“That’s the way things go in life,” said Shimamura. “Ah yes. The economy.”
“Ah yes,” said Sachiko.
“Well now,” sighed Takaoka.
“Do you still remember me?” asked his wife. “You saved my life. With your medical art and quinine. Malaria. You remember, don’t you, Doctor, in Shimane, back then, that summer, it was so long ago, wasn’t it?”
“Ah yes,” mouthed Shimamura. “Of course. Oh life, life.”
“Ah yes?” asked Sachiko.
Shimamura didn’t know what to do. He stared, practically agog, first at Takaoka’s wife and then at Takaoka.
“My wife was a patient,” said Takaoka to Sachiko, “and I was a student, and we eloped, as they say, we eloped and married in secret, without any family. Afterwards everything was a complete mess, we lived like a bunch of acrobats – anyway we were young and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to hear all the details.”
“No, I’m sure she wouldn’t,” said his wife. She covered her face with her hands as though she was terribly ashamed, but in actuality she was giggling.
“Ah, students,” said Sachiko, smiling.
“Malaria?” mumbled Shimamura.
“It still pains me enormously that I didn’t keep in touch,” said Yoshiro Takaoka. Then he reached across the table, all the way across the entire table, pulled Shimamura’s right hand out of its sleeve and squeezed it with his own.
For a moment even Sachiko lost her composure. She stood up to fetch more cakes — some different, better ones — along with some lemonade since it was so warm, and also so she could regain her composure in the kitchen. How ill-mannered these Tokyoites were, what with grabbing hands and that Chevrolet!
“Kiyo,” said Shimamura. “I didn’t expect to see you so again doing so well.”
“I was such a dumb kid,” said Takaoka.
“That terrible fever,” said his wife.
Then they all shook their heads.
Sachiko returned and Takaoka talked and talked and Kiyo smiled, laughed, and Shimamura still didn’t recognize them. Only bit by bit did the old pictures come into focus: Takaoka in the rickshaw. Takaoka in the inn. Takaoka by the miserable sickbed. Young Takaoka with his camera and his bare bottom, the way he talked, talked, talked. All of a sudden Shimamura laughed out loud. “Do you remember, you chatterbox,” he asked cheerfully, “do you remember when we were young — the foxes?”
“The foxes!” Yoshiro Takaoka said gleefully.
“Oh, the foxes!” Kiyo Takaoka shouted. “Oh yes! We all had the fox back then, all the girls, every summer, in Shimane over the sea!”
And then they laughed some more and drank lemonade.
The Takaokas enjoyed the afternoon, and somehow the Shimamuras also appreciated the change of pace. They walked a bit in the garden, talked about quinces and flowers. Shimamura regretted his choice of clothing; it was silly to act so formal in his own home. The children of Kameoka, who were still besieging the Chevrolet, pointed at him in secret. The hard silk pin-stripes creaked and crackled in the short grass.
Little by little Shimamura began to recognize Takaoka better and better. More than three decades had passed: he couldn’t be blamed for no longer being a strapping youth. Also Kiyo became more recognizable once her old toes disappeared in the cream-colored lace shoes, and her curled hair was glowing in the sunlight. But Shimamura didn’t know whether he was remembering the girl from Shimane in this woman or perhaps all the girls, all the girlhoods long since past. “Ach” said Shimamura. He smoked Takaoka’s American cigarettes, which did his bronchia an amazing amount of good.
“Who was that?” Shun’ichi Shimamura asked his wife, after the guests had gone and he could finally undress.
“Dear?”
“Who that was, please, Sachiko!” He seldom called her by her name.
Sachiko smiled. Shimamura wrinkled his forehead. Sachiko glided out of the room. Shimamura knew she was lurking behind the door. She would end up folding the damned hakama for him after he had tried ten times and given up. The sun went down. What a long day.
“All my memories,” Dr. Shimamura wrote that night in his notebook, “come from Josef Breuer’s chaise longue on the Brandstätte in Vienna.” Then he took his notebook and all the other notebooks, as well as all the notes and jottings that contained plans for his book on memory, carried them into the kitchen, stoked the fire and shoved everything inside. That was Sachiko’s fault. Why, he didn’t know.
16
July came, August, then an early September autumn, and Shun’ichi Shimamura did not die. He felt stronger, breathed more easily, slept better, and his fever vacillated between 99 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Every four days he still treated himself to a scopolamine injection, but that had become a luxury he could scarcely enjoy, as his dreams became increasingly boring, nothing more than random sexual fiddle-faddle.
In the middle of September he removed the fern that had been in the small urn next to his desk. The plant had likely been dead for weeks; it had no roots and was lying loose and lopsided across the soil.
At the end of September the left sleeve of his housecoat tore off for no apparent reason. It slid off his hand and dropped to the floor. Shimamura examined the sleeve and saw that over the years all the fleurs-de-lis had been worn sheer, nothing was left but a few brittle threads. He discovered the entire robe was in this condition. With great regret and after long hesitation he threw it away.
Now he often wrapped himself in a quilted blanket and sat on the porch in a folding chair, reading the newspaper. The women kept on about their business; they came and went, at times barely paying him any attention. For Shimamura that was the primary indication that his death was no longer so imminent.
Yukiko was displaying signs of senile dementia. Sometimes when she went to the temple she couldn’t find her way back and had to be escorted home by a neighbor or a child. She also ranted a lot. Although she had gone decades without ever mentioning it, she complained incessantly about her sore hip, which she blamed on everyone else. She was of no real use in the household. Sachiko assigned her small tasks, to keep her from yammering, but Yukiko was incapable of finishing anything, she dropped whatever she picked up, and kept asking why Sachiko had to marry this man who did nothing but sit around. “I ask myself that question,” Sachiko said, smiling, “but Father will know the answer.” Whenever Yukiko came onto the porch Shimamura went straight to his room.
Hanako, sprightly as ever, watched over Yukiko every night and slapped her gently when her breathing faltered. She had long since given up on her son’s biography, and since she hadn’t found any other occupation, the nights were very long and boring.
The housemaid still brought a bucket of water into Dr. Shimamura’s room every morning. In December, after he finally gave up the scopolamine altogether, every fourth day he treated himself to a conversation with the maid. Shimamura had her sit down in the rattan armchair and would then tell her something, sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in German and mostly half-and-half. He told her about the Suez Canal, the pink tongues of the ladies’ little dogs in the Place de l’Étoile. He told her about Dr. Bidet’s reaction times. About Josef Breuer who kept opening the window in his consulting room and about Barbara the landlady’s daughter who was insulted. Occasionally, when he didn’t know what else to say, he pulled the tattered Griesinger off the shelf and read a passage out loud. Where the disorder principally shows itself in evil desires, eccentricities, perverseness of every kind, the intelligence being well-preserved, the disease showing itself far more by senseless actions than by insane thoughts and speech . . . the patients perform foolish actions and show perversity of demeanor, but are also in a position to justify and to explain their conduct by a course of coherent reasoning which still lies within the bounds of possibility, i.e. folie raisonnante. How outmoded he sounded, Dr. Griesinger with his weak chin! Shimamura s
tood up and looked down at the housemaid. For some time her breasts had been well contained. Perhaps Sachiko had given her a so-called brassiere. “This is an impolite question,” said Shimamura, “but tell me one thing, Luise: what is about me that you find so endearing?” And then he went on talking because he had long since given up expecting an answer.
The maid rose from the chair. She locked her knees, put her hands together and straightened her head. And then she began to scream: “Not endearing!” Her voice came from deep inside her stomach, then rose high into her head and turned into a tantrum, a screech. “Not endearing! No!” she screamed. She kicked over the bucket. Shimamura was stunned. She swept everything off the desk. She hurled the Griesinger through the window paper and flung a paperweight against the European door. She stamped her foot. The sodden oriental rug squished and squirted. “Not endearing!” she screamed, screeched, sang, trilled. When the futon’s down feathers started flying Shimamura made his escape. He removed the key and put it back in the lock from the outside, then gave it two turns. But Sei smashed through the outer wall, evidently with her bare hands, and continued her raving on the porch. She kicked over the railing; even part of the roof collapsed. Holding the rattan chair in both arms she dashed around the house and came back in through the main entrance, still screaming. She plowed into the wardrobe and knocked it over along with two large vases. Finally Sachiko took a piece of wood and knocked the raving woman to the ground. When Sei woke up she was calm. She apologized, once, very curtly and with clenched teeth. She didn’t resist when they took her to Kyoto, where she lived for many years in the Prefectural University Neurological Clinic, and soon no one remembered her name and whether she was a nurse or a patient.
At the beginning of March 1923, after one more snow, Shun’ichi Shimamura spotted a fox for the very first time. It was twilight and the fox was standing still under the quince trees. It was a vixen carrying a cub in her mouth. The weak light from the house lit up her eyes. Shimamura crouched down and the animal bolted. But then it stopped for a moment and looked back, as if to say: one never knows.
The next morning Dr. Shimamura felt so much recovered that he discarded his diagnosis of consumption. He called the women together. The mood was festive. Eight days later he had a stroke and died in his sleep.
new directions titles available as ebooks
ndbooks.com
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura Page 12