A Quiet Life (13 page)

a robot's nightmare

T
he crystal-dear morning made me feel, somewhat ceremoniously, that this day and no other was the first day of winter. I busied myself with the laundry to get it dry while the sun was still on the house. A while later, from the kitchen corner where I could see the dining room and beyond, I noticed Eeyore, who had changed out of his nightclothes by himself, standing by the glass door to the terrace. He was gazing out at the array of potted plants in the brick-paved, sunlit terrace beyond the glass door. Though aware that, in this “expressive” state, Eeyore must be pondering something, my head, from low blood pressure, seemed to still be half asleep, and the only thought in it was of having to quickly prepare breakfast if he were hungry.

“Such discipline, Eeyore!” I exclaimed. “Up so early on a Sunday morning. Can you wait till I get: the bulk of this laundry done? Then I'll fix you some tea.”

Whenever I feel Eeyore's vivacity in the air, I begin to think I'm doing something worthwhile, even in doing my everyday household chores, like the laundry. I went out into the garden with a basket of laundry in my arms, carrying it like a Mexican washerwoman I had seen on TV, hung it up to dry, and prepared breakfast. The aroma of the black tea was nice, and the eggs were fried in such a way that the clear winter day really felt sunny side up.

Returning to the dining room, I found Eeyore still standing there like a guardian deity at a temple gate, looking intently at the plants. Then I realized he'd had the plants on his mind ever since he got up, and he wanted to talk to me about them.

“What is it you want to tell Ma-chan?” I asked. “I'll listen anytime. Or do you want to take your time and talk to me after breakfast?”

“Yes, that's what I will do!”

Whenever Eeyore has something to say, he has trouble saying it, especially if it's a thought he has well deliberated. But this is what I was finally able to get out of him.

“Today's the first Sunday of November!” he began, then nonchalantly added, “Mama puts the plants out in the garden in early May, the eighty-eighth day after spring sets in.” I couldn't have remembered this for all my memory was worth, He then went on to remind me that the first Sunday of November was when the plants had to be brought into the house.

Evidently he knew Mother's year-round schedule, and was determined to act as her deputy with me while she was away.

“You're admirable, Eeyore!” I said. “Really!”

“I remembered all along!” he said, looking happy beyond measure.

So after breakfast, I decided to bring in just the plants I could carry from the garden, where I perspired a little in the
sun, and felt more than a bit chilly in the shade. Eeyore, who had disappeared somewhere, emerged with a bulky loop of hemp twine bound together, as if entangled, with a wide leather belt, a device he had probably found in Father's library. Father spares no effort in doing the heavy work around the house, like that time he tried to clean the sewer. Moreover, he makes these gadgets himself for each of the tasks, and he really looks happy when they serve their purpose. The loop of belt-bound twine that Eeyore had found was a device Father had made to transport four of the biggest and heaviest potted hemp palms to and from the garden. Of course, I wasn't going to ask Eeyore to carry them in. They're all too heavy. The best I can do is inch them along, zigzag fashion, scraping and screeching them against the brick floor. Even if my arms were strong enough to lift them, it would be horrible to drop one on my feet.

But Eeyore had carefully observed how Father went about the task each year. And though not very adeptly, he had already fastened the belt on to the pot that held the biggest plant. As a safety measure, he hitched the loop of twine on to the bottom of the pot, then bent down, hugged the plant, and raised himself. I quickly ran ahead of him to the front door, opened it, and cleared the entrance of the shoes and sandals that were in his way. He couldn't have been able to see ahead very well with the dense stems obstructing his view, but he proceeded with a measured gait, mindful of the unevenness in the walkway to the entrance door. Dutifully slipping out of his shoes as he entered the house, he went into the living room and, without any mishap, set the pot in front of the glass door where Mother keeps it.

He took not even a moment's rest before bringing in the next pot. and encouraged by the vigor with which he did this heavy work, I very carefully watered each plant he brought in. After bringing in all four pots, Eeyore, unable to otherwise
express the sense of satisfaction that takes root in the body after physical labor, stepped back out into the garden again and, with his fingers entwined behind his back, stood in the sun under the colored leaves of the dogwood tree. I went out too, and savoring a rising strength in my heart, tended the potted wild plants, which had shed their bloom long ago and were already preparing for winter. I went around watering all the small potted plants we kept outdoors. Blighted as they were, I pictured their flowers in the spring and summer of their day: the large flowers of the lady's slippers, which were swollen like the bellies of goldfish, and the “snowholders” with the ricecake-like white mound amid their petals. I thought of each flower, and recalled the moments I had squatted beside Mother while she tended them and taught me their names. …

Before long, Eeyore came to my side and, while straightening up a tilted pot, he said, reminiscently, “We took flowers of this
grass
, too, to Mr. Shigeto's place!” Apparently we were experiencing the same wandering of minds.

“This is an orchid of the Calanthe family,” I said. “Kozucalanthe, I think they call it. I remember it has light brown and white flowers.”

“They smelled very sweet!” Eeyore said. “It was the day of Mr. Shigeto's debut!”

“Debut” is typical Eeyore-speak, his way of expressing things slightly off key, which made my recollection of the day more vivid. Eeyore started piano lessons with a tutor—Mrs. T, the wife of one of Father's editor friends—as soon as he entered the secondary division at the special-care school. It was through Mrs. T's patient instruction that he learned chord mechanics as well as how to piece together sequences of melodies. Also thanks to her, he even learned to compose his own music. But then she decided to go to Europe for further study, which left Mother and Eeyore at a total loss. She had left
Japan a number of times before, for the same purpose, but only for short stays. This time, though, she would be gone at least a year.

Then Father, the sort who thinks of actual solutions only when pressed to, hit upon the idea of asking Mr. Shigeto, his friend from college, to take over Eeyore's music education. All I knew of Mr. Shigeto at the time was that he was a specialist on Eastern European literature, but had recently decided to make a career of composing music, which until then he had done strictly for amusement. When asked if he could tutor Eeyore, his reply, I understand, was that, having passed a new turning point, he would first meet with Eeyore to see if he would be interested in working with him. Father said that if he took Eeyore to Mr. Shigeto's place, he might put an undue burden on his old friend. This sounded like he was being considerate, but again, I felt he was really being subtly egocentric. Mother, too, knowing Mr. Shigeto from her youth, genuinely feared his eccentric personality, and at the last minute shied away from the task. So it turned out that I would be making the visit with Eeyore. Mother made a bouquet for Mr. Shigeto's wife with the wildflowers she had lovingly tended, and when she was through, most of the pots were just a mass of green with hardly any flowers left on the plants.

Mrs. Shigeto, whom I met for the first time that day, had a pair of round, silver-rimmed glasses on her plump, round face. I later learned that she had chanced upon these glasses at an antiques fair in Prague. She impressed me as a woman who had grown up among loving folk: a happy, innocent girl turned elderly only with the passage of time. The firm bridge of her nose and the tension in her pliant temples, however, seemed to support the profound weight of her life experiences. With somber eyes, she looked intently at the flowers Eeyore offered her, and quietly spoke.

“The flower of this plant, this bluish-amber one, is very beautiful. It looks like an insect just about to sing, with its wings spread. I'll bet it has a name befitting its beauty.”

“I think it's ‘jewel beetle.’ “I said.

“It'll probably smell like a green bug if you crush it,” Mr. Shigeto said, his head peering from behind her, the tall man that he was, and thrust out his hand as though to sink his fingers into the bouquet. Eeyore made a move to stop him, though not in a hostile manner.

“Don't do anything rough with them,” Mrs. Shigeto said to her husband as she pulled the bouquet to her bosom. “These are rare wildflowers, each one of them. Thank you very much, Ma-chan, Eeyore. It must've been a bother to carry all this on the train. You can't just bunch them together like an ordinary bouquet. And so many! Your garden must look very lonely now.”

“Mother goes to places for some of them; others she buys,” I said. “She's the one who looks after them, and it was she who picked them for you.”

“She'll have no more flowers this year,” Mrs. Shigeto said, “but she's picked them very carefully, so as not to hurt the stems.”

Mr. Shigeto appeared a little embarrassed, not only by his wife's reproach but also by Eeyore's gesture. His dignity again intact, however, he returned from the kitchen with a big water-filled jug. And he produced glass bottles, of different colors, from the pockets of a jacket that looked like a painter's work outfit. So we busied ourselves sorting the flowers, which Mrs. Shigeto said were best not bunched together, and put each kind in its respective bottle. As we did this, Mrs. Shigeto said something to this effect: “Ma-chan, your parents are already well aware of this, but the reason Mr. Shigeto can be very particular about and sensitive to such things, and at times be uncouth like he was just a while ago, is because there's angst in his heart these days.”

“If I try to be easily cheerful, I can be that way,” Mr. Shigeto said. “But I'm the kind of person who aspires to meander into every nook and cranny of his angst, and carefully examine it.”

“You certainly are that type,” his wife said.

Mrs. Shigeto set the small flower-filled bottles on the table, at intervals, in such a way that they took up its whole surface. Eeyore brought his face close to the bottles to smell each kind of flower, one by one.

“Mr. Shigeto composes music professionally now,” his wife said, “but this doesn't earn him much. The translations he did are now out of print. … He worked on Milan Kundera, a writer whose father was a specialist in music, and Kundera himself was very much interested in ethnic music. So I think Mr. Shigeto, with his background, produces very good translations of writers of this kind. A few news agencies still ask him to submit translations of important articles from Eastern European newspapers and magazines.

“Mr. Shigeto also attends seminars for young journalists who are interested in the kind of work he does. But because these enthusiastic people, pretending to be specialists”—here Mr. Shigeto corrected her by saying that although the researchers were young, they were, in fact, specialists—”say pessimistic things about the situation in Eastern Europe, Mr. Shigeto became depressed. And at the same time, he suffered a serious illness. That's why he keeps saying these days that perhaps he should sever his ties with the news agencies.”

“Well,” Mr. Shigeto said, a sigh mingling with his voice, “I have transitions to go through, too.” Then, as if to divert himself, he turned to me and asked, “Ma-chan, what do you think?”

“How can anyone answer that?” his wife put in. “You need to elaborate, Mr. Shigeto.”

“Well, you see,” he said, “the younger researchers have a dismal view of the future of the society they're studying. And
they don't seem the least bothered with their pessimism. How do you feel about this, Ma-chan?”

I often recall this question, or perhaps I should call it an oral exam, which Mr. Shigeto asked of me on our first visit there. But it's all the more unforgettable because I felt as though I were going to
robotize
.

… I digress from my story about this first visit of ours to the Shigetos, but I think I need to write about my
robotization
. It's a phenomenon I often experience, so I even gave it a name, and here's how I came up with the term. On Eeyore's birthday a long time ago, Father gave him a sumo doll that ran on batteries. We all played with it a long time at the festive dinner table, moving it this way and that. After I helped Mother with the dishes and returned to the living room, I saw Sportsman Asashio on the low table before the sofa, where Eeyore had left him. Eeyore, a sumo aficionado, had given the automatic doll this name, finding humor in the fact that, though the toy moved briskly for a sumo wrestler, the wrestler who actually had the sumo name Asashio was not very agile. With raised arms, and his body twisted in the opposite direction, the mechanized Asashio was hanging rock-still in midair, as it were. When I pushed the button on his back, there was a revving whir, accompanied by a moment's wait. Soon he raised his already-lifted arms still higher above his head, and rolled his eyes around and around. I instinctively turned off the switch, for he looked so much like me. His groaning, mechanical whir continued a few more moments, then suddenly he drooped his head. His twisted body was such a painful sight that I had to lay Sportsman Asashio on his side.

My observations at the time became useful in self-criticism, too. I'm very thin, the opposite of the sumo doll, but whenever I'm in a plight, I hear this revving whir within me. My body
assumes this twisted shape, and at some point I suddenly droop my head. This is the phenomenon I call my
robotizalion
. …

I had already half
robotized
at Mr. Shigeto's sudden question. I was somehow able to pull myself together and present an opinion because I was desperately thinking only of Eeyore's well-being.