by Kenzaburo Oe
My letter to Mother in California. … Weekly visitors, mail, and budget report aside, I'll just transcribe the part that pertains to my thoughts and feelings.
“…Going to the welfare workshop, where he enjoys the company of his co-workers, and to Mr. Shigeto's music lessons seem to relieve Eeyore of the strain of not having Papa and Mama in Japan. As for his fits, he had two relatively minor ones last week.
“Remember when the whole family was here, he would occasionally become too dependent, and unless someone reminded him, he would forget to take his anticonvulsants? He takes them regularly on his own now—morning, noon, and night—so usually all I have to do every morning is look in the box to see if the medicines for the previous day have disappeared. I plan to take him to the hospital for a checkup when I go there for his medicines at the end of the month, so I have asked the welfare workshop to give him a day off then.
“O-chan's the sort of person who sets up a program for himself and then carries it out alone, so he systematically studies for his entrance exams at the desk in his room. During his breaks he listens to music through headphones at the dining table. I imagine he's working off his stress with this well-coordinated combination of study and music.
“Now about the condition of my stress. As you know, I often burden myself with anxiety, because I'm so clumsy in coping even with matters that, in the eyes of others, might be hilariously simple. I even feel that, in going to America, Mama, next to your worry about Eeyore's physical condition, your main concern has been about me sinking into psychological stress.
“But now we're stable. The worrywart that I am, though I'm maintaining my usual vigilance, in the event that beyond a higher level of stability might come an even higher level of instability. Please don't be too concerned about this point. Even if something were to come and hit my head with a clunk, it would certainly not be “a clunk from an unexpected blow.” I'm sure Eeyore and I would tide ourselves over pretty well. And though O-chan remains thoroughly reserved, we have his moral support, too.”
Now about what happened the following week right after we went to the Shigetos, and Eeyore's music composition lesson started: Mr. Shigeto, who came out of the music room leaving Eeyore to himself, which he usually does not do, approached my side as I was reading a book and said, “I lope I'm not being too inquisitive, but can you answer one question for me?”
These words themselves petrified me. They had been uttered in a manner no different from the way he usually speaks, playfully unconcerned and aloof. But when I looked up. I saw on his face, and in his eyes, which were fixed squarely on the thick staff paper he held in his hands, the ebb and flow of so distressed an ire that a chill came over me. Frightened to the bottom of my heart, I waited for his next words.
Turning toward me a pair of bloodshot eyes that were filled with resentment and agony, he resumed speaking.
“Ma-chan, this is a piece Eeyore started working on immediately after K and Oyu-san left for California, and finished for today's lesson. While he was working on the details, I was thinking more about music theory, which isn't my forte … and because I often saw him calmly smiling right before my eyes, it didn't occur to me to think of what was being expressed in the composition in progress. Besides, I was looking forward to the pleasure of playing the piece straight through upon its completion.
“Eeyore made a clean copy of the entire score and showed it to me today, and I played it, only to discover that it's such a dreadfully sad piece! Why is this?”
Mr. Shigeto cut his words short and swallowed, whereupon the blotches on the flesh of his quivering throat appeared to have turned darker and more pronounced, giving the impression of an old man, an impression he usually does not project. My flinching ears heard his voice itself, an echo entreating me, “… a dreadfully sad piece. Why is this!”
I finally took into my dully shaking hands the large sheet of paper that had been thrust before me, and I hesitated as I thought, ‘What for? I don't read music.' Yet when I saw in the upper margin of the staff paper the title “Sutego”* in penciled letters, I thought I was able to understand the reason for the painful rage in Mr. Shigeto's voice.
“What,” I asked, “is he doing in there now, all alone?”
“He's playing the newly completed piece, using the draft.”
“Does he look sad?”
“…No. Very cool, as usual … But Ma-chan, what on earth do you think he means by ‘Sutego'?”
“I don't know. I didn't know until now that such a word existed in his mind….”
“Does K have the slightest idea of what Eeyore's going through?” Mr. Shigeto and Father have been friends since before I was born, but the way he bitterly called him by name, without using any honorific, sounded like he was calling down an archenemy or something. “Oyu-san says K's in a ‘pinch,’ but does this allow her to leave the children to care for themselves? And Ma-chan, you had to go through that molester incident right after they left. You had a very terrifying experience. And now Eeyore's made this very sad piece that seems to wail, and the title he's given it, one he's thought up himself, is ‘Sutego’ of all things!”
Faint piano chords were coming from the other side of the soundproofed wall beyond the dark, narrow hallway to the right of the living room. The hall was further narrowed by bookcases and shelves along the walls, on top of which were stacked more books, one over another. And above them all were handicrafts, woven goods, and toys from Eastern Europe. Eeyore was playing his music just the way he composes it, not by tracing the melody horizontally, as it were, but by playing sound units the way he pencils them on the staff sheets, as though he were assembling building materials, one kind on top of another. Listening to this deliberate, pause-laden way of playing, it didn't sound to me like a “very sad piece that seems to wail,” and so I was able to somewhat recover from my restlessness.
Moreover, Mr. Shigeto himself appeared to be regretting his words, which had rung as if he were upbraiding me. Then he continued, this time directing his rage inwardly at himself.
“I hear K's gone to California, with Oyu-san attending to him, in an effort to cope with his pinch,” he said. “‘Oyu-san informed me of the circumstances, and I understand. From the time he was young, K's been more of the forbearing type. When his kind of person reaches a point where, either through action or some other means, he howls that it's dangerous to continue living like he does, then neither Oyu-san nor I could object to his taking emergency refuge. But if his action, which is basically self-centered, causes Eeyore to wonder whether he's become an abandoned child … I would be suspicious of the sort of power of observation he's exercised over Eeyore.”
The atypical atmosphere had prompted Mrs. Shigeto to come out from the kitchen and listen to her husband, with her head drooping and the silver rim on her glasses mirroring a grayish black. For my part, I sensed a dire need to say something, anything, to lift their heavy hearts.
“I think there's an element of humor in his usage of an expression like ‘abandoned child,’” I said. “It just, occurred to me that once, when he was watching a monster film on TV, an infant stegosaur* appeared, and Father explained to him what the name meant.
“Stegosaur!” Mr. Shigeto exclaimed, his voice mixed with grief and laughter. “… But he did entitle it ‘Sutego,’ knowing very well what an abandoned child is!”
“Mr. Shigeto, why should you be so forward and emotional?” his wife asked, addressing her husband by attaching “Mister” to his family name, which gave me a glimpse into their life in Eastern Europe. “Ma-chan's got it the roughest, shouldering all responsibility for Eeyore, and you shouldn't add to her cares by bursting out like that.”
“True,” Mr. Shigeto reiterated, “very true.”
“If Eeyore titled it ‘Sutego,’ doesn't this mean he's objectified his feelings through his music? And this very moment, too, he's playing it very calmly. Perhaps he may have a different understanding of ‘abandoned child’—the theme itself— from what yo
u, Mr. Shigeto, infer from it. … So let's have some tea, shall we, and try to calm down a bit.”
With meat-colored streaks of rage remaining on his cheeks and neck, Mr. Shigeto let his head fall and sat at the table, in his usual chair. I helped Mrs. Shigeto carry the black tea and cookies she had made, following her instructions, which she gave with a dignity I hadn't noticed in her until then. Nevertheless, she too appeared to be grieving over “Sutego,” Eeyore's composition. We had our tea, which normally Mrs. Shigeto serves me and Eeyore when his lesson is over, in dejection, huddled together as though the three of us were abandoned children, and wailed in this state until Eeyore came out after playing his newly completed piece to his heart's content.
After a while, because of his strong sense of responsibility, Mr. Shigeto took it upon himself to explain the backdrop of his emotional reaction. He elaborated on what he thought of Father and Mother leaving for California, and on the situation of their having done nothing—whatever their intentions might have been—about Eeyore feeling so forsaken that an expression such as “abandoned child' would enter his mind. I think he wanted to fill me in on things I didn't know very much about: his long friendship with, and personal understanding of, Father.
“…It's from K himself that I First learned of this ‘pinch’ he's in. He never said anything more about it, though, and later I heard the details from Oyu-san. Its direct cause, she said, was probably that the novel he was writing wasn't going well, which means that the matter lie's been contemplating as the core of his recent theme has entered a difficult stage. If the problem could see a solution in the form of a novel, K would be able to maintain a little distance from the problem itself, and then be able to cope with it. K's a writer who's shaped his life this way. Now, for someone like me, who can only brood when encumbered with a problem, the lengths to which K endeavors to invent a writer's lifestyle sometimes bore me, frankly.
“But looking at it the other way around, having trouble with a novel means to K that a certain period of his life—the whole time he spends structuring, writing, and then rewriting a novel—has come to a full stop. Perhaps it'll remain at a full stop, and he'll be deadlocked forever. K's the type who can't put aside a work he's having trouble writing. That's the way he writes. … But I understand the immediate cause of his ‘pinch’ this time was the lecture he gave, “The Prayers of a Faithless Man.” So behind all this, in a way, is a hilariousness that's typical of K.
“I don't think the lecture was scheduled to be televised,” I said. “An upperclassman in the French literature department when Father was going to college asked him to lecture at a women's university, and it just so happens that another former classmate of his, in the same department for that matter, videotaped it, and this got broadcast.” Depressed as she was, Mrs. Shigeto faintly smiled when I said this. She probably thought that I had been trying to be fair to Father.
“Yes,” Mr. Shigeto said, “and the fact that he hadn't intended it to be on TV was all the more reason he talked so candidly, and so all the deeper the dilemma he's fallen into.
“I watched the program, too. In it, he said that in his life with Eeyore, he had experienced moments in which, even for a faithless man like himself, he felt in his heart a movement, for which the only description was ‘prayer.’ In line with this, he talked of his own childhood. Now if everything he said in that lecture is true, then K's lived all his life—from about the time he was eleven or twelve—in fear of those who profess faith.”
“Father puts his spirit of service to work and tries to make his lectures interesting, but I don't think he says anything untrue when he talks on important matters. Grandma in Shikoku, too, said it was after the wheat-flour incident that he started suffering from insomnia, and this was the onset of the insomnia that has since then frequently revisited him. Something Grandma told me, but which Father didn't broach in the lecture, occurred about the time he learned there was a Christian church in Matsuyama. I understand it was very mystifying, the way he became obsessed with the church. The clan is deeply connected with Buddhism, and it even has its own temple. But Grandma feared he would go to the Christian church by himself, and so she didn't give him any money to make such a visit possible. Then early one morning he left the house without telling anybody. He walked the long trail through the mountains, and at night, when he reached some place near the city, a policeman stopped him. After this, he stopped talking about matters of the soul, as though nothing had ever happened. I hear he's even talked about what happened as though it were something to laugh about, telling people that when the policeman stopped him, he, the child that he was then, pleaded with the officer, as a last resort, to call up the church for him, and that when the policeman did call, whoever answered the phone told him the boy should be sent straight back home, which put a total damper on his spirits.”
“The nuance of the story I heard from K is a little different,” Mr. Shigeto said. “He told me that the portals of churches even in rural Japan were like the gates of impenetrable castles, and the matter-of-fact way he had been denied admittance had come as a relief to him. He said it had assured him that in church there were men who dedicated their entire body and sold to their faith, and that these men were piously engaged in matters of the soul. He realized then that it was only natural for them to refuse him, for he was not yet able to abandon everything in order to devote himself to matters of the soul. And he was relieved. Evidently, ever since he had furtively read a magazine article on St. Francis of Assisi, at the water mill he spoke of in the lecture, the one deep in the forest where he said the family had their wheat ground, he got to believing that, in order to dedicate himself to matters of the soul, he needed to first abandon everything and experience religion. You know, don't you, that St. Francis himself founded three separate levels of monastic orders? But K was only a child then, and he got to thinking that, unless he completely gave up all worldly attachments, he couldn't do anything regarding matters of the soul. … He sometimes blurted out that everything you did would be flagrant hypocrisy—mauvaise foi, he said, as the French students back in our college days used to put it—if you tried to do anything concerning matters of the soul without having discarded all attachments to the mundane world, all earthly desires.
“Simplifying things, you could say that K's just added on years of survival without changing a bit, and after reaching his fifties he inadvertently ended up speaking his indiscreet thoughts on matters of the soul. So actually, some people with faith quite bluntly told him that they would sanction his faith at face value, no matter how hypocritical it was. Didn't this cause him to lose his cool? K knew he wasn't anywhere near matters of the soul. So he reflected upon himself and realized that, so long as Eeyore was by his side, he had a loophole through which he could easily get away with his hypocrisy—which may be exactly what he feared. And perhaps this is why he left for California, to detach himself from Eeyore: reason enough to leave Eeyore behind, however heartrending it would be for them both: and sufficient reason, at the same time, for Eeyore to feel abandoned.”
“Eeyore has a mysteriously sensitive side to him, so that may be how he's perceived it. And perhaps because he couldn't express it in words, he let his music say it.”
“Not perhaps, but undoubtedly. He's even put it very clearly in words: ‘Sutego.’ You can't pretend that you didn't see it, or that you didn't hear it.”
“What exactly do you think Father's ‘pinch’ entails? From what you told me now, I wonder if he's going to end up…”
“Hanging from a branch of California live oak, one just right for hanging—spurred to the act by taking things too seriously, and everything compounded by the depression of encroaching old age … isn't this what Oyu-san is fearing?”
“Mr. Shigeto, I can understand you being upset out of worry for K-chan, and because of Eeyore's music,” his wife said in admonition, imparting an even stronger expression around her eyes, which, instead of a smile, were lined with severe wrinkles. “But you're onl
y intimidating Ma-chan with the things you're saying. If K-chan's in a ‘pinch,’ what you ought to do is explain to her how you think he could get back on his feet. Ranting like that won't get anybody anywhere. If you know K-chan so well that you can say he might hang himself and all that … you could do better by saying, for example, that he could use this opportunity to take up religion….”
“I can't know about other people, really,” Mr. Shigeto retorted. “The same obviously goes for my understanding of K,” he parroted, while repeatedly blinking, and turning red with a flush that was different from before. “… Speaking of faith,” he continued, “I think it would be harder for K to embrace a faith than to hang himself. For all these years, he's done his best to distance himself, as though with out-thrust arms, from people who have faith.
“I know he'd be offended if he heard me say he'd done his best. I think the question for him is, how is a faithless person to cope with life, staying on this side of the fence? This is where he believes he can find something upon which to establish a literary career. You know, don't you, how often he talks of Yeats? This goes way back, to when he was very young. You hear him mumbling this to himself from time to time, don't you? ‘The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life, or of the work, / And if it take the second must refuse / A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.’ Raging in the dark: that's what it is. But right after he entered the French department in Hongo, he got hung up on the heavenly mansion; he got the Christian paradise into his head, and so fervently sought for his place there that he even volunteered to do menial chores at a monastery. As I've said a number of times, his paradigm of faith is built upon his childhood experience of having imagined St. Francis of Assisi bidding him to devote himself to matters of the soul. This means that, unless he abandons everything, and possibly enters a monastery—one that's not too highly institutionalized—he'll never be able to arrive at a faith that gives him true peace of mind. But what he'll have to do then, more than anything else, is to abandon Eeyore! Eeyore's correct in sensing the anxieties of an abandoned child.”
