Botchan 2

Kiyo, too, seemed to have no particular plans of her own. She only said that once she got on a handcart, she would surely end up with a fine house with a proper entrance.

After that, Kiyo was set on the idea that if I got a place of my own and struck out independently, we would live together. She repeated her plea many times: "Please, do take me in." I, half believing I might actually come into a house someday, merely answered, "All right, I'll take you in." But this woman had a remarkably vivid imagination. "Which location would you prefer—Kojimachi, or perhaps Azabu? We'll put a swing in the garden for you to play on, and one Western-style room will be plenty," she would go on, laying out her own private plans all by herself. At the time, I had no desire for a house or anything of the sort. Neither a Western mansion nor a Japanese building was of any use to me, so I always told Kiyo, "I don't want such things." Then she would praise me again, saying, "You are so free of greed, your heart is pure." No matter what I said, Kiyo would praise me.

For five or six years after Mother died, we lived on in this state. I got scolded by Father. I quarreled with Brother. I got sweets from Kiyo, and was praised now and then. I had no other wishes. I thought this was plenty. I assumed other children were generally the same. It was just that, on every occasion, Kiyo would say without reason, "You are so pitiful, so unfortunate," and so I came to think, "Well then, I suppose I am pitiful and unfortunate." Apart from that, there was nothing that weighed on me. The only thing that bothered me was Father never giving me pocket money.

In the New Year of the sixth year after Mother's death, Father also passed away from a stroke. That April, I graduated from a certain private middle school. In June, Brother graduated from a commercial school. Brother had found a post at a company branch in Kyushu and had to go. I still had to study in Tokyo. Brother announced he would sell the house, settle the estate, and depart for his post. I answered that he could do as he pleased. I had no intention of depending on Brother anyway. Even if he offered to look after me, we would only quarrel, and he would surely say something in the end. It was precisely because I had accepted his half-hearted protection that I had to bow my head to such a brother. I made up my mind I could earn my bread even delivering milk. After that, Brother called in a dealer and sold our generations-old junk for a mere pittance. The house and land he transferred to a wealthy man through someone's mediation. That side of it seemed to bring in quite a sum, but I know nothing of the details. From a month earlier, I had been lodging in Ogawamachi, Kanda, until the direction of my future became clear. Kiyo greatly regretted that the house she had lived in for over ten years was passing into others' hands, but since it was not hers, there was nothing to be done. She kept pressing me: "If only you were a little older, you could inherit this place." If inheriting were possible by just being a little older, I should be able to inherit even now. The old woman knows nothing, and believes that once she ages, she can get Brother's house.

Brother and I thus parted, but the trouble was Kiyo's destination. Brother was of course in no position to take her along, and Kiyo had not the slightest intention of trailing after Brother all the way down to Kyushu. And as for me at the time, I was holed up in a four-and-a-half-mat cheap lodging, and even that I might have to vacate at any moment. There was nothing to be done. I asked Kiyo. I said, "Are you thinking of going into service somewhere?" She replied, having at last made up her mind: "Until you get a house of your own and take a wife, there's no help for it—I shall depend on my nephew." This nephew was a court clerk and managed well enough for today, and had invited Kiyo two or three times before, saying come if you like, but Kiyo had refused, saying that even if she worked as a maid, she preferred the house she had grown used to over the years. But in the present case, she probably thought it better to depend on her nephew than to change service and enter some unknown household with unease. Even so, she kept saying, "Get a house soon," "Take a wife," "Come and I'll look after you." She must have liked me, a stranger, better than her own nephew.

Two days before he left for Kyushu, Brother came to my lodging and produced six hundred yen. He said, "Use this as capital to go into business, or as tuition to study—use it as you like. In exchange, I'll have nothing more to do with you after this." For Brother, this was a commendable way of doing things. I thought I wouldn't be in trouble even without the six hundred yen, but I liked this unusually detached handling, so I thanked him and took it. Then Brother pulled out fifty yen and said, "Give this to Kiyo while you're at it," so I accepted without objection. Two days later we parted at Shimbashi Station, and I have not met Brother since.

Lying in bed, I thought about how to use the six hundred yen. Going into business would be troublesome and not something I could do well, and with only six hundred yen there was no way to run a proper business anyway. Even if I could, in my present state I couldn't boast of having received an education in front of others, so it would only be a loss. Capital didn't matter; I'd use it as tuition and study. Divide six hundred by three, spend two hundred a year, and I could study for three years. If I worked hard for three years, I'd amount to something. Then I considered which school to enter, but I had never liked any branch of learning. Especially languages or literature—no thank you. As for new-style poetry, of twenty lines I couldn't understand a single one. I figured if it was something I hated anyway, it didn't matter what I did, but by chance I passed in front of the Physics School and saw an advertisement for student recruitment, so thinking it was fate, I took the rule book and immediately went through the enrollment procedure. Looking back now, this too was a blunder born of the reckless foolhardiness I inherited from my father.

For three years I studied about as well as anyone, but being nothing special, it was more convenient to count my seat order from the bottom. Yet strange to say, when three years passed I up and graduated. I thought it funny myself, but since there was no grounds for complaint, I graduated quietly.

Eight days after graduating, the principal sent for me. Thinking he must want something, I went, and he said a middle school somewhere in Shikoku needed a math teacher. The salary was forty yen a month, and he asked if I'd go. I had studied three years, but truth be told, I had no intention of becoming a teacher, nor any thought of going to the countryside. Still, having no other plan for what to do besides teaching, when presented with this, I answered on the spot: "I'll go." Here again, the reckless foolhardiness inherited from my father wrought its mischief.

Once I'd accepted, I had to take up the post. These three years I had stayed shut in my four-and-a-half-mat room and never once heard a scolding. I got by without quarreling. It was a relatively peaceful time in my life. But now I had to give up even the four-and-a-half-mat room. Since birth, the only time I'd set foot outside Tokyo was when I went on a hike to Kamakura with my classmates. This time it was no Kamakura. I had to go far, far away. On the map it showed as a seaside speck the size of a needle tip. It was surely no good place. I didn't know what sort of town it was or what sort of people lived there. Not knowing didn't trouble me. It wasn't a worry. I just had to go. Admittedly, it was a bit of a bother.

Even after packing up the house, I went to see Kiyo now and then. Her nephew turned out to be a rather decent fellow. Whenever I visited, if he was home, he entertained me with this and that. Kiyo would put me before him and tell the nephew all about my merits. She even went so far as to proclaim that once I graduated I'd buy a mansion in Kojimachi and commute to government office. She decided all this alone and chattered on, and I, embarrassed, turned red in the face. And not just once or twice. Now and then she'd even bring up how I wet the bed when I was small, which was too much. What the nephew thought of Kiyo's boasting I don't know. Only, Kiyo was an old-fashioned woman, and seemed to regard our relationship as that of lord and retainer from the feudal age. Since I was her lord, she apparently reasoned, I must be lord to her nephew as well. The nephew, now, had a fine nerve.

When the arrangements were finally settled and I went to see her three days before leaving, she was in a north-facing three-mat room, laid up with a cold. The moment she saw me she sat up and at once asked, "Master, when will you get a house of your own?" She thought that once I graduated, money would naturally well up in my pocket. To have caught such a great person and still call him "Master" was absurd beyond absurd. I plainly said I wouldn't be getting a house for the time being, that I was going to the countryside. She looked deeply disappointed and kept smoothing her salt-and-pepper temples, all disheveled. Feeling sorry for her, I comforted her: "I am going, but I'll be back soon. I'll surely return next summer break." Even so she made a strange face, so I asked, "What should I buy you as a souvenir? What do you want?" She said, "I'd like some Niigata bamboo-leaf candy." I'd never even heard of Niigata bamboo-leaf candy. For one thing, the direction was wrong. I told her, "The countryside I'm going to doesn't seem to have bamboo-leaf candy." She asked back, "Then, which way is it?" I said, "West." She asked, "Past Hakone, or this side?" I was quite at a loss.

On the day of departure she came in the morning and fussed over me. On the way she bought from a notions shop some toothpaste, toothpicks, and a hand towel, and put them in my canvas leather trunk. Even when I said such things wouldn't fit, she wouldn't hear of it. We rode in a cart to the station, and when we stepped onto the platform, she gazed fixedly at my face as I climbed into the car and said in a small voice, "This may be the last we meet. Do take care." Her eyes were full of tears. I did not cry. But I came very near to it. After the train had gotten well under way, thinking it was surely all right now, I stuck my head out the window and turned back—and there she still stood. She looked somehow very small.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”