When I rested a moment, my hands felt as if they were going to drop off. I worried that I might miss my footing if I started down again. But I had no choice. I had to climb as far down as there was a shaft to climb, or else I’d tumble headfirst and split my skull open. Such thoughts gave me strength, somehow, to climb to the bottom. I still can’t figure out where that strength came from. It didn’t arrive all at once, but gradually, seeping into my arms and belly and legs, so that I was clearly aware of its coming. The same sort of thing happens when you’re studying all night for an exam. Exhausted, you doze for a few seconds, and when you suddenly wake up, you’re good for another five or six pages. Studying like this, you may not know what you’ve read, but you manage to read through it. In the same way, I couldn’t have declared with certainty that I had climbed down, but I was definitely there. And just as you know for sure how many pages of a book you have prepared even though you may have forgotten its contents, I knew precisely how many ladders I had come down. Fifteen. I was shocked to discover that I had reached the bottom of a fifteen-ladder climb, and still there was no sign of Hatsu. Fortunately, there was only one way to go. I scrambled through the narrow opening and there, at last, was Hatsu. Instead of issuing his usual clipped orders to me, he asked, “How you doin’? Tough goin’, huh?”
It had, indeed, been tough going, and I told him so. He then encouraged me to make a further effort.
“We’re almost there. Whaddya say?”
“More ladders?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, no more ladders. Don’t worry.” And he gave me a kindly smile.
As long as I had made it this far, I might as well press onward, I decided, falling in behind Hatsu—downward again. The farther down we went, the more water there was on the tunnel floor. Each step made a splash. The lanterns revealed a sheet of grayish water on the path, as when the sewage ditches in Shitaya overflow. And the water was cold. The skin between my toes felt as if it were being cut. I gained some relief each time I lifted a foot, but then I had to plunge it down into the unbroken waters again. With one foot up, I wanted to go on standing there like a heron. I had to put it down, of course, and when I did, the splash of my sandal bottom against the water raised waves like fish fins. No sooner did they sparkle in the light of the lantern than they disappeared. The calm surface was broken again with my next step. More glittering fish fins. As I advanced deeper and deeper into the earth like this, the water level rose. Telling myself—with no justification whatever—that all I had to do was make it through this spot and I’d be on dry land, I rounded a bend and the water suddenly rose from my ankles to my shins. I forged on, hoping the next curve would do it, but, turning to the right, there was a sudden drop and I was up to my knees. Every move made a big sloshing sound. My knees left wakes of whirling eddies, and these rose gradually higher up my thighs. I knew my life was in danger. Something was wrong. Something was causing the water to rise like this, and any minute now the whole mine was going to fill up. Such thoughts sent a chill from my hips to my belly. But Hatsu plowed on through the muddy water, absolutely unperturbed.
“Are we all right?” I asked from behind, but Hatsu went on sloshing through the water without replying. To me, it seemed impossible for anyone to work in water like this, even if we were in a copper mine. This water sloshing around could only mean that something had gone wrong or that I had been led into an abandoned tunnel—a disaster in either case, and I was about to ask Hatsu about it again when the water came up to my hips. This was more than I could take.
“Are we going on?” I called out to Hatsu. My voice did not sound as it would have in asking an ordinary question. My very life had practically come flying out of my mouth from an excess of fear for my own well-being. But I still had enough self-control to worry what Hatsu would think of me, so my voice had come out not as the monosyllabic scream it wanted to make, but in the guise of a fearful question. Not even Hatsu could ignore such a sound. Hip-deep in water, he stopped and turned toward me, holding his lantern aloft. I peered through the darkness to find that his brows were knit in concern and his lips were smiling.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Give up?”
“No, it’s just this water …” I looked down fearfully, but he was not the least bit impressed. He was still smiling, like a man happily lifting up his kimono skirts to cross a flooded street. This did much to clear up my doubts, but the fundamental cowardice remained, and just to make sure, I asked again, “Do you think we’re all right?”
Hatsu looked more amused than ever, but finally he became serious. “This is Tunnel 8. The bottom. There’s always water here, nothing to be scared of. Come on, follow me.”
He was not going to humor me. All I could do was follow after him, wet to the crotch. In this dark tunnel, I was (to use a daring metaphor) soaked in darkness from head to foot. Which was bad enough in itself, but in addition I was soaked in real water—water the color of the tunnel, which made me feel twice as bad. And the water had been rising slowly from ankle depth. Now it was up to my hips, and every move I made kicked up waves that wet me higher than the actual water level. Not only did the wet spots not dry, the waves sometimes leapt higher still, sending chills through me higher and higher until they reached my belly. Chilled from the top down by the tunnel and from the bottom up by the water, I trailed after my guide through this unfamiliar territory like a slug. Then, from the right, more water came flowing from a deep, cave-like opening. Inside the cave there echoed a clanging sound. The place had to be a work site.
Standing before the opening, Hatsu said, “Hear that? Somebody’s working way down here at the bottom. Think you can do it?”
Bending over until my chest touched the water, I peered into the cave. Everything wore a dull glow—if I can call it a glow. Actually, it was more like a vague smudge of something that was left after a weak, tiny little light had been stretched and pulled and pulled and stretched so far beyond its power to illuminate that whatever light it had to give off was overwhelmed by the darkness. The clanging sound came from a point where an object somewhat blacker than its surroundings clung to the rock wall at an angle. The sound scattered against the walls of the cave in a futile search for an escape route, rebounded from the surface of the water and, coalescing, emerged from the mouth of the cave. Water, too, emerged from the cave. There was a degree of brightness to the water, in contrast to the absolute darkness of the cave ceiling.
“Want to go in?” asked Hatsu.
The cold sent a shudder through me.
“Not really,” I said.
“All right. Never mind. Today.”
Adding this proviso, he looked hard at me. I, of course, was hooked.
“You mean I have to start working here tomorrow? How long do I—how long do you have to stay in the water when you work here?”
“Hmm” replied Hatsu, thinking. “There’s three shifts goin’ ’round the clock …”
Which meant that each shift lasted eight hours. I turned my gaze on the black water.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
Now, all of a sudden, he was trying to comfort me. He was probably feeling sorry for me.
“But,” I protested, “you have to work eight hours in this place.”
“Well, sure, you’ve got to put your time in. But you don’t have to worry.”
“Why’s that?”
“Look, I’m tellin’ you it’s all right.”
He started walking. I followed him in silence. After a few sloshes, he suddenly whirled around.
“New guys only work in Tunnel 2 or 3. The ones who come down here are the guys who really know their way around.”
He flashed me a grin and I grinned back.
“Feel better?”
The best I could do was say that I did. He seemed very pleased with himself. Suddenly the water receded to knee level. With my toes, I could feel that there were steps in the earth. I started counting them, and by the time I reached three, the w
ater had come down to my ankles. Then the ground leveled out. I was very happy that we had reached high ground so quickly. My happiness increased by leaps and bounds as each turn led to drier land. Finally, after all the sloshing around, we reached a spot where there was not so much as a splash to be heard. Hatsu asked if I wanted to see some machinery. When he explained that he was talking about the contraptions that collected the ore thrown down the several pits, sent it up to Tunnel 1, and hauled it out of the mine in electric cars, I begged off. No doubt this machinery moved in fascinating ways, but I had no desire to look at things that I would have nothing to do with after today. If I was not going to look at the machinery, that meant my tour of the mine was pretty much over. My guide Hatsu then informed me that it was time to go back. He chose a relatively dry route for our return trip. Apparently, not even he needed more than one soaking to the waist. Still, there was a fifty-foot stretch in which the water reached our calves. At this point, in my ignorance, I began to fear that we had come to the deep spot again, and I dragged my frozen feet along, recalling how, the first time through, I had felt as if my navel were turning to ice, and expecting it to happen again at any moment. Instead, the farther we went, the shallower the water became—and the lighter my steps. Finally we reached another dry passage.
“Is that all?” I asked, but Hatsu only laughed. I was in good spirits, too, at that point, but soon we came to the bottom of those endless ladders. I could have stood anything else—even water up to the chest. But those ladders! At least on the way back, if I could, I wanted to avoid them. And yet, undeniably, there we were, in that very spot. Someone had once told me the story of the plank road of Szechwan.18 These ladders were those planks dangling in space, all hint of the original incline having been snatched away. At this point my legs refused to move. It felt like a sudden attack of beriberi, and when that happened, something pulled at the seat of my pants. Some readers might think that it was Hatsu who pulled me, but they’d be wrong. It was just a feeling I had. If forced to describe it, I might say I was like an old man bent over with lumbago. I just couldn’t straighten up. Of course, I wasn’t ready to declare that I was under the spell of the dangling plank road, though it’s true that I had been gradually relaxing the intensity of my efforts in response to Hatsu’s sympathetic attitude. Whatever. I just couldn’t walk anymore.
Observing my condition, Hatsu said, “Can’t walk, huh? Better take a break till you straighten out. I’ll be back soon. Gonna go see somebody.”
With that, he slipped into the darkness and disappeared.
Now I was alone of course. I plopped down on my backside. The advantages of a seat-pad become obvious at times like this. At least I didn’t have to worry about hurting myself on the rocks or dirtying my clothes in the mud—one ray of happiness amid the darkness of despair. I leaned my stiffly bent back against the rock wall. This was the most I was willing to do: you couldn’t have gotten me to lift a finger. In this posture, I stared at the opposite wall. Either my mind stopped working because my body wasn’t moving or my body took it easy because my mind was relaxed, or maybe a little of both, but in any case everything went fuzzy for a while, during which I seem to have been drifting between life and death. At first I had a strong desire to breathe the daylight air, if only a single cubic foot of it, but gradually my mind went dark. With that, I became oblivious to the darkness of the mine. The darkness of the mine, the darkness of my mind: the two became one and indivisible. I did not sleep, however. Of that I’m sure. In the stillness, my consciousness became highly attenuated, that’s all. But even this attenuated consciousness was one part real world in ten parts water. As diluted as it became, it never quite disappeared. It was like talking to someone on the telephone instead of face-to-face, or possibly a little less distinct than that. For me, in whose eyes the sun of the world of men had become too intense; for me, who could stay neither in Tokyo nor the countryside; for me, who sorely needed a dose of something that would break the fever of my agony; for me, who had above all to disperse the excessive stimuli that had swarmed through the strands of my nervous system to their outermost ends; for me, having my consciousness sink beneath the surface like this was an overwhelming need, a desire, an ideal. It was a far more elevated paradise than the miner’s life I had imagined to myself as I had tramped along the road behind Chōzō. If fleeing was the first stop on the way toward letting myself die, this realm I had entered was the—I don’t know which stop, but it was a station not far from the end of the line. Having been thrust so unexpectedly to the verge of death in the brief interval during which I was left alone by Hatsu, I felt—well, how do you think I felt? Frankly, I was happy. Set adrift, however, amidst a consciousness that had been diluted in ten parts water, this sense of happiness did not strike me with the same intensity as other emotional ties with the real world. It, too, was extremely diluted. But it was definitely there. As long as a person remains conscious and retains any awareness at all, he can never lose just the awareness that he is happy. My mental state was different from impaired psychological phenomena in which the range of mental activity has been narrowed down. My mind was still free to pursue the full range of its activities at will. Only the intensity of those activities had diminished, the single difference between my usual self and myself at that moment being one of degree. In this palest interval of life, I experienced a pale happiness.
Had this state continued for an hour, I would have been satisfied for an hour. Had it gone on for a day, I’m sure I would have been satisfied for a day. Indeed, I probably would have been happy if it had continued for a hundred years. But—and here I encountered yet another new mental activity.
By which I mean that, unfortunately, this state did not remain stationary as I would have wished. It began to move, like the flame of a lantern that is running out of oil. Expressing levels of consciousness in terms of numbers, I might say that what normally functioned at a level of ten had come down to five. After a short while, it had dropped to four. Then three. Eventually, it would have to go to zero. I was aware of the gradual dilution of happiness that accompanied this process, but only with a degree of awareness diminishing at the same pace. The happiness itself was doubtless still happiness. Logically speaking, then, however much my consciousness might decrease, I should not have been anything other than satisfied, just thinking myself happy. Nevertheless, the moment my descending consciousness was about to strike zero, something leapt out of the darkness. What leapt out was the thought, “You’re going to die!” This was followed closely by another thought: “You can’t let that happen!” The moment it struck me, I yanked my eyes open.
My feet were ready to drop off. The blood was running through the frozen flesh between my knees and hips. My belly felt as if it were full of cold water or something. Only from the chest up did I feel human. When I opened my eyes and thought about what had just happened, there seemed to be an orderly connection until “You’re going to die! You can’t let that happen!” following which there was a sudden break. After the break had come the act of opening my eyes. In other words, I had reached a turning point in my life with “You’re going to die!” The very first act I followed that with was the opening of my eyes, and the two things were totally unconnected. Yet they were totally connected, the proof of which was the fact that, when I opened my eyes and looked at my surroundings, the shout “You’re going to die!” and so forth was echoing in my ears. I could still hear it. I say there was a “shout” in my “ears,” but only because there is no other way to apply a figure of speech to what had happened. Far from a mere figure of speech, I was convinced that someone had really warned me “You’re going to die,” etc. Of course there could not have been anyone there. Not a person, at least. By which I am not pointing to a god. I hate gods. I probably just panicked and imagined someone in my mind, but I had never dreamed that human beings were so worried about death. This should make suicide an impossibility. The soul works differently at such times, so you’re controlled by your instincts b
ut you’re completely unaware of it. I think we ought to be careful of this. One interpretation of an experience like mine might be that a god had saved me. Another might be that the spirit of someone close to me—most often a lover, it seems, in these cases—had been watching over me and saved me. Considering how young I was (and full of myself), I’m rather impressed that I didn’t interpret the voice as having come from Tsuyako or Sumie. I was born without that poetic streak, I guess.
All of a sudden, Hatsu was back. The moment I looked at him, my consciousness returned to remarkable clarity. Everything came back to me at once: that I had now to climb the dangling plank road, that tomorrow I would have to begin clanging with hammer and chisel, that there would be those other things to deal with—the mud-rice, the bedbugs, the jangle, the “goddesses,” and, last of all, the fact of my own degeneracy.
“Feelin’ better?” Hatsu asked.
“Yes. A little, I think.”
“Let’s get you up, then.”
I thanked him and, standing there, watched Hatsu latch onto a rung and vigorously set one foot on the ladder.
“Don’t forget,” he said, looking back at me, “the climb’s gonna be a little tough.” With that, he started up.