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四

Chapter 4

229 sentences · 29 notes

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  1. 1

    The school has night duty, and the staff take turns doing it.

    学校school学校 · nounoblique complement of あっ
    にatに · particleparticle marking 学校
    は(particle)は · particleparticle marking 学校
    宿直night duty宿直 · nounsubject of あっ
    が(particle)が · particleparticle marking 宿直
    あっthere isある · verbadverbial clause on つとめる
    てandて · subordinating conjunctionintroduces the clause of あっ
    職員staff職員 · nounsubject of つとめる
    が(particle)が · particleparticle marking 職員
    代る代るby turns代る代る · adverbmodifies つとめる
    これitこれ · pronoundirect object of つとめる
    を(particle)を · particleparticle marking これ
    つとめるperformつとめる · verbmain verb of the sentence

  2. Except, naturally, the Badger and Red Shirt are exempt.

  3. When I asked why those two are let off this basic duty, I was told it's because of their senior-appointee status.

  4. Not funny in the least.

  5. They rake in fat salaries, work short hours, and dodge night duty besides — is that fair or what?

  6. They cook up whatever rules suit them and wear a face like it's only natural.

  7. I don't know how anyone gets that shameless.

  8. I've got plenty to grumble about on this score, but according to Porcupine, no amount of one-man griping ever gets you anywhere.

  9. Seems to me if a thing's right, it ought to carry whether one person says it or two.

  10. Porcupine quoted some English at me — "might is right" — to lecture me, and since I couldn't quite follow it, I asked him what it meant, and it turns out it's "the right of the strong."

  11. I've known about the right of the strong since way back.

  12. No need for Porcupine to lecture me on it now.

  13. The right of the strong and night duty are two different matters.

  14. Who on earth would grant that the Badger or Red Shirt are the strong?

  15. Argument aside, this round of night duty finally rolled around to me.

  16. Being high-strung by nature, I can't feel properly asleep unless I'm lying easy in my own bedding.

  17. Even as a child I hardly ever stayed over at a friend's house.

  18. If I hate staying even at a friend's house, I hate night duty at school all the more.

  19. Hate it as I do, though, if this is part of what earns the forty yen, there's no help for it.

  20. I'll grit my teeth and do the job.

  21. 2

    Sitting there alone after both teachers and pupils have gone home for the day, gawking at nothing, is a pretty vacant way to spend an evening.

  22. The night-duty room is a single room at the western end of the dormitory, behind the classrooms.

  23. I stepped in for a look, but the west sun was blazing straight into it — unbearable.

  24. Just as you'd expect in the country, the heat takes its time leaving even after autumn comes.

  25. I had the students' kitchen send up supper, and I was floored by how bad it was.

  26. To think they eat that stuff and still have the energy to run riot the way they do.

  27. And they bolt supper down and clear it away by half past four — they must be made of sterner stuff than me.

  28. I'd eaten, but it wasn't dark yet, so I couldn't very well go to bed.

  29. I got a hankering to go to the hot spring.

  30. Whether it's proper or not for someone on night duty to step out, I don't know, but sitting here cooped up like I'm serving a sentence is more than I can stand.

  31. The first day I came to the school, when I asked where the man on duty was, the janitor answered he'd stepped out on some errand, and I thought that was odd — but now that my own turn has come round, I understand.

  32. Stepping out is the right thing to do.

  33. I told the janitor I was just popping out for a bit, and he asked what business I had, so I said it wasn't business, I was going to the bath, and off I marched.

  34. Too bad I left my red hand-towel back at my lodgings, but never mind — I'll borrow one there today.

  35. 3

    After a good leisurely stretch of going in and out of the water, evening finally came on, so I took the train to Old Town station and got off there.

  36. From there it is four chō to the school.

  37. Nothing to it, I thought, and set off on foot, when the Badger came toward me.

  38. He was probably headed for the same train, off to the hot spring.

  39. He came bustling along at a clip, and when we passed each other and he caught sight of my face, I gave him a little bow.

  40. Whereupon the Badger, looking terribly earnest, asked whether I wasn't on night duty today.

  41. "Wasn't I" — as if he didn't know.

  42. Two hours earlier he'd said to me, "Tonight's your first night duty, isn't it?

  43. Good luck with it" —

  44. — thanking me for it, no less.

  45. Get to be a principal and you start using the most twisted language imaginable.

  46. It made me angry, so I said, "Yes, I'm on night duty.

  47. Since I'm on duty, I will certainly be back to sleep there tonight," I flung at him, and stalked off.

  48. By the time I reached the crossroads at Tatemachi, this time I ran smack into Porcupine.

  49. What a cramped little town this is.

  50. Step outside at all and you're bound to run into someone.

  51. "Hey, aren't you on night duty?" he asked, and I said, "Yeah, I'm on duty," and he said, "It's pretty irregular for someone on duty to go wandering around like this."

  52. "Not irregular in the least — it'd be more irregular not to go out," I answered, putting on a brave front.

  53. "You and your slapdash ways — it'll be trouble if you run into the principal or the vice-principal," he said, sounding quite unlike himself, so I told him, "I already ran into the principal just now. The principal praised my walk. He said, 'In this heat, night duty must be hard unless you get out for a stroll.'" — and, too bothered to say more, I hurried straight back to school.

  54. 4

    After that, darkness falls fast.

  55. Once it was dark I called the janitor to the night-duty room and chatted with him for a couple of hours, but I got tired of that too, and though I couldn't sleep, I thought I'd get into bed anyway, so I changed into my nightclothes, rolled up the mosquito net, kicked off the red blanket, came down on my backside with a thump and lay back face up.

  56. Thumping down on my backside when I go to bed has been a habit of mine since I was a boy.

  57. Once, when I was boarding in Ogawamachi, a law-school student living one floor below came up to complain that it was a bad habit.

  58. Law students, for all that they're weaklings, have such a slick way with words, and this one went on and on about some nonsense, so I told him — the racket when I go to bed at night isn't my backside's fault.

  59. It's the lodging house's shoddy construction that's to blame.

  60. If you've got a complaint, take it up with the landlord, not me — and I sent him packing.

  61. This night-duty room isn't upstairs, so it doesn't matter how hard I come down with a thud.

  62. If I don't flop down with real force it doesn't feel like I've properly gone to sleep.

  63. "Ah, this is the life," I thought, stretching my legs out good and wide, when something jumped onto both my feet.

  64. It felt gritty, not at all like fleas, so I gave a start — what the devil — and shook my feet a couple of times inside the blanket.

  65. Then whatever the gritty things were suddenly multiplied — five or six on my shins, two or three on my thighs, one squashed with a squish under my backside, one that leaped clean up to my navel — by now I was thoroughly alarmed.

  66. I sprang up at once, flung the blanket back behind me, and out from the bedding leaped fifty or sixty grasshoppers.

  67. As long as I didn't know what the things were, it was more than a little unnerving, but once I'd settled on "grasshoppers," I suddenly got furious.

  68. The nerve of these grasshoppers, giving a man a fright — I'll show them, I thought, and grabbed my hard pillow and flung it at them a couple of times, but they were too small for that, and however hard I threw, it did no good.

  69. No help for it, so I sat back down on the bedding and, the way you roll up a straw mat and beat the tatami floor with it during year-end housecleaning, I whacked away wildly all around me.

  70. The grasshoppers, startled and then sent flying by the force of the pillow, kept landing on my shoulders, my head, the tip of my nose, and bumping into me.

  71. The ones that landed on my face I couldn't very well swat with the pillow, so I grabbed them with my hands and flung them down with all my might.

  72. Infuriating thing was, no matter how much force I put into it, whatever I hit was the mosquito net, so it just gave a soft sway and I felt no satisfaction at all.

  73. The grasshoppers, flung as they were, just clung there on the mosquito net.

  74. They didn't so much as die.

  75. It took a good half hour, but at last I finished the grasshoppers off.

  76. I fetched a broom and swept out their corpses.

  77. The janitor came and said, "What is it?" so I said, "What is it, my foot — what country lets grasshoppers get kept in a man's bedding?"

  78. Blockhead!

  79. When I scolded him like that, he made excuses, saying, "I have no idea."

  80. "'No idea' won't cut it," I said, and flung the broom out onto the veranda, whereupon the janitor gingerly picked it up on his shoulder and went off.

  81. 5

    I lost no time in summoning three of the boarding students as representatives.

  82. Six of them turned up instead.

  83. Six or ten, what did it matter to me.

  84. Still in my nightclothes, I rolled up my sleeves and opened negotiations.

  85. 6

    "Why did you put grasshoppers in my bed?"

  86. 7

    "A grasshopper, what's that, nah," said the one standing in front.

  87. Cool as you please, the impudent brute.

  88. Seems it's not just the principal at this school — even the students use this twisted way of talking.

  89. 8

    "You don't know what a grasshopper is? I'll show you, then," I said, but wouldn't you know it, I'd already swept them all out and there wasn't a single one left.

  90. So I called the janitor again and told him, "Bring back the grasshoppers from before," and he asked, "I've already thrown them onto the rubbish heap — shall I go pick some up?"

  91. "Yes, go get some right now," I said, and the janitor went dashing off, and soon came back with about ten of them laid out on a sheet of paper, saying, "I'm sorry, but this is all I could find in the dark — I'll pick up more tomorrow."

  92. Even the janitor's a fool.

  93. I showed the boy one of the grasshoppers and said, "Here's a grasshopper — big lump of a body like yours and you don't know what a grasshopper is, what's the meaning of that?" and the round-faced one standing farthest to the left cheekily talked back at me, "That there's a locust, that."

  94. "The devil it is — a locust and a grasshopper are the same thing. And what's the idea of a student using 'namoshi' on his teacher, of all things? You don't eat nameshi except alongside dengaku, anyhow," I turned it back on him and put him in his place, and he said, "'Namoshi' and 'nameshi' aren't the same thing, I tell you."

  95. No matter what, this fellow can't stop tacking that "that" onto everything.

  96. 9

    "Locust or grasshopper, whichever it is, why'd you put it in my bed? When did I ever ask anyone to put a grasshopper in for me?"

  97. 10

    "Nobody put none in, is what."

  98. 11

    "If nobody put any in, then how'd it get in my bed?"

  99. 12

    "Locusts like warm places, most like it crawled in on its own, is what."

  100. 13

    "Don't talk rot. As if a grasshopper's going to crawl in all on its own — I won't stand for a grasshopper 'crawling in on its own.' — Now then, why'd you play this trick? Speak up."

  101. 14

    "Speak up, you say, but there's no explaining a thing we didn't do, is what."

  102. 15

    Stingy little wretches.

  103. If they can't even own up to what they've done themselves, they'd have been better off never doing it at all.

  104. So long as no proof turns up, they mean to brazen it out and play innocent.

  105. Even I got up to a little mischief back in middle school myself.

  106. But when someone asked who'd done it, I never once shrank back like a coward.

  107. What I did, I did; what I didn't, I didn't — plain as that.

  108. However much mischief I got up to, I did it with a clean conscience.

  109. If a fellow's going to lie his way out of punishment, he shouldn't be getting up to mischief in the first place.

  110. Mischief and punishment go hand in hand.

  111. It's precisely because there's punishment that mischief can be enjoyed with an easy heart.

  112. What kind of low, rotten spirit thinks he can get the mischief without the punishment — where in the world does that pass for normal?

  113. The sort who borrow money and mean never to pay it back are bound to be the very fellows these boys grow up into once they graduate.

  114. What in blazes do they even come to middle school for?

  115. They enroll, tell lies, cheat their way through, sneak around doing petty, insolent, rotten little mischief behind everyone's back, and then, straight-faced, once they've graduated, go around fancying they've had an education.

  116. Miserable little foot soldiers, not worth talking to.

  117. 16

    Negotiating with such rotten-minded wretches turned my stomach, so I said, "If you can't bring yourselves to say it, I won't ask any more. It's a sorry state of affairs when you can't tell decent from indecent even after coming to middle school," and I sent the six of them packing.

  118. My own words and manner may not be especially refined, but I flatter myself my heart is a good deal more refined than theirs.

  119. The six of them withdrew at their leisure.

  120. On the surface, at least, they look a good deal more composed than I do, teacher though I am.

  121. The truth is, being so composed only makes it worse.

  122. I could never manage that kind of nerve myself.

  123. 17

    After that I got back into bed and lay down, but the mosquito net was still buzzing away from all the earlier commotion.

  124. Lighting a hand-candle and burning them off one by one was too much bother, so I unhooked the net's cord, folded it up long, and swung it around the room crosswise and lengthwise, and the metal ring flew off and struck the back of my hand something awful.

  125. The third time I got into bed I'd calmed down a little, but I still couldn't get to sleep.

  126. I looked at the clock — half past ten.

  127. Thinking it over, I'd landed myself in a troublesome place.

  128. Middle-school teachers everywhere, I'd imagine, have my sympathy if this is the kind of thing they have to deal with.

  129. It's a wonder they never run out of teachers.

  130. I suppose only extraordinarily patient blockheads become teachers.

  131. I could never stick it out myself.

  132. Thinking of that, Kiyo really is something to look up to.

  133. She's an old woman with neither education nor rank, but as a human being she's thoroughly noble.

  134. Up till now, for all she'd done for me, I never thought much of being grateful, but now that I've come all alone to this far-off province, I understand her kindness for the first time.

  135. If she took a fancy for Echigo taffy, it'd be worth going all the way to Echigo to buy it and feed it to her, just for the pleasure of feeding her.

  136. Kiyo praises me for being free of greed and having a straightforward nature, but the one doing the praising is a finer person than the one being praised.

  137. Somehow I found myself wanting to see Kiyo.

  138. 18

    While I was thinking of Kiyo, restless and turning this way and that, suddenly, over my head — judging by the sound, thirty or forty of them at least — came a thunderous don, don, don, stamping the floorboards in unison hard enough to bring the ceiling down.

  139. Then a great war-whoop went up, matching the stamping in scale.

  140. Wondering what on earth had broken out, I sprang up in alarm.

  141. The instant I sprang up, it dawned on me — ah, this must be the students getting back at me for earlier.

  142. It's not enough to know a wrong was wrong — until you've said so out loud, the fault doesn't go away.

  143. Whatever's wrong, those fellows themselves must know it perfectly well.

  144. The proper thing would be to go to bed, feel sorry about it, and come apologize the next morning.

  145. Even if they weren't going to apologize, the least they could do is lie there quietly, suitably chastened.

  146. And instead, what is this racket?

  147. You'd think they'd built a dormitory and were keeping pigs in it.

  148. There's a limit to how far you can carry on like lunatics.

  149. Just you wait, I thought. Still in my nightclothes, I flew out of the night-duty room and bounded up to the second floor in three and a half strides.

  150. Then, strange to say, the ruckus that had plainly been going on right overhead a moment before suddenly fell dead silent — not a voice, not even a footstep.

  151. Odd, this.

  152. The lamp was already out, so it was too dark to make out clearly where anything or anyone was, but you can tell from the feel of the place whether there's a soul about or not.

  153. The corridor, running the long way from east to west, hadn't so much as a mouse hiding in it.

  154. Moonlight slanted in from the corridor's far end, making the distance oddly bright.

  155. Very strange indeed — I've had, since I was a child, a habit of dreaming vividly, of springing up in the middle of a dream and muttering nonsense in my sleep, and being laughed at for it more than once.

  156. The night I dreamed, at sixteen or seventeen, that I'd picked up a diamond, I sprang to my feet and asked my brother, who was beside me, with tremendous urgency, where the diamond had got to.

  157. That time I was the family joke for a good three days and suffered plenty for it.

  158. It's possible this too was a dream.

  159. But I was sure I'd truly heard them stamping about, and while I stood puzzling it over in the middle of the corridor, from the far end where the moon shone in, a shout went up — "one, two, three, waaah" — thirty or forty voices bunched together, and no sooner had it faded than, just as before, they fell into rhythm again and everyone stamped the floorboards.

  160. See there — it wasn't a dream after all, it's really happening.

  161. "Quiet down, it's the middle of the night!" I shouted, not to be outdone, and went charging down the corridor toward them.

  162. The path I ran along was dark, with only the moonlight showing at the far end to aim for.

  163. I'd run about two ken when, in the middle of the corridor, I banged my shin against something hard and solid — and in the instant the "ouch" rang through my skull, my body went pitching forward flat.

  164. "Damn it," I said, scrambling up, but I couldn't run.

  165. My mind was in a hurry, but my legs simply wouldn't obey.

  166. Impatient, I went hopping along on one foot, and by the time I got there even the footsteps and voices had gone dead quiet — silent as the grave.

  167. However cowardly people can be, they can't ordinarily manage to be this cowardly.

  168. Might as well be pigs.

  169. Since it had come to this, I made up my mind to drag out whoever was hiding and make them apologize, and I tried to open one of the dormitory rooms to search it, but it wouldn't open.

  170. Whether it was locked, or had a desk or something propped against it, push as I might, it absolutely would not open.

  171. Next I tried the room facing it on the north side.

  172. Same story — it wouldn't open either.

  173. Just as I was growing impatient, meaning to open the door and grab whoever was inside, another war-whoop and stamping of feet started up again at the east end.

  174. These rascals must have arranged it between them, east and west answering each other to make a fool of me, I thought, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what to do about it.

  175. To be perfectly honest, my courage outstrips my cleverness by quite a margin.

  176. At a time like this I hadn't the faintest idea what to do.

  177. I didn't know what to do, but I had absolutely no intention of losing.

  178. To let this pass unanswered would be a stain on my honor.

  179. It'd be a shame to have it said that an Edokko has no backbone.

  180. If word got round that I'd been made a fool of by a pack of snot-nosed brats on night duty, found myself helpless, and swallowed it because there was nothing I could do, I'd be disgraced for life.

  181. Even so, I come from hatamoto stock.

  182. Our line descends from the Seiwa Genji, from the line of Tada no Manjū himself.

  183. I was born different from these dirt farmers.

  184. The only pity is I haven't the cleverness to match.

  185. The only trouble is not knowing what to do.

  186. Being in trouble doesn't mean I'll lose.

  187. It's precisely because I'm honest that I don't know what to do.

  188. Just think about it — is there anything in this world that beats honesty in the end?

  189. If I don't win tonight, I'll win tomorrow.

  190. If I don't win tomorrow, I'll win the day after.

  191. If I don't win the day after, I'll have my meals sent up from my lodgings and stay right here until I do.

  192. Having made up my mind to that, I sat cross-legged in the middle of the corridor and waited for morning to come.

  193. The mosquitoes came buzzing at me, but it didn't bother me in the least.

  194. When I felt the shin I'd banged earlier, it was strangely sticky.

  195. Must be bleeding.

  196. If it wants to bleed, let it bleed, for all I care.

  197. Before long, the fatigue from everything before caught up with me, and I dozed off without meaning to.

  198. Some commotion woke me, and finding myself awake I thought, "damn it, I've slept," and leapt up.

  199. The door on my right, where I'd been sitting, was half open, and two students stood in front of me.

  200. Coming to my senses with a start, I grabbed the nearer boy's leg right in front of my nose and yanked with all my strength, and down he went, flat on his back.

  201. Serves him right.

  202. The other one, caught off guard for a moment, I sprang on, grabbed him by the shoulder and cuffed him around two or three times, and he blinked in bewilderment.

  203. "Come with me to my room," I said, hauling him along, and, being a coward at heart apparently, he followed along without a word of protest.

  204. By now it was well past dawn.

  205. 19

    When I set about interrogating the pair I'd hauled back to the night-duty room, being pigs — hit them or beat them, pigs is all they are — they just played dumb and stuck to it, refusing to confess no matter what.

  206. Meanwhile more of them kept showing up — one, then another — gradually gathering from the second floor down to the night-duty room.

  207. Looking them over, they were all drooping sleepy-eyed.

  208. Stingy little wretches, the lot of them.

  209. Do they call it manly, going about with faces like that after not sleeping a wink all night?

  210. "Go wash your faces and then come argue with me," I told them, but not one of them went off to wash.

  211. 20

    I was in the middle of about an hour's back-and-forth with fifty-odd of them when, all of a sudden, the Badger came ambling in.

  212. I heard afterward that the janitor had gone out of his way to tell him there was a commotion at the school.

  213. To call in the principal over a thing this trifling shows a shocking lack of backbone.

  214. That's exactly why he's stuck being a middle-school janitor.

  215. 21

    The principal heard my account of things through once.

  216. He also listened a little to what the students had to say for themselves.

  217. "Until further disciplinary action is decided, come to school as usual.

  218. Hurry up, wash your faces, and eat breakfast, or you won't be on time," he said, and let all the boarders go free.

  219. Awfully soft-handed of him.

  220. If it were up to me, I'd expel the whole lot of them on the spot.

  221. It's exactly this kind of leniency that lets the students make a fool of the man on night duty.

  222. On top of that, he said to me, "You must be quite worried and worn out — you needn't teach your classes today," and I answered him like this:

  223. "No, I'm not the least bit worried. Even if this happened every single night, so long as I'm alive I won't worry about it. I'll take my classes — if I couldn't teach after missing one night's sleep, I'd hand back the salary I've been paid to the school." The principal, for whatever reason, gazed at my face for a while, then remarked that my face had swollen up quite a bit.

  224. Come to think of it, it did feel a little heavy.

  225. On top of that it itched all over.

  226. The mosquitoes must have bitten me plenty.

  227. Scratching at my face all over, I answered that however swollen my face got, my mouth could still talk just fine, so there'd be no trouble teaching.

  228. The principal laughed and praised me, saying I was in fine spirits.

  229. To tell the truth, he probably wasn't praising me — more likely poking fun.

The particulars

The text
坊っちゃん, Natsume Sōseki. Botchan.
Translation
Public-domain Japanese (Natsume Sōseki, d. 1916; published 1906). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
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Every word of the text, by letter.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.