Death by Water E-Book

Kenzaburô Ôe

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE An astonishing interweaving of myth, fantasy, history and autobiography, Kenzaburo Oe's Death by Water is the shimmering masterpiece of a Nobel Prize-winning author. For the first time in his long life, Nobel-laureate Kogito Choko is suffering from writer's block. The book that he wishes to write would examine the turbulent relationship he had with his father, and the guilt he feels about being absent the night his father drowned in a storm-swollen river; but how to write about a man he never really knew? When his estranged sister unexpectedly calls, she offers Choko a remedy - she has in her possession an old and mysterious red trunk, the contents of which promise to unlock the many secrets of the man who disappeared from their lives decades before.

Leseprobe

Contents

PART ONE

The Drowning Novel

Prologue: The Joke

Chapter 1: Enter the Caveman Group

Chapter 2: The Rehearsal

Chapter 3: The Red Leather Trunk

Chapter 4: Joke Accompli

Chapter 5: The Big Vertigo

PART TWO

Women Ascendant

Chapter 6: Tossing the Dead Dogs

Chapter 7: The Aftermath Continues

Chapter 8: Gishi-Gishi/Mr. Rhubarb

Chapter 9: Late Work

Chapter 10: A Memory . . . or the Coda to a Dream

Chapter 11: But Why The Golden Bough?

PART THREE

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

Chapter 12: All About Kogii

Chapter 13: The Macbeth Matter

Chapter 14: Everything That Happens Is Fodder for Drama

Chapter 15: Death by Rain

PART ONE

The Drowning Novel

Prologue

The Joke

1

The year I went off to university in Tokyo, something fateful happened when I returned home to Shikoku for one of the last in a series of traditional Buddhist services for my father. (He had died prematurely, nearly a decade earlier.) For the first time in ages our rambling farmhouse was overflowing with assorted friends and relations, and among the guests was an uncle of mine whose eldest daughter had recently been married to a government official, a graduate of Tokyo University’s prestigious law school.

“So,” this uncle said to me, “you managed to get into that university. Great news, but what’s your major?”

When I replied that I was studying literature, he made no attempt to hide his disappointment.

“In that case,” he said glumly, “you probably can’t expect to find a decent job after you leave school, can you?”

Then my mother, who was usually rather reserved in social situations, came out with a totally unexpected suggestion. Her words threw me into a state of confusion, for until then I had aspired to nothing more ambitious than becoming a French literature scholar.

“Well,” she said, “if he can’t find a regular job, then he’ll most likely become a novelist!” This pronouncement was greeted with stunned silence, but the tension was quickly dispelled by my mother’s next remark. “In fact,” she went on, “there’s more than enough raw material for a novel in the red leather trunk alone!” That made everybody laugh.

All the old families in the region (even if they didn’t have an illustrious history or any success in business to boast about) had their own unique legends and traditions, which were passed down from generation to generation. Time and again anecdotes that struck people as funny or strange would resurface as perennially popular in-jokes, though they would have been meaningless to visitors from the outside world. The red leather trunk was a small part of my clan’s proprietary strange and funny lore.

My mother’s startling words—“Then he’ll most likely become a novelist!”—put down deep, spreading roots inside me, and the fact that my close family members had found that notion so amusing simply added to its power.

During the three years that followed I still didn’t have a clear idea of what my chosen path would be, but I did try my hand at writing some short stories. To my surprise, one of those early efforts was published in Tokyo University’s campus newspaper, and as a result of that success I felt ready to embark on a career as a novelist right out of the gate. In a sense, then, my mother’s offhanded quip ended up steering me toward my destiny.

In the tale I’m about to relate, my mother’s “joke” will make an encore appearance in a way that is more tragic than comical, but we’ll get to that part of the story in due time.

2

For the past several years my wife, Chikashi, has been exchanging occasional greetings with my younger sister, Asa, on my behalf. As a rule, my sister would just leave me an occasional message, so it seemed unusual when she called our house in Tokyo one day and asked specifically to speak to me.

“It’s been ten years since Mother died,” she began, “and in accordance with her will—well, it’s really just an assortment of notes she dictated to me, so I don’t know whether it would even hold up in court—but anyhow, I promised to hand over the red leather trunk to you this year. If we wait till the actual anniversary of her death on December fifth I’ll be busy with other obligations, and when summer rolls around I was thinking that instead of heading to Kita-Karuizawa as usual, you might want to come back to Shikoku and pick up the trunk. You haven’t forgotten about it, have you? I mean, it’s not as if you’re too busy to get away; these days you seem to have all but abandoned your fiction and the only thing you’re doing, as far as I can tell, is eking out one column a month for a newspaper.”

“That’s correct,” I said, ignoring the sisterly gibe. “And of course I haven’t forgotten. Mother was worried that if I got hold of the items she kept in the red leather trunk, I might be able to resume work on the novel about Father’s drowning I’d started writing ages ago. That was her reason for instituting a ten-year moratorium—or was the cooling-off period your idea?”

“No, that was Mother, all the way. Her eyesight was failing and it was difficult for her to write, but her mind was still as sharp as ever. I think she figured you probably wouldn’t outlive her by ten years, since the men in our family aren’t exactly known for their longevity. Anyhow,” Asa went on, “when I mentioned I’ll be extra busy at the end of the year, it’s because I’ve gotten involved in a drama project with some young people—you may have heard that I’ve been in touch with Chikashi regarding their use of a number of your early books. Speaking of which, I’ve been letting the theater troupe use the Forest House—with Chikashi’s permission, of course—and their presence has really breathed new life into the place. Don’t worry; they’re very conscientious about always leaving everything in perfect order. But anyhow, as I was saying, if you’ll be coming down here to take a look at the contents of the red leather trunk, why don’t you plan to stick around for a while?”

Ah, the red leather trunk and the drowning novel (that was how I always thought of it). After my telephone conversation with Asa I felt an exhilarating resurgence of my enthusiasm for novel writing. While the sun was still high in the sky I withdrew to my study, which also doubled as a bedroom. I drew the curtains, then stretched out on the narrow bed to contemplate this intriguing new development.

When I was a young writer I had been mocked and criticized by people who said things like “Because he started writing while he was a college student, this novelist lacks the necessary life experience, and he will probably hit a brick wall before too long. Or maybe he’s planning to be like other writers of his generation and try to earn his stripes with a dramatic change in direction, such as becoming a war correspondent or some such.” Nonetheless, I never wavered. I knew that when the time was ripe I would write a definitive novel about my father. In the meantime, I told myself, I’ll be accumulating the necessary skills.

I imagined sometimes that I would begin to write the tale as “I” and would then just go with the flow of the narrative, bobbing along on the currents of memory. But, I fretted secretly, what if the novelist himself ended up being sucked into the whirlpool in a single gulp when he was finished telling his story?

The fact is, even back in the days when I hadn’t yet read a single serious work of fiction all the way through, I used to see a pivotal scene from the drowning novel in my dreams, night after night. The basis for the recurrent dream was something I actually experienced when I was ten years old. Then, at twenty, I happened upon the phrase “death by water”—in other words, drowning—in a poem by T. S. Eliot that I first read in the original English (the French translation was given alongside as well). And although I hadn’t tried putting my experience down on paper, even as a short story, I felt as if the novel already existed, fully formed, in my head.

So why didn’t I go ahead and start to draft the book? Because I realized clearly that I didn’t possess the literary finesse to pull it off. But even while I was floundering around, not at all certain that I would be able to survive as a young novelist, I remained essentially optimistic. Someday, I vowed, I will write the drowning novel.

There were times when I felt it might have been better to tackle that project sooner rather than later, but I always managed to suppress those urges by telling myself the moment still wasn’t right. I needed to pay my dues by struggling, and suffering, and striving to overcome all the character-building difficulties I would encounter while writing the other books I was meant to produce first, for practice. If I could escape so easily into writing the drowning novel, then what would be the point of the struggle?

3

Nevertheless, I did make a stab at writing the drowning novel, just once, when I was in my midthirties. I had already published The Silent Cry, which seemed to prove that I had attained a certain degree of proficiency, and that accomplishment gave me the confidence to dive in at last.

I dashed off a rough prologue and sent it along with a number of related notes to my sixtysomething mother, who was still living in the forests of Shikoku where I grew up. I enclosed a letter saying that in order to continue working on this book, which would focus on my father, I would like to take a look at his papers and whatever else was stored in the red leather trunk (an exotic piece of luggage that had been in our family since before I was born). However, I didn’t receive a direct reply from my mother, even though she had been saying all along that the raw materials for the novel in question were in the trunk. Nor did she ever return the rough draft of the prologue or any of the other notes I had sent.

Unable to proceed, I had no choice but to abandon the project. However, in the summer of the following year, fueled by unabated anger at my mother, I published The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away. The main characters in that novella were grotesquely exaggerated versions of myself and my father, and it also included what some critics perceived as a merciless caricature of my mother (although others lauded the character as a solitary voice of reason).

Not long after, I received a postcard from my sister, Asa, who was still living at home. “Lately Mother has been criticizing you in terms even more scathing than the deliberately spiteful and alienating words you used to describe her at the end of your nasty little book,” she wrote. Asa’s message concluded by announcing that she and our mother had decided to sever all relations with Kogii (my childhood nickname), effective immediately. I was, she said, disowned.

4

Some years before the publication of that novella, my son, Akari, had been born with a defect in his skull, and eventually this ongoing real-life crisis helped to restore my relationship with my mother. Everyone’s shared concern about Akari—who, amazingly, survived and overcame his obstacles—seemed to serve as a kind of intermediary buffer. The lines of communication between Chikashi and the Shikoku contingent were reopened, and we all began the long, slow process of easing back into an amicable family relationship.

However, until the day she died at the age of ninety-five, my mother never said a word about the prologue and notes for my drowning novel, or about the red leather trunk. I did hear that she used to reminisce to my sister, saying things like “When Kogii was a young boy here in the village he wasn’t very well-adjusted, and because I tried to interfere, his character may have ended up being irreparably damaged,” so perhaps she was just determined not to repeat the mistakes she thought she had made in my upbringing. Not only that, but before she passed away she even went to the trouble of planning ten years into the future!

5

Setbacks notwithstanding, I never doubted that I would eventually write the drowning novel. If you were to ask whether there were times when I found myself thinking about the stalled project, I would have to acknowledge that there were. (One example that springs to mind is when I was living alone in a foreign country, while another occurred just after I had learned of the death of someone for whom I felt great respect and affection.) But I was never inspired to jot down any new ideas, much less to pick up where I’d left off.

However, after Asa informed me that it was finally time for me to take possession of the red leather trunk, I suddenly found myself unable to think about anything except resuming work on the drowning novel—an undertaking that had been in limbo for what seemed like an eternity. Even amid those feelings of excited anticipation, though, it struck me that on some level I had been gearing up all along to tackle the project again. I was certain everything I needed was in the red leather trunk Asa was about to hand over to me: the materials my mother had preserved for so many years, along with the rough prologue and assorted scribbles I had mailed to her nearly half a century earlier and hadn’t laid eyes on since. As for the literary skills I would need in order to complete this challenging book, surely I had acquired the necessary tools during my decades of actively practicing the craft. But that encouraging thought was overlaid with a poignant sense that my life as a novelist might soon be approaching its end.

6

At long last I was ready to plunge headfirst into the drowning novel, and in order to do that I needed to pick up the red leather trunk. Then something happened—something very odd and unexpected—that made the idea of a trip to Shikoku seem considerably more appealing.

My house in Tokyo sits on a hill at the far end of the Musashino Plain. If you descend the western slope of the incline, you will see that a large area, originally nothing more than swampland, has been extensively developed around a canal-like waterway. A cycling path was built for the use of the residents of the towering apartment blocks that have gone up one after another, but it is also open to the public.

One day while I was walking on the path with my disabled son, I happened to run into an entirely unexpected individual . . . . That line was part of the opening scene of a novel I wrote soon after turning seventy. If I were to write again now that I made a new friend while strolling along the same cycling path, people would probably say with pitying smiles, “Oh, look, the poor old thing is plagiarizing himself—again!” But the simple truth is that for an elderly person like me who lives a somewhat reclusive life, there simply aren’t very many locations where chance encounters with the outside world can take place.

It was a morning in early summer. I set out alone for a walk, leaving Akari at home. In recent years my son’s physical decline had advanced to the point where any kind of sustained exertion had become an ordeal for him, and he required increasingly large doses of medicine to keep his epileptic seizures under control.

As I was ambling along I heard the sound of light footsteps behind me, beating out an even rhythm on the pavement, and a moment later someone overtook me and swiftly passed on by. I saw then that it was a diminutive young woman; her long black hair had been lightened to a deep brown hue, and she wore it pulled back in a single ponytail. She was dressed in a beige shirt and matching chinos, and there wasn’t a single wrinkle in the soft, thin, lustrous fabric of her slacks. They fit her like a glove, and the contours of her lower body were plainly visible. Her thighs appeared to be shapely and sturdy without being excessively muscular, and above them the sinewy curves of her small buttocks undulated lithely as she walked. While I was still observing her retreating figure, the girl quickly left me in the dust and vanished from sight.

As I continued at my usual leisurely pace, I spotted the girl up ahead doing stretches or calisthenics in a small landscaped area equipped with benches, iron bars, and other fitness equipment. She would gently extend one leg in front of her, lower her hips, and hold that stance for several seconds. Then she would change legs and repeat. When the girl had overtaken me earlier I’d caught a glimpse of an attractively round face, but seen now in profile as I passed the little plaza she looked more like a lovely, ivory-skinned demoness—in Japanese mythological terms, a hannya. (I once read a theory that Japanese beauties can be divided into two categories: moonfaced, plump-cheeked Otafuku types, named after the bawdy goddess of the underworld, and foxy-looking, angular-featured female demons.)

Meanwhile, the sound of rushing water in the canal had grown louder. This was because the current was stronger along here; also, the framework supporting the steel train bridge—the Odakyu Line passed directly overhead—formed a canopy over the canal and magnified the sound. My eyes were drawn to the surface of the water, where something rather interesting was going on. As I trundled along in a distracted state, staring into the canal, I suddenly collided with a lamppost that had loomed up unnoticed in front of me and I hit my head—hard! (How hard? Well, the resulting hematoma stretched from the right side of my head to the corner of my eye and was still plainly visible four or five days after the accident.)

Just as the world went dark and I was on the verge of toppling over, I was caught from behind in someone’s solid yet supple embrace. Two strong arms encircled me, and the next thing I knew I was perched on what seemed to be a sort of spindle-shaped platform. My perch felt strangely warm and alive, though, and I soon deduced that it was a human thigh. I also became aware that my back was resting against a soft female chest. I somehow managed to struggle to my feet, and clinging to the lamppost I had crashed into a moment earlier, I tried to catch my breath. All the while, I could hear myself groaning out loud.

“Sensei, please sit down on my lap again,” the girl in the chino pants said in a calm, measured tone and obediently, just like that, this vertiginous old man resumed his previous position. Nevertheless, after a few minutes had passed—it was about the same amount of time it took for Akari to recover from a medium-severe seizure—I once again hoisted my body off the girl’s thigh, which had grown noticeably warmer and was now soaked with perspiration.

As I was trying to express my gratitude the girl said politely, “Excuse me for asking, but does this kind of thing happen often?”

“No, not at all.”

“That’s good, because if it were a frequent occurrence it would be cause for worry.”

The girl had the sort of relaxed, easygoing attitude you would expect from someone in her thirties, and she was smiling as she spoke. (I suppose she was a young woman, technically, but she seemed like a girl to me.) Even while I was grimacing with pain, I felt the need to explain the confluence of circumstances that I thought, on brief reflection, had caused my bizarre accident.

“It’s rather dark in this particular spot because the Odakyu Line passes overhead,” I began, “and also this lamppost has a device in the base to turn it on automatically, so the lower part is quite wide while the upper section is oddly attenuated, and I simply didn’t see it. On top of that, my attention was distracted by a sloshing sound in the canal and I was trying to see what was going on. I think the fish have moved to the other shore now—you can still see them splashing around over there—but anyway, four or five splendid-looking male carp were tussling with each other, vying for the favor of one lone female. It must be spawning season for koi. Where I come from you never see such big carp swimming together in a group, and I was momentarily mesmerized by the unusual sight. The next thing I knew, I was about to crash into the pole. In my youth, when my reflexes were sharper, I probably could have made a quick course correction and avoided the collision, but . . .”

“I see,” said the girl, barely suppressing a giggle. “Thank you for the explanation. I guess that kind of precision and attention to detail must come in handy in your line of work.”

“The most outlandish thing is that the whole time I was trying to piece it all together, I was sitting on the knee of a young woman I’ve never even met! By the way, please excuse me for not being able to stay on my feet,” I added, “but the pain was simply too much to bear. I really can’t thank you enough for your assistance.”

“It’s a good thing the pole didn’t smack you in the temple,” the girl said. “But it looks as though the blood is still spreading under the skin at the edge of your forehead. You should hurry home and put some ice on it right away.”

As I headed toward the bridge over the canal, which was my customary turnaround point, the girl began walking with me, slowing her pace to match mine. That was when it finally dawned on me that this was not some fortuitous chance encounter at all. After the girl had first passed me without a backward glance, she had probably managed to confirm my identity when I passed the small fitness plaza and had followed me from there with the intention of talking to me about something; that’s how she happened to be nearby when I collided with the lamppost. She was planning to use the serendipitous rescue as an excuse for continuing our conversation.

“I’m sorry,” she was saying now. “I should have introduced myself earlier.” Watching my expression, which clearly conveyed, Well, there were extenuating circumstances—I mean, I banged my head on a pole and had to sit on your lap! the girl went on: “I’m from Masao Anai’s group, the Caveman Group, and I’ve heard that Masao has been acquainted with you, at least in passing, for many years. Incidentally, our group was given its name by your late brother-in-law, Goro Hanawa. Anyway, when Masao first started the theater company I gather he wrote you a letter, asking for permission to dramatize your early works, and you kindly agreed. After that, his stage version of The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away had a successful run and won an award, which was a huge career boost for our troupe. So we decided to move the Caveman Group’s headquarters to Matsuyama, and now we’re busy with a plan to dramatize more of your work. Your sister, Asa, has been unbelievably helpful, and we’ll be indebted to her forever. I was lucky enough to appear in the production of The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, and on the program where it credits ‘Unaiko’? That’s me!”

“In that case,” I said, “I did hear something about this from Asa, by way of my wife.”

“Actually, Sensei, I’ve been thinking for the longest time that I would like to meet you someday, if I ever had the chance. I needed to come to Tokyo this week on other business, so I decided to seize the moment. When I asked Asa how I should handle it, she said rather than setting up a formal appointment—she explained that you always found that sort of thing bothersome and added that your advancing age was a factor as well—anyway, she suggested that I should try to engineer an ‘accidental’ encounter, as if by coincidence. She said you often go walking on a nearby cycling path, and she suggested simply lying in wait and ambushing you, as she put it. (She’s so funny.) She even called your wife to find out what time you were likely to be here. But then the very first time I ventured out here—and I don’t know whether this was good luck, or . . .” Again, she choked back a little burst of laughter before continuing: “I mean, it was rotten luck for you, but even so, to be honest, it was really very fortunate for me that you happened to bump into the pole.”

My usual exercise course followed a road (paved with a soft, resilient mixture of red and black sand) along the opposite shore, then brought me back to my starting point. The girl followed along, chattering as we walked. There was one rapidly swelling knot between my ear and my eyebrow, and another on my forehead. Both lumps were throbbing and my entire body seemed to be engulfed in a rapidly rising fever, so I assumed the role of passive listener and hardly said a word.

“The truth is,” Unaiko began, “I heard from Asa that you’re planning to go home this summer after a long absence. I gather you’ll be staying in the Forest House, so Asa wanted to give the place a thorough cleaning well in advance. She asked whether the younger members of our troupe—the Caveman Group—might be willing to lend a hand, and of course we happily agreed. But anyway, while we were all working together, we got to hear about the reason for your return. Apparently Asa has been holding on to a certain red leather trunk your mother left in her custody before she passed away, and since this year is the tenth anniversary of your mother’s death, that trunk can now be given to you. Also, Asa said you would most likely pick up where you left off on a book you started many years ago, and that you’d be making use of the stuff in that trunk. She spoke of the book as the ‘drowning novel,’ and I gathered that it begins with an account of what happened one night when the river near your village overflowed its banks.

“Since you’ll be coming home in any case, Asa said she thought you would also do some research for your book around the area—location scouting, as the filmmakers say. She also mentioned that since Masao Anai knows all your work by heart and is in the process of writing a play based on some of your books, he could lend a hand with your research, and vice versa. And she suggested that the other members of our troupe might be able to help out, too, not just with cleaning and other chores but with brain-powered tasks as well. Masao is a different story, of course—he’s supersmart—but I have to wonder whether the rest of us would be very useful with brainwork.” (Even while she was issuing this faux-modest disclaimer, the girl looked as though she had absolute confidence in her own abilities.) “In any case, we were overjoyed at the prospect of getting to work with you and hopefully being able to help. But you’ve probably heard about this already, from Asa?”

“Yes,” I said, “I have spoken with Asa about spending some time in the Forest House, to sort through some things she’s been hanging on to for all these years—a prologue I drafted, and some notes, plus some odds and ends having to do with my father. We did discuss the possibility of ‘location scouting’ for the drowning novel on and around the river. And yes, I have heard her mention the Caveman Group.”

The girl looked thoughtful. “Before I left, Masao kept saying things like ‘Listen, Unaiko, on the chance you manage to meet up with Mr. Choko in Tokyo, make sure you don’t come on too strong. If you do, he may just dig in his heels and refuse to budge.’ Masao knows me pretty well, and I guess he was worried I might mess things up by being overly aggressive. But I was only thinking I’d like to have a chance to tell you in person that all of us in the Caveman Group are wishing and hoping your visit will come to pass.” And then she added in a burst of candor, “Please forgive me for saying this again, but I can’t help feeling what happened at the lamppost was a wonderful stroke of luck, at least for me, because it gave us a chance to talk like this, face-to-face.”

We had come to a halt in front of a horizontal steel pipe that served as a barrier to keep vehicles out, at the juncture where the cycling path intersects a busy city street. This was where I would normally start trudging homeward, up the slope. The bumps beside my ear and on my forehead had continued to swell, and as I was pressing on them gingerly with the fingers of one hand, I ventured another explanation.

“This walking course goes along both banks of the canal, and the two sides are joined by a bridge. Needless to say, depending on the person, it could also be used as a running or jogging course. But if you’re going to have an accidental encounter, the options are limited: you can bump into another person who’s approaching from the front, or you can pass someone, or you can be overtaken from behind. If you had come toward me from the opposite direction and it had been obvious you were targeting me, I would probably have passed by without a word even if you had called out a greeting. On the other hand, when someone creeps up from behind there’s even more of a feeling of pressure, and I wouldn’t have been likely to respond in a friendly way in that case, either. I agree that my collision with the lamppost must have had some deeper significance because I, too, am glad we’ve had this chance to talk. Well then, this is where I take my leave. Please tell Asa to give me a call.”

At that, I started to walk toward the uphill road that led to my house. But instead of taking the social cue and saying good-bye, the girl asked me a question. She seemed suddenly preoccupied, and a subtle change in her facial expression appeared to reflect some interior reverie.

“This is about something completely different,” she said, “but I heard that your old French literature professor at Tokyo University translated an epic novel from the sixteenth century—is that right? And apparently the book contains an episode about a man who uses a crazed bunch of dogs to create some kind of riot in Paris?”

“That’s right,” I said. “The book you’re referring to is The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais. The first volume of what is, indeed, a monumental novel, is called simply Pantagruel. The title character is one of a race of giants, and in one chapter his favorite retainer, Panurge, plays a prank on an aristocratic lady who rejected his attempts to court her. According to the story, Panurge found a female dog in heat and fed her all sorts of delicacies, presumably to enhance her sexual energy. Then he killed the dog and took a certain, um, something out of her insides. He mashed it up, stuffed the resulting pulp into the pocket of his greatcoat, and off he went. He tracked down the snooty Parisian lady and furtively smeared the substance on her dress: on the sleeves, in the folds of the skirt, and so on. Of course, the aroma attracted a huge crowd of male dogs. They all came running and leaped on the lady, and the result was a very unseemly sort of mayhem. I mean, you can imagine what would happen if ‘more than 600,014’ male dogs—the story gives the exact number—were whipped into a frenzy.”

“If the first dog, the one that was killed, was a female, what on earth did the retainer take out of her, um, insides?”

“Well . . . this is a bit awkward. I mean, it isn’t the sort of word I feel comfortable introducing into a conversation with a young woman I’ve only just met.” I was truly flustered by the question, but at the same time I was also pleasantly reminded of Professor Musumi’s transported expression and exuberant manner of speaking whenever he was illuminating some arcane point for his students. Trying to emulate my late mentor’s happily didactic spirit, I did my best to explain, as delicately as possible, one of the footnotes from my late mentor’s translation of the famous medieval novel.

“It was the uterus of the female dog,” I said. “That organ has been known to scholars since Greek times for its medicinal properties, and I’ve read that medieval sorcerers also used it as an ingredient in magical love potions.”

Without saying another word the girl gave a slight bow, then turned and walked away. I felt curiously refreshed and amused, and I also realized that the request from Unaiko and her colleagues in the Caveman Group had made me much more inclined to act on Asa’s invitation to return to Shikoku, after all these years, and explore the contents of the red leather trunk.

Chapter 1

Enter the Caveman Group

1

Asa picked me up at Matsuyama Airport in her car, and as we drove she shared some local news.

“The young folks from the Caveman Group were delighted to hear you’ll be staying at the Forest House for a while,” she began. “The head of the theater group, Masao Anai, was especially happy and relieved. Apparently when he found out that Unaiko—who, of course, is a very important part of the group—had made an arbitrary decision to go to Tokyo to talk to you directly, he was worried the whole thing might fall apart.

“On another topic, our local officials have been asking what should be done about the commemorative stone that was erected when you won that prize, since in its current location it would interfere with the building of a new road. I discussed the matter with Chikashi, and then relayed her thoughts to the powers that be. As she said, there’s really no need to move the whole thing, and once the stone has been relocated they could go ahead and tear down the pedestal. First, though, we’ll need to salvage the part of the monument that has the words you chose from Mother’s writing, along with your own little poem. While I was planning this it occurred to me that you’ve never even seen the monument in its finished state, so I thought we could go take a look right now—it’s down around Okawara, and we should be there in about an hour or so. Do you want to try to catch a few winks on the way?”

Asa then lapsed into silence and concentrated on piloting the car while I dozed fitfully in the passenger seat. Just as she’d said, it was about an hour later when we stopped the car at a place where the riverbank had been made into a park. Asa mentioned that my mother had planted pomegranates and camellias around the monument but they were gone, having been “tidied up” as part of the construction process. Jutting out of the bare ground was a large round stone that appeared to be a fragment of a meteorite. When I gazed up at the stone—it was a pale, vegetal shade of green, like early-spring onions—I saw that it was inscribed with five spare, calligraphic lines of Japanese characters. Some years earlier I had written those lines with a fountain pen, and the words had been enlarged and then expertly engraved on the stone.

You didn’t get Kogii ready to go up into the forest

And like the river current, you won’t return home.

In Tokyo during the dry season

I’m remembering everything backward,

From old age to earliest childhood.

“It reads better than I’d expected, considering all the fuss it provoked,” I said.

“For some reason the beginning—that is, Mother’s two-line poem—just didn’t sit well with people from the start,” Asa said. “They were complaining it wasn’t a proper haiku, yet it wasn’t a tanka, either. That couldn’t be helped, but the professor who was the adviser for the commemorative-stone committee summoned me to Matsuyama and made no secret of his displeasure. ‘What is this supposed to be, anyhow?’ he asked. ‘A parody of a Misora Hibari song?’

“Needless to say, that got my hackles up. So I told him, in no uncertain terms: ‘The line in the Hibari song is like the flowing of water, while this is like the river current. My mother doesn’t plagiarize!’ Then I went on to explain that the people around these parts speak of being ‘taken by the current’ when someone either drowns in the river or else is saved after being carried downstream in a flood. The people borne away by the current—obviously, the drowned, but even those who are rescued from the rushing waters—always seem to end up leaving the village, so the phrase has become a metaphor for going away and not returning, except maybe to visit once in a blue moon. And there’s the implied dig about certain people who go off to Tokyo to study and then stay there, almost as if the river had carried them away, even though they solemnly promised to return to the village someday . . . well, you know better than anyone that there’s nothing obscure about that. I explained those nuances to the adviser, and when I mentioned that I realized the first line of the poem might be difficult for an outsider to understand, he got all arrogant and defensive (I mean, he’s a university professor, right?) and informed me that he is the author of several scholarly books about the folklore and history of this area. He never did accept my interpretation, but in the end I made sure the stone was carved with the words you sent, exactly as you wrote them.”

Asa took a breath, then continued: “I really have my doubts about whether the professor even understood the first line. I mean, he couldn’t be expected to know that in our house your childhood nickname was Kogii, or that you were sharing your life in those days with a supernatural alter ego who was also called Kogii. Only someone who was intimately familiar with your work would be aware of such details. On the other hand, as you’re well aware, when we talk about sending someone up into the forest it’s usually a metaphor for dying, but it can also refer to holding a memorial service for someone who has passed away. Surely the professor would have discovered that through his research, at least.”

“You don’t know exactly where Father’s body washed up when it was carried downstream from here, do you?” I asked. “You did say that the first memory of your childhood was of the hours just after his body was brought back to our house, but . . .”

“I remember clearly that you told me to check around the futon where our dead father was laid out, to see if a dead child was lying nearby. Twenty-some years later, when I heard you were having a strange recurrent dream, it sounded like a joke at first, but then I realized it could also be the unbearably sad remembrance of something that really did happen. And I couldn’t help wondering whether, just maybe, the dream might be rooted in the fact that you ran away from the boat that took our father to his watery grave. But anyhow,” Asa continued, “I was walking around and around the dead person, lying on the tatami with a cloth over his face. At one point I stumbled and fell, and when I reached out to brace myself I touched his thick, wet hair with my outstretched hand. I remember that creepy sensation vividly, so I believe you when you say Father drowned after being carried away by the current, even though Mother would never talk about it.”

“Do you remember when I commuted for a year to the new postwar high school near here, before our village was incorporated?” I said. “One day during art period, we went to that shoal to do some plein air sketching. The teacher had set up his easel facing a spot on the edge of the sandbank where there was a thick stand of pussy willows, and he was working on an oil painting. As I was wandering aimlessly about, he called me over and said, ‘I’ve heard this spot has been known for years as the place where Mr. Choko washed ashore. Does that have something to do with your family, by any chance?’

“Of course, we were all in deep denial about the circumstances behind Father’s drowning, but in the outside world, everyone seemed to know about it. I think that probably goes a long way toward explaining how Mother happened to write the words ‘river current’ in the little poem on the stone.”

Walking along under a canopied row of cherry trees so heavily overgrown that hardly any light fell on the road (I’d heard they were already slated for clear-cutting), we returned to the car. As we drove the twenty-plus minutes to our hometown—the picturesque mountain valley deep in a forest, where we both grew up—Asa spoke about some things she had evidently been mulling over for quite a while.

“Listen, Kogii,” she said, “I was very happy when you said you’d be coming to stay for a while in the Forest House. It will be good for you to get some closure with the red leather trunk, after all these years, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking, Yep, my big brother is definitely getting old. One thing I’ve noticed about aging is that it gives rise to a desire to get things settled. And at this stage, it’s only natural to start having thoughts about death.

“Needless to say, I’m aging right along with you, and that’s why I think about these things. But really, isn’t the relevant question what happens between now and then? I mean, even if you’ve resigned yourself to the inevitability of death, you still have to deal with the intervening time until the day arrives. Death is going to find us all, no matter what, but we still have to take active responsibility for what remains of our lives.

“Take the poem our mother wrote—let’s just call it a haiku, shall we? I really think those lines were meant as a message from her to you, to be read when you eventually came home and saw the commemorative stone: You didn’t get Kogii ready to go up into the forest / And like the river current, you won’t return home.

“As a kind of counterpoint, in the three lines you contributed you made it clear you won’t be coming back here. You’re up there in Tokyo, pondering various things—you were echoing the quote from Eliot about ‘an old man in a dry month,’ right? And that’s fine, but compared with the two lines Mother wrote your response strikes me as much more blasé, which is exactly what I would have expected from you.

“As for our mother, when she wrote those lines she was still seeing you as Kogii, and she was concerned that you weren’t doing anything to prepare to send Akari up into the forest, since there’s a good chance he won’t live as long as you do. But I think part of your reason for wanting to come back down here for a while is a way of taking the first step toward making the necessary preparations to send Akari (and, eventually, yourself) up into the forest—with every bit of metaphorical subtext the phrase carries in local lore.”

After her long monologue, Asa drove in silence for several miles, and then stopped on the side of the road. “Just walk up this path—it’s really more like a trail for wild animals—and you’ll end up at the Forest House. You haven’t forgotten the shortcut, have you? We’re running late today, so I’m going to let you off here and go straight home. After I’ve had a little rest I’ll come back with some dinner for you. I’ll drop off your luggage then, too.

“Oh, and about Unaiko, the young woman you met in Tokyo? She’ll be dropping by the Forest House tomorrow with Masao Anai, who as I mentioned is the leader of the theater group. (You probably know he was a pupil of Goro Hanawa’s, although ‘disciple’ might be a better word.) Unaiko said that while you’re staying there they would like to talk to you about a number of things—I gather she just hinted at this when you spoke in Tokyo. Tomorrow some of the troupe’s younger members will be stopping by to install the commemorative stone, and after that’s done Masao and Unaiko are hoping to talk to you about your forthcoming collaboration. They’re really looking forward to this, so please be on your best behavior!”

2

Early the next morning Asa, who was always very well organized, dispatched a couple of the younger members of the theater group to pick up the stone. The back garden was planted with flowering dogwood and a maple tree of the variety known as Big Sake Cup, which Chikashi had brought from her garden in Tokyo along with a pomegranate tree she’d been given by her mother-in-law (that is, my mother), and these had grown in a way that was beautifully proportional with the intimate scale of the garden. I agreed with Asa that installing the big stone in front of the trees, facing the house, was a perfect plan.

The members of the Caveman Group arrived in a minivan with the name of their theater troupe emblazoned on the side. (Goro Hanawa had evidently written it out for them, and his calligraphy had been professionally enlarged and painted on their car.) As we stood in the front garden—which had simply been carved out of the overhanging rock and spread with gravel—Asa, who had hitched a ride with the group, introduced me to Masao Anai. I remembered having seen him before; he was a man in his forties, very simply dressed, with the look of someone who had been immersed in the theater world for a long time. Next to him, standing up very straight, wearing casual work clothes and a big smile, was the young woman I had met in Tokyo. Asa knew all about our stranger-than-fiction encounter, but she didn’t mention it. She simply said, “I’d like you to meet Masao Anai and Unaiko.”

After we had exchanged hurried greetings, Masao Anai sent the two apprentices to fetch the poetry stone, wrapped in an old blanket and tied with rope, from the back of the van. Then he led his young helpers to the back garden with their heavy burden, which they carried by balancing it on two sturdy wooden pallets.

Unaiko had remained behind, and as I was thanking her again for coming to my rescue the other day in Tokyo, Asa interrupted. “You know, Chikashi had something to do with Unaiko’s adopted name,” she announced.

Unaiko nodded. “They say the person who first started calling the leader of our troupe ‘the caveman’ was Goro Hanawa,” she said. “And I heard from Asa that your mother once said that her granddaughter, Maki, looked like a child from medieval times—an unaiko—with her unusual unai-style hairdo. (I gather it was a bob with bangs and a little ponytail sprouting on top.) And there I was, wearing my hair in a similar style. So I said, half joking, ‘Well, maybe I should change my name to Unaiko!’ And the younger folks thought it was a great idea, so the name sort of stuck. It was just a bonus that unai echoes our leader’s surname, Anai.”

“I remember hearing that the first time Chikashi brought our children to this valley to meet my mother, our older daughter, Maki, was wearing her hair rather like Unaiko here (though Maki’s version was a bit more girlish), and my mother thought it looked wonderful,” I said.

“Actually, I was standing right there when Chikashi and Mother were having that conversation,” Asa said. “Mother also mentioned an ancient ninth-century song that includes the term unaiko, and she even sang a few lines for us! It was lovely—all about summer rain and the cuckoo’s song and children running around wearing this same kind of retro-medieval hairstyle. Mother seemed very happy as she was singing those words, but of course she was already in high spirits because her grandchildren had come to visit.”

Masao Anai had returned from the garden, so Asa took a minute to fill him in on what he had missed before continuing her story.

“Anyhow,” she went on, “for the duration of their visit, everyone was calling little Maki ‘Unaiko.’ Years later, I told the story to this Unaiko, and the rest is history. Well then,” she added briskly, “shall we take a peek at how the young people are getting along in the garden?”

But by the time we went into the dining room and peered out at the back garden through the big plate-glass window, the giant stone was already in place and the young workers, who were taking a short break, seemed to be anxiously gauging our reaction. I assured Asa that the placement was flawless, and she flashed an “A-OK” sign. As the young men headed around to the front of the house, she went out to meet them. The rest of us sat gazing at the garden, with everyone’s eyes seemingly focused on the poetic inscription carved into the stone.

“Asa explained the significance of ‘the river current,’” Masao Anai said. Seeing his face in profile I could understand why Goro, who was always an extraordinarily perspicacious bestower of pet names and sobriquets, had dubbed him “the caveman.” While it had obviously started out as a clever play on the first element of Anai’s surname (in Japanese, ana can mean “cave,” “hole,” or “cavern”), the nickname was also a reaction to his distinctive physiognomy—especially the way his forehead sloped back from the sharply protuberant ridge of bone above his eyes, giving him an air of wild, primordial ruggedness. That sort of multilayered resonance was typical of Goro’s humor, and evidently “the caveman” had also struck Masao as a good name for his troupe.

“Actually,” Masao went on, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the dramatic significance of the way the notional alter ego, Kogii, runs through your novels as a sort of supernatural leitmotif. Reading this poem, I can’t help thinking that the idea of being sent up into the forest without making preparations seems like a contradiction of the rules of the mythical world you so often evoke in your work. I mean, his childhood playmate, Kogii, was someone who originally came down from the forest and later flew back up into the woods on his own.”

“You’re exactly right,” I said. “But when this poem mentions Kogii, it’s mainly talking about my earliest nickname. My mother uses the childhood name as a sort of verbal spear to ambush my adult self with a serious question about the preparations I’ve made for my own demise and for that of my son, Akari. So the meaning of her section of this poem is, essentially, that the most important thing I need to do in order to prepare for my own death is to get Akari ready for his trip to the forest, which may well precede mine.”

Just then Asa reappeared in the dining room and spoke to Masao Anai. “The young guys are going to take the car and go for a drive around Mount Odami, and they’ll return in three hours or so,” she announced. “Your theater apprentices are really an impressive group, by the way. Not only were they completely willing to do some heavy lifting, but they also had to deal with the constraints of being at a stranger’s house . . . or at least in a stranger’s garden.”

Masao acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow, then gestured toward his second-in-command. “Unaiko gets all the credit—she’s the one who oversees that aspect of their training,” he said.

After the young men had departed Asa made some fresh coffee and Unaiko served it. As we were sitting around the table, Asa turned to me. “Masao was saying that during your stay here, his main objective—and that of his entire group—is to be of assistance any way they can, but they are also hoping you’ll be willing to help them with the play they’re putting together, based on your work,” she said. “I’ll let him fill you in on the details.”

“Ah, well,” Anai demurred with a humorous shrug. “Asa makes us sound very noble and altruistic, but the truth is our motivations are purely selfish. Seriously, since we were already hard at work on a plan for a play that incorporated elements from your entire oeuvre, when Asa told us you were going to be spending time here it seemed like a gift from the gods. So one day when we were talking to her about the project, we asked whether there was any chance you might be willing to listen to what we’ve come up with so far, and she said, ‘I gather that while he’s down here my brother will try to synthesize all the work he’s done till now, so it shouldn’t be too hard to coordinate his project with yours.’ That arrangement seems to make sense, since we’ll both be creating retrospectives of a sort.

“At some point we’d like to ask you to take a look at the treatment for our play-in-progress, but today I’m just going to talk about the general contours of how we’re trying to approach your work, if I may.

“We’ve been extracting individual scenes from your novels and then converting them into dramatic form, one by one. We’ve barely begun to figure out how to make those vignettes flow as a whole, and since we have this rare opportunity to talk to you in person, we think it would add some depth if we could interview you and incorporate your comments into our play. Once we’ve accumulated a stash of interviews, we’ll find a way to fit them in. In the actual production we’ll dress someone up as you (it’ll be one of the actors from the Caveman Group, who will play other parts as well), and that person will be interviewed as an ongoing part of the drama. As for the other characters who emerge from the stories you share in the interviews, they’ll be portrayed by a rotating cast of actors. That’s the method we’re planning to use to create a multidimensional narrative.

“I have already created and performed a number of dramatic works based on your novels, but it’s my intention to make this current project a kind of summation of everything that’s gone before. With that in mind, I’m planning to turn your doppelgänger into the focal point. You might wonder how we’re going to portray such a singular character visually, but don’t worry—I already have something in mind. Once we start talking, I’m hoping our recorded conversations might be useful for you, too, while you’re working on your own project. (We heard from Asa that you’ll be sorting through your writings and combining them with some new material.) And if we can somehow help you, even just by providing some perspective on your previous work, it would be very satisfying for us.”

When Masao Anai stopped speaking, Asa took the floor and addressed her remarks to me. “I did mention to our friends here that you were planning to try to integrate some of your earlier work with the materials in the trunk and then, I gathered, to combine all those elements in a new book, as a sort of last hurrah,” she explained. “You were saying you’d tried to reread your older works but somehow couldn’t get through them, and an idea occurred to me. What if you tried revisiting your previous novels as a joint endeavor with these folks? Masao and Unaiko have been approaching the same task in a very bold and innovative way.”

I had to admit that I felt intrigued by the prospect of seeing my own books anew through the eyes of Masao Anai and his crew, and it struck me as an excellent way of getting a new perspective on my childhood alter ego, Kogii, who was still (quite literally) haunting my dreams.

“In that case, do you think it would be a good idea to try shaping our interviews to focus mainly on Kogii?” I asked.

“Most definitely,” Unaiko said. “And we’re ready to start right now!”

Intentionally avoiding her bright, eager eyes, I glanced over at my sister. In our younger days, Asa had often run interference for me by deflecting the overtures of this type of strong-willed, extroverted woman, but she didn’t seem to feel any need to do that now, and I trusted her judgment. Unaiko’s energetic body language appeared to say, Come on, let’s do this! and she began to pull an assortment of recording equipment out of a canvas tote bag I had noticed earlier, in passing, and deemed too large to be a woman’s purse.

To their credit, Unaiko and Anai didn’t rush me into recording mode. Instead, Unaiko carefully laid out the equipment on the dining-room table, piece by piece, while everyone else looked on. This was my first glimpse into the thoughtful, deliberate methodology that would typify my brief collaboration with the Caveman Group. I realized then that I was in capable hands, and any residual reluctance I might have been feeling simply melted away.

3

A short while later, with the tape recorder whirring, Masao Anai settled himself in a chair and began to speak. “Even though we hadn’t yet obtained your formal permission, Mr. Choko, we went ahead and started brainstorming the conceptual aspects of this new project,” he said. “Of course, we did talk things over with Asa, and her attitude was ‘I don’t foresee any problem with the plan you’ve described, but be sure to approach my brother with caution.’ There’s a fund designed to assist the directors of small theater groups, and in order to qualify for one of those grants a group needs to have won some type of prize or award. Even though you haven’t seen our performance of the play we based on your book The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, I gather you’ve heard about the gratifying praise that production received?

“Okay, that concludes the shameless self-congratulation portion of our program. Now let’s move on to the new project. Our original plan was to follow our success with the dramatization of Wipe My Tears Away (as we call it, for short) with a sequel, but as you know better than anyone, in the case of that novel there isn’t one. So I got the idea of searching through your complete canon for a recurrent motif linking all your books together.

“The leitmotif I found, of course, is Kogii. Now, I find it interesting that in your books the name ‘Kogii’ is assigned to a variety of entities. In the beginning, Kogii was your nickname. Later, you ended up sharing the name with your constant companion: the mysterious—dare I say imaginary?—playmate who supposedly lived at your house and who looked exactly like you. (Your body double, in cinematic terms.)