Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “Recently, though, I’ve come to believe there may be a much simpler explanation for the flotation device. Papa obviously wasn’t thinking straight, and maybe he just wanted to make the trunk buoyant so he could use it as a life preserver in case the boat capsized. It’s likely that he didn’t even consider the possibility he might perish, while the trunk survived.

  “It does seem as though my husband honestly believed the guerrilla bombing of the Imperial Palace was going to take place. Even though the officers used to come to our house and get drunk and talk big about staging some kind of violent uprising, in the beginning those discussions seemed rather abstract. But they gradually became more focused, and I believe when Papa somehow reached the conclusion that the officers were seriously planning to carry out their radical scheme, he became frightened.

  “We know how the story ends: Papa launched his boat on the flooded river and ended up drowning. But did he ever seriously believe he would be able to survive the churned-up current in the wobbly little rowboat? It seems to me, in retrospect, that he was concentrating on the immediate goal of making his escape from the valley, and he didn’t take the time to think about the next step. I think it was shamefully irresponsible, given the haphazardness of his plan, that he would even think about taking his young son along on that wild, doomed flight. And when I watched from above as Kogii came paddling back to shore through the muddy, turbulent water, it truly was one of the happiest moments of my life!

  “Anyhow, the one thing we know for sure is that Papa participated in plotting a guerrilla uprising along with a bunch of disgruntled soldiers, and even though it turned out to be nothing more than an idle fantasy, he was afraid he might be forced to go through with it. That’s why he felt the need to flee like a thief in the night in the midst of the biggest storm of the year.

  “Kogii always seemed to idolize his father, and if I had given him access to the red leather trunk when he first asked (before I began to weed out the contents), I was afraid it would have broken his heart to learn the truth about his father. Also, of course, I didn’t relish the idea of having our family’s dirty laundry aired in public. I couldn’t explain my reasons without disclosing the secret, and as a result we were estranged for years.

  “Kogii’s reaction was to write The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, which was apparently designed to punish and embarrass me. That dreadful novella portrayed Papa’s conduct in a way that made him look ludicrous and pathetic, while I came across as a sarcastic, hypercritical harpy. Even so, it was clear to me that Kogii was still hoping to write his drowning novel someday, to celebrate the father he always thought of as brave and heroic.”

  I gave the high sign to Unaiko, who had been standing next to the recording equipment all this time, keeping a watchful eye on me. Then I told her I wanted to listen to the rest of the tape alone, at my leisure, adding by way of explanation that I felt like trying the liquor Asa had sent with the tape. Dexterously, Unaiko rewound the cassette to the beginning, so I would only need to press the play button.

  I took the bottle and filled a large sake cup for myself, then pointed at another cup and looked inquiringly at Unaiko, who was in the process of pulling plastic water bottles out of the cloth-wrapped bundle and lining them up on the table. She declined, saying she would be leaving shortly to drive herself home. I quickly drained my cup, then refilled it.

  Unaiko must have noticed how distressed I was by the contents of the tape; her body language seemed to suggest that she would be willing to take on the role of sympathetic listener, but I didn’t feel like talking things out with her (or anyone else) at that particular moment. She watched me thoughtfully as I continued to drink alone, in silence, and after a while she spoke.

  “The story you’ve been trying to write about your father, who died more than sixty years ago—well, Asa was saying that your mother thought it was meant to be a novel of redemption, and she seems to have been right. I understand now why your mother was so opposed to the project.

  “Before you came to the Forest House this summer, Asa kindly offered to let us use it. We did a major cleaning, since the house had been empty for quite a while, and then Masao Anai and I and some of the younger members of the troupe used it as both a training center and a place to stay. It was supposed to be for only a week, but the younger folks had obligations in Matsuyama, so I would often stay down here alone. Asa thought I might be lonely, and she would sometimes come over in the evenings to keep me company.

  “I tried never to ask Asa any direct questions, but as the time approached for you to come down here and take possession of the red leather trunk (which, I gathered, had quite a bit of history), I got the distinct feeling that while she was looking forward to your arrival, at the same time she was also quite worried. Masao tends to be very perceptive about such things, and he said that he had a feeling it might turn out there was nothing packed away in the red leather trunk after all—or, at least, nothing that would provide you with the impetus (and the materials) you would need to finish your novel. That was worrying me, too, and one night as I sat here talking with Asa till the wee hours I inadvertently voiced my concerns. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘if our worst fears are realized and the materials Mr. Choko is hoping to find aren’t in the trunk, maybe it would be a good idea to let him know as soon as he arrives.’

  “I knew I had probably overstepped my boundaries, and I wasn’t surprised that Asa seemed a bit offended at first. When Masao is directing a play, he’ll sometimes say something like ‘You know, I’m deliberately restraining myself from getting angry at you guys,’ in order to keep the younger actors from ‘shrinking’ (that’s the term he uses). And I kind of got the feeling Asa was doing the same: reining in her annoyance. But after a rather tense couple of minutes I kind of sensed that she was saying to herself, Oh well, what the heck, I may as well go ahead and tell Unaiko about all the things I’ve been losing sleep over. She went back to her house beside the river to get her pajamas and other necessities, and after she returned we laid out our bedding side by side on the floor, crawled under the covers, and proceeded to talk the night away.

  “The gist of what she told me is that the red leather trunk was recovered by the police a fair distance downstream from where they found your drowned father’s body and was subsequently delivered to your house. The trunk was initially put away unopened, but as the years went by, your mother started to sort through and dispose of the papers, and through that process she gradually came to have a clearer understanding of what her husband had been involved in.

  “You probably know all of this already, but I’m going to repeat everything Asa told me, on the chance some of it might be helpful. In the beginning, apparently, your father just seemed to enjoy sharing drinks and conversation with the young officers from the regiment in Matsuyama who showed up one day bearing a letter of introduction from the Kochi Sensei, and soon became regular visitors to your house. Your dad would serve the visitors sake, along with various delicacies, such as sweetfish caught with nets during the months when their bodies have the most oil, then roasted, dried, and put aside to eat when those fish were out of season. I gathered that freshwater crabs and eels, plucked from the river by the village children, were another favorite delicacy. Your father even went so far as to serve meat, or jerky, from secretly slaughtered cows hung up to cure in natural caves in the mountains. You’ve written that the bloody tail of the cow would be delivered, wrapped in newspaper, and your father would then proceed to cook it, but according to your mother’s version of the same story, the guests were simply served the customary cuts of beef. In any case, the officers would dig into those lavish spreads, with their distinctively regional flavors, and your father would mostly sit quietly and listen as the animated conversation—lubricated by large quantities of locally brewed sake your family had somehow managed to obtain—swirled around him. That’s how it was, at first. “Gradually, those discussions began to take on an air of urgency, and the officers started talking ab
out the necessity of doing something radical to change what they perceived as the disastrous course of Japanese history since the Meiji Restoration. From that point on, the local girls who had been working those banquets were no longer allowed in the house, and your mother had to do all the serving herself, unassisted.

  “Apparently, according to what your mother told Asa about those get-togethers, at first your father’s role consisted mainly of making sure the sake was kept warm, but the way he listened to the officers’ conversations gradually became more attentive and more intense. Before long, he evidently allowed himself to be drawn into the intrigue, and he began to take an active part in the discussions about the insurgency the young officers were planning.

  “And then they learned that a kamikaze aircraft base had recently been established on Kyushu, not too far away, and they got the delusional idea of stealing some of those planes, which were laden with bombs and filled with enough gas for their one-way missions. From then on, when one of the top secret planning sessions was in progress, your mother was only allowed to come into the main house to deliver trays of food. It was around that time, for reasons your mother didn’t understand, that your father got into the habit of burning the midnight oil in his cramped little study while he pored over an assortment of big, heavy books written in English. If those books were somehow significant, doesn’t it seem likely they would have been stashed in the red leather trunk, along with the letters?”

  “You’re right,” I replied. “I discovered this only the other day, but the trunk did contain several volumes of Frazer’s classic work The Golden Bough. It was a kind of fad with my father’s generation to read (or at least carry around) the Japanese translation of the abridged version of those books, in the Iwanami paperback edition.”

  “Why that particular book, I wonder?” Unaiko asked.

  “I don’t have the foggiest idea,” I said, shaking my head.

  “So your father drowned, and time passed,” Unaiko went on. “You became a published novelist, and it was when you declared your intention of having your next book focus on your father’s life and death that your mother started to get worried. She refused to give you access to the background materials you needed, and you ultimately decided to put the entire project on ice, even though the first chapter was already written. When you told your mother you wouldn’t be needing the materials from the red leather trunk after all, she was tremendously relieved. But then you wrote The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, and from what Asa told me, its publication changed everything. In that fever dream of a novella you portrayed your father as a grotesque figure riding in a funky wooden chariot who leads his ragtag disciples into Matsuyama to rob a bank in order to get money to finance his little band of insurgents, but ends up being fatally shot by the police. Your mother was appalled by what she saw as your betrayal of your family, and apparently she kept repeating over and over that your book was an affront to the memory of your drowned father, and saying things like ‘Who does Kogii think he is, anyhow—and what makes him think he has a right to publish this kind of garbage?’

  “I have to say that Asa’s facial expression as she was telling me all this was something an actress of my generation would find difficult, if not impossible, to emulate. I don’t know whether to call it pain, or anguish, or grief, but it was clearly welling up from a very deep place. And this evening, too, when Asa was looking for the tape I just played for you, I noticed she was wearing the same expression. Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve said more than I should have, again …”

  “Please don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m going to listen to my mother’s tape now, and I’ll make a point of imagining that Asa is sitting here beside me, wearing exactly the facial expression you’ve described. Well then, to top off the evening’s festivities, won’t you join me in a little drink?”

  I was trying to be charming and persuasive, but my voice sounded pitiful in my own ears. I poured the shochu (which really was exceptionally good) into the large sake cup sitting on the table in front of Unaiko, but she stood up without even taking a token sip.

  “Needless to say, Asa has been concerned about the effect listening to this tape might have on you. Masao’s been worrying, too. Anyway, please don’t overdo it with the booze tonight.” And with that, she vanished into the night.

  Once I started drinking I had a bad habit (or perhaps it was a character flaw) of throwing back shot after shot, and as I wandered over to the chair in front of the speakers, I did pause for a moment to quaff the cup I had filled for Unaiko. However, I refrained from replenishing my own, and I left the bottle of liquor on the table.

  4

  The next morning I woke up early, after a rare night during which I didn’t have even the tiniest sliver of a dream. When I rolled out of bed and headed downstairs to get a drink of water—it was around six o’clock—I saw Masao Anai loitering in the back garden just outside the dining room. He was alone, and his bowed head was haloed by the gilded light streaming through the leaves of the pomegranate tree. There was something tentative and uncertain about the way he was perching atop the large, round poetry stone, as if he wasn’t sure he ought to be there.

  I went into the dining room and sat at the table in a position that allowed me to keep a diagonal eye on Masao, who was off to one side. Everything was as I’d left it the night before. I picked up the plastic carafe, poured water into one of the large sake cups (which was still faintly redolent of Japan’s answer to vodka), and emptied it in a single gulp. I repeated the sequence several times until my morning-after thirst was quenched.

  Beyond the big picture window, Masao raised his head and appeared to notice that I was up and about. He didn’t make any of the usual gestures of greeting, but a moment later he vanished around the west side of the house. I heard jingling as he unlocked the kitchen door, evidently using a bunch of keys entrusted to the theater group, and let himself in. After settling into the chair across from me, Masao sloshed some water into a cup he’d carried from the kitchen and drank it. Then he poured himself another draught and partially refilled my cup as well, after first hefting the plastic pitcher and thoughtfully calculating how much water remained so we would both get an equal amount.

  “If the novel you came here hoping to finish ends up going down the drain, will that also spell doom for the drama project we were hoping to work on in tandem with your own writing and research?” he asked.

  “I haven’t really had a chance to think that far ahead,” I said, “but it’s true my plan to stay down here and make a new start on my long-dormant novel, using the materials I’d expected to find in my mother’s trunk, has hit a brick wall.”

  “So does that mean your current sojourn will be canceled as well? (I think you mentioned this was probably going to be your last visit, in any case.) To be honest, having your stay at the Forest House cut short would be a very regrettable development from our point of view, but wouldn’t it also be a major blow to the final stage of Kogito Choko’s career? Asa is very concerned about how you’re handling this setback, emotionally. I received a phone call from her early this morning while it was still dark, and she was talking about what a monumental letdown this must have been for you, and saying you’d mentioned that as you’ve grown older you seem to wake up every morning at the crack of dawn with your mind awash in pessimistic thoughts. She was worried about your being alone at a time like this, and—of course, I realize I’m not her brother’s keeper, so to speak, but here I am anyway, barging in on you uninvited at this ungodly hour.”

  I didn’t reply. After a moment, I became aware of a kind of subliminal ringing in my ears. In the small forest that bordered the back garden and marked the perimeter of my mother’s property, there were still some ancient stands of broadleaf trees that hadn’t merged with the mixed groves of cedars and Japanese cypresses surrounding them. When I gazed up at the luxuriant foliage of those trees, their green leaves luminous in the early-morning sunshine, the sight was almost transcenden
tally dazzling.

  During the past ten years or so, every time I had come back to the Forest House the uncanny quietude of the forest had always made me aware of the residual clamor in my ears, and I could almost feel myself being reunited with the mystical sound of the forest: that beautifully musical hush. Now, once again, I seemed to hear the living forest’s melodic vibrations amid the radiance of all that grand and glorious greenness. I was suddenly oblivious to the existence of Masao Anai, and I had an illusion that I (in my present guise of feeble, useless old man) was hearing my mother’s line of poetry—You didn’t get Kogii ready to go up into the forest—overlaid with the subtle music that seemed to be emanating from the same forest.

  While I was in this trancelike state Masao had returned to his seat in the garden, under the pomegranate tree. He had an unusually large notebook open on his lap, but he didn’t appear to be looking at it. (I had seen the same tableau, featuring Unaiko and her own oversize notebook, any number of times.)

  I went outside and joined him under the tree. “What’s that you’ve got there? Is it some kind of director’s notebook?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Masao said. “I’ve read quite a few books written by the leaders of the New Drama movement in Japan—you know, adherents of the Stanislavski method—but my notes aren’t nearly so methodical or technique oriented. I jot things down as they occur to me; sometimes I’ll look at my notes later and I won’t even remember when I wrote them, or why. The funny thing is, the tidbits from various sources that I either transcribe or photocopy and paste onto these pages are often more useful than my original ideas. Maybe that’s because all my dramatic creations are basically just eclectic collages of quotations and allusions.”