Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “When I went to the airport to see my father and Akari off to Shikoku—and also to meet my aunt Asa, who had just flown in—I got the sense that Akari knew what was going on with our mother and was aware of what the worst-case outcome could be. He seemed so lost and depressed that I impulsively blurted out, ‘Mama is going to come home from the hospital around the beginning of May,’ even though I knew as I was saying those words that they could undermine my mother’s intentions.

  “Akari’s response was typical of his peculiar sense of humor—in fact, it was a playful variation on one of his quotes from the little book I put together. He said, ‘Oh, is that so? Mama’s coming home at the beginning of May? Well, even if she comes home then, right now she’s dead. Mama is really dead!’”

  Kogii, I can’t help thinking about one of the terms you’re so fond of: “rebirth.” Isn’t that the essence of what Akari is talking about here and in My Own Words as well?

  Chapter 10

  A Memory … or the Coda to a Dream

  1

  When Unaiko was offered a four-week job as guest director at a large theater—a far cry from the small-scale venues where she had been mounting her own productions—she naturally jumped at the opportunity. There was nothing more for Ricchan to do, so she left Tokyo as soon as she had finished attending to some personal business of her own.

  Ricchan’s first task after returning to the Forest House had been to rearrange the room she shared with Unaiko to create a designated space for Akari. He immediately settled into his downstairs pied-à-terre and busied himself with organizing the CDs Ricchan had brought back from Tokyo for him. After spending half a day lining up the discs according to his own method of classification he began listening to one track from each CD, starting with a Piazzolla piece for guitar, until he’d worked his way through the entire stack.

  Meanwhile, Ricchan came upstairs to clean my study/bedroom. While she worked, she told me about her farewell conversation with Chikashi at the hospital, although of course (as Ricchan knew) Asa had already given me a partial recap. While she was bundling some sheets, pillowcases, and pajamas to be laundered, Ricchan caught sight of the photograph of Unaiko’s heroic onstage pose, which I had tucked away on the bookshelf with my big dictionaries, and she quietly moved it to a more conspicuous place. Then she mentioned having noticed that Chikashi had only one photo of her late brother, Goro, on display in her hospital room—and even that was just a book cover rather than a framed photo.

  “It’s been ten years since Goro died,” I said, “and some books are finally coming out now that aren’t completely tainted by the tabloid newspaper scandal everyone was obsessed with immediately after his death. The photo was probably taken by a young photographer friend of Goro’s, whom we’d heard about but never met. Chikashi said it was an unusually relaxed-looking photo of Goro, and she added that for someone who was in the film business, he was surprisingly self-conscious about being photographed.”

  Ricchan nodded. “I mentioned to Chikashi that I couldn’t help noticing there weren’t any photos of Akari, or of you, Mr. Choko. I was really just making small talk, with no particular agenda, but she seemed to be thinking carefully about how to reply. Finally she said there was one photo of Akari she particularly liked—a black-and-white portrait that was on the cover of a magazine after sales of his second CD took off—but it was too large to bring to the hospital. She also mentioned that something she’s noticed about photographs of young people with brain damage (and she seemed a bit hesitant about saying this) is that most of the photos somehow seemed to emphasize those disabilities. She thinks it has as much to do with the photographers as with the subjects. But in the magazine photo, she said, Akari looks completely natural and relaxed. Then she went on to add, ‘As for a photograph of my husband, there’s one Goro took when they were both in high school, but it’s the polar opposite of a candid shot. It was posed within an inch of its life, but it’s still oddly unforgettable.’

  “When I said I would very much like to see the photograph, Chikashi told me it was published in The Changeling, as an illustration amid the pages where you talk about what was going on at that time in your life. So while Maki and I were at your house, sorting through Akari’s CDs and choosing a few for me to bring here, I helped myself to a copy. I haven’t had time to read it yet, and I haven’t looked at the photo, either.”

  2

  While she was in Tokyo, Ricchan went to the university hospital to pick up some of Akari’s prescriptions, and she asked the pharmacists for advice about the major seizure Akari had experienced in the forest. They told her increasing the dosages of any of his meds wasn’t an option and cautioned that special care should be taken to ensure he was getting enough exercise. As soon as she got back to the Forest House, Ricchan instituted a more rigorous fitness program based on walking and calisthenics interspersed with rest periods. She added a water flask to Akari’s portable kit (this was a new addition), and on her first morning back they set out together.

  Not long afterward, Daio dropped by. After touching on several innocuous household matters, the conversation soon progressed to a more volatile topic: Unaiko and Ricchan’s latest dog-tossing project.

  “Since my training camp went bust I haven’t really gotten together with any of my former disciples, but a number of them have become quite influential, both in the local prefectural government and elsewhere,” Daio began. “One way or another, I hear things, and they’re apparently keeping tabs on me as well. The other day I happened to run into a man who’s in touch with some of those guys; he’s in the shipping and transport business, so I guess he gets around quite a bit.

  “Anyhow, this person was expressing concern about Unaiko’s theatrical work and also about my own involvement with her group. He kept harping on the open-discussion format in the latter part of the plays—which, as you’ve surely heard, was the talk of the countryside around here (and not always in a good way!) after the performance at the junior high school. He was saying the faction that opposed whatever opinion she was espousing always seemed to be on the losing side of the dog-tossing battles, and he was complaining because he felt the other side (which was, in his opinion, making a fair point) inevitably ended up being ‘covered in dead dogs,’ as he put it. He believes Unaiko’s plays are biased, and he seemed to be blaming you, Kogito, at least in part. He said you didn’t come back here for the longest time, but as soon as you arrived, earlier this month, there was a sudden spike in what he called ‘subversive activity’ at the Forest House. (Apparently his spies are everywhere.) Suffice it to say he and his right-wing cronies have never been your biggest fans—and as you know better than anyone, that’s putting it mildly—and now they’ve gotten themselves all worked up with righteous indignation about Unaiko and her avant-garde approach to drama. This isn’t over, by a long shot.”

  We talked for a few more minutes about local politics, and then I said, “On another topic, when I decided to abandon my drowning novel, Asa told me you were happy about my decision because of your deep loyalty to my mother. She also said that since the red leather trunk is out of the picture and won’t be causing any problems in the future, you were hoping to renew our acquaintance. I gather that’s why we’re having the pleasure of seeing you around again on a regular basis, after all these years.

  “In any event, it so happens that you’re the person I want most to talk to right now. As you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about my father lately. You’ve suggested in passing that he had a stronger interest in the realms of literature and folklore than in politics as such, and what you’ve told me about the way his reading preferences also tended to skew in those directions strikes me as a very strong clue. After I went through the contents of the red leather trunk and found those three volumes of Frazer’s The Golden Bough—in the original English, no less!—I lugged those books back to Tokyo and started to read my way through them, a few pages at a time. However, because of some, uh, family issues, I put the project on ho
ld.

  “Since arriving here I’ve gotten back into the mood to read all three volumes in their entirety, but first I wanted to ask you a question. Do you have any idea why my father would have given those books—and those books alone—such preferential treatment, even going to the trouble of packing them in the trunk when he set out on his getaway run?”

  Daio stared at me with such intensity that after a second I had to look away. I focused instead on the garden behind him, where the trees had just begun to put forth the fresh new foliage of spring: the reddish shoots of the pomegranate, the yellow-green leaflings of the Konara oak. I remembered that during my previous reunion with Daio, back when Goro and I were both attending high school in Matsuyama, Daio had sometimes had this same coruscating light in his eyes. Finally he spoke, and his manner threw those old memories into even sharper relief for me.

  “You’re wondering about those books,” he said. “I don’t read English, but I do have some ideas about why your father might have been so interested in them. I’d like very much to talk to you about that but first I need to gather my thoughts, and I’m not quite there yet. Would you mind waiting a bit longer?”

  3

  With both Unaiko and Asa away in Tokyo, Ricchan was working even harder than usual. In the beginning I didn’t have a clear sense of how the members of the Caveman Group were managing to get by financially, although I was aware that the younger members always seemed to be juggling a variety of part-time jobs. When it came to the weekly expenses for Akari and me, Asa mentioned up front that I needed to contribute such-and-such a sum, so I was regularly depositing the prescribed amount, along with a bit extra, in an empty biscuit tin that was a permanent fixture on the dining-room table. However, when I lifted the lid at the beginning of every week to replenish the cash, I always found an assortment of receipts along with leftover funds in the form of coins and paper currency.

  Since Ricchan was helping us in many different ways I asked whether I could at least pay her something comparable to the hourly wages Daio had agreed to accept, but she refused even to discuss the matter, saying simply, “Let’s wait till Asa gets back.”

  I felt uneasy about the existing arrangement because Ricchan didn’t merely keep up with household chores and prepare all our meals; she also looked after Akari on a daily basis. On top of that, while Unaiko was away doing her guest-artist stint at a big theater in Tokyo, Ricchan was attending to a variety of managerial duties, both for the Caveman Group and for Unaiko’s next big dramatic project. (Ricchan tended to be somewhat closemouthed, but I did manage to learn Unaiko had been cast as a last-minute replacement for a well-known actress, which had delayed her return to Shikoku.) No doubt about it: Ricchan was an exceptionally diligent worker and a woman of many talents. As for Daio, he cheerfully lent a hand around the house and also took care of any outdoor-maintenance tasks Ricchan suggested.

  No matter how busy she was with her other obligations, Ricchan was always remarkably conscientious about Akari’s rehabilitation program, and every day—unless it happened to be raining—she would drive him to the Saya and assist him in his quest to strengthen the muscles surrounding the injured thoracic vertebra, while being careful not to inflict further damage. During these workout sessions Akari was free to play his chosen music, cranked up as loud as he pleased, and he must have found those freewheeling interludes a welcome release from the oppressive tension of sharing a house with me in our current state of estrangement.

  Ricchan’s days were filled to overflowing, but she was so adept at multitasking that she somehow found time to go out in the field on a regular basis and collect oral histories from some of the people who lived along the riverside and on the slope below the Saya. Although Ricchan didn’t talk much about this, I gathered from Daio that this research was part of the groundwork for the next dog-tossing project: a major theatrical presentation that Unaiko, Asa, and Ricchan would be collaborating on in the near future.

  Evidently Ricchan was trying to interview people who had been involved in the filming of Asa’s ill-starred movie about our local heroine, Meisuke’s mother. (No one ever used her given name, nor had I ever heard a single mention of Meisuke’s father.) Daio seemed certain that Unaiko and Ricchan’s next project was going to be an attempt to dramatize a famous guerrilla insurrection that took place after the Meiji Restoration, using Unaiko’s distinctive method of interactive theater. And, he added excitedly, they were hoping to use the screenplay I’d written for Asa’s film, Meisuke’s Mother Marches Off to War (which was based on actual history mixed in with some well-known local lore), as a source of guidance and inspiration—if they could ever get their hands on a copy of it.

  When Ricchan learned that Daio had already spilled the beans about this nascent plan, she decided to tell me why it had been kept under wraps. There were two reasons for the cloak of secrecy, and she explained them fully, albeit with her usual verbal economy. Reason number one: Asa was all in favor of having her brother (i.e., me) take a helpful role in the new project, and she had promised to nudge me gently in that direction. However, given the distressing complexity of my current situation (quite aside from the lingering repercussions from the Big Vertigo, I was having to cope with my wife’s serious illness as well as with some monumental difficulties in my relationship with my son) Asa had suggested that it might be more considerate to wait awhile before depositing anything new on my plate, so to speak.

  Ricchan went on to say that Unaiko had her heart set on putting together a play shaped by some mysterious theme derived from her personal history—a motif that apparently echoed the story of the insurrection on some level. Ricchan, by way of preliminary preparations, had been visiting the Honmachi library to look for archival materials pertaining to the uprising, while also gathering anecdotal evidence by talking to local women who had actually participated in the filming of the movie.

  After that disclosure there was no further need to keep me in the dark, and Ricchan’s fieldwork became a frequent topic of conversation around the dining-room table at the Forest House. One evening Akari, who had clearly been pondering something throughout the meal, left the table and trudged up the stairs to his room with an air of determination. A few moments later, he came back down clutching what appeared to be a large, custom-bound portfolio covered in blue cloth. (Back in Tokyo, Maki had sorted through her brother’s effects and had mailed him a number of things, apparently including this portfolio.)

  Still hugging the large blue folder, Akari announced: “Okay, this is it. The sheet music for the Beethoven piano sonata is in here, too.” It was obvious that while he didn’t want to hand the blue binder over to me directly, this was his oblique way of prodding me to explain the contents to Ricchan. “Mrs. Sakura Ogi Magarshack gave it to me,” he added.

  “Oh, I know,” I said, as recollection kicked in. “It’s the copy of the final shooting script Sakura gave you to commemorate the completion of the film, when she returned the Beethoven sheet music you loaned her while they were recording the sound track.”

  While I was speaking Akari had presented the blue portfolio to Ricchan, but when she opened the cloth cover the sheet music inside (just as Akari had said) fell to the floor. Akari bent over to pick up the pages with an easy alacrity, and it was evident that his muscle-building physical therapy was already yielding results in the form of flexibility and diminished discomfort. After shuffling the sheet music into the proper order, he handed it back to Ricchan.

  “All the people I’ve interviewed who were working as extras in the scenes filmed up at the Saya have talked about the way the sound of this music rang out over the meadows,” Ricchan said. “I told you about the women who were talking about that, right? Hearing Sakura Ogi Magarshack perform her battle-cry recitative with this music playing in the background seems to have made a deeper impression on them than almost anything else about the filming.”

  “Sakura had the idea of using this Beethoven sonata in the movie, even though it reminded her of some p
ainful memories from her childhood,” I said. “She knew the title of the piece, but it was Akari who helped her to find a recording of the specific performance she had in mind. Sakura was very impressed, as I recall. Akari also figured out the precise length of all the passages that would need to be included in the sound track, and he made those notations on his own copy of the sheet music before he passed it along to the NHK orchestra.”

  Ricchan looked thoughtfully at Akari, who was holding the score open to the relevant pages. Then she said, “Akari, do you by any chance have a CD of the performance you chose?”

  “You bet I do!” Akari exclaimed enthusiastically. “You’re the one who brought it down from Tokyo for me, Ricchan!” With that, he ran upstairs again, his face alight with an animation I hadn’t seen in recent memory.

  Meanwhile, Ricchan and I set about plugging in the sophisticated sound system set up in the great room for use in rehearsals. The speakers were on either side of the raised, brick-floored area that served as a makeshift stage, and in order to maximize the acoustics Ricchan opened the curtains at the south end of the room. During our sojourn at the Forest House, Akari and I had been getting by with just the light from the plate-glass window on the north end. When the young people needed to use the space for rehearsal, we would go upstairs to wait it out. They would open the curtains while the room was in use and then close them again before returning the living area to us.