A Quiet Life

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “Yes, I did very well!”

  “And, Mr. Arai,” Mr. Shigeto said, “your coaching techniques deserve equal compliment.”

  Mr. Arai looked up at Mr. Shigeto, with eyes askance and red from the pool water, but bright and sharp, as though they had been honed with an emery wheel of irascibility.

  “It's because Eeyore's the kind of person who does exactly what I tell him to do,” Mr. Arai said. “But learning to breathe is going to be difficult. Myself, I hope he keeps it up even when it gets more difficult. …”

  “I think I will keep it up even when it gets much more difficult,” Eeyore said.

  “I see that you two have established a firm coach-trainee relationship,” Mr. Shigeto said. “Mr. Arai, did you talk with K much, when he was commuting almost daily to the club?”

  “No, not very much,” replied Mr. Arai, turning to me with a probing look. “Myself, I once even asked him if I could visit and talk with him at his home, but he said no.”

  “Oh, no!” Eeyore said, so ruefully that I had to put a word in.

  “Father enjoys joking with people,” I said, “but characterwise, he's an introvert, and he doesn't have many acquaintances he can call new friends. …”

  “When you get to be our age,” Mr. Shigeto remarked, “it's troublesome to make new friends. It's nice if it happens naturally, like the way I made friends with Ma-chan and Eeyore.”

  Mr. Arai let his head fall in a nod, and then, with a vigor that seemed almost savage, he kept toweling off the beads of perspiration that surfaced from every pore of his upper body, though frankly I thought them too pretty to wipe off.

  On our way home from the pool, Mr. Shigeto treated us to some Italian food at a restaurant in the Shinjuku Station Building. He loosened the ties that bound my reserve by explaining that Mircea Eliade, whose correspondence he was directly translating from Romanian, had whetted his appetite for Italian food, for just then he was working on the letters Eliade had written as a young man traveling through Italy. He then carefully studied the menu with an attentiveness I thought Japanese seldom show. And the assortment of dishes he ordered was such as to make Eeyore, an experienced and earnest viewer of gourmet programs on TV, utter just the right exclamations of praise upon tasting each dish. Mr. Shigeto, elated by Eeyore's reaction, carefully observed, with narrowed eyes, how skillfully he used the knife and fork to eat his spaghetti. I think there was a certain grace about Eeyore's relaxed bearing that made Mr. Shigeto feel good, in the way he used his entire body to reveal the sense of satisfaction and fatigue that had come from spending a fulfilling day consisting of a music lesson and some swimming. …

  Before long, Mr. Shigeto matter-of-factly divulged the real purpose of his having invited us to dinner. He had heard from Father about Mr. Arai's past, about an incident that had occurred when Mr. Arai was a law student at a private university five years ago, the details of which he would not relate to me at this point in time, since part of it was mere rumor. And he believed my character was not of the curious sort that would badger him with questions about it. Mr. Arai had actually been involved in a troublesome incident, but Mr. Shigeto thought that for me to know more about it might cause my feelings toward him to take a path in an unfavorable direction. In other words, Father in California, by recalling the incident, was now discomfited at the fact that I had become acquainted with Mr. Arai. However', were Father and Mother to learn that my and Eeyore's relationship with him would be limited to Eeyore's swimming lessons, and that Mr. Shigeto would accompany us to the pool each time, they would be immediately unfettered from their pressing cares. …

  Later. I believe there is one kind of later, which refers not to months or years later but to just the ten or twenty days later in which things happen as time runs its everyday course and presents an entirely new picture of a situation. When you look back on those days, you reaffirm with much surprise that those things had actually happened.

  Such was the course Eeyore's swimming lessons later took. It was still early March, and Eeyore's style when going to the club was to wear a navy blue half-coat, and carry a sports bag. There's a picture taken by O-chan of how Eeyore looks. With exams over for the one and only university he had applied to, O-chan now had some time on his hands, and he planned to go to our cabin in Gumma for orienteering practice. Before his departure, however, he turned his thoughts to our parents in America, and rendered a photographic service for them. He went to the club with us and negotiated with Mr. Osawa to exempt his admission fee, telling him he had come only to do some photography. Then he took pictures of Eeyore in the pool and left on his trip.

  As Eeyore, breathing properly, swam all of twenty meters, O-chan kept snapping shot after shot, sighing as it were in amazement. Wonder touched my heart again, as I witnessed the feat that was taking place before my eyes. It was so awesome that I even quite illogically wondered whether Eeyore—apart from seals, otters, and other forms of marine animals—was the first mammal to descend from land to water, and swim so admirably well. Eeyore had performed so magnificently that I became restless after O-chan left the poolside, and lonely, too. So I went to the lane next to the one where he was swimming. I followed him and, through the water, watched him swim, propelling myself forward the way one practices flutter kicks.

  In the water, Eeyore's shoulders, arms, and chest looked white like the skin of a white man as he slowly but accurately immersed his hands and arms in the water, caught, swept, recovered, and swam on, executing each movement exactly as he had been instructed. When he turned his head to breathe, I saw that, his eyes were gently open in the water. He had stopped wearing goggles since I can't remember when, with the uncompromising stubbornness that's so typical of him. His mouth opened the moment it emerged from the water, and went back into the water closed, with chains of sparkling bubbles trailing it. Wave patterns that reflected the ceiling lights, created by the lane markers and crisscrossing ripples, were projected on his body and the flat surface of the bottom. To breathe, he twisted his large head as though he were engrossed in thought, then returned it to its original position. And he swam as though he were pulling himself up the net that had been cast in the form of the shadows of the lane markers and the ripples.

  “After watching you swim like that, Eeyore, I feel like a century's gone by,” I said to him when he stopped for a breather.

  “A century! That's amazing!” he replied thoughtfully, with an air of composure.

  That day after swimming practice, there were only the four of us in the drying room. The regular pool visitors were using the lounge—why they avoided the drying room you'll know later—to discuss a cruise to the Izu Peninsula, by way of a cherry-blossom-viewing outing. And perhaps because O-chan's picture-taking had created a solemn atmosphere, we were in a quieter mood than usual.

  “Oh? What happened here?”

  Eeyore, timidly raising his voice, had turned his gaze on Mr. Shigeto's back, and was hesitantly trying to put his finger on it. The top of Mr. Shigeto's old-fashioned swimsuit was somewhat twisted to one side, and part of his back was bared.

  “I had an operation,” he briefly explained, straightening his shirt quickly but not brusquely, before Eeyore's linger could touch it.

  “Your back was sick?” asked Eeyore. “I think it must have hurt a lot!”

  “To be exact, it was my esophagus,” Mr. Shigeto said. “But not because it hurt.”

  Eeyore seemed convinced by this, but I was very upset. I happened to be in the dining room when one of Father's former classmates phoned to inform him of Mr. Shigeto's illness. Until then, my image of Mr. Shigeto had been of a friend of Father's who made frequent trips to Eastern Europe and traveled there extensively. And so as I overheard the phone call, I thought that Mr. Shigeto had met with a traffic accident, or had needed surgical treatment of some sort. But I had also heard Father worriedly telling Mother, after visiting him in the hospital, that aside from his research on Eastern European literature, which required five to ten years of t
oil and labor to complete one project, Mr. Shigeto would devote his energy to music composition, the results of which he could see in a shorter period of time. … What a fool I had been, so oblivious to everything! Granted, I didn't know him personally then. But wasn't it the height of insensitivity on my part that, even after I had gotten to know him directly, and he had done so much for us, I still failed to associate his decision to compose music with a serious illness of his internal organs? Apart from the heat in the drying room, I felt the skin on my face begin to numb. Before long, quite the opposite of robotizing, I found myself unable to refrain from uttering a chain of emotional words.

  “Toward the end of last autumn,” I began, “Eeyore and I went to Father's native village. We had to attend a funeral, and I asked you to change the day of Eeyore's music lesson to another day. Father's mother talked to me about a lot of things then. We slept in the same room, you see. And there was something she said that I didn't understand very well, and it's been on my mind ever since. … She said very slowly, as though tapping her memory, that when Father was a child, he had nearly met his death a number of times, each time in a manner that appeared as though he had brought the danger on himself—not because he was courageous or reckless, but, mysteriously enough, because he couldn't help it. And the people around him couldn't let it be. Grandmother said that if he was still behaving this way, she would feel sorry for Mother·, and for us children, too. I apologize, Mr. Shigeto and Mr. Arai, for all the trouble Father is causing you with his ‘pinch.”'

  I myself was partly surprised at the stiffness of my speech and why I was talking so much, and worried whether Eeyore, too, didn't find all this bewildering. My words seemed incoherent, hut once they were uttered. I felt that they were unmistakably the thoughts that had been on my mind for a long time now. Exhausted, I pursed my lips. Then the beads of perspiration that covered my face began pouring off my brows and temples and were joined by the tears running down my cheeks.

  “What's come over you, Ma-chan!?” Eeyore timidly called to me. Mr. Shigeto and Mr. Arai looked humbled, as though they had taken my words as a protest against them.

  “… I'm sorry,” I said, “Father has put this burden on you, saying that he has his ‘pinch’ to deal with. But you're both so good to Eeyore. That's why I feel so indebted to you, and so sorry that I …”

  Mr. Arai handed me a towel, stretching out his arm to its full length, the way a monkey stretches its arms out, which alarmed me, for I thought the towel was going to be wet and smelly with his perspiration. It was dry, though, like bread straight from the oven. Wrapped in its fragrance, I dried my tears with it. And I even blew my nose in it, noisily.

  That day, Eeyore and I parted with Mr. Shigeto at Shinjuku Station, transferred to the Odakyu Line, and returned to Seijo Gakuen-mae Station, where we were met with an unexpected welcome. I immediately wondered how on earth, with dusk having come, he was able to spot us in the crowd in front of the station. Or had he been waiting on the pale-lit sidewalk to the left, where people queue up for taxis? From there he could have seen us either way we went on the pedestrian crossing, whether toward the well-illuminated supermarket on the right coming down the station stairs, or toward the pharmacy in front. We needed to buy something for dinner, and just as I picked up one of the shopping baskets stacked up at the entrance to the supermarket, someone came up from behind, springing along in jogging shoes, and hit Eeyore on his shoulder with a forceful blam! Turning around, much to my amazement. I saw Mr. Arai.

  “What a surprise!” said Eeyore, who appeared to be in good spirits, though usually he hates it when someone touches him.

  “I thought you'd he killing your body at this time of day,” I said. “… Why?”

  “Eeyore went through a photography session today, and he swam especially well. So myself, I thought I'd drive both of you home. Myself, I waited for you in front of the club, but”—he stopped his words short, turned his shoulders on their axis, and gestured in the direction of the liquor store, next to the pharmacy, in front of which were stacked many cases of discounted scotch whisky.

  Since the entire block was a no-parking zone, he must have repeatedly circled the area in his car, now and then stopping someplace nearby to wait for us for a few minutes. A grass-green Porsche, a grimy one, started to roll slowly toward us.

  “If you have some shopping to do,” he said, “myself, I could come back in ten minutes.” The way he had so vigorously said it, as though he were about to put his very words into action, made my blood boil.

  If I had been my usual self, I would have declined his offer, saying that we always walk home from the station. Though Eeyore looked like he really wanted to do some shopping, I brusquely put flown the basket, pulled him by the arm, and followed Mr. Arai, whose gait, as he walked in front of us, resembled that of a black basketball player. From the way he moved, he seemed to be a different person, so unlike at the club, where he walked in his bare feet, toes firmly clutching each stair. We walked toward the car. which had rolled slowly past us and was now halted a short distance away from the intersection ahead.

  Mr. Arai had on a dark blue jumper with an emblem embroidered on it, of the kind many college students in sports clubs wear. He appeared to be a much slimmer young man, as though he had cast off the armor of muscle in which he swims. Only his neck looked strong, with the lines from the side of his head falling on a slant to his shoulders. The woman, who kept her hands on the steering wheel all the while she looked back and peered out at the darkening sidewalk, appeared to be past middle age. She was thin and diminutive, and wore plain-looking clothes.

  Hastened by Mr. Arai, who promptly let the passenger seat fall forward, I first helped Eeyore in, then followed suit. I bowed to the woman, but had no time to exchange proper greetings with her. I gave directions vaguely to both the woman and Mr. Arai, not knowing exactly who to address, and as soon as the car started toward our house, Mr. Arai asked Eeyore if it was really all right that he hadn't bought anything at the supermarket.

  “I think I wanted a can of coffee!” was Eeyore's reply.

  We happened, just then, to be passing a rice dealer's store with a vending machine installed in front of it, and immediately Mr. Arai told the woman to stop. Not that he himself was going to hurry to the machine, for he made the woman at the wheel do it, which didn't seem to bother him in the least. And on top of this, he began some trivial conversation.

  “You don't have many visitors after K-san and your mother left, or do you?” he asked.

  “The wife of Mr. Y, the writer, kindly brought us some sweets, pickles, and a sweater!” Eeyore said.

  “This is the Mr. Y who might receive the Order of Cultural Merit next year? Eeyore, you know some important people.”

  Mrs. Y, who drives up to the gate of our house, gives us bountiful gifts at the front door, and then drives back home, once said, “Your papa is so health-minded that he swims even when he goes to America. Now why doesn't he buy you a car to take Eeyore to the welfare workshop and back? Ask him, please, to buy you one, all right?” After saying this with such force that some passersby peered at us, she drove her Mercedes back home.

  The traffic ahead was not as heavy as it had been on the street in front of the station, and we reached our house in no time. As soon as we arrived, Mr. Arai jumped out of the car, and alarm got the better of me.

  ‘Thank you for driving us home,” I quickly said, my language inadvertently becoming cut and dry. “My younger brother is away for training, and he won't be coming home tonight. So if you'd excuse us here …” I said, putting up a hard defensive battle. “Eeyore, now hurry! You're holding them up!”

  Eeyore had received two cans of coffee from the woman. They were too hot to keep holding with bare hands, and he had just put them into the smaller of the bags he carried, the one he used for his wet swimming trunks and cap. Seeing Eeyore put the bag at his side on his lap, with the satchel he carries his music sheets in, and then slide toward the door, Mr. Arai col
dly said, “‘Neither of you could have gotten out if I hadn't. Myself, I didn't get out to force you to invite me in.” Then, as if to pick a quarrel, he said to the woman in the driver's seat, “Was the coffee on you? How generous! But you don't do that for your homeroom pupils in your middle school, do you?”

  With her unassertive pink-framed glasses and prominent forehead, and with her face turned down, the woman presented the classic image of a bewildered middle-school teacher confronted by a rebellious pupil. I asked her to accept the two coins, which I had been holding in my hand with the intention of paying her anyway. As soon as we got out of the car, Mr. Arai violently got in and threw his head hack against his seat. He just stared at our house beyond the hedge, and didn't reply to Eeyore's good-bye.

  The following week, on the train we took to the pool after his music lesson, I had Eeyore sit down, and then told Mr. Shigeto, who was standing beside me, in front of Eeyore, about Mr. Arai taking us home in his car. I did not at all feel like I was squealing on him. In fact, I had inadvertently shown Mr. Arai my defensive side, which I have already said is one of Father's traits. Mr. Arai, as well, had displayed a derisive coldness toward my attitude. Even before I had entered our dark, empty house that evening, alone with Eeyore, I had started ruminating about this attitude of mine, and felt most unpleasant. I had also been feeling so helpless, with O-chan away on his trip, that I quickly closed the gate and locked the entrance door.

  This was all there was to it. A week had now passed, but today, for some reason, Eeyore had been so excited about practicing his swimming that, though making sure he had his swimming trunks, cap, and goggles as he put each item in his bag, when leaving the house he had forgotten the shoulder bag he puts his music scores in. We had already put on our shoes, so I called out to O-chan, who had returned from his trip and was going to look after the house in our absence, to get the bag for him. And all the while we stood in the entrance, Eeyore kept patting me on my back, smiling as if to tell me that his forgetting the bag had been an amusing blunder of mine. That day, a week ago, when O-chan had taken pictures of Eeyore swimming—they had turned out unbelievably well, with Eeyore swimming in exemplary form, and I sent them to our parents in California—and in the drying room, emotion had gotten the better of me because of what I had been led to imagine by Mr. Shigeto's postoperative scar. With all these things happening that day, Mr. Arai had tried to reward and comfort us by offering to drive us home, and I had become overly defensive in my reaction. This was all there was to it, I thought, after the lapse of a week's time. Regarding Mother's suggestion that I not see Mr. Arai without other people around to watch us—well, Eeyore had been with me that evening. As for Mr. Arai, that woman had been with him. …