Death by Water

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “‘Oh yeah?’ he said angrily. ‘Well, suppose you make a little hole in an entry door or a wooden wall, and the light from inside is leaking out. If somebody comes snooping around, they’re naturally going to put their eye up to the hole to see what’s going on, right? And imagine that poised on the other side of the illuminated hole is the tip of a speargun, with the energy in the rubber band stored up and waiting to propel the spear right into the enemy’s eyeball. How about that, eh?’

  “Goro just scoffed at him and said, ‘That’s disgusting. And a stupid toy is your idea of a weapon for guerrilla warfare? What a joke.’ Daio got very defensive, and he shot back, ‘Well, if we could get our hands on some fancier weapons, we wouldn’t have to resort to this ‘stupid’ kind of substitute!’”

  Asa didn’t say anything, but even in the darkness I could sense from her reaction that she found the eyeball-piercing story every bit as distasteful as Goro had. As a signal that she was all talked out and ready to call it a night, she silently slid a tray across the tatami toward me. When I reached over, I found a glass of water and a dose of my sister’s prescription sleeping powder.

  4

  I slept more soundly than I had in a very long time. When I awakened the next morning, I was relieved to find that while a light rain was still falling outside, the low-ceilinged room was filled with the fragrant air of the forest and a faint glimmering of morning light. The window overlooking the farmland was still closed, but the wooden rain shutters had been raised. Asa had placed a legless rattan chair—basically a flat cushion with an attached backrest—on the tatami-matted floor, and she was sitting there, watching attentively while she waited for me to wake up.

  “Yesterday was such a long, strange day, and I was so exhausted that I’m afraid I made a mistake with the dosage of your sleeping powder,” she said quietly as soon as I opened my eyes. “But I wasn’t worried, since your breathing was perfectly regular the whole time. You were sleeping like a log in the forest, but you must have still been aware of the pistol shots during the night, on some level?”

  In fact, I hadn’t been consciously aware of the pistol shots or anything else, but after the events of the previous evening the news that there had been gunfire overnight didn’t surprise me much at all.

  “Now that you mention it, I do remember having a vague sense that something was going on, somewhere in the realm between waking and dreaming,” I said after a moment’s reflection. “But it felt very fragmented, even for a dream.”

  “Well then, I’m going to tell you what happened, just the way I heard it from Ricchan. Oh, by the way, Akari went to sleep with his headphones on, and thanks to them, he just woke up a little while ago. So you don’t need to worry that he might have heard something upsetting.”

  Asa then proceeded to tell me what had happened, including all the details she had managed to collect from various sources while I was still asleep.

  The previous night, Akari and Ricchan had made short work of the late supper of convenience-store sandwiches Asa had brought. Then, after Ricchan had installed Akari’s extra-large body (cozily cocooned in a blanket) in one of the room’s two twin beds, she had stretched out on the other bed. The rain was pounding noisily on the roof directly overhead and the wind was rampaging through the forest with a sound like crashing waves, and Ricchan wasn’t able to fall asleep. Akari, though, drifted off immediately and proceeded to sleep soundly through the entire night.

  Ricchan remained wide-awake, and after a while she became aware of a man’s voice coming through the eastern wall of the room. The man droned on and on, and Ricchan soon realized that she was listening to Mr. Koga, although she thought his tone sounded considerably calmer than when she had briefly met him in Daio’s office, soon after her arrival. From time to time a woman’s voice, more muted than the man’s, would reply to something Mr. Koga had said. Ricchan knew right away that the woman was Unaiko, trying to keep her voice down out of consideration for Akari. The two people didn’t seem to be quarreling, but Ricchan heard sporadic sounds that seemed to suggest that a physical struggle of some kind was taking place, and she got the sense that the uncle’s behavior was making the transition from playful teasing into something more serious. Nonetheless, Unaiko never raised her voice, either in anger or to call for help. And while it seemed to be unmistakably clear that Mr. Koga was pestering his niece, he and Unaiko continued to carry on a fairly normal-sounding conversation, and once in a while their exchanges would even be punctuated by bursts of shared laughter.

  After nearly an hour had passed, Ricchan heard something through the wall that sounded suspiciously like two people tussling on top of a bed. Alarmed, she jumped from her own bed and opened the door a crack. Peeking out, she saw one of Mr. Koga’s thugs standing in front of the door to Unaiko’s room holding a truncheon and staring straight at her. The man brandished his nightstick above his head in a menacing way, but Ricchan couldn’t tell whether he was trying to intimidate her into staying in her room, or if it was just a generically hostile gesture.

  She hastily closed the door again and stood behind it, listening. It sounded as though the scuffle had escalated beyond mere horsing around. A moment later she heard Mr. Koga’s voice—much louder and more assertive now—barking an order at some third party. The door to Unaiko’s room opened and then closed. Clinging to a tenuous feeling of hopefulness, Ricchan sat down on her bed. She envisioned a best-case scenario in which the second henchman (whom she hadn’t seen when she peeked out the door) had been attempting to take liberties with Unaiko while the uncle was off somewhere, and now Mr. Koga had returned and given his subordinate the scolding he deserved. Even so, she didn’t feel entirely reassured, so she opened the door again and peered into the corridor. The man who had been standing guard was gone, but the sounds of movement inside the room continued.

  Ricchan tiptoed over and tried the door to Unaiko’s room, finding it locked from the inside. She crept down the dimly lit staircase to the first-floor lobby. There was nobody around, but she could see a light burning in the window of a nearby building, which she recognized as the bungalow that housed Daio’s office. She dashed out into the stormy darkness without stopping to look for a raincoat or even an umbrella, and ran along the roughly cobblestoned path as fast as her bare feet could carry her.

  Arriving at the office, Ricchan found Daio sprawled on the sofa at the rear of the small room, still fully dressed. He had just grabbed a hefty two-liter bottle of shochu from a square table nearby and was sloshing what was apparently the latest in a long series of refills into his cup. When he saw Ricchan standing there in her nightclothes, soaked to the skin, he didn’t utter a word of greeting, nor did he ask any questions. He simply got to his feet, walked over to the entryway where he’d left his tall rubber boots, and pulled them on. The khaki work jacket he had been wearing earlier was hanging nearby, and he put it on, too. Then he returned to the sofa, where a red leather trunk was resting on one of the end cushions. Daio unfastened the trunk, reached inside, extracted something wrapped in a lightweight rain parka, and dropped it into one of the large inside pockets of his coat. Holding the object in place with his one hand, he shot Ricchan a brief glance. His face wore a singular expression, and she didn’t know how to interpret it. Then, without even bothering to switch on the flashlight he carried, Daio strode outside and headed for the main building through the pelting rain.

  Ricchan remained behind in the office, sitting on one of the chairs around the square table. After some time had passed she heard two gunshots ring out in rapid succession, but she stayed where she was, frozen in place. A few moments later Daio returned and, standing with his back to the open door, he spoke to Ricchan in a gentle voice.

  “I shot Mr. Koga,” he announced matter-of-factly. “I had some bullets left over, but I didn’t see any reason to harm the bodyguard.” With that, Daio laid the slicker-wrapped bundle containing the pistol on the floor in front of him. He told Ricchan to stash the murder weapon in her car until
daybreak and then take it to the police station.

  “When Kogito gets up in the morning,” Daio went on, “would you please give him a message for me?”

  Ricchan quickly grabbed a pen and some paper from the jumble on the table and began to take notes.

  “I know this theory may sound crazy, Kogito,” Daio began, “and it only occurred to me just now, but here goes nothing. On that stormy night sixty-some years ago, when I hid and watched the little rowboat setting out on the flooded river, I thought at first that you—who would have been the natural choice to follow in your father’s footsteps—were in the boat beside him. Sensei was probably thinking that if his successor, his only son, had perished along with him in the river, it would have been the end of the line. But Sensei made you help with the preparations—I think this is an extremely important point—and together you equipped the red leather trunk with a flotation device, so even if the boat were to capsize, the trunk wouldn’t sink. As a child who had grown up along the river, you were a highly proficient swimmer, and as long as there was something for you to hang on to (namely, the red leather trunk), there would have been no need to worry that you might drown. As for Sensei himself, I think he actually wanted to die, and he probably thought the spirit possessing him would somehow be transferred into you, as his one true heir. Looking back on it now, I think maybe the father and son setting out together into the flood tide in a small boat was meant as a ritual, which Sensei hoped would somehow allow the spirit to be transferred to his son. What I mean is, Sensei must have believed his plan would cause you to replace him as the medium or channeler for that spirit.

  “But when it came time to join your father on the boat, you somehow managed to bungle that simple action (or maybe on some unconscious level you deliberately messed up). Instead of embarking on the flooded river with your father, you stood and watched as the boat disappeared into the waves with an apparition of your otherworldly playmate, Kogii, standing next to your father. (I know I shared a different theory about this the other day, but this one just feels right to me.) A while ago, when I was firing the pistol—I may have only one arm, but I’m a damned good shot—I had a sudden sense that the very same spirit that had possessed Choko Sensei had taken up residence in me, and I was its new vessel. I know I’m ever so late, Kogito, but I’m going to join your father. I guess it’s kind of like when the Sensei character in Kokoro finally committed junshi to follow the emperor into death. That’s right—after all is said and done, Choko Sensei’s number one disciple is still poor old Gishi-Gishi, now and forevermore!”

  With that, Daio bent over and took off his rubber boots. Then he extracted a pair of sturdy hiking boots from a nearby shoe shelf, put them on, stood up, and marched into the night without a backward glance. It was still pitch-dark, and the storm was raging unabated.

  Ricchan watched from the doorway as Daio climbed into a big, old Mercedes-Benz sedan parked at the rear of the main building and drove off down the road between the fields. Her encounter with the vigilante version of Daio had been very stressful for Ricchan. Once he was gone, though, she began to worry about Akari and she ran to the other building in her bare feet, sobbing all the way.

  Asa paused to catch her breath, then continued her account of what had transpired while I was sleeping.

  “Unaiko is in shock right now—I mean, who wouldn’t be? We moved her into Ricchan’s room, and she finally went to sleep. Needless to say, the show will not go on today. We’ve already gotten the word out about the cancellation through various channels. I also called Chikashi to let her know you and Akari are safe. In the course of the conversation, we talked a bit about Unaiko’s future as well. (That may seem odd at a time like this, but you know how I am.) No doubt the media will go crazy over this story, so it probably won’t be possible for Unaiko to resume her work in the theater for a while, at least. And, needless to say, after what happened to her last night there’s a chance she might be pregnant again. That’s the worst-case scenario, of course, but if it does come to pass, I’m not sure anyone would be able to persuade her to get another abortion. (Of course, you know how I feel about abortions, so I can’t pretend to be objective.) If Unaiko and her nice boyfriend, Tatsuo Katsura, should decide to hide out at the Forest House until the baby was born, I would of course do anything I could to help along the way. When I asked Chikashi whether it would be okay to continue the current financial arrangements vis-à-vis the Forest House, with you covering the operating expenses, she kindly gave her blessing. Of course, this is pure speculation. With luck, Unaiko won’t turn out to be pregnant and life can go on more or less as usual, although she will surely need some time to recover psychologically. As for the physical aspect, we’re standing by to take her to the hospital as soon as she wakes up.

  “Chikashi was wondering how the members of the theater group would make a living if their normal activities were suspended, even temporarily, and she asked me to talk to Ricchan about whether she might come live in Tokyo for a while and continue her work as Akari’s music teacher. I handed the phone to Akari then, and he said, ‘That’s good, because the piano at the junior high school is out of tune.’ Ricchan is on board with the plan, so it sounds as if her move to Tokyo is practically a done deal.”

  While Asa was talking, I got the sense that a number of people had arrived on the scene and were busy doing their jobs just beyond our door: homicide detectives, medical examiners, coroners, and so on. I was certain that my sister was in control of the situation, both now and going forward, and I had absolute confidence in her ability to handle everything in a typically resolute, pragmatic, and dependable manner.

  And then, as I was getting ready to follow Asa out into the bustling hallway, I suddenly remembered one of the dreams that had visited me the night before, in intermittent but vivid fragments, during my unnaturally deep sleep. In the dream (or was it a vision?) I had been standing alone on a high promontory amid the trees in the pouring rain, watching Daio from behind as he trudged uphill, ever deeper into the woods. The image of Daio in the forest reminded me of the two kanji—淼 淼 and 森 森—that suggest infinite expanses of water and forest, respectively, and thinking about those pictographs made the dream feel even more luminous and prophetic.

  In my dreamy vision, the relentless torrents of rain had saturated the leaves of the trees with such a vast amount of water that the entire forest seemed as deep and as wet as an ocean. For an average man—with the violent wind whipping around his legs as he struggled to make his way through the darkness, slipping and sliding on the rain-soaked earth—remaining upright would have been a matter of life and death. That isn’t hyperbole by any means; everyone knows it’s possible to drown in a cupful of water, and if a hiker lost his footing and tumbled facedown onto the forest floor, which had been transformed by the incessant downpour into a rushing river of mud, it would be very easy to perish. But Daio was an expert at navigating the forest, and as he forged ahead, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, he surely wouldn’t have fallen, even in those treacherous conditions.

  The forest directly above the training camp meandered around the border of Honmachi, then merged with the thick woods above the mountain valley that was my once and future home. I could picture Daio walking ever deeper into the woodland as the night sky slowly grew lighter. It would have been close to dawn when he finally reached a remote spot where he didn’t need to worry about being found right away (or, quite possibly, ever) by the police who would surely be tracking him before long with their specially trained dogs.

  In my mind’s eye I saw what happened next as clearly as if I had been there in the forest, and the moment felt far too real to be the memory of a dream.

  Daio plunged his face into a thick cluster of leaves, which were so heavily laden with rain that they appeared darker than the bark. And just like that, my father’s old disciple embraced his own watery death and drowned standing up.

  Ōe, Death by Water