Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

THE AGITATION OF the three days and nights Yoko had spent scarcely eating or drinking, only crying wildly, took a long while to fade from her system. For the first couple of days she had a blank look, but from the third day on she started to come around. Her temperature went down almost to normal, and despite a nasty cough she gradually began regaining her physical and mental equilibrium. She took to calling Miki every night, being a responsible mother and asking, “Are you eating properly? Are you lonely?” But once the receiver was put down she herself looked childlike, so young and innocent that she might have been a double of herself sleeping at Okura Hospital after the “elopement” more than twenty-five years earlier. When a woman is seriously ill, she often retreats into a much younger self, a simpler and purer self. Yoko was the same. When she was asleep, there was even something almost unearthly about the way she looked.

With her temperature still hovering above normal, it was important that she not get excited, so both men tried to avoid getting her talking. Taro took his cue from Masayuki and sometimes sat at her bedside reading novels aloud. One day, she interrupted.

“You know, Masayuki is a better reader than you,” she said. “There’s something funny about your Japanese. You make too many mistakes.”

Lying with her frizzy hair spread out on the pillow, her eyes on the wall opposite, she said this quite matter-of-factly. Taro laid the book he’d been reading in his lap and, despite this harsh verdict on his reading ability, just grinned.

“What’s so funny?” she wanted to know, a little smile playing on her own lips.

“Nothing.”

“But you’re laughing.”

Taro was reluctant to explain, but she kept pressing him, so he gave in. He’d known for a long time that Masayuki read to her at night to help her get to sleep, and he had always wanted to do the same thing. Now, here of all places, he’d been given his chance.

Yoko giggled, then burst out laughing too.

They both seemed to have put away the memory of lying entwined in the attic, crying together. To look at them you would never have guessed a scene like that had taken place.

YOKO’S COLDS ALWAYS took a long while to go away, so nobody was worried that as time went by she failed to get better. Her persistent cough didn’t alarm any of us either. It was only after a week, when her fever shot up again and we were told that she’d developed pneumonia, that we grew concerned. But even then no one expected her to die. She was still so young. When the antibiotic had no effect and her temperature hovered up around the danger level for two days running, on the evening of the third day the doctor suggested that it would be a good idea to summon her close family. Given her youth there was probably nothing to worry about, but you never could tell with a second bout of pneumonia. It was better to be prepared, just in case. That was when the gravity of the situation hit us for the first time. From then on she deteriorated at a horrifying rate; she had little reserve strength, and her immunity was down. Before they could find an antibiotic that would work, she slipped past the point of no return.

From the time her pneumonia set in, Masayuki and Taro scarcely left the hospital. She was moved to a room near the nurses’ station and Masayuki, the husband, stayed mainly in her room, while poor Taro sat on a bench in a far corner of the waiting room with his legs outstretched. I saw to all Yoko’s needs, wiping beads of sweat off her forehead, giving her sips of juice, letting the nurse know when her IV had run dry. With her high fever she mostly slept, but occasionally she would open her hollow eyes wide and look at the chair next to the bed as if to make sure someone was there. And she would reach out a hand to comfort the person sitting by her, whether it was Masayuki or Taro.

“I’m going to get well, I know it,” she would reassure them huskily.

But the night the doctor advised Masayuki to summon the rest of the family “just in case,” Yoko cried out, despite her fever, in a voice that seemed wrung from deep inside her, “It’s so sad!”

Knowing that her family had been sent for, she seemed to realize there was perhaps no hope. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she focused her eyes on the ceiling in fear. I thought she went to sleep, but apparently I was wrong; she was just waiting for the nurse to leave the room before she said anything. Masayuki got up and bent over the bed so that his face was in her line of vision.

“So sad,” she repeated, and held out her near hand to him, the one without an IV needle in it. “You poor thing, poor, poor thing.” She squeezed his hand as hard as she could and then closed her eyes. Soon her cheeks were wet, but she hadn’t the strength to cry much. She looked up at him and said, “Miki still has her life ahead of her, but for you, my sweet silly man, it’s over … over … when I die. You wouldn’t marry again if I begged you to … Damn heaven and earth! I’ve been so stupid. Insane. And there’s no going back, is there? It’s all so sad …”

Masayuki bent down and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. He stayed like that, as still as stone.

To give them some privacy, I stepped out and took the elevator down to the waiting room. Since it was after hours for the outpatients, the fluorescent lights were mostly turned off. Taro was sitting in the darkest part of the waiting room, hidden away on a bench far from both the elevator and the entrance. Two other pairs of people who seemed to be locals—an old woman with someone I guessed was her middle-aged daughter, and a young couple—had chosen the brightest places in the room to sit. Taro’s appearance marked him as an outsider, and sitting alone in the darkness he looked sinister, like an escaped prisoner. I went over and stood in front of him, saying simply, “She’s no better,” then turned and went to sit on a bench near the elevator. I decided to distance myself from him, in case Masayuki came down in search of me.

About half an hour went by before Masayuki came down in the elevator, wearing his coat. When he saw my face under the fluorescent light, he told me that Yoko was asking for me and Taro. After delivering the message he went outside.

The room was ominously silent when I opened the door. Yoko lay facing the ceiling, motionless. After a moment I realized she was taking rapid, shallow breaths. Even though barely half an hour had passed since I’d left her, signs of her approaching death were cruelly apparent.

“Fumiko.” She turned her head toward me, then paused for a moment to steady her breathing. “Taro and I were going to look after you in your old age … so I never did anything to thank you.”

She was preparing to die, but I wouldn’t have it and cut her off a bit tartly. “I’ll look after myself in my old age, thank you. And if it comes to that,” I added, “I’ve got Ami.”

“Yes … dear Ami.”

Yoko didn’t seem to mind the way I’d spoken. Seeing her look up at the ceiling again with those sunken eyes and nod quietly in agreement, I felt contrite. More gently I said, “And you’re young, so you’ll get well.”

“Perhaps,” she answered. “Anyway, thank you. We owe everything to you,” she said seriously. She turned her eyes back toward me, her gaze as pure as a ray of light.

For a while no one spoke.

“Taro …”

He was already there at her bedside, and when she called his name he leaned over the bed.

“Taro, you mustn’t kill yourself.” She reached up to touch his face, reaching out weakly with the arm that was free of IV equipment, so he bent down lower. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips and repeated, “You mustn’t. If you do, I’ll never forgive you as long as I—for all eternity, do you hear me?” Her voice was infinitely gentle.