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On the shore,
at a point so close to the ocean one might imagine it was there that the waves broke, stood a row of over twenty fairly tall cherry trees with coal-black trunks.
Every April when the new school year was about to begin these trees would display their dazzling blossoms and their moist brown leaves against the blue of the sea. Soon a snowstorm of blossoms would scatter in numerable petals into the water, flecking the surface with points of white which the waves carried back to the shore. This beach strewn with cherry blossoms served as the playground of the high school I attended. Stylized cherry blossoms flowered even on the badge of the regulation school cap and on the buttons of our uniforms.
A distant relative of mine had a house nearby, which was one reason why my father had specially selected for me this school of cherry blossoms by the sea. I was left in the care of the family, whose house was so close to the school that even after the morning bell had rung I could still make it to my class in time if I ran. That was the kind of lazy student I was, but I nevertheless managed, thanks to my accustomed antics, to win popularity with my schoolmates. This was my first experience living in a strange town. I found it far more agreeable than my native place. One might attribute this, perhaps, to the fact that my clowning had by this time become so much a part of me that it was no longer such a strain to trick others. I wonder, though, if it was not due instead to the incontestable difference in the problem involved in performing before one's own family and strangers, or in one's own town and elsewhere.
This problem exists no matter how great a genius one may be. An actor dreads most of the audience in his hometown; I imagine the greatest actor in the world would be quite paralyzed in a room where all his family and relatives were gathered to watch him. But I had learned to play my part. I had moreover been quite a success. It was inconceivable that so a talented an actor would fail away from home. The fear of human beings continued to writhe in my breast—I am not sure whether more or less intensely than before—but my acting talents had unquestionably matured. I could always convulse the classroom with laughter, and even as the teacher protested what a good class it would be if only I were not in it, he would be laughing behind his hand. At a word from me even the military drill instructor, whose more usual idiom was a barbarous, thunderous roar, would burst into helpless laughter. Just when I had begun to relax my guard a bit, fairly confident that I had succeeded by now in concealing completely my true identity, I was stabbed in the back, quite unexpectedly. The assailant, like most people who stab in the back, bordered on being a simpleton—the puniest boy in the class
, whose scrofulous face and floppy jacket with sleeves too long for him were complemented by a total lack of proficiency in his studies and by such clumsiness in military drill and physical training that he was perpetually designated as an "onlooker."Not surprisingly, I failed to recognize the need to be on my guard against him.
