Pathway to Japanese Literature

The seaside pine trees began to moan in the winter wind.
In a corner of the garden, a cluster of small dahlias were withering away.

He was gazing at the sluggish turtle in the garden pond from beside the sickbed where his wife lay.
When the turtle swam, the bright water reflections, cast back from the water’s surface, swayed upon the dried stones.

“Oh, you know, the pine needles have been shining so beautifully lately,” the wife said.

“So you were looking at the pine tree.”

“Yes.”

“I was watching the turtle.”

The two of them were about to lapse into silence once more, just as they were.

“You’ve been lying there for ages, and the only thing you have to say is that the pine needles are shining beautifully?”

“Yes, but I’ve decided not to think about anything anymore.”

“A human can’t just lie there without thinking about anything.”

“Well, I do think about things.”
“I want to get better soon and can’t stop thinking about doing laundry at the well—swish-swish like that.”

“Do laundry?”

He laughed at his wife’s unexpected desire.

“You’re a strange one. After putting me through all that trouble for so long, and now you want to do laundry? You’re a strange one.”

“But I envy how healthy I used to be. You’re the pitiable one, aren’t you?”

“Hmm,” he said.

He thought of the long struggle with her family over the four or five years until he married her.
Then he thought of the two painful years he had been caught between his mother and wife after their marriage.
When his mother died and they were left alone together, he suddenly recalled this past year’s hardships during which his wife had taken to bed with a chest illness.

“Indeed, I’ve come to want to do laundry now.”

“I wouldn’t mind dying now.”
“But I want to repay my debt to you more before I die.”
“Lately, that’s all that torments me.”

“What exactly do you mean by repaying me?”

“Well, I would cherish you, and…”

“And then?”
“There are so many more things I could do.”

But this woman couldn't be saved anymore, he thought.

“I don’t care about such things.”
“But for me... well.”
“I just want to go once to Munich, Germany—and even then, only if it’s raining there.”

“I want to go too,” the wife said, and suddenly undulated her belly like a wave on the sickbed.

“You need absolute rest.”

“No, no—I want to walk.”
“Help me up, come on, please?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t mind dying.”

“Even if you die, it won’t make any difference.”

“Fine, fine.”

“Well, stay still.”
“Then make it your life’s work to come up with just one adjective for how beautifully the pine needles shine.”

The wife fell silent.
He stood up, trying to choose a gentle topic to shift her mood.

At sea, the afternoon waves struck distant rocks and scattered.
A boat tilted as it rounded the sharp tip of the cape.
On the shore, against a backdrop of churning deep blue, two children sat like scraps of paper holding steaming potatoes.

He had never once tried to evade the successive waves of pain assailing him.
The reason these waves of pain—each distinct in quality as they struck—seemed to have been operative from the very inception of his physical existence was because he believed so.
He resolved to savor his pain completely, like a tongue relishing sugar, scrutinizing it with every sensory faculty aglow until nothing remained.
And when finished—which flavor had pleased him most?
—My body is a flask.
Above all else, it must first achieve transparency.
Thus he thought.

The dahlia stems coiled out on the ground like dried-up ropes.
The sea breeze blew in all day long from above the horizon, and winter arrived.

He went out through swirling sand winds twice daily to search for the fresh bird organs his wife wanted to eat.
He would visit every poultry shop in the seaside town one by one, glance around the garden from atop their yellow cutting boards, and then ask.

“Do you have any organs? Organs?”

When he was luckily handed agate-like organs from the ice, he would return home with a valiant stride and line them up by his wife’s pillow.

“This comma-shaped bead-like one is a pigeon’s kidney.
“This glossy liver—this is a duck’s raw gallbladder.
“This looks just like a bitten-off piece of lip, and this small blue egg—this is like jade from Kunlun Mountain.”

Then, his wife—goaded by his loquacity—writhed flamboyantly in her bed as though demanding their first kiss, her body convulsing with appetite.
He would cruelly snatch up the organs and immediately throw them into the pot, as was his habit.

The wife, from within the grille of her cage-like sickbed, smiled as she gazed into the constantly boiling pot.

“When I look at you from here, you really are a strange beast,” he said.

“Well, even a beast—I’m still your wife.”

“Hmm—so you’re the caged wife craving viscera.”
“You’re always faintly cruel in every situation.”

“That’s you.”
“You’re rational and cruel and only ever think of leaving my side.”

“That’s cage logic.”

He had to keep this conclusion ready these days to deceive his wife’s acute senses—which never missed even the wrinkles on his forehead that smoldered like half-formed shadows.
Still, there were times when his wife’s theories would tilt sharply yet pierce through his vital points and spiral around them with alarming frequency.

“The truth is, I hate sitting by your side.”
“Because tuberculosis—what we call tuberculosis—isn’t something happy by any measure.”

There were times when he would retaliate against his wife so directly.

“Isn’t that right?
Even if I leave you, I’d just be circling this garden endlessly.
I’m always tethered by a rope from your sickbed, forced to orbit within the circumference it draws.
This is nothing but a pitiable state—isn’t that so?”

“You’re... you’re the one who wants to have fun,” the wife said bitterly.

“Don’t you want to go out and enjoy yourself?”

“You want to go play with other women.”

“But you’re the one bringing this up—what if it were true?”

Thereupon, the wife would invariably burst into tears.
Startled, he then had to painstakingly unravel his logic with exaggerated gentleness.

“Admittedly, I detest being chained to your bedside from dawn till dusk.”
“Isn’t this endless circling of the garden precisely to cure you faster?”
“Even I’m not merely performing empty gestures here.”

“That’s because it’s for your sake.”
“You don’t have even a speck of good will toward me.”

When pressed this far by his wife, he found himself inevitably crushed beneath her cage logic.
But was I truly suppressing this pain solely for my own sake?

“That’s right—as you say, I must be enduring everything for my own sake.”
“But tell me—if I’m enduring this for myself, then whose sake demands I keep doing it?”
“I wouldn’t be performing this farcical zoo act if not for you.”
“Who’s this for?”
“Are you claiming it’s for my sake rather than yours?”
“Absurd.”

On nights like this, the wife’s fever would invariably rise to nearly 39 degrees.
Because he had clarified a single theory, he had to spend the entire night opening and closing the mouth of the ice bag.

Yet still, he had to continue organizing these cautionary reasons almost daily to clarify the justification for his own rest.
He worked in a separate room to feed himself and provide for the invalid.
Then, she would bring out the cage theory and assail him once more.

“Why do you want to get away from my side so badly?”
“You’ve only come to this room three times today, you know.”
“You know that, don’t you?”
“You’re exactly that sort of person, you know.”

“You... what exactly do you want me to do? I have to buy medicine and food to cure your illness. Who’s going to give me money if I just sit around doing nothing? So you’re saying I should perform magic tricks or something?”

“But if it’s work, you could do it here too,” the wife said.

“No, I can’t do it here.”
“I can’t do it unless I forget about you even a little bit.”

“Well, of course that’s true.”
“You’re the kind of person who thinks of nothing but work twenty-four hours a day—someone like me doesn’t matter at all.”

“Your enemy is my work.”
“But your enemy is actually the one constantly helping you.”

“I’m lonely.”
“Sooner or later, everyone must be lonely.”
“You’re all right.”
“You have work to do.”
“I have nothing.”

“Why don’t you just go look for it then?”

“I can’t look anywhere but you.”
“I’m just lying here staring at the ceiling.”

“Enough of this. Just stop there.”
“Let’s just agree we’re both lonely.”
“I have a deadline.”
“If I don’t finish writing today, who knows how much trouble they’ll be in.”

“Of course that’s so like you. The deadline is more important than me after all.”

“No—a deadline is a mandate that overrides any circumstances on the other party’s side.”
“Since I accepted this mandate after seeing it posted, I can’t afford to consider my own circumstances.”

“That’s right—you’re precisely that rational.”
“It’s always this way—I detest such rational people.”

“As long as you belong to my household, you must share equal responsibility with me for mandates from others.”

“Then why don’t you just refuse these mandates?”
“But what would become of our life?”
“If you’re going to be this cold-hearted, I’d rather die.”

Then he wordlessly jumped down into the garden and took a deep breath. Afterward, clutching a wrapping cloth, he slipped out to town to procure that day's organ meats.

Yet her "cage theory" pursued his own theory—the one chained to that very cage—with such visceral intensity that not even a hair's breadth remained between them. Through this, the razor-sharpness of the pathological theories she forged within her cage accelerated the daily destruction of her own lung tissue.

Her once round and taut, smooth feet and hands became as thin as bamboo.
When tapped, her chest made a light, hollow sound like papier-mâché.
And then, she no longer even glanced at her favorite poultry giblets.

To stimulate her appetite, he lined up numerous fresh fish caught from the sea on the veranda and explained them.

“This is an anglerfish—a sea clown exhausted from dancing.”
“This is a prawn—a Kuruma-ebi. The prawn’s a fallen sea warrior clad in armor.”
“This horse mackerel is a leaf blown up by the storm.”

“I’d rather have you read me the Bible,” she said.

Holding the fish like Pouro, he was struck by an ominous premonition and looked at his wife’s face.

“I don’t want to eat anything anymore. I want you to read me the Bible once a day.”

So, reluctantly, he decided from that day on to take out the soiled Bible and read it.

“Jehovah, hear my prayer.”
“May my cry come before Thee.”
“Hide not Thy face from me in the day of my distress.”
“Incline Thine ear unto me; answer me speedily when I call.”
“My days are consumed like smoke; my bones are burned as a firebrand.”
“My heart is smitten like grass and withered.”
“For I have forgotten to eat my bread.”

However, ominous events continued unabated.
One day after a stormy night had passed, that sluggish turtle disappeared from the garden pond.

As his wife's condition deteriorated, he found himself increasingly chained to her bedside.
Phlegm began oozing from her mouth every minute.
Since she couldn't remove it herself, he became its sole remover.
She started complaining of violent abdominal pains.
Massive coughing fits erupted five times daily without regard for day or night.
Each attack left her clawing at her chest in torment.
He resolved to maintain calmness opposite his patient's distress.
Yet the calmer he remained, the more fiercely she reviled him through cough-racked agonies.

“When someone is suffering, you—you’re thinking about other things.”

“Oh, quiet down—don’t shout now.”
“It’s because you’re so calm that I hate you!”
“If I were to panic now…”
“Shut up!”

She snatched the paper he was holding, wiped her phlegm sideways across it, and hurled it at him.

With one hand wiping sweat streaming indiscriminately from her entire body, he had to constantly wipe phlegm coughed from her mouth with the other. His crouched hips grew numb. In her agony, she kept glaring at the ceiling while swinging both hands to pound his chest. The sweat-soaked towel caught on her nightgown. Then she kicked at the futon, thrashing her body in wave-like motions as she tried to sit up.

“Don’t! Don’t move!”
“It hurts, it hurts.”
“Calm down.”

“It hurts.”

“You’ll destroy yourself.”

“Shut up!”

While being struck like a shield, he stroked her coarse chest.

Yet even at this agonizing peak, he felt there was a tenderness here—several degrees softer than the jealous torments she’d inflicted when healthy.
Reflecting further, he realized her sickly form with its rotting lung brought him greater happiness than her healthy body ever had.

――This is novel.
I have no choice but to cling to this novel interpretation.

Every time he recalled this interpretation, he would gaze at the sea and suddenly burst into loud, ahaha laughter.

Then, his wife once again dragged out her cage theory and glared at him bitterly.

“Alright then, I know full well why you laughed.”

“No—in fact, I might be all the more grateful if you stay quietly in bed rather than recover, start wanting to wear Western clothes, and go bouncing about.”
“First of all, when you’re like that, you’re pale and dignified.”
“Oh, just take it easy and stay in bed.”
“Because you’re that kind of person.”

“Precisely because you’re that sort of person, I can gratefully care for you.”

“Nursing this, nursing that—you bring up nursing at every turn.”

“This is my pride.”

“If this is what nursing means, I don’t want you doing it.”

“But suppose I went to the room across for three minutes—wouldn’t you claim it felt like three days of abandonment? Go on, answer me.”

“I want you to nurse me without a single complaint. If you pull faces or act annoyed while caring for me, I won’t feel grateful at all.”

“But nursing’s fundamentally a nuisance by design, you know.”

“I know that.”
“That’s precisely why I want you to do it in complete silence.”

“Exactly—to properly nurse you, I’d have to drag my whole clan here, stack up a million yen, then round up ten medical professors and a hundred nurses—”

“I don’t want any of that done for me—I want you alone to do it for me.”

“So you’re saying I should single-handedly imitate ten doctors, a hundred nurses, and a million-yen bank president?”

“I didn’t say anything like that. If I could just have you stay right by my side, I’d feel at ease.”

“See? That’s why you should at least put up with me making a sour face or complaining now and then.”

“When I die, I’ll resent you and resent you and resent you, and then I’ll die.”
“If that’s all there is to it, I can handle it.”

The wife fell silent.
However, he sensed she was still desperately honing her mind in that silence, as if unable to resist the urge to slash at him with words.

Yet he had to consider how his own work and lifestyle were accelerating her decline—but from nursing her and sleep deprivation, he found himself growing steadily more exhausted.
He knew full well that his fatigue directly diminished his capacity for work.
The less work he could manage, the more inevitable his life's descent into hardship became.
Despite this, the patient's mounting expenses clearly rose in lockstep with his worsening poverty.
And regardless of what might occur, the irrefutable truth remained: his exhaustion only deepened.

――Then what should I do?

――I want to be destroyed right here.
If that happens, I'll die without a single regret.

He sometimes had such thoughts.
Yet he also wanted to clearly see his own abilities in how to overcome this critical juncture of their lives.
He was awakened at night to rub his wife’s aching abdomen,
“Let more bitter days pile upon bitter days—let them pile ever higher.”

He developed a habit of muttering this.

Whenever he muttered this, an image would surface before his eyes—a struck ball rolling freely and alone across a vast expanse of blue woolen fabric.

“That’s my ball—but who struck it so recklessly?”

“Rub harder. Why have you grown so reluctant?”
“You weren’t like this before.”
“You used to rub my stomach more gently.”
“But now you just go ‘Ouch, ouch’ like this,” she said.

“I’m getting tired too.”
“I’ll be done for soon enough.”
“Then the two of us could just lie around here without a care, couldn’t we?”

Then she suddenly fell silent and murmured in a pitiful voice like an insect chirping from beneath the floorboards.

“I’ve already been so terribly selfish with you, haven’t I?”
“I’m ready to die at any time now.”
“I’m satisfied.”
“Please go to sleep now.”
“Because I’ll endure it.”

When he was told this, tears welled up involuntarily, and he no longer felt like stopping the hand that was rubbing the abdomen.

The garden lawn withered under the winter sea breeze.
The glass door trembled with a rattling sound like that of a carriage door throughout the day.
He had long forgotten that there was a large sea in front of the house.

One day, he went to the doctor’s to get his wife’s medicine.

“Ah yes.”
“I’d had been meaning to tell you for some time now,”

“Your wife is beyond saving now,” said the doctor.

“Ha.”

He clearly felt his own face gradually growing pale.

“The left lung is already gone, and what’s more, the right has advanced quite far.”

He returned along the seaside, jostled in the carriage like a piece of luggage.
The clear, bright sea hung limply before his face like a monotonous curtain concealing death.

He thought he no longer wanted to see his wife like this, ever again.
If he didn’t see her, he could keep believing she was still alive.

Upon returning home, he immediately entered his own room.
There, he thought about how he could avoid seeing his wife’s face.
He then went out into the garden and lay down on the lawn.
His body felt heavy and utterly drained.
As tears flowed weakly, he meticulously plucked the withered blades of lawn.

What is death?

"It’s simply vanishing from sight," he thought.

After a while, he composed his disturbed mind and entered his wife's sickroom.

The wife silently stared at his face.

“Don’t you want some winter flowers or something?”

“You were crying, weren’t you,” she said.

“No.”

“Yes, you were.”

“There’s no reason for me to cry.”

“I already know.”
“Did the doctor say something?”

Having thus settled the matter on her own, the wife began silently gazing at the ceiling without making any particularly sorrowful expression.
He sat down in the rattan chair by his wife’s bedside and stared at her face as if to commit it to memory anew.

Soon, the door between them would close.

But both she and I had already given each other everything we could give.
Now, there remained nothing at all.

From that day on, he began moving like a machine as she directed.
And so, he thought that this was the final parting gift he would give her.

One day, after suffering terribly, the wife said to him.

“Hey, you—next time buy me some morphine.”

“What’ll you do?”

“I’ll drink it. They say if you take morphine, you just sleep like this and never wake up again.”

“So you mean dying?”

“Yes—I’m not scared of dying one bit.”
“Once I’m dead, who knows how much better things might be.”

“You’ve gotten awfully bold without noticing.”
“If we’re at that point, then anyone could die anytime and it’d be just fine.”

“But you know, I feel so bad toward you.”
“I was only causing you pain all along, you know. I’m sorry.”

“Mmm,” he said.

“I do understand your feelings, you know.”
“But even though I said such selfish things, it’s not really me saying them.”
“It’s the illness making me say them.”

"That's right."
"The illness."

"You know，I've already written my will and everything."
"But I won't show it now."
"It's under my bed，so look at it after I die，okay?"

He fell silent.
The fact was something to be mourned.
Moreover, he thought he wanted her to stop bringing up more sorrowful things.

Beside the stone in the flower bed, the dahlia bulbs remained dug up and rotted away under the frost.
In place of the turtle, a stray cat that had come from somewhere began walking unhurriedly through his vacant study.
The wife remained silent almost the entire day, unable to speak due to her suffering.
She constantly gazed only at the distant glittering cape protruding from the sea surface toward the horizon.

He would sometimes read aloud from the Bible that had been assigned to her while at his wife’s side.

“Jehovah, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, nor chasten me in Your burning anger.
Jehovah, have mercy on me, for I am withered and failing.
Jehovah, heal me, for my bones quake in terror.
My very soul trembles and quakes in terror.
Jehovah, how long will You let this endure?
In death there is no remembrance of You.”

He heard his wife sobbing.
He stopped reading the Bible and looked at his wife.

“What were you thinking about just now?”

“Where will my bones go?”
“I’m worried about that.”

Her heart was now fixated on her own bones.—He could not respond.

It’s over.

He hung his heart as he hung his head.
Then tears began streaming even more violently from his wife’s eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“My bones have nowhere to go.”
“What should I do?”

Instead of answering, he hurriedly read from the Bible again.

“O Lord, deliver me, I beseech You.”
“The floodwaters have risen to my very soul.”
“I sink in deep mire where no foothold remains.”
“I am come into deep waters.”
“The floods overflow me.”
“I am weary with my crying.”
“My throat is parched; my eyes fail while I wait for my God.”

He and his wife sat side by side each day in silence, like a pair of withered stems.
However, now they had fully prepared for death.
There remained nothing left to fear, no matter what might occur.
And in his darkly subdued house, the water within the earthen jar brought down from the mountain stayed pure and full—like a heart grown still.

Every morning when his wife slept, he walked barefoot across new land emerging from the sea. Seaweed washed ashore by the previous night's high tide clung coldly to his feet. Sometimes children from the shore—wandering as if wind-blown—would clamber up rocky outcrops while slipping on fresh green laver.

Gradually, more white sails appeared on the sea surface.
The white path along the shore grew livelier day by day.

One day, an unexpected bouquet of sweet peas from an acquaintance arrived at his place, having come around the cape.

For the first time, early spring arrived sweetly in the house that had long been battered by cold winds.

He entered his wife’s room holding the bouquet with pollen-covered hands as if making an offering.

“Spring has finally come.”

“Oh, how pretty,” said the wife, her cheeks forming a faint smile as she extended her emaciated hand toward the flowers.

“This is truly beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Where did they come from?”

“These flowers rode in a carriage, scattering spring all along the seashore as they came.”

The wife received the bouquet from him and hugged it tightly to her chest with both hands.
Then, burying her pale face into the bright bouquet, she closed her eyes in ecstasy.