by Kenzaburo Oe
When, after saying this, Mr. Shigeto noticed his wife by his side smiling at him, the expression on his face suddenly became what you would want to call solemn.
“I believe Tarkovsky expressed his intent very well on the screen,” I said. “I feel it's only my limited powers of understanding that leave me unable to decide whether the child who moves those glasses with her stare is Christ in his Second Coming, or the antichrist.”
“I'll have to watch the movie to comment on that,” Mr. Shigeto replied, “… but for the moment, let me think of it this way—though only from what you've told me, mind you. An entire village disappears after a meteor hits it. That's how big the disaster is. After such a calamity, a yearning for the ‘millennium’ often spreads among the populace, and many so-called messiahs appear. Now if I were to say whether or not the guide represents the existence of one such messiah, I would say no. But couldn't the Room in the Zone where the guide leads the people, the Room itself, be a messiah? For you say that it fulfills the cherished, secret wishes of its visitors; and because it fulfills their wishes, some of the visitors are thrown into such despair that they have to hang themselves. But a place can't be human, can it?
“Looking at it this way, it all comes down to the child. She has yet to make formal use of her powers, but it seems the potential is there. I wouldn't put it past her if she became Stalker Junior. She'll turn out to be a person with ample savvy, unlike her dutiful but slow and benign father. Then the only question becomes: Is she Christ or the antichrist? The part you told me about, where the guide leads his charges through a pool of water, is to me an image of baptism. And so, in the end, the redeeming role of the Room in the Zone is, in itself, an image of Christ. But with a multitude of people rushing to the Zone and dying there, or even with things going well, if the fulfillment of their earthly wishes is merely a matter of desire, then I guess you would have to think of her as the havoc-wreaking antichrist, even if she were to pave the way for Christ's Second Coming. … In any event, a child messiah taking charge of the ‘millennium’ after devastation by a meteor makes an intriguing story.”
“A dog anxiously whines,” I said, “as the child concentrates on the power of her eyes to move the glasses on the table. Being a dog, perhaps it hears the distant din of the train before the human ear would, especially since it's new to the apartment. Anyway, when the train's rumble becomes loud, one of the glasses that's moved to the edge of the table falls to the floor and breaks into pieces. Up to this point you saw the child's face behind the glass, so now you see it better, and the expression on it appears to be savoring the sound of destruction … and then you hear music. Beethoven, wasn't it, Eeyore?”
“Yes,” replied Eeyore. “It was the ‘Ode to Joy.’ It's more than twenty minutes if you play it straight through, but in the movie it was very short!”
Both Mr. Shigeto and his wife appeared happy to hear Eeyore promptly respond to a question about music. Until then he'd been sitting there quietly, though it was highly dubious whether he understood what we were talking about.
“Ma-chan, when Eeyore's with you, you always share your topics of discussion with him, don't you? And it's so natural, the way you do it. Ma-chan is quite a person, don't you think, Eeyore?”
“Does that have a good meaning?” Eeyore thoughtfully asked for assurance.
“The best meaning,” replied Mrs. Shigeto. Her husband's face again turned solemn.
“I think Ma-chan is quite a person, too,” Eeyore said for me.
There was no music lesson scheduled for the following Thursday, but Mrs. Shigeto phoned to invite us over. Mr. Shigeto seems to truly enjoy teaching Eeyore, and he greeted us with a dash of ceremony, his welcoming mood much happier than usual. Eeyore, too, I know, enjoys his lessons with Mr. Shigeto. But I could tell from the way he sat beside me on the sofa— that day more relaxed, his face thrust forward, all ready to listen to Mr. Shigeto—that he, also, was particularly happy. Mr. Shigeto immediately revealed to us the reason for their invitation.
“I saw Stalker, too,” he said. “The commercial version. At my friend's place. He's an expert on Russian literature, and he said the version you saw on television must have been more or less the same. First, about the term stalker. Just as I thought, it's straight from the English stalker. It's just spelled in Russian. This is how it appears on the screen.” He printed CTAIIKEP on a piece of paper for me. “Hoh!” Eeyore breathed out in utter amazement at a printed letter with an unusual form. “I checked in some of the modern dictionaries of the Russian language my friend had, but it wasn't listed there,” Mr. Shigeto continued. “I looked in both Academy's and Ushanko's four-volume dictionaries. I tried Ozhekov's, too. Dictionary of New Words of the Seventies didn't have it either. This means it isn't Russian, but a loanword, and a new one at that. My friend told me he had read, in Russian, the novel on which the movie is based. He said that although CTAIIKEP appeared in it, the title of the book was totally different: Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. Even as a movie title I think this would have been more chic.”
‘… I'm sorry I made you go to so much trouble,” I said, feeling much obliged, and Eeyore, who was seated beside me, appeared to stiffen his body. I should have known better than to ask an offhand question of a scholar.
“No, no,” Mr. Shigeto said. “You see, I'm getting lazy, and I hardly ever go out these days, much less to see a movie. I wouldn't have known about this one if you hadn't told me. But don't you think the actor who played the guide was good, that he did a great job expressing the character's agony? What his wife said about him being derided, being called a slowpoke and a ne'er-do-well, came through very well. His acting also enabled me to quite naturally accept why, even though this man is being so dolefully tormented, a beautiful young girl marries him, and says how much she loves him and can do nothing about it. It reminded me that things like this can happen.”
“I especially liked the actress who did the wife's part,” Mrs. Shigeto said, while scrupulously rubbing grated garlic into the ribs of lamb she was preparing for Eeyore and me. She had removed the fat on the edges of the bones, and they looked like short comb teeth. “It was great the way she smokes her cigarette like a juvenile delinquent. And she isn't fat like most Russian women. No particular reason, but I wonder if she wasn't Jewish.”
“He's so vulnerable,” Mr. Shigeto said. “He's the sort of man whose entire heart is exposed on the surface. So I imagine that, until then, his wife protected him quite well. And with that child, too, it must have been tough for her.”
I thought of Mrs. Shigeto, who was busily preparing dinner at our side, for although they had no children, she, too, must have a hard time, standing by her husband, encouraging him to do only the kind of work that suited him. When I turned a casual glance in her direction, I saw a slight pink flush come to her face, as if she were feeling abashed, but she kept rubbing garlic into the ribs with her forefinger, which was bent at a charming angle.
Mr. Shigeto, who also had turned to his wife, an expression of surprise on his face compounding his usual solemnity, continued. “I thought the murky and dangerous would-be criminal side of the guide was also very well portrayed. And the irate reaction of one of the clients, who says ‘What the hell are you trying to do’ when he almost gets a crowbar thrown at him tor innocently trying to uproot a tuft of grass, was very true to life. A vulnerable and easily hurt somber and passionate, and ultimately criminal-like guy is really fearsome. … And Ma-chan, about this child, I don't think she's Christ in his Second Coming. You can't associate her father's criminality with Christ—though of course you could argue that she was born of a virgin mother. But the child herself, her eyes, struck me as harboring some kind of malevolent force. She could easily grow up to be a person whose role is to destroy everything—in other words, the antichrist—which is my conclusion for the moment.”
“Then why,” I wondered, “do we hear the ‘Ode to Joy’ together with the rumble of the train? Eeyore got all excited
and started conducting it.”
“Exactly!” Eeyore chimed in.
“There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn't there?” Mr. Shigeto said. “Isn't Jesus Christ's Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with ‘millenarian’ joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards. …”
“The story line's getting a little complicated, Mr. Shigeto,” his wife said, supplying me with a rescue boat, for actually I was having a hard time trying to follow his thoughts. “You can't tell Ma-chan a realistic story unless you first organize your own ideas better. … Well now, Ma-chan, why don't you switch your mind to cooking? I want you to learn the ratio of herbs and salt to pepper. Lamb is readily available these days. Even supermarkets have frozen lamb, and they do a good job of thawing it. Foreigners here say it's the only quality meat they can afford. See how you like it this evening, and if you do, then now and then you could make some for Eeyore.”
While Mrs. Shigeto and I busied ourselves in the small but amazingly well-kept kitchen, Mr. Shigeto piled on the table a mountain of old LP records and tapes he had recorded from radio. He and Eeyore, acting very professionally, were preparing to listen to and compare the many versions of the “Ode to Joy.”
When dinner started, Mr. Shigeto commended Eeyore for his ability to make accurate, educated guesses on how long each “Ode” was—even on the recordings he had never heard before. As I listened to Mr. Shigeto say to his wife, by way of explanation, that it was all a matter of understanding a conductor's style, I realized he had been so impressed with Eeyore that he had discussed this problem with him as one adult to another.
“The moment you hear the first few notes of some of these versions, you think they're going to be up-tempo,” he said. “And sure enough, when you've listened until the end, you tell yourself you were right, and remember them this way. Then there are those you remember as being slow, the way you remember the versions of Furtwängler or Toscanini we usually hear. But very often, these memories become distorted through your own stubborn imagination. Take me, for example. I would have carried such distortions to my grave if not for what Eeyore just pointed out to me. We were comparing only the introductory parts of the ‘Ode’ by different conductors, and as we discussed the tempo of each one, I learned that the way I perceived the various renditions was different from Eeyore's. He said calmly, but with conviction, that the recording times on this, that, and the other pieces were almost the same. So I picked out a few I believed were of a quite different tempo, and when I timed them on my stopwatch, it was just as he said. They weren't even thirty seconds apart!”
Mrs. Shigeto rolled at Eeyore her thought-immersed eyes, which watched attentively from deep behind her silver-rimmed glasses, and exclaimed with childlike admiration, “A difference of only thirty seconds is almost no difference at all!”
“I guess it's almost the same,” Eeyore cautiously replied.
“Eeyore really has an extraordinary ability to judge music, doesn't he?” Mrs. Shigeto said. “Shigeto-san, you'll have to work hard to teach Eeyore.”
“The ideal teacher-student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher,” Mr. Shigeto returned, unperturbed.
While we ate, Eeyore made us laugh with what seemed to be well-calculated jokes. The discussion of Stalker continued with Mr. Shigeto at the center, as before. But when we talked again of the scene where the guide piggybacks his daughter back to their apartment, he remarked upon the excellent acting of the dog in the scene, and there followed quite a heated exchange of words between him and his wife. Mrs. Shigeto first directed his attention to the fact that fine acting on the part of dogs is mere coincidence, with the exception of super movie dogs like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. And even their acting, she claimed, wasn't acting in its truest sense, for their roles were always the same. Her knowledge of the movies, abundant to the point of anarchy, stunned me as she then cited example after example of memorable scenes of dogs acting out. their parts. It was also interesting, though, because as she argued, she sometimes unwittingly provided supporting evidence in favor of her husband's contention.
Soon Mr. Shigeto steered the conversation to what I think he wanted to present as a conclusion, at least for the evening.
“To sum it up,” he said, “entirely intentional performances by animals may be limited to the animated films of Disney. By the way, the first Betty Boop was a bitch. I saw it at a private showing by a collector.”
“Then you agree with me,” Mrs. Shigeto said. “… But I don't understand why Betty Boop has to intrude into the discussion,” she objected in part, though on the whole she appeared satisfied.
Smiling, she asked Eeyore if he cared for more lamb. But Eeyore, after being cautioned at the welfare workshop about his weight increase, never ate more than what was first apportioned to him, and when I explained his attitude of refusal for him, Mrs. Shigeto promptly changed the subject and asked, “Eeyore, you saw the big dog in the movie too, didn't you?”
“Remember, Eeyore, you were watching it too, beside me, making music?” I said. “You liked the part where the little girl goes home piggybacked on her father's shoulders, because they proceeded across the screen in a crooked way. And there was a dog there, too?”
“Unfortunately, I couldn't observe the dog well,” Eeyore replied. “It kept moving around a lot.”
“You're right,” Mr. Shigeto remarked. “The focus of the dog's role in the scene was to just keep moving around. You have a firm grasp of the meaning of the scene, Eeyore.”
Then Eeyore said, “I used to piggyback a lot a long time ago!” He said it as though it was an idea he'd been sitting on for a while. “Yes, I often piggybacked Papa.”
“Papa piggybacked you, Eeyore,” I had to put in. “Besides, Papa was fat and heavy in those days.”
“I was healthy then.” Eeyore said. “My fits hadn't begun yet. I piggybacked very often.” We all happily laughed. Eeyore, too, was laughing. He was in high spirits throughout the evening we were there. And because I optimistically saw him as though I were seeing the Eeyore of long ago, I gradually became careless. On our way back from the Shigetos, following Eeyore, who walked hurriedly down the road in front of their house, I actually thought of the days when he was truly able to move very sprightly. Every summer in Kita-Karuizawa, when we jogged, as our daily routine, I could have passed him had I wanted to, but O-chan could never keep up with Eeyore's speed and stamina. Long ago, I reminisced, Eeyore was really very healthy. …
But as I now replay that scene of our return home from the Shigetos, I recall that when we reached the station and started going up the stairs to the gate, Eeyore looked unusually tired. We were lucky the train to Shinjuku, where we had to make a transfer, wasn't very crowded, and we were able to sit together, side by side, and rest comfortably for a while. Eeyore no longer talks to anyone in the family when we are out among other people.
That evening, too, he sat beside me in silence, wearing a solemn expression on his face that was somewhat different from Mr. Shigetos. Even so, I wasn't, worried about helping him make the transfer to the crowded outbound Odakyu Line from Shinjuku Station. On the express platform, however, I sensed for the first time, as we stood side by side at the head of a long line, that untoward changes were taking place inside Eeyore's body. Outwardly, his body looked defenseless and unstable, much like a big papier-mâché mannequin propped up against an invisible wall, and on his neck was a flushed face with bloodshot eyes, half-open yet showing no trace of seeing. With blood rushing to my head, and aware of my powerlessness, my inability to do anything, I desperately seized—hung on to—and tried to support Eeyore's body, which was emitting a high, stifling temperature, and was evidently suffering a fit. The upper half of his body, with its uncertain center of gravity, gave me no clue as to which way its weight would fall. At times, though, it would suddenly bear down on me with such for
ce that my shoulder bones creaked. …
After all the passengers had gotten off the other side of the incoming commuter train, Shinjuku being the end of the line, I heard the doors on our side open behind me, and my entire body chilled with fear. Immediately, the lines of boarding passengers started moving in, and although I was somehow supporting Eeyore's weight, which had become substantially heavy, the irresistible force of the crowd thrust me back two or three steps. I couldn't even scream at, let alone explain anything to, the passengers who were pushing and shoving to get in and scramble for a seat. I had been holding Eeyore at the front of the line, facing the visibly irate passengers, who merely saw two ostentatious young lovers hugging each other in public, blocking their path. I thought the work-weary, angry people, among whom were several drunks, were going to crush us. They would trample over us, perhaps kick Eeyore in the head with the toes of their hard leather shoes, kick him in the back of his head where his protective plastic plate was embedded. But no voice escaped from my open mouth; only tears of fear and desperation rolled down my cheeks. And all the while, people were gruffly shoving us back toward the end of the queue, and we were barely able to keep ourselves from falling. …
Then I noticed that Eeyore's body, which I thought I had been supporting, was in fact shielding me from the procession of the line. Moreover, it had slowly but steadily managed to switch positions with mine. Some clearly vulgar words were hissed beside our ears then, but Eeyore, who was standing so precariously off-balance that I thought he would be crushed at any moment, pushed back with great strength. And holding me with outstretched elbows, he confronted the inrushing passengers, looking them straight in the face. At this point, the pressure of people thrusting and shoving at our sides and backs subsided, and the movement of those who dodged us became in some sense a natural, flowing stream. By this time, passengers who had given up on getting a seat were proceeding through the doors at a calmer pace. Yet as I looked up, my tear-drenched eyes saw Eeyore still staring straight over my head at the people beyond, his face suffused with an expression that reflected less an open, spontaneous hostility toward others and more a sedate, menacing force. …
