Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/86

 man exhausted his rhetoric and stamped angrily out of the house. Seibei heaved a sigh of relief.

Seibei’s mother was sobbing softly. In a querulous whine she began to scold him, and in the midst of this, Seibei’s father returned from his shop. As soon as he heard what had happened, he grabbed his son by the collar and gave him a sound beating. “You’re no good!” he bawled at him. “You’ll never get anywhere in the world, the way you’re carrying on. I’ve a good mind to throw you out into the street where you belong!” The gourds on the wall caught his attention. Without a word, he fetched his hammer and systematically smashed them to pieces one after another. Seibei turned pale but said nothing.

The next day the teacher gave Seibei’s confiscated gourd to an old porter who worked in the school. “Here, take this,” he said, as if handing over some unclean object. The porter took the gourd home with him and hung it on the wall of his small, sooty room.

About two months later the porter, finding himself even more hard-pressed for money than usual, decided to take the gourd to a local curio-shop to see if he could get a few coppers for it. The curio-dealer examined the gourd carefully, then, assuming an uninterested tone, handed it back to the porter saying, “I might give you five yen for it.”

The porter was astounded, but being quite an astute old man, replied coolly, “I certainly wouldn’t part with it for that.” The dealer immediately raised his offer to ten yen, but the porter was still adamant.

In the end the curio-dealer had to pay fifty yen for the gourd. The porter left the shop, delighted at his luck. It wasn’t often that the teachers gave one a free gift equivalent to a year’s wages! He was so clever as not to mention the matter to anyone, and neither Seibei nor the teacher ever heard what had happened to the gourd. Yes, the porter was clever, but he was not clever enough: little did he imagine that this same gourd would be passed on by the curio-dealer to a wealthy collector in the district for 600 yen.