I would hasten to add that my wife hadn’t actually done anything wrong. But I was reminded of the telegram she’d sent me the morning after I’d fractured my leg.
SHOCKED TO LEARN OF YOUR SERIOUS INJURY. THOUGHT I SHOULD GO OVER STRAIGHT AWAY BUT MR ENAMI GAVE ME YOUR MESSAGE ON THE PHONE NOT TO GO TO THE TROUBLE SO I WILL ACCEPT YOUR KIND OFFER SINCE DEADLINE FOR FEB ISSUE IS NEAR. SORRY. PLEASE TAKE CARE. TOSHIE.
She was editing a town magazine with two other people and I believe she’d made the right decision. I was glad she hadn’t come.
It was only a fractured thighbone, after all, and although I couldn’t move from the bed since I’d fractured the only bone in the thigh, there was no chance of any complication. I was told that the surrounding muscle had hardly been damaged. It was swollen and there was pain and fever, but these were things I would simply have to live with for a while.
‘That worked out for the best, thank you,’ I’d said to Enami, the assistant manager. ‘I mean, there’s nothing she could do if she did come. All you can do when you have a fracture is lie in bed. There’s no reason for her to sacrifice her work and fly all the way over just for appearances.’
‘You’re very understanding,’ said Enami, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that he pitied me. True, if you looked at my situation as a whole, I could understand why people might feel sorry for me. But as far as my wife was concerned, it really was better if she didn’t come. It was simply much easier for me to relax without her around.
My wife had come to understand what work was all about. She used to criticise me by saying, ‘You think you can get away with anything if you say it’s for your job.’ So when shell told me that she couldn’t come because of her work, it gave me a feeling of satisfaction — like I’d gotten back at her somehow.
In the spring four years ago, soon after my nineteen-year old daughter had announced that she was getting married, my wife had begun to lose her senses. She’d cry that she’d used up her life for our two children and me. She threw things at me. She started seeing a doctor, who gave her medicine that made her lethargic, and that made her sleep all day. Soon after that, my daughter married a twenty- six-year-old guy working at a light electric appliances company and left home. Then my wife began working for a town magazine as an unpaid volunteer, which helped her regain her spirits. Half a year later, she quit that magazine and started a similar monthly magazine that operated on advertisement revenue. She hired two women, and although things seemed difficult for the first year, it was now doing much better than the other town magazine. She even appeared to be making about 2-300,000 yen a month.
Having such an ability, yet dedicating her life to taking care of her family, it was no surprise that she’d gone a little crazy. So when I was told of my move to the Northern Japan branch office a year ago, l told my wife that I would go alone. If I hadn’t suggested it first, she might have done so herself. But I had no intention of making my wife quit her work. My son had just started at university as well, so it only made sense that I went alone.
‘I hear it can get really lonely,’ said my wife, despite clearly having no intention of coming with me.
‘It’ll be nothing,’ I said.
I didn’t want to risk her going back to being a worn-out, nagging wife. I didn’t want to feel that I owed her, either.
Every so often I would feel small flashes of animosity and I can’t say for sure whether they were directed towards my wife. For example, I felt animosity about the brusque way the nurses snatched the thermometer when I handed it to them. When I heard a young woman visitor in the corridor say, ‘Well, take care, then,’ I was repulsed by her accent and annoyed at her lack of sincerity. And even when a young lady from work brought me carnations, I resented her awkward manner of speaking, her insensitivity and her hideous but healthy features.
For several days, my hours were dominated by uncontrollable feelings of hatred with which I didn’t know what to do. But owing to the way my hatred was always directed at women, I felt such feelings stemmed from my relationship with my wife. Maybe somewhere inside I’d wished my wife were the type to drop everything and rush over as soon as she’d learned I’d been injured.
But then again, who was I to feel this way? I was a man who had always put work first. I’d never considered taking time off when my wife had a fever and our children were still young, so I couldn’t criticise my wife for prioritising her job. She, like any human being, had an ego. She had the right to utilise it too, and to maximise its potential. My wishes were purely selfish. And my wishes were impossible. My wife wasn’t worried about her injured husband. She didn’t even want to see him.
This made the egos of women in general look enlarged to me. It made me feel that, though they may put on a friendly face, they were in fact all egomaniacs who would never devote their hearts to anything other than themselves (though I knew very well that I myself didn’t devote my heart to my wife, so such thinking was selfish). I felt determined not to feel sexually attracted to such selfish women and not even to act friendly towards them.
About two or three days later, I became able to see these feel ings from a distance and to laugh at myself for my immaturity. I felt my harsh feelings melt away and disappear. And in the end, it was a relief that my wife was concentrating on herself. It was much better than her coming along and being irritable. I might have felt lonelier for it, but it wasn’t a feeling I wasn’t used to. I was happier for the freedom it gave me and I was enjoying the nostalgic feeling of an adolescent nursing a broken heart.
So at the moment when my new female neighbour sighed, I turned my face away. I was determined not to be stimulated by something like that. Determined not to let my guard down and grab at silk, only to find a sharp metal item hidden underneath. I’d had enough of that kind of thing already. Perhaps this meant that I was still harbouring a grudge against my wife.
Even after night fell, the clanking of metal and the voices of workers restoring the railway reverberated like the sounds of a faraway festival.
‘I don’t,’ I said to the blue sheet, ‘want to impose.’
I felt her let out a breath on the other side of the partition, followed by a fragile ‘Yes’.
‘Being in the same room like this… and not saying anything… I feel like I’m being inconsiderate.’
‘Inconsiderate?’ she said in a soft voice.
‘I mean, when a man and a woman are in the same room and there is a long silence, it seems to me that is the man’s fault. At least that is how I feel somehow.’
I heard her shift her body slightly.
‘You could say in a sense that we’re in separate wards, but I’m not sure exactly how separate we can say this room is. So, I felt I ought to say something.’
There was a moment’s pause, then she said, ‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft.
‘That’s all.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re late with our supper aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’ She paused before continuing, ‘Yes, they certainly are late.’ I sensed something like a small smile in her words. And just that made me feel so much more at ease. Perhaps it was because of her soft voice. Perhaps it had been because she’d received my words so smoothly.
As it happens, I had actually thought of various other ways of starting the conversation. I could have started with, ‘Have you been here long?’ I could have sighed and apologised for lying in the bed next to hers by saying, ‘What a stroke of bad luck. This must be such an inconvenience to you.’ Or I could have started by saying how surprising the accident was.
But the words that came out when I opened my mouth were completely different from what I had expected. They were words that didn’t suit the usual me. Deputy sales directors of prefab construction manufacturers didn’t speak like that, you see. Besides, you couldn’t speak like that around here and expect people to accept it.
But the words that drifted naturally towards the other side of the blue cloth were accepted
quietly, which left me with a calm feeling. It was quite possible that it was just my wishful thinking. That she was actually too sick to bother mocking my pretentiousness. I wondered what must be wrong with me to exaggerate the meaning behind just a few words. I just hadn’t been myself the past few months.
Finally, I could hear the meal wagon rolling down the hall. Doors were swung open and slammed shut. Actually, they weren’t so rough with the doors, but it did seem that way when you were in bed.
‘Supper time. Sorry we’re late.’ It was the voice of Nurse Muraoka. Had the part-time meal lady who was so down at lunch gone home sick?
The door opened and I felt the hallway breeze drift into the room.
‘Supper time. Sorry we’re late.’
Suddenly I felt embarrassed, as if I’d been caught hiding with a woman. It was a feeling I hadn’t had for a long, long time. ‘Not the usual lady today?’ I asked, my voice cracking slightly. ‘No. Are you disappointed? she replied without breaking her cheerful gait. ‘You know, five or six others have asked me that already. She must be popular.’
‘Actually, I mentioned it because I was glad. You’re much better.’
‘Thank you! I’ll make sure to tell her tomorrow.’
‘You’d do that? Even though I paid you a compliment? Well, I was going to play matchmaker for you, but not any more.’
‘Oh that’s too bad.’
I laughed heartily, but once she’d left I felt a little embarrassed — like I’d been inconsiderate to the woman on the other side of the partition. She was lying there silent. Perhaps she’d smiled a little, but I couldn’t see.
So then we had dinner, just the two of us.
The sounds of tableware. The sounds of eating. The sounds of drinking.
‘So you’ve got some sort of injury?’ I said.
‘Yes. A lumbar fracture. At least, I think that’s what you call it?’
‘I see.’
I was about to ask how she had injured herself but decided against it. After all, I couldn’t ask how she had injured herself without telling her how I had injured myself. And I didn’t want to do that.
‘I’m in for my right leg. The thighbone. I have something that looks like a ladder covered in cotton as a splint, and I’ve been confined to bed for ten days already.’
‘I see…’ she whispered.
I got the sense that she didn’t want to talk, so I stopped talking.
The sounds of tableware began again. The sounds of eating. Of drinking.
Just after nine, a nurse came in and turned on the television.
‘Mr Taura, please watch this for a moment, would you?’ said the elderly nurse as laughter poured out of the TV set above me.
‘Why?’
‘Just because,’ said the nurse, and returned to the woman’s side.
Perplexed, I looked up at the TV as told. It was a quiz show. If I’d wanted to watch something, I’d have wanted to watch news footage of the crash. They might be showing images from the scene as the wreckage removal went on through the night. It was probably the top news of the day. But then again, even if I turned to NHK at thirteen minutes past nine, news of the crash would probably be over by then.
Then I noticed a faint smell of urine.
I was also using a urine bottle. Did this mean I was supposed to turn on the TV before using it? What if I wanted to use it in the middle of the night?
Even after ten, I could hear people working in the distance.
The woman murmured something. Or at least I thought she did.
‘Pardon?’
But there was no answer. The light was already off. Perhaps she was talking in her sleep.
Sleep talking. That’s something I was afraid I would do. That’s why I’d been so adamant to the colleague who signed me into the hospital that I wanted a private room. Who knows what I could be saying in my sleep! I might even cry and I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear that. In the end, I was more afraid that I wouldn’t sleep well because of my fear of what might happen if I did. I had difficulty sleeping as it was and I didn’t want to add to my worries.
‘I’m a little embarrassed,’ said the woman. I turned to face her direction, quite sure that she wasn’t talking in her sleep.
‘Pardon?’
‘I sometimes talk to myself. I’ve been in a private room all this time. So I haven’t had to be careful. That’s why I just spoke out loud without thinking about it.’
‘I didn’t really hear anything.’
‘Well, you said “Pardon?”‘
‘I couldn’t make out what you said.’
‘Okay.’
‘I do the same, you know. Talk to myself. Exactly the same thing. If I’m not thinking, I forget I’m not alone and I say things out loud too.’
‘I’ll try not to listen.’
‘Let’s both do that.’
Silence again. In the distance, I could hear the sound of a large piece of metal being moved. I still had the impression that she was either in her thirties or in her early forties and I wondered which it was. Her soft, delicate voice made me imagine a small, thin woman. I was accustomed to disappointment and so I stopped myself from guessing whether she would be beautiful or not.
‘In this shishuu…’ she started.
Did she mean shishuu as in embroidery? As in collection of poems? As in the stench of death?
‘Yes?’ I replied.
‘Well, I was wondering if you’d mind if—’
‘No. I’m listening. Don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep early tonight.’
‘I mean because of the accident; it’s got my heart beating faster and my mind wide awake,’ I added quickly, afraid she might think I couldn’t sleep because a woman was lying next to me.
‘Well, in this poem…’
‘Poem?’
`Yes. Poem. Shishuu as in collection of poems. Is my pronunciation strange?’
‘Not at all. I just thought you meant shishuu as in embroidery.’
‘Is there a difference?
‘How do you mean?
‘In the pronunciation between the two.’
‘No, it’s probably the same.’
‘I’m from Yokohama, maybe that’s it.’
‘Do you live there?
‘No. I was born there.’
`Of course. You couldn’t be living there.’
‘But you’re from Tokyo, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but it’s unusual for a woman to be in my situation.’
‘It’s been a long time…’
‘Pardon?’
‘A long time here…’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ve picked up the accent.’
‘But I think that’s nice. To have a slight accent…’
Having grown up in Tokyo, there was a part of me that found an accent on a woman exotic. It made me feel like they belonged to other men, and I found it sexually arousing. But I couldn’t possibly mention that.
‘In the collection…’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘That my explanation is taking so long. It really isn’t all that interesting.’
‘That’s no problem. Please go ahead. I have more time on my hands than I know what to do with.’
‘Poetry. I’m embarrassed. And at my age too.’
‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. When I was young I also dabbled in my fair share, or perhaps more than my fair share…’
‘Of poetry?’
‘Yes.’
‘You used to write your own?’
‘No. But I read poems.’
‘I see.’
‘Though now that I’ve been working in sales for almost twenty-five years, I feel that old me is long gone.’
‘Have you changed that much?’
‘Oh, I’ve changed,’ I said, and felt immediately embarrassed, like I was giving her some sort of sweet talk. ‘Not that I’m disappointed that I’ve
changed,’ I added unnecessarily.
The woman was silent.
‘So whose poem was it? Was it part of an anthology?’
‘I too…’
‘Huh?’
‘I too have changed,’ said the woman.
‘You’d be a ghost if you hadn’t.’
What a stupid thing for me to say. I should have gone with the flow of her feelings.
But the woman did not seem to be upset by my words.
‘Poems,’ she said again, ‘it’s been such a long time since I last read one. I wonder why I suddenly mentioned it now.’
‘Maybe it’s the effect of being in a hospital. I’m the same way. Lying here, away from work, I feel my forgotten self slowly resurfacing.’
‘It’s not that long ago.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘The poem.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘When I went home to Yokohama, I saw it in the newspaper. In a small section that quotes a poem every day.’
‘Occasional Verse’?
‘No, not that. But something like it.’
‘I see.’
‘An eighty-year-old father…’
‘Yes.’
‘Is lying sick in bed, his mind no longer clear…’
‘I see.’
‘And he suddenly shouts, “Mother”. Or perhaps it was “Ma”.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s frightening.’
‘Huh?’
‘To think what I would say in the same situation.’
‘Right.’
I could understand very well how she felt. I wondered what women would say in those instances? What was she afraid she might say? The name of a man other than her husband? Is that what she was trying to tell me? If so, it would have been an insult.
‘Talking to myself.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The idea reminded me of the poem.’
‘I see…’
‘The phrase that slips out the most is, “I hate it.”‘
‘When you talk to yourself?
‘Yes. I often say, “I hate it.”‘
She had told me this just moments after she’d said she didn’t want me to hear the words she’d let slip.
‘Is that what you said earlier?
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