九

Just as I was finally about to leave (it must have been the evening two days prior, I think), Father suddenly collapsed again. I was at that time tying up a trunk packed with books and clothing. Father had just gotten into the bath. Mother, who had gone to wash Father’s back, cried out in a loud voice and called me. I saw Father, still naked, being held from behind by Mother. Even so, when he was helped back to the sitting room, Father said he was all right now. To be safe, I sat by his pillow and cooled his head with a wet towel, and it was not until around nine o’clock that I finally managed a mere semblance of a supper.

By the next day, Father was in better spirits than I had expected. Ignoring our attempts to stop him, he walked to the toilet on his own.

“I’m all right now.”

Father repeated the same words he had spoken to me when he collapsed at the end of last year. Back then, true to his words, he had indeed been more or less all right. I thought that perhaps this time it might turn out the same. But the doctor only warned that caution was essential, and even when pressed, would not say anything definite. Burdened by anxiety, when the day of my departure arrived, I found myself unable to leave for Tokyo.

“Shall we wait and see how things go a little longer?” I consulted Mother.

“Please do that,” Mother pleaded.

Mother, though she remained calm as long as she saw Father lively enough to step into the garden or go down to the back gate, would, when such spells occurred, worry and fret beyond what was necessary.

“Weren’t you supposed to go to Tokyo today?” Father asked.

“Yes, I’ve put it off a bit,” I answered.

“Because of me?” Father asked in return.

I hesitated for a moment. To say yes would be to confirm the gravity of Father’s illness. I did not wish to make his nerves any more sensitive. Yet Father seemed to see right through me.

“What a pity,” he said, and turned his face toward the garden.

I went into my room and gazed at the trunk lying abandoned there. The trunk was still tightly bound, ready to be taken out at any time. Standing vaguely before it, I wondered if I should untie the rope again.

In the restless mood of one who sits yet lifts his hips to leave, I passed three or four more days. Then Father collapsed once more. The doctor ordered absolute bed rest.

“What are we to do?” Mother said to me in a small voice, so Father would not hear. Her face looked utterly helpless. I made ready to telegraph my brother and sister. Yet the lying Father showed almost no sign of suffering. From the way he spoke, he was no different from when he had caught a cold. Moreover, his appetite was greater than usual. He would not easily heed the warnings of those beside him.

“I’m going to die anyway, so I ought to eat something good before I go.”

To me, Father’s words about “something good” sounded both ludicrous and sorrowful. For Father did not live in a place where such delicacies were to be had. Come night, he would have rice cakes broiled and chew them with a crisp, crackling sound.

“Why am I so hungry? Maybe there’s still some strength in the old heart after all.”

Mother, in her disappointment, placed her hope in just the wrong place. Yet she used the old-fashioned word “hungry,” which Father only ever used when ill, to mean his eagerness to eat anything at all.

When my uncle came to visit, Father kept him long and would not let him go. The chief reason was his loneliness and his wish for company, but it seemed another purpose was to complain to Mother and me that we would not let him eat as much as he wanted.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”