十四

Father's illness had progressed to the very brink of its final blow, and there it seemed to hesitate for a while. The family went to bed each night thinking the sentence of fate might be pronounced today, or perhaps today. 　Father felt no pain anywhere that caused distress to those around him. In that respect, nursing him was rather easy. As a precaution, someone would stay up in turns, but the others could retire to their own beds at a reasonable hour without inconvenience. On one occasion when I couldn't sleep for some reason and mistook a faint moan for the patient's voice, I slipped out of bed at midnight and went to father's pillow just to be sure. That night it was mother's turn to be up. But mother had fallen asleep with her arm bent as a pillow beside father. Father too lay quiet like one gently placed in the depths of slumber. I tiptoed back to my own bed. 　I slept in the mosquito net with my brother. Only my sister's husband, perhaps because he was treated as a guest, rested alone in a separate room. "It's a pity for Mr. Seki, having to be kept away from home so many days." 　Seki was that man's surname. "But he's not so busy that he can't stay over like that. Mr. Seki's all right, but brother must be the one in a fix, with it dragging on so long." "No help for it even if I am. It's not like other things." 　Lying beside my brother in bed, I exchanged such night talk. In my brother's head and in my own breast alike was the thought that father could not possibly recover. There was also the thought: if he cannot recover anyway. We were, as children, waiting for our parent to die. Yet as children we shrank from putting it into words. And so we understood well what each of us was thinking. "Father still seems to think he'll get better," my brother said to me. 　In fact there were not wanting signs that bore out my brother's words. When neighbors came to visit, father would insist on seeing them and would not consent otherwise. When he did see them, he would surely lament that he could not invite them to celebrate my graduation. He would add now and then that once his own illness was cured, things would be different. "Your graduation celebration being called off was just as well. Mine was a sorry affair," my brother prodded my memory. I recalled the boisterous scene whipped up by alcohol and smiled bitterly. Father's manner of pressing drink and food on everyone also struck my eyes as distasteful. 　We were not such close brothers. As children we often fought, and the younger me was always made to cry. The difference in our specialties after entering school also stemmed from a complete difference in character. When I was at university, especially after I came into contact with teachers, I looked at my brother from afar and always thought him animal-like. Having not met my brother for a long time, and being far removed, in time as in distance he was never near to me. Even so, meeting again after so long, the gentle feeling of brothers welled up naturally from somewhere. The circumstances being what they were also formed a large part of that cause. At the pillow of the father we shared, the father who was about to die, my brother and I shook hands. "What will you do from now?" my brother asked. I put a completely unrelated question to him. "I wonder what's become of the family estate." "I don't know. Father hasn't said anything yet. But even if you call it estate, as cash it can't amount to much." 　Mother, for her part, was troubled waiting for the teacher's reply. "No letter yet?" she pressed me.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”