十二

When my brother returned, Father was lying in bed reading the newspaper. Father had always made it a habit to glance at the newspaper above all else, but once he took to his bed, out of boredom he wanted to read it all the more. Mother and I did not forcibly object, and let the patient have his way as much as possible.

"If you have the energy for that, it's a good sign. I came thinking you must be terribly ill, but you look quite well, don't you?"

Brother spoke to Father in this manner. To me, that overly cheerful tone sounded rather out of place. Still, when he turned away from Father and faced me directly, he was rather subdued.

"Shouldn't we stop him from reading the newspaper and such?"

"I think so too, but he won't have it any other way, so there's nothing to be done."

Brother listened silently to my explanation. Before long he said, "I wonder if he understands it properly." He seemed to have observed that Father's comprehension, owing to his illness, had dulled considerably from his usual state.

"That's for certain. I sat by his pillow just now for some twenty minutes and tried talking about various things, and there was not the slightest break in his responses. At this rate, depending, he may hold on for quite a while yet."

The opinion of my sister's husband, who had arrived around the same time as Brother, was far more optimistic than ours. Father asked him all sorts of questions about my sister. "Since I'm in this condition, it's better she not ride a train and be jostled about needlessly. If she forces herself to come visit, it only worries me here," he said. He also said, "Why, once I'm better I'll go out that way myself for the first time in a long while, to see the baby's face, so it's no trouble."

When General Nogi died, Father was the first to learn of it from the newspaper.

"This is terrible, terrible," he said.

We, knowing nothing, were startled by these sudden words.

"I thought then that his mind had truly gone, and it gave me a chill," Brother later said to me. "I was truly startled too," said my sister's husband, in a tone of agreement.

The newspapers of that time, in fact, carried nothing but articles that a country-dweller might await day by day. I sat by Father's pillow and read them to him carefully. When I had no time to read, I would quietly bring them to my own room and go through them all. For a long time my eyes could not forget the figure of General Nogi in his military uniform, and then his wife in what looked like a court-lady's attire.

While a sorrowful wind blew even to the corners of the countryside, shaking the sleepy trees and grass, I suddenly received a telegram from the Sensei. In a place where dogs bark at the sight of someone in Western clothes, even a single telegram was a great event. Mother, upon receiving it, looked startled as one might expect, and specially called me out where no one else was around.

"What is it?" she said, and stood by waiting for me to open the envelope.

The telegram briefly stated that he wished to see me and asked if I could come. I tilted my head.

"It must be about that position you asked him to put in a word for," Mother inferred for me.

I too thought perhaps that was so. But even so, I found it a bit strange. At any rate, having called even Brother and my sister's husband to come, I could not abandon Father in his illness and go to Tokyo. I consulted with Mother and decided to send a reply that I could not come. I added in the briefest words that Father's illness was growing critical, but even that did not satisfy me, so as a detailed letter I wrote out the fine circumstances that very day and sent it by post. Mother, thoroughly convinced it was only about the position I had asked him to secure, said, "It really can't be helped at such an inopportune time," and looked disappointed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”