Kenzaburo Oe - Death by Water

“I talked to Maki on the phone this morning, and I have to say that the way she criticized your behavior gave me chills. ‘Papa doesn’t have the courage to make his peace with Akari,’ she said. ‘I mean, he called Akari an idiot, for God’s sake. I’m sure Papa is wallowing in his own private darkness now, wondering if there’s any way to erase the egregious incident from Akari’s memory, weighing various options before ultimately deciding there’s nothing to be done. And that’s why Papa won’t even try to make his peace with Akari; he figures it’s hopeless, and he’s simply given up.’ And then she went on to say that for the past year or so, every time she has come to visit us here in Seijo she’s been noticing a gradual change in Akari, but she thinks you have probably overlooked it. She said, ‘Papa and Akari have been practically inseparable for more than forty years, and it seems to me that Papa’s oppressive (some might even say tyrannical) attitude toward Akari has become more and more set in stone. I know it probably has something to do with Papa’s advancing age; I understand the reasons, and I’m not unsympathetic, but I’m afraid that if this situation continues to fester it could go way beyond the level of terrible insults like “You’re an idiot.” I mean, I think matters could easily escalate to the point of physical violence or permanent estrangement.’

“Maki was quite worked up, and she said some pretty extreme things. ‘I’m afraid Papa could end up like King Lear,’ she told me, ‘wandering lost in the wilderness without even a Fool to accompany him. And if he went on wandering alone until he started to lose his mind, then maybe he would decide to resolve things himself, in the most drastic way, before he did anything that might cause a public scandal. And if he did decide to do away with himself, God knows there’s plenty of deserted wasteland around here where he could do the deed …’

“Maki was very angry about your calling her big brother an idiot,” Chikashi continued, “and I’m sure that’s why she said those things. But putting her concerns aside for now, there are some issues I’ve been worried about myself, and I’d like to discuss them with you. It goes without saying that both you and I are growing older, but have you given any serious thought to the fact that Akari is aging rapidly as well, especially on the physical level? As you know, you added a daily walk to your normal sedentary routine of sitting around the house reading and writing after the doctor said you should take Akari out walking as part of a fitness regimen. It went on for a long time, and then when Akari started having more and more epileptic seizures during your daily walks together, you got into the habit of walking for an hour early in the morning by yourself. You simply gave up taking Akari along. But I think we both understand that the worsening of his epilepsy wasn’t the real reason you gave up walking with Akari. Rather, it was because the degenerative aging process was making it too difficult for him to continue with those outings.

“And then there’s the dental situation. As you know, more than half of Akari’s teeth are already bad. I know the doctor talked to you about the results of the most recent set of blood tests, and while I only skimmed the written report, there seemed to be very few items on the list that weren’t marked ‘Requires Medical Care.’ His sleep apnea hasn’t improved, either, even though we’ve done our best to get his weight down. The reason he takes so many catnaps during the day is to compensate for all the sleep he loses at night.

“Back in the days when Akari was still going to work at the support center for disabled people, the head of the institute showed me a disheartening statistical chart of average life expectancy based on all the people who had ever been enrolled there. You were with me that day, remember? Anyway, he explained that after a certain point children with disabilities begin to age more rapidly than their parents, and when I tried to talk to you about it later, your only reply was silence. Now, though, I realize that what the doctor said is absolutely true, and the problem is we’re aging at a worrisomely rapid rate as well.

“On another topic, I don’t think I fully understood how heartsick you were about having to abandon work on the drowning novel. On reflection, I think this is the first time you not only didn’t finish a book you’d started, but simply stopped writing altogether. (You did take a short break once, early on, but it actually involved this very same book in its earliest incarnation.) Little by little, though, I’m starting to grasp the impact this disappointment has had on you, just from seeing how low your spirits have been since you returned from your fruitless trip to Shikoku. I don’t know when I’ve seen you as miserable as you are now, and it’s also obvious that Akari has been in seriously low spirits. You know how sometimes you’ll be sitting in the living room reading a book while he’s in the dining room studying a musical score? (That is, when you aren’t both holed up in your rooms.) Well, the scenario appears outwardly unchanged, apart from the fact that you aren’t speaking to each other. But for quite a while I’ve felt as if there were two giant mounds of depression permanently camped out in the house, and I couldn’t help worrying about what might happen if those two volatile lumps of unhappiness were to collide. And now what I think has happened is that they finally did crash into each other.

“Since Akari was born, you have never once said anything even remotely like ‘You’re an idiot’ to him. Akari clearly understands the meaning of the heartless phrase you blurted out, and when I think about it I can understand why, as Maki mentioned, you’re unable to summon the courage to patch things up with your son. I know you’re sincerely sorry about hurting Akari, but some combination of the stubbornness of age and a deep-seated personality trait is keeping you from saying the simple words that might restore harmony to our little family.

“This morning I was wide-awake from a very early hour, and I couldn’t stop turning this horrible situation over and over in my mind. Apparently Akari, too, had awakened while it was still dark outside; I had a feeling something wasn’t right, and when I went into his room, thinking he might be having a seizure, I found him crying his eyes out. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but he hasn’t made any attempt to listen to music on his own since the episode at the hospital, even when he’s alone in his room. That hasn’t happened since he was a baby.”

I was truly cornered. And I know this is unspeakably childish, but at that moment I was actively hoping to be ambushed by another attack of vertigo, just to free me from Chikashi’s relentless and entirely justified criticism. But alas, no dizzy spell rode to the rescue and I didn’t have the acting chops to fake one, so I had no choice but to sit quietly while my wife’s quiet censure rained down on me.

Very late that evening, as I was lying on the bed in my study still feeling as though my heart had been put through a meat grinder, I heard the strains of the second of the three sonatas Beethoven wrote and dedicated to Haydn (Op. 2 no. 2 in A Major, to be precise) wafting up through my pillow. Someone was playing the CD downstairs in the living room, with the volume unusually loud. I didn’t move, but when I heard the next piece — Mozart’s Symphony K. 550—being played full blast, I couldn’t control myself any longer, and I went charging down the stairs. Akari was crouched on the floor in front of the stereo.

“It’s after midnight, so why don’t you do this tomorrow instead?” I said mildly. Akari didn’t even glance in my direction, and I was suddenly galvanized by anger. When I went over and squatted beside him in an attempt to get his attention, he responded by boldly turning the volume up even louder. He continued to stare straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge my presence, and I could see the back of his neck flushing a deep crimson. Chikashi emerged from her bedroom and stood in the doorway, shooting me an inquiring look, but after she saw the expression on my face she retreated without speaking.