Pathway to Japanese Literature

As he drifted between dream and reality thinking Segawa must have come, some impulse abruptly startled him awake. At the same moment, the voices in the next room ceased. He surveyed the ceiling with widely opened eyes. Then feeling a leaden heaviness in his eyelids again, he instinctively closed them—and once more the voices reached him. They were indeed his wife and Segawa’s voices. He strained his ears toward them.

"...How would they extract it?"

"Well I didn’t hear specifics either, but consulting a doctor would clarify things. If such treatment truly existed, specialists should already know about it. Though considering they must deliberately slaughter an entire horse for this purpose, even with confirmed efficacy, I doubt it could see widespread practical use. Even in my friend’s case, they say the hospital director only tried it as a last resort."

“But if it could certainly cure…”
“However, they may not be able to definitively assert that it actually cures.”
“It likely depends largely on one’s constitution.”
“Though in my friend’s case, it’s thought the treatment happened to suit his constitution well.”
“How much would a horse cost?”

“Well…”
“And it might not be that just any horse would suffice.”

“Then shall I ask the doctor?”

“That’s true,” Segawa replied. “But that might not be necessary. Hasn’t he been doing much better lately?”

“Yes,” she answered, “he does seem somewhat improved. His fever has stayed down considerably, and he’s hardly coughing up any phlegm now.”

"He'll definitely get better. Kōno has a sound mind—a minor illness like this can be cured through mental strength."

"However, lately he seems rather irritable, and that worries me... And it will gradually get colder too."

The conversation never returned to the matter of the horse after that. However, he found himself increasingly preoccupied with it. A horse—something utterly unexpected—had suddenly appeared there, left behind what seemed like a significant implication for his own illness, and then vanished into the distance. While speculating about this matter in various ways, he was also listening to the conversation between his wife and Segawa. However, the conversation kept breaking off and jumping between various topics, never returning to the matter of the horse. He found remaining still unbearable. However, pretending now as if he had suddenly awoken also felt somehow awkward.

The conversation in the next room continued on.

“...It truly feels pleasant here.”
“In a place like this, an illness would naturally heal itself.”
“I too—every time I visit—think I won’t impose for too long. Yet once I come, I end up staying over and such. To the point where even I can’t tell whether I’m here on a sick visit or just for leisure.”

“If you’d simply come from the start intending to visit casually, that would be perfectly fine.”
“Since we moved here, few friends have come to call—Kōno has grown terribly lonely.”
“I too feel somehow fortified when you visit.”
“When you leave, Kōno always withdraws into silence looking desolate, and I find myself feeling strangely adrift—the whole house turns dreary at once.”

“Then even if I kindly pay a visit, it all cancels out in the end, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, so you must stay as long as possible.”
“You must stay over again tonight as well.”

“That’s true.”
“If Kōno feels up to it…”

“Please do stay. He’ll surely be pleased.”
“Lately, as his illness seems to have improved somewhat, he keeps saying he wants to regain his health soon and write one long piece.”
“No matter how much I try to stop him, he keeps the manuscript paper close by his pillow—writing a few lines and then pondering something.”
“But it seems he still lacks mental strength—he tears up those papers and goes back to sleep.”

“He really shouldn’t push himself so unreasonably from now on.”

“But I worry that opposing him too strongly might do harm, so even though I’m by his side, I find myself at a loss about what to do.”

“That must be troubling for you.”
“Shall I try suggesting he rest quietly for a while too?”

“Yes, please do.”

“And is Kōno still trying to write a novel, then?”

“They’re rather like personal impressions, you know. Because he writes and immediately tears them up, I don’t fully understand them, but the ones that can be pieced together to read—I quietly put those away. Because I thought they might be of some use later.”

“That was a good thing you did.”
“Kōno will surely be pleased.”
“The raw feelings experienced during illness rarely emerge clearly even when reflected upon later.”
“The direct sensations of that moment are the most precious thing.”

“But there’s only a very small amount, you know. I wouldn’t mind showing them to you, but since Kōno always hates having his unfinished works seen by others, please don’t take this the wrong way.”

“Oh, not at all—that’s perfectly true.”
“Anyone would dislike having their discarded writings seen by others.”

He suddenly forgot to follow the thread of conversation and sank into solitary thought. Phrases he had once discarded came surging back to his mind.

——To pity the sick is the right of the healthy.
To resist the healthy is the right of the sick.
Yet... when the healthy give something to the sick, when the sick receive from the healthy—what meaning does that emotion bear toward their former freedoms?

That was a scribble he had dashed off after Segawa’s visit the previous Saturday. That day he was in an unusually good mood. He had been informed by the doctor that his bronchial catarrh had mostly improved. When he sat down to breakfast, there was a small portion of red rice beside the porridge. With a slight lowering of her eyes and a smile, his wife said, “Today is your birthday.” Upon reflection, he realized that was indeed the case. He suddenly became happy. He felt as though a bright future lay ahead. Despite his wife saying it was merely an accompaniment, he ate a little of the red rice. He sat up on the floor and gazed at the garden for a long time. He resolved to spend this day pleasantly alone with his wife—just the two of them—without involving others. Then, in the afternoon, Segawa came. His face clouded over. He didn’t speak much either. However, Segawa showed no sign of leaving. When evening came, his wife said, “Since today is Kōno’s birthday, please take your time staying.” He became displeased. He wanted to shout “Idiot!” at his wife but stifled the impulse. He felt as though Segawa had trampled all over his carefully prepared birthday. But that evening, Segawa became strangely animated from a little alcohol and, driven by creative anguish, proceeded to lay bare his own flaws and shortcomings as he spoke.

A pleasant tension had begun to stir within him.
They had engaged in artistic debates for the first time in ages.
“Because I suddenly wanted to see you, I cast aside the manuscript I was writing and came here,” Segawa said.
When he closed his eyes, worn out from speaking, Segawa said:
“Forgive me for stirring you up—from my own affairs all the way to your sickbed.”
When he opened his eyes, Segawa’s eyes were glistening.
The two remained silent for a long while.

The next day, after Segawa had left, he thought alone.
“Would it have been better to spend yesterday quietly with just my wife, or to have passed that unusually tense evening with Segawa?”
For him—afflicted with a lung disease and leading a monotonous life at a sanatorium for so long—how he should spend each day had become a matter of grave importance.
After Segawa left, he wrote a few lines like before.

When he recalled that time, he was filled with an indescribable desolation.
The conversation in the next room continued sporadically.
But now even listening had become burdensome.
He could no longer bear lying still and feigning sleep.
"Why had he felt driven to eavesdrop on his wife and Segawa's conversation?" he asked himself.
Then the word "horse" surfaced in his mind.
An incomprehensible frustration swelled in his chest.

He turned over.

Perhaps hearing—or seeming to hear—the sound，the wife immediately came over.

“You... you’re awake? Mr. Segawa has come and is here now,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, he made a show of waking up properly for the first time.

“So, Segawa?”

“Yes, he has been here for some time now, but since you were sleeping so soundly…”

Before he could answer anything, Segawa had already entered the room.

“Oh, you’re sleeping quite soundly.”

“Have you been here long?”

“No—just now.”

He stared fixedly at Segawa’s face.
A healthy-looking complexion, neatly parted hair, bold eyes tinged with something sarcastic, a sturdy nose, a freshly-shaven bluish chin.
He tried to sit up there.

“Stay like that,” Segawa said.

He laid his head back on the pillow.
He didn’t understand why he had tried to sit up.
And he felt something panicked stirring deep within his heart.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m quite well,” he answered.
“The doctor even said it’s fine to sit up a bit if it’s warm.”

“But now is the most crucial time.”
“That’s why I’m being careful.”
“Who knows.”

“I really am.”

“That’s right—you’ve been writing manuscripts and such.”

“Ah, right. As for that stuff, you know—I just scribble three or four lines at a time to pass the boredom and then tear them up right away—so it doesn’t do any harm to my body.”

“But when you first pick up the pen, you intend to write something a bit longer, don’t you? That kind of mental effort is exactly what’s harmful.”

“I do understand what you mean. You’re saying that because the future matters, I should guard the present now, right? That must be how it is.” However, when lying ill for a long time, the act of guarding the present began to take on a different meaning. The interpretation during healthy times was that one must sacrifice the present to some extent for the future. However, when ill, he came to feel that he must cherish the present as much as possible for the future. Within people’s hearts, something ceaselessly takes root. If one does not carefully watch over those things taking root, a good future will not arrive.

Since moving here, I had spent each day doing nothing but gaze at the garden, naturally observing its minor changes. Then one morning, I discovered that an area I had thought was nothing but bare black soil was now entirely covered in green moss, and was startled by it myself. In a place where I thought there was nothing, during a time when I believed nothing was happening, the moss had in fact been gradually taking root and spreading. By the time I noticed it, the moss had already spread completely beyond any remedy.

Such things take place in our hearts as well. Unbeknownst to us, all sorts of things take root and spread. By the time one notices them, those roots have already deepened beyond remedy. The term “critical impasse” refers precisely to such a state of affairs. And the more imperceptibly these changes take place—the more they escape people’s notice—the greater the danger becomes. Therefore, to improve the future, one must pay deep attention to the present—to the almost unconsciously occurring shifts in one’s present state of mind.

Do not despise the present.
Do not let your guard down.
Do not act like a workhorse that gazes only at the distance while neglecting what's underfoot and charges ahead.
In that sense, I came to know the importance of cherishing the present.
And for that reason, I sometimes feel like scribbling my current feelings on paper.
It's regrettable that I still lack mental strength and can't write anything coherent, but by scribbling even pointlessly, I feel like my transient emotions become grounded in something tangible.
What I write is of that nature—it's not as though I'm frantically trying to produce creative work while bedridden with illness.

As he spoke, he found himself immersed in a mood he might describe as "miserable." And he rapidly uttered his final words as if hurling them.

“But you mustn’t push yourself too hard.
“If your nerves get too strained, you’ll only end up harming yourself.”

“Hurt myself….”
Repeating it like a parrot, he fell silent.

The wife, who had brought tea earlier and been listening to their conversation, interjected at that moment.

"What peculiar people you are, beginning arguments the moment you meet."

"Ha ha ha," Segawa laughed. "Quite right—it does seem we've come here precisely to foist debates upon the patient, doesn't it?"

He felt something cold in Segawa’s laughter.
Then a slight resentment arose at being called by the common noun “patient.”
That coldness and resentment gradually drew him into a gloomy mood.
He spoke in a manner contrary to his heart.

“You can take your time today.”

“That’s true… I’m not in any particular hurry.”

“In that case, how about staying over?”

“But I’m always just being a nuisance here, you know.”

“I don’t mind at all.
I’m bored here anyway.”

Then he fell silent, staring vacantly at the ceiling while occasionally catching snatches of conversation between his wife and Segawa, and thought in the depths of his growing despondency—Segawa was indeed his closest friend. Despite his busy schedule, he would often visit and usually stay about a night. Moreover, he wasn’t afraid of my tuberculosis—sharing meals, lying down together, speaking without reservation. Yet even as I rejoiced in and felt grateful for Segawa’s friendship like this, why did I sense a peculiar constraint whenever he came? Could it be that his staying too long was the problem? Shouldn’t my usual lonely self be pleased by his prolonged stay? Moreover, he must be visiting me during breaks between his work as if coming to a vacation home for leisure. His friendship—which had strengthened me in various ways and shown concern for my health—must be something beautiful and profound. Yet why had my heart, which had initially been grateful for this, come to feel a certain resistance lately? The friendships of one’s student days grant a kind of privilege, but does the time come when friendship no longer grants that privilege?

Having thought that far, he became lonely.
He himself grew lonely.
And he closed his eyes.

“Still sleepy?”

When he opened his eyes at the sound of that voice, Segawa was peering at him.
He answered with a wry smile.

“Hmm. I’m strangely sleepy today for some reason.”

“Why don’t you rest properly?” said the wife.
“In the meantime, perhaps Mr. Segawa could take a walk by the sea…”
“I’ll prepare everything for this evening.”

“That’s good,” he said.
“Tonight, make something a bit special.
“Segawa, forgive me, but I’m going to sleep. Why not walk by the sea?
“The late autumn sea is quite nice.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself.”
“Then let’s meet here again this evening—the three of us. …Next time, it would be good if you could join our walk too.”

When Segawa went out toward the sea, he turned on his side and stared fixedly at the loquat-colored paper of the sliding door. Then his wife peered into his face and said.
“Why are you so sleepy today?”

He glanced briefly at his wife’s face and answered.

“Oh, I’m not really sleepy—I just said that because I wanted to be alone for a bit.”

“Then you should have said so from the beginning.”
“There’s no need to hold back from Mr. Segawa at all.”

“But since he went out of his way to come, I can’t just do that.”
“That aside—make something special for tonight.”

“Yes.”

He thought for a while and finally ventured to say.

“I had a strange dream earlier.”

“What was it like?”

“Well, it’s a vast field.”
“No matter how far I went, there were only fields—no cultivated plots or hills in sight.”
“I passed through it at tremendous speed.”
“It was exactly as if I were riding a train—the speed was far beyond what human legs could achieve.”
“Moreover, my body remained completely still, while only the surrounding scenery kept rushing backward.”
“When I thought ‘This is strange,’ that’s when I first realized—I was riding a horse.”
“It was a splendid horse—its galloping speed was beyond words.”
“As I proudly applied the whip, sensing something amiss, I cautiously peered downward.”
“And what do you think? The horse was soaring through the air with me on its back.”
“That must be what they mean by a heavenly horse soaring through the sky.”
“But the moment I noticed that, my head spun, and I plummeted headfirst to the ground.”

“And then?”

“The moment I fell, I woke up.”

“What a strange dream.”

“It was a truly strange dream.”

“That’s strange.”

“What was?”

“Actually, I just heard a strange story about horses from Mr. Segawa.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s about a friend of Mr. Segawa’s friend—they suffered from tuberculosis for a long time, but no matter what treatments they tried, nothing worked. They gradually worsened and in the end had to be hospitalized.”
“They said something about Nagasaki, I believe.”
“And then, when it finally reached the point where no treatment was possible, the director of that place administered a certain treatment as a last attempt—and with that, they were completely cured.”
“The treatment involves taking a horse’s spinal cord and injecting it, they say.”
“They say that theory has existed for some time, but because it requires deliberately killing a horse, in practice it hasn’t been applied much, or so the story goes.”

“What nonsense.”

“But if it really is effective…”

“Are they saying they should try it on me?”

“Yes, if you remain unwell for too long…”

“But if its efficacy were truly certain, wouldn’t it have been widely practiced by now? There’s no need to specially kill a horse—they could just take it from a slaughterhouse.”

“I also thought it was strange, but it seems Mr. Segawa’s story is completely true.”

“And what did Segawa say?”

“He didn’t say anything particular—just mentioned that such a thing exists, and seemed half-convinced of it himself.”

Because the “horse story” he had fabricated a dream to subtly probe turned out unexpectedly trivial, he found himself at a loss for where to direct the emotions he had steeled himself with. Then he stared fixedly at his wife’s face.

“You’ve been hoodwinked by Segawa!”

“No, it was a completely true-seeming story—but shall I inquire about it once more?”
“What’s the point of that story?”

A silence continued for a while.

“Well then, I,” his wife said as if suddenly remembering, “will go and prepare.”
“If you need anything, please call me.”

He silently nodded.

When alone, he kept his eyes closed for some time before shifting his body slightly to gaze at the veranda's shoji screen. The westering sun brightly lit about the lower third of the screen. A gnarled tree branch cast a faint shadow where a small bird perched. These things had somehow become familiar to him—the plum branch in the garden's corner and the sparrow basking in sunlight. He fixed his gaze there momentarily. The sparrow remained motionless however long he waited. His eyes craving some movement—a tilt of that delicate head or flutter of wings—were forced into near-desperate patience. Everything existed in nothing but an ordinary yet luminous stillness. Even when he sensed the plum branch's shadow creeping silently across the screen, the sparrow didn't so much as twitch. Watching this filled him with terrible boredom.

He rested his head on the pillow again and closed his eyes.
The events of the two months since he had moved here for a change of air came to mind.
These too proved dreadfully tedious.

He fell into deep melancholy and despondency.
It was an abyss of emptiness he often sank into—one born from a sudden shift in mood.
With a feeling akin to falling from a great height in a dream—a sensation that indulged in that fall yet choked on it—he descended into the void through such emotions.
He felt too listless to do anything yet couldn't bear staying still.
A bottomless solitude welled up from his chest's depths.
Closing his eyes brought an impression of surroundings shackled by dimly lit desolation.
He opened his eyes wide and vacantly fixed them on the ceiling.
Yet he saw nothing.

While giving himself over to that empty loneliness, he did not know how much time had passed.

At that moment, the maid Haru brought a letter.

“Madam’s hands are soiled at the moment,” she said.

The letter was addressed from Hideko in Tokyo to his wife.
He opened the envelope.
As usual, trivial matters were described at length in cloying turns of phrase, with a postscript added that they might visit around the day after tomorrow—having invited Ms. Shizuko along as well.

As he read the letter, his heart gradually brightened.
When he finished reading and tossed it by his pillow, his mood became enveloped in a sort of agreeable atmosphere.
The gaudy colors of their attire and the bright tones of their voices rose up in his mind.

Then a strange contradiction arose within him.
Because the gloomy mood from moments before and his current buoyant state had carved an inharmonious rift between them, now facing each other within his heart.
It was a contradiction even he couldn’t unravel.
And as he stared at it, he sank into his habitual ritual of merciless self-dissection.

—For a patient, a woman’s softness was far more comforting than a man’s strength. Nurses must absolutely be women. —From this notion he began tracing—not so much a line of thought as a thread of reverie. Then he remembered how, the other day when his wife had gone out on an errand—during Hideko’s visit when they exchanged fragmented, meaningless words—he had suddenly felt a lightness so airy it might fog windowpanes with breath: that had circumstances differed slightly, he might have married Hideko; that even now, given some chance, they might yet fall in love. It had come to seem all things were decided by random opportunities and could be overturned by them too. He had grown uneasy sensing that even what he usually trusted completely might shift unpredictably. Everything appeared to hang on fate’s capricious slightest turns. —I might come to love Hideko because of some circumstance. And my wife too might come to love someone—Segawa, for instance—through some happenstance...

When he reached that point, his reverie made a full rotation—Segawa too might come to love his wife because of some circumstance.
The fact that Segawa came to visit him like that might also have been because his wife was there.
If he were alone, Segawa might not have visited him so often.
At the very least, his wife’s presence must have been more pleasant for Segawa than his solitude.
Speaking from his own experience as well, visiting a friend who had a young wife felt more pleasant than visiting one living alone in a boarding house.
And…….

At that moment, the figure of his wife wearing a white apron appeared.
He gazed at her with a dream-like, hazy feeling.

“What did Ms. Hideko say?” she said.

He had been abruptly cast out from his reverie and could not bring a single word of response to his lips.

“Let me take a look.”

Having said that she read the letter.

"Oh how delightful!"
"It would be wonderful if they both came to visit."

"Hmm" he responded mechanically thereafter.

When his wife stood up and went back toward the kitchen he was overcome by an irritated feeling bordering on self-loathing.
At such a ridiculously foolish thought—and precisely because it was so utterly absurd one couldn't afford complacency—he felt a kind of indignation.
And as if seeking an outlet he cried within his heart: "It's this cursed illness! This endless tedious sickness!"
Yet even then he remained powerless against resentment stirring deep within.

"In any case, I must cure my illness quickly"—thinking this, he tried to forcibly calm his mind.
If horse spinal cord was effective against tuberculosis, then being injected with it would be acceptable.

However, the horse that came to his mind at that time was not a robust riding steed with its torso and tail closely cropped, iron horseshoes on its hooves, and a flowing mane as it neighed.
It was a miserable old draft horse.
Its entire body was covered in matted fur that swirled in tufts, its long tail frayed and rust-colored at the tip, straw sandals on its hooves, neck thrust forward, eyes devoid of light fixed on the ground, foam dripping from its mouth as it pulled a heavy load—clopping and plodding along a desolate road.

He became uncomfortable.
To avoid delving deeper into that discomfort, he picked up a newspaper and read every last uninteresting article.
Then finally, he narrowly folded the Go board and traced each sequence of the opening moves.

When Segawa returned, the sun was already beginning to set, and the meal preparations had been completed.

“The sea is nice,” Segawa said.
“I still cannot believe in art as vast as the sky.
“But I feel I can believe in art like the sea or art like the mountains.
“I feel that kind of art could exist.”

However, he did not utter a single word in response.
And after a brief silence lingered, his wife brought up another matter.

“Mr. Segawa is quite skilled at spinning wild tales.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There—just now you put on such a serious face, going on about horse spinal cords this and that, and completely took me for a fool, didn’t you?”

“No—that was simply me relating exactly what I heard.”
“I don’t know whether that’s factual or not, but in any case it was a faithful report and not nonsense.”

“However, such things might actually exist,” he interjected.

“Did you already hear about it from your wife?” Segawa said.
“I also thought it was a strange story, but my friend kept insisting it was true.”

“In that case,” his wife said, “you’re one of those who were taken in too.”

“Well, there are facts in this world that seem like lies,” he concluded.

And he himself grew uneasy about his own conclusion.
This time, his wife and Segawa took the side of not believing it, leaving him alone in a position of supporting the theory.
In his head, the figure of the wretched draft horse appeared once more.
When he thought of “that spinal cord…”, he felt an indescribable nausea.

When the meal ended, he said, “Let’s play Go.”
Saying it might harm his health, his wife and Segawa stopped him.
However, he did not listen.
He didn’t want to talk.
He also hated sitting silently with Segawa before him.
A vague emotion resembling animosity settled within him.
He sought an outlet for that emotion in the Go match.
“If you won’t play, I’ll play alone,” he said.

His wife and Segawa reluctantly complied with his words.
Moreover, the room with its storm shutters tightly closed had grown warm from steam rising off an iron kettle boiling on the brazier.
He sat up on the floor, leaned against a tall stack of futons, and faced the Go board.
Both he and Segawa were amateurish Go players but made good opponents when playing on equal terms.

He silently placed a stone. Somehow there was no strength in the core of his mind, and his attention wouldn’t properly settle on the board. But as he continued playing, a feverish excitement began spreading from the back of his head, gradually unifying his mood into battle. And without even realizing it himself, he had secured a victory of about thirty points.

“You’ve gotten stronger since falling ill,” Segawa said.

However, in the second game, the position of his stones turned direly unfavorable. Here and there, scattered stones became isolated. He stared fixedly at the board, seeking a desperate path to salvage the crumbling situation. But the more he rushed, the more his mind grew strangely unmoored, leaving him stranded at critical junctures. Though his opponent's formation appeared arrogantly overextended with countless weaknesses to exploit, each stone he placed only tripped over trivial missteps. Before long, he discovered his own massive central stone group would die in a single move by his opponent's initiative. Yet at that moment, he found himself unable to refrain from engaging in the skirmish at the lower right corner. To hell with it! he thought. Even after ultimately losing the corner battle, he left his central stones abandoned and placed elsewhere. It became clear Segawa was deliberately avoiding contact with those central stones. Should they be captured, the defeat would be too humiliating to behold. Even if they survived, victory remained beyond his grasp.

By the time they neared the end, he found himself compelled to place a stone in the center through an unavoidable sequence of moves. And in silence, he added one move to that large stone group to secure its survival. He sensed through the faint twitch of cheek muscles that Segawa was feigning ignorance.

He had lost by seventeen points.

“This time it’s decisive,” he said.

Segawa placed his stones as though desperately evading confrontation.
However fiercely he pressed the attack, Segawa avoided clashes even while surrendering patches of territory.
And through these mundane exchanges, he emerged victorious.

“Let’s play another,” he said.

“No, we should stop now.
We’ll continue next time,” Segawa replied.

He wordlessly shoved the Go board aside.
An emotion neither humiliation nor fury seethed in his heart.

“You’re a coward,” he said aloud.

“Well, perhaps it’s because I haven’t played in so long—my timing’s all off,” Segawa offered an evasive response.

“You should lie down now,” said his wife.

He stretched out in the futon.
When he laid his head on the pillow, only his face burned strangely while an eerie chill crept through his body.
Tears without reason pooled in his eyes.

After that, he hardly spoke.
Moreover, it was already past nine o'clock.
Because it wouldn’t do to overtire the patient, they all decided to turn in.
Moreover, he had always made a habit of going to bed early at night and waking up early in the morning.

“Could you turn off the lights for a while? It’s just… oddly bright,” he said to his wife.

When enveloped in quiet-soft darkness, his nerves gently eased, and he sank into a completely despondent mood.
A strange weakness permeated him to the marrow of his bones—he felt a deep fatigue as though his limbs had come unstrung.
In a peaceful stupor of total surrender—as if his consciousness were being gradually eroded—he began drifting into sleep.

He did not remember how much time had passed.
When he suddenly opened his eyes to some presence, the room was brightly lit by the electric lamp, and his wife sat alone at his bedside.

“Did you fall asleep?” she said.

“Hmm,” he responded while continuing to gaze blearily at his wife’s face.

After a while, she spoke again.

“I’m worried your forehead seems rather hot—won’t you take your temperature?”

“Hmm,” he answered, still blearily.

“Could it be that playing Go has made your fever return?”

However, when she took his temperature, it was only thirty-six point eight degrees.
She smiled while holding the thermometer up to the electric light.
Forming small wrinkles between her eyebrows with a faint worry lingering on her forehead, she relaxed the muscles around her mouth and revealed a glimpse of white teeth.
Seeing her blend worry and relief together, he found his wife beautiful.

“Why are you staring at my face like that?” she said.
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“You must be exhausted.”
“Were you able to sleep?”
“I hope you can sleep soundly.”

He gave no answer.
He averted his eyes from her face and, while casting a vague gaze toward the corner of the ceiling, thought about his wife’s beautiful body.
He thought about the two months since his relocation, the recent dangerous two weeks when a cold had developed into bronchitis, and all that had transpired during that time.
This woman who spent her days almost entirely in nursing care; her body’s sexual life that seemed forgotten; …and now, the allure of that body which she herself had unknowingly revealed.
He was overcome by an indescribable loneliness and said.

“You should go to sleep now.”
“Yes.”
From his wife’s futon spread out immediately before him, he turned over to the opposite side.
He tried to sleep by closing his eyes, but the core of his head remained strangely clear, and he couldn’t fall asleep.

“What about Segawa?” he suddenly asked.

“He had already gone to sleep,” came the wife’s voice from behind.

He opened his eyes again and vaguely recalled the day’s events. As he did so, his attention turned toward his own eyes staring fixedly at the sliding door’s bamboo leaf pattern. Beyond that sliding door and separated by a six-tatami room, the image of Segawa sleeping peacefully surfaced in his mind. Then it began to nag at him incessantly. He took a deep breath and pressed his left hand against his forehead—Why did Segawa sleeping beneath this same roof unsettle him so? Why did Segawa’s tranquil slumber grate on his nerves?—The more he dwelled on it, the further sleep retreated from him. Yet within the depths of his mind lay a fatigue so profound it even carried a faint ache.

He took a deep breath, as though trying to expel delusions.
And, hunching his shoulders, he turned over.
Immediately before his eyes, his wife who lay sleeping facing him had her eyes wide open.

“If you can’t sleep, shall I massage your head a little?”

“No, I think I can fall asleep soon.”
“Let’s try to get some sleep.”

“Yes,” she answered, smiling with her eyes.

He gently covered his eyes with the futon.
Lonely tears overflowed from his eyelids.
And by the time the tears that had continued endlessly finally began to dry, he unwittingly drifted into a doze.

The next morning, he awoke unusually late.

The morning sunlight slanted in, illuminating every corner of the shoji screens.
When he had the shoji opened, a garden damp with dew and frost lay refreshingly before his eyes.
He quietly raised his upper body on the bed and turned toward the garden.
The black earth that seemed to hold resilient elasticity captivated his heart.
A desire to walk barefoot across it surged from the depths of his chest.
The realization that he hadn’t touched soil for so long conveyed a desolation like being torn from roots to his heart.
He fixed an unrelenting gaze upon the ground.

At that moment, Segawa entered the garden through the gate.
When he saw that figure, he suddenly felt flustered and retreated back into his futon.

“Is it really all right for you to be up at such an early hour?”

“Hmm, I’m fine now.”
“Besides, it’s not even early morning for me, you know.”

Segawa came up from the engawa.

"I went down to the sea—it was refreshing," he said.
"May you soon recover so you can walk outside too."

Segawa's cheeks were flushed a vivid red, his large eyes looking astonished.

"You can stay until evening, right?" Kōno said.

"Well, I always feel bad staying too long... Besides, I have some business today," Segawa replied.
"I thought I'd take the nine o'clock train back."

"But it's not anything important, right?"

“It’s not exactly urgent business.”

“Then won’t you at least stay for lunch?”
“Because I’m so lonely—so unbearably lonely on my own.”
“I might stay quiet, but if that’s all right with you, couldn’t you at least lie down here in this room until around noon?”

Segawa silently looked in his direction.

“It’s fine if I stay quiet.”

“Ah, that would be better,” said Segawa. “Yesterday you seemed rather irritated, so I was worried about you all by myself. If you stay quiet, I’ll stay until noon. I’ll bask in the sun on this veranda while reading a magazine or something.”

“Ah, please do that.”

He felt that with this, everything—even the disorganized chaos of everything—might improve. And when he saw the familiar face of Segawa, he somehow felt strengthened.