Gauche the Cellist
by Kenji Miyazawa
Copyright Paul Quirk 2013
Translated from - Serohiki no go-shu by Kenji Miyazawa
Cover image: by Tamie Oda
Discover other titles by Kenji Miyazawa and Nankichi Niimi published by Little J Books at https://www.littlejbooks.com/
Please note, copyright on the original works have expired, however, Little J Books holds all copyrights for these translations. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. The moral right of the translator has been asserted.
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Note on these translations
Where necessary chapters have been added to make navigation easier in an ebook format. Gauche the Cellist, for example, didn't originally contain any chapters.
Further notes on the translations will be added to the www.Littlejbooks.com website over time. Please email me if you have any questions!!
This series is dedicated to my wife Yuuki, who has provided me with the support and encouragement to make this project a reality.
Contents
Gauche the Cellist
About the Authors
About Little J Books
Other Titles by Little J Books
Gauche the Cellist
by Kenji Miyazawa
Chapter One
Gauche played the cello in the orchestra for the town theater. But his reputation wasn’t very good. In fact he was the worst of all the musicians, so the conductor was always picking on him.
It was afternoon and the musicians were sitting in a circle backstage, rehearsing Symphony No. 6 that they were due to play in the upcoming town concert.
The trumpets sang out at the top of their voice.
The violins cried like the wind.
The clarinets blew with passion, cheering them on.
Gauche was staring wide-eyed at his music, his lips pursed tight, playing with total concentration.
The conductor clapped his hands together. Everyone stopped dead and the room fell silent.
“Cello! You’re behind!” the conductor yelled. “Start again from ♬-Toh-Teh-Teh, Teh-Teh-Ti-♬. Begin!”
They went back a little and started again. Gauche's face was bright red and sweat was streaming from his brow as they finally moved passed the section where the conductor had yelled at him. He gave a sigh of relief as they continued on, but suddenly the conductor clapped his hands together again.
“Cello, you're out of tune! Goodness! I haven't time to be teaching you Do-Re-Mi!”
Feeling sorry for Gauche, the other musicians pretended to be busy reading their sheet music and checking their instruments. Gauche hurriedly tuned his cello. Of course Gauche was to blame, but the cello was in pretty bad shape too.
“Start again from one bar back. Begin!”
They started again. Gauche was trying as hard as he could, his mouth screwed to one side. And this time they continued on for some time. But just as they were settling into a nice rhythm, the conductor made a terrifying face and clapped his hands a third time. Not again, thought Gauche with dread, but thankfully this time it was someone else. Like the others had done before, Gauche put his face in his music and pretended to be thinking about something.
“OK, let's move on to the next section. Begin.”
But just as they began to play, the conductor stamped his foot on the floor and began to yell.
“No, no, no! That's not it at all! This bit is the heart of the piece. Your timing is all over the place! People! There are only ten days to the concert. How can we call ourselves professional musicians if we sound worse than a group of blacksmiths or the boys from the sweets shop?!
“And Gauche! I don’t know what to do with you. Your music doesn’t have any emotion. There’s no anger, no pleasure, there’s no feeling to it at all! And why can’t you play in time with the other instruments?! It's like you’re always walking behind everyone with your shoelaces trailing behind you. It's not good enough and you’re going to have to do better. What a shame it would be for the rest of the musicians if the great Venus Orchestra got stuck with a bad reputation because of you.
“Alright, that's enough for today. Take your breaks and be back in the box by six sharp for tonight's performance.”
After bowing to the conductor the musicians started lighting their cigarettes or walking off for their breaks. Gauche held his battered old box-like cello, turned to face the wall, screwed up his mouth and burst into tears, but then, pulling himself together, he began to quietly play from the beginning the section they'd just been practicing now, all by himself.
Chapter Two
Later that same evening, Gauche returned home carrying a big black object on his back. It wasn’t really a house he lived in, but rather a run-down water mill by the river on the outskirts of town where he lived all alone, pruning tomatoes and plucking caterpillars from the cabbages in his small veggie patch each morning, before heading into town in the afternoon.
Gauche went inside, turned on the light and opened up the black package. It was nothing; just that battered old cello from earlier in the day. After placing it gently on the floor, he quickly grabbed a glass from the shelf, scooped some water from out of a bucket, and gulped it down.
He then shook his head, sat down in a chair and started to play that same music from the afternoon with the ferocity of a raging tiger. He continued to play and think as he turned the pages, thinking and playing, as best as he could, until he reached the end, starting again, playing goh, goh, goh, over and over and over again.
Midnight had long since passed and Gauche looked as if he didn’t even know he was still playing, his face bright red, his eyes bloodshot; he was ready to pass out at any moment. Just then there was a knock at the backdoor.
“Is that you Hauche?” cried out Gauche in a daze.
But nudging open the door and slipping into the room was a large calico cat he'd seen five or six times before.
It was struggling to carry a half-ripe tomato it'd taken from Gauche's tomato patch, placing it at Gauche's feet.
“Aah! I'm pooped! Carrying that was hard work.”
“What's that?” asked Gauche.
“Just a little something for you. Eat up,” offered the cat.
Gauche’s frustration from the afternoon boiled over and he began to yell,
“WHO told you to bring a tomato here anyway!? Firstly, do you think I'm going to eat something you dragged in? And second of all, that tomato is mine! Look at that. You've picked one that's not even red. I bet it's you who's been chewing on the stems and digging up the roots. GET OUT! BLASTED CAT!”
The cat arched its back and squinted at Gauche, but smirked as it replied;
“Master Gauche, don’t get so worked up, it’s not good for you. Rather, why don’t you play Schumann's Traumerei? I’ll listen for you.”
“Don't be so cheeky! What would a cat know!?”
The cat was getting on his nerves and Gauche sat thinking about what to do with it.
“Please, no need to be shy. Go right ahead. For some reason I can't get to sleep unl
ess I hear you play.”
“CHEEKY! CHEEKY! CHEEKY!”
Gauche's face turned bright red and he yelled and stamped his foot like the conductor had done that afternoon, but then suddenly he had a change of heart.
“Alright then, I'll play.”
Curiously, he walked over and locked the door and closed all the windows, then picked up his cello and turned off the lamp. The light from the moon in its last quarter poured into the room.
“What was it you wanted me to play?”
“Traumerei, by Schumann the Romantic,” said the cat nonchalantly, wiping a paw across its mouth.
“Oh right. Is Traumerei the one that goes like this?”
Gauche tore up a handkerchief and stuffed it tightly into his ears. Then, with the ferocity of a raging storm, he launched into Tiger Hunting in India.
At first the cat sat listening with its head cocked sideways, but then started blinking rapidly, and suddenly jumped backwards towards the door. It slammed into the door with a loud thud, but the door stayed shut. The cat panicked as if realizing it had made a-once-in-a-lifetime blunder, and sparks began to fly from its eyes and forehead. Before long the sparks spread to its whiskers and nose, and for an instant, it stopped as if being tickled and were about to sneeze, before suddenly taking off as if unable to stand still one second longer. Gauche was thoroughly enjoying himself, and played with greater and greater intensity.
“Master Gauche, that’s enough. That’s enough! I'm begging you, please stop! I promise I won't interrupt you again.”
“Shush! I’m just about to catch the tiger.”
The cat was jumping around the room and clinging to the walls in a state of agony, leaving glowing blue marks wherever it went. Finally it started circling Gauche like a windmill.
Gauche started to feel a little dizzy himself, so he said to the cat,
“Ok, that’ll do you,” and stopped.
Acting as if nothing happened, the cat said,
“Master Gauche, your performance is really off tonight.”
This annoyed Gauche even more, but this time he simply pulled out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, and taking out a match, he asked the cat,
“Are you alright? You haven't hurt yourself have you? Give us a look at your tongue.”
The cat poked out its long pointy tongue as if making fun.
“Oh, it looks a little rough,” said Gauche, before quickly striking his match on the cat’s tongue and lighting his cigarette.
Stupefied, the cat swung its tongue around and around like a pinwheel as it raced toward the door, banging its head with a thud and stumbling backwards, coming back and banging its head with a thud and stumbling backwards again, and then coming back and banging its head with a thud and stumbling backwards again, trying to barge its way out.
Gauche watched on amused for a little while, but then said,
“Alright, I'll let you out. Don't come back, you silly cat!”
Gauche opened the door, and couldn’t help but laugh as he watched the cat run off like the wind through the wild grass. After that he fell into a deep sleep and woke feeling completely refreshed.
Chapter Three
The next evening also, Gauche returned home carrying his cello wrapped up on his back. After gulping down a glass of water he began playing just like he had the night before.
Midnight soon passed, and one O’clock, then two O’clock came and went, but still Gauche played on. As he continued playing and playing, no longer aware of the time or even that he was still playing, he could hear someone knocking from up on the roof.
“Cat, haven't you learnt your lesson?” yelled Gauche, but the next moment there was a loud fluttering sound, and a single grey bird flew in through a hole in the ceiling. As it landed on the floor, Gauche could see it was a cuckoo bird.
“Even the birds are coming! What do you want?” asked Gauche.
“I want to learn music,” replied the cuckoo calmly.
Gauche laughed,
“Music!? Don't you just go cuckoo, cuckoo?”
The cuckoo became very serious,
“Yes, that's it. But it's quite difficult, you know.”
“How hard could it be? It might be hard singing so much, but there’s not much to the singing itself, is there?”
“Actually, it’s really very difficult. Why, if one cuckoo bird sings ♬-cuckoo-♬ like this, and another sings ♬-cuckoo-♬ like this, you'll notice they sound completely different.
“Sounds the same.”
“Well you just don’t know, that's all. If ten thousand cuckoos sang ♬-cuckoo-♬, then all ten thousand would be different.”
“Whatever you say. If you know all that then what are you doing coming to me?”
“Well you see, I want to be able to do the proper Do-Re-Mi.”
“As if birds have Do-Re-Mi!”
“Yes, I need it before I go overseas.”
“As if birds have overseas!”
“Master Gauche, could you please teach me Do-Re-Mi? I'll follow your lead.”
“Boy, you are irritating. Alright, I'll play it three times and you’d better be leaving as soon as I’m done.”
Gauche stood up his cello, strummed it a couple of times to tune it, and started playing ♬-Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do-♬. The cuckoo noisily flapped its wings.
“That's not it, that's not it. It doesn't go like that!”
“You are irritating. Let's hear your version then.”
“It's like this,” and the cuckoo bent forward, braced itself momentarily, and let out a single,
♬-cuckoo-♬.
“Huh?! That's your Do-Re-Mi? Do-Re-Mi, Symphony No. 6, it's all the same to a cuckoo bird.”
“No, that's not true.”
“How isn't it?”
“It’s difficult when you have to sing it over and over.”
“You mean like this?” and Gauche took hold of his cello and played ♬-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-♬, over and over and over.
The cuckoo bird became ecstatic and joined in, singing ♬-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-♬. Bending forward as far as it could, it sang on and on and on. Gauche's hand eventually became sore, “Alright, that’ll do,” he said, and finished playing.
The cuckoo lowered its eyes sadly as it continued to sing, before slowly trailing off, ♬-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuck…cuck…koo…-♬
Gauche became furious,
“Look bird, if there’s nothing else then go home!” he yelled.
“Please, if you could just play it one more time. Yours is pretty good, it’s just a little off.”
“What did you say? I’m not taking lessons from you, you know. Aren’t you going home?”
“Please, just one more time. Please,” begged the cuckoo, bowing its head over and over.
“Alright, but no more after this.”
Gauche readied his bow. The cuckoo let out a “Koo” as it took a breath,
“Now, please play as long as you can,” it said, bowing one more time.
“What a pain you are,” said Gauche, giving a wry smile as he started to play.
The cuckoo became completely serious, bending forward and singing “♬-cuckoo-cuckoo-♬, with everything it had. At first Gauche was annoyed, but as he continued to play on and on, he started to get the feeling that it was actually the cuckoo that had the proper Do-Re-Mi. In fact, the more he played, the more he felt the bird had it right.
“Ah... if I keep this up I’ll turn into a bird myself,” said Gauche, and stopped all of a sudden.
The bird started to sway as if it had been whacked on the head, and then trailed off as before,
♬-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuck…cuck…koo…koo…-♬
It looked angrily up at Gauche,
“Why did you stop there? Even the wimpiest of cuckoos keep singing until their throats start to bleed.”
“Oh, you're so cheeky! How long do I have to put up with your
idiocy anyway? Go home! Look. It's nearly morning,” said Gauche, pointing out the window.
The eastern sky had taken on a silvery haze and the pitch black clouds were moving steadily toward the north.
“Ok, then please play until the sun comes up. One more time. Only a little more,” pleaded the cuckoo, bowing its head again.
“Shut up! What are you talking about, you silly bird. If you don't get out of here I'm going to pluck you and eat you for breakfast!” yelled Gauche, stamping his foot on the floor.
Frightened, the cuckoo suddenly took off, making straight for the window. It smashed its head straight into the glass, falling down with a thump.
“You flew straight into the glass, you silly bird,” said Gauche as he rushed to open the window, but this window wasn’t one that ever opened smoothly.
As Gauche stood trying to rattle it loose from its frame, the cuckoo once again flew smack into the glass and fell down onto the floor. He could see blood trickling from the top of its beak.
“Can't you see I'm trying to open it?! Just wait!” said Gauche, who had barely managed to prize open the window a couple of inches when the cuckoo got back to its feet, and, staring out at the eastern sky with a look that said ‘it’s now or never,’ took off with every ounce of energy it could muster. Of course this time it hit the glass harder than ever, falling down to the floor with a thump where it lay motionless for some time. Gauche reached down to grab it and throw it out the front door, but suddenly the cuckoo opened its eyes and leapt backwards. Then it flew at the glass one more time.
Without thinking, Gauche raised his foot and gave the window a good kick. The glass gave out a massive crack as it broke into two and then three shards, the entire window falling out of the building, frame and all. The cuckoo shot out through the gaping hole like an arrow. It continued flying on and on, in an endless straight line, until eventually it was out of sight. Gauche stood staring out after it with a look of amazement on his face, before crashing in a corner of the room and falling asleep.
Chapter Four
The next evening also, Gauche was having a cup of water, exhausted from once again practicing his cello into the early hours, when he again heard a knock at the door. He had decided that tonight, he would frighten off whatever animal appeared as soon as they came, like he had finally done to the cuckoo the previous night, and he stood waiting with his cup in hand, when the door opened just a fraction, and in walked a little raccoon dog. Gauche pushed the door open a little wider and stamped his foot on the ground,