A Quiet Life

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “Pardon me. Nothing I said was coherent …,” he said, taking back what he had said. “Eeyore, tomorrow let's go to the welfare workshop together!”

  Once more, this time quietly, O-chan closed the door and went upstairs. Eeyore, who nodded his head instead of replying by raising his voice, kept his head down as if in fearsome awe. It took some time for me to recover from my robotization, and I thought how I would be robbing O-chan of his precious time if I let him take Eeyore to the welfare workshop and back. For although O-chan sort of sees the light ahead in terms of his entrance exams, he undoubtedly has his anxieties, there being no absolute guarantee he will pass. …

  As the person responsible for doing the chores, though, I couldn't just sit there forever despondent. The moment we finished listening to Bach's short cantata, I took Eeyore to his bedroom. I stood by his side and watched him change into his nightclothes and lie on his bed. I then covered his large body with a blanket, and put the bedspread over him. Eeyore, as always, hooked his finger on to the switch of his bedside lamp and waited for me to go out into the glow of the night-light in the hallway. He was still very sad, and his head was turned the other way. As I exited the room, I heard the click of the switch behind me, and all was black. And from that darkness, I heard Eeyore's words, spoken in a suppressed tone of voice, as though in a quiet monologue: “I've been optimistic all along!”

  *A play on the words rakkan (optimism), rokkan shinkeitsu (intercostal neuralgia), and yakan (kettle).

  diary as home

  My younger brother, O-chan, made a thorough daily schedule, to start from January, which focused on home preparation for his college entrance exams. As for me, I decided to go to the university library and my French literature study room twice a week. I even had time to seriously think about Eeyore's physical exercise, the idea of which I had reacted to when Father declared Eeyore's need for it in connection with sexual “outbursts.” So Eeyore and I decided to go swimming. From my experience as a volunteer for handicapped people, however, one thing worried me. If I wanted to register Eeyore as a family member at the health club, where Father has a full-time membership, wouldn't he—admittedly a sort of mentally handicapped person—have to go through a troublesome interview? Nevertheless, the two of us, Eeyore and I, headed for the club in Nakano, where I remember Father had once taken me when I was in elementary school.

  My apprehensions were allayed by the membership sales manager, a certain Mr. Osawa, who went out of his way to ensure that everything went smoothly for us. Mr. Osawa's face was pale—probably from overwork—and attached to this face were a pair of expansive shoulders and a big chest, both of which were proportionately a size larger. He had originally started at the club as a gymnastics instructor, he said, but was now part of the management. He kindly showed us around the building and explained each facility, and by the time we returned to the lounge the required paperwork had been taken care of, and all Eeyore had to do was write his name and affix his seal to it.

  I immediately reported to Mother that I had registered Eeyore at the club). I wrote that the only worry I had—because I couldn't enter the men's locker room—was whether Eeyore would be able to go through the whole procedure, from changing into his swimming trunks to putting his clothes in the locker, in a timely manner. In an international phone call he made in reply to my letter, Father told me about the men's locker room, so that I would be able to utilize his own knowledge of it. He also supplied a meticulous explanation of the dos and don'ts therein—earnestly. Eeyore should use one of the lockers way back in the corner, for he would always find an empty one there, and be least in the way of the other members. He should be careful of the locker door, as it is a bare metal sheet whose edges have been bent inward, and so be especially careful, for some of the edges haven't been properly burnished, and he could cut his fingers on them. Always bring a ten-yen coin to insert into the slot in the locker. He would receive two towels at the entrance, a large one and a small one. Take the small one to the swimming pool downstairs. Use it in the drying room to wipe off the perspiration. …

  But Father said nothing directly about the decision I had made to have Eeyore take up swimming—an attitude I thought to be very typical of him. He was having scruples about having done nothing before his departure to deal with the matter that had been on his mind: Eeyore's exercise, the need for which he had deliberated on and declared in my presence. Using the bathroom at home, I gave Eeyore some practice in changing. O-chan, who was playing a video game with a device he had hooked up to the TV set in the living room, an unusual diversion for him, commented that the overly enthusiastic tone of my voice in addressing Eeyore was the same as Father's when he was trying to get Eeyore to do something difficult. How right he was.

  “Let's be quick now, Eeyore! There's nothing to be ashamed of, but if you stand there naked too long, they'll take you for a helpless old geezer. Now let's see you get into your swimming trunks in three minutes! Then check and see if you've put your clothes and stuff in the locker. Remember to put a ten-yen coin into the slot. Then you turn the key, right? I'll be waiting for you in front of the locker room with your smaller towel, goggles, and swim cap.”

  Would Eeyore be able to properly do all this? At first, of course, he'll be confused and very slow, but I am firmly convinced he'll eventually master it. My activities in looking after children with heavier handicaps than Eeyore's have gradually led me to a certain way of thinking, which I keep only in my heart. I call it the “Hang in there, kid!” method, from an expression I found while reading Céline. Little Céline is walking with his mother to the shop where she works. He's going there with the intention of helping her. His uncle, who happens to pass by, encourages the little boy. “Hardi petit—Hang in there, kid!” he shouts at him. The expression has a double meaning, but it's the positive, encouraging connotation that projects a vivid image in my mind. Céline must have felt the same way when he unearthed it from his Rigadoon memories.

  The handicapped children I have become friends with through volunteer activities at first had trouble with their apparently slow and uncertain movements. Yet they seemed to be shouting, “Hang in there, kid!” in their hearts, and in the end they succeeded in accomplishing things. Couldn't I expect the same from Eeyore?

  So long as Eeyore is at home, no one in the family finds his movements odd. Admittedly there have been incidents like the one that occurred on the bus, which I have already written about. But when we go out for a Christmas dinner or something, for example, Eeyore gets so excited that he walks ahead of everyone. He also displays a certain social consciousness, as when he offers a seat to an old person, though he does this only when he is not too tired, and only after he has discerned that the person, agewise, deserves to sit down. At the club, everybody is athletic. And I have seen a few young people who move their bodies in very rough ways. Couldn't Eeyore's more relaxed behavior become the cause of an annoying congestion in the men's locker room? Even if such things happened, though, I would hope he'd deal with the problem by showing a “Hang in there, kid!” spirit.

  In fact, Eeyore conducted himself admirably well from his first day at the pool. After rehearsing the procedure, I sent him into the men's locker room, went into the women's side where I quickly changed, and then waited for him in the hallway opposite the beverage vending machines, where a flight of stairs leads down to the pool. Then I saw Mr. Osawa come down the stairs from the workout room on the upper floor, and with him was a man who appeared to be in his thirties, wearing a jersey, the front of which was dark and wet with perspiration. I bowed to them, then immediately turned my gaze back to the swinging door of the men's locker room, worried that Eeyore might be having trouble changing. I thought the two men would go on their way, but they continued to stand beside me. And when I looked at them again—this time my eyes must have sharpened with disapproval, for I was in my bathing suit—I saw them looking at me with truly virtuous eyes.

  “This is Mr. Mochizuki, a member of the club's
Social Committee,” Mr. Osawa said, introducing the man to me.

  “I run a printing shop,” Mr. Mochizuki said. “Oh, and that was very nice of your father.” He seemed the sort of man best suited for a cameo role in a TV soap, the hail-fellow-well-met type, but he sounded very sincere in the way he addressed me. The “that was very nice of your father” seemed to be about a letter Father had written him in order to introduce us to him, after I had written to California about us taking up swimming for exercise. The words he spoke next, and the way he said them, though he made the familiar mistake about Eeyore, revealed his relaxed and good-natured personality.

  “Your younger brother is in the locker room? Shall I go and look in on him?”

  “He needs time,” I replied, “but he should be here very shortly.”

  Mr. Osawa went back to his office, looking the very symbol of business efficiency while Mr. Mochizuki stayed on, standing beside me, smiling brightly. But when Eeyore came out, pushing the swinging door with exaggerated inertia, trailed by a young man who seemed to be protecting him, a look of bewilderment appeared on Mr. Mochizuki's face. My head had been turned toward him just then, for I thought he was going to say something to me, but seeing his smile freeze into a frown, evidently from the consternation he felt when he spotted the young man, I directed my eyes toward Eeyore and the man. I was compelled to become defensive, for I thought that Mr. Mochizuki may have been shocked at seeing Eeyore naked. Mr. Mochizuki appeared genuinely troubled, yet at the same time his eyes, like those of a spoiled, mischievous child, were fixed on Eeyore's walking, and he seemed to be rapidly thinking how best to deal with the awkward situation—which is to say, there seemed to be something about the young man that spelled trouble.

  The young man had well-developed muscles, and fair skin tightly hugged his body. His swimming trunks, almost excessively short, complemented the muscles around his loins, as if they had been tailored for them. With bewilderment still on his face, Mr. Mochizuki introduced the young man who approached me with Eeyore.

  “This is Mr. Arai. He's one of the swimmers your father used to swim with for some time, when he frequented this place.”

  “I swam with this man, too.” Eeyore said. “I never forgot.”

  “Myself, I'm free now,” said Mr. Arai. “Myself, I can coach you, if you wish.”

  “Yes, please coach me.” Eeyore said firmly, deciding by himself. He also appeared to remember where the pool was, and stood before us as if to lead us down the stairs toward it.

  In the brief moment that Mr. Arai looked at me. I noticed between his lips, which he parted slightly like a girl would, a set of white teeth too straight for a boy, and rose-pink gums, which did not become his firm masculine figure. Even while he looked at me this way, his attention seemed directed also at Eeyore. For my part, I could only say, “I'd be much obliged!” Then he pursed his lips and hurried off to catch up with Eeyore, firmly treading the floor with limbs that seemed to have springs in them.

  Downstairs, there were three pools in all: one for racing, one for high dives, and a dark one—with a net over it—for deep diving. Swimming classes were in session in the racing pool, and children were enthusiastically receiving coaching. Beside this pool was the high-dive pool, which, with its tiered bottom, resembled a tabernacle submerged in deep Nile waters; and in it was an armada of middle-aged women in aqua suits that resembled life jackets, leisurely moving their arms and legs to music from a radio-cassette player.

  The pool for regular members lay beyond sliding glass doors along the high-dive pool, a few steps lower, and at the poolside Mr. Arai was already having Eeyore do some warm-up exercises. They immediately entered the lane farthest from the entrance to the pool, where nobody was swimming, and began practicing. I decided to swim in the lane next to theirs, so that if anything went wrong I could act as their interpreter. The place was off-limits to swimming-class pupils, and it being a weekday afternoon, there were only one or two swimmers in each lane. Someone awfully small, like a child, stood resting against the wall in one corner at the other end of the lane I had chosen to swim in.

  I did the crawl to the other end, and slowly turned. The woman who was resting against a lane marker was clad in a lackluster swimsuit, and all I thought of as I swam back was that it must have been the refraction of the light in the water that made her body seem so outlandishly bloated. While swimming. I became aware that the woman swimming was following me. I turned again and we passed each other. And my heart stopped.

  I had never seen anyone more obese. Arms and legs, in the shape of two cones attached to each other, protruded from her trunk, which was like a sack of rice. She was doing the crawl, but there was no space between her thighs, and her legs kicked the water like two fingers wiggling in one glove finger. She was swimming without goggles, perhaps to spare herself their extra weight, and her face, narrow eyes and all, was the face of a plump hina doll resting on a triple chin. When I caught up with this fat woman, who was exercising in apparent agony, I felt too embarrassed to watch, right before my eyes, the movement of her writhing legs, which kicked the water but produced no bubbles. …

  When I stopped for a breather in one corner of the lane I was in, I saw Mr. Arai nearby, in the adjacent lane, teaching Eeyore how to use his arms for the crawl stroke. He was marking time with a repetition of words that must have sounded pleasant to Eeyore: “Catch! Sweep! Recover! Catch!”—in this order. This may have been a basic technique required of every coach, but the method seemed perfectly suited to Eeyore. Mr. Arai got Eeyore to learn the arm motions in a very short time, and was already trying to make him swim, while supporting his sinking legs. I immersed myself in the water to see Eeyore's underwater movements. Gently, softly, but correctly executing each step. Eeyore's arms showed proper form, as they caught, swept, and recovered. With Mr. Arai directing him, Eeyore was able to effortlessly touch the floor with his feet, after which he composedly took a deep breath and waited for Mr. Arai's next instruction. …

  Mr. Arai then had Eeyore clasp between his thighs a pair of cylindrical Styrofoam floats, and made him swim on his own. Father once got him to try this method a long time ago. As I remember, he made Eeyore use a kickboard, but because Eeyore's thigh muscles weren't strong enough to keep it between his legs, the board slipped out and burst to the surface from under the water. But the device Eeyore was using now—two round cylinders joined together—was entwined, as it were, around his thighs, enabling him to paddle the water, and advance about two meters; and for the first time in his life, his body sank diagonally. Mr. Arai was waiting for him, and supported his torso. Eeyore spit out some water, and though he was coughing, he appeared excited at what he had accomplished. Mr. Arai was saying something to him, patting his soft, white back. He then turned straight toward me, as if to say he had known all along that I'd been watching, and called out, “Thirty minutes is enough for the first lesson. Let's go up to the drying room and discuss our future lesson plan there.”

  Mr. Arai himself had been vigorously moving about in the pool, but his voice was clear and bright, without the slightest panting. Eeyore had already become his ardent admirer, and was firmly nodding his head. …

  Eeyore and I sat side by side on the lower of the two tiers that lined the walls of the wood-paneled drying room. Eeyore hadn't worked out so vigorously in ages, and so he was pale with tension, yet the same tension was already beginning to ebb and leave an unusual expression on his face. Tired as he was, he kept his neck buried in his thick, round shoulders, and I could see that he was pleasantly savoring the aftertaste of a good workout.

  Mr. Arai, his upper body looking as though he were wearing armor made of muscles, continued to sit straight on the tier along the adjacent wall, beside the floats he had let Eeyore use, and some other training gear that he had placed next to himself. A girl, who could have been on a university swimming team, apparently someone he knew, came down from the direction of the locker room and gestured a friendly greeting to him, but he ignored her
and maintained an expressionless countenance that seemed almost cruel.

  It was only after Eeyore had fully recovered from the fatigue of the swim, the cooling-down exercises after it, and the walk up the winding stairway from the pool, that Mr. Arai broached with us the plan he had for Eeyore's lessons. Such thoughtfulness from a young man—whose body was that of a diligent athlete, but whose neck on up resembled a cross between a young boy and girl, the type the older generation refers to as the “new breed”—led me to embrace a favorable impression of him, as did his way of talking to Eeyore, as men of the same generation would talk. They may, in fact, have been the same age.

  “Can you come every week?” he asked. “The same day of the week, and at the same time? Practice for half an hour each time, for five sessions, and you'll learn how to breathe, and then be able to swim the whole length of the twenty-five-meter pool. You're good because you're not afraid of the water, and you follow directions well.”

  “Yes, I followed directions well!” Eeyore replied, lending an attentive ear so as not to let even one of Mr. Arai's words slip by.

  “He's never been told after physicals that he has a heart problem, has he?” Mr. Arai asked me.

  “He has epileptic fits …,” I said, “but there's nothing wrong with his heart. And his epilepsy isn't all that bad, either. The fits last about thirty to forty seconds. He gets delirious then, that's all. It could be dangerous if it happened in the water—if he were alone. …”

  Mr. Arai listened attentively, but twice the girl sitting next to him made a strange burplike noise. Alarmed, I turned to look up at her, and realized that she was stifling her laughter each time I said epilepsy. I let my eyes fall from her sweat-beaded face to her full, spindle-shaped, gloriously suntanned thighs. Then I resumed looking at my own plain white thighs, which were like sticks and weren't even starting to perspire. Although Mr. Arai certainly needed to explain his instruction schedule to me, I felt that he was being unfair to the girl, ignoring her as he was, talking only to Eeyore and me.