Kenzaburo Oe - Death by Water

“The other day when I was at the supermarket in Honmachi I happened to run into Daio, and he had just come from scouting a meeting of the right-wing group. As for Unaiko, she said that even if she told you there was a battle brewing, she didn’t think you would ever turn tail and run away at this advanced stage of the proceedings. Of course Unaiko is absolutely determined to stand her ground and deal directly with the neonationalists’ catcalls and objections and so on, during the performance and afterward as well. To that end, she added a couple of lines to the battle-cry recitative and tweaked the last line a bit. So now it will be: Men commit rape — that’s nothing new / But countries can be rapists, too. / Women warriors, here we go / Off to vanquish every foe!

“And during the chant, dolls representing the spirit of the reincarnation of Meisuke II will be flying through the air. (Naturally, we’ll need to get your approval for those additions, since you are the original author of the chant we’ll be using.) Even so — and this is something we’ve experienced with other dog-tossing performances — no matter how forceful the hard-liners’ arguments might be, I think it’s going to be difficult for them to push the entire audience into an emotional meltdown. But never fear, Unaiko is preparing for that eventuality, and she’s going to have an ace up her sleeve. I’m not in a position to reveal the details to you right now, Mr. Choko; I’ll only say that this is the thing I alluded to earlier. You really need to hear about it directly from Unaiko, and I’m sure she’s planning to tell you before too long.”

I had no intention of trying to force Ricchan to disclose any details about the mysterious “thing,” but I did venture a question regarding another matter that had been bothering me.

“The other day Unaiko turned up with a man she introduced as her boyfriend,” I said. “He and I hit it off quite well, and we had an unusually candid conversation. However, toward the end of our visit Unaiko seemed to have an emotional meltdown, to use your term, and she even started to cry. I was wondering whether you might have any idea what could have caused her to react that way?”

“Oh, yes, I heard about that,” Ricchan said. “Unaiko told me she was very moved when you quoted the translation of one of your favorite lines from Eliot, These fragments I have shored against my ruins. She said it made her realize that even for an older author who has had a great deal of success, the struggle never ends; on the contrary, it goes on forever, until you die. As I’ve said before, while Unaiko is undeniably egocentric, she is also a very sensitive soul who can be saddened to the point of tears by something as small as suddenly becoming aware of the burdens an old person has to bear.”

3

When Asa finally returned to her house by the river after having stayed in Tokyo considerably longer than expected, she brought with her a packet that had been put together by Akari’s music teacher in Tokyo. It contained a summary of Akari’s overall progress; copies of all the handwritten sheet music for his original compositions — both in progress and completed; and an evaluation of his most recent work. (I had shared Akari’s latest efforts with our family in Tokyo, and Asa had passed those pages along to the music teacher.)

When Asa and I got together to talk about Akari’s musical situation, she told me about a new development we both feared would be upsetting for Akari if he knew. It appeared likely that his music teacher, who was married to the associate conductor of an orchestra patterned after the West German model, would soon be accompanying her husband on a posting abroad, where she would pursue her own education as an advanced student of music.

After we had finished a communal lunch and Ricchan had set off with Akari for his daily round of rehab exercises, Asa gave me a full report on the state of affairs at my house in Seijo. This included an account of a soul-baring talk she’d had with Maki, who had been left in charge of the household while Chikashi was in the hospital. Asa began by reassuring me that I didn’t need to worry about Chikashi’s medical bills, since they would be covered by our health insurance. As for taxes, she said Maki was already planning for the following year. In an ordinary year, I would have published a new book, which would have yielded some income. This year, however, my work on the drowning novel had screeched to a halt, and I didn’t have any other book projects in mind. There was enough money in the bank to cover everyone’s living expenses through the next year, but what, Asa asked, was I planning to do when the big tax payments came due next March?

“Don’t worry, Kogii,” she said briskly before I could reply, “I may have come up with a possible solution. It’s been confirmed that we have copyrights on all versions of the screenplay for the Meisuke’s Mother Marches Off to War movie. According to Ricchan, they’ve begun work on a draft of their stage-play version of the story, which will be presented using Unaiko’s trademark dog-tossing method. As remuneration for your work and for the use of your screenplay, what if you combined those two versions of the story in a single volume, as a set? There’s no reason to expect a novelist’s screenplay and a playscript to be a bestseller, but it’s worth a try, don’t you agree? I’m acquainted with the editor who would have been handling your current novel, if it had ever come to fruition, so I went ahead and sent an email to sound him out about this idea.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, remembering. “If you’re wondering what became of his reply, the editor and I just corresponded directly. As you’re aware, his publishing house puts out a literary magazine, and as it happens, the editor in chief has a long-standing interest in both film and the theater. He’s already said that he would like to publish both scripts in his magazine, as a new work, and they’re willing to pay for it, too. I really have to hand it to you, sis — you’re as much of a go-getter as any professional literary agent out there!”

Asa knew I was historically ambivalent about her aggressively proactive tendencies, and she clearly heard the undertone of resentment beneath my compliment. However, that didn’t stop her from forging ahead.

“Once it’s been decided that your scripts will appear in a literary magazine, you won’t be able to bail on the project the way you did on your last novel,” she said pointedly. “In that spirit, I think you need to take the time to walk the insurrection route and check things out for yourself. You’ve never actually made the trek along the river, have you? Unaiko mentioned she wanted to get a sense of where the uprising took place to help her imagine the frightful ordeal that Meisuke’s mother endured afterward, so I told her we’d be glad to provide a hands-on guided tour. We’re planning to go next Sunday, and I trust I can count on you to come along?”

4

That Sunday morning, Unaiko drove over to pick Asa up, and then they swung back around to fetch me. I climbed into the passenger seat next to Unaiko and assumed the role of explainer in chief, while Asa added her own questions and comments from the backseat.

“I’ve been thinking about the best way to give you the grand tour,” I told Unaiko. “Asa, remember the time when we were kids, when we went and rambled around some ruins not far from here? They were supposedly the habitat of the Destroyer: the literally larger-than-life character who’s the star of the single most popular legend around these parts … I suppose ‘legend’ could imply a basis in truth, so maybe I should just call him an apocryphal being. In any case, sometime between 250 and 300 years ago, deep in the forest where the feudal clan’s authority held no sway, this charismatic individual supposedly created a completely independent, self-sustaining community of separatists. He’s said to have lived a remarkably long life and somehow, along the way, he was magically transformed into a giant. According to local lore, the Road of the Dead and other large-scale projects were built under his leadership. In any case, one day during our childhood we went to take a look, as a family outing. In the midst of the ruins there was a raised area, like a round platform, covered with vividly verdant grass.”