All Summer in a Day
Ray Bradbury
同志社国際中学校３年

北村涼

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 drumand gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussionof 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 tobe 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, andif there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hourand showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, atnight, 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 theworld 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 ofclear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and26

their dreams were gone.

Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great
thick windows.

been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from hereyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an
old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all
her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain andthe loud wet world beyond the huge glass.

“What’re you looking at?” said William.

Margot said nothing.

“Speak when you’re spoken to.” He gave her a shove. But she did not
move; rather she let herself by moved only by him and nothing else.

“Get away!” The boy gave her another push. “What’re you waiting for?”Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she waswaiting for was in her eyes.

“Well, don’t wait around here!” cried the boy savagely. “You won’t seenothing!”

Her lips moved.

“Nothing!” he cried. “It was all a joke, wasn’t it?” He turned to the otherchildren. “Nothing’s happening today. Is it?”

They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their

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中学生―Ｉ部門

Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she hadheads. “Nothing, nothing!”“All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly. “Hey, everyone, let’s
put her in a closet before teacher comes!”
中学生―Ｉ部門

They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and thenpleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they
slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it
tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her
muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down thetunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

“Ready, children?” she glanced at her watch.

“Yes!” said everyone.

The rain slackened still more.

They crowded to the huge door.

The rain stopped.

It was as if, in the midst of a film, concerning an avalanche, a tornado, ahurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with thesound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of theblasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film fromthe projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not
move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so
immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you
had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears.
They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting
world came in to them.
The sun came out.

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