A Dark Night's Passing

by Naoya Shiga

  The two men went back to the house and waited upstairs for the things to arrive from the hospital. The baby continued to cry endlessly downstairs.

  Overcoming his dread of what he might be told, Kensaku finally said, “What do you think?”

  “It would have been easier if the baby had been a year old. But the infection is still at an early stage, and we may be able to do something about it.”

  Even for adults, the doctor explained, erysipelas was a rather serious disease, and with an infant, it was very much a matter of whether or not his constitution could withstand for long the struggle against the infection. He must therefore get his nourishment, and what had to be avoided at all costs was the stopping of the mother’s milk. It would be good if Naoko could be put in a part of the house where she could not hear the baby crying. “I don’t particularly like the idea of your wife’s being moved about so soon after the delivery, but I’m afraid that her milk will soon stop if she has to go on listening to that crying. Of course being separated from the baby isn’t going to prevent her from worrying, but her state of mind will depend to a great extent on how you yourself handle the situation. You must be extremely tactful, and do everything you can to reassure her that the baby is in good hands and doing well. Otherwise her milk will undoubtedly stop.”

  “I understand,” said Kensaku, but with little conviction. He believed neither that Naoko could be appeased nor that the baby’s infection could be checked; nor, indeed, that the doctor himself had any real hope. Dejectedly he asked, “But isn’t erysipelas in an infant normally thought to be fatal?”

  “No, that is not so. I grant that it’s a very serious disease. And if it turns into cellulitis and pyemia, then there’s nothing we can do. But I’ll do what I can to prevent it from getting to that point.” Kensaku lowered his head a little and said nothing. “You see,” the doctor said, “the purpose of the injection is to anticipate the spreading of the infection, and by injecting certain strategic places one hopes to contain it. If that works, then it might turn out to be not too serious.”

  “The baby’s incessant crying—does it mean that he’s in pain?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Is there no way of lessening his pain?”

  “That would be difficult.”

  The man from the hospital arrived. Kneeling on one knee on the verandah, the doctor disinfected his syringe. “Please put a solution of this mercury chloride in a basin,” he said to the nurse. “And you, too, must wash your hands in it afterward.”

  After he had given the injection he began to rub the ichthyol, left in its thick state, on the baby’s body, moving gradually from the periphery to the center. As he did so he explained the technique to the nurse. The baby continued to cry.

  “I just told your husband,” he said to Naoko as he washed his hands in the disinfectant, “that unless the baby is fully nourished, he’ll succumb to the infection. So please try to relax as much as possible so that your milk won’t stop. It’s very important. Remember, we were lucky to be able to start our treatment so soon, and even though the infection may spread a little, I’m convinced that we’ll be able to stop it. Do you understand me?”

  Naoko nodded several times like a child. Kensaku said, “And we’re going to move your bed into the morning room. You come to this room only when the baby needs to be fed, all right?”

  “Yes,” she said almost in a whisper, then burst out crying.

  The doctor left soon afterward.

  “You must keep a firm grip on yourself,” Kensaku said. “What good will worrying do? There’s nothing you can do for the baby, except to see that he gets enough milk from you. So try to be as relaxed as you can, and stop worrying.”

  Naoko turned her swollen eyes toward Kensaku and glared at him. “That’s quite an order you’re giving me.”

  “Maybe so,” said Kensaku sharply, losing control of himself, “but it would be most unfortunate if you didn’t do as I asked.”

  Silently Naoko lowered her eyes. Kensaku was of course irritable, not having had any sleep the night before. But he was filled with anger too, anger at this misfortune that had suddenly befallen them. “I’m not a fool you know,” he said. “I’m perfectly aware that to tell a mother not to worry over her sick baby is unreasonable. I say what I say because it has to be said. Do you want your milk to stop?”

  “Please, don’t say any more. I know the situation as well as you do. You see, we had a neighbor whose child died from erysipelas. How can I not think of that? But I promise, I’ll try not to worry, I’ll try to forget he’s ill. And I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did. It’s not easy for you either.”

  “That’s all right. But tell me, when was it that your neighbor’s child died?”

  “Four or five years ago.”

  “Oh, well, the injection that Dr. K used today wasn’t available then. You know, there’s been a lot of progress in medicine in the last few years. And don’t forget what Dr. K said—thanks to the early diagnosis, the baby will most likely be all right. Just keep on remembering that.”

  “I will.”

  “And we are fortunate, don’t you think, in having a nurse as good as Miss Hayashi?”

  “Yes, we are. I know she’ll take good care of our baby.”

  Hearing someone come into the house, Kensaku went out to the front hall. The baby was asleep at the time, and the nurse had got there before him. By the doorway stood the local doctor, already wilting before the harsh, unforgiving nurse. Even the night before she had made quite clear by her manner that she had little respect for him, but now she was being openly antagonistic. What the baby had, she was saying, was erysipelas, not indigestion, and to have kept him away from his mother’s milk was the worst possible thing they could have done.

  The little doctor’s eyes darted about as though in search of a hole he might sink into. “Oh, really, really—I’m awfully sorry to hear that.” He then turned to Kensaku and said embarrassedly, “I had a call to make near here, so I thought I’d drop in and ask how the baby was doing.”

  Kensaku felt sorry for the doctor. Besides, he might be useful in the future when some elementary medical care was needed. “Since you’re here, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming in to look at the baby?”

  “No, no, Dr. K’s diagnosis needs no confirmation from me. Well, I must be going. I hope the baby will get better soon.” So saying the little doctor scurried out of the house.

  19

  His brow puckered, his tiny lips quivering, the baby continued to cry almost without cease. Kensaku and Naoko were pierced to the heart by the crying; and even when it stopped, it continued to echo in their ears. When sometimes Kensaku was walking outside, well beyond earshot of the cry, he would suddenly hear it. Sometimes, inside the house, when the cry seemed to become even more desperate than ever, Kensaku would find himself saying aloud, “Oh, what are we to do, what are we to do!” There was nothing they could do.

  Gradually the crying got weaker and weaker, until it became inaudible and only the face cried. For the poor baby, the inability to cry aloud meant that he had been deprived of one of two means of expressing his agony; but for the others, the silence was a reprieve.

  Fortunately, Naoko’s milk did not stop; and despite his suffering, the baby had a surprisingly good appetite. On this, then, they rested their hope. But before two weeks had passed, the baby developed cellulitis.

  Naoko’s mother, who had in the meantime come to stay with them, kept on insisting that the willow tree by the back door had been planted in a very unlucky position—“the willow at the demon’s gate,” she called it—and that it should be put elsewhere. Kensaku was at first not inclined to give in too easily to such superstition, but was finally persuaded.

  What had been worrying him more was the fact that on the evening of the very day his child was born, he had kept his appointment with Suematsu and Mizutani to attend a recital being held at the Young Men’s Hall in Sanjo, and there had heard Schubert’s “Erlkönig.”
Had he known that this piece was being performed, he would probably not have gone. And as he listened to the song about the child who was taken by the demon of death on a stormy night, he could not help thinking what an inauspicious thing it was for him to hear on the day of his child’s birth.

  It was the main item on the program, and was sung by a young contralto. Kensaku listened to the music at first with indifference, then with an increasing sense of animosity and repugnance. It was all too obvious, he thought, much too cheap. The only aspect of the performance that elicited any response from him was the literary content. Why not, then, he asked himself, read the original work and leave it at that? All Schubert had done was to exaggerate and make more crude what was already a little too theatrical as literature. Surely, music had a nobler mission than that?

  And so even Goethe’s work did not impress him. He did not think it a serious treatment of death; rather, it seemed to him like a drawn-out rendering of a clever notion. Goethe must have been relatively young when he wrote it, Kensaku decided; he simply could not respect it as he could, say, Maeterlinck’s “La Morte de Tintagiles.” They were in Teramachi, on their way home, when Mizutani said with emotion, “What a marvellous piece ‘Erlkönig’ is!”

  “Yes, it is,” said Suematsu. He could not play any music, but he was fond of it and knew a great deal about it. To Kensaku who was silent he said, “I think that it’s the best thing Schubert wrote.” Kensaku gave no reply. He didn’t know enough about music to want to express openly unqualified opinions about it. Surreptitiously he pulled out the crumpled program from the pocket of his Inverness cape, and let it drop to the ground—rather in the manner of someone trying to shake off a curse.

  Since that night he had tried not to think about the recital. It was not worth worrying about, he told himself; besides, what good would it do to worry about it anyway? Of course he never mentioned it to Naoko. And if his child had not become so desperately ill, he would never have started wondering again if hearing “Erlkönig” that night had not been a bad omen.

  Fearing contagion, they were all careful to disinfect their hands in the solution of mercury chloride. One beautiful morning Kensaku and his mother-in-law were having breakfast in the morning room. It was nursing time, and Naoko had just left them to go to the baby’s room by way of the verandah. She walked quietly, trailing the skirt of her night kimono along the wooden floor.

  “No, Bell, no!” Kensaku heard her cry out.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Please come here, Bell is trying to drink the disinfectant.”

  Kensaku stepped off the verandah, put on his clogs, and went into the garden. There he found Bell, the puppy that the old janitor had found for them, running about happily.

  “He was about to drink that,” Naoko said, pointing to the basin lying on the stone step by the verandah. It had been put there to be emptied out and refilled.

  “He wouldn’t do a silly thing like that,” Kensaku said. “He was just sniffing at it, I’m sure.”

  “But he really was about to drink it, I thought. It would kill him if he did.”

  The puppy was not theirs any more. When it was learned that Naoko was pregnant they had given him away, together with the kennel, to a neighbor living two houses away. It would not be a good thing, they had been persuaded, to have a puppy and a baby in the same house. He had continued to come to their house to play, however, and seemed to think he had two homes.

  Miss Hayashi appeared. Without a word, and looking cross, she picked up the basin and marched away toward the kitchen.

  Kensaku had come to place great trust in this strong-willed and possibly short-tempered nurse. She was utterly unyielding in her concern for the baby’s welfare, and there were times when Kensaku would marvel at her tenacity, and wonder how much longer she could possibly continue to demand so much of herself. Mostly for her sake, then, Kensaku had decided to employ another nurse. But Miss Hayashi was far from grateful. Disapproving of the new nurse’s handling of the baby, she worked as hard as ever, never resting even when her colleague was supposed to be in charge. And when the new nurse had had to go home with a cold, she had immediately come to Kensaku and said, “If it was for my sake that you hired her, then please don’t ask her back. Of course it would be a different matter if you thought I wasn’t doing enough.”

  But it would be a terrible thing for the baby, Kensaku had said, if Miss Hayashi were to collapse from exhaustion; she would be irreplaceable. Never fear, had been her reply, she would never collapse.

  Under the present circumstances, what was required of Naoko was that she should be the provider of milk and nothing more; so that only at nursing time was she allowed to be with the baby. But, Kensaku could not help feeling, even a baby so young must need a mother’s love; and it was this need, he was convinced, that no nurse other than Miss Hayashi could ever satisfy. At any rate, he was grateful to her because what she gave to the baby was much more than the care of a competent nurse.

  The baby’s condition became more and more hopeless. His entire back was now red and swollen, filled with pulsating pus. Surgery now being the only recourse, Dr. K brought a surgeon from the same hospital with him. It was a chancy operation, the surgeon said, and he refused to make any promises. Kensaku was aware that without the operation, the baby was doomed; and he thought he knew, too, that even if the baby were to survive the operation, his chances of recovery later would be very poor, far less than even. Could he dare to hope, Kensaku wondered, that the baby had as much as one chance in ten?

  Kensaku sat beside Dr. K, helping him prepare the saline injection. But he was not going to stay to watch the operation. He was too frightened. “Would you mind if I left?”

  “Not at all,” said Dr. K.

  Kensaku went outside into the garden. The young surgeon in his white gown was on the verandah, energetically scrubbing his hands with brush and soap. When he had gone into the baby’s room, Kensaku, too, went back into the house to join Naoko. “Aren’t you going to stay with him?” she asked sharply.

  Kensaku grimaced and shook his head. “I just couldn’t.”

  “Poor baby, you’ve deserted him.”

  “Dr. K said it would be all right for me to leave.”

  “I don’t care what he said, we can’t leave our baby all alone without any of his kin beside him. Mother, will you please go?”

  “Yes,” her mother said, and left.

  Kensaku went out into the garden again, and hung about outside the baby’s room. He heard low voices behind the closed door, and the occasional sound of something or other being moved. The baby was utterly silent, having lost his voice long ago. A new fear assailed Kensaku: might the baby be already dead? Unable to stay still, he paced up and down the garden. Bell, in a frolicsome mood, kept jumping at his ankles.

  The door slid open, and Miss Hayashi looked out. Her tension made her seem more stern than ever. Seeing Kensaku she said to him, “He needs milk, so please tell madame,” and promptly withdrew. He’s come through, thought Kensaku as he hurried to Naoko’s room.

  “Quickly, Naoko, he needs milk.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Naoko rushed out of the room. A moment later, Kensaku espied Miss Hayashi walking quickly toward the bathroom with a basin under her arm. It was filled with blood-stained cotton and gauze, and she carried it as unobtrusively as she could.

  By the time Kensaku went into the baby’s room it had been completely tidied up. Naoko sat beside Dr. K, holding back her tears as she watched him administer oxygen to the baby.

  Without looking up Dr. K said, “There was an enormous amount of pus.” Kensaku said nothing. “Thanks to the injection and the oxygen, he managed to pull through. He did very well, I must say.”

  Kensaku sat down and relieved the doctor of the inhaler. The baby was in a deep, exhausted sleep, his brow puckered in a grimace. His cheeks were sunken, making the head above look unusually large. His was truly an old man’s
face. Suddenly, with his eyes still shut, he opened his mouth wide. His face was now a mass of wrinkles. He was trying to cry, to express his pain, but the sound he made was so feeble, it could hardly be called crying. As he looked at him, Kensaku could not make himself believe that there was any hope at all. What was strange was that this baby, barely alive, was still able to respond when Naoko brought her nipple to his mouth. He moved his head quickly, put his lips around the nipple, and began to suck. But for all his will to live, the effort did not last long; and very soon, before he had had enough, he was asleep again.

  After the operation it was the surgeon, and not Dr. K, who came to their house every day to attend to the baby. And always, when he took the day-old bandage off, it was soaked with blood and pus. The wound was no bigger than the open palm of an adult’s hand, but it covered nearly all of the baby’s back. Eventually parts of his backbone began to show here and there. To Kensaku, it was incredible that the child should still be alive. At times he would stop breathing altogether. They would immediately give him a camphor injection and oxygen, and he would revive. He was to be given a prescribed amount of oxygen daily as a matter of course, but sometimes, when such instances of emergency occurred too frequently, they would run out of their oxygen supply and have to send a rickshaw man to the hospital in the middle of the night to get more. The uneasiness at such times, as they waited for the man to return with the oxygen, was unbearable. Night was always the worst time for them, whether or not such emergencies occurred. And it was with immense relief that they would see the sky lighten and hear the first chatter of the sparrows. They would watch the gentle light of the early morning sun gradually approach the verandah, grateful that yet another night had passed.

  There was always the smell of camphor and oxygen in the baby’s room; and no matter where they went, the smell stayed with them.