Pathway to Japanese Literature

I The color of the sky was like pale yellow stained glass spread across the heavens. Not a single scattered cloud, almost no gradation in hue—a uniform blue transparency that held a beauty so unreal it defied belief. It was a beauty so precarious that even a trivial incident—like someone tossing a stone—might cause some unimaginable transformation in an instant. At that moment, I could imagine countless blue fragments falling from the vast sky.

Moreover, this beauty existed within a stillness where both time and space seemed to have been erased. That very stillness may have been what plunged me into sudden, violent anxiety. My wife was still sleeping 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. It ticked busily indeed as if announcing each passing moment of time’s progression. “There there,” it went. Moreover no matter how much we tried not to hear that sound it was futile. The more we tried not to hear it the more persistently that continuous sound resonated in our ears. However someday that sound would disappear. Or rather when I suddenly noticed that sound again I found myself looking back on those past few hours without it with a certain emptiness. Strangely enough the sound of the clock heard at such times carried a nostalgic quality akin to a kind of relief.

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

It had happened late last night. In a deep sleep, I seemed to hear my wife’s voice. But an even deeper sleep came over me, and I sank into it. Yet within that dark, haze-like slumber, I could hear my wife’s voice calling again. “Someone... Someone, please wake up.”

I opened my eyes as if shaking off sleep.

“What’s wrong?”

“It hurts… It hurts.” “Please call the masseur.” The sound of the clock resonated clearly in my ears. The clock was nearing midnight. “Calling a masseur, that’s impossible. “It’s already midnight, you know.”

“In that case… could you massage me for just a little while?” “Alright, alright. Just a little bit then.” I began massaging my wife’s bony, leathery shoulder. My wife remained silent, letting me continue. Tonight’s pain didn’t seem to be that severe. Lately, my wife—who couldn’t sleep at night—had developed a habit of dozing fitfully during the day, which only made her nights more sleepless. The anxiety of those long hours and her neuralgic pain, never relenting for a moment, coalesced into an obsessive thought rising from the darkness—might this be why she frantically called out someone’s name? But I had work tomorrow too.

“That’s enough for now—your pain never ends.” “Then… could you call the masseur?” Perhaps due to her disrupted sleep patterns, my wife often seemed confused about the time. Just the other day, when I went out to buy liquor in the evening, she chuckled softly to herself— “No place sells alcohol this early in the morning,” she had said once, and when I returned carrying liquor, she stared at me with a thoroughly puzzled look.

“You’ve mixed up the time again, haven’t you? The masseur? It’s already half past twelve. It’s midnight, you know.” “It hurts... What am I supposed to do? I can’t sleep…”

“You can sleep whenever you want.” “If you can’t sleep at night, you can just sleep during the day.” “Don’t even try to force yourself to sleep.” “See? I did say something wise once, didn’t I?” The moaning wasn’t a complaint about the pain. It was just keeping rhythm with the pain. In that way, without resisting either the pain or sleep, she would seize an opening and slip effortlessly into slumber. “Anyway, I’m going to sleep.”

I got into the futon. Before long, a drowsy, shallow sleep began to envelop me.

“That’s nice…” “You can fall asleep so easily.” “Ahh… It hurts.”

Indeed, within this pleasant interplay with sleep, I heard my wife’s voice. I couldn’t help envisioning her there in the darkness—alone, eyes open. Yet I knew full well that if I disrupted this dance with slumber even slightly, sleep would vanish instantly. Cunningly feigning deafness, I surrendered myself wholly to sleep’s embrace.

I was startled awake by a strange sound. My wife was vomiting on the tatami. “Huh? What’s wrong?”

I jumped up and rubbed my wife’s back. But by that time，her vomiting had already subsided. “What went wrong?” “Should I call Dr．Ono？”

“It’s fine now. “There’s no need for Dr. Ono.”

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

“Hey, in times like this, you should wake me up.” “But I feel bad asking so often.”

“Whether it’s settled or not depends on the circumstances.” “Then I’ll go pee while I’m up.” “Got it.”

I knocked away my wife’s futon. The instant I did so, white smoke billowed up from within it, and a burnt smell stabbed at my nose. That night, for the first time, the electric kotatsu made by our children had overturned and was scorching its wooden frame. The flames had already reached the futon too.

“The electric kotatsu’s in trouble! Quick—over here!” I laid my wife down on the tatami and flung water from a pot by the sink onto the futon. A sharp hiss sounded as the flames died instantly. Into the coal-black scorched cotton, I poured another full measure of water.

“There we go, it’s all right now. You must’ve been freezing.”

I picked up my wife. My wife, cradled in my arms, made a tearful face and let out a childlike cry. “I’m scared… The electric kotatsu scares me…”

“Yeah, I don’t like that thing either.” “You really can’t let your guard down with what children do.” While my wife was using the bathroom, I rearranged my futon, dragged out a torn futon from the closet, laid out her bedding, and finally settled her body onto it.

“Well, that was quite an ordeal.” “How’s this? I think this should keep you warm.” After spreading my wife’s futon over her, I crawled into the space between the children’s futons. The bodies of the twelve-year-old boy and fifteen-year-old girl were warm. But both futons were too short, and I couldn’t even find a place for my feet; this time, sleep didn’t seem likely to come. Suddenly, I heard my wife’s crying voice. “It’s cold… So cold… So cold…”

“Oh right—I’d forgotten about the kotatsu.” “It’s scary… The electric kotatsu is scary…” “It’s not that electric kotatsu. Dad-style—I’ll heap in some powdered charcoal and give you a nice, toasty one.”

I gathered scraps of paper, struck a match, and transferred the flame. While flapping the fan briskly to fan the flames, I placed the charcoal brazier on top. The kitchen light at midnight was a desolate thing. Spiderwebs, dried radish leaves, mandarin orange peels, a soiled folding board, empty bottles. Wind leaking through gaps in the wooden floor came creeping through the floorboard joints. It felt like my testicles were shrinking. I flapped the fan again with brisk motions; the charcoal crackled sharply.

The neighbor’s clock struck two. The moment I registered this, our own clock chimed the hour five minutes behind.

“There we go, it’s lit now. “I’ll put in something warm for you, okay?” I placed the kotatsu inside my wife’s bedding, adjusted her two emaciated legs where they lay exposed, then laid the futon over her and lightly tapped its hem two or three times. And then, once again, I crawled into the space between the children’s futons and eventually fell asleep.

In the deep night that enveloped everything, it was an occurrence like a solitary five-candlepower electric lamp burning alone. It was as if it had all been a dream.

When I got up this morning, my wife was sleeping soundly. Unusually—perhaps her headache had subsided—her face was calm, and she slept with perfect peace. And what a magnificent color the sky was. No clouds, no wind—a sky of pure blue, as if it had swallowed even the light.

But even so, the color of this sky was far too beautiful. A decoy boat. No matter how desperately I clung to the edge of a paper sail, the moment I closed my eyes, it transformed into a ship’s bow. That was the childish sorrow of boyhood. There might have been an even more terrifying mechanism at work there. And yet, in broad daylight, everything was far too quiet. It was a quietness like being sucked into some vast maw.

I involuntarily stood up and went to check on my wife in the adjacent room. My wife was still sleeping. I knelt at my wife’s bedside, crossed my arms, and gazed at her condition for a while. Her exhaled breath, her inhaled breath—each one perfectly peaceful. But this uncharacteristic calmness of hers, so unlike her usual state, stirred a certain unease within me.

“Mother… Mother.” “Mother.” I tried shaking my wife’s shoulders. But my wife slept on without any response. For the first time realizing this was it—with a face like a child stifling sobs while running—I ran to the doctor’s office.

II

It was indeed unconsciousness caused by a 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 collapsed from this illness, I had been told by the doctor that cerebral softening was less severe than cerebral hemorrhage, with quicker recovery, but carried the concern of frequent recurrence. However, it was only now that I finally realized my own naivety—how I had clung only to its supposed mildness while letting slip from memory its tendency to recur.

I was sitting at my wife’s bedside with my arms folded. “Toku… Toku…”

Involuntarily, I called out my wife’s name. But of course, there was no response. Her breathing alone continued peacefully. She seemed to be in a deep slumber, and I felt no sense of gravity whatsoever; once that was settled, I found myself able to believe the doctor’s words exactly as they were. Suddenly aware of the impurity, I lifted the edge of the futon—the acrid stench of urine warmed by the kotatsu’s heat engulfed my nostrils. Suddenly, a surge of affection—reminiscent of the nostalgic smell of a baby’s swaddling cloth—welled up, echoing in my chest.

In the basin too was the beautiful color of the sky. When the pump water splashed in, the blue sky shattered into azure fragments and scattered wildly. But when I stopped pumping, it immediately became a round blue sky again. Within it, winter tree branches traced beautiful lines. However, as I washed my wife’s soiled clothes, the shadow of anxiety from earlier vanished. This was work that could not be entrusted to the children—work I felt keenly was now mine to shoulder from this day forth.

The next day too, my wife remained unconscious, still asleep as before.

Ringer’s injection. Yet even that thick needle seemed to cause no sensation in my wife’s sagging, wrinkled leg.

Today was another strangely beautiful day. The desk faced south, and on its shoji screen, winter tree branches cast deep shadows. With not even a slight breeze, the branch shadows remained sharply imprinted as they gradually shifted eastward. It was quiet. Amidst it all, the clock was ringing again today.

“I’m home, Mom—still sleeping?”

The youngest child, Kazuo, returned from school. “Mom… Mom, come on!” “Tch, this is so lame!”

Eventually, our only daughter, Ikuko, returned as well.

“I’m home, Mom. You still haven’t woken up?” “Mom... Mom.” “What’s wrong?” However, my wife must have still been sleeping peacefully. Of course, there came no answering voice from her.

The sun must have shifted far to the west; the branch shadows had vanished at some point, and a faintly tinted sunlight now slanted through the small gaps in the shoji screens. I soon had to take in my wife’s laundry.

The oldest son, the second son, and the third son left for the study room, and both Ikuko and Kazuo seemed to have begun reviewing their lessons at the dining table. As I often did 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. For a while, I gazed vacantly at my wife’s face; then, making her tranquil breathing my sole companion, I tilted back the cup of sake. A sudden loneliness flooded in.

“Mom… Mom.”

At that moment, I heard my wife’s low, moaning voice. In an instant, my chest throbbed violently. I was happy. I was happy—as if we shared a secret between just the two of us.

However, I immediately had to reconsider. When she finally regained consciousness, what face would my wife make? What would be her first words? By what means could the pain of her neuralgia have been healed? “It hurts… It hurts… It hurts so much.” Suddenly, that voice of my wife echoed in my ears. Even if she were to regain consciousness after all this, wouldn’t what awaited her be nothing but suffering? My wife’s neuralgia, like her cerebral softening, was said to stem from heart valve disease—a condition with no cure. With her left hand useless and legs disabled, for what purpose must this wife of mine keep living? My heart ached. Yet my wife absolutely had to live. Whether my wish was selfish or not, irrationally, she absolutely had to live.

However, the next day too, my wife’s consciousness did not return. In the afternoon, I went out. What kind of weather it was, what scenery met my eyes—I remember 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 who passed me was an adult or a child.

However, my wife was still lying there in a deep stupor. The oldest son informed me that Dr. Ono had made a house call while I was away.

“Dad, you shouldn’t go out.” “Huh, is it really that bad?” “That seems to be the case. “It seems something could happen at any moment, in any way.” “I see.”

“Tomorrow, they say they’ll administer nutrients orally.” “I was told to prepare eggs and milk.” “Eggs and milk...” “She probably can’t taste any of that anyway.”

“There’s no way to tell about such things.” “I see.”

I sat down at my wife’s bedside with my arms folded. This truly seemed to embody what it meant to wait with folded arms.

Toward evening, my wife broke into a heavy sweat. After obtaining Dr. Ono’s permission and having the oldest son assist me, I changed my wife’s kimono.

It was when I took my usual evening cup of sake and sat by my wife’s bedside that I noticed her condition had changed slightly. Her face showed no trace of pain, but her breathing had quickened somewhat, and her throat emitted a low rasping sound. I immediately sent my oldest son running to Dr. Ono. Dr. Ono, wearing geta, sat down and peered intently into my wife’s face.

“Ah, this isn’t good.”

“I see.”

“If there are telegrams you need to send, please send them immediately.” Dr. Ono had stopped conducting examinations altogether and sat at the bedside with his arms crossed, just like me.

“Eishū, Hoki, and Enda.” What should I do? For Eishū—maybe have them write there’s no need to come after all. “In any case, Grandmother’s at that age,” I instructed the children about sending telegrams. While it was true that I had my elderly mother’s frail body in mind—since she had long opposed our marriage—I found myself being particular partly out of consideration for my wife’s family.

“That’s right. I’ll have them add ‘unnecessarily.’ ‘No need to force yourself to come,’ I should say.” “Well then,” Dr. Ono said as he rose. “This time it seems we’ve reached the end. The final moment will likely come around midnight.”

“I’ll come again.”

“So it’s finally come.” I tried to make myself truly grasp that fact. Yet as I looked at my wife’s tranquil face, the reality of death refused to draw near. I stood up, fetched the one-shō bottle, poured liquor into a glass, and drank. I kept drinking—two cups, then three.

Suddenly, an unexpected thought welled up. Completely unexpected—though even that might have been a lie. It had taken root in my subconscious, lurking in my mind since that moment. Perhaps the drowsiness I felt then had simply shrouded it beyond my awareness. The thought was this: that my wife might have tried to end her own life. Could I have known this all along, pretending otherwise?

At that time, I placed the kotatsu in my wife’s bed and slipped back into the children’s futon. My wife seemed to have quieted down at last. Before long, a shallow sleep came over me. That pleasant interplay between sleep and me gradually sank into deeper depths. I could hear my wife’s low moan. Drowsiness—and yet I remained in a comfort that felt like being lured deeper into its embrace. How much time had passed?

“It hurts… It hurts… It hurts so much.” Suddenly, I thought I heard my wife’s voice crying out. Following that came the sound of a forehead being violently knocked. I thought, I shouldn’t— But whether I had fallen asleep like that or whether my wife had lost consciousness at that moment, I had no recollection of hearing any sound afterward.

It was like a nightmare. But I was helpless against this all too vivid consciousness of guilt—that momentary lapse when, even while thinking "I shouldn’t," I yielded to the sweetness of sleep.

Had I even grown to resent massaging my wife’s shoulders? Had I not shown any real care for her sleepless suffering? And when startled by the fire in the futon, hadn’t I abandoned her on the tatami to extinguish the flames first? By then, why did my wife have to endure this pain any longer?

“I want to die. I’m so sorry to everyone for becoming paralyzed like this.”

In March, when she first fell ill, my wife said those words and even wept.

“You shouldn’t say such things. If even a little of my feelings get through to you—it might be painful, but please endure it.”

At that time, I could state so emphatically because my heart was still overflowing with fierce love for my wife, whose spirit remained unjaded.

A regret close to terror raced through my entire body.

However, even though midnight was already approaching, my wife kept breathing quietly, as if unaware of anything. I hadn’t noticed her breathing had weakened; whether there was any gurgling in her throat or not, it even seemed she had grown much calmer. I simply couldn’t believe death was approaching amid such tranquility.

I stood up and broke into a run. Through the night mist, the red gate lantern of Dr. Ono’s clinic appeared to float in the distance. I described my wife’s condition and tentatively proposed a cardiac injection. But Dr. Ono kept his head tilted at an angle. “I’m afraid that would be pointless,” he said. “Though I’ll come immediately.” Dr. Ono remained seated by the pillow, still peering into my wife’s face.

“It seems to be taking a bit longer than expected.” My wife continued breathing quietly. At her bedside, the five children were also gathered. At that moment, I seemed to lose all sense of time. I did not notice when midnight struck, nor when one o’clock came. “It seems she has passed.”

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

“Can a human really die this easily?” I involuntarily looked up at Dr. Ono. Dr. Ono opened my wife’s eyelids to examine them. “She has passed.”

I was vacantly gazing at my wife’s face. Even then, the reality that my wife had died simply would not sink in. Her face in death was so serene. But the hand of my wife that I had been holding grew rapidly colder. I hurriedly looked up at the pillar clock. The clock’s hands were pointing exactly at two o’clock. Suddenly, the sound of the clock resounded in my ears.

She was forty-six years old.

3

Eiko Eda (my wife’s half-sister), who had rushed over upon seeing the telegram announcing my wife’s death, suddenly told this story. My wife’s biological mother had dreamed in the middle of the night that she was visited by me and my wife. In the dream, though I was greeting her normally, my wife stood rigidly without making a single gesture of greeting. “How strange, O-toku-san.”

Her biological mother awoke from her dream thinking this. But the surroundings were still pitch-dark, and her biological mother fell into a fitful shallow sleep while feeling strangely uneasy. "I hope nothing has happened to O-toku-san." "When dawn broke, I was truly relieved."

Her biological mother had reportedly repeated the story of that dream to each family member, adding those words each time. At that very moment, telegrams announcing both my wife’s critical condition and her death arrived. “No wonder O-toku-san didn’t greet her.” My wife had breathed her last at 2 AM; then, it seemed her biological mother had appeared in a dream around that very time. “But O-toku-san was blessed.” “Even after death, you’re still husband and wife.”

“Grandmother kept saying that while blinking her eyes rapidly. But how strange, isn’t it?” Eiko concluded her story. A wave of sorrow welled up suddenly. 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 though I was, I had long feared acting in confusion when this moment arrived—yet strangely, no tears came. But since that time, I felt as though a dull, heavy sac—something like a tear reservoir—had formed deep within my eyelids, and I couldn't help thinking that should this sac ever rupture, my tears would become endless.

But funerals have a certain hollow quality to them. My wife’s remains lay atop an altar decorated with paper flowers and electric candles—as if she were now in a place beyond my reach. From Hoki came the Yagishita couple (my wife had been adopted into that family as a child; they were her adoptive household’s inheritors), and by morning my elderly mother had arrived from our hometown. Without any particular reason, I drank steadily from morning onward. Hoh… hohh… My wife’s stifled cries—like radio time signals forewarning pain she could no longer endure—would suddenly echo in my ears’ depths. Unwittingly I’d repeat them in my heart, losing all sense of time.

The figure of my wife when I first met her at a café in Azabu Roppongi—wearing a white apron yet looking every bit the 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 her boarding house at the foot of that cliff in Azabu Miyamura-chō, where we lay together on shared bedding. Carrying our oldest son born in Hoki, I moved for the first time to the house in Nagasaki-cho with a swaddling cloth in hand—the house in Nishi-Ogikubo where our second son was born; the house in Fukagawa where our third son was born; the house in Asagaya where our oldest daughter and fourth son were born.

The figure of my wife during air-raid drills, beating an alarm bucket; the figure of my wife on the Day of Needles, struggling to thread her sewing needle; the figure of my wife stuffing a torn wallet with inflation bills and dashing about. Any figure of my wife I could vividly recall. But any figure of my wife would vanish in an instant. At the wake—true to form for my wife who had been laughingly called “rain woman” since her lifetime—it rained. However, on the day itself, it was a balmy Indian summer day, unusual for winter.

At the farewell ceremony, many friends offered incense for us. In particular, Mr. Nakatani had come all the way from Matsumoto in Shinshu, Mr. Asami from Onjuku in Chiba Prefecture, and Mr. Miyoshi from Fukui—who happened to already be in Tokyo—each offering heartfelt incense. I was seen off by old friends from our Azabu days, and it was thought that my wife must have been satisfied.

When carrying out the coffin, having Mr. Takii bear my wife’s casket was indeed a humbling experience, yet I felt it as something akin to a karmic bond—a thing to be grateful for.

I went out toward the entrance with the young funeral worker, carrying my wife’s coffin. At that moment, the children had gone ahead to the crematorium, and the friends were standing 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.

“Could someone please lend a hand?” As they were about to descend the entranceway, the young funeral worker called out. One person stood up immediately. It was Mr.Takii. Alongside Mr.Takii, I carried my wife’s coffin—that tear reservoir within me swelling as if it might burst audibly at any moment. Mr.Takii was the mentor who had opened my eyes as a writer. Around the time I met my wife, I encountered his series of works titled *Infinite Embrace*. I could say that from *Infinite Embrace*, I drew not just literary nourishment but above all, the confidence to live. That my inherently obstinate self’s love for my wife could blossom so fully—in my own way—was this not due to that very confidence? Memories of my youth surfaced.

However, my wife’s coffin was carried through the alley she must have walked countless times a day during her lifetime—clutching a shopping basket and dragging her worn-out clogs—before being loaded onto the hearse at the greengrocer’s corner. The hearse began moving at once. Waved off by friends and neighbors, the vehicle gradually picked up speed, bounced heavily two or three times, then disappeared from my sight.

After the friends had all left, I faced my mother. “From here on out, it’ll be lonely—but don’t you go losing heart now.” I apologized to my mother on my wife’s behalf—she who should have cared for her in old age—for the misfortune of dying first. Such a Japanese wife was pitiful.

“Why, she raised all these children so splendidly, you know. She fulfilled her duties as a housewife completely. She was a good person.” Mother said this with a brave expression. Such a sight of Mother was pitiful. Several hours later, my wife—now reduced to bones—was carried back by our oldest son. My mother and I sprinkled salt on the children’s bodies before welcoming it in.

IV

The seventh-day memorial service had been completed, and my mother, concerned about year-end affairs back in our hometown, had also returned.

I was leaning against the kitchen brazier alone. There was nothing in particular to do. It was quiet. Today too, the sun that looked warm was shining on the engawa, and the sky’s color—unlike winter—stained the shoji’s glass a deep blue, which was reflected in the mirror at the room’s corner. Yet the colors reflected in the mirror—any color at all—are cold.

Come to think of it, mirrors are cold things. They reflect any shadow cast upon them yet retain none. Such an object—they say Mother left it to her daughter long ago. It was pitiful. Since my wife’s death, I seem to have lost all resistance to everything. A hollow space feels carved open in my chest.

In the immediate aftermath of her death, I was dazed—drank sake from morning onward as if in a half-dreaming state—but now that I found myself alone, I suddenly felt the vastness of this hollow space. Suddenly, an unfathomable emotion welled up. Before I knew it, I stood up. I began pacing around the room in circles. The children’s torn socks and soiled things lay discarded as they were.

“Even with spring gone and summer here, how am I to prepare for winter?” My bedridden wife would often say things like that. But that wife was now dead. Things could only turn out as they did. This winter—wasn’t it strangely warm? More pressing—what was I to do with myself? In the study’s alcove lay my wife’s remains adorned with flowers. I quietly sat down at the desk beside them. It had been days since I last did this.

Suddenly, a cloud-like sorrow welled up, and before I could even think “Ah—”, that sorrow overflowed as tears. Sorrow shuddered through my chest; tears overflowed and kept overflowing. I finally collapsed in tears onto the desk. They were purely tears of sorrow—nothing else. Neither a trace of regret nor obsession was mixed within them. When my wife had fallen critically ill, I was at times tormented by the delusion that she might have attempted suicide. However, not the slightest trace of that thought remains now. My wife was not that kind of woman. I must not defile the end of my wife—who had endured and persevered through everything—with such delusions. That is not merely my kind-hearted self-consolation. For her sake, I must sincerely accept my wife’s heart—so modest it verged on foolishness.

Wasn’t she the wife who carried even this image of me to her birth mother’s deathbed in a dream? I must not harbor even a trace of regret. And how could there ever be any? It was simply a sorrow tinged with blue. Such sorrow overflowed as tears, one wave after another. This grief welled up like the sensation of an elevator’s sudden drop—the endolymph in my semicircular canals lurching violently—an abrupt, sharp constriction of the chest. There was nothing I could do about it. In panic, I could only press my hands against my eyes.

By now, it was a sorrow beyond good and evil—closer to something pitiless. But when it comes to human tears, they’re tepid. What’s more, tears streaming down the cheeks of a man nearing fifty are the very height of wretchedness. But I had no strength left to endure it now. Once again, I collapsed weeping onto the desk. Fortunately, tears do not flow endlessly. All I could do was pull at the corners of my eyes and wait for them to dry on their own.

Outside continued balmy days unthinkable for winter, yet I found myself enduring days that wore out all welcome. When I sat alone facing my desk, it would invariably come. It’s coming now—the thought would strike. But by then tears already streamed shamelessly down my cheeks. This visitation repeated daily without count. Each time left me helplessly collapsed over the desk in tears.

Certainly, I had thought I was dreaming. Yet I also thought my wife hadn’t died. Outside, what sounded like a drunkard’s loud voice and footsteps were audible. There came a noise like something striking the entrance door. At that instant, my wife lying beside me raised her upper body and listened intently. I watched her figure from within the bedding, my neck drawn in. But appearing thoroughly reassured, she immediately lowered herself back into the futon.

I seemed to have dozed off while remaining prostrate on the desk. Was that a dream? Or was I recalling something that had happened during my wife’s lifetime? It was unclear. By then, it was nearly evening, and when I suddenly noticed, my wife’s haori hung over my shoulders—perhaps a child returning from school had draped it there. So had I been sleeping after all? Tears—especially those of a middle-aged widower—are a squalid thing. They must be something like the cloying self-indulgence of emotion. Yet however foolish I may be, now that I approach fifty, even my tear ducts will surely dry up someday. What would this sorrow without tears be like?

Where in the world does this sorrow come from? Or perhaps it wells up from the hollow space that has opened in my chest.

It seemed not to be solely the sorrow of my wife’s death. That appeared connected to myself as well. Certainly, that hollow space—though an ambiguous term—seemed to gape open within what might be called my vitality. This listless lethargy too might stem from that. In my diary from when I first knew my wife, eager, youthful words lined every page. There was a line from one day during that time.

"The two of us are no longer two separate entities." "A single entity—in living beings, there exists no such thing as 0.5."

That was how it had been. I was taught by my younger self. The bond was not mine alone. Nor was it my wife’s alone. Then, the hollow space that had opened within my life seemed—if I were to put it into words—to be the scar left by our bond, now that one of us was gone. It was no longer 0.5. It was 0.

In that hollow space, there was no future. What remained was only the past. In the darkness of days gone by，only memories flickered with a fleeting glow. And so，would this sorrow—already without tears—continue to race desolately through that hollow space’s futureless future until my life’s end?

Now that I thought of it, the children were unexpectedly energetic. Even Kazuo, while carrying her bones on the way back from the crematorium, had called out loudly to friends flying kites.

“I’ll come soon—wait for me!”

I had been worried about my only daughter, Ikuko, but she too showed no significant signs of despair.

Their futures must be so distant that they could not remain entangled forever in their mother’s death, now passed. Instead, my children had suddenly begun to support me—a man who now looked aged and decrepit, his eyes puffy around the edges.

I too had come to feel no fatherly resistance toward such children. Given that a father exists because of a mother and a mother exists because of a father, perhaps it was only natural that now, without my wife, even the fatherliness within me was fading away.

Had their lives—instinctively aware of this—already begun to grow vigorously on their own? Having become a hollow shell of a father, was I merely watching over them—hovering in fruitless anxiety as I observed these children’s days passing by?

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

Since that night，I had been sleeping between my two children’s futons．When I held the warm，rounded curve of their hips，I suddenly sensed something like lingering warmth from my deceased wife’s life—and shamefully，I even felt a fleeting carnal desire toward her．

A reprimand—I wanted to sharply rebuke my foolish self. It was nothing but sentimentality after all. Or was this nothing more than a belated sense of impermanence? I had become utterly spineless. Having gotten drunk, I had ended up playing that foolish game with the children the other night.

“It’s a mineral.” “Is it man-made?” “No.” “Is it something found in the ground?”

“No, there isn’t now.” “So it’s not a manufactured item.” “Is it inside this house?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. “Is it in the kitchen?” “No.” “Is it in the ten-mat room?”

“No.”

“Is it in the parlor?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, got it!” Kazuo ran off toward the parlor. However, he immediately scratched his head and came back. “It’s not a manufactured item, right?” “There’s no such thing here.” “Could it be juzu beads?”

“Clang! Thanks for your hard work.” “Juzu beads? Of course those are manufactured items.” “No.” “Air” “No.” “Air isn’t a mineral.” “But it’s neither an animal nor a plant, right?” “You’re so dumb. If it’s air, isn’t there some in the ten-mat room and even the kitchen?” “Ash—the ash in the parlor’s brazier.”

“No.”

“Ah, I know!” “What is it?” “Bro, what is it?” “Now, for the correct answer.” “Is it something that’s going into the ground now?”

“That’s right.” “How about it? See there! Until just recently, was it an animal?” “That’s right.” “Was it Dad’s most beloved animal?” “You got me. Well, that’s right.” “Oh my, how…! Don’t hold back! If she hadn’t had a stroke—‘I could scratch my back with my foot’—did you say that?” “Did she constantly run off on errands carrying a tattered wallet?” “Did she wear something like a Yoitomake undergarment?”

As each of them spoke, there came a burst of laughter. Wasn’t it truly nothing more than a few bone fragments in the urn by now?

But even as I laughed—ha ha—I could do nothing about how the electric lights once again began flickering in disarray.