The Changeling

by Kenzaburo Oe

  As a novelist, every time Kogito got bogged down in trying to re-create some past occurrence along a linear time sequence (i.e., this happened, then that happened), he would feel the necessity of changing the focal point of the narrative by jumping around in time and space. Because of that, it was easy for Kogito to understand why, when Goro wrote about that bedtime discussion of Rimbaud, it was in the form of a scene in which he and Kogito were sitting across from each other as adults, recalling that conversation from forty years ago—a scene that never actually took place in real life.

  We see present-day Goro talking to present-day Kogito, but we don’t need to get any realistic sense of Kogito’s actual presence or physical form. We should just get a vague impression of a sort of shadowy effigy, almost like a scarecrow, with its back to us. As another option, without even bringing in the actor who’s playing Kogito’s character, it might be effective to have this scene show Goro alone late at night, talking at length into a cassette recorder, making the tapes that he will later send to Kogito. (Incidentally, the part of present-day Goro will probably be played by the director himself.)

  GORO (speaking into Tagame’s microphone): That night in the old house in the valley in the forest, I said that I had a feeling that Rimbaud was writing about our futures in “Adieu.” You didn’t say anything specific in response, as I recall, but I could tell that you knew exactly what I meant. After I’d said something as naïve as that, if you had cynically brushed it aside I would probably have clammed up for the rest of the evening, nursing my wounded feelings. The translation I have with me now isn’t the one by Hideo Kobayashi, it’s the Chikuma paperback you recommended, but when I read “Adieu” again in this newer version, I saw that our lives since then are proof positive that what I said was right on target. Indeed, my prediction has come almost heartbreakingly true. Of course, I knew you were especially fond of the opening phrase, and I felt the same way. But already, at that time, I wasn’t envisioning a totally glorious scenario for the future. And that, too, was because I was being guided by what Rimbaud had written. When you think about it, I really was adorably earnest, wasn’t I? Anyway, it went like this:

  >> Autumn. Our boat, risen out of a hanging fog, turns toward poverty’s harbor, the monstrous city, its sky stained with fire and mud.<<

  And then he’s in the city, and he goes on: >> I can see myself again ... << remember this part? >> ... my skin corroded by dirt and disease, hair and armpits crawling with worms, and worms still larger crawling in my heart, stretched out among ageless, heartless, unknown figures ... I could easily have died there ...<<

  I can pretty much guarantee that this prediction of the future and so on is really and truly accurate, and very specific to boot, at least for me. I can’t claim to be able to predict your future, but if I think about a vision of my own imminent fate, it’s right on the mark. Bingo! Because I figure that sooner or later, I’m probably going to end up taking a fatal dive off of some high place. Of all the available options, that’s the surest way of snuffing it—mainly because even if you change your mind halfway down, there’s no way to stop. If you film the jumper’s descent and then run the film backward, he’ll seem to be floating in air, but of course there’s no “rewind” or “freeze-frame” in reality. And by the very nature of the act, it’s impossible to have anything like the ambivalent wrist slasher’s hesitation marks when you’re free-falling through space.

  And then my body—rather like the man in the Kafka story who turned into a bug and ended up dying quietly under the sofa. (Do you remember when I told you my interpretation that the insect in question was a cockroach? Only in those days we didn’t have a disgusting word like “cockroach,” so we called them “oily bugs.”) Anyway, what if no one found me—you know, like Kafka’s cockroach? I daydream about things like that sometimes when I’m standing on the roof of this office building in the middle of Tokyo, looking down at the alley far below. I mean, suppose my body came crashing down—ka-thunk!—amid the mountain of cardboard boxes and other trash that’s always piled up down there, and my corpse wasn’t discovered for days? If I’m going to end up decaying like that, then I really will have died in exactly the way Rimbaud describes, line by line, crawling maggots and all.

  Not only that, but when I come to the following phrase, I naturally think about the movies that I’ve made: I was the creator of every feast, every triumph, every drama. I tried to invent new flowers, new planets, new flesh, new languages. I thought I had acquired supernatural powers.

  As for you, Kogito, there are people who relentlessly ridicule you and your work with all the usual stereotypical put-downs. They say that you’re a fool who turns up his nose at pop culture and only thinks or cares about old-fashioned belles lettres and so-called “pure art.” But I don’t think that’s the case, at all. And I don’t think there’s any way that someone who has been writing novels for as long as you have could be unaware that all literature and all art (including your own work) is, basically, au fond, kitsch. If you accept that premise, then the astoundingly popular movies that I make have a deliberate halo of kitschiness around them from the very beginning. But even if I blew my own horn like that—I was the creator of every feast, every triumph, every drama—you wouldn’t laugh me out of the room, would you? For you, too, as a novelist, surely there must be times when you want to say I tried to invent new flowers, new planets, new flesh, new languages? In your recent novels, there do seem to be some elements of supernatural power emerging here and there. Anyway, for people like us who have been friends since we were schoolboys, isn’t it all right to acknowledge what we’ve accomplished so far? After all, this is a private conversation, just between the two of us.

  So anyhow, after that, Rimbaud says: Ha! I have to bury my imagination and my memories! What an end to a splendid career as an artist and storyteller! And later he adds, Well, I shall ask forgiveness for having lived on lies. And that’s that.

  This passage really hits me where I live. Don’t you feel the same way, Kogito? When you think about people who do the kind of work we do—selling the “new flowers” of kitsch and the “new stars” of kitsch by the yard, as it were—we don’t have that much time left, and we need to come to terms with that fact and ask forgiveness for having lived on lies. How about Takamura? What was he thinking about at the end, I wonder? Did you try asking him about that sort of thing when you visited him after he was hospitalized with terminal cancer? Surely you wouldn’t have told him that his own music was pure art and had no relation whatsoever to kitsch or anything like that, would you? He would have felt disappointed, even betrayed, if you had gotten all deathbed-sentimental and started insisting that his art had nothing kitschy about it.

  From the time I first met you, when you were sixteen, I’ve always told you that you should never tell a lie. I’ve said it all along: “You shouldn’t tell lies, not even to entertain people or give them comfort.” I said that again just the other day, remember? But Rimbaud’s line about having lived on lies is absolutely true of me, as well. That’s right, your exalted mentor is a liar. Anyway, there’s something that you and I, together, need to try asking forgiveness for, and then it will be time for us to take our leave.

  Needless to say, I’ll be heading out by myself this time. And when you get to be our age, if someone makes up his mind to go on alone, there’s no way to stop him. Other people can’t possibly stop him—I mean, how could they, when the person in question can’t even stop himself? And wasn’t Rimbaud talking about that kind of departure, the end of this first act, when he said: >>But not one friendly hand! and where can I look for help?<<

  And listen, Kogito, here’s the thing. What I’m able to understand of the poem “Adieu” is really just up to this point; that is to say, I only understand the parts of it that have some bearing on my own life so far. That’s because I won’t be able to perfectly understand the latter half of the poem until after I say my own farewell—at least that’s the way I feel now.

  You’
ve seen those sequential photographs, taken with a strobe-style flash that goes off every few seconds? I feel as if I’m already starting to see glimpses of the Other Side, like frozen images illuminated by a brief flash of light. And I feel as if once I actually get there, I’ll truly be able to understand any and all of the lines in the latter half of the poem. For instance, this kind of passage: >>A hard night! Dried blood smokes on my face, and nothing lies behind me but that repulsive little tree!<< If you look at it this way, Rimbaud really does seem to be talking about what happened to us: you know, about THAT. It’s as if this one line has somehow been layered over my actual memories, and my own past is just a faint pentimento, or palimpsest.

  Kogito was shocked by this portion of the screenplay, wherein Goro seemed to be saying that before too long he was planning to jump to his death from a high place—which is exactly what he had done. Moreover, while he was reading that passage, Kogito had a distinct sensation of déjà vu. That feeling led him directly to the drawing Goro had left behind, showing himself reclining lengthwise in midair holding a Tagame clone—and which, Kogito saw now, could almost have been one of the storyboard drawings that corresponded with various scenes in the screenplay. He felt, suddenly, as if he had heard these same words spoken in Goro’s voice on one of the Tagame tapes. That realization was so distressing that the blood rushed to his face and he jumped to his feet in agitation.

  Of course, the screenplay and storyboards had been delivered to Kogito after Goro’s death, by way of Chikashi. But Kogito couldn’t help thinking, in a state of consternation verging on panic: If only I had listened sooner to all the Tagame tapes that were in the small trunk ... if only I had come across the tape that, even if it wasn’t exactly the same as the screenplay, might at least have hinted at Goro’s plan ... and if only I had talked about it to Chikashi and then asked her to discuss the matter with Umeko, surely the women would have taken Goro to the hospital of a famous doctor they had met when Goro was making a movie about dying in hospitals, and then he would have been safely under the care of a physician who specialized in presenile dementia or depression or whatever was ailing him ... wouldn’t he?

  When Kogito took out the little duralumin trunk, his memos about the contents of all the cassette tapes that he had already listened to were on the labels, and by using those notations as clues and constantly fast-forwarding, he managed to run through all the tapes again in half a day. He had to perform this task in the living room, which was the only place where the light was bright enough for him to read the small print on the labels, and when Chikashi saw him wearing the forbidden Tagame headphones, she gave him a look that seemed to say, “Oh, no, not again!” Akari, too, was clearly uneasy about seeing his father so immersed in an unusual project involving large numbers of cassette tapes.

  In the end, Kogito wasn’t able to find the recording that he’d thought he remembered, albeit in a vague, déjà vu—ish way. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help thinking that the very concept of Tagame itself was a signal from Goro, a plea for help, and this ended up reviving the feeling he had, right after it happened, that he himself was somehow to blame for Goro’s death.

  But on a different level, a phrase from the oft-quoted “Adieu” struck him with new force: A hard night! Dried blood smokes on my face, and nothing lies behind me but that repulsive little tree!” And he realized that Goro was on to something when he remarked in his screenplay soliloquy: “If you look at it this way, Rimbaud really does seem to be talking about what happened to us: you know, about THAT!”

  5

  When Goro and Kogito woke up in the big old house in the deep mountain valley, it was already past noon. Kogito’s younger sister came to roust them out of bed, saying, “Mother’s going out to work.” When the two late risers wandered into the big dirt-floored room (the large door was open now, along with the smaller door they had squeezed in through the night before), Kogito’s mother was sitting on the verandah, dressed in her gardening clothes and obviously waiting for them.

  “Welcome!” she greeted Goro with high good humor, bowing from the waist. “We’re very grateful for everything you’ve done for Kogito.” (That was the customary pleasantry.)

  “I’m sorry we made so much noise so late at night,” Goro replied, equally formulaically. Wearing an exquisitely polite smile, he returned the bow with a grace and elegance that Kogito had never before witnessed in someone his own age.

  Kogito’s mother went out through the main gate with no further conversation, and as soon as she was out of sight Goro said, in a loud, excited voice, “She was wearing the turban!” At that moment they heard the horn of the little three-wheeled truck honking three times, just like the night before, and Kogito’s little brother, Chu (who until then had been hiding timidly behind Asa, staring at Goro), turned and ran after their mother. Asa was in the tatami-matted room that was a step up from the dirt-floored entry hall, preparing breakfast for her older brother and his guest beside the sunken hearth that connected that room to the kitchen.

  Led by Chu, who had evidently been sent back by his mother, the same taciturn young man from the training camp entered the house and remained standing in the dirt-floored room. He spoke to Goro and Kogito while they were digging into their late breakfast, and Kogito couldn’t help thinking that the young man’s grandparents probably would have behaved in the same deferential, class-conscious manner if they had come to talk to the head of the estate and his family (that is, to Kogito’s grandparents) about some business or other. The young man’s way of speaking, too, was a complicated mixture of reserve and supplication.

  “Daio is really worried about how you two are going to get back to Matsuyama!” he said, addressing his remarks to Kogito. “He was saying that since today’s Sunday, that’s no problem, but if you guys miss school tomorrow your mother will surely be angry ... and also, he figured she probably noticed that the friend you brought home was a trifle intoxicated. So that’s why he sent me to pick you up. He was saying that if I take you back to our training camp, you can grab a ride back to Matsuyama with Peter, in that foreign car. Peter went back to his army base for a while, but he said he’d return in the evening. Daio also said that after Kogito’s mother heard about last night, she might have ordered her son not to go back to the kind of place that serves alcohol to minors, but that your friend, Goro, doesn’t answer to your mother and so she can’t boss him around. And besides, we’re living in a world of democracy now! That’s what he was saying, anyway. It’s none of my business, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the reason Kogito’s mother went out to work in the fields on a Sunday—later than usual, but even so—is because she was angry with Kogito about last night.”

  Kogito knew, but didn’t say, that his mother hadn’t gone to work in the fields at all. She had set out for the overgrown remains of a botanical garden, featuring a collection of medicinal plants, that was between the basin of the valley, where they lived, and the other part of the village farther up the hill. According to local folklore, that garden had been created by the founder of the village. Nowadays it was just a plot of land covered with scrubby weeds and shrubs, rather than cultivated herbs and grasses, but Kogito’s mother always managed to find some useful things amid the untamed vegetation. When she went on these horticultural treasure hunts she would sometimes come across a type of wild rhubarb called daio—known colloquially around these parts as gishi-gishi—and no doubt it had struck her that one of the young men who came to visit her husband during the war was named Daio. Hence (as Daio himself had explained earlier, under the Matsuyama cherry blossoms) the nickname, “Gishi-Gishi.”

  While the truck driver was making his pitch to Kogito, Goro sat quietly listening and devouring his breakfast. His body language made it clear that he wanted to go back to the training camp, and he seemed mystified by Kogito’s momentary hesitation.

  They arrived at Daio’s training camp in the late afternoon, around 4 PM. Even now, Kogito still remembered the quizzical ex
pression on Goro’s face after they had crossed the rope suspension bridge and were trudging uphill through the grassy meadow. Kogito, too, was wondering whether the partying had started early. He couldn’t identify any explicit sounds of festivity, but he had the definite impression that there was some sort of commotion taking place in the vicinity of the training hall.

  The truck driver had told the boys that Daio was waiting for them in the main building. There was a tall step at the entrance (the structure reminded Kogito of the temple of the Tenrikyo sect of Buddhism that had been built in his village), and as Kogito and Goro entered the building they sensed immediately that their reception was going to be different from the hearty welcome they had received the day before. Indeed, when they first poked their heads into the office, they thought no one was there.

  After a moment, they noticed Daio sitting on a couch against the wall, with his legs folded under him and bent to one side. There was a two-quart bottle of home-brewed sake on the floor beside him, and he was in the process of sloshing some into a teacup. Then, with no trace of the cheery expression he had worn at the previous night’s banquet, he fixed them with a look that was so dark and doleful they were almost afraid to approach him. The words he spoke were still affable enough, but his face told a different story.

  “Won’t you join me for a drink, Goro?” he called out. “I know you’re a man who can hold his liquor. I already got an angry letter from Kogito’s mother, reading me the riot act for giving alcohol to minors, so I won’t be pouring any for him, that’s for sure.”