Milky Way Railroad. Kenji Miyazawa
a look around. This part of the lens is thin so you can see only a few shining pebbles or stars. Over here and here, the glass is thick and the pebbles—the stars—are numerous. The faraway ones look white to us.
“Well then, so much for today’s discussion of that great heavenly river, the Milky Way. The next questions, about how big the lens is and about the various stars within, will be our next science lesson, I guess. For now, time’s up. Today is the Milky Way Festival, so all of you go outside and look at the sky tonight. That’s all. Close your books and notebooks.”
And for a moment the room was full of the sound of desks opening and closing, and of books piling up. Then everyone stood to attention and left the classroom.
The Print Shop
As he went out the schoolhouse gate, Giovanni found seven or eight of his classmates who, instead of going home, had gathered around Campanella by the cherry tree in the corner of the school garden. They seemed to be talking about going to get the gourds which, hollowed out and fitted with candles, would be sailed down the river as part of tonight’s Milky Way Festival.
But Giovanni, with a broad wave of his hand, hurried by and went on out the school gate. Each house he passed in the town had made various preparations for the festival—wreaths of yew leaves were hung out, and the branches of the cypress trees were strung with lights. Giovanni did not go straight home. Instead, he turned three corners and, removing his shoes, went into a spacious room where, although it was still day, the lights were on and a great number of rotary presses were churning and clanging away. Men with bands of cloth and eyeshades fitted around their heads were hard at work reading and counting in singsong voices.
Giovanni went straight to the man sitting at the third table from the front and bowed respectfully. “That’s all we can pick up, is it?” said the man, after searching the shelves of type for awhile. He pushed a page of manuscript over to Giovanni. Taking a small flat box from under the table, Giovanni went over to the brightly lit area where racks of type were lined against the wall and began to pluck out the required bits of grainlike type, one by one, with a small pair of tweezers.
The place where giovanni was rushing so eagerly was a little house on a side street.
“Hey, Bug-eyes! How’re you doing?” called a man wearing a blue vest as he passed behind Giovanni. Four or five men working nearby laughed mockingly, but did not turn around. Giovanni had to wipe his eyes often as he laboriously picked out the type, and finally, a little after six o’clock, he took the flat box, now full of the type he had compared with the manuscript, and brought it back to the man at the table. The man took the box without speaking and nodded slightly.
Giovanni bowed as he went out through the door and stopped at the accountant’s desk. There a man dressed in white silently handed over a small silver coin to him. Giovanni’s face suddenly brightened and, in high spirits, he took his bag of schoolbooks from the place where he had left it and went running out of the print shop. Whistling vigorously, he stopped at the bakery to buy a loaf of bread and a bag of sugar cubes before racing on at full speed.
Home
The place where Giovanni was rushing so eagerly was a little house on a side street. There, in the farthest left of three doorways, asparagus and purple kale grew in an open box. The shades were pulled down over two small windows. “Mother, I’m back! Are you feeling all right?” Giovanni called out, as he slipped out of his shoes.
When Giovanni came in, he found his mother resting in the front room with a white cloth wrapped around her head. “Ah—Giovanni, you must have had a rough day. I’ve been feeling just fine. It was nice and cool today.”
Giovanni opened a window. “Mom, I bought a bag of sugar today. I thought you’d like some sugar in your milk.”
“Well, you have some first, Giovanni. I’m not hungry yet.”
“Mom, when did Sis get back?”
“Ah, it was about three. She did all the housework for me.”
“Didn’t your milk come, Mom?”
“It looks like it didn’t.”
“I’ll go get it!”
“No, you go ahead and eat now. I can take my time later. Your sister made some kind of tomato dish and put it over there.”
“Okay. I’ll eat right away.” Giovanni took the plate of tomatoes from the windowsill and sat for a while munching tomatoes and bread. “Oh. Mom,” he broke out suddenly, “I’m quite sure Dad will be coming back before long!”
“I think so, too, but why do you think so, Giovanni?”
“It said in the paper this morning that the fishing was very good this year in the north.”
“Ummm. But your father probably didn’t go out to fish.”
“Sure he did!” And Giovanni added, “He wouldn’t do anything bad enough to be sent to jail. Remember the big crab shell and the reindeer antlers he gave to the school? Now they’re in the display room, and the teachers take turns showing them in their classes.”
“He said he’d bring you an otter-skin coat next time,” said his mother.
“When the guys meet me, they all talk about that, too, to make fun of me.”
“They make fun of you?”
“Yes, but Campanella never joins in. When they make remarks, Campanella just gets sort of sad-looking.”
“Campanella’s father and your father were friends when they were boys, just like you and Campanella are.”
Giovanni took the plate of tomatoes from the windowsill and sat for a while munching tomatoes and bread.
“That’s why Dad took me with him to Campanella’s house. Those were good times! I used to stop at Campanella’s all the time on the way from school. There was a model train at Campanella’s that ran with an alcohol engine. If you put together seven pieces of rail, they made a circle, and there were telephone poles and signal lights that turned green when the train was coming! Once when there wasn’t any alcohol we used kerosene and the canister got covered with soot.”
“Sounds logical,” said Giovanni’s mother.
“Now I go by there every morning on my paper route, but the house is always quiet and dark.”
“Because it’s so early.”
“They have a dog called Pooch. His tail is just like a broom! When I go, he runs along beside me whining. He goes all the way to the corner in town with me. Sometimes even farther. Tonight,” he went on, “everyone is going to sail gourds with candles down the river. I’m sure they’ll take the dog.”
“That’s right, tonight’s the Milky Way Festival, isn’t it?”
“Yes. When I go for the milk, I’ll go take a look.”
“Yes, go right ahead!” urged his mother. “Only stay out of the river.”
“I’ll just be looking down from the rocks, and I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Play as much as you like. If you’re with Campanella, I’m not worried.”
“We’ll