Child of Fortune

by Yuko Tsushima

  She couldn’t resist speculating on what it would be like to have a child with Doi. Not because it might look like him, that wasn’t the point. She was calculating the pluses and minuses, assessing how effective the child might be. If he were told a baby was coming, Doi would no doubt accept it in his own way. Beyond that she couldn’t guess. (Perhaps Doi couldn’t have said what he would do either, if she had asked him at the time.) He probably wouldn’t act irresponsibly, that much she knew, but nor would he come running to her. Perhaps he’d say something like ‘That’s a tough decision, having it on your own, it shows a woman’s strength.’ And then merely continue to visit from time to time. Kōko couldn’t complain if he did. Knowing Doi’s nature she thought it was the most likely reaction; it was also the one she feared most. To be told: it was your own decision, wasn’t it? So don’t rely on other people.

  Sometimes, though she knew it was silly, she even wished that Doi were Hatanaka, because then she could have safely had another baby. Hatanaka was a man easily carried away with enthusiasm in everything he did. It was this enthusiasm that had made him rush into living with Kōko when they’d barely known each other a month. And it had been the same again when they separated. Once the word ‘divorce’ had entered his mind it fired his imagination, inspiring fantasies of a new, free life with his young woman – until he noticed that Kōko was still around and hadn’t agreed to a divorce, at which point he would be angry with her for wasting time.

  It was only after they parted that Kōko realized she had hated this side of Hatanaka for a long time. In fact, she was the one who was deeply glad of the divorce.

  Kōko then took up with Doi again, and without once getting pregnant. But she didn’t consider herself lucky. She couldn’t forget that, while she was busy weighing the pros and cons, Doi’s wife had given birth to a second child. To have had another child nine years after the first, she must have been pretty determined. Kōko greeted the news with scorn: what a way to hold onto her man, she thought. And yet this was precisely what she’d been contemplating herself, day after day. She had added up the personal advantages and disadvantages, hesitated and agonized over Doi’s wife, until finally she had forgotten her own capacity to decide. Kōko wanted Doi as her own property. But she wanted him in order to fill a particular gap in her life and Kayako’s; even if Doi had happened to comply, she would certainly have refused to make Kayako his stepdaughter. It was not unlike wanting to buy Kayako a toy.

  When Doi’s second child was born, Kōko had actually welcomed the change at first, turning it into the opportunity she needed to leave him, but before very long she was stricken with a hopeless frustration, until she twisted and moaned in bed; frustration at herself, at having let Doi go, at having failed to take action. If she’d shown just a little more courage that second child would have been her own. Why was her child born into Doi’s household of all places, when she was the one who had clung to Doi’s body in a tangle of desire? She would find herself thinking: the baby must be three weeks old; now six months; now just toddling. Whenever she saw children of a similar age in the street she observed them closely, and she delved into the child-care books she still had on hand. Though she trembled at the wretchedness of it, she couldn’t stop this preoccupation with babies. It wasn’t enough merely to remember what Kayako had been like when she was little – and since Kayako was then eight years old, those earlier memories were all blurred together. When she cast back, she couldn’t bring the sound of a single cry into focus.

  Already three years had passed since she stopped seeing Doi. She no longer followed strangers’ children about with her eyes, but her regrets were still lodged like a lump of heavy metal deep inside her body. Three years had gone by and she hadn’t rid herself of the thought, I’ve lost. As time passed she wondered why she had been so strangely afraid of pregnancy for so long. Strange that it was she, and not Doi, who had dreaded and refused. She’d had an abortion once, while in college. The father was Doi. Kōko had gone straight to a local doctor. It had seemed much simpler not to ask Doi to pay, as they weren’t then on such intimate terms, and in the end she saw to it without a word. Kōko herself hadn’t attached any great importance to what had happened, she’d put it down to a small slip, just one of those things. When they began to keep closer company, after they’d left college, Kōko stayed quiet about her abortion. It was almost as if she’d only cared after she heard that he was expecting the birth of his first child. Even then, though, it wasn’t such a bad memory; she couldn’t account for her fear of pregnancy that way.

  What she did feel at the time was sympathy for the woman living with Doi, who was still free as long as they weren’t legally married. So, thought Kōko, she’s decided to bind herself to one man, and the man is Doi.

  Quiet, intelligent Doi, whose cynicism sometimes deflated other people’s dreams in what seemed a deliberate way. He was several years Kōko’s senior in college, and she looked up to him, with fear as well as admiration. She didn’t even begin to trust him. Doi never sought to charm women as other men did – he held her to him willfully. He would come into her room without speaking and, brushing aside her hopes of having a good talk, would pull her roughly into his arms. And then, in company, he’d browbeat her for her indecisiveness, her readiness to change her thinking if that was what her man wanted. In those days Kōko had often tried to dismiss Doi as a man merely indulging his own sensuality. When he embraced her, though, she always responded with everything she could give.

  The desire that Doi brought out in her had nothing to do with their bodies, far less with their emotions. Kōko enjoyed the strangeness of it: to think that something on that level could make a man and woman inseparable. Or perhaps it’s us, she thought sadly. Perhaps it’s only true of us because we’re alike in the nature of our desire. It’s so intense that we’re blinded to its worth. Since their own state seemed pitifully deformed, she naturally had to feel sorry for the one woman – of several who’d slept with Doi – whose accidental pregnancy had made her his wife. And to watch her in admiration: how strong she must be, to take on having Doi’s child. (She never dreamed then that desire might be different with another lover.)

  However she looked at it, her lasting terror of another pregnancy with Doi couldn’t have been due to the abortion. This left only one explanation: she must have caused it herself, as she clung to the carefree quality of a momentary, evanescent pleasure and steadily refused to face the instincts that transcended their flesh. Even as she clutched Doi’s body, believing she knew after all this time what it meant to love one man, she was hating and despising the instincts in her. She feared their strength. She was thrilled when he whispered –I’ve loved you all along.– And had answered –But I’ve always loved you, too. Why didn’t you tell me before?– Even her marriage to Hatanaka must have been his fault, she decided, intoxicated, now that it was ended, by this sudden pleasure. For the first time in her life she knew its value. Or so she’d thought. But pregnancy would have been a complete affirmation of those instincts. She needn’t have tried to explain her fear in terms of deference to Doi’s wife. She had loved Doi but failed to see any real beauty in their naked embrace. The greater the pleasure, the more she felt that her own lonely husbandless state was being flaunted before her eyes.

  When she was with Hatanaka, she’d happily accepted her pregnancy because she knew they could always get married. When she was told, she’d felt as though the people at the hospital were giving her their blessing; the word ‘sex’ had never entered her mind – another memory that forced her to admit her own sordid cowardice. For it was she who’d trampled her relationship with Doi underfoot – under the dirty feet of respectability.

  Whenever Kōko’s thoughts followed this course, she had to grit her teeth in bitterness at missing the child she might have had.

  Last fall she’d begun seeing Osada, a friend of Hatanaka’s, and this had stirred up the old, deep regrets all over again. Every time they arranged to meet she inevitably aske
d herself: what are you going to do this time? Although she was avoiding pregnancy, her feelings about it were unclear. Of course Osada was also afraid of getting her pregnant. But Kōko would watch their sex as if staring bleakly down from the ceiling: what a pointless thing to be doing. Then she found herself hanging back from taking precautions, ashamed of her own vigilance. She hated the idea of pregnancy more than ever, she seemed more than usually anxious to avoid it, yet in the end she was actually inviting it. It was unthinkable, and yet she could foresee it. And she could tell that if she did conceive she would want to give birth, though it would be madness at this late date. She knew it wouldn’t make up for anything, yet she would almost certainly do it. And so she’d gone on dreading pregnancy all the more.

  Now, with her belly actually swelling, Kōko was so unworried that it was even a letdown. Only one thing gave her pause, a slight concern – after all – about what people would think. And even that small hesitation seemed unlikely to survive her highhanded view of life, for, living as she chose until now, she’d come to care little about appearances at this stage. Maybe she was reaching an age when it was senseless to want a fatherless child; but, precisely because of her age, she didn’t want to make a choice that she would regret till the day she died. Lately she was more convinced than ever that there was no point in worrying about what people thought. She would soon be thirty-seven. The only person watching Kōko at thirty-seven was Kōko. When this obvious fact finally came home to her it was still a surprise – what a very lonely fact it was! The baby’s paternity was too insignificant to worry about; she was simply going to produce another child, and that was all there was to it.

  In her college days, she had heard the words eka kṣaṇaḥ in a lecture on Indian philosophy. The phrase had had a brief vogue among the students. It was Sanskrit for ‘a single instant’. She seemed to remember learning that to see and to transcend the whole universe in one instant, in eka kṣaṇaḥ, was the meaning of ‘enlightenment’. She had also been told that the ancient Indian concept of time closely resembled the modern cyclic theory of the universe. Yes, there was more she remembered. Over a dizzying span of years, the universe repeats its rhythm of birth, collapse, and regeneration. The phenomena of the universe, and all the time and life that it contains, disintegrate with it, for they contain no truth that passes into eternity. The world is just a great illusion flowing emptily by; we mustn’t be deceived. Where, then, should we seek the truth that passes into eternity? Hidden in the present, in a single instant, is the power to shatter the illusion. In this single present instant the eyes of eternity open, eyes that can penetrate the secrets of the movements of the cosmos …

  She had sat in on only one or two lectures, just for fun, but she couldn’t help thinking that those remembered words were now alive in her. She had only to entrust everything, utterly, to the present moment. For wasn’t each instant – now, and now – charged with the meaning of the whole cosmos? During sex with Osada, there had been a moment’s sensation as though she’d swallowed the movements of the celestial bodies into her own, and at that moment the celestial body in her womb must also have stirred. It was the instant of conception, a moment of grace; there was no other word for it. Why not embrace it, then? The eternal present: how sweet those words sounded! Kōko had no difficulty believing that the universe was a great illusion. Here she was, being swept along inside the illusion: there was clearly no call to think pretentious thoughts about the new life within her.

  She had two facts in front of her: Kayako, who rejected her mother and was fascinated by her aunt’s world; and the pregnancy. Kōko couldn’t help feeling that the timing was somehow significant: she’d been given the two at once. She couldn’t grasp one and throw away the other without throwing herself with it.

  ‘Well, shall we go?’ Kōko finished her cigarette and got up to leave. On an impulse she added: ‘While we’re downtown, I’ll take you to look for a blouse in Ginza, if you like. There must be a lot of spring ones in by now.’

  Kayako gave a faint nod and stood up, her eyes still lowered. With her hand on the girl’s back Kōko steered her toward the cashier. Right now she wanted to do all she could to console Kayako, whose confidence had quite deserted her. At one time, she could have taken her in her lap like a baby, stroked her head and murmured ‘You poor, poor thing’ until the tears stopped. Now, however, Kayako refused to cry openly in front of her mother, and her mother couldn’t put her arms around her. Kōko was moved with pity for this child on whose shoulders rested the fate of growing up. Kayako’s back was lean, though the backbone was solid.

  Hailing a taxi in front of the restaurant, she pushed Kayako in first. By now it was raining hard and the streets were so dark that it could have been nightfall. The exam would land on a foul day like this, she thought, as if Kayako had been singled out for this bit of bad luck. (Kayako still hadn’t broken her silence after they left the restaurant.) If she fixed her gaze on the window glass, the shapes in the streets vanished to leave only a pale light dissolved in water, so that the cab rode like a glass tank drifting freely on undersea currents.

  All the same – Kōko dropped her eyes to her abdomen – should she tell Osada or not? Of course she had no intention of involving him as the child’s father in any way. From Osada’s point of view, though, it would surely be spooky to have a child of his alive quite unknown to him. And she was likely to meet him on some future occasion.

  Osada had been pressed by Hatanaka into serving as a sort of go-between. Lately the messages had tapered off on Hatanaka’s side also, but until two or three years ago Osada used to phone on his behalf quite frequently. The arrangement had suited Kōko, too, as she was comfortable talking to Osada; it was a pleasure to go and meet him, taking along Kayako’s report cards and photographs.

  By way of Osada, Hatanaka sent presents more or less regularly for Christmas and Kayako’s birthday. At first, Kōko hadn’t been able to tell her these were from her father; she had handed them over together with her own, without explanation. She finally managed to tell her the truth when she was no longer seeing Doi, but by then Hatanaka, in turn, was shunning direct contact with her, just as she’d been avoiding him. They still needed Osada. She learned that Hatanaka had a baby now, two or three months after remarrying – a boy this time.

  –He even washes diapers– Osada had told her.

  –That’s just like him, isn’t it?– Kōko had laughed when she heard.

  Hatanaka had lavished affection on Kayako as a baby – spoiled her, even. But he always shirked the burden of providing for them financially, when this was a very real need. She wished he’d at least share the load of housework and looking after the baby, but he merely played games with Kayako. Kōko meanwhile went to her mother for money with a growing sense that all her efforts were for nothing. At night, Hatanaka would go out drinking as usual with his young admirers and friends. Often he phoned home very late. – Come on over– she’d hear him say drunkenly. –Take a taxi. Come on, just this once.– She would put the receiver back without speaking, bitterly asking herself just whose money he thought it was, anyway.

  Osada used to come and see them in those days. He was an old college friend of Hatanaka’s. His health had failed just before graduation, however, and he’d gone home to the country and spent two years convalescing there. He had often written to Hatanaka, and Kōko had been shown many of his letters. They were childishly straightforward, but written in a way that compelled interest in what the writer felt.

  All the letters said basically the same thing: how unhappy he was hanging about at his mother’s, unable to do anything because of his illness; how he longed to return to Tokyo and find a job. But he made fun of himself and his situation, and gave a humorous twist to his accounts of the local scene. How come Hatanaka, jobless and penniless like himself, had been able to marry and even have a child? It simply wasn’t fair, when he couldn’t get a girl into bed for the night. Then Osada would describe some new episode. His letters se
emed written with the reader’s enjoyment constantly in mind. Hatanaka would chuckle over every one: –Silly fool, always getting in a sweat. When’ll he ever learn?–

  When Osada recovered at last, Kōko was surprised to find herself looking forward to his approaching return. The impression she’d unconsciously formed was all the stronger because they’d never met, although she felt closer to him than to Hatanaka’s other friends. The first time she met him face to face she was tense. She didn’t want him to disapprove of her as Hatanaka’s partner. When he turned out to be more highly strung than she’d imagined, she was taut and guarded, afraid that at any moment he’d detect the impurities between them. Distrustfully, she watched Hatanaka roaring with laughter and wondered why he wasn’t more wary of Osada.

  –Hatanaka could have all the girls he wanted– said Osada. –And me – well, at least I made him dazzle by comparison.– But Kōko couldn’t relax enough to enjoy his jokes. She was sure she saw criticism of Hatanaka in his eyes.

  –That’s right.– Hatanaka gave another laugh. –I passed on a lot of mine, but you never got anywhere, did you?–

  Osada stayed just one night, his first back in Tokyo, before moving in with a single friend. One month later he had found himself a job and an apartment. His approach to finding both was another contrast to Hatanaka’s ways: he was cautious, methodical. He was a realistic young man, quite free from the kind of pretensions in which Hatanaka was tightly ensnared. And yet perhaps his approach was too cautious, for he’d had no luck with the job, nor with his marriage prospects. At present, after trying a number of other jobs, he was a reporter on a small trade paper, and he was still asserting that next year he’d get himself a wife.