Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

It was exhausting.

Sitting face-to-face across a sunken kotatsu with no fire lit, the elderly couple remained silent.
Their thoughts were aligned, yet they now lacked the energy to voice them.
With no one else present, this should have been precisely the moment for frank discussion—the time when it was necessary—yet the words refused to come.
To say there was no need at this late hour to verify each detail would be true enough—but when confronted anew with a situation demanding they steel their resolve and straighten their spines, exhaustion still took precedence.
The husband—gaunt as if having shed all excess flesh befitting his age—sat with salt-and-pepper eyebrows drawn near sunken eyes, clutching an unlit cigarette while lost in thought; meanwhile his wife, uncommonly stout, rested her cheek against the kotatsu board and stared vacantly without blinking.
They seemed profoundly exhausted.

Eventually, the husband muttered.

"The insects are chirping."

The wife noticed the dark room but found it too much trouble to get up and turn on the light.
The wife, who had been prone to illness in recent years, found her body growing even heavier at times like these.
Normally, the nimble husband would take care of things, but today even he showed no sign of getting up.
And then he muttered again.

"When insects chirp like that, it just makes everything feel even more melancholic."

He likely meant for his wife to hear, but at his repeated muttering, something like absurdity welled up in her along with tears. Though she hadn’t meant to laugh at that utterly sincere muttering, what struck her as absurd was how these sentimental words—ones she’d never once heard through forty years of shared life—had now emerged from a husband ordinarily disinclined to use such language. Precisely because he was so deadly earnest, those words must have been his genuine feelings. Feeling her tension ease at this realization, the wife stood to turn on the light.

"He looked so pitiful."

Turning her back to the light while wiping her tears,

“We can’t even risk shedding tears in front of him.”
“She just keeps listing off these spur-of-the-moment lies and spouting empty comforts—”

“Don’t you think he’s at least somewhat aware of his illness?”

“There’s no way he hasn’t noticed.”
“But I wonder if he’s pretending not to notice.”

“Hmm.”

“Even if my mouth were to rot, I can’t say it.”

“Even if he himself suspects something, he can’t bring himself to speak of it.”

The elderly couple had just visited their son-in-law—hospitalized for the second time due to complications from his stomach ulcer—at the hospital.
And day and night, they found themselves burdened by the apparent worsening of his condition.
The patient, whose fever had soared to 42 degrees today and only just been brought down by an injection, still lay there gasping,

“The cause… of the fever… isn’t clear.”

As if knowing that alone might let him escape his daily suffering, he pleaded with bitter frustration.
In a voice so faint it was nearly inaudible, his lips were so parched they seemed on the verge of splitting open and bleeding.
And after that, he kept his eyes closed, drifting in and out of consciousness.
“He has no appetite at all,” the daughter attending to him said in a hushed voice,

“He’s nothing but angry all the time.”

She said in a forlorn tone.

“The days he’s still angry are a blessing.”

“Yeah.”

Once he stopped getting angry, it would mean the end—and since that moment was already approaching, they couldn’t possibly tell even their own daughter to prepare herself.
Even so, they could hardly believe this was the same cheerful patient who had entered the hospital twenty days earlier, delighted by the small television.
Now he no longer even had the energy to watch that television—he would start trembling violently, lose consciousness from high fevers, drift in and out of sleep, and through blood transfusions and Ringer’s solution administered between these recurring episodes, he was barely being sustained.
And there was no prospect whatsoever of his condition improving at this point.
On the contrary, his pain and weakness seemed only to intensify.

“I feel like I’ll never go home again—”

To him who had even uttered such words,

“What are you saying? Even I managed to recover and go home, so don’t you go spouting such nonsense when you’re still young.”

This "I" had also been recuperating from illness at this very same hospital until very recently.

II

“Even if we go there, we won’t be any help though.”

“Even so, just seeing our faces might make the patient happy.”
“He says he wants to meet us.”
“But you know, once we see his face, doesn’t it make him suffer in all sorts of ways too?”
“I do think that.”

“I think so too, but—”

“Even if he says he doesn’t want to see anyone, if it turns out no one actually comes to visit, he’d feel lonely, wouldn’t he?”

“So even if it’s just us, we have to go see him.”

While the elderly couple were engaged in this exchange, flowers arrived from an acquaintance.
The flowers had been delivered not to the patient, but to his elderly novelist wife.
The flowers were exquisite orchids.
They didn’t know what variety of orchid it was called, but it was said to have been specially ordered by plane from Hawaii.
The elderly wife occasionally received these extravagant flowers from the same person.
Flowers that one would never find at any ordinary florist’s—she always decorated her study with them with immense delight.
But today was different.

“I’ll take them to the patient.”

Then their son Tarō—who had delivered the flowers—stumbled over his words a bit as he...

“Since they were given to you, why not put them in your room?”

But she shook her head,

"I'm sorry, but today I'll take them to him."

Tarō quickly understood,

"Yeah, you’re right."

Tarō agreed.
The sender of the flowers was someone close to Tarō.

“Maybe we’ll take the bus today.”

Thinking there was no luggage besides the flowers, when the wife—who usually went out by hired car—said this, the husband, who always worried about his wife walking alone after her illness,

“Then I’ll go with you.
“Oh right, why don’t I bring some honey while I’m at it?
“His lips were badly chapped, after all.”

“That’s a good idea.”
“Shall we bring some apple vinegar too?”
“If we mix it with honey, he might be able to drink it, you know.”
“It goes down smoothly.”

Her voice was bright with a thread of hope.
Though he was a patient who wouldn’t even touch vegetable soup, this might just go down his throat.

The packed bus arrived at Asagaya Station terminal after being roughly jostled along the narrow road, with no one offering seats.
The wife holding flowers in one hand and the husband carrying a small honey bottle were last to slowly disembark.
Though they had ridden only fifteen minutes, the wife felt terribly exhausted.
She might have gotten carsick from taking the bus after so long.
The plump wife slowly approached the round flowerbed beside the stop and sat on its concrete edge.
She involuntarily sighed.

“Feeling sick?”

The husband approached and asked gruffly.
When she nodded silently,

“That’s why I told you we shouldn’t hold back and should’ve just called a hired car.”

It was her husband’s habit for his voice to turn sharp at times like this.
If it had been his wife of old, she would have immediately retorted,

――There was no use saying anything.
Let it go.

she would have snapped back at him.
And the conversation would gradually become entangled until they ended up hurling their usual grievances at each other.

It was her husband’s habit—and even his way of showing concern—but it had taken her forty years to realize this. As she thought this, “I’m sorry. I’m all right now.”

When she stood up, he tucked the wife’s arm under his,

“Are you okay? Let’s walk slowly.”

The husband’s voice softened unexpectedly. To reach the hospital, they would need to cross the square ahead first, then walk for about fifteen minutes at the wife’s pace. Did he mean to have them walk that distance arm in arm? Until just recently, they had still felt too self-conscious to walk shoulder-to-shoulder—but seeing his wife’s weakened legs after her illness, had even that lingering bashfulness disappeared?

“Namikawa Bunkichi and Namikawa Motoko are walking hand in hand. Wouldn’t people find it strange if they saw us?”

“Who cares if anyone does?”

“Is it just the absurdity of a plump old woman being cared for by a scrawny old man?”

“...”

“Mr. Namikawa Bunkichi the poet and Ms. Namikawa Motoko the novelist aren’t looking well either, are they?”

“Is that so?”

“Exactly. It would be against the natural order if we ended up being tended by young people here—whether I or you fall ill or die, that’s just life’s course.”

Namikawa Motoko’s voice began to tremble with ominous premonition.
“He’s pitiful.”
Namikawa Bunkichi’s voice was also low.
“Us?”

Motoko deliberately asked again.

“Mr. Yamagata—he collapsed right when things were about to begin,” Bunkichi said. “How bitterly frustrating that must feel.”

Motoko shared his sentiment.

“And his wife and children—isn’t their plight pitiful too?”

They were repeating these meaningless words once more while preparing to visit their moaning son-in-law’s bedside with flowers offering little comfort. Though such visits risked aggravating his suffering, they couldn’t bear leaving him unattended even a day. Perhaps by immersing themselves in his pain’s vortex they sought solace too—now compulsively checking his condition morning and night through hospital visits. On rare occasions when medicine granted him sleep they found fleeting relief, but such moments grew scarce. Their intent to support their dutiful daughter Hiromi crumbled seeing how she too wasted away beside her invalid husband—each encounter revealing more gauntness in her cheeks.

“Pull yourself together.”

But even if she told her to stay strong, for Hiromi—who hadn’t slept or rested—all that remained was receiving vitamin injections. And here they were bringing flowers? When an illness reaches its most critical stage, things like flowers might only get in the way.

Namikawa Motoko gently peeked into the paper-wrapped orchid. Though they had no scent, the pink flowers with their curled-back petals were clustered so luxuriantly that she thought she caught a faint fragrance. How beautiful they were. But he might not be pleased with these flowers.

“Mr. Yamagata is actually quite attentive to details, you know.”

When she spoke, recalling the time when he had been healthy, her husband nodded,

“That’s right. He was diligent in his work too.”

“Both last year and this year, the only one who brought flowers on February twentieth was Mr. Yamagata.”

“February twentieth?”
“Isn’t that Takiji’s day?”

“See? Even you think of it that way.”

“Ah.”

He wore a look that said, “Is that all?”
February 20th was the unforgettable day when Kobayashi Takiji—a writer and Communist Party member—had been murdered thirty years prior at Tsukiji Police Station where he was detained, but on that same date a decade before that, Namikawa Bunkichi and Motoko had held a wedding with just the two of them.
It had been forty years since then.

“Actually, I had forgotten too.”

“...”
“He brought such a lovely bunch of white freesias.”
It had happened during Motoko’s first hospitalization the year before last.
He presented a splendid bouquet of freesias tied with a pink ribbon to Motoko on her bed,

“Congratulations,” he said. “Please forgive the simplicity of just a bouquet.”

Motoko immediately realized this wasn’t an ordinary get-well visit when she saw his playful grin.

“Thank you.”

That he alone had remembered their wedding anniversary—so distant even their own family had forgotten it—and had replaced a standard hospital visit with this thoughtful gesture made Motoko quietly happy.

“You remembered.”

“Oh no, Hiromi told me about it.”

His spilling out the honest truth wasn’t a bad thing either.

Come to think of it, the freesias were also the flowers that Hiromi, the bride, had held at the Yamagatas' wedding.
The flowers that Taro had been entrusted to buy were so beautifully pure they still lingered in her heart, complementing Hiromi as the bride.
Perhaps it had been the freesias that were tied to those memories.…

“Ah!”

Motoko let out a small cry and stopped in her tracks. Then, looking around restlessly, she turned to Bunkichi and,

“This is the road,” she said. “That’s right. You see the crosswalk over there? If we cross it and walk a little further, Takiji’s house was on the left—”

That day, upon learning of Takiji’s death in the evening paper, Motoko took the still-young Hiromi and rushed to the house where Takiji’s mother lived.
The realization that this path—the same one they now took to the hospital—had come to her through an association stemming from the freesias.
They had delivered the many funeral flowers gathered for Takiji to the numerous people from his cultural group who were imprisoned at the time.
Bunkichi had been among them.
Adorning single red carnations with freesias, they had used Takiji’s mother’s name as the sender.
By doing so, they had intended to inform others of Takiji’s death.
The idea had been Motoko’s, and it was Namikawa Motoko who had carried it to the prison.
At that time, Motoko had not yet written any novels; as a family member of Bunkichi—who had been imprisoned as a victim of the liberation movement—she served as the delivery person within the cultural group.

When they entered the hospital entrance, Hiromi rushed up as if she had been waiting,

“I just called.”
“Then they said they’d be arriving soon.”
“Is he worse?”

“Yeah.
The hiccups started and just won’t stop.
It’s pitiful.”

“I see.”

To the hospital room far from the entrance, the three of them walked with quiet footsteps.
Hiromi’s emaciation stood out.

III

Every day found them too agitated to focus on their work.
This inevitably led to daily hospital visits.

“When busy people come morning and night every day like this, I end up thinking it must be cancer after all.”

Yesterday, he finally said it.
He had turned toward the wall where no one could see his face, but Motoko—who had been adjusting his blanket—could painfully discern how intently he listened for reactions.
Though he spoke with feigned calmness, his lips and gaunt cheeks trembled faintly.
But since his voice was so soft only she could hear it, Motoko used her increasingly poor hearing as pretext to pretend she hadn’t caught his words, deflecting with an evasion.

“Because it’s close by, I’m fine.
“It’s good exercise—helps keep my legs strong—so it works out perfectly.”
“I’ll come again.”

When they stepped out into the hallway, to Hiromi who tried to see them off to the entrance,

“Did you hear what he was saying?”

Hiromi was relatively calm.

“Yeah, he’s always saying stuff like that.”

Her manner became overly familiar, as if it were merely a form of harassment.

“He’s worried about it, isn’t he?”
“Poor thing.”

When Motoko spilled tears, Hiromi too wavered on the edge of weeping.

“But I can’t properly engage with him, you see?
“If I try giving some half-baked consolation, he flies into a rage—that’s why I force this smirk.”
“When he wants me to say it’s cancer, I turn it back on him.”
“However you look at it, he’s unmanageable.”

That timid, guileless Hiromi had grown capable of such stratagems—this realization made Motoko’s eyes widen in belated astonishment.
She’d been an old-fashioned woman, a rarity nowadays, who knew nothing but clinging to her husband without ever contradicting him—yet becoming mother to two children must have transformed her in countless ways.
Come to think of it, Yamagata had recently shared an amusing anecdote.

“I finished bar-hopping and drank away all my money.”
“Though I made it sound like all my money—it was only about two thousand yen.”
“I ran out of even train fare home—so I hailed a taxi.”
“Completely plastered—the driver hauled me off to some flophouse—said ‘Stay here tonight!’”
“‘Not a penny!’—showed him my empty wallet—finally drove me home—past one already.”
“‘That’ll be nine hundred yen.’”
“Hiromi was fuming—you know how she gets.”

“But you still had the money, didn’t you?”

“It was the day after payday, you know. I wouldn’t have been so reckless otherwise. But the next day was brutal. Of all days, it had to be Sunday. There I was with a splitting hangover headache when she shook me awake—‘Get up, we’re going out.’ ‘Since you blew money yesterday,’ she says, ‘today’s my turn to spend.’ So off we went to the department store. I carried the boy from the sixth floor down to the basement, circling round and round until we came home with just one three-hundred-yen pot. I was beat.”

“So this is what you call a woman’s wasteful spending?”

“When I teased her about being pitiful, she just grinned and went ‘Here!’—tosses this wrapped package right at me. Opened it up and there’s a two-thousand-yen sweater inside.”

Yamagata laughed dryly and added cheerfully, "For Hiromi, that's quite a success." Back when they still had only one child—during the time he was drinking heavily. Before that child was born, there were stories they'd heard about him taking Hiromi bar-hopping. Now that he could no longer drink, for Yamagata, even such things must have become nostalgic memories.

“Maybe we should visit less often if it’s worrying him.”

“What do you think?”

“If we’re left with regrets afterward… when the worst comes… it would be too hard.”

“I see.”

“Hiromi must be feeling so alone too.”

If a call from Hiromi about his condition were to come here, the elderly couple would begin preparing to leave as if they had been waiting for nothing else.
Motoko, who wasn’t one to bother with makeup, could be ready to leave in no time by simply retying her obi—but Bunkichi could never manage that.
For a while, he hurriedly darted in and out of the room, tilting his head and muttering under his breath—all the while,

“Do you know where the glasses are?”

"I know where your glasses are—at least that much."

"Where?"

"That, I don't know."

Bunkichi had so many places where he left his glasses that Motoko had to crack such jokes just to keep from getting angry.

“It’s because you don’t decide where to put them when taking off your glasses.”
“In the living room—on top of the TV; in the study—not on the desk but inside a drawer; in the bathroom—not before the mirror but right on the bathtub lid.”
“If you did that properly, there’d be no need for all this fuss.”

Lately Motoko had become just as forgetful as Bunkichi.
When they finally gave up searching and had new glasses made, the old pair would be found perched atop the azalea thicket in the garden.
Back when Hiromi lived with them, she had been their designated searcher—a role she excelled at.
Though they’d grown accustomed to handling their own affairs after Hiromi left home, advancing age made each forgotten item feel like fresh evidence of their burdensome decline.
This went far beyond mere glasses.

“Parents are such pitiable things.”
“They throw themselves into raising children, and just when they might finally catch their breath, the kids are already gone.”
“Even if you’ve steeled yourself all along not to depend on your children, once age comes and your body stops obeying you, you somehow end up wanting to lean on them after all.”

“It’s a gradual decline.”
“It can’t be helped.”

Even Motoko and the others, who used to say such things, found that lately their conversations had shifted considerably.

“I might end up having to look after the grandchildren.”
“I’m prepared for that.”

“Yeah.”

“When I look at Yamagata, I can’t possibly think he’ll live another three or even five years.”
“The child has just started kindergarten—and there’s the baby.”

“It’s so pitiable.”
“All of it.”

“When I look at Mr. Yamagata, my asthma doesn’t even seem to qualify as a real illness.”

“It’s not like that.”
“Haven’t you spent half your time in hospitals since the year before last?”

“But he’s someone who can manage to bring a desk into his hospital room and work.”
“I won’t be hospitalized again.”

“Even so, if you have an attack, I can’t just stand by.”

“I’ll make sure not to have any asthma attacks.”
“Anyway, now that things have come to this, if we don’t stay composed, it’ll be a total collapse.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“That’s right.”
“I’ve grown rather superstitious lately.”
“You know how they say what happens twice will happen thrice.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s the matter of my older sister and younger brother.”
“It troubles me.”

In the past year and a bit, Motoko had lost two siblings. Her older sister had succumbed after a long illness, while her younger brother had been felled by a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Both deaths having occurred during Motoko’s own hospitalization, she couldn’t attend their funerals and was left to dwell on memories alone in her hospital room. Working in entirely separate fields, they had grown distant over time—many years passing without these siblings ever growing close. Compared to that strained bond, even setting aside their formal relationship as mother-in-law and son-in-law, there existed with Yamagata—who worked at a literary publishing house—a mutual trust that let her feel a familial connection stronger than what she’d shared with her own sisters. She had come to rely on him. Now that very light sustaining Yamagata’s life faced a storm’s onslaught.

Misfortune tends to call forth more misfortune, they say.
It seemed there was no longer any way to protect the flame of life that might be extinguished at any moment.

The elderly couple standing before the hospital room instinctively exchanged glances at the hushed atmosphere, more still than usual. The usual moans were absent. They knocked—knock, knock—as softly as they could. Hiromi appeared,

“Oh!”

she said cheerfully, moving toward the bed,

“It’s Grandpa and Grandma.”

Yamagata was unusually propped up on the bed with his hands. It seemed he had just been helped sit up moments earlier, and Hiromi immediately drew close, carefully settling him into a cross-legged position. His legs—reduced to little more than bone—wouldn’t obey Yamagata’s will alone, making her fumble with them. Yet his mood seemed remarkably good, and even those stubborn hiccups had stopped.

“You’re looking lively today.”

Hiromi took over,

“They just stopped right now.”
“That’s a relief.”
“But they’ll start again—”
As she started to say,
“Shut up!”
Yamagata shouted with unexpected vigor.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry”

Hiromi shrugged her shoulders,
“I just had to go and say something unnecessary.”
“That’s exactly what’s so damn annoying!”

Motoko was startled. She found herself surprised that he still retained such vitality, and equally impressed by how skillfully Hiromi endured being reprimanded. Hiromi,

“Tea!”
“Yes.”
As she poured hot water from the thermos into the teapot and took out teacups for Bunkichi and the others,
“Hurry.”
“Yes, yes.”
When she held out the teacup,
“It’s hot!”

“I’m sorry.”

“You knew that already.”

“I’m sorry, um…”

She seemed embarrassed to check the temperature in front of her parents.
Even so, his voice alone remained remarkably vigorous.
As soon as he finished drinking, he immediately tried to lie back down.
As expected, he still couldn’t bear sitting up.
Taking his time, he rested his head on the pillow, curled his body shrimp-like, and when he finally lay down, let out a deep breath.
But his vigor seemed to still remain, and though his eyes remained closed, he turned toward Bunkichi and Motoko and,

“Today, the company president came to visit me.”

He looked happy. That might be why he seemed different from usual.

“I see.”

Bunkichi responded and pulled a chair closer to the bed.

“Even though I’m on leave, when I tried to thank him for giving me a raise, he said, ‘Don’t worry about it—we’re making profits anyway,’ so—”

“That’s wonderful.”

When Motoko leaned in and said this, Hiromi followed suit,

“There was still something good today, you know. He ate sushi!”

“What?!”

Without thinking, Motoko looked at Hiromi.

"He said he wanted tuna rolls, so I got them."
"He ate four of them!"

"Is he all right?"

Motoko was alarmed.
Rather than questioning whether it was acceptable for the critically ill patient—who for half a month had consumed nothing but water and juice—to suddenly eat tuna rolls, Motoko felt a pressing awareness of what had long been said: that such behavior often occurs in patients nearing their crisis point.
But Hiromi didn’t seem particularly concerned,

“Somehow, he’s been so full of energy since morning. He even did things like brushing his teeth unprompted and changing his underwear on his own.”

Then Yamagata, acting a bit carried away,

“It’s been a while since I had firm rice.”

“Right. Was it good?”

“It wasn’t particularly good, though.”

“It’s okay. You shouldn’t do something like that all of a sudden.”

“It’s all right. The doctor said I can eat anything—like he’s telling a patient they’ve given up on—so I tried eating.”
“It wasn’t particularly good, but if I put my mind to it, I could eat it.”
“I had ice cream too, and about two cups of tea, maybe.”
“Three cups, maybe.”

He was still speaking with his eyes closed.
Motoko signaled Hiromi with a look and led her out into the hallway.
She whispered to Bunkichi that she was going to the sweet red bean soup shop.

"I'm worried."
"Be careful."

"Right."

"If you think his appetite has returned, you're completely mistaken."

"I know."

Hiromi nodded without showing any sense of urgency—how much she truly understood was unclear—but she seemed more buoyed by having shared tuna rolls with her husband.

When they returned to the hospital room, Bunkichi leaned close to the patient and kept nodding repeatedly with "Mm-hmm." Yamagata's voice remained too low for Motoko to hear clearly through her hearing loss，but Bunkichi appeared to have received various explanations.

“That’s because you did well.”
“So get better soon, and we’ll have you take up that work again.”
“And in doing so, I’d like you to publish my poetry collection.”

The fatigue became quite noticeable.
Though not yet severe, the hiccups started.
However, he began to snore lightly.
Perhaps he had grown so exhausted from their lengthy conversation that he fell asleep without needing an injection.

On their way back, Bunkichi—as if venting the same anxiety as Motoko—

“He talked so much… It worries me.”
“That’s right.”

“He suddenly ate sushi… Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it now. Even if we told him to eat porridge before sushi, he’s not the type to listen.”

“Well, we’ll just leave him be.”
“Didn’t the doctor say something earlier about throwing in the towel?”
“He must’ve sensed it too—maybe he’s grown a bit desperate.”

“At this rate, we won’t be able to keep feigning ignorance forever, will we?”

“So that’s why we’re being blunt with Hiromi, huh? She can’t exactly vent her frustrations on us either.”

“But that directness works well. It’s something you couldn’t say to the professional nurses. I’m glad we kept Hiromi by his side. For both their sakes.”

“Yeah.”

“We want to somehow make their time alone last even a little longer.”

“But you know, he seemed truly happy that the president visited today.”
“So maybe he’s started to feel a glimmer of hope because of that.”

“Right.”

“He said all sorts of things—like how since you love poetry, you should draft plans for a complete collection and submit them, or how you’re perfectly suited for that work and ought to partner with someone.”
“That seemed to make him genuinely happy.”

Yamagata Tsuneo had been planning poetry book projects and handling the publication of poetry collections at the publisher where he worked. The culmination of his work to date had been the lavish complete poetry collections of renowned poets such as Saisei. And during his initial hospitalization, he would bring those large, heavy poetry collections all the way to his hospital room—occasionally opening them, stroking their covers with a deeply moved expression as though touching an infant’s head.

“Including yours—we’ll publish your poetry collection too, Grandpa.”

There had been times when such things were said, but now, a mere six months later, poetry collections were the last thing on his mind. He didn’t even pick up the daily newspaper anymore.

“I’m sick of this job.”

There were times when he would blurt out things like that. He must have been venting the anxiety lodged in his chest in that manner.

“In my dreams—this bastard keeps hypnotizing me, shoving these reasons at me that make no sense by normal logic—it hurts so much, hurts so much.”
“No matter how much I beg them to break this hypnosis—they won’t do it.”
“I thought I was done for.”

As if it weren’t a dream, he would repeat his pleas, sweating profusely and even growing indignant.
After such things occurred, the decline became more noticeable with each passing day.
Even so, Bunkichi said that when the president visited that day and encouraged him by talking about the poetry collection, his nearly extinguished life’s flame must have flared up for an instant—which was why he had been in slightly better spirits than usual—

“When you were at the sweet shop, he started talking about all sorts of things.”

“Oh, really?”

“He said this year marks exactly twenty years since he started working in publishing.”

“Right.”

“When it comes to work—I’ve been fortunate—”

“—”

“The fact that I never once had an unpleasant experience means all the poets I worked with were good people, and that my judgment wasn’t mistaken—it makes me happy,”

“…………”

“Grandpa, I don’t write a single line of poetry myself, but I really do love it.”
“The one who taught me about poetry was a guy from the class above me at Matsuyama High School—hey, do you know someone named Ito Shizuo?”
“Ito Shizuo was my junior high school teacher.”
“But that he was a poet—I hadn’t known.”
“Before long, I was expelled from Matsuyama High School due to the campus movement and moved to Tokyo, you know.”
“I searched for Ito Shizuo’s poetry collection, you know.”
“Through them, I came to understand Sakutaro’s connections, came to grasp how Sakutaro and Saisei were linked.”
“I grew closer to Grandpa and Grandma as well—”

So that’s how he ended up marrying Hiromi.
Motoko suddenly recalled a certain night ten years ago during New Year’s when there had been a proposal asking for Hiromi to become his wife.
Hopelessly drunk on New Year’s sake, he prostrated himself before Bunkichi and Motoko with a slurred, clumsy speech.

Bunkichi’s account continued.
As if trying to faithfully reproduce the sick Yamagata’s very tone, he continued slowly in a low voice,

“Whenever I went to Tokyo-do, there were so many poetry collections.”
“So, the first thing I bought there was Mr. Baku’s poetry collection.”
Yamaguchi Baku.
“—he said with deep emotion.”

“Right.”

“He talked like there was some fateful connection with Mr. Baku’s cancer.”
“Then he just shut down completely.”
“I kept quiet too.”
“But even in all that silence—there was something real lingering there.”

“…………”

“Then, after a while, he muttered under his breath.”
“Lately, tobacco’s been tasting better—”

A stifled sob escaped from Bunkichi’s throat.
Having changed their path to the dim Kusunoki Alley, the elderly couple stood in silence for a while.

IV

The Yamagata house was located in the same neighborhood as the Namikawa family, about a ten-minute walk away.
Not only did Yamagata often stop by on his way to and from work, but Hiromi, for her part, would come almost daily with their two children—not just when shopping, but even when she wasn’t.
At such times, the adult-filled Namikawa household would suddenly rejuvenate,

“Oh ho! You’re here, you’re here!”

With such words, Motoko would abandon her work and welcome them with a warm smile.
The grandchildren consisted of the older Sōichi, who was in kindergarten, and the younger, a girl who had just passed her newborn stage.
When the younger Chisaki was born, Motoko was hospitalized after suffering her second attack.
Due to her chronic kidney disease and beriberi, Hiromi—who had undergone an early induced delivery even with her first son—stopped by Motoko’s hospital room with Yamagata on her way back from the maternity hospital after the second birth.
On their way there, the couple’s faces had both been tinged with vague anxiety, but on the return trip, even Hiromi’s body had relaxed smoothly, and the entire family seemed enveloped in happiness.
Sōichi was with them too.

“She delivered successfully, didn’t she?”

Yamagata boasted as he reluctantly handed over Chisaki—whom he had been cradling with great care—into Motoko’s hands. The sleeping infant was startlingly light and small, perhaps due to being lightly dressed, and the soles of her feet—like the finest silk—left a profound impression. When she touched them with her fingertips, they already gave a slight twitch.

“Maybe I’ll just keep her.”

Teased by Motoko and taken aback, Sōichi shook his head earnestly,

“Let’s go home, okay? Let’s go.”

Yet when the crucial moment arrived—if only for an instant—the couple, each unconsciously deferring to the other to hold the infant, nearly left Chisaki behind as they started to leave.
Motoko said loudly,
“Oh, are we leaving her here?”
For a moment, laughter welled up.

With such amusing episodes behind them, over a year had passed.
Sōichi entered his second year of kindergarten, and Chisaki was already running around.
It had been a happy year.
It was out of their desire to live nearby and watch over their daughter’s family that the Yamagatas had chosen a location close to the Namikawa home, yet an unexpected crisis now befell that happiness.

"I feel like I’ll never be able to go home again like this."

Motoko felt her spirits sink whenever she recalled Yamagata’s forlorn words.
That could very well happen.
Can’t something be done?
Wondering whether Yamagata—so devoted to that child—had even seen his children’s faces, Motoko once...

“Shall I bring them?”

Motoko asked.
Yamagata weakly shook his head,
“I don’t want the children to see me like this.”
“At the very least, I need to be well enough to greet them with a smile.”
When would that smile ever return to Yamagata’s face?
At the vacant home, Yamagata’s mother, who was over eighty, was watching the two children.
That must also be a burden.

Since Yamagata’s hospitalization, the children had not come to Motoko’s house even once.
Motoko and the others were also so preoccupied with Yamagata that they couldn’t go see their grandchildren.
Though it was only a ten-minute walk, the sloping road made Motoko—with her weak legs—hesitate to take the next step.

“I’m sure they’re fine, but please go check on them.”

At Hiromi’s request, after dinner, Motoko and her husband decided to go out.
They walked side by side along the concrete road lined with five-story apartment buildings.
Passing through this area and ascending from the apartment complex’s edge into a slightly elevated residential district, Yamagata’s house soon came into view.
Sporadic drops began to fall.
Within the apartment complex, even the rain felt harsh and charmless.
While opening the umbrella she had been using as a cane, Motoko—

“Sōichi said he’s envious of this apartment complex, you know.”
“Next time, he says he wants a house like that built and has asked Taro to do it.”

The modest house built to Taro the architect’s design apparently didn’t sit well with young Sōichi.
Was it because so many of his playmates were children from the apartment complex?

“I wonder how they’re doing.”

A light came into view before them.

“Take care…”——

When would they ever see the sight of that child and father stepping out onto the wide wet veranda and waving with all their might?

“Maybe I should bring a Buddhist altar offering as a get-well gift.”

Motoko began recalling an incident from the early spring of the year before last. While Motoko was bedridden with pneumonia, a care package from a publisher had arrived at her home. From the outside of the department store’s paper wrapping, it had appeared to be fruit. Motoko, who had lost her appetite, said: “If it’s melon, I want to eat it.” The attendant immediately unwrapped the package at Motoko’s bedside. “Oh!” she exclaimed. When Motoko turned around, the attendant was pacing restlessly, holding the basket she had just opened. When they noticed, a slip printed with “Offering for the Deceased” in large characters was stuck there.

“What should I do? That’s so inauspicious!”

The attendant—as if resigning herself now that she’d been found out—plopped down heavily, her face wearing an expression caught between a bitter smile and a tearful laugh.

“It must be some kind of mistake.”
“Please don’t concern yourself.”

Motoko burst out laughing.
The laughter didn’t stop right away; she sat up and laughed while clutching her stomach.
It was the first time she had sat up since lying down.
And with that incident as the catalyst, Motoko’s appetite began to return.
For a while, the laughter born of remembrance continued.

―They say this sort of thing makes one live long.

Friends of Motoko's began saying such things, and rumors spread among their acquaintances.

“Congratulations.”
“They say you’ve cheated death.”
“All thanks to that Buddhist offering.”

Having settled on that explanation and turned it into an amusing anecdote, autumn arrived and her asthma suddenly flared up. The doctor said it was pneumonia's parting gift. Since then, Motoko's asthma would sometimes rage like a hysterical woman, leaving her spending half each year in hospitals. If I can stay alive, she thought, even this would be acceptable. Still, surely no fool would seriously bring "Buddhist altar offerings" to Yamagata's place.

The narrow concrete road reverberated sharply through Motoko's spine as she wore geta for the first time in ages. Lately she'd worn zori even in rain—to avoid falls. This was Motoko who'd kept taking new medication since falling ill, medicine that swelled her face and made bones snap easily if she fell. The lower back bones were said to break most readily. Break those and she mightn't even use crutches. That misfortune would dwarf mere facial swelling.

The Yamagata house had a stone staircase of about five steps leading up to its entrance.
When they pressed the bell, small footsteps came scrambling from beyond the door.
But the door opened slowly.

“Oh, welcome.”

Yamagata’s mother descended into the narrow three-foot-wide dirt-floored entryway,

“Thank you ever so much for coming at this time——”

Bowing her head, she glanced back at Chisaki,
“When the doorbell rings, they seem to think it’s Mommy.”
She pressed her sleeve to her eyes.

“Right. My bad for being Grandma. Come on in.”

“Sorry for being Grandma. Come on in.”

When she held out both hands, Chisaki brushed them away and didn’t even smile.

“Oh, did Grandma forget already? Here, a little something for you.”

When she held out the package of rice crackers, Chisaki took only that, then backed away and clung to Yamagata’s mother. She looked wary, as if facing an enemy.

“Oh dear, I’ve been disliked.”

When they turned to Sōichi, he too sullenly clammed up and lowered his eyes.
In his case, he resented that all the attention was going to Chisaki.

“You’re the big brother, Sō-chan—such a good boy.”

“……”

“Since you’re being good, I’ll give you something special.
Guess what?”

Finally, a spark of life returned to his eyes.

“Guess right and it’s yours.”

When she took out the paper package, Sōichi suddenly broke into a smile,

“It’s a book! It’s a book!”

The book was a children’s magazine donated to Motoko every month.
Because it had been handed to him every month still in its bag, Sōichi immediately recognized it.
As she was taking it out of the bag, Chisaki approached and reached out her hand while shouting “Ah—”.
Though she couldn’t speak yet, Motoko had heard from Hiromi that Chisaki hated losing—and seeing it firsthand was rather amusing.
It seemed they had finally returned to the children’s world, and the earlier gloominess vanished without notice.

“Hey, Sō-chan, Chisaki-chan will be going to sleep soon, so let’s save looking at the book for tomorrow, okay?”

Yamagata’s mother tried to appease Sōichi with a coaxing voice.

“Ah, so that’s why Chisaki-chan was in a bad mood.”

“That’s right.”
“Unfortunately, she was just about to fall asleep.”

“I see. We’ve come at a bad time, haven’t we?”
“We’ve come at a bad time, haven’t we?”

“No.
“But you know, I must say I’m impressed.”
“The two of them have been so well-behaved.”
“Right now they’re making a fuss over the book, but all day long they’ve stayed quiet without complaint, keeping inside the house with this old woman.”

Ah, realizing that this was what Hiromi had been worried about, Motoko,

"Um, how about I take care of Chisaki-chan, at least?"

“No, I’ll at least take care of the children, so please don’t worry.
“Come on, Chisaki-chan, let’s get you to bed.”

She took her into the room.
Having had the book taken away, Sōichi fell back into sullen silence.
For an eighty-year-old woman, even two children must be hard to manage.

“Eighty, five, and one.”
“The generations are too far apart, aren’t they?”

Motoko whispered softly to Bunkichi, who had been sitting silently in the corner reading the evening paper,
“There, there, Sō-chan.
I’ll teach you something nice.”
Sōichi silently lifted his face.
“Hey, lend me some paper and a pencil.
I’ll teach you a fun song.”
Sōichi pulled his chin in as if embarrassed by his own returning good mood, made an “Eh—” sound with his mouth, and brought paper and a pencil.
Motoko took a seat at the dining table,

“Do you know the song ‘There Was a Single Stick’?”

When she sang the Cook’s song from the children’s program she’d learned on TV during her hospital stay, Sōichi happily—

He nodded with a “Uh-huh.”

“There once was a single stick.”

As Motoko sang again while writing the character for "one," Sōichi said in a small voice,

"Is it a leaf?"

he continued.
Oh, Motoko smiled at the unexpected success and, adding eyes to the leaf,

"It's not a leaf—it's a frog!"

“It’s not a frog—it’s a duck!”

“On June sixth—the rain came pouring down—”

“The triangular ruler cracked right through—”

“Two anpan loaves—three beans too—”

“Two koppe pans, please!”

Sōichi’s voice gradually grew louder until during “In the Blink of an Eye, a Cute Cook,” it became a booming shout that echoed through the room.
Motoko lifted Sōichi onto her lap and pressed her cheek against his small one from behind.

“Hey, Chisaki-chan will wake up again.”

“E-even if she does, it’s f-fine!”

Thrilled at being held, Sōichi thrashed about.
Motoko tightened her embrace,

“No.”
“You must stay quiet now. Hush, hush.”
“Instead of this, Sō-chan—how about we go stay at Grandma Namikawa’s house tonight?”

The medicine seemed to have taken strong effect.
Sōichi suddenly grew quiet.

“Let’s go. And then we’ll sleep together with Big Brother Taro.”

“…”

“Big Brother Taro will build an apartment for you.”

He remained silent and nodded.

“Well then, let’s go stay over and ask about that apartment too while we’re at it.”

“I don’t want to!”

“Why?”

“A house that big would be hard to clean, he said.”
“Who said that?”
“Papa.”

“Oh?”
“Papa hates apartments, he said.”
“I see. I wonder why?”
“Well, you know, flowers and plants—you can’t plant them there, he said.”

“I see.”

“So I don’t need an apartment anymore.”
“Because Papa’s sick and it’s so sad.”

“……”

Motoko took a trembling breath in silence.

“Alright, now it’s your turn, Sō-chan. Go pee and change into your pajamas—”

“Okay!”

Sōichi started taking off his clothes by himself.
Yamagata’s mother gazed at him affectionately while,

“If you don’t behave quietly—Papa says he won’t want to come home—so here you are now,” she explained, “changing into your pajamas all by yourself like this.”
“So pitifully sweet.”

Coaxed by praise, Sōichi obediently climbed into bed.
Feeling restless, Motoko absently looked at the pillar calendar hanging on the post beside the television.
On the front of the calendar—branded with the sushi shop’s name—beneath the auspicious pine, bamboo, and plum trees, three rabbits—white, black, and brown—crouched with their long ears flattened.
For someone as relatively modern as Yamagata, it was an odd calendar to have hanging there.
While wondering if this might reflect his mother’s preferences, she found herself gazing at the tear-off calendar without truly seeing it.
Friday, August 16th.
Kyūshi, Tomobiki.
Kyoto Daimonji.
kanotou.
The twenty-seventh day of the sixth month in the old calendar.
Good laughter brightens the home.—

Such text was printed in small characters across the compact page, some lines vertical and others horizontal.
August 16th.
That was the day Yamagata had been hospitalized.
From then on, in this house, days had not advanced on the calendar.
When she tentatively flipped one page, the 17th—Happaku.
Senbu.
The 18th—Shichiseki, Butsumetsu.
The 19th—Rokuhaku, Senshō.

Ah, in this house where various fates had quietly layered upon one another, the night had yet to break.
As if trying to pull back the days when its master was present just as they were, day after day, the calendar had no one to flip its pages.…

(Showa 38 [1963], November)