A Quiet Life (27 page)

This was all there was to it. A week had now passed, but today, for some reason, Eeyore had been so excited about practicing his swimming that, though making sure he had his swimming trunks, cap, and goggles as he put each item in his bag, when leaving the house he had forgotten the shoulder bag he puts his music scores in. We had already put on our shoes, so I called out to O-chan, who had returned from his trip and was going to look after the house in our absence, to get the bag for him. And all the while we stood in the entrance, Eeyore kept patting me on my back, smiling as if to tell me that his forgetting the bag had been an amusing blunder of mine. That day, a week ago, when O-chan had taken pictures of Eeyore swimming—they had turned out unbelievably well, with Eeyore swimming in exemplary form, and I sent them to our parents in California—and in the drying room, emotion had gotten the
better of me because of what I had been led to imagine by Mr. Shigeto's postoperative scar. With all these things happening that day, Mr. Arai had tried to reward and comfort us by offering to drive us home, and I had become overly defensive in my reaction. This was all there was to it, I thought, after the lapse of a week's time. Regarding Mother's suggestion that I not see Mr. Arai without other people around to watch us—well, Eeyore had been with me that evening. As for Mr. Arai, that woman had been with him. …

It was more or less after reflecting that I had acted rudely toward Mr. Arai that I told Mr. Shigeto about all this—presumptuously wishing that if Mr. Arai were still feeling offended, Mr. Shigeto would intercede for me and patch things up between us. Mr. Shigeto did not immediately show any particular reaction to what I had told him. He
sort of
listened to me, then turned his eyes to the book of Polish verse that, probably-due to this farsightedness, he held at a distance in front of his chest, with his back erect; the binding of the book resembled those of some Meiji-era kimono-sleeve books in Father's library. From the corner of my eye, though, I thought I saw, for just a moment, a vivid flush appear on the flesh of his usually faded mien. …

Mr. Arai's coaching was no different than before. Eeyore was trying harder than ever, and his relationship with Mr. Arai, who butterflied after him to carefully correct his arm movements and breathing technique, appeared even intimate. In contrast, when Mr. Arai and I saw each other for the first time that day, his bow was but perfunctory as he cast a watchful glance around with vivid eyes that assumed the shape, of apricots. While bowing, he avoided even looking at me or saying anything. Of course, I wouldn't have known how to answer him, even if he had reproached me for my attitude the previous week.
And in fact I felt relieved to be ignored. It would be best, I thought, for the time of Eeyore's swimming lesson that day to pass just this way, and next week everything would be back to what it had been before. …

Spirited talk among the regulars—the sweat-dripping, ever-smiling Mr. Mochizuki; Mrs. Ueki, who was depressive but wouldn't say no to anyone; the sharp-tongued beauty parlor proprietor, who as usual kept needling the other two; and a newcomer, a stalwart man whose muscles looked as though they had come from manual labor rather than weight training—filled the drying room that day, with the newcomer at the center of a discussion that recapitulated the professional baseball draft. Mr. Arai seemed to effortlessly withdraw into, and enclose himself within, his armor of muscles. Just as he was preparing himself to resume his own training, however, Mr. Shigeto, who had remained completely silent until then, asked him if he would spare him some time that evening. He asked him about how long it would take to finish his body-killing regimen, his bath, and sauna. Me would be waiting in the lounge, he said, and proposed that they talk over some beer, which he would buy at the vending machine. …

Mr. Arai sneaked a look at me with his apricot-shaped eyes, wary under their single-fold lids, then returned his gaze to Mr. Shigeto and nodded. Eeyore appeared to want to stay longer, but I pressed him on, and as we exited the club, I thought it strange that I hadn't noticed the rare shape of Mr. Arai's eyes until then: you rarely saw such eyes on the face of an adult male.

The following week, when we visited the Shigetos for a lesson, Mrs. Shigeto, who opened the door to us, was wearing an expression that was more depressed and gloomier than the day she had returned from the hospital. Dark brown rings
encircled her wide upper eyelids, half of which showed above the silver frames of her glasses. And her eyes, which had always looked so clever and bright, seemed to have loosely contracted.

“Mr. Shigeto is in a bad way, but please don't be alarmed,” she whispered to Eeyore. I had sensed something ominous, but as much as she appeared concerned about me, I knew from the way she said this that she was more concerned for Eeyore, who had relaxedly greeted her and then was removing his shoes.

Mr. Shigeto, who had been sitting on the living room sofa, rose halfway to greet us, and suddenly he groaned “Uhh!” as he assumed a posture that appeared as though he were going to hang in midair, and then another “Uhh!” as he bounced back onto the sofa from this position. Eeyore saw all this, and despite the warning we had been given, he exclaimed, “Oh, no! What happened!? I am surprised!?” No other words could have been more appropriate for the occasion, I thought.

Mr. Shigeto's face was swollen, and had turned angular like a kite. On his upper right cheek, brow, and two places on his head—in the front and in the back—were patches of gauze attached with tape, through which the blurry yellow of an ointment showed. Around his bare chin and throat were reddish-black bruises as big as hands. He was dressed in a gown that had aged in a noble manner, but the odd protuberance around his chest and down his side—wasn't that a cast he was wearing?

“Recent disasters befalling our family all have to do with fractured bones,” Mrs. Shigeto said, her voice sounding a bit more spirited than it had at the entrance. “I sometimes feel like asking a geomancer to divine the fortunes of the lay of the house.”

“Eeyore, in my case it's really the ribs! And I'm in a perfect mood for your ‘Ribs.’ Play it for me, won't you? I've been told not to move my right arm for some time.”

Granted, it was Eeyore's simplicity that caused him to immediately brace up and start looking for the object of his heart's desire among the music sheets in his satchel. But planted in the manner in which Mr. Shigeto had spoken these words was a plot to encourage my alarmed and heartbroken brother. I got teary-eyed, and I
robotized
, and was unable to do anything except stand at Eeyore's side. I could never respond to or help the injured Mr. Shigeto as much as my brother, who was thumbing through his music to accommodate his mentor's request.

“Have you found it?” Mr. Shigeto asked. “Eeyore, I'm sorry to ask this of you when you've just arrived, hut could you play it for me on the piano in the music room? Play it a couple of times, and change the tempo each time. Leave the door open—I want my ribs to directly feel the vibration, but in a way that won't hurt. …”

Eeyore directed a worried and solemn bow to Mr. Shigeto, and alone went into the music room. All of which meant that Mr. Shigeto had wanted an opportunity to discuss matters in such a way that the content of what he needed to convey to me would not reach Eeyore's ears. I immediately understood this to be a proper consideration. And while listening to Mr. Shigeto, I even wished that I could have gone and hidden in Eeyore's shadow, as he kept playing his “Ribs.” The catastrophe that had befallen Mr. Shigeto had, I think, been greater than the premonition that had reflexively and violently seized me a few moments ago.

That evening, Mr. Shigeto had been waiting in the lounge for almost two hours, drinking beer, when Mr. Arai emerged looking neat, with his lotion-laced short hair teased and combed so that it stood straight, up. Because of the exhausting training program with which he kills his body, his cheeks were sunken and pale, and when Mr. Shigeto asked him to sit down and
join him at the table, which was covered with empty beer cans, he bluntly refused. His excuse was
sort of
convincing: he didn't touch any alcoholic beverages while training for a meet. So Mr. Shigeto took Mr. Arai up on his suggestion that they go to a quieter place to talk: the parking lot in back of the club building.

“He clearly admits he was drunk,” Mrs. Shigeto said of her husband, supplementing his words, “because it was almost strategic how late Mr. Arai showed up. And one reason Mr. Shigeto won't go to the police is because he was under the influence. Mr. Shigeto told me that, while walking from the lounge to the parking lot. Mr. Arai talked so much that he seemed a different person. And he had done this with a practically indecent flippancy, the exact opposite of what had been at the bottom of his stoic reticence in the drying room. “For instance,” Mr. Shigeto said, “he told me about the dream you had of him.” I blushed, though I was
robotized.
“He got it out of Eeyore in tidbits each time he made him take a break. Ma-chan, he said you'd dreamed of marrying him with Eeyore along. …”

Indeed, the dream I had was one of the variations of the dream I started having some time ago, in which the Eeyore-to-be appears, standing at. my side as my attendant. The new dwelling Mr. Arai had prepared for us was a two-bedroom apartment. It was owned by the Metropolitan Government, yet in the basement was a long and narrow three-lane, twenty-meter swimming pool. It also seemed that the pool came with our room. It was for our exclusive use, and Mrs. Ueki was training in it. Eeyore, with Mr. Arai coaching him, of course, swam on and on, repeatedly making turns. Quite inappropriate for the place, I was dressed in a wedding gown, and was standing nonplussed by the very wet poolside, with a bouquet of withered flowers in my hands. I had told Eeyore of this dream, focusing on the moving scene in which I had seen him vigorously swimming.

What finally provoked Mr. Shigeto to ire was evidently the insinuating manner in which Mr. Arai talked about this dream. According to his wife—who put in her comments from the side—this time, too, just as when he had gone to have a word with the privilege-flaunting Polish government official at Warsaw Airport, Mr. Shigeto had been stirred to the point of venting his
desperate Yamato spirit.
“But Shigeto-san,” added his wife, “is an internationally minded intellectual, a rare specimen in this country. …”

With an aching heart, I entered in “Diary as Home” the verbal exchange between Mr. Shigeto and Mr. Arai. To be fair, however, I should also say that, although it was Mr. Arai who did the provoking, it was Mr. Shigeto who started talking as though he was ready to fight.

“Don't you think it's dirty,” Mr. Shigeto said, “that you coaxed Eeyore into telling you about Ma-chan's dream, and then told it to a third party, imbuing it with your own nuances?”

“Myself”—Eeyore had long since found it amusing that Mr. Arai was the sort of person who used “myself” in this way—“I find it very annoying that K-san and Ma-chan—father and daughter together—forge distorted images of me to suit themselves, and then inflate them.”

“Do you interpret a modest girl's humble dream as a warped image? … Regarding K, yes, he did write a novel that used, as a starting point, the incident that took place on the cruiser. First, though, you gave him your book of notes after receiving money from him. Moreover, I heard that you asked him to analyze your inner thoughts and behavior through his writing, because you didn't understand them very well yourself. Second, it's clear that K intentionally deflected the setting from the cruiser. And if my memory is correct, he also wrote that the crime being perpetrated by the young protagonist was a supposition. The focus of the story is on the middle-aged
man, who sacrifices himself to save the young man who, because of his involvement in some sort of crime, has fallen into a desperate situation. K wrote that if, in fact, the crime had been committed by the young man, then the middle-aged man had atoned for it on his behalf by virtue of his own self-sacrifice; and so rebirth was possible for the young man, who accepted what the older man had done for him. This is how K analyzed your inner thoughts and behavior, exactly as you had asked him to.”

“First off, myself, I returned the money to Mr. K. And second, there was no crime to begin with. Aren't some members of the club secretly discussing their cruise to Izu because Mr. K fabricated a sex-offense story out of what had been a mere accident? Myself, I find this a real pain in the neck.”

“You returned the money to K because you stood to benefit from the insurance policy the young girl who died on the cruiser had bought. The weekly magazines played up the case long before K's novel came out. Shouldn't you have sued them, and K, too, for libel then? You actually wrote K a letter threatening to take the matter to court, and you also sent him an offensive New Year's card. I surmise that the reason you gave K your notes was so he could write a novel about the incident, so in case you were indicted you could have expected voluntary defense activities on the part of good-natured K. But it didn't become a legal case, and moreover, you received the insurance money. After this, far from suing anyone, you simply wished that the incident would be forgotten. I have no interest in any conjecture beyond this. As I said before, I don't mind you coaching Eeyore. All I ask is that you not intrude into Ma-chan's and Eeyore's private life. What did you have in mind, anyway, lying in wait for them at Scijo Gakuen-mae Station, and then following them to their house?”

Though this, too, may have been a rhetorical question, Mr. Arai, instead of answering it, suddenly pounced on Mr. Shigeto, and thoroughly beat him up. Three of his ribs were broken because Mr. Arai had intentionally and repeatedly kicked him in the side. Mr. Shigeto couldn't help reading a criminal disposition, both into the way Mr. Arai had gone about relishing the half-kill of a decrepit dog, as it were, and into the way he had seen to it that this was so scrupulously accomplished. In this regard, Mr. Shigeto believed that, though aggressive, his attitude, in giving Mr. Arai warning not to approach us, had been fair and in line with K's request. …