Death by Water Read online

  “Needless to say, that got my hackles up. So I told him, in no uncertain terms: ‘The line in the Hibari song is like the flowing of water, while this is like the river current. My mother doesn’t plagiarize!’ Then I went on to explain that the people around these parts speak of being ‘taken by the current’ when someone either drowns in the river or else is saved after being carried downstream in a flood. The people borne away by the current—obviously, the drowned, but even those who are rescued from the rushing waters—always seem to end up leaving the village, so the phrase has become a metaphor for going away and not returning, except maybe to visit once in a blue moon. And there’s the implied dig about certain people who go off to Tokyo to study and then stay there, almost as if the river had carried them away, even though they solemnly promised to return to the village someday … well, you know better than anyone that there’s nothing obscure about that. I explained those nuances to the adviser, and when I mentioned that I realized the first line of the poem might be difficult for an outsider to understand, he got all arrogant and defensive (I mean, he’s a university professor, right?) and informed me that he is the author of several scholarly books about the folklore and history of this area. He never did accept my interpretation, but in the end I made sure the stone was carved with the words you sent, exactly as you wrote them.”

  Asa took a breath, then continued: “I really have my doubts about whether the professor even understood the first line. I mean, he couldn’t be expected to know that in our house your childhood nickname was Kogii, or that you were sharing your life in those days with a supernatural alter ego who was also called Kogii. Only someone who was intimately familiar with your work would be aware of such details. On the other hand, as you’re well aware, when we talk about sending someone up into the forest it’s usually a metaphor for dying, but it can also refer to holding a memorial service for someone who has passed away. Surely the professor would have discovered that through his research, at least.”

  “You don’t know exactly where Father’s body washed up when it was carried downstream from here, do you?” I asked. “You did say that the first memory of your childhood was of the hours just after his body was brought back to our house, but …”

  “I remember clearly that you told me to check around the futon where our dead father was laid out, to see if a dead child was lying nearby. Twenty-some years later, when I heard you were having a strange recurrent dream, it sounded like a joke at first, but then I realized it could also be the unbearably sad remembrance of something that really did happen. And I couldn’t help wondering whether, just maybe, the dream might be rooted in the fact that you ran away from the boat that took our father to his watery grave. But anyhow,” Asa continued, “I was walking around and around the dead person, lying on the tatami with a cloth over his face. At one point I stumbled and fell, and when I reached out to brace myself I touched his thick, wet hair with my outstretched hand. I remember that creepy sensation vividly, so I believe you when you say Father drowned after being carried away by the current, even though Mother would never talk about it.”

  “Do you remember when I commuted for a year to the new postwar high school near here, before our village was incorporated?” I said. “One day during art period, we went to that shoal to do some plein air sketching. The teacher had set up his easel facing a spot on the edge of the sandbank where there was a thick stand of pussy willows, and he was working on an oil painting. As I was wandering aimlessly about, he called me over and said, ‘I’ve heard this spot has been known for years as the place where Mr. Choko washed ashore. Does that have something to do with your family, by any chance?’

  “Of course, we were all in deep denial about the circumstances behind Father’s drowning, but in the outside world, everyone seemed to know about it. I think that probably goes a long way toward explaining how Mother happened to write the words ‘river current’ in the little poem on the stone.”

  Walking along under a canopied row of cherry trees so heavily overgrown that hardly any light fell on the road (I’d heard they were already slated for clear-cutting), we returned to the car. As we drove the twenty-plus minutes to our hometown—the picturesque mountain valley deep in a forest, where we both grew up—Asa spoke about some things she had evidently been mulling over for quite a while.

  “Listen, Kogii,” she said, “I was very happy when you said you’d be coming to stay for a while in the Forest House. It will be good for you to get some closure with the red leather trunk, after all these years, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking, Yep, my big brother is definitely getting old. One thing I’ve noticed about aging is that it gives rise to a desire to get things settled. And at this stage, it’s only natural to start having thoughts about death.

  “Needless to say, I’m aging right along with you, and that’s why I think about these things. But really, isn’t the relevant question what happens between now and then? I mean, even if you’ve resigned yourself to the inevitability of death, you still have to deal with the intervening time until the day arrives. Death is going to find us all, no matter what, but we still have to take active responsibility for what remains of our lives.

  “Take the poem our mother wrote—let’s just call it a haiku, shall we? I really think those lines were meant as a message from her to you, to be read when you eventually came home and saw the commemorative stone: You didn’t get Kogii ready to go up into the forest / And like the river current, you won’t return home.

  “As a kind of counterpoint, in the three lines you contributed you made it clear you won’t be coming back here. You’re up there in Tokyo, pondering various things—you were echoing the quote from Eliot about ‘an old man in a dry month,’ right? And that’s fine, but compared with the two lines Mother wrote your response strikes me as much more blasé, which is exactly what I would have expected from you.

  “As for our mother, when she wrote those lines she was still seeing you as Kogii, and she was concerned that you weren’t doing anything to prepare to send Akari up into the forest, since there’s a good chance he won’t live as long as you do. But I think part of your reason for wanting to come back down here for a while is a way of taking the first step toward making the necessary preparations to send Akari (and, eventually, yourself) up into the forest—with every bit of metaphorical subtext the phrase carries in local lore.”

  After her long monologue, Asa drove in silence for several miles, and then stopped on the side of the road. “Just walk up this path—it’s really more like a trail for wild animals—and you’ll end up at the Forest House. You haven’t forgotten the shortcut, have you? We’re running late today, so I’m going to let you off here and go straight home. After I’ve had a little rest I’ll come back with some dinner for you. I’ll drop off your luggage then, too.

  “Oh, and about Unaiko, the young woman you met in Tokyo? She’ll be dropping by the Forest House tomorrow with Masao Anai, who as I mentioned is the leader of the theater group. (You probably know he was a pupil of Goro Hanawa’s, although ‘disciple’ might be a better word.) Unaiko said that while you’re staying there they would like to talk to you about a number of things—I gather she just hinted at this when you spoke in Tokyo. Tomorrow some of the troupe’s younger members will be stopping by to install the commemorative stone, and after that’s done Masao and Unaiko are hoping to talk to you about your forthcoming collaboration. They’re really looking forward to this, so please be on your best behavior!”

  2

  Early the next morning Asa, who was always very well organized, dispatched a couple of the younger members of the theater group to pick up the stone. The back garden was planted with flowering dogwood and a maple tree of the variety known as Big Sake Cup, which Chikashi had brought from her garden in Tokyo along with a pomegranate tree she’d been given by her mother-in-law (that is, my mother), and these had grown in a way that was beautifully proportional with the intimate scale of the garden. I agreed with Asa that insta
lling the big stone in front of the trees, facing the house, was a perfect plan.

  The members of the Caveman Group arrived in a minivan with the name of their theater troupe emblazoned on the side. (Goro Hanawa had evidently written it out for them, and his calligraphy had been professionally enlarged and painted on their car.) As we stood in the front garden—which had simply been carved out of the overhanging rock and spread with gravel—Asa, who had hitched a ride with the group, introduced me to Masao Anai. I remembered having seen him before; he was a man in his forties, very simply dressed, with the look of someone who had been immersed in the theater world for a long time. Next to him, standing up very straight, wearing casual work clothes and a big smile, was the young woman I had met in Tokyo. Asa knew all about our stranger-than-fiction encounter, but she didn’t mention it. She simply said, “I’d like you to meet Masao Anai and Unaiko.”

  After we had exchanged hurried greetings, Masao Anai sent the two apprentices to fetch the poetry stone, wrapped in an old blanket and tied with rope, from the back of the van. Then he led his young helpers to the back garden with their heavy burden, which they carried by balancing it on two sturdy wooden pallets.

  Unaiko had remained behind, and as I was thanking her again for coming to my rescue the other day in Tokyo, Asa interrupted. “You know, Chikashi had something to do with Unaiko’s adopted name,” she announced.

  Unaiko nodded. “They say the person who first started calling the leader of our troupe ‘the caveman’ was Goro Hanawa,” she said. “And I heard from Asa that your mother once said that her granddaughter, Maki, looked like a child from medieval times—an unaiko—with her unusual unai-style hairdo. (I gather it was a bob with bangs and a little ponytail sprouting on top.) And there I was, wearing my hair in a similar style. So I said, half joking, ‘Well, maybe I should change my name to Unaiko!’ And the younger folks thought it was a great idea, so the name sort of stuck. It was just a bonus that unai echoes our leader’s surname, Anai.”

  “I remember hearing that the first time Chikashi brought our children to this valley to meet my mother, our older daughter, Maki, was wearing her hair rather like Unaiko here (though Maki’s version was a bit more girlish), and my mother thought it looked wonderful,” I said.

  “Actually, I was standing right there when Chikashi and Mother were having that conversation,” Asa said. “Mother also mentioned an ancient ninth-century song that includes the term unaiko, and she even sang a few lines for us! It was lovely—all about summer rain and the cuckoo’s song and children running around wearing this same kind of retro-medieval hairstyle. Mother seemed very happy as she was singing those words, but of course she was already in high spirits because her grandchildren had come to visit.”

  Masao Anai had returned from the garden, so Asa took a minute to fill him in on what he had missed before continuing her story.

  “Anyhow,” she went on, “for the duration of their visit, everyone was calling little Maki ‘Unaiko.’ Years later, I told the story to this Unaiko, and the rest is history. Well then,” she added briskly, “shall we take a peek at how the young people are getting along in the garden?”

  But by the time we went into the dining room and peered out at the back garden through the big plate-glass window, the giant stone was already in place and the young workers, who were taking a short break, seemed to be anxiously gauging our reaction. I assured Asa that the placement was flawless, and she flashed an “A-OK” sign. As the young men headed around to the front of the house, she went out to meet them. The rest of us sat gazing at the garden, with everyone’s eyes seemingly focused on the poetic inscription carved into the stone.

  “Asa explained the significance of ‘the river current,’” Masao Anai said. Seeing his face in profile I could understand why Goro, who was always an extraordinarily perspicacious bestower of pet names and sobriquets, had dubbed him “the caveman.” While it had obviously started out as a clever play on the first element of Anai’s surname (in Japanese, ana can mean “cave,” “hole,” or “cavern”), the nickname was also a reaction to his distinctive physiognomy—especially the way his forehead sloped back from the sharply protuberant ridge of bone above his eyes, giving him an air of wild, primordial ruggedness. That sort of multilayered resonance was typical of Goro’s humor, and evidently “the caveman” had also struck Masao as a good name for his troupe.

  “Actually,” Masao went on, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the dramatic significance of the way the notional alter ego, Kogii, runs through your novels as a sort of supernatural leitmotif. Reading this poem, I can’t help thinking that the idea of being sent up into the forest without making preparations seems like a contradiction of the rules of the mythical world you so often evoke in your work. I mean, his childhood playmate, Kogii, was someone who originally came down from the forest and later flew back up into the woods on his own.”

  “You’re exactly right,” I said. “But when this poem mentions Kogii, it’s mainly talking about my earliest nickname. My mother uses the childhood name as a sort of verbal spear to ambush my adult self with a serious question about the preparations I’ve made for my own demise and for that of my son, Akari. So the meaning of her section of this poem is, essentially, that the most important thing I need to do in order to prepare for my own death is to get Akari ready for his trip to the forest, which may well precede mine.”

  Just then Asa reappeared in the dining room and spoke to Masao Anai. “The young guys are going to take the car and go for a drive around Mount Odami, and they’ll return in three hours or so,” she announced. “Your theater apprentices are really an impressive group, by the way. Not only were they completely willing to do some heavy lifting, but they also had to deal with the constraints of being at a stranger’s house … or at least in a stranger’s garden.”

  Masao acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow, then gestured toward his second-in-command. “Unaiko gets all the credit—she’s the one who oversees that aspect of their training,” he said.

  After the young men had departed Asa made some fresh coffee and Unaiko served it. As we were sitting around the table, Asa turned to me. “Masao was saying that during your stay here, his main objective—and that of his entire group—is to be of assistance any way they can, but they are also hoping you’ll be willing to help them with the play they’re putting together, based on your work,” she said. “I’ll let him fill you in on the details.”

  “Ah, well,” Anai demurred with a humorous shrug. “Asa makes us sound very noble and altruistic, but the truth is our motivations are purely selfish. Seriously, since we were already hard at work on a plan for a play that incorporated elements from your entire oeuvre, when Asa told us you were going to be spending time here it seemed like a gift from the gods. So one day when we were talking to her about the project, we asked whether there was any chance you might be willing to listen to what we’ve come up with so far, and she said, ‘I gather that while he’s down here my brother will try to synthesize all the work he’s done till now, so it shouldn’t be too hard to coordinate his project with yours.’ That arrangement seems to make sense, since we’ll both be creating retrospectives of a sort.

  “At some point we’d like to ask you to take a look at the treatment for our play-in-progress, but today I’m just going to talk about the general contours of how we’re trying to approach your work, if I may.

  “We’ve been extracting individual scenes from your novels and then converting them into dramatic form, one by one. We’ve barely begun to figure out how to make those vignettes flow as a whole, and since we have this rare opportunity to talk to you in person, we think it would add some depth if we could interview you and incorporate your comments into our play. Once we’ve accumulated a stash of interviews, we’ll find a way to fit them in. In the actual production we’ll dress someone up as you (it’ll be one of the actors from the Caveman Group, who will play other parts as well), and that person will be interviewed as an ongoing part of
the drama. As for the other characters who emerge from the stories you share in the interviews, they’ll be portrayed by a rotating cast of actors. That’s the method we’re planning to use to create a multidimensional narrative.

  “I have already created and performed a number of dramatic works based on your novels, but it’s my intention to make this current project a kind of summation of everything that’s gone before. With that in mind, I’m planning to turn your doppelgänger into the focal point. You might wonder how we’re going to portray such a singular character visually, but don’t worry—I already have something in mind. Once we start talking, I’m hoping our recorded conversations might be useful for you, too, while you’re working on your own project. (We heard from Asa that you’ll be sorting through your writings and combining them with some new material.) And if we can somehow help you, even just by providing some perspective on your previous work, it would be very satisfying for us.”

  When Masao Anai stopped speaking, Asa took the floor and addressed her remarks to me. “I did mention to our friends here that you were planning to try to integrate some of your earlier work with the materials in the trunk and then, I gathered, to combine all those elements in a new book, as a sort of last hurrah,” she explained. “You were saying you’d tried to reread your older works but somehow couldn’t get through them, and an idea occurred to me. What if you tried revisiting your previous novels as a joint endeavor with these folks? Masao and Unaiko have been approaching the same task in a very bold and innovative way.”

  I had to admit that I felt intrigued by the prospect of seeing my own books anew through the eyes of Masao Anai and his crew, and it struck me as an excellent way of getting a new perspective on my childhood alter ego, Kogii, who was still (quite literally) haunting my dreams.