A Quiet Life Read online

  The sewer servicemen seemed to have formidable trouble, too. But soon, beneath the dirt, Father found one more cover beyond the one he had thought was the last of the series. Under this cover was a sievelike device that prevented all solid waste from entering the long pipe. This screen had caused the drainpipe to become mercilessly clogged, but the problem was solved once all the globs blocking the waterway were scooped out-Then the sewer service owner, who at first seemed to have no confidence, began to lecture Father to clean everything regularly. Father became despondent, for he had to admit failure. What he had believed to be cover number n was in fact n–1. From the start, he should have realized it was strange when his tool hit something at the far end of the pipe. After all. it would have been a simple matter of checking to see if there was another cover hidden under the dirt.

  “After the sewer-cleaning incident,” Mother wrote, “Papa kept grumbling his remorse for quite some time. ‘When the tool hit the end, I should have pulled it out of the pipe and stretched it out on the ground, and then poked along the pipe's perimeters with a metal bar. And why didn't it occur to me that there could have been another cover…?’ Inadvertently, I told him rather brusquely to brood over the matter no more, since practiced hands had already taken care of it. Then Papa moaned out loud. ‘What better chance was there for a family patriarch to prove himself! And I blew it.’ This startled me.

  “This time, too, I don't think I can do anything to turn Papa's mind away from what he believes is his ‘pinch.’ All I can do is stay by his side. Even though, as he admits, his lecturing on faith was the trigger, I don't think he himself knows exactly why everything is piling up on him now and causing him to be so despondent. Nothing about his present ‘pinch’ is as simple as the sewer-cleaning incident. He has even gone so far as to say that his accumulated evils have caused it. So, Ma-chan, while I know we're causing you a lot of trouble, I'd like to stay at Papa's side and look after him.”

  I often dream about things that adhere to day-to-day affairs, with only slight distortions. I'm not the kind of person who dreams truly dreamlike dreams: yet the night I read Mother's letter, I did have an elaborate one, though I can't say whether the letter had anything to do with it. Anyway, in the dream, not only had Father written a play—something he has never ventured to do in real life—but he was also on the stage where all this was taking place! Even Mother was there! While doubting that any of this was possible, since neither of them has had any training in acting, and while wondering when they had returned from California. I depart for the theater with Eeyore. …

  Both Mother and Father are actually on stage, but I can't hear them well. The play has just begun, so Eeyore and I try to move up to a front seat, when a man with a PRESS armband appears and tries to exclude us, saying, “You belong in the cheapest seats, so you can't come here!” That's the dream I had. I had never encountered this man with the PRESS band in real life, and even if I had, we had probably just passed by each other once or twice. Even so, I thought I definitely knew the man, but when I awoke, I just couldn't remember who he was. …

  At breakfast I told O-chan about the dream, and he said, “Well, I could call this a form of amateur psychology, but it's really only a level of discourse that could reveal as much about me as it does about anything else. But when you see a discomforting, disgusting dream, the guy who appears in such a dream and does something terrible to you is different from the person you regard as the most vicious guy. It's Number Two, so to speak, who appears. Since even in a dream you wouldn't want to encounter the guy you consider the most malicious in real life, wouldn't you make Number Two the executor of the dream? So wouldn't it be simpler to start with the person you now regard as the most vicious in real life, and then consider his proxy?”

  When in kindergarten, O-chan was always either putting together Legos or reading science picture books. When talking to my parents, even to me, he spoke as though he were reading from a book, which irritated me so much that I often quarreled with him over it. In middle school and high school he did orienteering, and after he decided he would study natural science in college, I haven't seen him reading even one humanities-related book. Even so, he nonchalantly uses words you find only in such writing. Malicious? Executor? Proxy? I stammered to myself, barely able to follow his train of thought. But as I visualized the Chinese characters for these words, each was in its own right quite convincing, and I thought O-chan's diction indeed appropriate. This idiosyncratic way with words, I think, issues from a depth in my younger brother that I don't sense in my everyday life with him. I related all this to Mother, to which not only she, but also Father replied.

  “Papa appeared to be filled with emotion when I told him about the dream you had, about you and Eeyore going to the theater together.

  “I think I, too, can solve the riddle in the dream scene where you and Eeyore sat in the audience seats far separated from the stage that Papa and I were on, and in which you received rude treatment. I would say it represents the situation you and Eeyore have now been put in. Don't you think so, Ma-chan?. When I asked Papa about this, he said, ‘More than that, I think it portrays their plight after we're dead.’ He even went on to say, ‘By dreaming such a dream, Ma-chan's rehearsing for the future, hers and Eeyore's future as orphans.’ His own strong words seemed to hurt him when he said this. … He told me he would write to you about the thoughts your letter evoked, when he can bring himself to feel better.”

  Just one day after Mother's letter, a letter from Father also arrived.

  “When you're in dreamland in Tokyo, Ma-chan, it's either morning or dusk here in California, which means I'm usually up. I remember one day toward evening, I was walking along Strawberry Creek, which is lined with redwood trees and is on the edge of the campus close to where I am now living, and I felt myself in the midst of public observation, but unlike a delusion of persecution, the sensation didn't feel bad. It must have been deep in the night in Tokyo, and you were seeing a dream of us on stage.

  “I can think of someone with a malevolent mind, and he's capable of wearing a PRESS armband if he wanted to, but judging from the structure of your dream, I would say this. In your dream you went with Eeyore to see a play you imagined I had written, but before the plot, had even unfolded in your head, you paged the insolent man with the PRESS armband, so you could avert your eyes from the stage on the pretext of your relationship with him. Now if this were the case, I would find some relief in what, you did, for it could mean that you are preparing yourself for a situation in which you would actually come across men with vicious minds. Because, any day, such people are going to appear not only in your dreams, but in your real life.”

  The day I received Father's letter, Eeyore had a fit as soon as we reached Mr. Shigeto's house. He hadn't forgotten to take his anticonvulsants, and he neither had a cold nor was feeling bad, yet he had a fit anyway. Not a serious one, though. His movements somehow slowly gave way despite his resistance to it, and when I looked carefully I noticed an expansion of feverish red from his neck to his face. When I explained his condition to Mr. Shigeto and laid him down on the sofa, Mrs. Shigeto brought a blanket that seemed to have a history connected with some country in Eastern Europe. I wrapped Eeyore with it from his chest on down, and placed his head on a cushion, which was also of Polish peasant embroidery. His head was heavy, and because of its uncertain center of gravity, I had difficulty placing it squarely on the cushion. His breath was foul as always when he has his fits, a reek 1 could never get used to no matter how hard I tried. This made me clearly recall—as did the aura of the blanket and the cushion—a story I had read in kindergarten, a story I now know to be a retelling of a Russian folktale, about a hot-and-foul-breath-spewing devil with legs and arms like those of a small crane fly.

  Mr. Shigeto's wife closed the curtains to shut out the sunlight because Eeyore, lying at full length, was shading his eyes with his hand, his shapely fingers straight and tight. “Shall I play a record?” she asked as she drew
the curtains, but Eeyore couldn't even gesture a reply, let alone answer her. Mr. Shigeto said nothing. Long-faced, and drooping his head, he looked anguished as if thinking that he, for some reason, had been the cause of Eeyore's fit. A while later I asked Eeyore, “Are you all right now? Do you feel better?” To which he replied, “I'm all right now! I feel better! Thank you!” His voice was still low and hoarse. Perhaps because Eeyore had spoken with the simple seriousness of a small child, Mr. Shigeto's face, which he lifted in relief in the pale darkness, appeared to be stifling tears. I turned my face to look as far away from him as I could. …

  For this reason, I had to write Mother a letter reporting on the state of Eeyore's fits. I wrote her that toward the end of the following month I would take him to the hospital for a checkup, instead of my going there just for his medicines. I usually just go to a university hospital in ltabashi—the same place he was rushed to in an ambulance immediately alter he was born, and where he has received treatment ever since—and drop his medical card in a box labeled PRESCRIPTIONS to get medicines that are issued in four-week quantities.

  While writing this letter to Mother, I fondly remembered what each of us did when Eeyore had his fits—especially Father's way of handling it, which I found so repulsive when he was here, but now to some extent condone. Father would make a big thing of it, together with Eeyore, as though it were a game of some sort. But now I'm starting to feel that, in a way, he had the right attitude toward it.

  This is what I immediately recall whenever Eeyore has a mild fit: It's morning. Eeyore's just gotten out of bed and is feverish. Sometimes it's just the start of a cold, but Father, with an intuition that comes from long years of experience, can distinguish whether or not it foretells a fit. At such times, Father doesn't go upstairs to his study. Ensconced on the living room sofa, and with a drawing board on his lap, he continues writing, all the while paying mind to Eeyore, who's lying prostrate on the floor, listening to music on FM radio. After a while, Eeyore gets up and starts walking from the living room to the dining room, which is one step higher. And on the way, his batteries die.

  When this happens, Eeyore doesn't fall headlong, but there is nothing either Mother or I, with our physical strength, can do. O-chan stands nearby looking worried, but out of reserve he doesn't dare touch him. Enter Father, manifesting an agility that's alien to an adult's dignity; and by the time I notice him, he's already at Eeyore's side. And though I know he's only encouraging him, words I feel as much resistance toward as “peck” fly from Father's mouth one after another.

  “Eeyore, it's the ‘fit-and-runs,’ is it? Well, hang in there and let's go to the toilet. Don't give up now. Don't you let your fit-and-runs come out! … Good! You made it! A grand success! Your fit-and-runs!”

  Eeyore is already just as tall as Father, and weightwise has surpassed him. And because he's suffering early symptoms of a fit, or is already in the midst of one, his consciousness is blurred and his movements have become dull, and he's on the brink of falling, as Father guides him and takes him to the toilet. Violent diarrhea starts the moment you have him sit on the commode, or even before that. It makes a world of difference for Mother whether or not he makes it there in time, for she's the one who has to do the cleaning. So it's only a matter of course for Father, sensing the beginning of a fit, or one that has just started, to be full of enthusiasm when he plunges into the task of taking Eeyore to the toilet. And I also think it's only natural that he's happy when everything turns out to be a grand success.

  Granted, we took delight in this way of talking at the time Eeyore was still going to the special-care school, as we did with “peck.” But wasn't it going too far to play it up, as though it were a gay festival, with the seemingly fixed expression fit-and-runs? Doesn't Eeyore—just before his fit, or in the midst of one—feel as though hot bubbles were boiling in his bronchioles and esophagus, stomach and bowels? Isn't this condition alone sufficiently disagreeable? And while all this is going on, he's got to listen to Father's relentless banter next to his ears, and move arms and legs that are difficult to move, and head for the toilet, balancing the weight of a body that threatens to fall—and above all bear his fit-and-runs—how excruciating all this must be!

  Honestly, it was with such a feeling that I reacted to Father's speech and conduct. Nevertheless, sometime before my parents departed for the United States I began to sympathize with Father, who looked after Eeyore. I remember one Sunday when Father returned home pitifully worn out from a charity event for handicapped people he had taken Eeyore to, a performance by the Metropolitan Orchestra called the Joining of Hearts Concert. By contrast, Eeyore was in high spirits. Come to think of it, Father's “pinch” was clearly apparent to us from about that time. I had taken Eeyore to these concerts twice before, and Irom these experiences, I worried about Father accompanying him there. It's only my personal impression, but at such charity concerts, the emcee and conductor are oddly spirited, while the members of the orchestra often betray a natural fatigue. So I worried that Father, who was accustomed to concerts of first performances of new works by his composer friends, would be shocked by the slack atmosphere created by such an orchestra. But the night before the Joining of Hearts Concert, he seemed inclined to switch with me and said in his usual sportive manner, “Who're you going to the concert with tomorrow, Eeyore?” Eeyore then pointed his nicely shaped finger shyly, as if to hide it under the table, in Father's direction.

  Father had Eeyore wear his old suit to the concert, a suit Father had worn just once or twice a long time ago and saved for Eeyore upon finding that it looked better on him, and they had dinner at a nearby Ikebukuro restaurant afterwards, and came home. His positive attitude seems to have lingered awhile after the concert, for he brought back some ice cream he had bought at the restaurant, but when he got home after sundown, he looked totally frazzled.

  The Joining of Hearts Concerts that I have been to have been gatherings of handicapped people with truly diverse idiosyncrasies, and the equally idiosyncratic members of their families. Their different backgrounds are especially apparent in the mothers of mentally retarded children of high school age. They are banded together, and on each is imprinted the dark, indelible mark of the wheel of suffering to which they boldly put their shoulders. I respect them for this, which is why I usually stay with these mothers when I go to these gatherings. But I also feel there is nothing quite like the complex and fervent mood in the assembly of various handicapped people with their families and the volunteers.

  But I wonder if Father, who is used to working by himself, didn't find the excitement-echoing atmosphere more enervating than encouraging. When Eeyore and I are in public, at concert halls or on trains, I'm frequently led to reconfirm the oddity of his facial expressions and movements, which are strikingly different from those of ordinary people, though at home they are an integral part of the family and something we like a lot. The oddity is often made more conspicuous in the company of other handicapped people, each of whom unwittingly punctuates their own dissimilarity. So I imagine Father received quite a shock when he began to see unfamiliar impressions in Eeyore at the Joining of Hearts Concert.

  And so I felt both sorry for and angry with Father. I possessed no concrete evidence on which to justify my presumptuous intrusion into his inner thoughts when I surmised that his exhaustion was due to his having reconfirmed Eeyore's handicap, which in the presence of other handicapped people had supposedly seemed more obvious to him. I was led to think this way by the various experiences I myself had gone through. Even now, whenever I take Eeyore to these gatherings, or when I help as a university volunteer, I notice that the mothers of handicapped children, however sad they look, appear to have a firm grip on themselves, whereas the fathers, especially those of Father's age, wear expressions of doleful apprehension. Each appears to be nursing a fear that the outline of his own child's handicap, which he has sketched in pencil, is being retraced and accentuated with a magic marker by the other fathers. They also ap
pear to be meditating plaintively on their own future, seeing families caring for handicapped members even older than they are. …

  At such times, I fix my gaze on these fathers and repeat to myself, “Hell, no! Hell, no! The road ahead may be pitch black, but let's brace ourselves and push on!” Were these fathers to see only my exterior, they would merely think that a girl who had been intently looking at them, a skinny girl with a small, round head, had quickly dropped her eyes the moment, they had turned to look at her. But the reason I hear such voices calling out within me is because, in the same concert hall, I also notice despondent mothers who, like me, harbor the repelling forces of Hell, no! Hell, no!

  The honest impression I get at such concerts these days is that, time has passed. “Time has passed!” I think to myself. I guess I feel this way because I compare these performances with the ones I used to go to when Eeyore was in the secondary division at. the special school for the handicapped. Whenever I accompanied Mother to the school, I felt that not only the students, but the teachers and guardians as well, were in good spirits. And the mothers, especially, were so unaffected: their unconstrained laughter always took me by pleasant surprise. But now I don't hear such laughter ring out in the Joining of Hearts Concerts now. Assuredly, each concert is quite festive with, on the performers' side for example, an elderly musician whistling out—his fingers between his lips—a double-octave, ear-piercing tune, while his daughter trills an Italian folk song, flailing the microphone in pop idol fashion. But during the intermission, which immediately follows this, the mothers keep their eyes fixed on their laps or something, while the fathers look around unnaturally with unsettled eyes.

  That's why I feel good when a young person with a handicap sometimes makes a positive, aggressive response at a concert, hall. In my heart that voice exclaims, “Hell, yes! Hell, yes! The road ahead may be pitch black, but let's brace ourselves and push on!”