow one moved gradually round to the far side while the small blue one advanced toward this side, and before long the two edges overlapped, forming a beautiful green double-convex lens shape, which itself gradually bulged out further in the middle until at last the blue one came fully in front of the topaz, making a green center ringed with a bright yellow band.

That too gradually drifted sideways out of alignment, repeating the earlier lens shape in reverse, until at last the two drew fully apart, the sapphire circling away to the far side and the yellow one advancing toward this side, and it all became just as it had been before.

Surrounded by the shapeless, soundless water of the Galaxy, that black observatory truly lay there quietly, as though asleep.

"That's an instrument for measuring the speed of the water. The water too —"

Just as the bird catcher was saying this,

"Tickets, please."

a tall conductor in a red cap, who had appeared standing straight up beside the three of them, said.

The bird catcher, without a word, drew a small slip of paper from his pocket.

The conductor glanced at it and quickly looked away, and (and yours?)

as though saying this, moving his fingers, held out his hand toward Giovanni and the others.

"Well now —"

Giovanni was at a loss and fidgeted, while Campanella, looking as though it were nothing at all, produced a small mouse-gray ticket.

Giovanni, thoroughly flustered, thinking there might be something in his jacket pocket after all, put his hand in and touched some large folded slip of paper.

Wondering whether something like this had really been in there, he hurriedly pulled it out, and found it was a green piece of paper, folded in four, about the size of a postcard.

Since the conductor was holding out his hand, Giovanni thought, whatever it is, here goes, and handed it over, and the conductor straightened up properly and opened it out carefully to look at it.

And as he read it, he kept fussing with the buttons of his jacket and so on, and the lighthouse keeper too was peering up at it eagerly from below, so that Giovanni felt sure this must be some kind of certificate or the like, and his chest grew warm with a strange feeling.

"Did you bring this from the direction of the third dimension?"

the conductor asked.

"I don't really know."

Giovanni said, relieved now that everything must be all right, looking up that way and giving a little chuckle.

"Very well. We'll be arriving at the Southern Cross around the next third hour."

The conductor handed the paper back to Giovanni and went off toward the other end of the car.

Campanella, as though he could hardly wait to find out what that slip of paper was, peered eagerly at it.

Giovanni too had been dying to look at it.

But it was printed all over with a pattern like black arabesques, with some ten strange characters printed among them, and just looking at it silently gave him the feeling that he was somehow being drawn right in.

Then the bird catcher glanced at it sideways and said, as though flustered,

"Well now, this is really something. This is a ticket that could take you clear to true heaven itself. Not just heaven — it's a pass that lets you walk anywhere at all, as you please. If you're carrying something like this, no wonder you two can go anywhere at all on this imperfect, dreamlike Fourth-Dimensional Galactic Railroad. You two really are something."

"I don't really understand it."

Giovanni answered, going red, and folded it back up and put it away in his pocket.

And feeling awkward, he and Campanella went back to gazing out the window together, though he could vaguely tell that the bird catcher kept glancing over at them now and then, as though still thinking how remarkable it was.

"It's almost the Eagle station now."

Campanella said, comparing the map with three small pale blue-white triangulation markers standing in a row on the far bank.

Giovanni, without quite knowing why, suddenly felt unbearably sorry for the bird catcher beside him.

Thinking over it all, one thing after another — how the man had been so pleased at catching herons, wrapping them round and round in white cloth, glancing sidelong in surprise at their ticket and hurriedly praising it — Giovanni felt that he wanted to give this bird catcher, a total stranger, everything he had, everything he could eat, anything at all; that if it would truly make this man happy, he himself would gladly stand on that shining riverbed of the River of Heaven and catch birds there for a hundred years straight; and he simply could not stay silent any longer.

He was about to ask what it was the man truly wanted more than anything, but thought that would be too abrupt, and while he was wondering what to do, he turned around to look — and the bird catcher was no longer there.

Nor was the white baggage to be seen on the luggage rack anymore.

Thinking he might be out there again, planting his feet and looking up at the sky, getting ready to catch herons, Giovanni looked quickly out the window, but outside there was only a stretch of beautiful sand and waves of white pampas grass, and no sign anywhere of the bird catcher's broad back or his pointed cap.

"Where do you suppose he went?"

Campanella said vaguely, too.

"Where could he have gone. Where on earth will we meet him again. I never did manage to say much of anything to him at all, did I."

"Yes, I've been thinking the same thing."

"I felt like he was in the way, somehow. That's why it's so hard for me now."

Giovanni thought this was truly the first time he had ever felt such a strange feeling, and that he had never said anything like this before.

"Somehow it smells of apples. Is it because I was just thinking about apples?"

Campanella said, looking around him with a puzzled air.

"It really is the smell of apples. And I can smell wild roses too."

Giovanni looked around too, and it did seem to be coming in through the window somehow.

It's autumn now, so there shouldn't be any smell of wild rose blossoms, Giovanni thought.

And then, all at once, there stood a boy of about six, with glossy black hair, his red jacket unbuttoned, his face terribly startled-looking, trembling all over and barefoot.

Beside him stood a tall young man in a neat black suit, holding the boy's hand firmly, standing in a posture like a zelkova tree caught full in the wind.

"Oh, wherever are we? My, how beautiful."

Behind the young man stood another, a pretty brown-eyed girl of about twelve, wearing a black coat, clinging to the young man's arm and gazing out the window with a puzzled look.

"Ah, this is Lancashire. No, it's Connecticut. No — ah, we have come to the sky. We are going to Heaven. Look there. That sign is the sign of Heaven. There is nothing more to fear now. We have been called by God."

The young man in black said this to the girl, his face shining with joy.

But for some reason his brow was also carved deep with lines, and he seemed terribly tired, and forcing a smile, he made the boy sit down beside Giovanni.

Then he gently pointed the girl to the seat beside Campanella.

The girl obediently sat down there, and folded her hands neatly together.

"I'm going to big sister's place."

The boy, having just sat down, said this with a strange look on his face, to the young man who had just taken the seat across from the lighthouse keeper.

The young man made an indescribably sorrowful face, and gazed steadily at the boy's damp, curly hair.

The girl suddenly put both hands to her face and began to weep quietly.

"Father and big sister Kiku still have all sorts of work to do. But they'll be coming along right after us. More than that, just think how long your mother must have been waiting — wondering what song my precious Tadashi is singing right now, whether he's out playing with everyone, holding hands, going round and round the elder bushes on a snowy morning — she really has been waiting and worrying, so let's hurry and go see her."

"Yes, but I wish I hadn't gotten on that ship."

"Yes, but look, there — see how splendid that river is? See, that's the one that always showed pale and white through the window all that summer, whenever we sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star at bedtime. That's it, right there. Isn't it beautiful, shining like that."

The elder sister, who had been crying, wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and looked outside too.

The young man spoke again gently to the brother and sister, as though teaching them.

"There is nothing sad left for us now. We are traveling through this beautiful place, and soon we will go to God's own place. There, it is truly bright, and sweet-smelling, and full of splendid people. And the people who took our places on the boat will surely all be rescued, and go home to their own fathers and mothers, each to their own house, all of them waiting anxiously. Come now, it won't be long, so let's keep our spirits up and go along singing merrily."

The young man stroked the boy's damp-looking black hair, and as he comforted them all, his own face too gradually began to shine.

"Where might you all have come from? Whatever happened to you?"

The lighthouse keeper from before asked the young man, as though he had finally begun to understand a little.

The young man smiled faintly.

"Oh, our ship struck an iceberg and sank, you see. The father of this family had to return home ahead of us two months ago on urgent business, so we set out afterward. I was at the university, and had been hired as a private tutor. Well, it was exactly the twelfth day out — around today or yesterday — when the ship struck an iceberg and all at once listed over and began to sink. There was some faint moonlight somewhere, but the fog was extremely thick. The boats on the port side were already half useless, so there was no way everyone could fit into them. Already the ship was sinking even as we stood there, and I cried out desperately, begging them please to let the little ones aboard. The people nearby opened a path for us at once, and prayed for the children. But between where we stood and the boats there were still more small children and their parents and so on, and I simply did not have the courage to push them aside. And yet I felt it was truly my duty to save these two, no matter what, so I tried to push aside the children ahead of us. But then I thought too that rather than save them that way, it would truly be a greater happiness for these two to go before God together with everyone else, just as they were. And then I thought that I alone would bear the sin of going against God's will, and that I must save them whatever it took. But when it came down to it, watching, I found I simply could not do it. Seeing the boat filled only with children, a mother sending kisses after it as though out of her mind, a father standing perfectly straight, holding back his grief with all his might — it was enough to tear one's very insides apart. Meanwhile the ship kept sinking further and further, so we gathered together, fully resolved now, and holding these two in our arms, we waited for the ship to sink, determined to stay afloat as long as we possibly could. Someone threw a life buoy, but it slipped past and went off far to the other side. I worked with all my might to free a lattice section of the deck, and the three of us clung fast to it.

From somewhere or other, a voice rose up singing hymn number three hundred and six.

At once everyone joined in singing it together, all at once, each in their own language.

Just then there came a great sound, and we fell into the water, and just as I thought we had been caught in a whirlpool, holding these two fast in my arms, everything went hazy, and before I knew it, I found myself here.

These children's mother passed away the year before last.

Yes — the boat must surely have gotten away safely. After all, it was rowed by thoroughly skilled sailors, and it pulled swiftly away from the ship."

Small sighs and murmured prayers could be heard here and there, and both Giovanni and Campanella found themselves vaguely remembering all sorts of things they had until now forgotten, their eyes growing hot.

(Ah, could that great sea have been the one called the Pacific?

Out there in that sea at the far northern edge, where the icebergs drift, someone is working with all his might right now, aboard some small boat, fighting against the wind and the freezing salt water and the fierce cold.

I feel truly sorry for that person, and somehow ashamed before him.

What, in the end, ought I to do for that person's happiness?)

Giovanni hung his head, sunk completely into gloom.

"There's no telling what happiness is. Truly, no matter how painful a thing may be, if it happens while we are walking the right path, then every step, whether up the pass or down it, is a step drawing nearer to true happiness after all."

The lighthouse keeper was offering comfort.

"Ah, yes, that's so. All the various sorrows too are simply God's will, to bring us at last to the greatest happiness of all."

The young man answered this as though in prayer.

And by now the brother and sister were tired out, each slumped limply against their seat, fast asleep.

Those bare feet from before were now, somehow, wearing soft white shoes.

Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, the train went on along the bank of the glittering, phosphorescent river.

Looking out the window on the far side, the field looked just like a magic-lantern show.

Hundreds, thousands of triangulation markers of every size could be seen, with red-dotted surveying flags atop the larger ones, and at the very edge of the field they all gathered together, so many and so many, into a hazy pale blue mist, and from there, or perhaps from somewhere further off still, all sorts of vague, signal-fire-like shapes rose up now and then, one after another, into the beautiful bellflower-colored sky.

That truly transparent, beautiful wind was full of the fragrance of roses.

"How about it? I daresay this is your first time with apples like these."

The lighthouse keeper across the aisle was, somehow, now cradling in both hands on his lap a large apple, beautifully colored in gold and crimson, so as not to drop it.

"Oh my, wherever did that come from? How splendid. Do apples like this grow around here?"

The young man, looking truly astonished, gazed at the pile of apples cradled in the lighthouse keeper's hands, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head this way and that, quite forgetting himself.

"Oh, please, do take one. Please, go ahead and take one."

The young man took one and glanced over toward Giovanni and the others.

"Now then, young gentlemen over there. How about it? Please take one."

Giovanni, a little irritated at being called a young gentleman, kept silent, but Campanella said,

"Thank you."

he said.

Then the young man himself took two and passed one to each of them, so that Giovanni too stood up and said thank you.

The lighthouse keeper, his arms finally free, this time set the apples down gently, one each, in the laps of the sleeping brother and sister himself.

"Thank you so much. Wherever do apples like this, so splendid, come from?"

The young man said, gazing at it closely.

"Around here, of course, we do practice farming, but for the most part things are arranged so that fine crops grow of their own accord. Farming isn't such hard work as all that. Mostly, if you simply plant whatever seed you please, it grows up splendidly on its own. Even rice has no husk, unlike over around the Pacific, and it's ten times as large and much better smelling. But in the place where you all are bound, there won't be any farming left at all. Neither apples nor sweets leave the least bit of waste behind — everything is turned, according to each person, into just a little pleasant fragrance of its own, and scattered away through the pores of the skin."

Suddenly the boy opened his eyes wide and said,

"Oh, I was just dreaming about Mama. Mama was in a place with a splendid cupboard and books, and she looked my way and held out her hands and smiled and smiled. I said, Mama, shall I go pick you some apples? — and then I woke up. Oh, this is that train from before, isn't it."

"Here are those very apples. This gentleman gave them to us."

The young man said.

"Thank you, mister. Oh, sister Kaoru is still asleep. I'll wake her up. Sister. Look, we got some apples. Wake up and look."

His sister laughed and opened her eyes, put both hands to her eyes as though dazzled, and then looked at the apple.

The boy was already eating his, just as though he were eating pie.

And even the beautiful peel he had so carefully pared off, curling up into a shape like a corkscrew, would turn a shining ash-gray and evaporate away entirely before it ever reached the floor.

The two of them tucked their apples carefully away in their pockets.

On the far bank downstream a great forest, thick and green, came into view, its branches heavy with round fruit, ripe and shining bright red, and in the middle of that forest a very tall triangulation marker stood, and from within the woods, mingled with orchestra bells and a xylophone, came drifting on the wind some indescribably beautiful tone, melting, seeping in.

The young man gave a shiver, as though a chill had run through his body.

Listening silently to that music, it seemed as though, all around, a bright field or carpet of yellow and pale green spread out everywhere, and snow-white, wax-like dew went grazing past the face of the sun.

"Oh, look at that crow."

The girl beside Campanella, called Kaoru, cried out.

"Those aren't crows. They're all magpies."

Campanella called out again, offhandedly, as though scolding him, so that Giovanni couldn't help laughing again, and the girl looked embarrassed.

Indeed, on the pale blue-white light of the riverbed, black birds sat perched in a long, long row, quietly bathed in the faint glow of the river.

"They're magpies, aren't they — you can tell by the feathers standing up sharp at the back of their heads."

The young man said, smoothing things over.

The triangulation marker in the green forest on the far side came fully in front of the train now.

Just then, from far back at the rear of the train, came the sound of that familiar melody of hymn number three hundred and six.

It seemed to be sung in chorus by quite a large number of people.

The young man's face went pale in an instant, and he half rose as if to go that way, but thought better of it and sat down again.

Kaoru pressed her handkerchief to her face.

Even Giovanni's nose began to prickle strangely.

But before anyone knew when or by whom, that song had begun, and it grew gradually clearer and stronger.

Before they knew it, both Giovanni and Campanella found themselves singing along too.

And the green olive forest, shimmering with a soft, tearful light beyond the unseen River of Heaven, drew gradually further behind them, and the strange instrumental music drifting from it grew fainter and fainter still, worn thin by the rattle of the train and the sound of the wind.

"Oh, there's a peacock. Oh, there's a peacock."

"That must be the lodging of the Lyre forest. I'm sure the members of some great orchestra of long ago are gathered there in that forest, and I'm sure there are lots of blue peacocks and things all around them."

"Yes, there were lots of them."

The girl answered.

Giovanni watched the reflected light, flashing pale blue now and then, above that forest, now shrunk so small it looked like nothing more than a single green shell button, as the peacocks there spread and folded their wings.

"That's right, I heard the peacocks' cries too, a while ago."

Campanella said to the girl.

"Yes, there were certainly about thirty of them."

The girl answered.

Giovanni suddenly felt an indescribable sadness come over him, and almost said, with a stern look on his face,

"Campanella, let's jump off here and play for a while."

that was how close he came to saying it.

But just then Giovanni saw something strange, far off downstream.

It was certainly something black and sleek and slender, leaping up out of that unseen water of the River of Heaven, arcing forward in something like the shape of a bow, and then seeming to vanish back into the water.

Thinking this odd, he watched carefully, and this time something of the same kind seemed to happen much nearer at hand.

Before long, that strange black, sleek thing could be seen leaping out of the water here and there, all around, arcing through the air and diving back in headfirst, again and again.

They all seemed to be swimming upstream, like fish.

"Oh, whatever are those? Look, Tada dear. My, there are so many. Whatever can they be?"

The boy, who had been sleepily rubbing his eyes, jumped to his feet, startled.

"What could they be?"

The young man stood up too.

"My, what strange fish. Whatever are they?"

"Dolphins."

Campanella answered, looking that way.

"Dolphins — well, this is the first I've heard of it. But this isn't the sea, is it?"

"Dolphins aren't only found in the sea."

That strange low voice came from somewhere again.

Truly the strangest thing about the shape of those dolphins was the way they leapt out of the water with their two fins held down close, just like arms at attention, and then, heads bowed reverently down, plunged back into the water again, still holding that same rigid posture.

At that moment the unseen water of the River of Heaven, too, rose up in waves that swayed like blue flame.

"Are dolphins fish?"

The girl spoke to Campanella.

The boy leaned limply against his seat, exhausted, and had fallen asleep.

"Dolphins aren't fish. They're beasts, just like whales."

Campanella answered.

"Have you ever seen a whale?"

"I have. With a whale, you only see the head and the black tail. When it spouts, it looks exactly like the pictures in books."

"A whale must be huge, then."

"Whales are huge. Even the babies are about as big as a dolphin."

"That's right, I saw one in the Arabian Nights."

The elder sister said, sounding pleased with herself, twisting a slender silver ring on her finger as she talked.

(Campanella, I'm going away now.

I've never even seen a whale, not once.)

Giovanni, fretting so much he could hardly bear it, still bit down hard on his lip to hold himself back, and kept gazing out the window.

Outside that window the shapes of the dolphins could no longer be seen now, and the river split into two.

In the middle of that pitch-black island a single tall, tall watchtower had been built, and on top of it stood a man in loose clothing, wearing a red cap.

He held a red flag in one hand and a blue flag in the other, and was signaling, looking up at the sky.

While Giovanni watched, the man kept waving his red flag steadily, but suddenly lowered it and hid it behind his back, then raised the blue flag high, high, and swung it violently about, just like an orchestra conductor.

Then a sound like rushing rain came from the air, and something pitch-black, in mass after mass, went flying off toward the far side of the river like cannonballs.

Giovanni, without thinking, leaned half his body out the window and looked up that way.

Beneath that beautiful, beautiful, hollow bellflower-blue sky, truly tens of thousands of small birds, in flock after flock, went passing by, each one crying busily, busily along.

"There go the birds flying."

Giovanni said, out the window.

"Let's see."

Campanella looked up at the sky too.

Just then the man in loose clothing atop the watchtower suddenly raised the red flag and waved it about like a madman.

At once the flock of birds stopped passing entirely, and at the same moment a crushing sort of thud sounded from downstream, and then for a while everything fell silent.

And no sooner had he thought so than that red-capped signalman was waving his blue flag again and shouting.

"Now cross, migrating birds, cross now, migrating birds!"

That voice too could be heard clearly.

And with it, tens of thousands more of birds came racing straight across the sky again.

From the middle window, where the two of them had their faces out, the girl put her face out too, her lovely cheeks glowing, and looked up at the sky.

"My, what a lot of birds there are. Oh my, how beautiful the sky is."

The girl spoke to Giovanni, but Giovanni, thinking her forward and disliking it, kept his mouth shut and went on looking silently up at the sky.

The girl gave a small, quiet sigh and went silently back to her seat.

Campanella, looking sorry for her, drew his face back in from the window and looked down at the map.

"I wonder if that man is giving directions to the birds."

The girl asked Campanella quietly.

"He's signaling the migrating birds. It must be so a signal fire gets lit from somewhere."

Campanella answered, a little uncertainly.

And the inside of the car fell perfectly silent.

Giovanni wanted to draw his head back in now, but it was too painful to show his face somewhere bright, so he stayed there in silence, enduring it, standing and whistling.

(Why am I so sad like this?

I have to keep my heart clearer, and larger, than this.

Far off along that bank, there's a small blue light, like a wisp of smoke.

How truly quiet and cool it looks.

I'll look at it well, and calm my heart down.)

Giovanni pressed both hands against his hot, aching head, and looked that way.

(Ah, is there really no one who will go with me, all the way, wherever I go?

Even Campanella is off talking so happily with that girl — this is truly hard for me.)

Giovanni's eyes filled with tears again, and the River of Heaven itself looked as though it had drawn far away, nothing but a hazy white blur now.

Just then the train gradually drew away from the river and began running along the top of a cliff.

On the far bank too, a black cliff rose gradually higher and higher as it followed the riverbank downstream.

And then, for a moment, he saw a great cornstalk.

Its leaves curled round and round, and beneath the leaves a beautiful, large green husk let out red silk threads, and for an instant he caught sight of pearl-like kernels within.

They grew gradually more numerous, until now they stood in a row like a hedge between the cliff and the tracks, and when Giovanni, without thinking, drew his head back in from the window and looked out the window on the other side, he saw that clear to the horizon of that beautiful field of sky, those great cornstalks were planted almost everywhere across the whole expanse, rustling and swaying in the wind, and from the tips of their splendid curled leaves, dew clung thick, like diamonds that had drunk their fill of sunlight all through the day, burning and shining in red and green.

Campanella said,

"That's corn, isn't it."

to Giovanni, but Giovanni's mood simply would not lift, so he only looked bluntly out at the field and answered,

"I suppose so."

he answered.

Just then the train grew gradually quieter, passed several signal lamps and switch lights, and came to a stop at a small station.

The pale blue-white clock facing the platform showed exactly two o'clock, second hour, and with the wind fallen still and the train not moving, in that quiet, quiet field its pendulum went on ticking off the time correctly, tick, tick.

And in the very gaps between the ticks of that pendulum, from the far, far edge of the field, a faint, faint melody came drifting in like a thread.

"It's the New World Symphony."

The elder sister across the aisle said quietly, as though to herself, looking this way.

By now, truly, everyone in the car, even that tall young man in black, was dreaming some gentle dream.

(Why can't I feel happier, in such a quiet, lovely place as this?

Why am I so lonely, all by myself?

But really, Campanella is too much — riding on this train together with me, and yet talking away with nothing but that girl.

I'm truly miserable.)

Giovanni half covered his face with his hand again, and stared fixedly out the window on the other side.

A whistle sounded, clear as glass, and the train began moving quietly on, and Campanella too whistled the star-round tune, sounding lonely.

"Yes, yes, this whole area is quite a highland now, you know."

From somewhere behind them came the voice of someone who sounded elderly, talking briskly, as though just woken up.

"Even corn won't grow unless you bore a hole two feet deep with a stick first and sow it in there."

"Is that so. I wonder how far it is to the river from here."

"Oh yes, yes, it's anywhere from two thousand to six thousand feet down to the river. It's become quite a terrible gorge along there now."

Come to think of it, wasn't this the Colorado highlands? Giovanni couldn't help thinking so.

The elder sister let her brother lean against her chest, asleep, her dark eyes gazing dreamily off into the distance, lost in thought without really looking at anything; Campanella went on whistling the star tune alone, still sounding lonely; and the boy, his face the color of an apple wrapped in silk, kept looking in the same direction as Giovanni.

Suddenly the corn came to an end and a great black field opened out wide before them.

The New World Symphony now welled up ever more clearly from the far edge of the horizon, and across that pitch-black field a single Indian, white feathers fixed in his hair, his arms and chest adorned with many stones, an arrow fitted to his small bow, came racing after the train at full speed.

"Oh, an Indian. It's an Indian. Sister, look."

The young man in black woke up too.

Giovanni and Campanella both stood up.

"He's running this way, oh, he's running this way. Is he chasing us?"

"No, he's not chasing the train. He must be out hunting, or dancing."

The young man said, standing with his hands in his pockets, as though he had forgotten for a moment where he was.

Indeed, the Indian did look half as if he were dancing.

For running alone, his footwork seemed far more economical, and far more purposeful, than it needed to be.

All at once those sharp white feathers tilted forward, and the Indian stopped dead in his tracks and swiftly drew his bow up toward the sky.

A single crane came tumbling unsteadily down from up there, and fell right into the wide-spread arms of the Indian, who had already started running again.

The Indian stood there laughing, looking pleased.

And soon his figure, holding the crane and watching this way, grew smaller and smaller in the distance, and two insulators on a telegraph pole flashed past in quick succession, glinting, and then it was cornfields again.

Looking out the window on this side, he saw that the train was truly running along the top of a very, very high cliff, and at the bottom of that valley a river flowed, just as wide and bright as before.

"Yes, it's downhill from around here now. After all, this time we go straight down to the level of that water all at once, so it's no easy matter. Because of this slope, the train never comes back up this way from over there. There, you can feel it's picking up speed already, can't you."

That elderly-sounding voice from before said.

On and on, faster and faster, the train went rushing downward.

Wherever the railway ran along the very edge of the cliff, the river could be seen bright below.

Giovanni's spirits gradually began to lift.

When the train passed in front of a small hut, and there in front of it stood a single forlorn-looking child, watching this way, Giovanni couldn't help crying out, ho!

On and on, faster and faster, the train went rushing along.

Everyone in the car clung tightly to their seats, half thrown backward.

Giovanni couldn't help laughing along with Campanella.

And now the River of Heaven, right alongside the train, seemed to have been flowing quite fiercely all this while, flashing here and there as it flowed.

Pale pink riverbed pinks were blooming here and there.

The train seemed to have finally settled down, and ran along slowly now.

On both banks, near and far, flags bearing a star shape and a crossed pickaxe stood planted.

"I wonder what flag that is."

Giovanni finally spoke up.

"Hmm, I don't know either. It's not even on the map. Look, there's an iron boat set out there too."

"Ah."

"Isn't it a place where they're building a bridge?"

The girl said.

"Ah, that must be an engineer corps flag. They're doing bridge-building drills. But I don't see any soldiers, do you."

Just then, a little downstream near the far bank, the unseen water of the River of Heaven flashed brightly and shot up high like a pillar, and a great booming sound rang out.

"That's a blast! A blast!"

Campanella jumped for joy.

That pillar-like column of water vanished from sight, and a great salmon or trout, its belly flashing white, went hurtling through the air, tracing a round arc, and fell back into the water again.

Giovanni felt so light-hearted now he could almost have jumped up, and said,

"An engineer battalion of the sky. How about that, a trout got thrown clear up like that. I've never been on such a wonderful trip. Isn't it great."

"If you saw that trout up close it would be about this big, I bet. There must be a lot of fish in this water."

"Are there small fish too, I wonder?"

The girl said, drawn into the conversation.

"There must be. If there are big ones, there must be small ones too. But it was too far off, so we couldn't see the small ones just now."

Giovanni, his spirits fully restored now, answered the girl cheerfully, laughing.

"That must be the shrine of the Twin Stars!"

The boy suddenly cried out, pointing out the window.

On a low hill to the right stood two small shrines side by side, looking as though they were built of crystal.

"What's the shrine of the Twin Stars?"

"I've heard about it from my mother lots of times before. It must be that one, since there are two little crystal shrines standing right next to each other, just like she said."

"Tell it, then. What did the Twin Stars do?"

"I know too. The Twin Stars went out to play in the fields, and got in a fight with a crow, right?"

"That's not it at all. You see, on the bank of the River of Heaven, Mother told me the story..."

"And then the comet came along going gee-gee-foo, gee-gee-foo, right?"

"No, Tada dear, that's not it at all. That's a different story."

"So is he playing his flute over there right now?"

"He's gone off to the sea right now."

"No, that's wrong. He's already come back up from the sea."

"Oh, that's right, I know, I'll tell it."

The far bank of the river suddenly turned red.

The willow trees and everything else stood out in silhouette, pitch black, and the unseen waves of the River of Heaven too flashed red now and then, like needles.

Indeed, in the field on the far bank, a great crimson fire was burning, its black smoke rising so high it seemed almost to scorch the cold-looking bellflower-blue sky above.

Redder and more transparent than ruby, more beautifully intoxicating than lithium flame, that fire burned on.

"Whatever kind of fire is that? What do you have to burn to get a fire that shines red like that?"

Giovanni said.

"That's the Scorpion's fire."

Campanella answered, poring over the map again.

"Oh, if it's the Scorpion's fire, I know that story."

"What's the Scorpion's fire?"

Giovanni asked.

"The scorpion burned to death. And that fire is still burning even now, they say — I've heard it from my father many times."

"A scorpion — that's a bug, isn't it."

"Yes, a scorpion is a bug. But a good bug."

"Scorpions aren't good bugs. I saw one preserved in alcohol at the museum. It has a hook like this on its tail, and the teacher said if it stings you, you die."

"That's true. But it's a good bug all the same — this is what Father told me. Long ago, out in the fields of Baldora, there was a scorpion who lived by killing and eating little bugs and things. Then one day a weasel found him and was about to eat him. The scorpion ran and ran with all his might, but at last the weasel was just about to catch him. Just then there happened to be a well right in front of him, and he fell straight into it. He couldn't climb out no matter what he tried, and the scorpion began to drown. And at that moment, the scorpion prayed, saying this.

Ah, I have no idea how many lives I have taken until now. And yet when the weasel was about to take mine, I ran from it with all my might.

And even so, I have come to this in the end.

Ah, none of it was worth relying on.

Why did I not simply give my own body over to the weasel in silence?

If I had, the weasel would have gone on living for one more day.

O God.

Look upon my heart.

Do not let me throw my life away so uselessly again — please, the next time, let me use this body of mine for the true happiness of all.

That's what he said, they say.

And then, before he knew it, the scorpion saw his own body turned into a beautiful crimson fire, burning and lighting up the darkness of the night.

Father said it's still burning even now.

That fire, right there — that's really it."

"That's right. Look. The triangulation markers over there are lined up exactly in the shape of a scorpion."

Giovanni saw indeed, beyond that great fire, three triangulation markers arranged just like the scorpion's claws, and on this side, five more arranged like its tail and stinger.

And truly that beautiful crimson fire of the Scorpion burned on, silently, bright and brighter still.

As that fire fell gradually further behind them, everyone began to hear something indescribably lively — all sorts of music, and something like the fragrance of wildflowers, whistling, and the murmur of many people's voices.

It felt as though there must be a town or something nearby now, with some kind of festival going on there.

"Centaurus, send down the dew!"

All at once, the boy beside Giovanni, who had been asleep until now, cried out, looking at the window on the other side.

And there indeed stood spruce or fir trees, deep blue like Christmas trees, and among them countless little bean-lamps were lit, just as though a thousand fireflies had gathered together.

"Ah, that's right, it's the Centaurus Festival tonight, isn't it."

"Ah, this is the village of Centaurus."

Campanella said at once.

(Manuscript missing here.)

"When it comes to throwing a ball, I never miss."

The boy said, quite puffed up with pride.

"It's almost the Southern Cross now. Please get ready to get off."

The young man said to everyone.

"I'm going to stay on the train a little longer."

The boy said.

The girl beside Campanella stood up restlessly and began getting ready, but she still seemed reluctant to part from Giovanni and the others.

"We have to get off here."

The young man said, pressing his lips firmly together and looking down at the boy.

"I don't want to. I'm going to ride the train a little longer before I go."

Giovanni, unable to hold himself back any longer, said,

"Come along with us. We have a ticket that can take us anywhere at all."

"But we have to get off right here. This is where we go up to Heaven."

The girl said, sounding sad.