Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

The color of the sky was like pale yellow stained glass stretched taut over it. Not a single wisp of cloud marred its surface—a uniform blue transparency with scarcely any gradation, possessing an almost unbelievable beauty. It was a beauty so fragile that one feared even the slightest disturbance—a casually tossed stone, say—might instantly transform it in some unforeseen way. At that moment, I could imagine countless blue fragments falling through the vast sky.

Moreover, this beauty existed within a quietness where both time and space seemed to have vanished. That very thing, paradoxically, may have been what plunged me into sudden, intense anxiety.

My wife remained asleep in the adjacent room. When I thought that, the sound of the clock finally returned to my ears.

The sound of a clock was a strange thing. Busily, indeed—as if ticking away moment by moment—it seemed to announce the passage of time. “There, there,” it seemed to say. Moreover, no matter how desperately we tried not to hear that sound, it was futile. The more we strained not to listen, the more persistently that continuous noise resonated in our ears. Yet eventually that sound would disappear. Or rather, when I suddenly became aware of the sound again, I found myself looking back on those past few hours without it as somehow hollow. Strangely enough, the sound of the clock heard at such times carried a nostalgic quality akin to reassurance.

My wife still seemed to be asleep. It was quiet.

It was late last night. In the depths of sleep, I seemed to hear my wife’s voice calling out. But an even deeper sleep overcame me, and I sank into it. Yet within that dark haze of slumber, I heard her voice calling out again.

“Someone, someone, please wake up.”

As if shaking off sleep, I opened my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts, it hurts.” “Please call the masseur.” The sound of the clock rang clearly in my ears. The clock showed nearly twelve o'clock. “The masseur? That’s impossible.” “It’s already midnight, you see.”

“In that case, could you just rub me a little? Even briefly would do.” “Fine, fine.” “Just a little bit then.” I began kneading my wife’s bony shoulders that felt like leather stretched over bone. She stayed silent beneath my hands. Tonight’s pain didn’t strike me as being particularly intense. These days—unable to sleep at night—she’d developed a habit of dozing listlessly through daylight hours, which only worsened her wakefulness after dark. The endless nocturnal anxiety and neuralgic pain that never subsided seemed to coalesce into an obsessive compulsion rising from the blackness—could this be why she kept frantically calling out names? But I had work waiting tomorrow too.

“Alright, I’ll stop here. Yours never ends, you know.” “In that case, could you call the masseur for me?” Perhaps due to her disrupted sleep patterns, my wife often seemed to confuse the time of day. Just the other day, when I went out to buy sake in the evening, she had giggled softly to herself— “There’s nowhere selling alcohol this early in the morning,” she’d apparently said—and when I returned carrying sake, she stared at me with a thoroughly puzzled expression.

“You’ve mixed up the time again，haven’t you? “The masseur? Look，it’s already twelve-thirty at night.” “It’s the middle of the night.”

“It hurts. What should I do. I can’t sleep.” “You can sleep whenever you want. If you can’t sleep at night, then sleep during the day. Don’t even try to force yourself to sleep. There, didn’t you say something sensible once? Your groaning isn’t you complaining of the pain. You’re just keeping pace with the pain, you see. That’s how you do it—not resisting the pain or sleep, but seizing the moment to slip right under, you see. Anyway, I’m going to sleep.”

I got into the futon. Before long, a shallow sleep began to envelop me—fitful and thin. “How nice...” “You can fall asleep right away.” “Aah... It hurts.” Indeed, within this pleasant dalliance with slumber, I heard my wife’s voice. In the darkness bloomed her silhouette—wide awake and solitary—though I tried not to picture it. Yet I knew full well: disturb this fragile dance with sleep even slightly, and it would vanish like smoke. Cunningly feigning deafness, I yielded myself wholly to sleep’s embrace.

At a strange sound, I jolted awake. My wife was vomiting on the tatami mats.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” I leapt up and stroked my wife’s back. However, by that time, her vomiting had already subsided. “What went wrong?” “Should I call Dr. Ono?” “It’s already fine.” “Dr. Ono isn’t necessary.”

While cleaning up the vomit by the pillow, I said to my wife.

“Hey, at times like this, you should wake me up.” “But I can’t keep troubling you so often.”

“Whether it settles or not depends on the case.” “Then maybe I’ll pee while we’re at it.” “Right.”

I threw aside my wife’s futon. The moment I did, white smoke billowed up from within it, and an acrid burning smell stung our noses. That night, for the first time, the electric kotatsu the children had made lay overturned, scorching its wooden frame. The fire had spread to the futon as well. “The electric kotatsu’s in trouble! Quick, take shelter over here!” I laid my wife down on the tatami mats, then dashed the pot of water from beside the sink onto the futon. With a sharp sizzle, the flames went out immediately. Into the pitch-black charred cotton, I poured another cup of water.

“There, it’s all right now. You must have been cold.”

I lifted my wife up. In my arms, she made a tearful face and let out a childlike voice. “I’m scared… The electric kotatsu’s so scary.”

“Yeah‚ I don’t like that electric kotatsu either‚” he said‚ his voice carrying both weariness and resolve‚ “What children do—you really can’t let your guard down.” While my wife relieved herself‚ I rearranged my futon‚ dragged out a torn one from the closet‚ laid out her bedding‚ and finally settled her body onto it.

“Well, that was quite something.” “I wonder… This should keep you warm, but...” After covering my wife with her futon, I slipped between the children’s futons. The twelve-year-old boy’s body and the fifteen-year-old girl’s body were warm. However, both futons were too short, and I struggled to find a place for my feet; this time, sleep seemed unlikely to come. Suddenly, I heard my wife’s sobs. “I’m cold, so cold, so cold…”

“Ah, right—I’d forgotten about the kotatsu.”

“I’m scared… The electric kotatsu’s so scary.” “It’s not that electric kotatsu you’re scared of.” “Papa-style—I’ll heap in the powdered charcoal and give you a nice toasty one, okay?” I gathered scraps of paper, struck a match, and transferred the flame. As I briskly fanned with the uchiwa, I placed the charcoal holder on top as well. The kitchen light in the dead of night was a lonely thing. Spider webs, dried radish leaves, mandarin orange peels, a dirty corrugated board, empty bottles. The wind leaking through the gaps in the wooden floorboards crept in from beneath my hems. I felt my testicles shrivel from the cold. I flapped the uchiwa briskly again; the charcoal popped and crackled. The neighbor’s clock struck two. The moment I registered this, our own clock chimed the hour five minutes late.

“There, it’s started. “I’ll put something warm in for you, okay?” I placed the kotatsu inside my wife’s bedding, adjusted her two emaciated legs that had become exposed, laid the futon over her, and lightly patted its hem a couple of times. And so, I slipped once more between the children’s futons and fell asleep before I knew it.

In the deep darkness enveloping the surroundings, it was an event that seemed illuminated solely by a solitary five-candlepower electric lamp. It was as if it were all a dream.

This morning, when I awoke, my wife was sleeping soundly. Perhaps because her headache had subsided—a rare occurrence—she lay there with a serene expression, resting in perfect peace. And what an extraordinary color graced the sky. Cloudless and windless—a monochrome blue that appeared to have devoured even the light itself.

But even so, this sky’s color was far too beautiful. A paper boat of deception. No matter how desperately I clung to the edge of its sail, closing my eyes transformed it instantly into the prow. That was the childish sorrow of my boyhood. There might be an even more dreadful mechanism at play here. And then—the daytime was far too quiet. A stillness as though being swallowed whole.

I involuntarily stood up and went to check on my wife in the next room. My wife was still sleeping. I crouched by my wife’s pillow, crossed my arms, and for a while gazed at her. Her exhaled breath, inhaled breath—each perfectly peaceful. But this uncharacteristically calm state of hers instead roused an anxiety within me.

“Mother.” “Mother!” I tried shaking my wife’s shoulder. However, my wife gave no response and remained asleep. For the first time, realizing what was happening—with a face like a child stifling sobs as I rushed off—I ran to the doctor’s office.

II

It was indeed unconsciousness caused by the recurrence of cerebral softening. However, the diagnosis was that her consciousness would recover within two or three days at the latest. In March, when my wife had collapsed from this illness, I had been informed by the doctor that cerebral softening, while less severe than cerebral hemorrhage and quicker to recover from, carried the concern of recurring frequently. Yet it was only now that I finally recognized my own trusting nature—how I had clung to the notion of its mildness as something sacrosanct, while letting its tendency to recur slip unnoticed from memory.

I sat at my wife’s bedside with my arms crossed. “Tok… tok…”

I involuntarily tried calling my wife’s name. But of course, there was no answer she could give. Only her breathing continued peacefully. She seemed to be sleeping deeply and peacefully; I felt no sense of gravity at all, and once that became clear, I found myself able to believe the doctor’s words exactly as they were said. Suddenly noticing the soiled state, I lifted the futon’s hem to find the stench of urine warmed by the kotatsu’s heat assailing my nostrils. Suddenly, an affection reminiscent of the nostalgic scent of swaddling clothes welled up, resonating in my chest.

In the washbasin too lay the beautiful color of the sky. When water from the pump splashed in, the blue sky shattered into azure fragments that scattered wildly. But when I stopped working the pump, the blue sky immediately reformed into a perfect circle. Within it, bare winter branches traced clean lines. Yet as I washed my wife’s soiled clothes, the shadow of anxiety I’d felt earlier had vanished. This alone was a task I couldn’t leave to the children—a duty that from this day forward was mine alone—and I felt this truth permeate me to my core.

The next day as well, my wife remained unconscious, still continued to sleep. A Ringer’s solution injection. However, even that thick needle seemed to cause no sensation in my wife’s wrinkled, sagging legs. Today was another strangely beautiful day. At the desk facing south, the shoji screen bore the stark silhouettes of winter branches. With not even a breath of wind, the branch shadows remained sharply defined as they slowly shifted eastward. It was quiet. Within that stillness, today too, the clock continued to sound.

“I’m home, Mom. Are you still sleeping?”

The youngest son, Kazuo, returned from school.

“Mom. Mom, you…” “Tch, this is so lame.” Before long, our only daughter, Ikuko, returned home. “I’m home, Mom. Haven’t you noticed?” “Mom. Mom.” “What’s wrong?”

However, my wife continued to sleep soundly as ever. Of course, there was no answering voice from my wife.

The sun must have shifted far westward, for the branch shadows had vanished at some point, and indeed a paler sunlight now slanted through the shoji’s latticework. I had to take in my wife’s laundry now. The eldest son, the second son, and the third son left for the study room while Ikuko and Kazuo seemed to begin their review at the dining table. As I had often done during my wife’s illness, I took my evening drink cup and sat at her bedside. But now she was no longer a wife who could speak. I gazed blankly at my wife’s face for a while before tilting the cup of sake toward her peaceful breathing as my sole companion. Suddenly loneliness came rushing in.

“Mom. Mom.” At that moment, I heard my wife’s low, moan-like voice. Instantly, violently, my chest throbbed. I was glad. I was glad, as if we shared a secret between just the two of us. However, I immediately had to reconsider. When she regained consciousness, what expression would my wife have? What would be the first words she utters? By what means had the pain of her neuralgia been healed?

“It hurts… It hurts… It hurts so much.” Suddenly, that voice of my wife’s came back to me. Even were she to regain consciousness after all this time, what awaited my wife would be nothing but suffering. My wife’s neuralgia—like her cerebral softening—stemmed from heart valve disease, they said, with no cure to be found. With her left hand useless and legs disabled—for what purpose must this wife of mine keep living? My heart was in torment. Yet my wife had to keep living no matter what. Whether this wish of mine was selfish or not—regardless of reason—my wife had to keep living no matter what.

However, the next day as well, my wife's consciousness did not return. In the afternoon, I went out. What weather there had been, what scenes had met my eyes—I remembered none of it. Upon returning home, I would try betting on all sorts of things—whether my wife had regained consciousness or not, whether the first person I encountered was a man or a woman, whether the train number was odd or even, whether the last person I overtook was an adult or a child.

However, my wife remained unconscious, still asleep. While I was out, our eldest son informed me that Dr. Ono had come by. “Dad shouldn’t go out or anything like that.”

“Huh, is it that bad?” “It seems so.” “They say anything could happen at any time.” “I see.” “Tomorrow, they’ll be administering nutrients orally.” “I was told to prepare eggs and milk.” “Eggs and milk, huh.” “She probably won’t even taste it anyway.” “You can’t know that for sure.” “I see.”

I crossed my arms and sank down at my wife’s bedside. This, it struck me, was precisely what people meant by crossing one’s arms in idle resignation.

Toward evening, my wife broke out in profuse sweating. After obtaining Dr. Ono’s permission, I had my eldest son help me change my wife’s kimono.

The moment I noticed some change in my wife’s condition was when I took my usual evening sake cup and sat at her bedside. There was not the slightest trace of pain on my wife’s face, but her breathing was somewhat rapid, and her throat emitted a low sound. I immediately sent my eldest son running to Dr. Ono.

Dr. Ono, who had come wearing geta, immediately sat down as if peering into my wife’s face. “Ah, this won’t do.” “I see.”

“If there’s somewhere you can have telegrams sent, please do so immediately.”

Dr. Ono no longer examined her and, just like me, sat with his arms crossed at her bedside.

“Gōshū, Hoki, and Eda, then.” What should I do. For Gōshū, perhaps we should have them add that there’s no need for you to come. “In any case, Grandmother is at that age,” I instructed the children to send the telegrams.

While it was true that I had been considering my elderly mother’s frailty, since she had long opposed our marriage, I found myself somewhat fixated on how it would appear to my wife’s family.

"That’s right. I should have them add 'no need to force yourself.' I should have them add 'there’s no need for you to force yourself to come.'"

“Well then,” Dr. Ono said as he got to his feet.

“This time, she didn’t pull through after all.” “The time of death will likely be around midnight.” “I’ll come back.”

"So it's finally come." I tried to make myself truly grasp that. Yet as I looked at my wife’s peaceful face, the reality of death refused to feel real. I stood up, fetched the one-shō bottle, poured some into a cup, and drank. I went on drinking two cups, then three.

Suddenly, an utterly unexpected thought welled up. Unexpected—even that might be a lie. It had been lurking in my subconscious since that moment. Perhaps the drowsiness of that time had deeply enveloped it beyond the reach of consciousness.

That is, my wife might have attempted suicide. Was I aware of this all along, feigning ignorance?

At that time, I placed the kotatsu into my wife’s bedding and crawled back into the children’s futon. My wife seemed to have finally grown still. Before long, a shallow sleep came over me. That pleasant interplay between sleep and myself gradually sank into the depths. I thought I could hear my wife’s low moans. Drowsiness—and I was caught in such intense pleasure, it felt as though I were being drawn deeper into its embrace. How much time had passed?

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!” Suddenly, I thought I heard my wife’s voice crying out in pain. Next came the violent sound of her forehead being struck. I thought, “This is bad!” But whether I had fallen asleep like that, or whether my wife had lost consciousness at that moment—afterward, I was aware of no further sounds.

It felt like a nightmare. Yet I remain helpless before this guilt—this all-too-vivid guilt from that moment when, knowing I shouldn’t, I surrendered to sleep’s sweetness. Had I come to resent massaging my wife’s shoulders? Had I shown so little compassion for her sleepless agony? Worse still—when startled by the futon fire, had I not abandoned her on the tatami to douse the flames first? For whose sake must she endure this suffering now?

“I want to die. “I’ve ended up with this stroke, causing trouble for everyone.” In March, when she first collapsed from illness, my wife said those words and wept. “You shouldn’t say such things. “If even a part of my feelings can reach you, it might be painful, but please endure it.” At that time, my heart still overflowed with such untarnished, fervent love for my wife that I could state those words with absolute conviction.

A regret akin to terror surged through my entire body.

Yet despite it being nearly midnight now, my wife kept breathing quietly as if unaware of anything. I hadn’t noticed that her strength to breathe had weakened; with the gurgling sound in her throat barely present, it even seemed she had become much more comfortable. I simply couldn’t believe that death could be approaching within such tranquility.

I stood up. I broke into a run. In the night fog, the red gate lamp of Dr. Ono’s clinic seemed to float in the distance.

I reported my wife’s condition and suggested a cardiac injection. But Dr. Ono kept his head tilted.

“Well… but that would be futile.” “I will come immediately.”

Dr. Ono peered into my wife’s face as expected and remained seated at her bedside.

“It seems to be a bit delayed.”

My wife continued breathing quietly. At her bedside, the five children were also gathered. At that moment, I seemed to have no sense of time in my head. I did not know when midnight struck, nor when one o'clock came. “It appears the time has come.”

However, there was no change in my wife’s condition. Not a trace of suffering showed on the faces of the children watching over her.

“Can someone really die this easily?” I instinctively looked up at Dr. Ono. Dr. Ono peeled open my wife’s eyelids to examine them.

“She has passed away.”

I stared vacantly at my wife's face. Even then, I couldn't make myself feel the reality of her death. So serene was her countenance in death. Yet the hand I'd been holding grew cold before my eyes. I jerked my head up toward the grandfather clock. Its hands stood precisely at two. Suddenly the clock's tolling reverberated through my skull. She had lived forty-six years.

III

Eiko from Eda (my wife’s half-sister), who had rushed over upon seeing the telegram announcing my wife’s death, abruptly began this story.

The wife’s biological mother had dreamed in the middle of the night that my wife and I had come to visit. In that dream, I was greeting her normally, yet my wife stood there rigidly without attempting a single greeting.

“What a strange Mrs. O-toku.”

Her biological mother thought this in her dream and awakened. But the surroundings were still pitch-dark, and her biological mother, strangely preoccupied, fitfully drifted into a shallow sleep. “I hope nothing has happened to Mrs. O-toku.” “When morning came, she was truly relieved.”

Her biological mother had repeated the dream story to each family member, adding those words every time she recounted it. It was then that telegrams announcing both her critical condition and her death arrived simultaneously.

“No wonder Mrs. O-toku didn’t offer a greeting, I suppose.”

My wife had drawn her last breath at 2 AM; it seemed her biological mother had appeared at her bedside in a dream precisely at that time.

“But Mrs. O-toku was fortunate.” “Even after death, you remain together as husband and wife.” “Grandma kept saying that while blinking rapidly.” “Yet how strange it all is,” Eiko concluded her tale.

Suddenly, sorrow welled up. Even so, did my wife—did her spirit—take even this form of mine along with her?

“Forgive me.”

However, I did not cry. Foolish as I was, I had long feared behaving in disarray when this moment arrived, yet strangely, no tears came. However, since that time, it felt as though a dull, heavy sac—a tear sac, as it were—had formed deep within my eyelids, and I came to think that if this sac were ever to rupture, my tears would become endless.

But funerals inherently carry an air of artificiality. My wife’s remains had been placed on an altar decorated with paper flowers and electric candles, making her seem somehow beyond my reach.

From Hoki came Mr. and Mrs. Yagishita (the wife had been adopted as a child and was the heir to that adoptive family), and the next morning, my elderly mother arrived from our hometown.

I had been drinking alcohol since morning without any particular reason. Hah, hah—my wife’s cry, like the lead-in to a radio time signal, a cry that seemed utterly unable to bear the pain, would suddenly resound in the depths of my ears; I would unwittingly repeat it within my chest; I would terribly miscalculate the time.

The figure of my wife when we first met at the Azabu Roppongi café—wearing a white apron yet unmistakably like a country girl; the figure of my wife enveloped in thick mountain mist as we shared our first kiss atop Mount Myōgi; the figure of my wife in that boarding house beneath the cliff in Azabu Miyamura-chō, where we shared bedding.

Carrying our firstborn on my back in Hoki while clutching swaddling clothes, I moved to our initial home in Nagasaki-cho; then to the Nishi-Ogikubo house where our second son was born; next to Fukagawa where our third came into the world; finally to Asagaya where we welcomed our daughter and fourth son. The figure of my wife pounding an alarm bucket during air defense drills; the figure of my wife fumbling with thread on Needle Day; the figure of my wife inflating a torn wallet with devalued bills and dashing about. Every visage of my wife rose vividly before me. Yet each would dissolve like mist.

At the wake—fittingly for my wife who had been laughingly called a “rain woman” since her lifetime—it rained. However, on that day—unusually for winter—it was a balmy, spring-like day. At the farewell ceremony, a great number of friends offered incense in tribute. Particularly, Mr. Nakatani had come all the way from Matsumoto in Shinshu, Mr. Asami from Onjuku in Chiba, and Mr. Miyoshi from Fukui happened to be in Tokyo at the time—each offering heartfelt incense. Seen off by old friends from our Azabu days too, it seemed my wife must have been satisfied.

Particularly when carrying out the coffin, having Mr. Takii bear my wife’s casket was something that made me feel deeply obliged, yet I also perceived it as a fated connection, for which I felt grateful.

I went out toward the entrance with the young funeral worker, carrying my wife’s coffin. At that time, the children had gone ahead to the crematorium, while our friends stood in the garden waiting for the coffin to be carried out. Only three or four people had gone up to the room and were talking. “Would someone please lend me a hand here?” As we tried to descend from the entrance steps, the young funeral worker called out. One person immediately stood up. That person was Mr. Takii. I, together with Mr. Takii, carried my wife’s coffin, and that tear-filled sac within me felt as though it would burst with a sound at any moment.

Mr. Takii was the senior who opened my eyes as a writer. Around the time I met my wife, I came to know Mr. Takii's series of works titled Infinite Embrace. I could say I drew literary nourishment from Infinite Embrace while being given, above all, the confidence to live. That my love for my wife—a love belonging to my inherently stubborn self—could bloom as fully as I was capable of in my own way—wasn't it all due to that confidence? Memories of my younger days came to mind.

But my wife’s coffin was carried through the alley where she had likely walked back and forth countless times during her life, shopping basket in hand and dragging her worn-out clogs, and was loaded onto the hearse at the greengrocer’s corner.

The car started moving immediately. Seen off by friends and neighbors, the hearse gradually picked up speed before bouncing heavily two or three times and vanishing from my field of vision.

After the friends had all left, I found myself facing my mother.

“From here on out will be lonesome times, but please don’t lose heart.”

I apologized to Mother on behalf of my wife—who should have been caring for her in her old age—for the misfortune of having predeceased her. How pitiable was the lot of a Japanese wife.

“How on earth did she manage to raise so many children so splendidly?” “She fully fulfilled her duties as a housewife.” “She was a good person.”

Mother said this with a valiant expression. Such a sight of Mother was also heartrending. Several hours later, my wife, now white bones, returned home cradled in our eldest son's arms. After scattering salt over the children's bodies, Mother and I received her remains.

IV

The seventh-day memorial service had passed, and Mother, concerned about year-end matters back home, had also returned.

I was leaning against the kitchen brazier alone. There was nothing in particular to do. It was quiet. Today too, the warm-looking sun shone on the engawa, while the sky’s color—unthinkable for winter—stained the glass of the shoji screens a vivid blue, its reflection captured in the mirror at the room’s corner. Yet any color reflected in a mirror turns cold.

Now that I think of it, mirrors are cold things. They reflect every shadow cast upon them yet stop none. It is said mothers of old bequeathed such things to their daughters. How pitiful it was.

Since my wife’s death，it seemed I had grown unable to feel much resistance toward anything. It felt as though there was a hollow gaping hole in my chest. In those first days after her passing，I had moved through life dazed—drinking sake from morning onward until everything took on the quality of some half-waking dream. But now，finding myself truly alone，I suddenly felt confronted by this void’s enormity. Without warning，an unfathomable emotion surged through me. My body rose unbidden from where I sat. I began pacing circles around the room. The children’s torn socks and soiled clothes lay where they’d been cast aside.

“Even though spring had passed and summer was coming, what should I do about winter preparations?” My bedridden wife had often said such things. But that wife too was dead now, wasn’t she? Things could only become what they would become. This winter—look—wasn’t it strangely warm? But what was I to do with this self of mine?

In the tokonoma of my study, my wife’s remains were placed, adorned with flowers. I quietly tried sitting down at the desk beside it. It had been days since I last did this.

Suddenly, a sorrow like a cloud welled up inside me, and in the moment I thought Ah—, that sorrow overflowed as tears. Sorrow shuddered through my chest; tears overflowed and overflowed. I finally collapsed prostrate over the desk, weeping.

They were tears of pure grief—nothing else. Not a trace of remorse or lingering attachment tainted them. When my wife had fallen into critical condition，I’d been plagued by delusions that she might have taken her own life. But now，not a shred of that thought remained. My wife wasn’t that sort of woman. I must not defile these final moments of hers—she who’d endured everything with such perseverance—with such baseless imaginings. This wasn’t some kindly self-delusion. For her sake，I must accept with clear eyes her heart—that heart so foolishly modest.

Was she not the wife who had carried this very image of me into her biological mother’s dream visitation? There must be not even a shred of remorse. How could there possibly remain any? It was merely a sorrow tinged with blue. Such sorrow welled up as tears, spilling over one after another. The sorrow rose like the sensation of an elevator plunging abruptly—the endolymph in the semicircular canals lurching violently—suddenly constricting my chest without warning. There was nothing I could do about it. In panic, I could only barely manage to press my hands against my eyes.

By now, it was a sorrow beyond good and evil—closer to callousness. But human tears are tepid. Moreover, tears streaming down the cheeks of a man nearing fifty are the very height of slovenliness. But I lacked the strength to suppress them now. I found myself weeping prostrate on the desk once again. Fortunately, tears do not flow endlessly. In time, I could only pull up the edges of my eyes and wait for them to dry naturally.

Outside, days so balmy they scarcely seemed like winter continued, yet I spent my days in a state so wearisome I disgusted even myself. When I sat alone at my desk, it always came. Here it comes, I thought. But by then, tears were already streaming shamelessly down my cheeks. It came countless times a day. Each time, helplessly, I had to weep prostrate on the desk.

Certainly, I had thought I was dreaming. But I had also thought that my wife had not died. Outside came the loud voice of what sounded like a drunkard and the tread of footsteps. There was a noise like something striking against the front door. The instant it happened, my wife lying beside me raised her upper body and appeared to listen intently. From within the bedding, I drew my neck in and watched her like that. But my wife, as if truly relieved, immediately lowered herself back down and burrowed into the futon.

I seemed to have dozed off while lying prostrate on the desk. Was that a dream just now? Or had I been recalling something that happened during my wife’s lifetime? I couldn’t tell.

By now it was nearly evening when I suddenly noticed—perhaps placed by the child who had returned from school—my wife’s haori hanging over my shoulders. Then I wondered—had I indeed been asleep after all?

Tears—especially those of a middle-aged widower—are a tawdry thing. It is probably something like cloying emotional masturbation of sorts. But however foolish I may be—already nearing fifty—even my tear sacs will surely dry up someday. What would this tearless sorrow be like?

Where on earth does this sorrow come from? Or perhaps it wells up from the hollow that has opened within my chest.

This sorrow did not seem to stem solely from my wife’s death. It appeared connected to something within myself as well. That hollow—though an ambiguous term—seemed to have gaped open like a maw within what I might call my life force. This gutted apathy might too originate from that void.

In the diary I kept when I first knew my wife, each day’s entry brimmed with ambitious, youthful words strung together. From that time, a verse from one particular day: “The two of us are no longer separate beings.” “In a single living being, there exists no such thing as 0.5.”

That was how it had been. I was taught by my younger self.

A vow is not mine alone. It is not hers alone. Then, the hollow that opened within my life seems—so to speak—to be the vestige of a vow between two people now gone. It is no longer 0.5. It is 0.

Within that hollow lay no future. What existed was only the past. In the darkness of days gone by，only memories flickered with an ephemeral hue. Then，would this sorrow continue to race desolately through the hollow’s futureless future until my life’s end—already devoid of tears?

Speaking of which, the children were unexpectedly energetic. Even Kazuo, on the way back from the crematorium carrying bones, had called out loudly to friends flying kites. “I’ll be right there, so wait for me!”

I had been worried, but even my only daughter Ikuko showed no signs of being that disheartened.

They could not linger forever over their mother’s death now passed; their future stretched so far ahead. If anything, they had suddenly begun to support me—utterly senile as I was, with swollen rims around my eyes.

I, too, had eventually ceased to feel any fatherly resistance toward such children. If a mother exists through a father and a father through a mother, then now that my wife was gone, perhaps it was only natural that even the fatherhood within me was fading away.

Had their life force—instinctively aware of this—already begun to grow vigorously on its own? And so, having become an empty husk of a father, do I merely watch over these children’s days—observing them with anxious futility?

But it’s a strange thing. My wife's life lives on within those children. My life lives on together with hers.

Since that night, I had been sleeping between my two children’s futons. As I held the warm roundness near their buttocks, I would suddenly sense something like the afterglow of my deceased wife’s life and—to my shame—even feel fleeting lust toward her.

A rebuke—I want to bark at my foolish self. After all, isn’t this just sentimentality? Or isn’t this merely a belated sense of impermanence? I am utterly spineless. In a drunken stupor, I had played a foolish game with the children just the other night.

“It’s a mineral.” “Is it processed?” “No.” “Is it something found in the ground?” “No, there isn’t any now.”

“So it’s not processed then.” “Is it in this house?”

“There is.”

“Now then. “Is it in the kitchen?”

“There isn’t.”

“Is it in the ten-mat room?”

“There isn’t.”

“Is it in the sitting room?”

“There is.” “Alright, got it!” Kazuo said and ran to the sitting room. But he immediately tilted his head in puzzlement and came back. “It’s not a processed item, is it? “There’s no such thing here.” “Prayer beads maybe?” “Clang! Well done. “Prayer beads are obviously processed items!” “No.” “Air” “No.”

“Air isn’t a mineral.” “But it’s not an animal or a plant either, right?”

“You’re so dense. “If it’s air, then it’s even in the ten-mat room and the kitchen, isn’t there?”

“Ash—the ash from the sitting room’s brazier.” “No.”

“Ah, I’ve got it!” “What is it? Big brother, what is it?” “Now then, here’s the correct answer. Is it something that will go into the ground now?”

“That’s right.” “How about that? “See?” “Was it an animal until just now?” “That’s right.” “Was it Dad’s most beloved animal?” “You got me there. Well, yes.” “My, aren’t you holding back! “If she hadn’t had paralysis, could she have scratched her back with her foot?” “Did you always go running errands clutching that tattered wallet?” “Did she wear an underrobe like some Good Luck Roll undershirt?”

With each barbed comment came explosive laughter. Was she truly now nothing more than a handful of bones in an urn?

But even as I laughed—ahaha—I could do nothing about how the electric light’s glow once again began to flicker chaotically.