A Quiet Life

by Kenzaburo Oe

  It was more or less after reflecting that I had acted rudely toward Mr. Arai that I told Mr. Shigeto about all this—presumptuously wishing that if Mr. Arai were still feeling offended, Mr. Shigeto would intercede for me and patch things up between us. Mr. Shigeto did not immediately show any particular reaction to what I had told him. He sort of listened to me, then turned his eyes to the book of Polish verse that, probably-due to this farsightedness, he held at a distance in front of his chest, with his back erect; the binding of the book resembled those of some Meiji-era kimono-sleeve books in Father's library. From the corner of my eye, though, I thought I saw, for just a moment, a vivid flush appear on the flesh of his usually faded mien. …

  Mr. Arai's coaching was no different than before. Eeyore was trying harder than ever, and his relationship with Mr. Arai, who butterflied after him to carefully correct his arm movements and breathing technique, appeared even intimate. In contrast, when Mr. Arai and I saw each other for the first time that day, his bow was but perfunctory as he cast a watchful glance around with vivid eyes that assumed the shape, of apricots. While bowing, he avoided even looking at me or saying anything. Of course, I wouldn't have known how to answer him, even if he had reproached me for my attitude the previous week. And in fact I felt relieved to be ignored. It would be best, I thought, for the time of Eeyore's swimming lesson that day to pass just this way, and next week everything would be back to what it had been before. …

  Spirited talk among the regulars—the sweat-dripping, ever-smiling Mr. Mochizuki; Mrs. Ueki, who was depressive but wouldn't say no to anyone; the sharp-tongued beauty parlor proprietor, who as usual kept needling the other two; and a newcomer, a stalwart man whose muscles looked as though they had come from manual labor rather than weight training—filled the drying room that day, with the newcomer at the center of a discussion that recapitulated the professional baseball draft. Mr. Arai seemed to effortlessly withdraw into, and enclose himself within, his armor of muscles. Just as he was preparing himself to resume his own training, however, Mr. Shigeto, who had remained completely silent until then, asked him if he would spare him some time that evening. He asked him about how long it would take to finish his body-killing regimen, his bath, and sauna. Me would be waiting in the lounge, he said, and proposed that they talk over some beer, which he would buy at the vending machine. …

  Mr. Arai sneaked a look at me with his apricot-shaped eyes, wary under their single-fold lids, then returned his gaze to Mr. Shigeto and nodded. Eeyore appeared to want to stay longer, but I pressed him on, and as we exited the club, I thought it strange that I hadn't noticed the rare shape of Mr. Arai's eyes until then: you rarely saw such eyes on the face of an adult male.

  The following week, when we visited the Shigetos for a lesson, Mrs. Shigeto, who opened the door to us, was wearing an expression that was more depressed and gloomier than the day she had returned from the hospital. Dark brown rings encircled her wide upper eyelids, half of which showed above the silver frames of her glasses. And her eyes, which had always looked so clever and bright, seemed to have loosely contracted.

  “Mr. Shigeto is in a bad way, but please don't be alarmed,” she whispered to Eeyore. I had sensed something ominous, but as much as she appeared concerned about me, I knew from the way she said this that she was more concerned for Eeyore, who had relaxedly greeted her and then was removing his shoes.

  Mr. Shigeto, who had been sitting on the living room sofa, rose halfway to greet us, and suddenly he groaned “Uhh!” as he assumed a posture that appeared as though he were going to hang in midair, and then another “Uhh!” as he bounced back onto the sofa from this position. Eeyore saw all this, and despite the warning we had been given, he exclaimed, “Oh, no! What happened!? I am surprised!?” No other words could have been more appropriate for the occasion, I thought.

  Mr. Shigeto's face was swollen, and had turned angular like a kite. On his upper right cheek, brow, and two places on his head—in the front and in the back—were patches of gauze attached with tape, through which the blurry yellow of an ointment showed. Around his bare chin and throat were reddish-black bruises as big as hands. He was dressed in a gown that had aged in a noble manner, but the odd protuberance around his chest and down his side—wasn't that a cast he was wearing?

  “Recent disasters befalling our family all have to do with fractured bones,” Mrs. Shigeto said, her voice sounding a bit more spirited than it had at the entrance. “I sometimes feel like asking a geomancer to divine the fortunes of the lay of the house.”

  “Eeyore, in my case it's really the ribs! And I'm in a perfect mood for your ‘Ribs.’ Play it for me, won't you? I've been told not to move my right arm for some time.”

  Granted, it was Eeyore's simplicity that caused him to immediately brace up and start looking for the object of his heart's desire among the music sheets in his satchel. But planted in the manner in which Mr. Shigeto had spoken these words was a plot to encourage my alarmed and heartbroken brother. I got teary-eyed, and I robotized, and was unable to do anything except stand at Eeyore's side. I could never respond to or help the injured Mr. Shigeto as much as my brother, who was thumbing through his music to accommodate his mentor's request.

  “Have you found it?” Mr. Shigeto asked. “Eeyore, I'm sorry to ask this of you when you've just arrived, hut could you play it for me on the piano in the music room? Play it a couple of times, and change the tempo each time. Leave the door open—I want my ribs to directly feel the vibration, but in a way that won't hurt. …”

  Eeyore directed a worried and solemn bow to Mr. Shigeto, and alone went into the music room. All of which meant that Mr. Shigeto had wanted an opportunity to discuss matters in such a way that the content of what he needed to convey to me would not reach Eeyore's ears. I immediately understood this to be a proper consideration. And while listening to Mr. Shigeto, I even wished that I could have gone and hidden in Eeyore's shadow, as he kept playing his “Ribs.” The catastrophe that had befallen Mr. Shigeto had, I think, been greater than the premonition that had reflexively and violently seized me a few moments ago.

  That evening, Mr. Shigeto had been waiting in the lounge for almost two hours, drinking beer, when Mr. Arai emerged looking neat, with his lotion-laced short hair teased and combed so that it stood straight, up. Because of the exhausting training program with which he kills his body, his cheeks were sunken and pale, and when Mr. Shigeto asked him to sit down and join him at the table, which was covered with empty beer cans, he bluntly refused. His excuse was sort of convincing: he didn't touch any alcoholic beverages while training for a meet. So Mr. Shigeto took Mr. Arai up on his suggestion that they go to a quieter place to talk: the parking lot in back of the club building.

  “He clearly admits he was drunk,” Mrs. Shigeto said of her husband, supplementing his words, “because it was almost strategic how late Mr. Arai showed up. And one reason Mr. Shigeto won't go to the police is because he was under the influence. Mr. Shigeto told me that, while walking from the lounge to the parking lot. Mr. Arai talked so much that he seemed a different person. And he had done this with a practically indecent flippancy, the exact opposite of what had been at the bottom of his stoic reticence in the drying room. “For instance,” Mr. Shigeto said, “he told me about the dream you had of him.” I blushed, though I was robotized. “He got it out of Eeyore in tidbits each time he made him take a break. Ma-chan, he said you'd dreamed of marrying him with Eeyore along. …”

  Indeed, the dream I had was one of the variations of the dream I started having some time ago, in which the Eeyore-to-be appears, standing at. my side as my attendant. The new dwelling Mr. Arai had prepared for us was a two-bedroom apartment. It was owned by the Metropolitan Government, yet in the basement was a long and narrow three-lane, twenty-meter swimming pool. It also seemed that the pool came with our room. It was for our exclusive use, and Mrs. Ueki was training in it. Eeyore, with Mr. Arai coaching him, of course, swam on and on, repeatedly making turns. Quite inappr
opriate for the place, I was dressed in a wedding gown, and was standing nonplussed by the very wet poolside, with a bouquet of withered flowers in my hands. I had told Eeyore of this dream, focusing on the moving scene in which I had seen him vigorously swimming.

  What finally provoked Mr. Shigeto to ire was evidently the insinuating manner in which Mr. Arai talked about this dream. According to his wife—who put in her comments from the side—this time, too, just as when he had gone to have a word with the privilege-flaunting Polish government official at Warsaw Airport, Mr. Shigeto had been stirred to the point of venting his desperate Yamato spirit. “But Shigeto-san,” added his wife, “is an internationally minded intellectual, a rare specimen in this country. …”

  With an aching heart, I entered in “Diary as Home” the verbal exchange between Mr. Shigeto and Mr. Arai. To be fair, however, I should also say that, although it was Mr. Arai who did the provoking, it was Mr. Shigeto who started talking as though he was ready to fight.

  “Don't you think it's dirty,” Mr. Shigeto said, “that you coaxed Eeyore into telling you about Ma-chan's dream, and then told it to a third party, imbuing it with your own nuances?”

  “Myself”—Eeyore had long since found it amusing that Mr. Arai was the sort of person who used “myself” in this way—“I find it very annoying that K-san and Ma-chan—father and daughter together—forge distorted images of me to suit themselves, and then inflate them.”

  “Do you interpret a modest girl's humble dream as a warped image? … Regarding K, yes, he did write a novel that used, as a starting point, the incident that took place on the cruiser. First, though, you gave him your book of notes after receiving money from him. Moreover, I heard that you asked him to analyze your inner thoughts and behavior through his writing, because you didn't understand them very well yourself. Second, it's clear that K intentionally deflected the setting from the cruiser. And if my memory is correct, he also wrote that the crime being perpetrated by the young protagonist was a supposition. The focus of the story is on the middle-aged man, who sacrifices himself to save the young man who, because of his involvement in some sort of crime, has fallen into a desperate situation. K wrote that if, in fact, the crime had been committed by the young man, then the middle-aged man had atoned for it on his behalf by virtue of his own self-sacrifice; and so rebirth was possible for the young man, who accepted what the older man had done for him. This is how K analyzed your inner thoughts and behavior, exactly as you had asked him to.”

  “First off, myself, I returned the money to Mr. K. And second, there was no crime to begin with. Aren't some members of the club secretly discussing their cruise to Izu because Mr. K fabricated a sex-offense story out of what had been a mere accident? Myself, I find this a real pain in the neck.”

  “You returned the money to K because you stood to benefit from the insurance policy the young girl who died on the cruiser had bought. The weekly magazines played up the case long before K's novel came out. Shouldn't you have sued them, and K, too, for libel then? You actually wrote K a letter threatening to take the matter to court, and you also sent him an offensive New Year's card. I surmise that the reason you gave K your notes was so he could write a novel about the incident, so in case you were indicted you could have expected voluntary defense activities on the part of good-natured K. But it didn't become a legal case, and moreover, you received the insurance money. After this, far from suing anyone, you simply wished that the incident would be forgotten. I have no interest in any conjecture beyond this. As I said before, I don't mind you coaching Eeyore. All I ask is that you not intrude into Ma-chan's and Eeyore's private life. What did you have in mind, anyway, lying in wait for them at Scijo Gakuen-mae Station, and then following them to their house?”

  Though this, too, may have been a rhetorical question, Mr. Arai, instead of answering it, suddenly pounced on Mr. Shigeto, and thoroughly beat him up. Three of his ribs were broken because Mr. Arai had intentionally and repeatedly kicked him in the side. Mr. Shigeto couldn't help reading a criminal disposition, both into the way Mr. Arai had gone about relishing the half-kill of a decrepit dog, as it were, and into the way he had seen to it that this was so scrupulously accomplished. In this regard, Mr. Shigeto believed that, though aggressive, his attitude, in giving Mr. Arai warning not to approach us, had been fair and in line with K's request. …

  Mrs. Shigeto did not become emotional toward the young man who had inflicted injuries on her husband. She said, instead, that it wasn't right, in her opinion, to call Mr. Arai a criminal solely on psychological grounds. From what she had gleaned from reading the newspapers, the cruiser incident of five years ago had been an unfortunate accident, and the police had come to the same conclusion. When his wife said “solely on psychological grounds,” Mr. Shigeto fidgeted and moved his body, thrusting his bulging torso forward. He was using these movements to assert that he possessed both material and physical evidence, when once again—“Uhh!”—he let out a groan.

  All the while I was being informed of what had happened in the parking lot, Eeyore kept playing his “Ribs” for Mr. Shigeto's injured body. Mr. Shigeto, who must have felt sorry for Eeyore, gingerly raised himself from the sofa, like an old man, and started for the music room. With the closing of the door behind him, he seemed, with the sound of the piano, to have quietly receded into the distance. And immediately, I faintly heard him begin his private lesson.

  I read the copies of the newspaper articles Mrs. Shigeto had obtained through an acquaintance of hers at a news agency. The incident had involved not so much Mr. Arai, but more a fifty-year-old high school teacher named Kurokawa and a thirty-five-year-old female travel agent named Suzaki. Mr. Arai merely happened to join the Izu-Oshirna cruise on which the other two had gone. Mr. Kurokawa and Miss Suzaki had disappeared during the night, and later both bodies were picked up by a fishing boat. It came to light that Mr. Kurokawa had drowned but Miss Suzaki had been thrown into the sea after being strangled. Mr. Arai testified that he had been sleeping in the cabin below, it having been his night off duty, and had learned that his cruising companions were missing only around dawn when the shifts were changed. …

  Magazine articles emphasized that. Miss Suzaki had taken out an enormous amount of insurance with Mr. Arai as the beneficiary. Mr. Kurokawa, Miss Suzaki, and Mr. Arai had met at the athletic club, and had become so intimate they went to far-off places together, cruising, skiing, and whatnot. Shortly before the incident, Miss Suzaki and Mr. Arai had secretly become engaged. Miss Suzaki, much older than Mr. Arai, and very well paid, had been the guardian of a student who was still in college, and the buying of an insurance policy had been her idea, she being very familiar with the business from the nature of her work. From the very start, however, Mr. Kurokawa and Miss Suzaki had had a physical relationship, which Mr. Arai had known about. Other people saw, on top of this relationship, a special affinity at work among the three. The cruise was supposed to give Miss Suzaki an opportunity to discuss breaking off her relationship with Mr. Kurokawa, but he pressed her to continue it, and in the course of the argument he had strangled her and committed suicide. … The widow Mrs. Kurokawa lodged a protest with the police, who had ruled the incident a murder-suicide. This protest, and the discovery of the existence of the policy, had scandalized the case.

  “As far as Mr. Arai's inner thoughts are concerned, K-chan's novel doesn't deviate from his notes. After all, that's how Mr. Arai asked him to write it. In the scene where the woman gets murdered in the dark of night, K-chan changed the concrete details, such as from the cruiser at sea to a children's park beside a loop highway. It's depicted in the grotesque realism that's so typical of K-chan. … I don't think you need to read that far, Ma-chan.

  “K-chan contrived a setting that couldn't exist in reality—probably because he was being careful to avoid pulling the reader's attention back to the actual incident—wherein he has a young man kill a woman because of what transpires sexually. But then he has a man in his fifties, totall
y drunk, assault the woman again, and step into the role of murderer. As a result, the man commits suicide. This is the story K-chan wrote. The scene he invented, in which he has the man hang himself in a dovecote on a nearby rooftop, is one you would find only in the movies. K-chan imparts meaning to the man's motives by writing: He sacrificed his own life in such a manner as to destroy his ego and his own body in disgrace, so as to rescue a young man in dire circumstances from which there was no turning back. …’ He also has this drunk-turned-hero reveal his peculiar resolve this way: ‘All right. Then I, and who else but I, shall let him taste of grace—this youth ensnared in remorse enormous and without exit. I shall assume God's role so that the murder, which he committed, will be effaced for him.’

  “Though it may be stretching it a bit, doesn't this seem a peculiar contraposition of Christ's crucifixion? Perhaps K-chan himself has a strange desire to act out this man's sacrifice. But in real life—which is exactly what his dilemma appears to be about—instead of him sacrificing anything, there's a tendency for him to have others perform sacrifices for him. Even the roughing up that Mr. Shigeto incurred stems from what. K-chan requested of him. And he's victimizing you, too, by having you look after Eeyore, while he himself has taken emergency shelter in California with Oyu-san nursing him. …”