Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  I recently remembered a day, many years ago, when you read a letter from one of your young readers and then went into your study without a word and stretched out on your army cot. The memory was triggered the other afternoon when I noticed a book you had been reading next to the chaise longue. (You had gone off to get a haircut while I was getting ready to head for the hospital alone to check myself in, as we’d agreed.) The book had a handmade dust cover, and when I opened it and took a peek at the title page, I saw that it was Soseki’s Kokoro.

  Anyway, the young reader—this was when you were quite young yourself, so that person was probably only ten years your junior at most—was responding to a short essay of yours that appeared in one of those little publishing-company advertising brochures they give away at bookstores and university co-ops. The title was a quote from Kokoro: I’d like you to remember something. This is the way I have lived my life. Apparently after reading the essay (or, at least, after glancing at the title) the student scrawled some rude remarks—things like “Who do you think you’re talking to, anyway? Why should I waste my time remembering how you’ve lived your life? As if I cared!”—on a page torn out of a school notebook and mailed it to you. The student’s comments struck me as oddly reasonable and I inadvertently burst out laughing, which just made you more depressed. (I could tell, even though you didn’t say anything.)

  Getting back to the present, before I left for the hospital I wandered around the rooms on the second floor of our house. As I was looking at the shelves in the library where all your books are lined up, I remembered the indignant reaction of the young reader (now presumably grown old) to your Kokoro quotation and it made me giggle again, even though it isn’t a particularly pleasant memory. In any event, my little tour of your bookshelves gave me an idea, and I’d like to ask for a favor. Would you please copy out the parts of your novels where you quote things Akari has said and send them to me? I thought maybe I could ask Maki to make those excerpts into a miniature book, using a nice, clean-looking Mincho typeface on her computer (which she insists is already outmoded). Then she could finish them by hand.

  I have to say, I’m feeling very optimistic about our chances of weathering the current storm. In the past, whenever we’ve had to deal with a crisis of any magnitude I have always felt we would make it through somehow, and we’ve done just that, every single time. Upon reflection, everyone in our family, including Akari (aside from the disabilities he was born with), has been blessed with fundamentally healthy bodies. Do you remember the famous aphorism Musumi Sensei translated so precisely from the Latin, Mens sana in corpore sano, adding his own observation that a sound mind can easily coexist with an unhealthy body, and vice versa? That’s probably true, but—no, I’m going to resist the temptation to point out that we’re both growing old and before long our crises will be at an end. I would rather be positive and borrow a phrase of Céline’s that you once translated, aeons ago: “Let’s keep our chins up and be of good cheer!”

  The truth is, when I glanced over those books in the library I couldn’t help thinking (like the young reader) that being told to “please remember all this” was, indeed, a rather tall order. Of course, I stopped reading your novels somewhere around the middle of Letters to a Nostalgic Time—though I did continue reading your essays, since I illustrated the bulk of them. But anyway … you know how Soseki writes that Sensei found himself automatically tallying the years on his fingers? Well, when I did that just now I realized it’s been twenty years since I decided to stop reading your fiction. And even now, to be honest, I don’t feel any desire to use my downtime in the hospital to catch up on your books.

  That’s why I’d like to ask you to go through your work and extract the passages where you quote things Akari has said. I remember you once told me in all seriousness that you write down Akari’s comments verbatim, without embellishment, because you can’t very well hand over the rough draft and ask him whether he wants to make any corrections.

  6

  Dear Kogii,

  Maki sent me a copy of the charming little My Own Words book she put together after you went through your novels and picked out a number of the quotes attributed to Akari. (Of course, his remarks would have been easy to spot because they were always in bold type—or in italics, in the English translations.)

  Unaiko was completely enchanted with the compilation, from the very first page, and she’s been running around quoting from it ever since. However, Maki enclosed a note saying that she didn’t necessarily agree with the way you chose the excerpts, although I gather she hasn’t shared those thoughts with you directly.

  Chikashi once told me that Maki was very outgoing and vivacious as a young child but her personality suddenly changed when she was halfway through middle school, and she became much more subdued and withdrawn. Also, she started having bouts of extreme melancholy and she would just say whatever she was thinking, without any of the customary filters. I remember the conventional wisdom in the nursing community at the time was that many antidepressants contained an ingredient that could cause an abnormal degree of aggressiveness in patients. In any event, I know Maki is taking antidepressants now, and I’m telling you this because I think it may be relevant to what’s going on between the two of you.

  In her note, Maki expressed the opinion that there have been many other times when you were very controlling toward Akari. (She used the word “oppression,” which seems to keep popping up.) She reminded me of a time you described in your autobiographical novel Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! when you went over to Europe, during the rise of the grassroots antinuclear protest movement there, to participate in the making of a television documentary. You ended up staying quite a bit longer than expected, and Akari became convinced you were dead. “Is that right? Is he coming back on Sunday? Even if he is, right now he’s dead! Papa is really dead!”

  Of course you know this story better than anyone. Anyhow, in the book Akari started talking back to his mother, who was very much alive. He kept responding to her questions in a belligerent way, and when the father finally did get home he gave Akari a good scolding, and that triggered a rift between them. However, not long afterward, when the father was laid up with an acute attack of gout, Akari addressed his dad—whose ailment had temporarily transformed him into the weakest member of the family—through the intermediary of the father’s badly swollen feet. As a result, amicable relations were restored, both in the book and in real life, but as Maki points out there are some significant differences between that situation and what’s going on now. On second thought, I’m just going to copy the rest of what she said instead of trying to paraphrase:

  If Mama is hoping to orchestrate some kind of peaceful accord, like what happened before, and if Papa created this little book of Akari’s quotations in the hopes that it will miraculously smooth things over, then they’re both being way too optimistic. If Papa really thinks the same approach will work this time, when the damage is so much more severe, it only shows that his oppressive attitude toward Akari hasn’t changed a bit. At least that’s how it seems to me. And isn’t this exactly what Mama has been talking about all along as well?

  Those were Maki’s main points, but she ended her note by raising an interesting question: “Don’t you think everyone’s getting a kick out of the My Own Words booklet just because of the unique way Akari uses language?”

  Since Chikashi went into the hospital earlier than expected and I wasn’t able to adjust my own departure date to accommodate the change, I’ve been talking to Maki on the phone quite frequently these days about various practical matters. During one of those conversations I mentioned offhandedly that I would be interested in hearing an explanation of the rationale behind the harsh things she’s been saying about you lately and her unforgiving attitude toward you in general. I had heard from Chikashi about how rough things were at your house, but I didn’t really understand what was going on.

  Maki was completely candid. She told me, “Papa flung s
ome unspeakably cruel words at Akari, not once but twice. The first incident was bad enough, but there’s no way he can forgive himself for letting it happen again. Papa knows this is an intolerable situation, and I’m sure he’s been trying to figure out how to make it better, but suppose Papa and Akari don’t manage to work things out this time and they just go on living completely separate lives. Would that really be so bad? Akari could come live with me. I’ve been talking to Mama about that solution, too.”

  That seems to be where Maki stands right now. As I see it, we might be able to make allowances for the first incident by saying that when Akari innocently defaced the flawless Beethoven score—a memento of your friendship with Edward W. Said—you were so upset that you simply lost control of yourself. However, the second lapse is a different story. I mean, you had already gone to bed, but you got up and made a special trip downstairs to confront Akari, and then you called him that shocking name again. True, it was the middle of the night and you were probably under the influence of your usual nightcap. Even so, there’s no excuse for such appalling behavior, and I was literally speechless when I heard about it.

  I don’t want to end on an unpleasant topic, so let’s get back to the delightful little book Maki assembled. As I said earlier, Akari’s quotations made a deep impression on Unaiko. She and Ricchan have both been working very hard to get everything ready for when you and Akari arrive, but even though Unaiko already knows you fairly well she told me she’s been feeling nervous about meeting Akari, so she gave the little booklet an extra-careful reading. I gather she has also been trying to formulate a strategy that could lead to an eventual reconciliation between you and Akari. Apparently she found a glimmer of hope in the passage where your foot was inflamed and swollen from gout, and Akari’s response was so sweetly solicitous. She thinks that scene has great dramatic potential, too, although she was saying they would need to find a way to make a stuffed-toy likeness of your gouty foot!

  This is Unaiko’s take on the scene, which she analyzed with her usual intensity: the head of the household, who is the family’s authority figure, is angry at Akari, who, in turn, is going through a rebellious stage. Even so, he wants to make peace with his father, but he doesn’t have the courage to address his conciliatory gestures to the more central parts of his father’s anatomy—especially the angry face, which he finds frightening. However, the red, swollen, gout-ridden feet that are causing the father so much suffering are peripheral and therefore, somehow, easier to approach. Also, those feet seem to be staging a mutiny of their own against the more entitled and politically powerful parts of the body, so Akari feels he can engage with those extremities and speak to them directly with affection and concern. “Foot, are you all right? Good foot, nice foot! Gout, are you all right? Nice foot! Nice foot!” Unaiko found that section very moving. Of course, she sees everything from a theatrical perspective, and she said Akari’s touching speech to his father’s feet is an unusually deep expression of his own complicated feelings, the likes of which she’s never seen on any stage.

  My recent letters to you must have seemed like an endless barrage of criticism, I know, so I’d like to end by reminding you of another nice passage in the same novel, where it’s clear that Akari is worrying more about his father than about himself. Since you didn’t choose to include those lines in your compilation, I’m planning to write them in the miniature book Maki sent me. I’ll include them here as well, on the chance they might make you feel better.

  “Can’t you sleep, Papa? I wonder if you’ll be able to sleep when I’m not here. I expect you to cheer up and sleep!”

  Well then, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you when our paths cross at Haneda Airport. I’m glad we were able to arrange it so I’ll be flying into Tokyo right around the time you and Akari are taking off for Shikoku!

  Chapter 8

  Gishi-Gishi/Mr. Rhubarb

  1

  As the day of Chikashi’s surgery approached I headed back to my original home turf, the rustic valley deep in the forests of Shikoku, this time with Akari in tow. Asa was by my wife’s side at the hospital; both Chikashi and our daughter, Maki, acknowledged that no one was better qualified to see Chikashi through the surgery and the subsequent recovery period than my sister, who had spent more than half her life working as a nurse.

  Maki, meanwhile, would be at our house in the Seijo district of Tokyo, holding down the domestic fort and dealing with incoming correspondence regarding copyrights, writing commissions, and miscellaneous business matters. Akari’s preference would naturally have been to stay home and keep Maki company. However, Chikashi (who couldn’t stop worrying about the precarious state of my relationship with Akari) believed the two of us might find it healing to spend some time together on Shikoku, and she almost seemed more concerned with advancing the plan than with her own impending surgery. Maki somehow managed to convince her brother that this was the best option, and while Akari must surely have sensed the underlying motivation, he agreed.

  As for me, I didn’t feel particularly sanguine about the chances our stay on Shikoku would result in a return to familial harmony, but I did understand that it would be less stressful for Chikashi not to have a couple of depressive lumps moping around the house, or the hospital. She had said all along that since I tended to be a worrywart, I should leave dealing with her illness to the female warriors in the family. I agreed to this hands-off approach, and the only medical information I had received was that a uterine tumor, benignly dormant for many years, had somehow become malignant and needed to be removed as soon as possible.

  As things stood, I wasn’t being allowed to share in Akari’s music, which had long been both the most essential element in his life and his primary mode of communication within the family. Whenever my thoughts strayed to that torturous subject, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of utter desolation and spiritual bankruptcy. As we set off for Shikoku, Akari was in an understandably sour mood; after all, I had given him every reason to carry a major chip on his shoulder. He wasn’t speaking to me, and as far as I could see there was nothing I could do about that.

  Our flight had been scheduled so that we would depart from Haneda Airport not long after Asa had flown in, so Maki was able to see Akari and me off while also meeting her arriving aunt. The exceedingly strained relations between me and both my children had made the taxi ride to the airport more than a little awkward, but naturally the ever-indomitable Asa had come equipped with a plan to drag me back into the land of the living.

  “Kogii,” she said after we had exchanged cursory greetings, “I’ve arranged for someone to come by and keep you company at the Forest House from time to time. You’ll never guess who it is: Daio!” She then launched into a lengthy etymological explanation about the evolution of that person’s name and history, presumably for Maki and Akari’s benefit.

  “So when he was repatriated to Japan as an unidentified orphan, the immigration officials gave him a made-up name: Ichiro Daio,” Asa concluded. “Our mother felt sorry for him, and because one of the medicinal herbs she used to gather—a type of wild rhubarb called daio—was known locally as gishi-gishi, she bestowed that playful nickname on him and it stuck. Of course, nobody calls him Gishi-Gishi anymore, and his first name somehow lost the long ‘o’ over the years. Kogii, I haven’t felt the time was right to tell you about Daio’s return, what with the whole drowning-novel debacle and all. When he first resurfaced, ages ago, Mother actually forbade me to share the news with you. But since you’ve now abandoned your novel for good, I don’t think I need to worry about Mother’s wishes anymore. Really, though, isn’t it like a nostalgic blast from the past to hear Daio’s name? I saw him at the memorial service on the tenth anniversary of Mother’s death, and when we started chatting I could tell he was thinking fondly about years gone by. He specifically mentioned that he was hoping to have a chance to see you again someday.”

  Apart from this announcement, which she tossed off in a casual, matter-of-fact manner, Asa
spent most of our shared time at the airport chatting with Akari. The unexpected mention of Daio reminded me that whenever my mother had addressed him as Gishi-Gishi—a nickname that could be translated, loosely, as “Mr. Rhubarb”—she always pronounced those words with an oddly singsong lilt, as if she were speaking Chinese. However, my attention at the airport and during the plane trip was entirely focused on my upcoming sojourn on Shikoku with Akari, so Asa’s news didn’t really register.

  On the flight to Matsuyama, Akari seemed to be feeling some degree of pain or discomfort in his knees and lower back, but he didn’t complain. I sat next to him, alternately dozing and waking, and after a while I began to think my aging ears had somehow misheard what Asa had said. It hardly seemed likely that Daio (who had been dead for several years, as far as I knew) would be coming to visit me at the Forest House.

  A day or so after I returned from my first guest-teaching stint in Berlin, I had received a large wooden crate along with a letter notifying me of Daio’s death, ostensibly sent by the few remaining disciples who were still living with him at his old paramilitary training camp. After offering the customary flowery greetings, the letter explained that with the demise of their leader the training camp was being disbanded and sold off piece by piece. It then went on to explain that the crate contained a gigantic freshwater turtle, which Daio had supposedly caught, just before his death, in a mountain stream at the lower end of the camp. The turtle was a remarkable specimen: a good fourteen centimeters tall and brimming with youthful strength and vigor. I interpreted the turtle’s sudden appearance as a personal challenge and, feeling rather like a jet-lagged gladiator, I immediately charged into battle. It took me from midnight until the break of dawn to subdue that formidable foe, and by the time I finally triumphed the kitchen was completely covered with blood and I was soaked in gore from head to foot.