The Sky-Colored Rocking Chair

by Naoko Awa

translated by Toshiya Kamei

This is a story of a northern town where potatoes and milk were delicious. On the outskirts of this town, a young chair-maker lived with his wife. He made sturdy, comfortable chairs. One day, the chair-maker made a charming rocking chair.

“Oh, what a pretty chair! Who ordered this?” his wife asked while cooking potato stew.

“Well, dear, it’s for us,” he answered.

“For us? But who’s going to use it?”

“Our baby, of course!” the chair-maker cried. They were thrilled to be expecting their long-awaited first child that spring. “Why don’t you have a seat, honey?”

“Oh, it’s so comfortable,” she sighed, serenely rocking as she gazed up at the sky.

Just the day before the baby’s birth, the chair-maker wondered aloud, his eyes shining, “What color should I paint it?”

“Well, I like red,” his wife suggested.

The next day, the chair-maker decided to buy red paint, the color of newly blossoming roses.

Their baby girl was born on a day when the sky was nearly as deep a blue as the sea.

But sadly, she was born blind. When the chair-maker realized this, he dashed out to call a town doctor. After a thorough examination, the doctor said the baby’s blindness was incurable because she was born that way.

The chair-maker and his wife cried for days. By the time the townspeople came to order new chairs, their eyes were finally dry.

One day, toward the end of autumn, the chair-maker discovered the rocking chair in a forgotten corner, pushed out of his mind in the distraction of having a new baby in the house. “I never painted it,” he mumbled. He felt sad; no matter how wonderful the red paint might be, his daughter wouldn’t be able to see it.

The day before, his wife reported, “She can’t see anything - the color of beautiful flowers, the color of water, or the color of the sky.”

“The color of the sky...” the chair-maker repeated. The sky was deep blue. Under a dry tree, he squinted, then looked up at the sky. “If I could teach my daughter one color, it would be the color of the sky,” he thought.

Then he heard a rustle behind him, followed by a child’s voice: “Mister.”

When the chair-maker turned around, he found a little boy sitting behind the tree among the fallen leaves. He was painting with watercolors, but the colors were deep and vibrant.

“I haven’t seen you before. Where are you from?” asked the chair-maker.

“I’m painting.” The boy smiled, ignoring his question.

“What are you painting?” asked the chair-maker. He crouched next to the boy and looked at his drawing paper. He was flabbergasted to see that the boy had painted the paper all blue. The chair-maker looked down at the painting. It looked like a series of random blue brushstrokes, piled one on top of the other.

“That’s not a painting, is it?” he asked.

“Yes, it is. I’m painting the sky.”

“The sky?” The chair-maker was surprised again. Yes, the boy was painting the sky. The drawing paper was the same color as the blue sky above them.

The color touched his heart deeply. Even when he closed his eyes, he could still see the sky. Then the chair-maker thought of a wonderful idea. “Can you give me some of that blue paint?”

“What for?”

“I’m going to paint a chair.”

“Why?” the boy asked, looking at the man as if he was making up his mind about something.

The chair-maker told the boy about his daughter and how he wished he could show her the color of the sky. Maybe she could feel the color in the texture of the boy’s paint, the man thought to himself, hoping against hope.

“I see. I’ll give it to you. But this is all I have now.” The boy lifted a small jar with a little blue paint left. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come back here tomorrow if it doesn’t rain,” the boy said. “Why don’t you bring a jar and a brush here tomorrow morning?”

“Okay. I’ll be here with a jar and a brush if it’s sunny,” answered the chair-maker. The boy said goodbye to the chair-maker and disappeared into the dusk as suddenly as the chair-maker had initially noticed him.

The next morning, when the sunlight came in through a narrow gap between the windows, the chair-maker went to the field with an empty jar and a brush. He found the boy sitting under the same tree.

“Good morning,” the chair-maker said.

“Good morning. It’s a beautiful day,” the boy answered.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Did you bring a jar?” the boy asked.

In silence, the chair-maker showed the jar and the brush he had brought with him.

“Now let’s get to work,” the boy said.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, we’ve got a lot to do.” The boy took a transparent triangular stick out of his pocket.

“I came here for your paint,” said the chair-maker, confused.

“But you wanted the color of the sky.” The boy laughed. “The sky will give you the true color of the sky.” He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the grass. He raised the glass stick against the sun. A tiny rainbow appeared over the handkerchief.

“Take the blue paint from the rainbow,” the boy said.

The chair-maker took out the brush and did as the boy told him.

When the brush touched the rainbow’s blue stripe, the tip swallowed up the blue paint like it was taking a drink. When he brought the brush to the mouth of the jar, blue drops fell inside.

As the chair-maker repeated the same action over and over again, the sun gradually rose higher and higher.

He focused his mind on moving his brush from the rainbow to the jar and from the jar to the rainbow. The paint in the jar gradually became tinted with the hues of various flowers-violet, rodgersia, gentian, dayflower, forget-me-not, bellflower, and hydrangea.

Suddenly, the paint became bright red, then dark purple. When the purple drop fell into the jar, the small rainbow over the white handkerchief disappeared.

Now the chair-maker had a jar full of wonderful paint.

It was already getting dark. “We’ve been doing this all day!” the chair-maker cried, surprised.

“Yes, that’s why you’ve managed to gather an excellent color.” The boy’s voice echoed through the twilit field.

“Thank you.” The chair-maker shook the boy’s warm hand.

The chair-maker went home and dragged out the rocking chair. Then he dipped his brush into the paint and applied it to the chair. Soon the rocking chair was covered with the color of the sky. What a wonderful color!

When she turned three, the girl learned the color of the sky while sitting on the rocking chair. She also learned that the sky was the most spacious, the most beautiful, and the highest thing in the world. Sometimes she would say, “Look, a bird is flying in the sky” or “Wonderful clouds are floating.”

The story of a blind girl who could see the sky spread around town, then to other towns. Many people rushed to the chair-maker’s house to see the girl and the sky-colored rocking chair.

It all happened the autumn the girl turned five. The chair-maker busied himself in his workshop while his wife cooked potatoes in a pot. The girl swayed in her rocking chair, looking up at the sky.

Then someone came to visit. They heard a voice saying, “Hello.”

When the chair-maker’s wife opened the door, she saw a boy about ten years old. “Oh, where do you come from?” she asked.

Before the boy could answer, the chair-maker came rushing from his workshop. “Oh, it’s you! It’s been a long time!” he cried, noticing how he had grown. His wife, too, recognized the boy, and she poured more milk into the pot of stew.

“How’s the baby?” the boy whispered.

“Baby? She’s already five,” the chair-maker answered, and pointed toward the window, where sat the girl in the sky-colored rocking chair.

“Hello.” The boy approached the girl. She turned. “Well, I...” the boy started to say.

“I know you!” the girl cried, her eyes sparkling. “You’re the one who gave me the color of the sky!”

The boy felt delighted. He nodded deeply and added, “Yes!”

Then the boy ate the stew with the chair-maker and his family, all of them sitting around the small table.

As the boy was leaving, the chair-maker asked, “Can you bring me red paint next time? I want to show my daughter the color of flowers.”

The boy nodded. “I’m a wind boy,” he whispered to the girl, at the door. “Do you remember a gentle breeze that blows when autumn says goodbye? That’s me.”

At the beginning of the next summer, the wind boy was in a town in the south. When he saw a splendid rose garden, he remembered the chair-maker’s request the year before.

One night, with a large basket under his arm, the boy sneaked into the rose garden. He began to pluck the red flowers, filling the basket with red petals. When the basket was full, he put them into his pockets, then into his hat. Before sunrise, he sneaked out of the garden.

The next morning, the garden keeper almost fainted when he found the garden in ruins; all the red roses had been plucked out. Soon the rose garden was filled with clamor.

Unaware of the uproar he had caused, the wind boy went down to the riverbank and started a fire to boil the red rose petals. After a long while, he collected a jar full of red paint: beautiful dark crimson.

With autumn’s arrival, the wind boy came back to the chair-maker’s house, holding the jar of red paint in his hand. As before, the chair-maker and his wife were delighted to see him and fed him an excellent bowl of stew.

The chair-maker hurried to apply the red paint to a new rocking chair he had made during the summer. When the pretty red chair was finished, the wind boy said to the girl, “It’s the color of roses in a rose garden to the south.”

“The color of roses!” the girl cried. She groped her way and sat on the rose-colored chair. Then she found herself standing in a garden of crimson roses. “Ah, this is red,” she thought. It reminded her of a warm lap robe and the sol-ti-re chord, touching her heart deeply. “Ah, this is red, the color of red roses.” Forgetting to breathe, she kept staring at the red color.

As the wind boy was leaving, the girl said, “I want the color of the sea next year.”

“The color of the sea...” the boy repeated, thinking it wouldn’t be easy.

“Please, I want a sea-colored chair,” the girl pleaded.

“Let me see what I can do.” The wind boy nodded gently.

The next morning, the girl sat on the rose-colored chair. But something unexpected happened: she could no longer see the red color. Instead, a ruined rose garden without a single flower appeared like a colorless painting. The chair-maker noticed that the red paint on the chair had faded overnight.

The girl tried her hardest to remember the red color she had seen the day before. Thinking she would never see the same color again, she wanted to keep it stored in her heart.

As the wind boy traveled southward, he asked the sea, “Sea, please give me your color. I want to give it to a blind girl.”

But the sea gave no reply. The large white waves kept splashing against the rocks. As the boy ran along the beach, he asked the sea for its color. The waves washed his small feet.

On his way back from the south, the boy asked the sea again. But the sea remained silent. The seawater was deep blue, but when he scooped it into his hands, it became as transparent as sunlight, as useless as paint on anyone else’s brush.

The wind boy stood on the sandy beach, gazing sadly at the sea until sunset. Over the sound of waves breaking on the shore, he heard a pleasant song; it was the sea singing.

At autumn’s end, the wind boy came back. When the chair-maker opened the door, he was surprised to find the boy standing like a beanstalk-he had grown five centimeters taller. Had he not grinned and revealed his white teeth, the chair-maker might not have recognized him.

“Sorry, I couldn’t bring sea-colored paint,” the boy apologized. “But I’ve learned a song.”

He sang the girl the sea’s song, humming beautifully. When she listened to him sing, she could imagine a warm blue expanse of water, shiny waves, and the distant horizon, and even the faint fragrance of the tide.

The wind boy taught the chair-maker’s daughter the song, and she learned about the sea.

In the sky-colored rocking chair, the girl sang the sea’s song, waiting for autumn. But that year, even after autumn came and all the leaves fell, the wind boy didn’t come. The next autumn and the autumn after that, he didn’t come either.

As the girl waited in the sky-colored chair for years and years, her black pigtails became longer and longer.

After a while, the girl forgot what she was waiting for. But she still longed for autumn.

The girl turned fifteen. One day, her mother taught her to make stew. The girl’s cooking gradually became more and more delicious, and in time, she was able to cook an excellent pot of stew.

A few more years passed. The girl began to forget the color of the sky. Seated in the rocking chair, she did her best to remember something she had stored away in her heart long ago. It was something special, even though she didn’t remember where she had put it. The girl sighed.

One autumn day, the chair-maker heard a knock on the door. He opened it, and there stood a tall young man, who claimed he had come by ship from the south. He asked the chair-maker to take him as an apprentice. Delighted, he taught the young man his trade every day.

The girl cooked potatoes in a pot every day, and the young man loved her stew.

One day the young man hummed a song while working in the workshop. Seated in the rocking chair, the girl was startled by the familiar melody.

Yes, it was that song, the sea’s song!

Suddenly, she began to see the color of the sky clearly, then the color of roses she had thought lost.

The girl ran toward the young man and cried, “I knew it was you! You’re the one who gave me the color of the sky!”

After a while, the blind girl married the young man. She became a happy wife who knew the true color of the sky better than anyone else.

Even after her long hair turned white, she enjoyed watching the sky in her rocking chair.