A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  His wife stood in the doorway of the living room. She did not look pleased. She had been the one who’d called, and Oliver had spoken to her. Her husband had finished the translation of the French diary, she said. Would Ruth please come to their house to collect it, tonight. Oliver hung up the phone, put the chainsaw in the truck, and offered to drive. The wind was picking up, and the tall trees were beginning to sway. Another storm was coming, this one heading right toward them.

  Benoit held out a sheaf of about twenty sheets of ruled notebook paper, which shook in his outstretched hand.

  “Le mal de vivre,” he said. “You ask me what it means. This is what it means. Evil, sorrow, suffering. How can there be so much pain in the world?”

  Ruth took the pages from him.

  “Thank you,” she said, glancing down at the translation.

  “Take this, too,” he said. He held out the thin composition booklet that contained the diary, wrapped in its waxy paper.

  “I really appreciate . . . ,” she started, but he shook his head and stared back into the flames.

  His wife stepped forward then and touched her on the arm. She led Ruth from the room and showed her to the door. “He’s been drinking.”

  Ruth didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  His wife softened. “It’s not just your fault,” she said, lowering her voice. “His little dog got snatched by the wolves last night. They sent a young bitch out and he followed. Stupid dog. The pack was waiting on the far side of a ravine. Set on him and killed him, just like that. Tore him to shreds and ate him.” She looked back toward the living room, where her husband was still sitting. “He watched it happen. Called him and chased after, but couldn’t get across the ravine. He’s too big. Too slow. There were just pieces of fur left by the time he got there. He loved that little dog.” She opened the door and cocked her head, listening. “You better go. Wind’s picking up. It’s going to be a bad one.”

  Haruki #1’s Secret French Diary

  1.

  December 10, 1943—We sleep together in one large room, my squadron members and I, laid out in rows like small fish hung to dry. It is only when the moon is nearly full and the sky is clear that I have enough light to write. I slip these pages out from inside the lining of my uniform, where I keep them hidden, careful not to rustle. I unscrew the cap on my fountain pen, worried that the ink might run dry and be insufficient for my thoughts. My last thoughts, measured out in drops of ink.

  We have been instructed to keep a diary of our training and our feelings as we face certain death, but I have been warned by one of the other student soldiers that the senior officers will inspect these diaries, as they will read our letters, without warning, so I should be careful not to write truthfully from my heart. Duplicity is a hardship I am unwilling to suffer, so I have decided I will keep two records: one for show, and this hidden one for truth, for you, even though I hardly expect you will ever read this. I will write in French, ma chère Maman, following the good example of your idol, Kanno-san, who faithfully persisted in her English lessons right up until the moment they led her to the gallows. Like her, we must keep up our studies even as civilization collapses around us.

  2.

  Clench your teeth. Bite down hard! our commanding officer, le Marquis de F—, orders. He punches K in the face with his fist until K’s knees buckle, and then he kicks him when he’s down. Last week, he crushed two of K’s back teeth, but K acted as though he didn’t feel a thing, blinking and smiling his sweet, otherworldly smile as the blood ran from his mouth.

  K is my senior in the Philosophy Department and I have a duty to him. Yesterday, when the beating got particularly bad, I stepped in front of K to take his blows. The Marquis de F—was delighted. He punched me on both sides of my face and beat me with the heel of his boot. Afterward, the inside of my mouth was like minced meat and even the smallest sip of miso soup brought tears to my eyes, the salt in the wounds was so painful.

  Chère Maman, I am wrapping this composition book in oilskin and hiding it under the rice in the bottom of my lunchbox. I will try to find a way to get it to you before I die. I cannot write candidly in my letters to you, but the hope that someday you will know the truth about this imbecilic lynching comforts me. No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.

  3.

  Last night, during the pleasure quarters game, I sensed a change come over K as he watched my humiliation. As I crouched behind the rifle rack, following the orders of le Marquis, reaching out my arms through the slats and waving my hands seductively like a lady of the night, I saw K turn away for the first time, as though the sight of me was too much to bear.

  Le Marquis, noticing K’s withdrawal, perhaps, ordered me do it again and again. He feeds me my lines. Hey there, soldier, I call. Like a director, an auteur, he studies my performance with his head cocked to one side. He tells me to make my voice higher and sweeter. There is a seriousness, almost an innocence, to his attention. Won’t you come inside and play with me? I cry, and it is only a matter of time before he obliges. The games don’t finish until long after the final bugle call, signaling lights-out. At night, sometimes I can hear K, weeping.

  Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques;

  De tes bijoux l’Horreur n’est pas le moins charmant . . .146

  Did Baudelaire know of such things, Maman? Are these the dark petals of les fleurs du mal?

  4.

  The bush warbler’s song is a beautiful song. I will never be able to hear it again without thinking of F— and wanting to kill him. We hear whispered stories about hated officers who have been shot from behind or beaten to death by their own troops in the confusion of a skirmish. I am counting the blows I receive from the Marquis. I will return each one to him someday. The number as of tonight is 267.

  I don’t mind dying. We all understand that death is the only outcome for us. I only hope that I will not die before I taste the sweetness of revenge.

  5.

  No sense. No sense. K escaped at dawn, and later we were told that he committed suicide in front of a supply train, but one of the men who’d seen his body told me that he’d been shot in the back. That night, I discovered his worn copy of Master Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō tucked inside my duffel. I lie here and long for the hot tears I used to cry, but my heart is frozen. I am frozen, inside and out. I have ceased to feel. Even the Marquis’s blows have no effect and fail to move me to anger. They are like torpedoes, missing their mark. At one point in my life, I learned how to think. I used to know how to feel. In war, these are lessons best forgotten.

  6.

  During your visit, Maman, I was planning to find a way to slip these pages to you, but your shocked expression when you laid eyes upon my face caused me to change my mind. I lied to you and told you that the bruises were due to a routine training accident. I do not think you believed me, but in that moment, my lie made it impossible to follow through with my plan to slip you this diary, containing as it does such lengthy and self-indulgent accounts of what are the routine and quite banal cruelties of military life. So as a result of my lack of self-restraint and mental training, here I am once again, writing alone by the light of the moon. I do not regret my lie, however. I would do anything to spare you more grief.

  And in fact, my feelings toward the Marquis have begun to transform. At first, when he beat me, I was afraid. I do not mind admitting this. How could I not be? I had never been beaten before! Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in the world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I’m complaining, but I’m not! You mustn’t think I blame you. I’m afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you r
aised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you’ve suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby.

  There, now I have spoiled this page with my tears so I can barely make out the words. Paper is precious, although these words are hardly worth the paper or the ink required to write them.

  Where was I? Oh, yes. I was telling you about the transformation of my feelings toward F—. After the first few weeks of punishment and training, I began to notice that my initial fear and self-pity were transforming into resentment, and then from resentment into rage. When he called my name, instead of anxiety, a boiling excitement shot through my body like a drug, and I worked to keep my gaze lowered, certain that if I looked at his despicable face, he would see the white-hot fire of rage in mine. My anger frightened me more than my fear once had.

  But recently, my feelings have changed once again. Last week, he called me out to correct me for some small infraction—perhaps I dropped a grain of rice when I served him, or left a speck of dust on his shoe, or maybe he’d just suffered indigestion or a poor night’s sleep. I don’t remember, but he ordered me to kneel on the floor with my hands tucked beneath my thighs, and he began to beat me with his belt across my face and body.

  Normally, I would keep my eyes downturned, staring fixedly at a point on the floor until my eyes would swell or fill with blood and I could no longer see, but that day, for some reason, I raised my gaze. I looked F— straight in the eye, which is against the rules, for we are never to make eye contact with a superior, and when I did, oddly, I felt my heart soften. I know it sounds strange, but that’s what it felt like. For the first time, I noticed the fever in his narrow-set eyes and the greasy sweat upon his brow, and I was filled with pity, and even after a dozen blows, I could forgive him sincerely. Of course, this was not a good strategy, since my steady gaze and disobedience made him even angrier, and twelve blows turned to twenty and then thirty. When I lost consciousness, I also lost count. Eventually the beating must have come to an end. Someone must have carried me back to the barracks and covered me with a blanket. When I woke, my body must have hurt, but I couldn’t feel the pain. Instead, I was enveloped in a warm sensation of peace, which comes from the knowledge of inner power.

  This, I think, was the source of the smile I remember seeing on K’s face when he was being beaten, before I stepped in to take his punishment for him. He could tolerate his own pain, but mine, taken on his behalf, was more than he could bear. It still torments me to imagine that I was the one responsible for his death, but in this tangled world of cause and effect, it is impossible to know.

  Since then, although there have been one or two punitive sessions, it seems that F— has grown bored with me, too, or perhaps he is scared. It might be my imagination, but his heart just doesn’t seem to be in it anymore.

  Should I be grateful to him? Having lost count of the blows I have received, I no longer care to return them. Perhaps this means I have outgrown this childishness. Perhaps I have graduated and am finally a man.

  7.

  August 3, 1944—Here is what I could not say in my letter. Rumors abound, Maman. The war is not going well. Our troops have withdrawn from northern Burma, and American forces have landed on Guam. If this continues, a U.S. invasion of Japan may follow, and our deployment will be the last attempt to stem the tide. I was deeply disturbed to read your account of the visit from the military police, and I fear you may be targeted because of your political activities. I beg you to be careful. I wish you would reconsider taking my sisters and evacuating to the countryside.

  8.

  I have written to you of my decision to die. Here is what I did not tell you. On either side of me, my comrades sigh and groan, restless in their sleep, and outside the insects cry, but the ticking of the clock is the only sound I am able to hear now. Second by second, minute by minute . . . tick, tick, tick . . . the small, dry sounds fill every crevice of silence. I write this in the shadows. I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time, marching toward my death.

  If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their torturous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But no, there is no use, no way of stopping time, and so I lie here, paralyzed, listening to the last moments of my life tick by.

  I don’t want to die, Maman! I don’t want to die!

  I don’t want to die.

  ❖

  I’m sorry. I was just talking to the moon.

  ❖

  Silly. The amount of ink I waste on foolish outpourings, smashing clocks in my mind, crying out in my imagination. Forget the clock. It has no power over time, but words do, and now I am tempted to rip up these pages. Is this how I want to be remembered? By these words? By you?

  But no, I will leave them for now, since you will never see them. I write them for my own benefit, to conjure you in my mind. They are meant only for me.

  “To study the Way is to study the self,” Dōgen said. I have vowed to sit zazen and study my thoughts and feelings meticulously, the way a scientist would dissect a cadaver, in order to improve myself as much as I can in the few short weeks I have left. I have vowed to reveal myself to you, even if you never read this. Ripping up the pages will not excise the cowardice from my heart any more than ripping the hands from a clock face will stop time.

  Really, I am one of the lucky ones. I have been educated and my mind has been trained. I have the capacity to think things through.

  “To philosophize is to learn to die.”

  So wrote Montaigne, paraphrasing Cicero, although the thought, of course, was not a new one, going back at least as far as Socrates in the West, and the Buddha in the East . . . although certainly the notion of what it meant “to philosophize” differed.

  “To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all the myriad things.”

  ❖

  I mentioned to you in a letter my fanciful thoughts about Miyazawa’s tale of the Crow Wars, and now I feel very silly indeed. I am no Crow Captain, taking to wing to do battle! But the truth is, I cannot deny my love of flying. And foolish as it might seem, the tale remained in my mind, and later on, I found myself recalling the scene where the Crow Captain is burying his dead enemy and he prays to the stars. Do you remember the passage? It goes something like this:

  Blessed Stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate. Were such a thing to come about, I would not complain even if my body were torn to pieces again and again.

  These beautiful words I believe are true and, now that I know I will sortie, they have such poignant meaning for me. Recalling this passage during dinner brought tears to my eyes. Unfortunately, as I was brushing them away, I dropped a bowl of pickles onto the floor. My new rank, however, seems to protect me from scolding, and the Marquis just looks the other way.

  9.

  Time is so interesting to me now that I have so little of it. I sit zazen, or run the juzu through my fingers, counting with beads and breath the moments until my death. Somewhere Dōgen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don’t remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every single one will be clear and pure and discernible. At the moment of my death, I look forward at last to being fu
lly aware and alive.

  Dōgen also wrote that a single moment is all we need to establish our human will and attain truth. I never understood this before, because my understanding of time was murky and imprecise, but now that my death is imminent, I can appreciate his meaning. Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.

  When I think of this, I am both cheered and saddened. Cheered at the thought of the many instants that arise and are available to do good in the world. Saddened by all the misspent moments that have piled on top of each other and led us to this war.

  In the end, then, what volition will arise in me? Will I bravely hold my plane’s course steady, knowing that at the moment of contact my body will explode in a ball of flames and kill so many of my so-called enemy, whom I have never met and whom I cannot hate? Or will cowardice (or my better human nature) rally one last time, just long enough to nudge my hand on the control stick and turn my plane off course, so that by choosing to end my life in watery disgrace rather than inflamed heroics, I will at the very same instant forever alter the fate of those enemy troops on the battleship, as well as their mothers and sisters and brothers and wives and children?

  And in that same fraction of time, that minuscule movement of my hand through space will determine the fates of all the Japanese soldiers and citizens that these same Americans (enemies, whose lives I save) may live to kill. And so on and so on, until you could even say that the very outcome of this war will be decided by a moment and a millimeter, representing the outward manifestation of my will. But how am I to know?