"Why should he hanker so? He must surely still have quite a strong spirit," said my mother, groping in her despair for anything positive. Interestingly, to refer to his desire for food, she was using an old expression that was once specifically a.s.sociated with illness.

My uncle paid my father a visit, and as he rose to leave, my father held him back, loath to let him go home. He said it was because he was lonely, but he also seemed to want to complain to someone about how my mother and I weren't giving him enough to eat.

CHAPTER 46.

My father's condition remained unchanged for over a week. During that time I sent a long letter to my brother in Kyushu and asked my mother to write to my sister. I had a strong feeling that these would probably be the last letters detailing to them my father's state of health. Our letters included the information that we would telegram when the time came, so they should stand ready to come at short notice.

My brother was in a busy line of work. My sister was pregnant. Neither was in a position to be called until my father was in evident danger. On the other hand, it would be awful if they were asked to make the journey only to arrive too late. I felt a private weight of responsibility about exactly when the telegrams should be sent.

"I couldn't give you a precise answer on that, but you must understand that the danger can arise at any time," said the doctor, who had come from the nearby railway station. I talked it over with my mother, and we asked him to arrange for a nurse from the hospital to be hired. When my father laid eyes on this woman, who arrived at his bedside in a white uniform to greet him, he had a peculiar expression on his face.

My father had long known that he was mortally ill. Nevertheless, he was unaware that death was now fast approaching.

"When I'm well again, I might take another trip to Tokyo," he remarked. "Who knows when you'll die? You have to do all the things you want while you're alive to do them."

My mother could only respond with "I hope you'll take me along when you go."

But sometimes he grew deeply dejected. "Do make sure to take good care of your mother when I die," he said to me.

His "when I die" evoked a certain memory. That evening after my graduation, when I was preparing to leave Tokyo, Sensei had used this same phrase several times in the conversation with his wife. I remembered Sensei's smiling face as he spoke, and his wife blocking her ears against the inauspicious words. The words had been merely hypothetical then, but now they rang with the certainty that sometime soon they would be fulfilled.

I could not emulate Sensei's wife's response, but I did need to find a way of distracting my father from his thoughts.

"Let's hear you talking a bit more optimistically. Didn't you say you'd take a trip to Tokyo when you were well again?" I asked. "With Mother. You'll be amazed when you see it next, at how it's changed. The streetcars, for instance-there are all sorts of new routes now. And once streetcars go into a neighborhood, of course, the whole look of the area changes. And the city divisions were recently revised-there's not a moment day or night when Tokyo stands still." My tongue went prattling on out of control, while he listened contentedly.

The presence of an invalid meant that there were a lot more comings and goings at the house. Every few days one or another of the relatives called to visit my father. Among them were some who lived farther away and were normally not in close contact. One remarked as he left, "I was wondering how he'd be, but he seems quite well. He talks without effort, and I must say, to look at his face, he hasn't lost a bit of weight." The household, almost too quiet for comfort when I first arrived, was now filled with increasing bustle and activity.

My father's illness was the one thing that stood still in the midst of all this coming and going, and it was slowly growing worse. After consulting with my mother and uncle, I finally sent off the telegrams I had prepared. My brother replied that he would soon be there, and my sister's husband replied similarly-her previous pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, and her husband had already intimated that they were taking particular care that it wouldn't become the pattern, so he would probably come in her place.

CHAPTER 47.

Amid all this unrest, I nevertheless found time to sit quietly. Occasionally I even managed to open a book and read ten pages or so before I was distracted. The trunk I had packed and closed had been reopened, and I retrieved things from it as the need arose. I reviewed the schedule of study I had set up for myself back in Tokyo. I had not achieved even a third of what I'd hoped to do. The same depressing thing had happened numerous times before, it's true, but rarely had my study gone less according to plan than this summer. I tried telling myself that this was probably simply the way it goes, but nevertheless my sense of failure oppressed me.

Huddled unhappily in self-castigations, I also thought of my father's illness. I tried to imagine how things would be after his death. And this thought brought another, the thought of Sensei. At both ends of the spectrum of my misery were poised the images of these two men, so opposite in social standing, education, and character.

Once when I left my father's bedside and went back to my room, my mother looked in and found me sitting alone, arms folded, amid my jumble of books.

"Why not take a nap?" she suggested. "You must be a bit exhausted."

She had no comprehension of how I felt. Nor was I childish enough to really expect her to. I simply thanked her. However, she continued standing in the doorway.

"How's Father?" I asked.

"He's having a good sleep," she replied.

Suddenly she stepped into the room and came and sat beside me.

"Has anything come from Sensei yet?"

She had believed me when I a.s.sured her there would be a reply. But even when I was writing to him, I had had no expectation that he would send the kind of reply they were hoping for. In effect, I had knowingly deceived her.

"Write to him again, will you?" she urged.

I was not inclined to begrudge the effort of writing any number of useless letters if it would comfort my mother, but having to press Sensei on this matter was painful. I dreaded earning his scorn far more than being scolded by my father or hurting my mother. I already suspected that his lack of response to my previous letter bespoke precisely that reaction from him.

"It's easy enough to write a letter," I said, "but this isn't the sort of matter that gets solved through the mail. I have to go to Tokyo and present myself in person."

"But with your father the way he is, there's no knowing when you can go to Tokyo."

"Exactly. And I'll be staying here till we know what the story is, whether he gets better or not."

"That goes without saying. Who on earth would leave someone as ill as he is and take off to Tokyo, after all?"

My first reaction was pity for my innocent mother. But I couldn't understand why she would choose this hectic moment to bring up the problem. Was there something in her makeup that was equivalent to the oddly casual way I could forget my father's illness and sit calmly reading, something that allowed her to temporarily forget the invalid in her care and concern herself like this with other matters?

As this thought was crossing my mind, my mother spoke. "Actually," she said, "actually, it's my belief it would be a great comfort to your father if you could find yourself a position before he died. The way things are going, it may be too late, but really, the way he talks shows he's still quite aware of things. You should be a good son and make him happy while you still can."

Alas, the situation prevented me from being a good son, and I wrote no more to Sensei.

CHAPTER 48.

When my brother arrived, my father was lying in bed reading the newspaper. My father had always made a special point of looking through the newspaper every day, and since he had taken to his bed, boredom had exacerbated this urge. My mother and I held our tongues, determined to indulge him in any way he wanted.

"It's wonderful to find you looking so well," said my brother cheerfully as he sat talking with him. "I came expecting you to be in a pretty bad way, but you seem absolutely fine." His boisterous high spirits struck me as rather out of keeping with the situation.

When he left my father's side and came to talk to me, however, he was much more somber. "Isn't it a bad idea to let him read the newspaper?"

"I think so too, but he won't take no for an answer, so what can we do?"

My brother listened in silence to my justifications, then asked, "How well does he understand it, I wonder?" He had apparently concluded that my father's illness had affected his grasp of things.

"He understands just fine," chimed in my sister's husband, who had arrived at about the same time. "I spent twenty minutes or so at his bedside talking about this and that, and there was no sign of a problem. He may well last a while yet, to judge from how he seems." He was far more optimistic than we were.

My father had asked him a number of questions about my sister. "You mustn't let her rock about in trains, in her condition," he had told him. "It would only be a worry for me if she endangered herself by coming to see me." And he added, "Don't worry, I'll be better in no time, and then I'll take the trip up there myself for a change and meet the baby."

When General Nogi committed ritual suicide soon after the emperor's funeral, stating that he was following his lord into death, my father was the first to learn of it from the newspaper.

"Oh no, this is dreadful!" he exclaimed.

We, of course, knew nothing of what had prompted these words, and they gave us quite a shock. "I really thought he'd turned a bit odd," my brother said later to me. "It sent a cold shiver down my spine." My sister's husband agreed that he'd been alarmed as well.

Just then the paper was filled daily with news that made us country folk eager to read every issue. I would sit beside my father going carefully through its pages, and if I didn't have enough time, I quietly carried it off to my room, where I read it cover to cover. The photograph of General Nogi in his military uniform, and his wife, who had died with him, dressed in what looked like the clothing of an imperial lady-in-waiting, stayed with me vividly for a long time.

These tragic winds were penetrating even our distant corner of the land, shaking summer's sleepy trees and gra.s.ses, when suddenly I received a telegram from Sensei. In this backwater, where the mere sight of someone dressed in the Western style would set the dogs barking, even a telegram was a major event.

My startled mother was the one to accept its delivery at the door, and she called me over to hand it to me in private.

"What is it?" she said, standing expectantly beside me as I opened the envelope.

The telegram simply stated that he wanted to see me and asked if I could come. I c.o.c.ked my head in puzzlement.

"It's bound to be about a position he's found for you," declared my mother, leaping to conclusions.

Perhaps she was right, but if so, it seemed a bit strange. At any rate, having called my brother and brother-in-law to come because the end was near, I certainly couldn't turn my back on my father's illness and run off to Tokyo.

I talked it over with my mother and decided to send a telegram replying that I was unable to go. I appended a very brief explanation that my father's illness was becoming critical, but that was not enough to satisfy me. "Letter follows," I added, and the same day I sent off a letter detailing the situation.

"It's such a shame it's come at such a bad time," my mother said ruefully, still convinced the summons had to do with some position he had found for me.

CHAPTER 49.

The letter I wrote to Sensei was a fairly long one, and both my mother and I a.s.sumed that this time he would answer. Then two days later another telegram arrived for me. All it said was that I need not come. I showed it to my mother.

"He must plan on sending a letter about it," she said, still insisting on interpreting things in terms of the position that Sensei was helping me procure. I wondered if she might be right, though it did not fit the Sensei I knew. The proposition that "Sensei would find a position for me" struck me as out of the question.

"Anyway, my letter won't have reached him yet," I said firmly. "He clearly sent this telegram before he read it."

"That's true," said my mother solemnly, appearing to ponder the matter, although the mere fact that he had sent the telegram before he read the letter could have given her no fresh information.

That day the doctor was coming with the hospital's head physician, so we had no more opportunity to discuss the subject. The two talked about my father and gave him an enema, then left.

Ever since the doctor had ordered total rest, my father had needed help to urinate and defecate. Fastidious man that he was, at first he loathed the process, but his physical incapacity meant he had no option but to resort to a bedpan. Then perhaps his illness slowly dulled his reactions, for he gradually ceased to be concerned by excretion difficulties. Occasionally he would soil the bedclothes, but although this distressed those around him, he seemed unperturbed by it. The nature of his illness, of course, meant that the amount of urine lessened dramatically. This worried the doctor. His appet.i.te too was gradually fading. If he occasionally wanted to eat something, it was only to taste it-he actually ate very little. He even lost the strength to take up his accustomed newspaper. The gla.s.ses by his bedside lay untouched in their black case.

When he received a visit from Saku-san, a friend since childhood who now lived about two miles distant, my father merely turned glazed eyes in his direction. "Ah, Saku-san, is it?" he said. "Thanks for coming. I wish I was well like you. It's all over for me."

"You're the lucky one," Saku-san responded. "Here you are with two sons graduated-a little illness is nothing to complain about. Look at me, now. Wife dead, and no children. The best you can say for me is I'm alive. What pleasure's mere good health, eh?"

A few days after Saku-san's visit, my father was given the enema. He was delighted and grateful at how much better the doctor had made him feel, and his mood improved. He seemed to regain some of his will to live.

Perhaps swayed by this improvement, or hoping to boost him further, my mother proceeded to tell him about Sensei's telegram, quite as if a position had already been found for me in Tokyo as my father wished. It made me cringe to sit there listening to her, but I couldn't contradict her, so I held my peace.

My father looked happy.

"That's excellent," my brother-in-law remarked.

"Do you know yet what the position is?" asked my brother.

Now things had gone so far, I lost the courage to deny the story. I prevaricated with some vague reply, incomprehensible even to myself, and left the room.

CHAPTER 50.

My father's condition deteriorated to the point where the fatal blow seemed imminent, only to hover there precariously. Each night the family would go to sleep feeling that tomorrow might well be the day of reckoning.

He was completely free of the kind of pain that is a torture for others to witness-in this way at least, he was easy to nurse. We took care to ensure that someone was always taking his turn by the bedside, but the rest of us could usually settle down to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Once when I couldn't get to sleep for some reason, I mistakenly thought I heard my father faintly groaning. I slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and went to check on him. That evening it was my mother's turn to stay up with him. I found her asleep beside him, her head resting on her crooked arm. My father lay peacefully at her side, like one laid gently down inside a deep sleep. I tiptoed back to bed again.

I shared a bed under a mosquito net with my brother, while my sister's husband, who was treated more as a guest, slept alone in a separate room.

"Poor Seki," my brother said. Seki was our brother-in-law's family name. "He's caught here day after day, when he ought to be getting back."

"But he can't really be so busy, if he can stay on like this," I said. "You're the one who must be finding it difficult to stay so long."

"There's no help for it, is there? This isn't an everyday matter, after all."

So our conversation went as we lay there side by side. My brother believed, as did I, that our father was doomed, and this being so, we longed for it all to be over. Essentially we were awaiting our father's death, but we were reluctant to express it that way. Yet each of us was well aware of what the other was thinking.

"He seems to be still hoping he'll recover, doesn't he?" my brother remarked.

This idea was not entirely unjustified. When neighbors came to visit him, my father always insisted on seeing them. He would then proceed to apologize that he hadn't been able to invite them to my graduation celebration, sometimes adding that he'd make amends once he was better.

"It's a good thing your celebration party was canceled, you know," my brother remarked to me. "Mine was dreadful, remember?" His words prodded my memory, and I smiled wryly, thinking of that event's alcohol-inflamed disorder. I had painful memories of the way my father had gone around forcing food and drink on everyone.

We two brothers were not terribly close. When we were little, we had fought a lot, and being the younger, I was constantly reduced to tears. In school our different choices of field of study clearly reflected our different characters. While I was at the university, and especially once I had come in contact with Sensei, I came to look on my distant brother as rather an animal. We had not met for a long time and lived very far apart, so both time and distance separated us.

But circ.u.mstances had at last brought us together again, and a brotherly affection sprang up naturally between us. The nature of the situation played a large part. There at the bedside of our dying father, my brother and I were reconciled.

"What do you plan to do now?" my brother asked me.