Totto-Chan, the Little Girl at the Window (10 page)

Blood kept trickling down, and Mother and Daddy eventually realized that Rocky must have bitten her. But they assured Totto-chan they wouldn't be cross with him, and the child finally removed her hands. When she saw Totto-chan's ear dangling, Mother screamed. Daddy carried his little girl to the doctor's with Mother leading the way. Luckily, because it was treated in time, the doctor was able to fasten the ear back, just as it was before, to her parents' great relief. But the only thing Totto-chan was concerned about, however, was whether Mother and Daddy would keep their promise not to scold Rocky.

Totto-chan went home all bandaged from the top of her head to her chin, looking just like a white rabbit. In spite of his promise not to scold Rocky, Daddy felt very inclined to admonish the dog in some way. But Mother gave him a look with her eyes as much as to say, "Please keep your promise," and Daddy reluctantly did so.

Totto-chan rushed into the house, anxious to let Rocky know, as soon as possible, that everything was all right, and nobody was cross any more. But she couldn't find Rocky anywhere. For the first time Totto-chan cried. She hadn't cried at the doctor's, she had been so afraid that if she did, it would increase her parents' anger with the dog. But there was no stopping her tears now. As she cried, she called, “Rocky! Rocky! Where are you!"

After calling several more times, her tear-stained face lifted into a smile as a familiar brown back emerged slowly from behind the sofa. Going up to Totto-chan, he gently licked the good ear that was just visible among the bandages. Totto-chan put her
arms around Rocky's neck and sniffed inside his ears. Mother and Daddy used to say they were smelly, but how she loved that dear familiar odor.

Rocky and Totto-chan were tired and very sleepy.

The end-of-summer moon looked down from above the garden on the little bandaged girl and the dog who never wanted to play "wolf' again. The two were even better friends now than they had been before.

Tomoe's Sports Day was held every year on the third of November. The headmaster had decided on that day after a lot of research, in which he found out that the third of November was the autumn day on which it had rained the fewest times. Perhaps it was due to his skill in collecting weather data, or perhaps it was just that the sun and clouds heeded his desire--that no rain should mar the Sports Day so anticipated by
the children, who had decorated the school grounds the day before and made all sorts of preparations. Whatever it was, it was almost uncanny the way it never rained on that day.

As all kinds of things were done differently at Tomoe, its Sports Day, too, was unique. The only sports events that were the same as at other elementary schools were the Tug of War and the Three Legged Race. All the rest had been invented by the headmaster. Requiring no special or elaborate equipment, they made use of familiar everyday school things.

For instance, there was the Carp Race. Large tubular cloth streamers, shaped and painted like carp-the kind that are flown from poles in May for Boys' Day Festival-- were laid in the middle of the school grounds. At the signal, the children had to start running toward the carp streamers and crawl through them from the mouth end to the tail end and then run back to the starring point. There were only three carp one red and two blue--so three children raced at a time. The race looked easy but was quite difficult. It was dark inside, and the carp were long, so you could easily lose your sense of direction. Some children, including Totto-chan, kept coming out of the mouth, only to realize their mistake and hurriedly burrow inside again. It was terribly funny to watch because the children crawling backward and forward inside made the carp wriggle as if they were alive.

There was another event called Find-A-Mother Race. At the signal the children had to run toward a wooden ladder propped up on its side, crawl through it between the rungs, take an envelope from a basket, open it, and if the paper inside said, for instance, "Sakko-chan's mother," they would have to find her in the crowd of spectators, take her hand, and return together to the finishing line. One had to ease oneself through the ladder with catlike grace or one's bottom could get stuck. Besides that, a child might know well enough who Sakko-chan's mother was, bur if the paper read "Miss Oku's sister," or Mr. Tsue's mother," or Mrs. Kuninori's son," whom one had never met, one had to go to the spectators' section and call in a loud voice, "Miss Oku's sister!"

It took courage. Children who were lucky and picked their own mothers would jump up and down shouting, "Mother! Mother! Hurry!" The spectators, too, had to be alert for this event. There was no telling when their names might be called, and they
would have to be ready to get up from the bench or from the mat where they were sitting, excuse themselves, and wend their way out as fast as they could to where someone's child was waiting, take his or her hand, and go running off. So when a child arrived and stopped in front of the grown-ups, even the fathers held their breath, wondering who was going to be called. There was little time for idle chit-chat or nibbling food. The grown-ups had to take part in events almost as much as the children.

The headmaster and other teachers joined the children in the two teams for the Tug of War, pulling and shouting, "Heave-ho, heave-ho!" while handicapped children, like Yasuaki-chan, who couldn't pull, had the task of keeping their eyes on the hand- kerchief tied to the center of the rope to see who was winning.

The final Relay Race involving the whole school was also different at Tomoe. No one had to run over, far. All one had to do was run up and down the semicircular flight of concrete steps leading to the Assembly Hall. At first glance it looked absurdly easy, but the steps were unusually shallow and close together, and as no one was allowed to take more than one step at a time, it was quite difficult if you were
tall or had large feet. The familiar steps, bounded up each day at lunchtime, took on a fresh, fun aspect on Sports Day, and the children hurried up and down them shrieking gaily. To anyone watching from afar, the scene would have looked like a beautiful kaleidoscope. Counting the top one there were eight steps in all.

The first Sports Day for Totto-chan and her classmates was a fine day just as the headmaster had hoped. The decorations of paper chains and gold stars made by the children the day before and the phonograph records of rousing marches made it seem like a festival.

Totto-chan wore navy blue shorts and a –white blouse, although she would have preferred to wear athletic bloomers. She longed to wear them. One day after school the headmaster had been giving a class in eurythmics to some kindergarten teachers, and Totto-chan was very taken with the bloomers some of the women were wearing. What she liked about them was that when the women stamped their feet on the ground, their lower thighs showing beneath the bloomers rippled in such a lovely grown-up way. She ran home and got out her shorts and put them on and stamped on the floor. But her thin, childish thighs didn't ripple at all. After trying several times, she came to the conclusion it was because of what those ladies had been wearing.

She asked what they were and Mother explained they were athletic bloomers. She told Mother she definitely wanted to wear bloomers on Sports Day, but they couldn't find any in a small size. That was why Totto-chan had to make do with shorts, which didn't produce any ripples, alas.

Something amazing happened on Sports Day. Takahashi, who had the shortest arms and legs and was the smallest in the school, came first in everything. It was unbelievable. While the others were still creeping about inside the carp, Takahashi was through it in a flash, and while the others only had their heads through the ladder, he was already out of it and running several yards ahead. As for the Relay Race up the Assembly Hall steps, while the others were clumsily negotiating them a step at a time, Takahashi--his short legs moving like pistons --was up them in one spurt and down again like a speeded-up movie.

"We've got to try and beat Takahashi," they all said.

Determined to beat him, the children did their utmost, but try as they might, Takahashi won every time. Totto-chan tried hard, too, but she never managed to beat Takahashi. They could outrun him in the straight stretches, but lost to him over the difficult bits.

Takahashi went up to collect his prizes, looking happy and as proud as Punch. He was first in everything so he collected prize after prize. Everyone watched enviously.

"I’ll beat Takahashi next year!" said each child to himself. But every year it was Takahashi who turned out to be the star athlete.

Now the prizes, too, were typical of the head-master. First Prize might be a giant radish; Second Prize, two burdock roots; Third Prize, a bundle of spinach. Things like that. Until she was much older Totto-chan thought all schools gave vegetables for Sports Day prizes.

In those days, most schools gave notebooks, pencils, and erasers for prizes. The Tomoe children didn't know that, but they weren't happy about the vegetables. Totto- chan, for instance, who got some burdock roots and some onions, was embarrassed about having to carry them on the train. Additional prizes were given for various things, so at the end of Sports Day all the children at Tomoe had some sort of vegetable. Now, why should children be embarrassed about going home from school with vegetables! No one minded being sent to buy vegetables by his mother, but they apparently felt it would look odd carrying vegetables home from school.

A fat boy who won a cabbage didn't know what to do with it.

"I don't want to be seen carrying this," he said. "I think I'll throw it away.”

The headmaster must have heard about their complaints for he went over to the children with their carrots and radishes and things.

"What's the matter? Don't you want them?" he asked. Then he went on, "Get your mothers to cool them for you for dinner tonight. They're vegetable you earned yourselves. You have provided food for your families by your own efforts. How's that? I’ll bet it tastes good!"

Of course, he was right. It was the first time in her life, for instance, that Totto-chan had ever provided anything for dinner.

"I'll get Mother to make spicy burdock!" she told the headmaster. "I haven't decided yet what to ask her to make with the onions."

Whereupon the others all began thinking up menus, too, describing them to the headmaster.

"Good! So now you've got the idea," he said, smiling so happily his cheeks became quite flushed. He was probably thinking how nice it would be if the children and their families ate the vegetables while talking over the Sports Day events.

No doubt he was thinking especially of Takahashi-whose dinner table would be overflowing with First Prizes-and hoping the boy would remember his pride and happiness at winning those First Prizes before developing an inferiority complex about his size and the fact he would never grow. And maybe, who knows, the headmaster had thought up those singularly Tomoe-type events just so Takahashi would come first in them.

The children liked to call the headmaster "Issa Kobayashi." They even made up affectionate verses about him like the following:

Issa Kobayashi! Issa's our Old Man With his bald head!

That was because the headmaster's family name was Kobayashi, the same as that of the famous nineteenth-century poet Issa Kobayashi, whose haiku he loved. He quoted Issa's haiku so often, the children felt as if Issa Kobayashi was just as much their friend as Sosaku Kobayashi, their headmaster.

The headmaster loved Issa's haiku because they were so true and dealt with the ordinary things in life. At a time when there must have been thousands of haiku poets, Issa created a world of his own that nobody was able to imitate. The headmaster admired his verses with their almost childlike simplicity. So at every opportunity, he would teach his pupils verses by Issa, which they would learn by heart, such as:

Lean Frog,
Don't you surrender! Here's Issa by you.
Fledgling Sparrows! Make way, make way,
Way for the noble Horse! Spare the Fly!
Wringing his hands, wringing his feet, He implores your mercy!

The headmaster once improvised a melody for one, and they all sang it.

Come and play with me Little Orphan Sparrows for mother less ye be .

The headmaster often held haiku classes, although hey were not a formal part of the curriculum.

Totto-chan's first effort at composing haiku described her favorite comic-strip character Norakuro, stray black dog who had joined the army as a private and gradually earned promotion in spite of he ups and downs in his career. It ran in a popular boy's magazine.

Stray dog Black sets off

For the Continent, now that He has been demobilized.

The headmaster had said "Try making up an honest, straight forward haiku about something that is in your thoughts."

You couldn't call Totto-chan's a proper haiku. But it did show what sort of thing impressed her in those days. Her haiku didn't quite conform to the proper 5-7-5 syllable form. Hers was 5-7-7. But then, Issa's one about the fledgling sparrows in Japanese was 5-8-7, so Totto-chan thought it would be all right.

During their walks to Kuhonbutsu Temple, or when it rained and they couldn't play outdoors but gathered in the Assembly Hall, Tomoe's Issa Kobayashi would tell the children about haiku. He also used haiku to illustrate his own thoughts about life

and nature.
Some of Issa's haiku might have been written especially for Tomoe.

The snow thaws--

And suddenly the whole village is full of children!

Totto-chan found some money for the first time in her life. It happened during the train ride going home from school. She got on the Oimachi train at Jiyugaoka. Before the train reached the next station, Midorigaoka, there was a sharp curve, and the train always leaned over with a great creaking. Totto-chan would brace herself with her feet so she wouldn't go "Oops." She always stood by the right-hand door at the rear of the train, facing the way the train was going. She stood there because the platform at her own station was on the right-hand side and that door was nearest the exit.