by Kenzaburo Oe
“I don t think I'm being victimized,” I said.
“You don't? Well, you've always been a personification of conviction, Ma-chan!” Mrs. Shigeto ruefully said, tolerating the forceful way I had answered her. “I don't think it will do you harm to read at least this part of the novel, because it quite honestly reveals his feelings at the time—before this current ‘pinch’ of his—when he diligently swam as treatment for his ailing mind. …”
Before Eeyore's lesson was over, I had not only finished reading the part of Father's novel that Mrs. Shigeto had marked in red, but thinking that I ought to preserve it in the pages of “Diary as Home,” I also copied it down on one of the Céline cards I always carry with me, though as I wrote, I had a feeling that I didn't understand it well enough.
One day when I was a child, which later I surmised was just before my father died, he said something like this to me. “Nobody will ever throw down their life for you. Never think such a thing could possibly happen. Never think, somewhere down the line as people lavish attention on you, remarking how clever a child you are, that someone might emerge who will think that your life has more value than their own. This is human depravity at its worst. You may say you'll never feel this way, but those who are doted upon and given too much attention tend to believe this. And not only kids. Some adults, also, get it into their heads, and continue to think this way.”
I perceived then, even as a child, that my father's words, prophetically, as it were, had hit the mark. I also felt a stifling dissatisfaction from being unable to gainsay that I didn't actually possess such a character, since it was a matter that pertained to the future. In fact, in my life since then—in other words, at various times in the future I envisioned as a child—I found my father's words to be true. I even think that the shame I felt upon awakening to the worst of human depravity is one reason for my soul's depression, which in turn necessitated my present self-treatment at the swimming pool. Hadn't I, in the way I dealt with this man or that woman, thought that they were inferior to me, and would willingly sacrifice their lives for me, because their lives were lower in value than mine? Though, of course, this has never reached the point of involving an exchange of lives as such, I have sometimes thought this way regarding certain routine choices I have had to make. And so, all this time, an enormous shame has been compounding in my heart. …*
After the lesson at Mr. Shigeto's place, I thought: that Eeyore and I would make the transfer to the Odakyu Line at Shinjuku Station and go straight home. But Eeyore hurriedly went through the National Railway gate on his own, and headed toward the platform for the Chuo Line's rapid-service trains.
“Oh, wait! Let's not go to the pool today. Mr. Shigeto didn't come with us, you know?”
“Because that gentleman is having a terrible time with his rib injury. I think I shall swim!”
So firm was Eeyore's reply that I had no choice but to go to the club with him. But then in my heart, I guess I had thought little of it. I figured that because Mr. Arai had roughed up Mr. Shigeto so badly as to cause such serious injuries and had done it all in the parking lot, some club member must have witnessed the brawl. And though the victim hadn't reported it to the police—I thought that this kind of attitude must be typical of a strange man in his fifties, the kind of person who would sacrifice himself to do something for a young man who's gone astray—the information must have gotten around. Mr. Arai couldn't possibly disregard this and come out for his everyday practice, could he? Besides, he had once before been involved in an incident the weekly magazines had scandalized. So I would take Mr. Arai's place and, while standing in the same lane, only because I worry about his epileptic fits, watch Eeyore do his laps with his newly acquired skills.
Eeyore and I opened the glass door to the members-only pool, and walked down the aisle that led to the tiered poolside. But in the open space where we usually do our warm-up exercises was Mr. Arai, with his white teeth and pink gums showing through his typically slightly parted, girlish lips, vigorously flailing his arms and motioning to Eeyore. Taking big strides, in his new pair of red-and-green swimming trunks of the most unconventional design, he walked over to Eeyore, held him by the arm as he would a friend, and fetched him away, making only a neutral bow to me.
I was left alone with warm-up exercises to do. But without Mr. Shigeto, there were no examples to follow in moving my arms and legs. At a loss, I noticed Mrs. Ueki on the other side of the pool slowly doing some preparation exercises, so I went over to her side. Weighing more than when in the water, Mrs. Ueki was all the more laboriously moving her body. Yet she greeted me with a nod that, though despondent, was friendly. After the exercises. Mrs. Ueki and I entered the pool. The only others swimming were Mr. Arai and Eeyore, two lanes across from us. Mesmerized by the mesh-patterned shadows that the lane markers were casting on the bottom of the quiet water, I recalled, in fragments, Father's words, which Mrs. Shigeto had read to me: this youth ensnared in remorse enormous and without exit. … which he committed … be effaced. … Could it be that Eeyore and Mr. Arai, enthusiastically exchanging words each time they swam, were struggling together to wipe away what had been done in the parking lot, with a huge invisible eraser they kept afloat on the water?
Before long, however, I recalled with sudden fright the scar on Mr. Shigeto's back, and the decision he had made after the operation on his esophagus, most likely for cancer. I couldn't help but shudder again at the thought of the cruel Mr. Arai smiting and kicking a man of such mind and body as Mr. Shigeto, kicking him repeatedly, and aiming the kicks at his ribs in order to break them.
My small round head became unfocused and hot, as though it were being pulled apart from both sides, but I continued with my flutter kicks, feigning bravado, repeating in my heart, Hell, no! Hell, no! as if it were an incantation, yet no longer knowing why I was saying this. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Mr. Arai and Eeyore were leaving the pool, so I went over to the faucets used for washing the eyes and gargling, while maintaining a little distance from them. By the time I had settled in the drying room, my body was tired, as if I had swum two or three times longer than the usual thirty minutes, and my head was exhausted to the core.
In the drying room, as usual Mr. Arai's behavior was the opposite of the lively movements and expressions he exhibits at the pool. He had entrenched himself in his armor of muscles, and was sitting there motionless with his head down, not even sweating. Mr. Shigeto's absence had given Eeyore, too, a reason to sit there solemnly with his eyes cast down. But perhaps I appeared even lonelier, as I looked down at my plain thighs, which resembled white sticks. As the regulars trickled in, the atmosphere of the room gradually changed into something quite different from the usually more lively one. The jovial and gentle Mr. Mochizuki, whose facial features and body are those of an artisan, sat in silence that day with a deep, pensive look, glaring, as it were, at the sauna device in the middle of the room, with beads of perspiration forming around his reddened nose. Even the mustached, feminine-sounding beauty parlor proprietor was wearing an irascible expression on his face; he looked like a young prosecutor in a colored-woodblock print from the late nineteenth century I had seen in a course on contemporary literature. Mrs. Ueki, who had finished her training somewhat later than us, had climbed to the upper tier of the drying room, with her thighs rubbing together and her shoulders rounded like a cat's, to endeavor to heighten the perspiration effect at its ever-so-slightly higher elevation; and only she seemed to have adopted the attitude that she could not be discriminatory toward Mr. Arai, which is not to say that she was a friendly woman. …
All the other regulars were critical of Mr. Arai, and each appeared, in their own way, to be demonstrating a warning to me for still incorrigibly associating with him. Pressured by the stiff-mannered attitudes of Mr. Mochizuki and the others, I was nonetheless starting to react to it all with a Hell, no! Hell, no!—though Eeyore would say, “Ma-chan, you're impossible.” No doubt Mr. Arai's act of violence had been horrendous.
Even so, aren't there times when the mind becomes distressed to the point that a person explosively resorts to violence? Instead of bawling, for not having people understand your suffering? Though the cruiser incident that had killed Mr. Kurokawa had involved Mr. Arai, the man who had beaten up her husband, Mrs. Shigeto told me that, ever since the incident Mr. Arai had been living with the widowed wife, a middle-school teacher, and she said that perhaps this was his way of atoning as best he could. …
After a while, though, it appeared that Mr. Arai, to my surprise, was whispering something in my brother's ear, something apparently interesting to Eeyore, who was sitting solemnly beside him with his head sunk into his fat, round shoulders. Mr. Arai then came over to the corner in which I was sitting, one corner away from where he had been. He aligned his thighs, which resembled unboned ham, right in front of me. And as heat waves of silent rebuke gushed toward me from the regulars, including an especially strong glare from Mr. Mochizuki, whose protests I had ignored, Mr. Arai fixed his apricot-shaped eyes on me and said, “Let's design Eeyore's new training plan at my condo, where we won't be bothered by rubbernecks. Eeyore thinks it's a good idea. Mr. Shigeto”—it sounded like he said Mista Shigeto—“is trying his best to cut me off from Eeyore, which I don't mind. But in all fairness, myself, I don't think Eeyore should let the progress he's made go to waste. And if he's to practice on his own, myself, I have this Textbook of Swimming I can lend you. You can read it with Eeyore and follow it in conducting his swimming regimen. So if you would come …”
As soon as they saw me emerge from the locker room, Mr. Arai and Eeyore, who had already changed and had been waiting for me, hastened down to the club's reception counter on the second floor. In the staff room beyond the lockers and automatic door of the regular members' exit was Mr. Osawa, who seemed to have something to discuss with me. But because Eeyore, who usually needs more time to put on his shoes and everything, had been very quick that evening, all I could do was hurry out after him.
Night had set in, and a fine rain was falling. Both Eeyore and I took out our folding umbrellas from our bags, but Mr. Arai, who had turned up his sweater collar, wasn't at all bothered by the rain. We helplessly followed Mr. Arai, who had the sort of gait that exploited the spring in the sole of his jogging shoes, and entered a road alongside the health club, perpendicular to the street that runs along the railway tracks, the one we always take. On one side of this road was a kindergarten and several posh condos, and on the other side, which had night lamps, ran the carefully built high concrete wall of a prewar residential area. It wasn't that long after dusk, yet the road was empty of human figures, probably on account of the rain. Mr. Arai kept walking, even after we had passed the signboard marking the club's parking place for bicycles, and so I asked, “Is the parking lot far?”
To this he clasped the collar of his sweater like an eagle, turned, and replied curtly, making light of me, “My condo's very near this place. Why should we go by car?” and continued walking briskly.
I too hurried along, abreast of Eeyore, who was resolutely stretching his strides to keep up with Mr. Arai, and while walking I was seized with a sense of fear and a feeling of nausea that chilled me to the core of my body. It occurred to me that, if he didn't keep his car at the club parking lot, then he must have gone there from the very outset, in search of a place to beat up Mr. Shigeto. Unable to bring myself to tell Eeyore that we should turn back, I kept walking along the road between the wall, which grew progressively taller, and structures that showed no sign of people in them. I was intimidated by the fact that the road, which up ahead turned down to the right, was of an antiquated style that consisted of placing on a slant one thick, blackish, hardened-gravel slab on top of another, for never before in my life had I taken such a road. I tried to walk its full stretch, while bringing myself so close to Eeyore that our umbrellas hit. On the right hand side of this slope, which felt like we were descending one oddly long step at a time, was a garage that cut into the backyard hedge of a stately old house. In the darkness were two cars. One of them was the Porsche. Mr. Arai hopped onto a narrow walkway by the garage. At the top of a steep flight of stairs that led up from the path was a long and narrow lot on which stood the three-story building that housed Mr. Arai's condo, on one side of which was a high concrete wall, and on the other a structure, most likely a public building, fringed with beech and zelkova trees that had shed their leaves.
On the second floor—reached by ascending a flight of stairs on the outside of the building that was narrow like the passageways adjoining a ship's cabins, and had chest-high panels that served as blinds—were two residential units, side by side. Mr. Arai unlocked the two doors with a gesture that boasted he owned both units. I then realized that, if Mr. Arai had left the place with both keys—one for the unit closer to the stairs, which had KUROKAWA on its nameplate, and one for the other unit, marked ARAI, which Eeyore and I were being led into—then Mrs. Kurokawa wasn't home, and this prompted me to assume a firm defensive posture. Yet I failed to turn back, despite this situation, not only because Eeyore had quickly gone in, but also because my attitude that day on the whole had been one of confusion. And my memory of what happened after I entered Mr. Arai's condo is just as confused. Indeed my comportment, as I tried to somehow hold my ground against fretting, fearing, almost robotizing, must have been far from natural. …
This, ironically, must have been a factor in causing Mr. Arai's actions to escalate in the direction of utter unruliness. Although I could never match Mrs. Shigeto's efforts to be thoroughly fair, I want to write about what happened in Mr. Arai's room without imparting any emotions, lest I be overly unfair to him. I'll be, brief, like I would in presenting an outline. While I have reservations about presenting conclusions beforehand, I would say that the most distinctive feature of the incident, which began to gel in my mind as I later repeatedly replayed what had happened, is that Mr. Arai's attitude in his condo, even after he became overtly hostile, indeed even before that, was such that I could not really tell whether he was serious or joking; and in spite of this, or because of this, his behavior was overly and flagrantly exaggerated. In a sense, you could interpret the ambiguity of Mr. Arai's attitude as something he intended to serve as an alibi, so that later he could insist that it had all been a game, for no man in his right mind could have seriously attempted to translate into action anything so outrageous. …
Mr. Arai's condo was typical of a young man's habitat, with new-model audio components, a TV set with a videogame gadget attached to it, CDs and videos piled on shelves next to a big bed. Pinned to the wall, like a collage, were a slew of bright, gaudy posters and pictures of himself swimming. For books, all he had were, I don't know what you call them, new science or new religion books with psychedelic covers on them, books on swimming, and textbooks of sports theory, all jumbled together with magazines, which made me feel that I didn't belong there, accustomed as I was to life in a house filled with Father's books. Eeyore, who proceeded straight to the CD shelf to see what it held, said reservedly, but with bewilderment and dismay crossing his face, “Rock and new music aren't my favorites. …”
Whereupon Mr. Arai, saying that there was plenty of classical stuff in the adjacent room, opened the large steel door connecting the two units from inside, and took Eeyore into Mrs. Kurokawa's living area. Almost immediately after this, Brahms's First Symphony came through with fine sound quality, and I heard Eeyore's joyous exclamation, “Furtwängler, is it? Hoh!” Mr. Arai came back alone, sat down on his bed with a thud, and suddenly, with an attitude that was almost rude, told me to come to his side. I feared that if I robotized I wouldn't be able to put up any resistance, and while desperately bracing my feelings, I tried not to listen to the unbelievable words he relentlessly spewed at me. …
I quote Mr. Arai's words. “If you want to make your dream of marrying me and bringing Eeyore along come true, you could very well move in here, right now. Eeyore could sleep in Mrs. Kurokawa's room at night. … You sit t
here as prim as a princess, but myself, I've seen what yours looks like, good and hard, from behind your crotch when you, in your swimsuit, were doing the breaststroke. … Myself, I could give it to you now if you want, but Eeyore's quietly listening to music, and he would be bothered if you started moaning and groaning with pleasure. But as a token of us having arrived at a new relationship, you could show me just the part that your swimsuit conceals … never mind your breasts—myself, I could see from looking at you in your swimsuit that you hardly have any. Myself, I want to see your lower body. …
“Mr. K wrote that myself, I had the woman bare her lower parts, and tied her legs to both sides of her hips in the shape of an M, so as to expose her c—. He just let his imagination go wild, and branded me with infamy. … It would be mighty fun if myself, I experimented with you, his daughter, to see what shape it really looks like. …”
I screamed at the top of my voice in the direction of the living area next door, and I heard what sounded like Eeyore quickly rise and approach the door and repeatedly pull at the doorknob, for Mr. Arai had locked it. I sprang to my feet to rush to the door, but Mr. Arai caught me by my arms and twisted them upward from behind with the force of a machine. He stood like this for a while, chuckling behind my ears, but soon he dragged me backward with one forceful pull, and threw me onto his bed. I fell on my back and tried to hide my face in my hands, but he pushed my arms open, from in front of me to my sides; and with his flushed smooth face mixed with an expression of rage and amusement, he kept looking down at me with his apricot-shaped eyes. …
