by Kenzaburo Oe
At home my wife began drinking. Silent, ignoring both Takashi and myself, she sat perfectly upright facing the fireplace in the center of the room, slowly but surely sinking into intoxication. Caught between the inefficient lighting of that uneconomical house in the valley and the charcoal fire in the open hearth, she looked exactly the way she’d been that day when I first saw her drunk in the library. So much was clear, if only from the fact that I could read the whole of my own emotional experience that day in Takashi’s eyes now, as for the first time he watched her getting drunk in this fashion, and in the look of shock so unequivocal despite his feigned detachment. She’d been drunk in front of him many times since his return to Japan, but always within the family circle; it wasn’t a drunkenness that made one see in her eyes and on the very surface of her skin the entrance to that spiral staircase leading down to the terrifying darkness within. Fine, closely arrayed beads of sweat clung to her narrow forehead, to the shadowy places about her eyes, to the flared upper lip and to her neck. The fierce red of her eyes showed that she was already outside our field of gravity. Slowly but surely she was descending the winding stairs to those anxious depths reeking of crude whisky and sticky with sweat.
Since she showed absolutely no interest in her surroundings, Momoko, who had returned by now, was preparing the meal instead. Hoshio had dismantled the engine and brought it into the kitchen, where he was repairing it under the watchful eye of the four skinny children, surrounded by a faint smell of gasoline that hung about him like a transparent mist. Hoshio, at least, had succeeded with the children in converting dislike into respect. Even I, who had never seen such an industrious teen-ager, was obliged to lay aside my preconceptions. He seemed full of a new confidence since arriving in the village, so that something approaching the beauty of harmony had appeared on his comical features. My wife continued to drink in silence, while Takashi and I sprawled on the other side of the fireplace, listening to an old record from our dead sister’s collection on an ancient portable phonograph. Lipatti, playing a Chopin waltz in the last concert recording of his life. . . .
“The way she listened to the piano was quite unusual, you know,” said Takashi quietly in a gruff voice. “She didn’t miss a note. However fast Lipatti played, she caught every single sound that came from the piano. You even felt she was splitting up the harmonies and catching the individual notes. She once told me how many notes there were in this E-flat waltz. Like a fool, I wrote the figure in a small notebook, then lost it, but her ear was really rather special.” It occurred to me that this was the first voluntary mention of our sister I’d heard him make since her death.
“Was she able to count so high, then?” I asked.
“No. You see, she had a big sheet of paper covered all over with pencil dots, like tiny specks of dust. It was like a photograph of the Milky Way, only with all the heavenly bodies shown as black dots. The opus 18 waltz was all there. I spent ages calculating the figure from her diagram. But then I went and lost the result. It’s a pity, because I feel sure the number of pencil dots she made was accurate.” Then, unexpectedly making a conciliatory gesture toward me, he added, “Your wife seems rather special too.”
I remembered how he’d used the same expression of my friend who had painted his head crimson and hanged himself, and, profoundly moved, I put it together with what he’d just said. S too had been “rather special” : if Takashi meant it, then I had no further desire to attempt impertinent amendments of his dream memories. His words showed that he’d grasped the existence of something in the depths of all who had died—died in the grip of a fear they could communicate to no one else.
The Emperor of the Supermarkets
ONE clear, bitterly cold morning when the hand pump in the kitchen had frozen, we drew water from the outside well. With its heavy bucket on a rope, it stood in the long, narrow back garden, separated only by a small mulberry orchard from the densely shrubbed hillside that we’d once called “Sedawa.” Monopolizing the first bucketful of water, my brother washed at great length—his face, his neck, behind his ears even—then stripped to the waist and scrubbed relentlessly at his chest and shoulders. As I stood aimlessly by his side waiting for my turn with the bucket, I told myself that Takashi, who had hated the cold as a child, must have remodeled his character. His back which, doubtless consciously, was exposed to my gaze, bore livid scars where the tissues of skin and flesh had been broken down by blows from some blunt instrument. As I saw them now for the first time I felt something clutch at my stomach as though the sight had revived memories of pain borne by my own body.
I was still waiting for my turn when Momoko with the Sea Urchin in tow came through the kitchen and out into the back garden. Despite the bitter morning cold, the grotesque-featured youth wore only a pair of light blue jeans and an undershirt with sleeves so long that they half covered his fingers. He stood shivering uncontrollably with his great head hunched into his shoulders and made no move to speak to Takashi as long as I was there. He was pale, not only from the cold but as though exhausted from the very depths of his being.
In the end I gave up all idea of washing and went back to the fireplace—not that failure to wash my face bothered me particularly by now; my teeth, for one thing, hadn’t been brushed for several months and were as yellow as an animal’s. In my case, though, I hadn’t consciously remodeled my nature: my dead friend and the baby who had gone into the institution had bequeathed a new nature to me.
“Mitsu, do you think that young man doesn’t feel the cold?” my wife asked in a low voice so that Takashi and the others shouldn’t hear.
“He feels it all right. He’s shivering terribly. But he wants to impress on everyone that he’s an unusual, stoic type, so he refuses to wear an overcoat or jacket even in midwinter. That in itself mightn’t be enough to win people’s respect even here in the valley, but his whole appearance and the show he puts on of ignoring other people also help to set him apart.”
“If that’s enough to make someone the leader in a young people’s group, then it’s all rather primitive, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but in practice the kind of person who puts on such a naive show isn’t necessarily simple in his psychological makeup,” I said. “That’s what makes politics among the village kids so complex.”
Before long Takashi came back into the kitchen with the young man, walking by his side with an exaggerated air of friendliness. He then shook hands with a vigor that even a bystander could tell was meant to be encouraging, and watched as the other, who remained silent, took his leave. As the youth stepped across the threshold his broad face, seen in the sunlight, was graven with a harsh melancholy that took me aback.
“Is something wrong, Taka?” my wife asked in a timid voice, just as startled as I was. He didn’t reply directly, but came and stood by the fireplace with a towel round his neck like a boxer in training, the expression of his face torn between two fierce, conflicting emotions. It was as though he were struggling simultaneously with an extraordinary sense of the comic and shock at encountering something unspeakably depressing. Then, looking searchingly at my wife and me with eyes full of proud passion, he said in a loud voice :
“Either hunger or cold has killed off all the chickens, several thousand of them.” He gave a short laugh.
I said nothing, overwhelmed with the same sense of absurdity and horror at the idea of those thousands of unfortunate chickens all lying dead. Then, as my imagination extended to the spectacle of the Sea Urchin and his friends shivering ceaselessly even as they pretended indifference to the cold, the full horror of their plight aroused a sense of revulsion and distress in me.
“So they came to ask me to go and see the Emperor and discuss what to do with the dead chickens. I can’t leave them to their fate. I’m going into town.”
“The Emperor? Oh—you mean the owner of the supermarket chain. I don’t imagine even he can turn dead chickens to profit. Unless they make a hell of a lot of soup cubes.”
“Mos
t of the funds for keeping the chickens were provided by the Emperor. The young people’s group wanted to be independent of the supermarket, but obviously the need to buy feed and ship the eggs made it difficult to keep out the Emperor’s influence. Now that all the chickens have been wiped out, the loss to the young men’s group is a loss for the Emperor as well. So they’re looking to me to negotiate with him and forestall any charges of irresponsibility he might make against the group. Of course, they’re such a dumb crowd I wouldn’t mind betting that some of the more imaginative of them are still hoping he’ll think up some profitable way of disposing of the dead chickens.”
“It wouldn’t do for the valley folk to eat the dead chickens and get food poisoning or something.” I sighed, my sense of depression deepening.
“If the chickens froze to death with empty stomachs, they may well be every bit as sanitary as chemically grown frozen vegetables. In fact, I might get them to give me two or three of the least skinny ones in return for going to town, and use them to give Jin some protein. What do you think?”
“She eats almost no animal protein in spite of her morbid appetite,” my wife said. “It’s bad for her liver.”
Throughout their hasty breakfast Takashi held a detailed conversation with Hoshio concerning the time required for a round trip to the town in the young men’s van and the distance between places where gasoline supplies were available. Their dialogue went at a brisk pace. Hoshio’s knowledge of automobiles was practical and detailed; Takashi had only to put a question to get a reply that was concise and to the point. As Hoshio explained the shortcomings of the van’s engine, the likelihood of mechanical failure during the several hours’ drive through the forest became more and more apparent, and they finally decided that Hoshio should go into town with him.
“Hoshi’s an expert at repairing old crates” said Momoko. “With him along, you can drive any car any distance without worrying. The older the car the better he knows how it’s put together. He’ll be a real asset.” With this effort to be fair, she gave vent to a sigh full of childish envy: “Oh dear, I wonder what movies are on in the civilized world? I wonder if Brigitte Bardot’s still around?…”
“We’ll take you with us,” said Takashi. “These teen-age girls get too worked up about everything,” he added with a smile of frank sympathy at the joy apparent in Momoko’s whole body.
“Drive carefully, Taka,” my wife said. “There’s ice on the road through the forest.”
“OK. And I’ll be particularly careful on the way back, as I’ll be bringing half a dozen bottles of whisky, something a bit better than the stuff you get in the village. What about you, Mitsu? Is there anything you want done?”
“Nothing.”
“Mitsu’s past expecting anything,” mocked Takashi in revenge for my surliness, “either from others or from himself.”
Unerringly, he’d sensed the absence in me of any feeling of expectation. For all I knew, indeed, the signs that this feeling had deserted me might be apparent to anyone from my physical appearance alone.
“And some coffee, please, Taka,” put in my wife.
“I’ll bring a full load of supplies—I’ll get an advance on the storehouse from the Emperor. You two have a right to get some pleasure from that money.”
“If possible, I’d like a drip-type coffee maker and some fresh-ground coffee, Taka,” said my wife. She too was obviously beginning to hanker after the trip to town.
Finishing breakfast, Takashi and his bodyguards ran down in a group to the Citroen waiting in the space before the village office. My wife and I, interrupting our meal, watched them go from the front garden, standing on ground made treacherous by mounds of ice needles.
“Taka’s quickly making himself at home with the young men of the valley,” she said. “Not like you—you’re just the same here as you were shut up in your room in Tokyo.”
“Taka’s trying to put down roots again,” I replied. “I don’t seem to have any roots to put down.” The self-pity in my voice disgusted even me.
“Hoshi seems to think Taka’s getting too friendly with the young men,” she said.
“But he’s cooperating with Taka in working for their association, isn’t he?”
“He cooperates more or less enthusiastically with anything that Taka does. All the same, he seems to be secretly dissatisfied this time. I wonder if he’s jealous of Taka’s new friends.”
“If so, I expect he feels a kind of incestuous revulsion toward the other kids. After all, it’s only a short while since he was living on a farm himself. I imagine he knows the peasant type too well to have as much simple confidence in him as Taka. Taka’s completely forgotten almost everything about life here.”
“Do you feel the same way?” she inquired, but I didn’t reply.
The roar from the exhaust of the Citroen carrying Takashi and the others rose with undue commotion to the stone wall where we stood, then faded into the rectangle of sky bounded by the lofty forest, leaving multiple echoes crisscrossing throughout the valley. Then, as the car vanished with the same swiftness as its echo, a triangular banner of a strangely bright yellow floated up into the early morning air of a valley empty once more of all movement. It flew gaily from a flagpole on the saké storehouse belonging to the brewers—a family as old-established as our own and, with the Nedokoros, one of the only two to have their houses attacked in the farmers’ riot of 1860. The brewers had left the village by now; their storehouse had been bought up and one of its walls knocked out to make a supermarket.
“The flag has ‘3S2D’ embroidered on it,” I said, my interest aroused. “What the hell do you think that stands for?”
“ ‘Self-Service Discount Dynamic Store,’ of course. I saw it yesterday on an advertising leaflet that came with the local paper. I suppose the owner of the supermarket chain got hold of the idea during his tour of America. Anyway, even if it is Japanese English, I admire it, I think it’s a very fine, powerful phrase,” she said in a tone of voice that made me suspicious.
“I wonder how impressed you really are?” I said, carefully examining my imperfect memory of how the valley usually looked in order to determine whether the flag had been flying every day so far. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the banner before.”
“I expect they’ve put it up because there’s a sale today. Jin says that on sale days people come to shop there not only from the houses along the edge of the forest but from the next village too. They come by bus along the road by the river.”
“Anyway, the Emperor seems to have his wits about him,” I said, flinching at the sight of the triangular banner fluttering in a breeze that had just sprung up.
“Yes, doesn’t he?…” she said, but she was already preoccupied with a different idea. “Supposing,” she went on, “all the trees in this forest were damaged by the cold and rotted where they stood—I wonder how long the people in the hollow would be able to put up with the smell?”
I was about to respond by gazing at the forest round about us when some premonition prompted a show of disapproval and I remained looking at the ground, on which the ice needles had already begun to collapse. My frozen breath sank down toward them and hung there indeterminately, spreading out horizontally with an increasing sense of stagnation yet never finally disappearing. As I watched it I felt a memory reviving in me, a memory of the suffocating stench given off by the fleshy leaves of ornamental plants rotting from frostbite.
“Well, then,” I urged her with a shudder, “let’s finish breakfast in our own time.”
But as she turned and took a step forward, the ice needles gave way beneath her foot. She promptly lost her balance and fell, soiling her hands and knees in the frozen mud. Her sense of balance, in abeyance after a long night of inebriation, was liable to be upset periodically by any force acting on her, whether physical or psychological. At that particular moment, moreover, the renewed memory of that smell in her nostrils had probably upset her balance still further. She’d been brought d
own, in short, by the ghosts of some ornamental plants that had died at our home in Tokyo.
Ever since our marriage, she’d been cultivating rubber plants, monsteras, and various ferns and orchids in a small glass-walled conservatory that she’d made on the south side of our combined dining room and kitchen. In midwinter, whenever a cold wave was forecast, she would keep the gas fire on all night in the dining room and get up every hour to let the warm air into the conservatory. I suggested various compromises, such as leaving the partition between dining room and conservatory slightly open, or putting a charcoal burner in the conservatory, but she’d been too terrified of burglars and fires since childhood even to consider such suggestions. Thanks to this neurotic diligence, the conservatory was smothered from floor to low ceiling with a wild profusion of plants. But this winter it had been hard for her, drinking herself to sleep with whisky as she did every evening, to keep her mind on the conservatory all the time from late night until dawn. I was scared, too, at the idea of her handling the gas stove in the small hours when she was drunk. When the radio forecasts announced the imminent arrival of winter’s first cold wave, we waited for it in the same frame of mind as some puny tribe awaiting the approach of a mighty army.
Early one morning, after a night of cold that made it hard to sleep, I went into the dining room and peered into the conservatory through the glass door to find that the leaves of the plants were blotched with darkish patches. My eyes, even so, detected nothing particularly ominous about them; the leaves were all damaged, but they weren’t yet withered. Only when I opened the glass door and went in did I realize, with a severe shock, the true extent of the harm that had befallen our ornamental plants. I was knocked back by the overpowering, raw odor, like the reek of a dog’s slobbering mouth, that filled the place. Once the smell had seized hold of my mind, the rubber plants and monsteras on either side, all mottled in differing shades of dingy green, began to look like tall giants dying where they stood, and the murky mass of broad-leaved orchids crouched at my feet like a sick animal. My spirits failed me. Doing nothing more, I returned to the bedroom and went to sleep, still haunted by the smell that seemed somehow to have seeped into every pore of my body. Getting up sometime before noon, I found my wife eating a late breakfast in silence, but the familiar doggy odor emanating from her immediately evoked the minutes I’d spent in the conservatory while she lay unconscious. Of all the portents of ruin that had shown themselves in our household since my wife had first started to drift in the lower depths of intoxication, none had impinged on us with such effrontery and such raw immediacy. Overcoming my repugnance, I took another look through the glass door and found that under the strong sunlight the blackish marks had already spread all over the foliage, and withered leaves were dangling from their stems like hands from broken wrists. It was only too obvious that the plants were dying.
