The Changeling

by Kenzaburo Oe

  “The sun’s still a bit too high for that,” Goro replied, refusing the offer in a sophisticated manner that sounded odd coming from someone so young.

  Daio picked up the teacup full of doburoku, scooted down to one end of the couch, and set his bare feet on the floor. Goro sat down in the newly opened space, but there was no room for Kogito, so he grabbed a nearby wooden chair, turned it around, and plopped himself down. Daio observed this operation with an expression that was somehow arrogant and disdainful. Then, ignoring Kogito completely, he continued to address himself to Goro alone.

  “I’m really happy you came back!” he exclaimed. “This morning, before Peter made a run to the army base—he’ll be back later—I told him that you guys would probably be dropping by again this evening, as well. He’s a sly one, that Peter. He came right out and said that if Goro wasn’t here when he returned with the broken guns, he wouldn’t be fooled again the way he was last night when you two sneaked off without telling anyone. He said that he would just turn around and go home, without even taking the weapons out of the car.

  “When the young warriors heard that, they weren’t too happy. They had started drinking toward the end, after you ran off, and the party last night ended up getting a little bit wild and out of control, so maybe they forgot their manners, or maybe it was just their youthful high spirits. They’re kind of hot-blooded, and they don’t always take the time to think things through. Anyway, they said to Peter, ‘You may say that you won’t give us the stuff you bring, but we won’t let you get away with that.’

  “And then Peter really showed his true colors. He said, ‘That’s a direct threat, and it would be my right as a soldier of the occupying army—more than a right: my duty—to shoot you to death just for saying that. I’ll be keeping that in mind, and when I come back I won’t just be bringing broken guns. I’ll be bringing one that really works so I can defend myself!’

  “But Peter’s a young guy, too, so he really didn’t need to say something like that, am I right? When the warriors heard that, instead of being concerned for their own safety, they were very excited at the prospect of getting their hands on a gun that they could actually use to shoot someone. He probably wouldn’t bring a rifle, so if you have one man with a pistol, all you need is for five men to jump on him with the intention of knocking him down. They could easily restrain him—some of these young guys are demobilized soldiers, with experience in battle. No, Peter really blew it; he said something he never should have said. Even so, when he left he was wearing a very solemn expression. You’d have thought the young warriors would have been intimidated by what Peter said, but they let out a big, loud war whoop that I’m sure was audible even where he was, over by the Cadillac. I hope that when he heard the sudden roar of voices he realized how radically the circumstances had changed, because I think it would be just as well if he didn’t come back ...

  “The young warriors held an emergency meeting, and they apparently worked out a strategy in case Peter did come back. If he returned with a working pistol, they were planning to take it from him right away, by force. But Peter’s an officer in the military, so there’s no way he’s going to give up his pistol and bullets without a struggle! If he lost his gun, he would probably be punished in some way, and the Army of Occupation would come and root us out, and then our entire crew would end up doing hard labor in some Okinawan prison, isn’t that right? For Peter, losing his gun here would be a very different story than if they just found out that he was doing the approximate equivalent of selling broken guns to black-market metal dealers, even if he did do that half in fun, as a sort of reckless game.”

  “Was the plan you told us about just a game, too?” Kogito couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  Daio’s face returned to the dark, gloomy aspect it had worn before he noticed their arrival. The one-armed man drained the doburoku in his teacup and took a deep breath.

  “Of course it wouldn’t be just a game for us,” he said, glaring at Kogito with seriously chilly eyes. “Your mother told us not to pass your father’s ideas on to you, as if we were some kind of low-life vermin who would try to corrupt her precious son, but that isn’t our aim at all. In any case, you have no business calling our carefully thought-out plan a game!

  “I know I’ve talked about this before, but when this country was ignominiously occupied for the first time in its history, we made up our minds that it wouldn’t do to let the peace treaty take effect without a single show of armed resistance from the Japanese people. But in this well-policed country, it simply isn’t possible to put together a group of armed rebels. If it were possible, don’t you think someone would have done so by now? That’s why we came up with the next best thing: ten of us are going to storm the front gates of the army camp with automatic rifles at the ready—and it won’t matter that they’re broken, because no one will be able to tell just by looking at them. And then we’ll be mowed down by a hail of bullets from the guns of the American soldiers.

  “But the story doesn’t end with us dying an honorable death. After the word gets out that the attack was staged with nonfunctional guns and the men who were shot to death were, essentially, unarmed Japanese—and if the occupying army doesn’t make that information public, the survivors here at the training camp will be handling PR and making sure the truth gets out. Anyway, when that happens, the occupying army’s censorship will have come to an end! And don’t you think that there will be a nationwide outcry of anger and indignation? We believe that outcry will determine the fate of this country after the peace treaty takes effect, because these are the beliefs we’ve acquired so far, and we’re willing to die for them!

  “And isn’t this a natural extension of the philosophy of your father, Choko Sensei, who stormed the bank—unarmed, as we will be—and was shot to death in the process? I haven’t been teaching these young men that they should go out and kill people. Rather, I’ve taught them that we should be willing to give up our lives to restore the nationalistic ideology that’s been lost in this country. That’s what I’ve been saying all along! So what’s the point of stealing a single pistol that’s in working order? On top of which, what if you’re properly armed and you end up killing your opponent on the spur of the moment? And what if, among the soldiers of the occupying army, we killed a young pro-Japanese, Japanese-speaking officer like Peter? What effect would that have? Would the peaceable-minded Japan of today be sympathetic if we did something like that?

  “But the young warriors end up getting carried away with some reckless, half-baked plan, and they don’t listen to what I tell them! ‘If you steal a pistol and end up killing your opponent in combat, especially before the peace treaty takes effect, that’s the same as annihilating one soldier of the occupying army’—one idiot actually said that as if it was a good thing, and everybody clapped and cheered. Then there was the smart aleck who said, ‘If the person whose pistol you stole is running away before your eyes, rather than letting him go and bring the Army of Occupation down on us, wouldn’t it make more sense to kill him on the spot?’ And another guy said that if you had one working pistol, you would feel more secure than if you were attacking with a bunch of broken rifles. In the end, the group didn’t seem to understand a word I said. They really do behave like a bunch of brainless bumpkins sometimes.”

  After he had finished this tirade, Daio picked up his teacup and splashed another dose of doburoku into it, then lifted the cup to his mouth with a trembling hand and drained it dry in a single gulp. The area from his chin to his throat was wet with sake, and after a not entirely successful attempt to wipe it off with the back of his hand, he turned to Goro and began to speak in a tone that seemed to suggest that Goro owed him something or, at the very least, that Goro ought to appreciate Daio’s noble efforts to remove the danger his volatile young followers might pose to Peter. Evidently he expected Goro to be grateful even if that effort turned out to be unsuccessful.

  “If only Peter would sense that something weird
is brewing and not come back, everything would be fine,” Daio said. “But the thing is, Peter has his heart set on seeing Goro, so I’ll bet he’s behind the wheel of the Cadillac at this very moment, heading back this way ...”

  Daio had turned the back of his darkly sunburned neck toward Kogito and was plainly avoiding his gaze. But when he said that, Kogito blurted out, “From the beginning, you’ve been using Goro as bait to lure Peter here, and just a while ago you were saying that Peter would be happy that Goro had come back. So you’re no different from the gang that’s lying in wait to try to kill Peter! And what you’re doing right now is creating an alibi for yourself, so that after Peter’s been murdered, you can say, ‘Oh, no, I was against it, but the young warriors just pushed me aside and ignored my warnings.’ And you’re trying to use us as witnesses for your self-serving alibi!”

  Daio turned his head and looked at Kogito straight on, with a troubled expression. “No,” he said, “I was truly glad that Goro decided to come back, and ... just like the plan we made in the beginning, I hope that Peter won’t have to take out his pistol and that he’ll be able to enjoy his reunion with Goro. All I want is for him to leave ten broken rifles for us when he goes home.

  “Just like yesterday, I’ve heated up the bath, and I’m having another feast prepared—today some of the young warriors butchered a cow, just for the occasion—and that’s as far as it’s gone. Beyond that, if Peter and Goro find themselves on the same wavelength and decide that they want to get together, we’ve already gotten a bedroom ready for the two of them, just in case.

  “My plan is essentially a peaceful one. If everything goes well, we’ll send Peter home with his desires satisfied. And if he leaves behind ten broken rifles for us, that’s when we’ll begin to set our plan in motion so we can go out in a blaze of glory, like true sons of Japan.”

  As Kogito was standing up he saw Daio glancing in his direction, and he suddenly kicked out wildly and hit the older man under the right eye. Daio tumbled from the sofa onto the floor with a loud crash, so easily that Kogito wondered whether he had fallen on purpose for dramatic effect. This impression was confirmed when Daio continued lying flat on the ground, fumbling around halfheartedly with his one remaining arm as he tried (though not very hard) to raise his torso to a sitting position.

  Goro jumped to his feet. “Kogito,” he scolded, “why do you always have to lose your temper? What’s the point of doing something stupid like that?”

  Evidently thinking that Kogito might aim another kick at the back of Daio’s head or his side while the one-armed man was lying defenseless on the floor, Goro stood in “ready” position, clearly determined to stop his headstrong friend from doing any more damage. The truth was, seeing Daio in that pitiful state, feebly groping around—almost as if he was deliberately trying to exaggerate his own weakness and vulnerability—caused a new wave of anger to blaze up in Kogito. But Goro had put one arm around Kogito’s shoulder and was propelling him toward the exit, and Kogito had no intention of defying his friend’s wishes.

  Kogito and Goro, who were both feeling as dispirited as if they had lost the confrontation with Daio (or, at least, as if they hadn’t won), squatted down at the top of the tall steps at the entrance to the main building and put on their shoes. Then they set off walking toward the wide, sloping meadow, where the bright green grass was waving in the wind.

  6

  The sky was clear, and both the lush, grassy meadow and the deciduous forest on the other side of the valley (with a heavy cliff looming precariously above) were bathed in a diluted yellowish light, even though it wasn’t yet dusk. The wind that was blowing up from the river was unseasonably chilly.

  About halfway down the incline, some freshly cut timber from the periodic thinning of the forest (each log was about the diameter of a clenched fist) had been assembled into a sort of rack that resembled an oversized sawhorse. Goro and Kogito walked up to the odd-looking apparatus. Gingerly, the two of them clambered onto it—buttocks resting on the topmost crosspiece, feet supported by the lowest one—and gazed down the slope.

  “Come on, Goro, let’s just go home,” Kogito pleaded.

  “Why? Isn’t this an exciting adventure?”

  “I just think it’s stupid to be curious about that sort of thing.”

  “Hmm,” Goro said facetiously, pretending to address his remarks to an invisible third person. “Exactly what does Kogito mean by ‘that sort of thing,’ I wonder?”

  “Well, then,” Kogito shot back, “what I wonder is, why do you want to stay?”

  “Because Peter’s a friend, and he’s risking his life by coming back here. He has absolutely nothing to gain from that, you know.”

  “It’s only because he heard that you were going to come back today.”

  “In that case, it’ll be even worse if I’m not here when he returns.”

  “Worse for whom?”

  “For Peter, of course. But also for my self-respect. I don’t like to play bait and switch.”

  “So you’re going to offer yourself up as a sacrifice?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

  “What if you end up being forced at gunpoint?” As he said that, Kogito felt that he was being terribly childish and melodramatic.

  “Even if there’s a gun pointing at me, I still won’t do it. Like I said, if I don’t want to do something ...,” Goro repeated.

  “But there’s no need to get yourself backed into a corner where you have to make that kind of choice, is there? ’Cause there’s someone waiting to give us a ride back to Matsuyama in the three-wheeled truck, right now.”

  “Yeah, and they’ll probably let you pass through to the place where the three-wheeled truck is parked—after all, this secret hideout was built by your father’s followers. But do you really think they would let me cross the bridge so easily?”

  Kogito’s attention was suddenly drawn toward the lower right-hand corner of the slope, at the foot of the suspension bridge. There, a crowd of Daio’s disciples—the young warriors, as he liked to call them—was milling about. While Kogito and Goro had been batting these short sentences back and forth, a fair amount of time had elapsed. From a distance, it was impossible to read the expressions on the faces of the young men, but it was clear that they were very busy doing something at the bottom of the hill.

  What bothered Kogito right away was the way the group was moving. He could see a certain aggressive, overstated swagger in their physical movements and gestures, which was typical of people from around here when they’d had too much to drink. During the party the night before, as far as Kogito could see, none of the young disciples had been partaking of the free-flowing home-brewed sake. But according to Daio’s account, the party had gotten quite wild toward the end, after Kogito and Goro had snuck off.

  Whether the young warriors were making up for their previous abstemiousness or going the hair-of-the-dog route, they must have started drinking well before dusk today (probably right after their unpleasant confrontation with Daio), passing around high-octane doburoku that had been decanted into giant-sized beer bottles or something like that. And then there was Daio, too, guzzling moonshine nonstop, all by himself. It seemed likely that both sides were drinking as a distraction from everything that was weighing on their minds. What if everyone at the training camp had decided to get rip-roaring drunk? That prospect made Kogito feel distinctly uneasy.

  At the bottom of the lower part of the slope, on the left side, there was a thicket of leafy, luxuriant shrubbery covered with reddish-brown buds. While Kogito watched, five or six young disciples, who had apparently been engaged in some sort of clandestine activity in the thicket, suddenly burst out of the bushes and began working in plain sight. First they would fill large, deep buckets with something, and then, as if setting out to walk down to the river, they would dump the contents of the buckets into the water, which wasn’t visible from the top of the slope. There were also some large, bulky item
s, too big to fit into the buckets, which they carried to the edge of the cliff and flung into the river far below.

  From the other side of the thicket, two black dogs sprang out in a frenzy of excitement. The dogs started eagerly jumping up on the young men, who were cleaning out the emptied buckets with wads of fresh-picked grass, but they were soon driven off. The hounds ran away at top speed along a road that couldn’t be seen from the top of the slope, then dashed down the hill into the deep valley.

  By and by Kogito noticed that several young disciples—the number seemed to have increased—were climbing up the slope, each lugging a bucket that had obviously been refilled with something. Behind them marched two strapping young men, carrying what looked like a messy, rolled-up carpet with jagged edges on their broad shoulders. As they drew closer, it gradually became evident that the men were extremely dirty—not only their upper torsos but their heads and faces, as well. It was also obvious from the way they lurched along that they were more than a little intoxicated.

  The men were walking with exaggerated slowness, but soon enough they sidled up next to the sawhorse where Goro and Kogito were sitting, in the manner of innocent pedestrians who just happened to be passing by. Kogito realized then that the stuff in the buckets they were carrying was the flesh and internal organs of the slaughtered calf Daio had mentioned earlier in connection with the feast, and that the unwieldy ruglike object was that animal’s pelt, although it was so massive that it looked more like the skin of a full-grown cow. The young men who were toting these gruesome burdens, whether by hand or on their shoulders, were grinning wordlessly and clearly feeling no pain. They looked like the grown-up versions of country children who have come to town for a festival parade, but Kogito had no idea what they were planning to do.

  After a while one of the young acolytes, who seemed to be the most popular member of the group, put down the largest bucket as if it didn’t weigh a thing and called out to Kogito and Goro, not addressing either one in particular: “Oh, that’s the life! I guess it pays to be a pretty boy.” After a moment’s silence, Goro responded in a tranquil voice. “What are you talking about?” he asked mildly, but his response had an element of condescension, as if he wasn’t taking the young men very seriously.