26
中学生―Ｉ部門
The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds,
intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.
It rained.
It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days
compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum
and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion
of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand
forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to
be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus,
and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women
who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.
“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!”
“Yes, yes!”
Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time
when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and
if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour
and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at
night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming
and remembering an old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the
world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a
blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands.
But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of
clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and
同志社国際中学校 ３年 北 村 涼
All Summer in a Day
Ray Bradbury
