Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  As twofold evidence of my somber, senescent state of mind, not only did I procrastinate unpacking the cartons Asa had sent, but I also overlooked the fact that there was a smaller box from a different sender sitting on top of them. I noticed the extra one only when I finally got around to tackling the stack a day or two later; its brown-paper wrappings so closely resembled those of the others that it had simply blended in. The small, sturdy box had been carefully packed, and the return address was the Caveman Group’s office in Matsuyama.

  When I opened the box I found a masterfully crafted picture frame wrapped in brown paper, along with a taped-on card signed by all the members of the Caveman Group. The card read simply, For Mr. Choko: We’re glad you came back to the forest! When I tore away the wrapping I saw a full-length photograph of a voluptuous young woman standing, completely naked, in front of a painted backdrop depicting a large city at night. After I had spent several minutes gazing at the portrait, I suddenly recognized the woman’s resolute, triumphant-looking profile. It was, unmistakably, Unaiko!

  In order to get the shot, I mused, the photographer must have been directly in front of the stage, with an assistant crouching down on one side and aiming a handheld light to illuminate the subject at the proper angle. The woman in the photograph was wearing black high heels and she looked as if she might be getting ready to step off the edge of the stage, with the bulk of her weight supported on the left side of her body. Although the muscles were overlaid with a layer of soft fat, the firm solidity of her thighs was clearly apparent, as was the luxuriant thicket of hair covering her gently rounded pubic area. As for her breasts, they were so perfect that they reminded me of the impossibly idealized portrayals of the female form in comic books and graphic novels. Evidently the senders wanted me to feast my eyes on this photograph and I was doing just that, so I was startled when I heard Unaiko’s voice behind me, from the stairs.

  “Before the photograph was sent to you, my colleagues in the Caveman Group hung it on the wall of our headquarters for a day,” she said. “It seemed to be common knowledge that you have what they called a ‘pubic-hair fetish,’ so I guess they thought it would be a witty gift. Anyway, this photograph was taken five years ago during a public performance, without my knowledge. I don’t think the motivation behind their sending it to you now was anything more sinister than a desire to tease Old Man Choko a little bit, but I wouldn’t want you to think of me as belonging to a group that would joke around about someone’s, um, private predilections. Backstory aside, though, I gather you’ve taken a liking to the picture?”

  “Yes, I like it very much,” I said. After a moment I added, “Since this was a gift to me, I think I’d better keep it in my study, just to be safe.” Akari had been a step or two behind Unaiko when she came down from the second floor, and he had passed by on his way to the restroom. I was hoping he hadn’t seen the framed photograph I was holding, since it was the kind of thing he always found upsetting, but when he stormed into the washroom, slamming the door behind him, I knew he must have caught a glimpse of the photo and formed an impression of the subject matter, if not the subject.

  Even before we had fallen into the current deplorable state of affairs, it had been clear that Akari felt particularly ill at ease whenever I was conversing with visitors on topics with the slightest hint of a sexual connotation, even though he probably didn’t understand what was being discussed with any degree of clarity. Unaiko had evidently intuited the reason behind Akari’s door-slamming discomfiture, because she redirected our playful conversation about the photograph into a more serious channel.

  “From this angle I appear to be standing on the stage stark-naked, like a fool, but there’s actually a military formation downstage from me, waving an assortment of flags,” she explained. “The naked woman is meant to be confronting that group, although there’s some doubt as to whether it poses any actual threat, and she is seen by the audience for only a split second before the stage is plunged into total darkness. Masao is a big proponent of deliberate ambiguity in his theater work, so while the naked woman was supposed to be standing there openly and proudly, the original plan was for her torso to be covered by a nude-colored tank top that came down to the tops of her thighs. I was actually the one who insisted full-frontal nudity was the only honest way to go. The next day we gave my ‘little striptease’ (as Masao insisted on calling it) a trial run at the first performance, to see how it would play onstage, and someone who was there returned the next night and took a surreptitious photo, and then sold it to a photography magazine. That photo created quite a sensation, and it’s one of the reasons the Caveman Group got a reputation for doing outrageous things, even before we started throwing ‘dead dogs’ around. Masao was so incensed that he threatened legal action, but the other party had proof the photo had been taken legitimately at a public performance, so that was the end of it.

  “Getting back to the gift, I can’t help speculating about the motivation. I know that certain members of our troupe decided to send you this photo on the pretext of indulging your supposed pubic-hair fetish, but I can’t help wondering whether they might also have had a hidden agenda. I think this bizarre gesture might have been rooted in their apprehensions about our next big public-performance project—you know, the one Ricchan and I have been trying to put together, with Asa’s help. I know there’s a faction in the Caveman Group that isn’t completely thrilled with what I’ve been doing, and these members also voiced concern that my projects could end up overshadowing their own work. As I’m sure you’re aware, even in a theater group that appears to be made up of forward-looking artists there can still be a strong undertone of sexist discrimination directed toward ‘uppity females,’ especially in the more rural parts of this country.”

  4

  Later that morning, toward the end of the breakfast hour, Daio stopped by to relay an important message: Akari’s custom-made plaster cast had been delivered to the clinic in Honmachi.

  “The cast is removable, so it will need to be taken off every night at bedtime and put back on first thing in the morning. Once you get the hang of it, Akari, you should be able to handle both those tasks by yourself,” Daio explained. “During the early stages, though, would you be able to take on that responsibility, Kogito? If so, I’d like to take you and Akari down to the clinic to get some pointers about how to deal with the cast.”

  “I’ve been getting Akari’s bed ready every evening for the past forty-some years, except when I’ve been away from home, so I don’t think dealing with a cast will be excessively challenging,” I said drily.

  “I’m making my bed all by myself now,” Akari muttered, looking down at his plate.

  “Yesterday evening I was sticking special tape on the most painful places for you, isn’t that right, Akari?” I said. “I was being very careful not to touch your crushed vertebra, but …”

  “It never hurt when Unaiko and Ricchan did it, either,” Akari retorted.

  “Then would you rather have those two help you with the cast during the early stages, while you’re getting used to it?” I asked, unable to keep the despondency out of my voice. “If they have time, of course.”

  “We were planning to ride along to the clinic in any case—that is, either Ricchan or me,” Unaiko said. “Since all we’re doing right now is outlining our next big production, we would be happy to help Akari in any way we can. Akari, would you like me to drive you today?”

  “That sounds great!” Akari exclaimed.

  “Thanks, Unaiko. I’ll leave it to you then,” Daio said. He, too, kept his face averted so he wouldn’t have to meet my eyes.

  After Akari and Unaiko had set off in the van I went back to work unpacking the rest of the books Asa had sent. Daio sat on the sofa, reaching out from time to time to pick up a book and leaf idly through it. After a moment, I began to reminisce aloud.

  “As you mentioned the other day, when Goro and I were still in high school, during the Occupation, we paid a visit to you
r training camp and we brought along an American officer who was a language expert,” I said. “His name was Peter, and your students hatched a plan to use him as a conduit to get their hands on some automatic pistols, rifles, and so on that the Americans had scrapped after the Korean War. Goro and I somehow got dragged into it, and we ended up overreacting just a bit.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Daio said, and chuckled. “You put all the lurid details into one of your recent novels. Someone told me about the book, and when I read it I thought, Ah, so this is what was going on in Kogito’s head that weekend.

  “As you say, Peter sold us some old army-surplus guns, which we thought we could turn around and sell to a scrap-iron dealer to raise a few bucks. However, when you wrote about that transaction in your novel, you added an imaginary scene in which Peter’s own pistol is forcibly confiscated by the guys from my training camp. You left it ambiguous, as you tend to do, but the implication was that Peter might have met with foul play at the hands of my followers. One of the local policemen happened to read the book and he came snooping around the camp, asking questions. This was a long time ago, of course. The truth was, we had kept a few of the surplus guns to use for target practice and that kind of thing, but everything was perfectly innocent and above board, and no harm came to Peter at all.”

  “Yes, I realize that now,” I said. “But at the time, based on what Goro and I saw and heard at the training camp that weekend, we seriously believed you and your disciples were planning to attack the American military base on the outskirts of Matsuyama the night the peace treaty went into effect: September 8, 1951. When the date rolled around we were glued to the radio till well past midnight, expecting to hear some breaking news about your exploits.”

  “Oh, right.” Daio smiled sheepishly. “You mentioned in your book that you even took a photo to commemorate the occasion. It seems as though we inadvertently set you boys up for a big disappointment, and I’m sorry about that,” he added, but he didn’t sound very contrite.

  “Of course, we knew those discarded guns wouldn’t be of any use in actual combat,” I said. “After all, they were old and rusty and obsolete. We figured you were just using them as props for playing war games, but we really did believe your group was planning to stage some kind of suicidal attack on the American MPs who were guarding the gate of the army base. If you and your subordinates had actually followed through on that plan you would have been shot dead in the blink of an eye—although it would have gone down in history as the only uprising ever staged during the tenure of the occupying forces.”

  “Well, the guerrilla warfare didn’t take place, and to be candid there was really never any chance it was going to,” Daio said. “The truth is, we did have one serious goal, although it was probably more of a wild hope. Since you obviously believed our goal was to get ourselves killed and go out in a blaze of glory, we thought you might be moved to drop by the training camp again on the day in question to try to intervene. If you had, I was hoping we would be able to persuade you—as the son and heir of Choko Sensei—to become our leader going forward.

  “Going back a few years to when Japan lost the war, the most upsetting thing was that all the army officers and sailors who had seemed to be so gung ho about our earlier plan suddenly began acting as if they had just been released from an evil spell or something,” Daio went on. “They started acting as though everything we had talked about was a big joke and pretending they had never been serious about it at all. Choko Sensei was the only one who was fully committed to our ideologies, to the point where he felt compelled to flee the village, but of course he was swept away by the flooded river and ended up drowning before he could make his escape. Your father cared enough about our beliefs to stake his life on them, so we, as his survivors, were trying to preserve those principles through our work at the training camp after the war was over. Even today, I can’t help thinking about how inspiring it would have been if we could have had Choko Sensei’s son as our leader, to look up to. But yes, it’s true that even though we did have some abstract discussions about staging a kamikaze attack as a sort of posthumous tribute to your father’s devotion to the cause, when that day arrived my young disciples and I sat around laughing about that over-the-top scenario, and everyone agreed it had been a ridiculously unrealistic idea all along.

  “Then many years later, when I read your novel, I was surprised to discover how seriously you and Goro had taken the whole thing. I mean, you two were so worried about the possibility of getting into trouble for your part in the illegal gun exchange that you actually went so far as to take a commemorative photo in case you ended up going to jail.”

  Daio paused for a moment before adding, with a wry smile, “It’s really kind of funny, when you think about it!”

  Chapter 9

  Late Work

  1

  Several days later I plunked myself down on the great-room sofa, which had been jammed into a corner to create more space for rehearsals, and continued unpacking the books Asa had sent down from Tokyo. (I had already devoted three full days to this task.) I spent a few moments leafing through each volume before moving on to the next. When I had finished perusing one stack I put that batch back into its cardboard box, extracted a new pile of books, and began the process anew.

  Normally I would have been prospecting for some riveting research topic to throw myself into as the first step toward beginning a new novel, but that wasn’t the case now. These were mostly books I had stashed on the top shelf of a certain bookcase at my house in Tokyo with the idea of eventually getting around to rereading them. In my upstairs study/bedroom there I kept my indispensable collection—many years in the making—of books by an assortment of authors, poets, and thinkers (including the collected works of my mentor, Professor Musumi) and a number of those were in the boxes as well. Finally, there were numerous unexplored volumes that I’d been planning to read someday at my leisure. Since I had abandoned the drowning novel and didn’t have a clue what else I might tackle as part of a late-work plan, the inchoate someday was suddenly at hand.

  In the past whenever I had decided to seize the moment and begin rereading a certain book, before long I would toss it aside and move on to the next volume on the shelf. You might think such a scattershot approach would be an unsatisfying way to pass the time, but it wasn’t uncommon for me to look up from the pages and discover that two or three hours had passed in a pleasant blur. This was similar to the process I always went through when I was casting around for subject matter for my next book, but I already knew I wouldn’t be tackling another novel-length fiction project any time soon, if ever. At least, I thought, I could use this fallow time to catch up on my reading—and my rereading as well.

  On this day, Unaiko and Akari had driven away in the Caveman Group’s van for an outing that would combine listening to music with exercise. (Those jaunts were now an almost daily occurrence.)

  Not long after they set off, I received a phone call from Unaiko. There was a good deal of background noise and I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but she was clearly upset. When I realized that she was trying to tell me something about Akari, I jumped up from the sofa in alarm. The crackling static on the line kept getting louder and louder, and then the phone abruptly went dead. I replaced the handset in its cradle, then stood anxiously next to the phone and waited. Ten endless minutes later, it finally rang again. This time Asa was on the other end, calling from Tokyo. She sounded perfectly calm—almost too calm, as if she was making a conscious effort to convey that impression.

  “Akari had a seizure,” she said. “He and Unaiko were up at the Saya, doing one of their fitness walks, and apparently it happened when they stopped to rest. Unaiko called me in a state of panic, saying she had tried to reach you but it was a bad connection to start with, and then the call was dropped. Luckily she was able to get through to Tamakichi’s mobile phone, and he called me in Tokyo. As it happened he’s already in the neighborhood, doing some forestry wor
k not far from your house—planting saplings and whatnot. Anyhow, you need to head over to the Saya as soon as possible, so Tamakichi will swing by shortly to get you. He said it would help if you could be waiting for him at the top of the driveway.”

  As I rushed around getting ready to leave, I couldn’t stop worrying about Akari’s seizure. There was a chance he might have fallen and hit his head on one of the rocks scattered around the Saya, I thought. For some reason that image reminded me of the strength and resiliency of Unaiko’s thighs the day we first met on the cycling path near my house in Tokyo, when she caught me from behind and saved me from toppling over.

  In any event, I managed to find Akari’s prepacked emergency bag (which I had forgotten to give to Unaiko to take along on their outing), and as I emerged from the house my nephew Tamakichi was already sitting in the driveway in a pickup truck. Without getting out of the cab, he stretched one suntanned arm across the passenger seat and opened the door for me. No sooner had I climbed in than he put his foot on the gas pedal and sped away.

  “I’m sorry you had to drive all the way down here,” I said. “I know I was supposed to be waiting for you up by the forest road, but when you start getting older everything seems to move in slow motion.”

  “No worries,” Tamakichi replied. “I called Unaiko back, and she said that Akari was already up and about. I gathered they were just heading to the river to get him cleaned up.”

  This news came as a great relief, but then I noticed that instead of taking the forest road through the valley, Tamakichi was heading uphill. “Is this the right way?” I asked.

  “If you take the forest road to the Saya, you have to park the car and walk quite a ways,” Tamakichi explained. “I’m planning to take a detour, so we’ll be approaching from the top.”