by Kenzaburo Oe
This address, delivered in O-chan's very crystalline voice, is followed by a toast with cola, and then a few congratulatory words from Father. While Father is speaking, O-chan leaves the table to go to the kitchen to see if there is any more cola. Thirteen years have passed, but certain things about him haven't changed at all. With this thought in mind, it was amusing to see him there, with his thin, scrawny beard, listening morosely to the tape—and when he discovers that there's more cola, his voice intrudes, reporting his discovery to all. “Hey, guess what,” he says, “there's some cola in the fridge!” Me suddenly sounds like a mischievous imp, quite different from the way he usually talks, in his written-language style of speech, which had always irritated me.
“You may have the brains to become a scholar in eleven fields,” Father says, taking O-chan to task for interrupting him in the middle of his address, “but you're always thinking only of yourself. You don't think of other people's circumstances. You're going to go to school from now on to meet with children your own age, but who've grown up under different circumstances, and you're going to learn to cooperate with them. This is probably much more important than becoming your so-called scholar in eleven fields. …”
“Thank you. Eeyore,” I said. “I think that's enough of the cassette. You can get back to your FM. … O-chan, I thought you always resisted Father, but in fact you put his advice into practice. In high school, you agreed to become captain of your orienteering team, and you did so much for the team that you even failed your entrance exams.”
“I don't fully understand what you're trying to say, and can't, therefore, immediately respond,” he said, at first declining my encouragement, still embarrassed at his infantile voice of yesteryear.
“… Well, it was nice of Eeyore to remember we had the tape,” he continued, “and go and find it so quickly. You can tell from the terse replies he gave on the recording that he was fulfilling the role of our big brother very well. If we hadn't been able to hear his voice, the party would've been something like an elite family celebrating their child's entrance into a prestigious school, and the snobbish atmosphere would've been unbearable, don't you think? … Anyway, beginning tomorrow, let me take Eeyore to the welfare workshop and back on a trial basis.”
“Thank you very much!” Eeyore said, putting the tape back into its box very carefully, as usual.
“The pleasure's mine,” O-chan ceremoniously answered.
I took the Chuo Line to Yotsuya Station and went to the university. I hadn't been there for some time, and after seeing some friends I had promised to meet, I dropped by the French literature study room, then headed for the library, where a mystifying experience awaited me. After taking a seat in the reading room, where I planned to make a list of the books I needed to borrow for an extended period of time, I saw, on the second empty desk away from mine, the copper-colored, silk-bound book I so fondly remembered: The Neverending Story. It was noon, and the person who'd been reading it had probably gone out for lunch, so I excused myself and picked it up. When I opened it, I saw these words inscribed on the title page, in a firm handwriting that told me it was no trite doodle: “Why can't Japan produce writers who can truly encourage their readers?”
I recalled the excitement I felt when I read Ende, and empathized with the person who had to write such words. At the same time, I wondered, with a stifling hesitancy in my chest, whether, out of personal or even family feelings, I ought to be agreeing with them. … I felt this way because I had read hardly anything by Father, who was now struggling to ride out his “pinch.” Still, I felt it wouldn't be fair to him if I, as his daughter, were to sympathize with a statement that negated all writers in Japan, and laud Ende. O-chan might say such a reflection was meaningless, for were I to interpret such things as his daughter, this itself would already be attaching an unfair provision.
So the vigor with which I had taken myself to the library vanished, and from the index cards that were typed in Japanese, I chose a couple of books that had caught my eye: Céline's play entitled Cathedral, and an American researcher's account of his visit to Céline in Denmark, where he was still taking refuge; and to the request slip I added Father's novel M/T and the Marvels of the Forest, figuring that he had probably written something in it about “The Marvels of the Forest” that Aunt Fusa had mentioned in her talk with me. I then hurried out of the library, thinking that I had better go before my neighbor returned. …
And so, thanks also to O-chan's trial cooperation, I was able to resume, before the year was over, my visits to the French literature study room and the library, and on top of this, read Father's novel. But O-chan, who was now studying more often in the dining-cum-living room where Eeyore and I spent most of our time, also appeared to take an interest in Céline's novel, his I-wish-to-learn curiosity whetted by the thesis reference cards I had spread all over the place. He said, however, that as someone who would soon be taking college entrance exams, he couldn't be so unscrupulous as to read a novel in Japanese translation. He might sometimes be dropping in at his cram school after taking Eeyore to the welfare workshop, and he wouldn't want his friends to see him reading a novel in Japanese. He wanted to read an English translation, which would benefit him more in terms of study.
So I sort of lent O-chan the memorable Penguin edition, my first book by Céline, through which I have come to know him. I have doubts, though, as to whether I have come across the real Céline yet, for in his account of his visit to Céline, the researcher wrote that he had observed a certain ferociousness in Céline's character, a ferociousness I find to be incompatible with the love and dedication to children that I thought ran throughout his writing, from his earlier works to Rigadoon.
On Christmas Eve, Madame Chan's, a Chinese restaurant that supposedly has nothing to do with anything Christian, was packed, but thanks to O-chan, who had made a reservation, we were able to secure a table for three. Eeyore in particular, who had long been looking forward to eating Peking duck again, ate everything very skillfully, putting the thinly sliced leeks and miso sauce on the duck skin in a manner close to reverence, then wrapping the ingredients in the thin crêpe. In volume, O-chan ate as much as Eeyore: a good match. I shed my reserve and ate a lot, too. But without Father, who on occasions like this takes his time drinking beer, lao-chu, whatever, the courses were soon over. “Come to think of it,” O-chan said as we stood up to leave—the family at the table next to ours had not yet quite finished their second-course dish, the first having been hors d'oeuvres—“our old man, with his drinking habits, was a good pacemaker.” Paying the cashier an amount within the limit Mother had approved, I felt lighthearted, and walked in the moonlight, trailing right behind Eeyore on the homeward route he took. We went along with O-chan, who proposed we spend the rest of the evening talking and listening to records, his reason being “because today is the Sabbath.” He said it in a manner that suggested he wasn't quite sure of its definition, which was unusual for him, but we let it go at that.
Eeyore had already prepared on a card a list of music he had selected for Christinas, and he had placed the CDs beside the stereo set. I pasted the card in “Diary as Home,” just as he had written it: “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring”—Bach; “The Magic Flute,” selections—Mozart; “Sleepers Awake!”—Bach. …
As person in charge of the music, Eeyore seated himself in front of the stereo equipment, while O-chan and I decided to talk at the dining table. We had even prepared ourselves an agenda, for a change. For one thing, O-chan had finished Rigadoon, so we could discuss that. For another, I wanted to talk to him about M/T and the Marvels of the Forest, something I thought inappropriate to write to our parents about, or in “Diary as Home” for that matter, but which I needed to talk about with somebody. And who would be better than O-chan! His first comment after reading Rigadoon: “This is a kind of ‘railway story’!”
O-chan had been jumping all over the country at orienteering meets since he was a middle-school student, so naturally he knows a lot
about railways. I hesitated to associate Rigadoon with a “railway story,” for my image of such stories was one of light reading. But since O-chan was now calling it one. I decided that in a way he was right.
“Of course,” he continued, “it's not a leisure-filled ‘railway story’ as such. Quite the opposite. It's a clunk from an unexpected blow, as you often say, and now I know where the expression comes from. It must have been really grueling for him to portray a scene like that.”
Just before Céline is asked to look after our little idiots, in the Hannover bombardment mentioned earlier, while he is running from the flames of war, in the confusion of an escape journey during a direct bombing, he gets a clunk from an unexpected blow and sustains a head injury.
Seeking an escape route from Germany, they head north, piecing together, as it were, the ends of the shredded railway. But at one point they abandon their train to cross the city of Hannover, where the fires that the incendiary bombs had started are still burning. Céline greases the palm of the station-master—Eeyore would be shocked at my vulgar expression—to borrow a cart, and after filling it with their luggage, he starts pushing it away from the crippled station, toward another on the opposite side of the city. The other passengers, who have also disembarked but are stuck, swear at him, envious of his guile. Their anger builds to the point where they start going after Céline and his retinue. “Murderers! Murderers! Quick!” he shouts as they flee. A balcony falls to the road, blocking their path, and another bomb explodes. Clunk! A brick hits him on the head and he falls. When at length he comes to, he notices blood all over his head, shirt, and trousers. The head wound renders him delirious while he tends to the children, but it doesn't stop him from doing all he can for them.
“It says in K.V.'s introduction, too,” O-chan said, “that Céline always worried whether his brain had gone bad, because of the injury he suffered in World War I, and of yet another one he incurred while crossing through Hannover. K.V. writes sympathetically about the injuries, as if they concerned him. I like the part in the introduction where he quotes from the English translation of the novel. Of course, the content is heavy, and I don't think I can do it justice by simply saying I like it, yet my impressions might be different if I read it in French.”
So saying, O-chan showed me a card he had put in the leaves of the Penguin book, which made me realize that we shared a common attitude toward reading, a habit we can trace to Father. I read O-chan's translation, contrasting it with the passage in French I had already transcribed.
“Neither death nor suffering,” he had written, “could be as serious as I believe them to be. Both are very common, and I must be deranged to treat them as though they deserved my special attention. I must try to be saner.”
“O-chan,” I said, “you translate much better than I do. I can't put it so straightforwardly in Japanese. Besides, the French has a slightly lighter ring to it. … It's the first book by Céline that I read, but I recall that I, too, the first time I read it, was overcome by a strange sensation when I came to this passage.”
“You had it underlined in red, I recall.”
“This is between you and me, O-chan,” I said. “Even then, I hesitate to say it, for it might sound too forward. But I felt sorry for Céline and for Mr. K. V., and for Papa, too, who suggested that I ask Mr. K. V. to autograph this hook. … And I can't help thinking about Eeyore, you know. Eeyore sustained two head wounds, too—once in Mother's body, and then from the operation, immediately after he was born. When I read these lines, I fully understood why he should he so sensitive to sickness and death.”
I already mentioned—when I wrote about Great-uncle's demise—that every time Eeyore sees the name of a sumo stable master or a composer in an obituary, he heaves a deferential sigh, and says, “Oh no, dead again!” And he was truly reverential at Great-uncle's funeral. Any indication of an abnormality in his system—like when he runs a fever from catching a cold, or has diarrhea after his fits—appears to rob him of even his soul, and forces him to lie prostrate on the sofa as though he has been cut down. But on the days of his semiannual checkups at the hospital, he is always in such fine spirits that Mother, bewildered, once said, “He was so happy going there, he was running all over the place.” And he has always been like this, even after Dr. M, the doctor who'd been looking after him ever since his first operation, passed away. The reason he is happy to go there, I think, is not so much because he can meet the doctors he likes, as because he wants them to check his state of health, which he is very concerned about.
When the time comes for Eeyore to realize that he is soon going to die, how terrified he's going to be! What agony would compound his fear, were he to die of some pain-ridden illness, like cancer! Wouldn't the torments he goes through be enormously magnified, compared to those of healthy people—of individuals who, to use Mr. K. V.'s expression, are “saner” than he?
I couldn't let such thoughts pass through my lips in Eeyore's presence—he was actually beside me, listening to music—but I figured that since O-chan had copied this passage from Mr. K. V.'s introduction onto a card, I had enough reason to believe that he felt and thought the same way I did about the novel. So I told him just what I thought about it, linking my words to the feelings that were in my heart.
“Don't you think there's an element of self-abandonment in Céline?” I asked. “In his real life as well as his novels? An attitude similar to the ‘desperate, savage courage’ of Homei Iwano that Papa once told me about. With Ende, there's something about his work that tells you, before the novel is brought calmly to the end, that Ende himself has arrived at a state of calm. Papa wrote that, when he met Ende in San Francisco, he found him to be precisely this kind of harmonious person.
“I consciously thought of Father as I read him this time, which is something I'd never done before. And though it's a work of fiction, I got the impression that Papa, the storyteller, has thrust himself out into an ever-harsher reality. Putting it more bluntly, I suppose the big question for him now is the question of faith. Unlike Ende, neither Papa nor his protagonist knows salvation; nor is he like Céline, who takes a devil-may-care attitude toward both his novels and the real world. Despite the kind of person he himself may be, Céline pulls no punches when he fights for ‘our little idiots'; whereas Papa, in my opinion, is lukewarm when it comes to action. … He's always fondly reminiscing on the hollow deep in the forest, to the point that he even writes a novel based on its legends. After writing it, though, he realizes he can't live in the forest the way Grandma and Aunt Fusa have so naturally done—and die there. … So I can certainly see why he should be in a ‘pinch’ after writing that novel.”
“That is a problem, isn't it!” O-chan remarked, in a manner that again made me recall Father's way of talking. “If a difficult problem on the side of reality is to be clarified by writing a novel, and yet the problem can't be hurdled in the novel, then things are really going to be hard for him.”
“I don't understand Papa's ‘pinch’ very well,” I said, “but from what I can tell, I guess that's what it's all about. And in his case, from what Grandma told me, he himself didn't choose to make a career of writing. Apparently his family's position in the village gave him no choice but to become the one to remember and pass on the legends of the deep forest. The people around him had high hopes for him from the time he was a child. …
“O-chan,” I said, “you were good at talking the way people write, even before you entered elementary school. I wonder if Papa was the same when he was little—though, of course, he spoke with the accent of his village.”
“That was a close call,” O-chan rejoined. “Has someone been trying to make a storyteller out of me, too?”
“Remember when I went to Papa's village to attend Great-uncle's funeral?” I said. “As I listened to what Grandma had to say, I felt that it'd been planned for someone in our family to become a creator of stories, and for someone else to become a composer of music, and that someday they would giv
e expression to ‘The Marvels of the Forest.’ Reading M/T and the Marvels of the Forest led me to reconfirm this.”
“Which means,” O-chan said, “that Papa and Eeyore saved us from acting out those roles. I guess we've been lucky, as far as that goes! But this doesn't mean we can be optimistic about the future.”
Having heard his name and the words “composer of music,” Eeyore, who had redirected his attention toward us, joined our conversation.
“No, I don't think we should be optimistic!” he said.
“Oh, Eeyore, do you know the word optimistic?” I asked.
“I don't think it has anything to do with intercostal neuralgia, and it doesn't boil water, either,”* he said, holding on to his side and expressively gazing at the red kettle on the gas stove, in which water was boiling. I laughed, momentarily cut loose from the depression that had been tying me down. But O-chan, to my surprise, flew into a rage, perhaps because Rigadoon had started him thinking deep in his heart about something serious; or simply because he had endured, or recalled having endured, listening to the tape, which he didn't want to hear—the recording of the speech he gave when we celebrated his acceptance into elementary school.
“Eeyore,” he said, “I think puns like that are a bore. There's nothing productive in such puns. Father is pleased when you make them, and he writes about them in his novels, but I don't think they're a good idea. Puns don't bring about realistic solutions. … I dislike an Eeyore who's always amusing himself by saying such things. So tomorrow I'm not going to take you!”
His face pale with anger, O-chan brusquely left the living room. Both Eeyore and I became silent and glum. I wanted to comfort Eeyore, tell him not to worry. But I couldn't, for I felt that O-chan had reprimanded me for the way I'd been treating Eeyore. Moreover, I felt that his rebuke was fair—and then for the first time in a long while, I robotized, and I remained in this state. But even before he reached his room, O-chan came downstairs again, and his face, still pale, peered in from the door he had opened halfway.
