ON THE HARM OF WRITING A NOVEL

　　　Probably you are wondering why writing a novel is harmful. You may argue, “It is far from harmful, but beneficial.” I know writing is good for clear thinking. When you are thinking, you cannot see your thought, but once you write it down, you can recognize it with your eyes. Moreover, the written idea allows objective scrutiny, because you are a reader of what you have written. This is why professional writers recommend you to put away your writing for a couple of days and return to it later. This is the proof that once you have turned your thought into the written form, your thought exists before your eyes as something tangible. So you may insist that writing does you good. You are right. I know Francis Bacon’s words: "writing makes an exact man." My argument is, however, not about “writing” but about “writing a novel.” My point is that “writing a NOVEL” is harmful.
　　Now let me tell you about the harm. After you have read this essay, I hope you will quit writing novels. This is a caution. Otherwise, the rest of your life will be cursed. You cannot recover from the curse, nor lead a normal happy life, nor escape from the addiction.

Harm No. 1: you can’t enjoy reading a novel.

　　Your inclination to write a novel disturbs your mind whenever you read a novel. You are so much occupied by how to write a novel well that you are destined to pay attention to how the novel you are reading is written: the choice of words, plot, character and scene description, and climax and ending. You are too much interested in these matters to enjoy reading it.
　 Let me give you an example. Suppose three men are walking in the forest. One is a biologist; another, a painter; and the other, a musician. After they pass through the forest, ask each of them the same question: what did you see in the forest?
　　The biologist will answer, “I saw birds, small animals, and insects. I was lucky to see an Indian Ringneck Parrot, a rare species. Oh, I caught some unknown worms under the bark of a red pine tree. I am going to study them in my laboratory.” The painter will answer, “The forest consisted of marvelous pictures. I saw here and there pictures of Cezanne, Monet, and Corot. I saw beautiful women dancing around a tree like the women in a Corot’s picture. The colors of the sky, clouds, and leaves were making such a fine contrast with each other that I wished I could stop walking and paint them.” How will the musician respond? Probably she will say, “What did I see? I should say, I ‘heard’ rather than I saw. Actually I did not see anything special but I heard a wonderful symphony of the forest orchestra. How wonderful to hear the sound of brooks, birds, and leaves in the breeze. They are sometimes soft and gentle as in Heaven but sometimes so harsh and violent as in Hell. The sound inspired me to compose music.”
　　Every one of them enjoys walking through the forest, but what they see is quite different. I feel sorry for each of them because their appreciation of the forest is biased and self-centered. They only see what they want to see. Then, how do ordinary people walk in the forest? Do they see the forest in the same way as the three people? No. They simply enjoy the forest biologically, picturesquely, and musically at the same time, although some of them may pay special attention to things they are very much interested in.
　　This prejudiced attitude can be applied to reading a novel. A novel writer cannot read a novel without thinking of how it is written. They may say, “Ah, this combination of words is astonishing. I will use it in my next work. Oh, this must be a foreshadowing. An ordinary reader will miss it, but I won’t. The protagonist’s psychology is poorly described. I could do it much better.” Thus, you are always thinking about how the novel is written. So you don’t have time to enjoy the story.

Harm No. 2: you can’t enjoy a cup of coffee.

　 A novel writer is always paying attention to the conversation her neighbors are engaged in. She is all the time listening secretly to the conversation she hears so that she can reproduce some of them in her work. Since her conversation in her novel is based on what she has overheard, it sounds natural. Suppose you drop in at a coffee shop. You automatically try to listen to the neighboring conversation. You are forced to do so before you notice it. So how can you sip coffee and relax despite your busy engagement in eavesdropping?

Harm 3: you can’t enjoy TV dramas.

　　You are always thinking of some original ideas that will help you write a new novel. Whenever you are watching a TV drama or seeing a movie, your brain is so programmed as to get some hints for your next novel. If you are a detective story writer, your eyes will automatically fix on criminal scenes in the drama you are watching. How the murder took place? Who did it, where and why, and how was it solved? If you are a romance writer, you pay attention to how the relationship in the film you are seeing develops rather than enjoy it. Your brain is always bound by the chain of writing a novel even when you are in a movie theater.
　So stop writing a novel. Otherwise, you cannot enjoy the wonderful world in a relaxed way. To write a novel is to live your life with an unnecessary load. So quit writing a novel before you are addicted.

WHO IS MY FATHER?

I rushed to the hospital by taxi. “Your father is in critical condition,” my uncle had told me on the phone. After a 40 minute taxi ride, I reached the hospital. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked fast to my father’s room. I opened the door and found him lying on the bed with an oxygen mask on his face, wheezing. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip. A drop of yellowish liquid fell in a vessel hung on the pole. By the side of the bed was my uncle, who looked at me, looking relieved, nodded, and looked at my father’s face. A nurse was looking at the faint electrocardiographic wave going up and down on the dark screen by the bedside. I said in a small voice, “Dad….” His eyes looked at me momentarily. I thought he had recognized me. It was around eight o’clock in the evening. The nurse left the room saying she would come back soon. My father was breathing under the oxygen mask constantly wheezing.
I said to my uncle, “Uncle Ishida, thank you for calling me.”
“That’s all right. I happened to come and see your father here today and found him in serious condition,” he said.sn
“You must be tired. I’ll watch him. So please go home,” I said.
“OK, then. I wish I could stay here longer, but I am an old man. I must go and take a rest,” he said, stood up, and began to walk to the door, but instead of opening the door, he kept standing for a second as if he had remembered something. He returned to me and said.
“Takao, I have something to talk to you.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“But, not now. I can’t talk it to you now. If your father dies, I’ll tell you.”
“After he dies?”
“Yes, after that,” he said decisively, turned around, and left the room. I wondered why he couldn’t tell it to me just then. Why after my father dies? Did he have some secret?
The nurse came back and looked at the electrocardiographic screen. The wave had become feeble. She told me to call her at the nurse station if anything went wrong with my father. I thought it would not be long before he died. I stayed awoke at his bedside all during the night.
My father died around five on the morning of the next day. He was 75. He had been suffering from chronic heart disease. That evening the wake was held, and my uncle was among the relatives. After the wake was over, I had a chance to talk to him. I asked what was it that he had wanted to say to me.
He said, “Ah, yes, I said something like that, but it doesn’t matter now. Forget it. It’s just a trifle.”
“But you looked very serious when you said that. I thought it was something very important. Please tell me.”
“No, no, no. It’s not important. And, ah, everybody looks serious when his brother is going to die, don’t they? So, forget it,” my uncle said, but his tone of voice betrayed and he sounded as if he were hiding something very important.
After the funeral the next day, when the relatives were leaving my house, my uncle came to me and said, “I’ve decided to tell it to you.”
“Good, what is it?”
“I’m your father.”
I was taken aback. He must be joking, I thought.
“What? What do you mean? You are my father?”
“Yes, I am your father,” he said looking in my eyes.
My uncle sometimes cracked jokes, but this was not one, I thought. He looked serious. His eyes seemed to prove it.
Instantly I faced a dilemma. My father used to say to me when I was a boy, “Don’t believe your uncle. He is a bad man. He drinks a lot, doesn’t have a regular job. His wife always complains about him to me.” When I did something bad, my father always said to me, “Don’t behave like your uncle. You don’t want to be like your uncle, do you? I despise him. Don’t imitate him. OK, Son?” While I was a boy, I don’t think he visited my father often. My uncle and I only met with each other on occasions like at relatives’ weddings and funerals. We never went on a trip or played together. As I was a child, I wondered why my father and my uncle avoided each other.
So if I followed my father’s advice, I shouldn’t believe my uncle’s words, but his face looked very serious.

PART 2

I said to him, “Really? You surprise me. Why are you….? How come, how come you are my father?”
I was totally confused. I could not stand on my feet steadily. I felt as if I were not myself. My father’s death had already hindered my mental balance, and what my uncle revealed had aggravated it further.
“Sorry to upset you, but believe me this is true. I am your father. I have always wanted to say this to you whenever I met you for the past, let me see, you are 40 years old, right, so for the past 40 years.”
“Do you mean my father adopted me from you when I was a baby? Am I an adopted child?” I said.
“No, you aren’t. You were born from your mother, but you know, the sperm was mine. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. Your mother and I didn’t have any sexual relationship. Actually, I gave my sperm to your father.”
My mother had died of cancer three years before.
“Why did you…. You mean my father asked you to give your sperm to him?”
“Yes, one day he came to my house and asked me for my sperm. Your parents had not had a baby for five years after their marriage, so I thought they decided to have a baby through artificial insemination.
“So, I gave mine to him. He then thanked me and hurried back home. Before leaving my house, he said he would mix his sperm with mine. After he left I wondered why he had said he would mix his with mine. Then I thought his sperm might be too weak or too few in number.”
(Later I found out that sperm in a test tube would be alive for two hours if kept at body temperature. Also, I learned that barren parents in 1950s conducted artificial insemination at home.)
I remembered that my father had said that he and my mother were very glad to have a baby after five years of marriage. My father married at the age of 28. He was 33 years old when my mother gave birth to me.
“So if he had mixed his sperm with yours. Then, the chance is 50-50. I may not be your son,” I said.
To accept what he said was to accept that my world had spun 180 degrees. The world I had lived in for 40 years would collapse with a thundering noise. What had I been, I thought. I would be nothing. My whole experience would turn into a daydream. My psychology resisted the news. I wanted my father to be my father. I felt irritated. Why keeping it secret for many years and all of a sudden reveal it to me? That’s too cruel, too harsh to bear.
“I understand you,” my uncle said. “You have been your father’s son for 40 years. And it is quite a shock to you. But try to put yourself into my shoes. I needed tremendous patience not to reveal the secret to you. But since your father died, I thought that would be a good chance and I thought if I had lost this chance I wouldn’t have another. I hope you’ll understand my feelings.”
My uncle paused for a moment and said, “O.K. Why am I so sure? Ever since you were born, I have been watching you up until now. What do you think is the big difference between your father and I? You see, he was active, talkative, and extroverted, and likes sports, while I like reading books, hate sports, and am introverted. I am good at mathematics but he was not. Do you understand now? I know you don’t like playing ball games, but you prefer reading books and writing essays. I know you were excellent in mathematics. Thanks to your ability in math, you were able to enter the department of technology of Nagoya University. Ah, I remember you won a prize in the All Japan High School Students Essay Contest. I still keep the newspaper article in my album with all your photographs. That was the time when I became confident that you were my son.”
I was just listening to him. His talk sounded convincing. What he said about my tastes was true. But at the same time I was thinking of the brothers and sisters who had different likings although they were born from the same parents. Maybe my uncle was telling self-satisfyingly, I thought.
He added, “But, Takao, to tell you the truth, I am not 100 percent sure.”
He seemed to have noticed my embarrassment and to have felt the necessity to console me. I understood his feelings. I did not respond to him. I did not argue. That was not something to argue. Suddenly I remembered my father’s favorite lines: don’t believe your uncle. He is a liar. So that’s why he said them again and again. He had foreseen what my uncle would say after his death or even during his lifetime. He had put a preemptive measure in me. But on second thought my father may have been telling the truth about my uncle’s bad behavior. I had sometimes heard about his disgraceful conducts, especially when he was drunk.

PART 3

Since then, I was not able to concentrate on my job as a high school teacher. I had had several incidents so far that had disturbed me, but my uncle’s disturbance was by far the greatest. While I was in class, I forgot about the problem and concentrated on teaching, but what I dreaded was lunch time and breaks between class. While I was marking examination papers in the teachers’ room or while I was attending meetings, I sometimes stopped what I was doing and, before I knew it, I would be wondering who on earth was my real father. You can guess what my absent-minded attitude to my wife and children was like at home. Sometimes I lost the track of conversation with my wife. While I was watching a television drama, I couldn’t help thinking of my fate when I saw a son and his father talking with each other on the screen.
My wife soon noticed my mental change and asked me what the matter was with me. First, I replied to her that there was nothing that worried me, but one day about ten days later after the funeral, she said she had heard me during my sleep. She said I was saying clearly, “Dad, dad….” She desperately wanted to know what it was that was troubling me.
I confessed. She was surprised. She complained to me why I hadn’t revealed it to her earlier. I told her that I had wanted to talk about it to her every day, but I couldn’t dare to do so, and had postponed it day after day till that day. I said to her,
“To tell you the truth, I feel I have lost something very important, something that has supported me all my life. I have lost my foundation I have stood on. For the past week, I felt I was not myself. I was someone else. I have lost my identity. I don’t know how I should put my feelings into words, but I think I am completely alienated from the world. It may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s true. I was not able to think reasonably. Probably that’s why I didn’t dare to tell it to you earlier. I know I should have.”
My wife said, “If you are worried about it so much, why don’t you have your DNA tested? They have begun to solve these matters by the tests in recent years
, I hear.”
“I know. I have thought of it, but I didn’t dare do that. I was afraid that my uncle was telling the truth. It’s incredible that he’s my father. I’m angry at him. I don’t want to dig a hole to discover something unnecessary, something crucial, something you can’t dispute. I want my father to be my father. I know I may sound childish. Why did my uncle…, why couldn’t he…?”
I was getting desperate.
She said, “I understand how you feel, but you see, worrying about it every day and every hour is not like you. It will eat your mind and body. It’s unhealthy. It’ll keep torturing you for the rest of your life. Which do you prefer to live in uncertainty or in certainty? You should face the fact. You are the same you whether your father is your uncle or not.”
She paused. “That’s right. I am the same myself whether my uncle is my father or not,” I thought. I thought I was behaving like a spoilt child. She didn’t like such me.
“All right, I understand now. You are right. I will have the DNA test as you say.”
Today it is easy to find DNA test companies on the Internet, but in 1992 it was not. I went to a library and searched for books about DNA tests. In the last page of one of the books, the companies that performed the tests were listed. There were only five companies. I picked DNA Solution Co. from among them. The company, founded in 1989, was a Japan branch of DNA Diagnostics Center in the USA. All I needed was my father’s DNA sample. It was easy to get it. When the undertakers cleaned my father’s corpse before the funeral, they had cut some of his hair at the front part of his head and given it to me. I had kept it in the Buddhist family altar.
I sent both my hair and my father’s to DNA Solution Co. It would take as long as two weeks before the result was sent to me because the company would send the samples to the DNA Diagnostics Center in the U.S. After I sent them, I did not worry about the problem as much as before. After all, my roots would be identified in two weeks. Either would be OK, I forced myself to believe.

PART 4


Two weeks later, the result of the DNA test was sent to me. Before I opened the envelope, I breathed deeply to calm down myself. The letter said:
DNA Solutions reports that the results of the parentage testing procedure carried out on the bodily samples of the donors specified above show that the alleged father is excluded as the biological father with 99.98% certainty.
99.98 percent! It is practically 100 percent. Then my father was not my biological father. My uncle was correct. He is my father. I felt as if I had been hit with a bat. I told my wife about the result. She said,
“I understand. You must be disappointed, but as I said before, you are what you are even if your uncle is your father. Nothing has changed with me. You should face the fact.”
It may be easy to say, “Face the fact,” but is difficult to practice it. I couldn’t change my mental channel like TV channels. I had been so much accustomed to fait accompli. My mind understood the fact, but my blood and flesh did not. They resisted confronting the fact.
I did not write to my uncle about the results of the test. It was not necessary to take the trouble because he firmly believed that he was my father. If he asked if I had had a DNA test, I would tell him, although we did not have chance to meet with each other so often because I lived in Nagoya and he lived in Kakunodate, Akita Prefecture.
One year passed. Hoji (a Buddhist service on the first anniversary of my father’s death) was held at a temple near my house. I expected to meet my uncle, but his son, Yasuo came to the ceremony on behalf of his father. He said his father had become feeble and it was difficult for him to travel all the way to Nagoya.
After the Hoji was over, all the relatives went to a Japanese restaurant to eat a Hoji dinner. First, sake and beer were served. As the host of the ceremony, I went around to each relative one by one to thank them for attending the Hoji with a bottle of beer in my hand. When I came to Yasuo, I momentarily wondered whether he knew the relation between him and me. So I just picked up an ordinary conversation topic. I said to him,
“How is your father? Is he very sick?” I said pouring beer in his glass.
“No, he isn’t,” he said after sipping the beer. “It’s just he has caused low back pain. He is all right except for that.”
“My father was two years older than he. So, he is now 72, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He is 72.”
Yasuo paused and drank the rest of beer and held the glass in front of me. I filled the glass again. It was strange for him to drink so much beer at such a fast pace because he was not a strong drinker. He easily got drunk. I thought he was trying to get drunk intentionally. Soon he became red. His eyes got glassy. Suddenly he sat up and erected his posture, and looked into my eyes seriously. His face was tense. He came closer to me and said in a small voice so that the other relatives, who were enjoying drinking and talking, would not hear him.
“I have long wanted to tell you something, something very important.”
I was surprised. So he had known the truth.
“Oh, I know what you are going to say,” I said. “Do you mean that we are…?”
“Yes, we are.”
“So your father told you about it after my father’s funeral, didn’t he?”
“No, he had told it to me long ago.”
“Long ago? What do you mean?”
“Well, when I was 13 years old, he told me about it. At first I thought he was joking. He said that only your parents and he knew the secret and that I should never tell it to anybody. He made me promise. I promised. But now since my father told you about it, and one year passed since your father died. I thought I didn’t have to keep it a secret.”
He looked relieved. He was three years younger than I. It was difficult to think of him as my younger brother. We didn’t often play together in our childhood. He was just my cousin and no more or less than that.
“To tell you the truth, last year I had a paternity test.”
“Oh, did you? I thought you would. And?”
He looked at me in the eye with full of curiosity.
“And, the report said that my father was not my biological father with a 99.98 percent certainty.”
Yasuo said, “That’s just what I expected. So, we are half brothers, right?”
“Yes, most probably,” I confirmed rather reluctantly.
“Most probably?”
He looked puzzled. Apparently he expected that I would say, “Yes, we are.”
A moment later, Yasuo said, “I understand how you feel.”
Deep in the bottom of my heart, I was saying to myself, “99.98 is not 100. The test showed that there was a 0.02% possibility that my father was my biological father.
Two months later, in October, my wife and I took a trip to the Tohoku district. We visited Chusonji Temple in Hiraizumi, the Oirase River, and Lake Towada. On our way home, we visited Kakunodate City, where my uncle lived. My uncle was happy to welcome us. His wife had already died. He was living with his son, Yasuo, his daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
At the dinner table, my uncle said with a beaming smile, “This is a special day. I have bought the very best sake in Japan for this day.” He put a bottle of sake wrapped in colorful paper on the table.
He continued, “This is Dewasakura Sake, the gold medal winner in the All Japan Sake Contest.”
He filled everyone’s cup, and declared, “Let’s toast the father-son bond!”
“Kanpai!” We emptied our cups.
My uncle said, “So, I heard you had a parental test.”
I said, “Yes, my wife strongly recommended that I should.”
“How wise!” he said looking at my wife.
“I wanted him to face the fact,” she said.
“So, I am glad that you’ve faced the fact,” he said. “You see, I told you that you were my son. I have always believed you are my son. This time, it has been proved. So, I am happy to have two biological sons.”
I and Yasuo glanced at each other.
My uncle said, “But you don’t have to call me ‘Dad’ if you don’t want to. I understand how you feel. It’s up to you.”
I wouldn’t.
Since I had arrived at his house, I had been wondering whether I should ask him to give me some of his hair or nail. I desperately wanted to have the parental test between my uncle and me even though there was little hope that my uncle was not my biological father. I just wanted to confirm the DNA test report. I thought, “But if I broach the subject to his happy face, it will surely offend him. I don’t want to rub him the wrong way. If I asked Yasuo for his hair, he would give me some anyway, but some time later, he might tell it to his father. This might also offend my uncle. Actually, I did not care whether it would offend him or not, but I didn’t want to ruin a 72-year-old man’s happy feelings.
Without any bodily samples of my uncle’s, my wife and I left his house. I still possessed the desire to confirm my relationship with my uncle.

PART 5

Three years passed and my uncle died. I went to Kakunodate to attend his funeral. During the wake, I asked my cousin, Yasuo, if he could give me some of my uncle’s hair.
Yasuo said in a silent irritated way, “Why? Do you still doubt he is your father?” He looked surprised at my abrupt and unexpected request.
“I don’t, but I just want to confirm the relationship. The DNA test will not change the relationship, I know, but I just want to have 100 percent confirmation. If you were in my shoes, you would do the same, I believe. It’s not a big deal, is it?”
Yasuo looked at me and kept silent for a moment. He apparently did not want to desecrate his father’s body by cutting his hair, but I knew he would consent to my request.
“All right. I’m sorry I was being selfish,” Yasuo said. “My uncle’s body is not mine alone, but it’s yours, too. I understand how you feel. Let me help you.”
He went to the next room and came back with a pair of scissors in his hand. He opened the coffin lid, looked in, and cut some of my uncle’s hair. He gave it to me. I thanked him.
After I came back home, I again sent both my hair and my uncle’s to DNA Solution Co. I was sure the company would report that my uncle was my biological father. Even if it cost a lot of money and trouble to have the sample tested, it would be worthwhile, I thought. It might be for my self-satisfaction, but deep in my heart I still thought that 99.98 percent was not 100 percent. I expected a different test result in this last-ditch bid. I said to myself, “What does 99.98 percent certainty mean? It means two out of 10,000 tests are incorrect. The report may have been incorrect. I need a 100 percent certainty. Otherwise, I will suffer from the uncertainty forever. I just want to know the truth.”
I had been gradually accustomed to the new relationship with my uncle. I had tried to believe it. I had accepted the new fact theoretically. Therefore, at least in my mind I was ready to face the second test report.
Along with this problem, I began to wonder why it was so important for a person to know who his or her father was. I could not explain why it was so grave a matter. It wouldn’t change your environment nor your life at all, but to know your root was a vital importance, I thought.
Two weeks later, DNA solution Co. sent the report. I mechanically opened the envelope and mechanically began to read the content. I had expected to read that my uncle was my biological father.
While I was reading the report with a calm objective mind, my eyes reached the conclusive sentence. It said:
…the paternity test showed a 0.00 % probability that Mr. Seiji Ishida is the father of Mr. Hiroki Shimizu.
What! My uncle is NOT my father? Is something wrong with this report? It can’t be. I continued to read the rest of the report. It said that each of the six different kinds of parental tests showed no match between the two samples. The report also said that they provided the client with accurate test results by testing each case twice.
Therefore, this report is accurate. So my uncle is not my biological father. It means neither my father nor my uncle is my biological father. Then who is my father? Who on earth is my father?

PART 6

I reviewed the two DNA test results. The possibility of my father being my biological father was 99.98 percent, and that of my uncle was 0.00 percent. That meant someone I didn’t know was my biological father. If the DNA Solution Co. did not make a mistake, and I didn’t think they had made one, who was my biological father? I did not know why, but I wanted to get the answer. It was not such a big problem as to hinder my daily life, but I could not resist my instinctive desire to identify my biological father. Otherwise, I was like a rootless plant.
I remembered the American film named “Roots,” which was on televivsion about 30 years ago. The protagonist, Kuta Kinte, triggered the boom that drove many Japanese people to run back to their ancestoral roots. What use was there in knowing their roots, I wondered, yet they went libraries, family temples, and civil registration offices to find their earliest ancestors. Even today many people are concerned with their roots. Then, what about me? Even they, who know their biological fathers, try to seek out their origins. Then it was all the more natural for me to do the same.
But how could I find my biological father? I thought about my birth. I was born in a hospital. I thought, “The doctor might have dealt with my father and uncle’s mixed sperm. He might have lost the sperm by mistake, and used his or someone else’s sperm. If I visit the hospital, I may get some information.”
I was born in 1965 and was 44 years old. I wondered whether the hospital was still in practice. It would be too much to expect the doctor who delivered me to be still alive. Even if he was alive, he would be old and wouldn’t remember anything about those times. And even if he remembered them, and even if he had made a mistake, he would not admit it. I knew it would prove fruitless, yet I wanted to confirm the fruitlessness. I had nothing to lose.
Nakagawa Hospital was in Y City in Mie Prefecture. It took about an hour train ride to get to the city. It was still in practice, but it had changed from a maternity clinic to a hospital for the aged. At the receptionist counter I inquired about the former hospital director, but she said he had already retired. I asked her whether I could meet him. She telephoned him and said I could meet him at his house at the back of the hospital.
I visited the house and met him. He was a round-faced old man, around 80, with gentle eyes. His voice was not feeble but firm. I told him my problem.
I said, “This may sound very rude, and I’m afraid you may be offended, but is there any possibility that you might have used your sperm?”
He said he had never used his or any other person’s sperm for his client. Watching his eyes and listening to the way he talked, I thought he was telling the truth.
“I remember, by the way,” Dr. Nakagawa said. “When I became a doctor, and began to work for Y City Municipal Hospital, that was 1960, the young interns I knew were offering their sperm for artificial insemination. You know, using the third person’s sperm is practiced today, but it is only when the husband is infertile. The hospitals that practice such treatments are limited to a very few hospitals such as Keio University Hospital. But, in case of oligospermia, that is, the husband’s sperm has small number of sperm cell, less than 50 million, the sperm is cultivated and condensed with a centrifugal machine.”
He paused and looked at me. I was rather bored with his lecture.
He said, “Well, well, I was getting off the track. So, back to the point, as I said before, I have never practiced artificial insemination involving an infertile husband. And I have never lost or damaged any sperm by mistake. So, I don’t understand the results of the DNA test company. Something is wrong. I’m sorry I haven’t been of any help to you. I’m afraid I have confused you.”
I thanked him. When I stood up to leave his house, I hesitatingly asked for his hair. I was afraid that would offend him, but he consented to my request right away, and gave his sample, saying, “My pleasure, if that will help you.” He looked 100 percent sure that his DNA would not match with mine.
I sent the samples to the company. Two weeks later the company reported that there was a 0.00 probability that the doctor was my biological father.
Part seven
Thus, I lost all the clues to find my biological father. I wondered, “Who am I? Who is my real father? Is it so important to know my biological father?” The same question tortured me again and again. My wife supported me saying, “As I said before, you are what you are. Why are you so much concerned about your biological father? It’s nonsense to wear your nerves on such a matter. I’m sorry you’ve lost all the clues, but is it so vital a problem? There are things you can change in this world, and things you can’t. You should give up and accept the fact. Why not live the present moment?”
I knew she was right, but if she were in my shoes, what would she say? What if her father was not her biological father and if she lost all the channels to reach her real father? Her opinion might change. She did not really understand my problem. No one would understand my unsettled feelings.
However, I knew I had to solve the problem by myself. It shouldn’t eat my mind. Gradually I tried to give up and live my life detached from the problem.
Months passed. And years passed. Gradually I adjusted myself to the “fatherless” situation.
Forty-three years passed and I was 87 years old. My eyesight and hearing ability became feeble but I was able to read headlines in the newspaper and understand most of what the television news said.
One day when I was reading a newspaper on June 5, 2009, a headline caught my eyes. It read: DNA test findings lead to lifer's release. I read the article with a magnifier. The article went:
A man sentenced to life for the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl was freed from Chiba Prison after 17 years behind bars as prosecutors opted not to challenge a recent DNA test that did not link him with the victim.
A further reading revealed that the prisoner Toshikazu Sugaya was convicted of murder based on the DNA test, but the accuracy of the DNA test in 1990 was not so advanced as today. 1.2 out of 1000 DNA tests in those days were incorrect. The accuracy of the DNA test today has astonishingly developed. Only one out of 1700,000,000,000 is incorrect.
Suddenly the news reminded me of my DNA test in 1961 when I was 40 years old. The result said that alleged father was excluded as the biological father with 99.98% certainty.　Now I understood the answer to my longstanding problem. The DNA test in 1961 was based on a primitive, inaccurate testing. I took out some of my father’s hair from the family Buddhist altar and sent the hair together with mine to the Japan DNA Center in Tokyo. In ten days, the result reached me. The letter said:

“The alleged father cannot be excluded as being the biological father of the child, and the probability of paternity is. > 99.999%.”

What has tortured me for more than 40 years has resolved, but what have I been doing these 40 years? I am 87 years old and a dying old man. What benefit has the technology of DNA testing brought to me? Nothing, but only an uneasy life.

THE END

WHERE HAS MY WIFE GONE?

“Listen. Satoshi is in the bathroom. He is singing a song he learned in the kindergarten today. How nicely he sings! My dear elephant, my dear elephant, your trunk is very long. Why is it so long? Can you hear him, dear?”
A pale-faced Yasuko began to sing merrily a kid’s song “My Dear Elephant” in a soft husky voice, with her eyes half shining.
“There you go again. Yasuko, Satoshi has been dead for four years. He is not in the bathroom. This is a hospital. You know that, don’t you?” Kenji pleaded controlling his irritation. Kenji saw two mental patients talking with their visitors in the lobby of the hospital. One was a young man talking with his mother, probably; and the other a middle-aged woman talking with another middle-aged woman. Probably they were sisters, Kenji thought. Yasuko’s high-pitched song resonated in the whole lobby, but the patients and the visitors did not pay attention to her.
“What are you talking about?” Yasuko rebuked. “Can’t you hear Satoshi’s cheerful song? Listen.”
Three years have passed since Yasuko was hospitalized. Four years before, when Satoshi had been a kindergartener, he had been taking a bath alone. He had been in the bathroom for more than 20 minutes. Wondering why he was taking a bath for such a long time, Yasuko went to the bathroom and was shocked to find Satoshi had drowned. His body was floating in the bathtub. Yasuko, terrified, called an ambulance, but by the time it reached the hospital, Satoshi had already stopped breathing.
Yasuko changed completely. She could not live in the condominium where her only son died. Her husband, Kenji and Yasuko moved to a different condo in a different town. Yasuko hated to go to the bathroom, and much more when she took a bath. She began to stay at home almost all day. She rarely cleaned the house, washed clothes, and made meals. Suddenly, Kenji had to do a lot of house work after coming back from work exhausted. He did most of shopping, cleaning, and washing on weekends. Yasuko was always crying, “Satoshi-chan, Satoshi-chan.”
One year after Satoshi’s death, Yasuko had become a little abnormal. She began to say that she could hear Satoshi’s voice and see Satoshi. One day she said, “Kenji-san, look, Satoshi is standing in front of the refrigerator. Satosh, don’t eat so much ice cream. You’ll have stomachache. You are a bad boy. I’ll have to lock the fridge.” Yasuko’s symptom gradually deteriorated. When she was watching a news program on TV, she suddenly stood up and said, “Look, Kenji-san, Satoshi is walking along the street. There! Satoshi! Satoshi!” When they were riding on the train, she whispered to Kenji looking at the women sitting near their seat, “They are talking about Satoshi. What are they saying about him? I’ll have to join them.” And, she said, “I saw a gold fox coming out of the wall of the living room. Satoshi loved the golden fox story, didn’t he, you know?”
At last, Kenji took her to a mental hospital, about an hour’s drive from his house and hospitalized her. He had told her to go on a picnic with Satoshi.
Since her hospitalization, Kenji visited her in the hospital every weekend, but every time he visited it, he was disappointed by Yasuko’s unusual behavior. One day, the nurse said to Kenji, “Yasuko-san sometimes sits down on the corridor and says, ‘Welcome Satoshi-chan, I’ve been waiting for you. Come here, and let me hug you. Here are some candies for you,’ and puts the candies which are given to the patients for the afternoon snack. She always keeps them for her son, I guess.” Kenji had to apologize for the trouble the nurse had to deal with.
When Kenji met the doctor and asked about Yasuko’s condition, he said, “It takes some time to recover from mental shock. Some recover in a few months, but in a severe case, it takes years. A mother who lost her three children in a traffic accident has been here for more than 20 years. The cause of the mental unbalance is to escape from an unbearable condition by means of changing character, that is, the mental status. The extreme case is, you know, split personality. They are trying to save their lives by changing themselves mentally and not physically. In the case of physical change, they suffer from diseases, such as a heart failure, gastric ulcer, and asthma. Kenji did not care what the cause of the disease was. He only wished for her recovery.
Yasuko was three years younger than Kenji. They had gone to the same university and met with each other while sitting on the same table in the university cafeteria. Her father was a doctor. Since her parents wanted Yasuko to marry a doctor, they objected to her marrying a man working for a trade company. But she married against her parents’ objection.
Although two months passed since her hospitalization, Yasuko showed no recovery. Every time he visited the hospital, he was dissapointed. It was not worth visiting. He was not able to communicate with Yasuko normally. What she was thinking about and what he was thinking about while they were “talking” was a world of difference. She only talked about Satoshi. She believed Satoshi was alive even if Kenji told her that he was dead. She said, “That’s a lie. Why do you dare to tell me a lie?” While she was talking, she did not look at Kenji’s eyes directly, but was always looking at somewhere around Kenji. She did not eat her favorite dish of sushi nor sweet bun he bought for her. She said she would keep them for Satoshi.
Gradually, the frequency of his visits to the hospital decreased. First, he visited her once a week, but then once in two weeks, and later once a month.
One day, Yasuko said, “Did you bring a shinkansen bullet train toy that I had asked you to buy?”
“Oh, I’ve forgotten. I’ll bring one the next time. I’m sorry.”
“You are so forgetful. Don’t forget the next time. And please bring some toy pamphlets, too. I want to buy a lot of toys for his birthday.”
Kenji felt demoralized whenever he left the hospital after meeting Yasuko. There was no normal husband-wife communication. She was seriously ill. She mightn’t recover. She would be in the mental hospital for her whole life, separated from the world. Is it worth visiting the hospital after driving for one hour? My life will be ruined if I continue visiting for the rest of my life. What happened to the passionate love between us before our marriage? What happened to the happy times when Satoshi was born? Where have they gone?
Yasuko came to me against her parents’ strong opposition. Is this the punishment? Do I, does she, or do we deserve this? I thought she would recover it she had another baby, but it was impossible. She wasn’t willing to have another baby. Having another baby was out of the question for her. The loss of Satoshi overwhelmed her.
After Satoshi’s death, she couldn’t think of anything else except Satoshi. She has become vacant. Her eyes have beome hollow. I can’t reach her. She is possessed by something powerful beyond my comprehension. I don’t catch, nor feel her self, her willingness to engage herself with me or with the world. She is Yasuko, but she is not. She talks like Yasuko, but someone else inside her is talking. She recognizes me, calls me, “Kenji-san,” or says, “Thank you for coming to see me,” but that is only superficial. Where has that bond, that normal human bond, that tie that connected us gone?
I go to the office and work there as if I didn’t have any more problems than my colleagues. I know they too have problems. One of their family member may be ill in bed in a hospital, but they are not insane. They can communicate with those who visit them in the hospital. Being normal is such a simple matter just like breathing air or drinking water, but it is not. To be normal is more difficult than to rotate the earth in reverse. I wish I could open Yasuko’s head and turn off the abnormal switch that controls her. Why do I have to receive the torrent of agony, torture, depression, hopelessness, and bitterness? This is unfair. This is unfair. Isn’t there any place for me where I can rest? I want a bit of peaceful time free from the burden of this everlasting oppression. I won’t have any peace of mind even for one minute as long as my wife is in the hospital.
Yasuko lives in her own world, not worrying about my agony. She does not, cannot pay any attention to my problems. Her world is firmly built around herself and no one can enter her fort, which is so high and strong. There is no bridge to her inner mind in the castle. Where has she gone? She has built a gigantic castle no one can enter or destroy. In the structure she lives with Satoshi. She will live with him forever. She doesn’t regard herself as a mentally disorganized person. In a sense, she may be happy; she meets me when I visit her every once in a while. She can “talk and see” Satoshi from time to time. The hospital nurses feed her, bathe her, and wash her clothes. She is safe in the fictional world.
Compare her life with mine. Which gear in my, our life went wrong? I prepare meals by myself, eat them alone, On weekends, I must go shopping, do the washing, and cleaning. I am tired. I am mentally and physically exhausted through and through. We were supposed to lead a happy life. When I cross a park, I see a happy family. I envy them. I sometimes hope, this is dreadful but, the child will die. That little child should die and make her parents suffer the same agony I have.
Watching television is superficial. Reading a book is hollow. Eating supper alone is vexing. I want someone to talk to. I want someone to quarrel with. I want someone to whom I can open my heart. I want someone to cry with, to laugh with. I want someone whom I can talk normally. My hope is not big, just a small hope.
After midnight, I go to my futon alone. Entering the futon, I curl my lonely body in a fetal position, with my shoulders hunched, hugging the pillow with my arms, tears standing in my eyes, weeping silently.

Five years passed since Yasuko was hospitalized. Kenji was 40 years old. One morning when Kenji was walking the corridor of his company, Yoko Shimizu, a young female office worker talked to him, “Good morning, Goto-san. You have a nice tie.”
Surprised, Kenji said, “Oh, Amano-san, thank you. I bought it when I went to the Singapore branch on business. Do you like it?”
“Yes, I love it, but I prefer your tartan-checked brown one,” Yoko said.
“Really? I am surprised. You know what ties I have? Are you always watching my ties?” Kenji asked.
“Yes, but not particularly your ties, but,” Yoko paused for a second. “I’m, I’m, actually, watching you.”
Kenji, a little confused, asked, “Are you? Why? Why are you….” Kenji paused and, the next moment he understood the reason. “You mean you are interested in, oh, this may sound rude, but are you fond of, fond of….” Kenji could not force him to say, “fond of me?”
Looking down at the floor of the corridor, Yoko said with her cheeks blushing, “Yes, you,” and with a quick stealthy glance at Kenji, she walked away at a brisk pace.
Kenji doubted what he had just heard. He thought, “She said in a clear voice, ‘Yes, you.’ Yoko is fond of me? Me of all men? Such a tired-out, such a hopeless, such a middle-aged man? But she surely said, ‘Yes, you.’ That’s why she knows what ties I have. That’s why she prefers my tartan-checked tie. So, she likes me. She is fond of me. What a happy feeling! I have never experienced such a happy feeling for the past six years since Satoshi died. Isn’t this a dream? Why is such a young girl like Yoko fond of me? She’s probably around 22 years old since she is one of the new employees fresh from college. She is 18 years younger than I.”
After kenji returned home, he was occupied by her voice, her face, her appearance. He couldn’t believe what had happened at the office. Kenji thought, “I am no longer lonely. Yoko is thinking about me. She is a support for me during these hard times.” He felt as if a ray of light streamed in the total darkness: his misery, loneliness, and agony. Yasuko, who was living in an unknown world, was unable to communicate with him. Visiting the hospital is a torture, but meeting Yoko is a paradise.
The next day Kenji was always looking for Yoko. Kenji and Yoko worked in the same Planning Department room where 23 people worked. Kenji was worried all day because Yoko did not seem to be paying any attention to him. He began to doubt what she had said to him the day before. He thought, “That must have been a joke, a mistake. I must have heard her wrong. It’s impossible that such a young girl likes me. I had a bad dream.” Kenji was beginning to lose confidence in himself.
Around six o’clock when the office work was about to finish, Yoko came to Kenji as if nothing particular had happened the day before, put a small envelope on Kenji’s desk, looked at him, and quickly went to her desk. Kenji’s eyes followed her to her desk. She sat down and resumed her work. Kenji looked at the pinkish-colored envelope with a design of a few purple flower petals on the front side. Kenji, thinking it was not an appropriate time to open it at that moment, put it in his bag, wondering what was in the envelope. He couldn’t wait for the closing time at the office work.
On his way home, Kenji opened the envelope, took out a piece of paper. It was a letter to him:
Goto-san,
Please forgive me for being blunt, but I would like to go to see the movie “Jane Eyre” with you. Could you possibly spare your time next Saturday or Sunday afternoon?”
Yoko.
Kenji said to himself, “What had happened yesterday was not a joke, nor a dream. Yes, of course I will go by all means.”
The movie theater specialized in famous classical movies such as “Roman Holiday,” “Gone with the Wind,” and “The Third Man.” Kenji had seen “Jane Eyre” before. The film might not be as interesting as when he had seen it for the first time because he knew the ending, but it was not a problem at all. He would go to see the movie a hundred times with Yoko.
The next Saturday, they enjoyed the movie. After the movie, they dropped in at a tea shop and talked over a cup of coffee. After making small talk about the movie, Kenji dared to ask her a question.
“I was surprised and happy when you said, ‘Yes, you,’ the other day. Why me of all men, may I ask?”
A moment of silence followed. Yoko sipped her coffee, put the cup on the saucer, and said, “Please excuse me if I am too rude, Goto san, but you resemble my deceased father. I was surprised to see you when I first came to the office as a newcomer.”
“Your father is deceased? I am sorry I didn’t know that.”
Kenji was disappointed to know that Yoko regarded him as a substitute for her father, not a close friend or a loved one.
“How old was he when he died?”
“41. He had leukemia.”
“So young? You must have been very sad. I don’t know how to, how to….” Kenji tried to utter some nice consoling words but couldn’t.
“Please, don’t worry. Ten years have passed since his death. I have overcome the sorrow. Of course, when he died I was so sad that I thought I would go mad.”
“I understand. So, you say I resemble your father? Specifically, what part of me resembles him?”
“Everything. Your face, your figure, and particularly your character.”
“My character? What do you mean?”
“Well, how shall I describe…. It’s difficult to tell, but I hope I am not too impolite. My father was a rather nervous man. In other words, he was sensitive and understood other people’s feelings well. And he was persevering,” Yoko paused for a second and then continued. “Also he looked somehow lonely.”
Kenji was listening to Yoko attentively. He thought that everything Yoko was saying about her father was applicable to him.
Kenji said, “Your father seems to have had close resemblance to me. You know, my wife often says to me, ‘You are nervous. You should be bolder. Your perseverance comes from your father.’” Kenji dared not ask about the reason why Yoko’s father looked lonely because he thought that would lead to the topic of his son’s death.
After coming back home for the date, Kenji thought, “I am a substitute for Yoko’s father. She has found something in me that consoles her. OK. All right. I am expecting too much of her. I should consider myself a lucky man because such a young woman like Yoko wants to go to a movie with me. I am a middle aged man. Yes, she is right. Probably I look lonely. It is natural since I lost my boy, and my wife has gone somewhere I can’t reach. Well, I don’t care whether I resemble her father or not as long as Yoko is fond of me, as long as she feels at home talking with me. She is taking my depressed feelings away from me.
A month passed. Kenji began to feel ambivalent. Whenever he met with Yoko, he felt guilty to his wife, Yasuko. Meeting his wife overclouded him, but meeting Yoko blew away the cloud and gave light to him. The more often Kenji met Yoko, the less often he wanted to meet Yasuko. Visiting the hospital became a kind of burden for him but at the same time it was a kind of atonement.
The hospital had roughly two sections: the open wards for the patients who had mild mental disorders, and the closed ones for those who were seriously ill. Yasuko was in the open wards sharing one room with two other patients. Those patients in the open wards were allowed to watch TV, do some light work such as making paper and cloth dolls, painting pictures, and playing games. They were also allowed to go out of the hospital if they got permission. Superficially they seemed to talk, eat, and work normally. Occasionally, Kenji was able to communicate with Yasuko normally.
Kenji said to Yasuko, “Last Sunday, I attended a Hoji Buddhist memorial service at Mr. Sasaki’s house. Mr. Sasaki’s first daughter is going to get married. What’s her name? I can’t remember.”
Yasuko said, “It’s Keiko. So Keiko-chan is going to get married? When she was a high school girl, she often visited us and read picture story books to Satoshi. Satoshi liked her.”
“The wedding ceremony is scheduled in November. Mr. Sasaki said he would send me an invitation card soon,” Kenji said.
“That’s wonderful,” Yasuko said surprised. “So, Satoshi can see Keiko-chan. How nice! Satoshi will be glad to see her after a long absence.”
Kenji was again pushed over a cliff down to the abyss. A moment ago, he was happy being able to communicate with Yasuko. A normal conversation took place, but the next moment, what a gap! Kenji thought, “What on earth is Yasuko thinking about? She never admits that Satoshi is dead.”
Though half Irritated, Kenji almost said, “Satoshi is dead,” but he did not because he remembered what the doctor had said: you must accept whatever Yasuko says.
Kenji said, “OK. We’ll take Satoshi to the wedding, shall we? Keiko-chan will be glad to see Satoshi after a long absence.”
Yasuko said, “That’s wonderful. Kenji-san, by the way let’s keep it a secret that Satoshi is dead. Then no one will know about his death. Right?”
Kenji did not know what to answer. He just kept silence and glanced at Yasuko’s face.
Yasuko looked back at Kenji and wondered what happened to Kenji. Kenji was confused. Kenji said to himself, “What does it mean ‘let’s keep it a secret.’” Now it was impossible to suppress himself. It was beyond his control. He said, “But it is impossible to keep it a secret. You know that?”
“Why is it impossible?” Yasuko said looking at Kenji in the face. “If you say so, I don’t want to see you. Please go home. Thank you. Don’t come to see me again!” Yasuko stood up, walked across the lobby, and disappeared without looking back.
Again Kenji sat behind the wheel and drove home depressed, discouraged, and nearly sobbing. He was thinking only on Yasuko. He could not see the green country fields that stretched on both sides of the car. He could not see anything, nor could he hear anything. He was only occupied with Yasuko.
But as he neared his home, Yasuko’s image gradually disappeared and was replaced by Yoko’s. Yoko encouraged Kenji when Yasuko discouraged him. Just going to his company erased his worries about Yasuko. Just looking at Yoko working or hearing her talking to their colleagues comforted him.
Two months passed since their first date. One afternoon they were walking abreast along the street.
Yoko said, “I heard you’ve lost your little son.”
“Yes, he was a kindergartner.”
“Now I understand why you look lonely.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, when I first met you, I felt so,” Yoko said. “You had something sad, something depressing in your heart.”
“But I think I have changed,” Kenji said. “Now I feel more alive. My depressed feelings have drastically decreased thanks to you. You’ve helped me a lot. You’ve given me light. I thank you.”
Kenji thanked her from the bottom of his heart. He tried to avoid talking about his wife. He had told his colleagues that his wife was hospitalized because of her kidney disease. No one in his company knew that she was in a psychiatric hospital. The only people who knew it were his close relatives, but they wouldn’t dare to say that to his colleagues. Kenji did not want Yoko to know about it.
“Don’t thank me,” Yoko said. “I am glad that I was of some help in releasing your sad feelings. Actually, my sister died when she was a seventh grader. After that my father changed. He often went to the tombstone to pray for her. He bought a big Buddhist alter and often chanted a Buddhist sutra for her in front of it.”
Kenji remembered that Yoko had said that he looked lonely and sorrowful just like her father. He was glad that Yoko revealed her sister’s death because this was a private matter. He felt he had heard something important about her family. He felt he had something in common with Yoko. Yoko confided in him.
Suddenly, Yoko stopped, looked at Kenji’s eyes, and said daringly.
“Goto san, to tell you the truth, my mother insists that I get married. She says, if there are no men I’m interested in marrying, she will ask a matchmaker and let him introduce a nice man to me. She always asks me if there is someone I like.”
Kenji was embarrassed. He didn’t know what to say. Was Yoko asking for some advice from him? Did Kenji have to play a role of her father now? Or was Yoko thinking of Kenji as the man she liked?
Kenji asked, “So, you have someone in mind?” Kenji regretted to have said such a senseless thing.
Yoko said, “Yes, but…,” and stopped talking. Kenji kept silent. Both of them continued to walk without saying anything more to each other. Yoko said after a few moments, looking down at the road. “Goto san, I’m sorry to have embarrassed you. I should have kept it to myslef. Please forgive me.”
That night, Kenji was unable to sleep. He was thinking about Yoko, about the relationship between him and Yoko. He said to himself, “What will our relation be? Is it all right to continue to associate with Yoko just as it is? What does it mean what Yoko said? She said, ‘Yes, but….’ ‘Yes’ means she has someone she likes, someone she wants to marry. Who on earth is he? Is it, is it me, myself? It is probable. Apparently she confided in no one but me about her marriage problem. Then it is probable that she is thinking of marrying me. That’s why she stopped talking. Her way of talking sounded rather painful, because she can’t marry me. Am I too complacent? Am I? But even if Yoko likes me and wants to marry me, what can I do? I can’t marry her. As long as Yasuko is alive, I can’t marry her. And I can’t communicate with Yasuko. Theoretically Yasuko and I are married, but in reality we are world’s apart. It is as if we are total strangers. If Yasuko were not alive, I could marry Yoko. Does a man who has an insane wife have to sacrifice their whole life because of her? It is unreasonable, isn’t it? I know there are many men whose wives are hospitalized because of serious illness, but they can communicate with their wives. I know a couple who are always quarreling with each other, but they quarrel because they are in the normal husband and wife relationship. The husband regards his quarreling opponent as his spouse and vice versa. Yasuko on the other hand is my wife only legally. Yasuko lives in a different world.” Kenji was trying to justify his desire to marry Yoko.
He continued to think, “Yes, the solution for this problem is Yasuko’s death. Yasuko used to say when Satoshi died, “I want to die and go meet Satoshi.” Insane people are doing nothing beneficial to society. They are useless. Their mental disorder involves their family members, who, as a result, feel distressed and exhausted. Insane people are minus elements of society. The minus elements of society must be eliminated. Murderers are great minus elements. That’s why the death penalty is admitted in some societies.”
Suddenly Kenji heard a car stopping and following that fierce barking of dogs outside his house. His chain of thought stopped and he realized what a dreadful thing he was thinking about. He thought he was so obsessed with marrying Yoko that he was viewing things from a selfish way.
After a sleepless night, however, he gradually began to hope that he could marry Yoko though he was not sure of her feelings about him.
The next Sunday, Kenji visited the hospital. The nurse took Yasuko to the lobby. Yasuko sat down next to Kenji on the sofa.
Yasuko said to Kenji, “You smell good. I smell a nice fragrance, some perfume.”
Kenji was startled. He had gone on a date with Yoko the previous day and she had worn perfume. The smell was from Yoko’s perfume, Kenji was afraid.　Yasuko may have detected that I was meeting Yoko, he thought.
“You say you smell perfume? What smell? I don’t know. The woman next to me in the subway wore a lot of perfume yesterday. Probably my coat absorbed the smell.”
“Is that so? But you smelled the same last time you came to see me. That’s a nice smell.”
“Really?” Kenji was embarrassed. “But, I don’t smell. You have a keen sense of smell. Some of the women in the company wear strong perfume and...”
“I like it. Will you buy the same perfume for me?”
“But I can’t identify the perfume. I’ll try, though,” he paused and looking at the toy box he had brought for her, he said, “By the way, I have brought a Shinkansen toy train.” Kenji changed the topic and breathed a sigh of relief, but at the back of his mind, he was worried that Yasuko might have sensed his relationship with Yoko. Yasuko was insane, he thought, and said she wanted him to buy the same perfume. What did it mean? Yasuko didn’t say that Kenji was going out with a woman. Was she acting as if she didn’t know? No, she was not acting. She was mentally confused. But how insane was she? How deep was her madness? She didn’t show any signs of jealousy. Or was she concealing her jealousy? Kenji was confused. He decided never to wear the same clothes that he wore on the date with Yoko.
Kenji opened a big toy box and took out the toy train, and handed it to Yasuko.
Yasuko said with a frown, “This is too large. Why didn’t you buy a smaller one. Satoshi can’t play with such a big train, can he? You should return it to the shop.”
Kenji got angry. He had had a hard time looking for a nice train in various toy shops and looked at many kinds before choosing the one he thought best for Satoshi. He did not find any significance of buying a toy for his dead son, but anyway he bought it just to console Yasuko’s pain, but she has coldly rejected the toy only because she thought it was too big for Satoshi.
Kenji couldn’t control his anger. Yasuko did not know how much energy and time he had spent to find the toy. “What do you mean it’s too big? Why can’t you admit that Satoshi is dead?” Simultaneously, he regretted to have said such a harsh thing to his wife. Kenji knew well about the doctor’s advice that he should refrain from hurting Yasuko’s heart, but there was limitation in anything. He had lost his patience with her.
Yasuko retorted immediately, “That’s why I am telling you again and again that we should keep Satoshi’s death a secret. Why don’t you understand?”
While he was driving back home from the hospital, his irritation, helplessness, and despair continued to harm him. He couldn’t do anything for Yasuko. He cursed Heaven and Yasuko. He wished Yasuko were dead. She was such a trouble maker, such an irritation. She confused him. She was a tremendous stress. His peaceful life was ruined whenever he met her. He thought, “I don’t care what will become of Yasuko. She is not what she used to be. She is a different character. She is not Yasuko. It’s impossible to expect her to recover.”
As he was driving home, familiar stores, trees, rivers, and condominiums began to come in sight. His irritation, confusion, and anger began to melt and instead Yoko’s face began to appear in his mind. He wanted to meet her. He wanted Yasuko to die and to marry Yoko that instant. He thought, “Yoko seems to want to marry me. I should ask her true feelings about me.” When he reached home, his mind was occupied by Yoko.
Five days later, Kenji asked Yoko, “If I proposed to you, would you, would you accept it?”
Yoko immediately answered, “Don’t tease me. I know you are married.”
Kenji said with earnest eyes, “I am serious. I wish I could marry you. If I could marry you, I would be very happy. I am always thinking about you. Since I met you for the first time, you have given me a new light, a strong power to live. This may sound like an exaggeration but you have changed my life. You have lifted me to heaven from hell. The whole world has changed. You are my power to live. You are my life. Without you, the world would be dark.”
Yoko was listening to Kenji quietly. After a moment’s silence, she responded, “That is the same with me. Since I lost my father, I was a living corps. Nothing in the world consoled me. I wanted to die and join with my father. I was always crying. As years passed, my sad feelings gradually decreased, but deep in my heart, I have never forgotten about my father. I have always been living with my father in my heart. Even after several years passed since his death, I talked with him, I walked with him, and I ate with him, until finally I met with you. When I first saw you, as I said before, you struck me. You looked like my father. When I was near you, I felt my father. When you talked to me, I thought my father was talking to me. Probably, I was in a state of blindness. At first you played the role of a substitute for my father, but now you are not a substitution. I find many different points between my father and you. I find you attractive. You give me a strong support for me. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying this because you look like my father. This is not a matter of whether you look like my father or not.” She paused a moment and continued, “I am also dreaming of marrying you. If I could marry you, I would be more than happy.”
She abruptly stopped talking and looked helplessly at Kenji’s eyes. Her face showed disappointment. She said, “Let’s stop talking about this. This is unproductive. You are married and it is…”
Kenji strongly wished that Yasuko would die and that he would marry Yoko, but how? How could he kill Yasuko die? By poisoning her? By making it like an accident? He couldn’t think of a clever way.
Three weeks later on Sunday, he visited the hospital and met Yasuko accompanied by the nurse. The nurse complained to him, “Goto-san, please tell your wife to eat. Yasuko-san won’t eat at all. She clenches her teeth and refuses to eat. Two nurses try hard to open her mouth and feed her.”
Kenji looked at Yasuko, who looked thin and tired. Her vacant eyes were looking at a distant place. She seemed to be aware of Kenji’s presence.
Kenji said to her, “Yasuko, the nurse says you are refusing to eat. Why? Why don’t you eat? If you don’t eat, you will become sick. You don’t want to become sick, do you?”
Yasuko looked at Kenji, but her eyes were out of focus. She seemed not to be listening to Kenji. Kenji sensed an impenetrable wall between Yasuko and himself. It was impossible to reach her heart, he thought, but at the same time he was afraid that Yasuko had penetrated the wall and knew what Kenji was really thinking about. He thought as if she were saying, “I know you. You want to marry Yoko, don’t you? You want me to die, don’t you?”
Kenji continued to talk to Yasuko despite the dilemma, “What are you thinking about, Yasuko? Don’t you feel sorry for putting the nurses through so much trouble?” He scolded her more than enough out of regard for the nurse who was standing beside them. “I say again, Yasuko. Please try to eat, otherwise you will die. Don’t you understand?”
Kenji looked at Yasuko, but their eyes did not meet. She was looking at a different place. She had sunken eyes and her face was dark and pale. Her arms were as thin as twigs. She was a living corpse. The nurse told Yasuko to do as Kenji said and left them.
Kenji said to Yasuko, “Why don’t you say something?”
Yasuko kept silent.
“Yasuko, what’s the matter with you?” Kenji said a little irritated.
Yasuko said in a feeble voice, “I’d rather die.”
Kenji couldn’t believe what he had just heard. She said she would rather die. He was bewildered. He wondered, “Does she really know my desire to marry Yoko?”
Kenji said, “What are you talking about? You should eat and recover your health and leave the hospital as soon as possible.” He half hated himself for saying to her what he did not really want.
Yasuko said frantically, “I want to die. I want to die. Takashi doesn’t come. Everyone goes away from me. Everyone. Where are they going? I want to go away.”
Kenji said to himself, “What does it mean, ‘Everyone goes away from me’?” Does it mean that Satoshi died or that I am thinking of leaving Yasuko and marrying another woman? Or that her mother died of heart failure a month after Satoshi was born? Or what?”
Kenji did not know what to say to the nurse. The nurses seemed to have more trouble taking care of Yasuko than other patients. They had sometimes complained of Yasuko’s strange actions: that Yasuko hated to take a bath; that she did not go to bed but prowled in the midnight; and that she refused to eat. He wanted to say to the nurses, “But that is your job,” but couldn’t. He felt sorry for the nurses and for himself. He was sad. He was tormented. He did not know what to do.
15 minutes later he went to the hospital office and paid the hospital charges and left the hospital. While he was driving back home, he talked to himself, “It is not you, Yasuko, who wants to die, but myself. I want to die. I want to vanish from this world. How can I overcome these spiritual sufferings? OK. OK. If you want to die, why don’t you die?” Kenji gradually got angry and desperate. “It’s all right with me if you die. Who cares? Why don’t you die right now? I can’t take care of you any longer. I want to forget about you. Go to heaven and meet Satoshi. I don’t care! This is the limit. I can’t endure the pain any more.”
That night he was very tired and went to bed early and fell asleep. After some hours passed, someone came to the front door of his house. “Tadaima, I am home.” That was Yasuko’s voice. Kenji opened the door and his eyes met with Yasuko’s smiling eyes. Kenji said surprised, “Yasuko, what’s happened? Have you recovered from the sickness? You look cheerful and happy. You look fine. So you’ve really got well.” Yasuko said, “I am sorry to have troubled you for a long time. I am completely cured. I know how much you have suffered. Thank you for visiting me in the hospital so often. I appreciate you. We will live together from today on. I’ll do the housework, go shopping, clean the house, and cook for you. So you don’t have to do any housework. But first, I want to go to Satoshi’s grave and pray for his peaceful rest. Shall we go now? Is it all right for you to go right now?”
The shrill sound of the telephone woke Kenji from the dream. It was past midnight. He picked up the receiver and said, his mind still foggy in his dream.
“Hello, this is Goto speaking.”
“This is Ogasawara Hospital. Is this Mr. Kenji Goto?”
“Yes, this is Kenji Goto speaking.”
“Goto-san, your wife, Yasuko-san is in critical condition. Please come to the hospital immediately.”
Kenji couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He confirmed, “Yasuko is in critical condition? Is it Ogasawara Hospital? Yasuko Goto, critical?”
“Yes, this is Ogasawara Hospital. Yasuko-san is in dangerous condition. Please come immediately.”
Kenji felt as if he were watching a scene from a movie. He repeated in his mind what the person at the end of the line said, “Ogasawara Hospital. Yasuko Goto.”
He called a taxi. It took less than an hour due to the light traffic in the middle of the night. Arriving at the hospital, he rushed to Yasuko’s room. When he opened the door, the hospital director, Yasuko’s doctor, and nurses turned and looked at Kenji. He entered the room, and saw Yasuko. An oxygen mask was covering Yasuko’s nose. An ECT machine was put on the table beside her bed.
The director said in a low voice, “Mr. Goto, I am sorry, but she has just taken her last breath.”
A powerful force hit Kenji. He couldn’t believe that Yasuko had died. She was alive just hours ago when he visited her. What happened during those hours?
The doctor said, “It was heart failure.”
A heart failure! Was it possible that a woman of 35 could die of heart failure? He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t think of anything. He looked at Yasuko. She seemed to be sleeping, her face pale and bony, peaceful, free from any agony. Kenji suddenly imagined her funeral scene, which then was overlapped by the face of Yoko. The marriage with Yoko? Kenji tried hard to delete Yoko’s image. What a dreadful man I am, he thought, to think of marrying Yoko just at the moment of my wife’s death! He was surprised at his cruelty.
After the funeral, while Kenji was getting rid of Yasuko’s belongings sent from the hospital, he found a tiny notebook. It was Yasuko’s diary, which briefly described her daily life in the hospital. She had written things about Satoshi, meals, doctors and nurses, the patients, washing and taking a bath, remembrances of past days, and so forth. The last diary was written on the day when Kenji visited her the last time. It read:
May 20
Kenji visited. Nice smell. Don’t go away.
Kenji did not understand the meaning of “Nice smell” since he had avoided wearing the same clothes which he wore on his date with Yoko. Nor could he understand the meaning of “Don’t go away.” He wondered, "Does it mean that I shouldn’t go away from Yasuko and go to Yoko?”
Kenji looked at Yasuko’s handwriting. Her neat, smooth, and feminine handwriting. He remembered her first letter to him. It said that she wanted to marry him despite her father’s strong opposition. He remembered the day when he first met her. Yasuko was 23 years old and Kenji was 27. That day, Kenji was riding on a bus, holding a hand strap. Suddenly the bus stopped and he fell on a woman’s lap. She was sitting on the seat in front of him with a paper bag on her lap. When he fell on her lap, her bag fell, scattering the things in the bag on the floor. Kenji crouched down and tried to pick them up, but she said, “Oh, don’t. I’ll do it myself,” and began to pick them up. Arriving at his company, Kenji was walking along the corridor, when he happened to meet her again. That was how he met Yoko for the first time.
Kenji remembered the happy marriage, and her fulfilled smile at her baby beside her on the bed. He remembered her reading aloud kamishibai or picture card stories for Satoshi. He also remembered her painful agony when she lost Satoshi, and her loud crying over the small coffin at the funeral.
Kenji said to himself, “How much did I support Yasuko when she was distressed by losing Satoshi? I had work to do at my company which somehow relieved me from the pain, while Yasuko, staying all day at home, did not have anything to relieve the stress from her. He regretted that he had not stood by her in her hard days. He thought he should have done much more things to help her, to encourage her, and to rescue her before she really became insane. He realized that it was he himself that was responsible for her insanity. Now Kenji began to blame himself for the first time after Satoshi’s death.
In front of the Buddhist altar, Kenji prayed for Yasuko so that her soul might rest in peace. He talked to Yasuko’s picture in the altar, “I am sorry Yasuko. Only after you have died, I have realized how important you have been for me. Your existence in this world, even if you were insane, was a silent support for me. You were like water or air without which I couldn’t live. Now that they were lost, I have realized how important they were. Sometimes I hated visiting you at the hospital because I couldn’t talk to you, communicate with you, or reach your heart. I was all wrong. I expected too much out of you. I should have accepted you as you were. I was not generous. I was cruel and cold to you. I am sorry. I have done wrong twice. I failed to support you at Satoshi’s death. And I failed to support you while you were in the hospital. I am sorry I have been such a selfish man. I won’t go away from you.”
Kenji continued to look at her picture for a long time. He wanted to hear some words from Yasuko. He wanted her to pardon him. Then he clearly realized that he had been using Yoko to escape from his harsh reality.
Kenji wrote a letter to Yoko saying that he wanted to stop meeting her because he realized after his wife’s death that he did not love Yoko.
He then asked the manager of personal division of his company to send him to the Singapore branch.

The End

BY THE SIDE OF THE CRAPE MYRTLE

BY THE SIDE OF THE CRAPE MYRTLE [1]

“What are you doing here?” a man in blue overalls said to Takashi.
Startled, Takashi hid a bag of ashes behind his back automatically.
“What are you hiding? You were scattering something white on the ground, weren’t you?”
“Oh, no, no, I wasn’t. I was just….”　
“Why then, did you step over the fence? And what is that stone by your foot?”
Takashi was standing inside the fence that surrounded a Crape myrtle in the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens. There was a lunchbox size of stone near his foot. The man in overalls was an employee for the gardens.
“Well, ah… This tree is very big, and gorgeous. So, I just wanted to touch it.”
“That's the lamest excuse I've ever heard. What are you hiding from me?”
Saying this, the employee strode over the fence and came near Takashi. He looked as old as Takashi, around sixty. Takashi gave up and showed the bag to the man. The employee looked inside the bag and said,
“What is this white substance?”
He put his hand in the bag. Then he picked up some of the substance by his thumb, forefinger, and mid finger, lifted it to his eyes, and looked at it.
“These are ashes from the crematory, aren’t they?”
“Ah, well, yes. They are.”
“Were you scattering the ashes?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, but….”
“This is the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens. It’s prohibited to scatter ashes here. This is not a mountain or a river. And what is that stone?”
Reluctantly Takashi picked up the stone and handed it to him. On the stone was inscribed in black letters: “Here lies Fumiko Shimizu. Departed September 10, 2008. Aged 82.”
“What on earth is this? It’s small, but a tomb stone. Are you going to make our botanical gardens your family graveyard? Incredible!”
“I’m sorry, but I have no intention to do such a thing. I just wanted to…”
“No intention? Why then are you scattering the ashes?”
“Sorry, but that was my mother’s will.”
“Your mother’s will?”
“Yes.”
“What a trouble maker! It is prohibited to scatter ashes except on your own property, you know. I have to take you to the office. Come along with me. I’ll keep the bag and the stone.”
Takashi was taken to a pick-up truck. He sat on the front passenger seat. When the truck was heading to the garden office, Takashi heard an announcement:
“Thank you for visiting our botanical gardens. We hope you have enjoyed them. We are closing soon. Please visit the gardens again.”
Then, Auld Lang Syne started up over the speaker. The early November sun was just about to set behind a cluster of trees.

About thirty minutes earlier, Takashi had been sitting on the veranda of a gassho-zukuri farmhouse[2] looking at the Crape myrtle in the front garden. Around 4:40 p.m., a botanical garden employee had come to the house and said, “We are closing now,” and began to close the amado sliding shutters with a rattling noise. After he went away, it became quiet. There was nobody as far as Takashi could see.
Thinking, “The time is opportune,” Takashi stepped over the fence of the Crape myrtle. He put the tiny tombstone near the tree and began to scatter his mother’s ashes around it.

About five minutes later, the truck arrived at the garden office. There were four desks on the right side of the room and a sofa and a table on the left side.
　Finding the curator of the gardens was not in the office, the employee telephoned him.
“Yes, I have confiscated the ashes and the stone. I have brought him to the office. Yes, please. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Ten minutes later, the curator came to the office. Takashi was looking out of the window with his back against the entrance of the office.
Looking at Takashi’s back, the curator said to the employee, “So that’s the man you were talking about on the phone, Nishiyama-san?”
“Yes. These are the bag of ashes and the stone,” Nishiyama pointed his finger at them on the table. Looking at Takashi, he said, “Hey, man, turn around. Here is the curator.”
Takashi hesitated to turn around but was just looking out of the window.
“What an impolite man! Turn around and face the curator. Takashi reluctantly turned around and his eyes met with the curator’s.
The curator was taken aback and said, “Sensei, what a surprise! You are Mr. Shimizu. It’s been ages since I saw you last.” He looked at Nishiyama and said, “Nishiyama-san, this is my teacher in my high school days. He taught me mathematics.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know that. I am sorry,” Nishiyama said bowing his head lightly to Takashi. “You should have told me that you were his teacher.”
“That’s all right. It is I that should apologize,” Takashi said.
The curator said to Takashi, “I am glad to meet you, Sensei. Please sit down. Ah, Nishiyama-san, thank you for the trouble. I’ll handle the matter. So, why don’t you continue the dry flower campaign program? We are behind the work schedule, you know.”
Nishiyama went to one of the desks, switched on the computer, and began to work.
Sitting on the sofa, the curator said, “You haven’t changed at all, Mr. Shimizu. You look great.”
“No, I have become a white-haired old man. So, how old are you now?”
“Fifty. If I remember correctly, you are ten years older than I.”
“Right. I am sixty, and next March I am going to retire.”
“But you don’t look as old as sixty. Look at my bald head. Probably I look older than you, Mr. Shimizu,” the curator chuckled. “So, what has brought you here? I heard you were scattering ashes and put a tombstone on the premise.”
“Yes, I feel ashamed of myself. I am sorry. I knew you were the curator of the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens. I could have asked you, but it would have troubled you. I didn’t want to put you to any trouble. So, I decided to do it by myself, but was caught in the act by the…,” Takashi quickly glanced around at Nishiyama, who momentarily stopped typing the keys.
“I am happy to help you in any way I can, Sensei, but scattering ashes is, as you know, prohibited. Why were you scattering ashes?”
“That’s my mother’s will. While she was alive, she wanted me to scatter her ashes by the side of the Crape myrtle in the garden of the gassho-zukuri farmhouse.”
“But why by the side of the Crape myrtle?”
“Well, it’s a long story. My mother was 82 when she died. She had lived in Shirakawa-mura Village since she was born. You know gassho-zukuri farmhouses in Shirakawa-mura?”
“Yes, I’ve visited the village twice.”
“Three years ago, her husband died.”
“You mean your father?”
“Yes, my father died three years ago, and so she began to live alone in her gassho-zukuri. I was worried about her living alone, so I suggested to her to come to Nagoya and live with my family at my condominium. But she refused. She earnestly wanted to continue to live in the gassho-zukuri. I can understand her feelings.”
“Yes, I understand. Your mother lived in her gassho-zukuri for so many years and it’s quite a change to live in a condominium in such a large city as Nagoya.”
“Yes, that’s true, but about a year ago she tumbled over the edge of a tatami mat and broke her leg. So, I hospitalized her in Nagoya.”
The sky became dark and it began to shower. The rain hit the windows hard. The wind brought wet soil smell into the room through the open windows. Nishiyama stood up and began to close the windows. Takashi and the curator halted the conversation temporally and their eyes followed him as he shut the windows one by one. The tall trees were bending toward the same direction heavily dripping. Nishiyama closed all the windows and sat at his desk.
Takashi said to the curator, “Where did I leave off?”
The curator said, “Your mother was hospitalized in Nagoya.”
“Yes. So, after three months’ stay in the hospital, my mother left the hospital and began to live in my apartment though she insisted to live in Shirakawa Village. I told her that she might again injure herself or become seriously ill living alone in the village. She reluctantly consented to living in Nagoya. But, you see, she didn’t easily get accustomed to life in Nagoya. I felt sorry for her that she had to give up life in Shirakawa Village after living there for eighty years. But, I had no choice. It was impossible for my family to move to Shirakawa Village.”
The curator said with a sigh, “I understand. My mother is living in Toyama alone. She is 76 years old.”
“Really? You’ll have to think about taking your mother under your care some day in the future. Anyway, after my mother had her leg cured completely and began to walk by herself, she wanted to go back to Shirakawa Village and live in the gassho-zukuri farmhouse. She hated life in Nagoya. She hated an apartment life, and the pollluted air, and the noise in Nagoya. She missed the clean air full of ozone, birds, and quiet atmosphere. Almost every day she said she would like to return to her gassho-zukuri. My wife and I were at a loss what to do with her. Then, one day, my wife hit on a good idea. She remembered that there was a gassho-zukiri farmhouse in Higashiyama Botanical Gardens. She suggested that we take her there.”
The gassho-zukuri farmhouse in the Higashiyama Botanical Gardens was relocated from Shirakawa-mura Village in 1956 so that the visitors of the gardens could enter and appreciate the traditional thatched farmhouse. Many people, mostly middle-aged, visit the gasso-zukuri, look around it, and take a rest sitting at the veranda commanding the beautiful scenery of Nagaike Pond in front of the farmhouse.
“So, one fine warm day we took her to the gassho-zukuri. When she saw the roof of the farmhouse above the thick trees from a distance, she thought she was dreaming. Coming near the house, she became so happy and overwhelmed that tears stood in her eyes. Her delighted tears touched my heart. I felt sympathy for her. Gassho-zukuri was her life. She had missed them very much. I wished I could let her live in Shirakawa-mura Village.”
Takashi’s voice became feeble and his eyes seemed to be moist with tears. The curator was listening to Takashi’s story attentively. Nishiyama stopped typing and glanced at Takashi.
Takashi continued, “But, you know, I can’t let her live alone in Shirakawa Village. It can’t be helped. This is the tragedy of nuclear families. As you know, gassho-zukuri is a symbol of a big family. So, it’s a 180 degree change. Since then, my wife and I began to take her to the gassho-zukuri farmhouse as often as possible. At least once a month. It was the best I could do to her.”
“If I had known you were visiting here so often, I could have been of some help, Sensei.”
“Yes, I know, but you have a lot of things to do as the head of the gardens. Anyway, she loved coming to the gassho-zukuri. Whenever we came here, her otherwise tense countenance turned soft and relaxed. Her voice became peaceful and cheerful. I think every cell in her body revived here. The air here is good; birds are singing; and there are many trees and beautiful flowers. Everything soothed her. She felt at home here.”
Takashi momentarily stopped talking and looked out of the window. The rain had stopped. It had grown dark. Dark tree tops were swaying in the breeze. The hands of the clock on the wall pointed to six o’clock. All the visitors to the botanical gardens had left.
“The rain has stopped,” Takashi said to the curator.
“Yes, the trees have been washed and refreshed,” the curator said looking at the top of the tree silhouettes.
Then he turned to Takashi and continued, “So your mother felt at home here. That’s very nice. The mere sight of the gassho-zukuri farmhouse comforted her. I understand her feelings.”
“But, you see, soon, my mother began to get senile, and was not able to distinguish the gassho-zukuri here and the one she lived in in Shirakawa-mura. She began to regard the gassho-zukuri here as her own house. Coincidentally, there was a big Crape myrtle in front of the gassho-zukuri in her home village just like there is one in front of the gassho-zukuri here. My mother brought a young Crape myrtle when she married my father. They planted it in front of their house. She married at the age of 20. So she lived with the tree for about sixty years. Whenever she looked at the crape myrtle in front of the gassho-zukuri here, she would talk about the day when she and her husband planted and watered it.”
Takashi abruptly stopped talking and asked, “Oh, is it all right for me to keep talking? You must be busy, aren’t you?”
“No. You don’t have to worry. I’ve finished today’s work. I have no meetings today.”
The curator turned to Nishiyama and said, “Nishiyama-san, please bring some tea. I’m sorry, Shimizu Sensei. I haven’t served tea yet.”
“Oh, okamainaku that’s all right,” Takashi said. Nishiyama stood up and went to an adjoining kitchen.
The curator said, “So, your parents planted the Crape myrtle and watered it.”
“Ah, yes. My mother often told me that she and my father would often talk over a cup of tea sitting on the veranda looking at the tree full of beautiful pink flowers. One day when we visited the gassho-zukuri here, she said to me looking at the tree, ‘This tree reminds me of To-chan, my husband. When I see the tree, I can see his face, and hear his voice. This tree is To-chan.’ I guess, this is a symptom of her auditory and visual hallucinations. Anyway, the tree and my father were one for her.”
Listening to Takashi talking, the curator was thinking of his mother. She was living alone in Toyama, but she might some day get senile. What would he do if she began to get senile, he wondered.
“You are thinking about your mother, aren’t you? How’s she doing?”
“She is doing fine, but…. Sensei, you can understand what I am thinking about?”
“Yes, your face tells me what you are thinking about. It’s my profession to guess what a student is thinking about.”
“That’s great.”
Nishiyama came back with two cups of tea on a tray, and put them on the table beside the bag of ashes, and returned to his desk.
“Thank you, Nishiyama-san. Sensei, please help yourself.”
“Thank you,” Takashi said, and picked up the cup and sipped some tea.
“So what happened to your mother?” asked the curator, sipping the tea, too.
“Then comes her will. She told me to scatter her ashes around the Crape myrtle here so that she could be with her husband again. I understand her. She believed that the tree was her husband. When she was saying this, her eyes were serious. About a week ago, her 49th day hoji, Buddhist memorial service, was held. And I have brought her ashes today. Well, that’s about all. Thank you for listening to my tedious talk.”
“Not at all. It might be my own problem sooner or later,” the curator said. He then looked at the table and asked, “May I look at the stone?”
“Of course.”
The curator picked up the tombstone and looked at the inscribed letters.
“So, this is the tombstone, Sensei?”
“Yes, I brought it from the garden of the gass-hozukuri in Shirakawa-mura Village. I wanted to put it beside the Crape myrtle. I was planning to bury two thirds of the tombstone in the ground so that it would not catch the garden visiors’ attention while they were looking at the tree.”
It became dark outside. The wind had stopped blowing and the dark leaves of the trees were motionless. No birds were heard.
“To tell you the truth,” Takashi continued. “I was wondering what to do with the ashes. Should I obey the will of my mother and scatter her ashes around the Crape myrtle here? Or, should I just follow the traditional way? That is, to put her ashes in the Shimizu Family’s tomb in Shirakawa-mura? I remembered her serious eyes when she asked me about her ashes. In the end, I decided to divide the ashes into two parts. I would put one half in the family tomb and scatter the other half around the Crape myrtle here.”
“I see. I am sorry to say, but as you know, these botanical gardens belong to Nagoya City and are not private property,” the curator said. “I hear that scattering ashes in a private land or in the sea or rivers is legally allowed. I want to do anything you ask of me, but I am sorry I can’t help you this time.”
Takashi said, “I know you can’t help me in this. That’s why I was scattering the ashes without your permission. I didn’t want to involve you. It would have caused you a lot of trouble. I am sorry it worked out this way. You see, a teacher is supposed to be a good citizen, but I was doing an illegal act. I feel ashamed of myself. I have to thank the man over there,” Takashi turned and glanced at Nishiyama, who looked up from the key board and glanced back at Takashi, too.
Takashi continued, “Now, I understand what I was doing. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have listened to my feebleminded mother. I will put all her ashes in the grave in Shirakawa-mura Village. These days, I tend to do things in a self-satisfying way. I am afraid I have become a little week-headed due to my old age,” Takashi said wryly. “Sorry to have troubled you. Thank you for sparing your time for me.”
In the bottom of his heart, however, Takashi still wanted to fulfill his mother’s last wish. Her eyes were truly serious, he remembered. If there were any way to meet her wish without troubling the curator or anybody, he would do it. Yet, since he apologized for what he had been doing, he couldn’t do it again. If he should try it the next time, it would bring disgrace to the curator and to himself. After all he was just about to retire. And it would be a big embarrassment for him if his illegal act was made public.
“I am sorry not being able to help you, Sensei. Here are the bag and the tombstone,” the curator picked them up and handed them to Takashi. “Please visit me anytime. You are always welcome.”
“Thank you for all the troubles. Well, see you again. I’ve had a good time talking with you.”
“Oh, please wait a moment,” the curator said. “We are going to offer tulip bulbs to the first 500 visitors tomorrow. They will bear beautiful big tulip flowers.”
The curator asked Nishiyama to fetch some bulbs. Nishiyama stood up and disappeared to the next room.
The curator said to Takashi, “I belonged to the gardening club in my high school days, do you remember? The members took care of the flowerbeds and grew a lot of beautiful flowers. That was the beginning of my interest in botany.”
Takashi said that the gardening club had always presented one of the best exhibitions in the school festival.
Soon, Nishiyama brought a bag of tulip bulbs and gave it to Takashi.
“Thank you. My wife likes tulips,” Takashi said and, looking around the table, remembered having left his knapsack on the bench in front of the gassho-zukuri.
“Oops, I have forgotten my knapsack.”
“Really? Where did you put it?” the curator asked.
“Probably, on the bench in front of the gassho-zukuri”
“All right, then, Nishiyama-san, please take Mr. Shimizu to the gassho-zukuri in the truck.”
“Certainly,” Nishiyama answered.
“I am sorry to trouble you so often, Nishiyama-san,” Takashi said bowing his head.
Takashi said to the curator, “Well, then, good-bye now. See you soon.”
“Good-bye, please take care of yourself.”
Takashi and Nishiyama rode on the truck and headed for the gassho-zukuri. An eerie darkness surrounded them. The headlights of the car lit the narrow wet road. Nothing was heard except the noise of the truck.
“Nishiyama-san, thank you for troubling yourself,” Takashi said.
“That’s all right. I am sorry for my rude behavior. I didn’t know you were the curator’s former teacher,” Nishiyama said. They were silent for a while.
Then, Nishiyama said as if he had remembered something important, “Actually, my mother’s name is Fumiko, too. I was surprised when I read the inscription on the tombstone. It’s an unbelievable coincidence. Fu-mi-ko, the same three Chinese characters. Fu, Wealth; Mi, Beauty; and Ko, Child. She is 82 years old. She lives with me, but has become very feeble these days.”
“Oh, the same Fumiko kanji characters? It really is a coincidence. It’s good that your mother is still healthy and alive at the age of 82. My mother died when she was 82.”
“Yes, I know, the inscription said so. Well, Shimizu-san, to tell you the truth, I was eavesdropping on your conversation with the curator. Your story about your mother sounded like my mother’s. I’m sorry for eavesdropping.”
“That’s all right.”
The truck passed Okuike Pond, and then a watermill, and finally reached the gassho-zukuri. Nishiyama turned off the engine. All of a sudden weird darkness and silence spread around them. Insects were heard chirping. Before getting out of the truck, Nishiyama took a flashlight from the box at the driver’s seat, and turned it on. He lit the path to the gassho-zukuri, and Takashi followed him. They came to the bench. Nishiyama put the light on the bench, where there was a knapsack. It looked wet and glared in the light.
“Shimizu-san, it’s on the bench.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” Takashi went to the bench and picked it up.
After a moment’s pause, Nishiyama said in a hesitating manner, “It may sound rude, but may I ask a question about the ashes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Are you really going to give up scattering the ashes?”
“Yes, but why?”
“I guess you still want to scatter them around the tree.”
“Well,…yes, actually, I do want to do so, but, you know, it can’t be helped.”
“Then, I will help you. It’s dark and nobody is around here. Please follow me.”
Saying this, Nishiyama went to the Crape myrtle and stepped over the fence and lit the ground by the tree.

The End

[1] Japanese sarusuberi-no-ki(百日紅)
[2] a traditional Japanese farmhouse with a steeply peaked thatched roof that resembles a face-down half opened book. Such houses are very rare even in rural areas today. You can see them in Shirakawa-mura Village in Gifu Prefecture, a World Heritage site.