The Changeling (29 page)

“In one of your books, when the main character was in elementary school he wrote a composition in which he said that all the things his younger brother had experienced in life were carried in that brother’s pocket, so to speak. You found a sentence in Latin that expressed that metaphorical conceit, and you had the other brother repeat it ad nauseam, remember?”

Kogito remembered. It was a quotation from Cicero that he had come across in a book by an Italian writer:
Omnia mea mecum porto
—literally, “I carry all my things with me,” but usually translated as “My wisdom is my greatest treasure.”

“Getting back to my main point,” Goro went on, “what you need to understand is that when the book you’re working on right now is published, and potential readers wander into a bookstore hoping to find an interesting-looking novel, most of those readers aren’t going to be specifically searching for the latest offering from Kogito Choko. Assuming there are any people out there who have read all your books and are sitting around eagerly counting the days till the next one comes out, they’re probably pretty few and far between. That’s what you don’t seem to grasp. Or even if you understand it intellectually, you can’t seem to escape from your ancient habits. Maybe it’s just too late to teach an old dog new tricks!”

As he sat in business class on the jumbo jet, heading back to Tokyo from Berlin, Kogito was reminded of a time when Chikashi told him about a conversation she’d had with Goro, in which Goro (a rarity for him) had actually praised one of Kogito’s novels. The book in question was the paradoxically titled
Looking Ahead to Years Gone By
, which told the story of Goro’s opposition to their marriage—and which, incidentally, was the book that catalyzed Chikashi’s decision to stop reading her husband’s novels.

“Goro was saying that he thought the end of that novel was really beautiful, especially the scene where two sisters pull the drowned body of their brother, Gii, up onto an island and are waiting for the police to come,” Chikashi said. “And on the periphery of that solemn yet oddly pleasant scene, a young woman who looks like me is playfully gathering wild grasses with Akari, who’s still a small child. Goro said that if he shot that scene very carefully, he thought he could create an image that would express the deep meaning of the tableau. He was saying that the last sentence of the book was very novelistic, and so it
wasn’t something he could translate into a filmed image, but that as an example of the power of words it was really impressive. That’s what he said.”

The night he heard this, Kogito stretched out on his army cot with a copy of
Looking Ahead to Years Gone By
and reread the passage in question.

Listen, Brother Gii: I’m going to write you a great many letters about what happened in the past, as if we were still experiencing those moments together, over and over again. Starting now, I will keep on writing to you from this transient world in which you’re no longer present, until the end of my own time on earth. And that, I think, will be my task from now on.

Even after Kogito was back in Tokyo, that would hardly be the time to vow to give up his Tagame dialogues with Goro forever.
For me, now
, he mused,
isn’t Goro already like another Brother Gii, as we exchange these messages about the much-missed past
? Kogito struggled unsuccessfully to stifle the sigh that rose in his throat, and an instant later a flight attendant who had been hovering watchfully in the shadows materialized next to his seat.

“Excuse me, sir, is something the matter? That is, I mean—is everything all right?”

The subtle rephrasing gave a fleeting glimpse into the flight attendant’s private, interior self in a way that Kogito found very appealing, but she immediately reverted to the protocol set forth in her professional manual.

“How about a drink?” she said brightly. “That’ll cheer you up!”

2

The jet was now approaching the eastern tip of Siberia, and as the flight continued Kogito attempted to deconstruct his relationship with Goro from a different perspective. Regarding
THAT
, the one experience he had never been able to escape from and which he now suspected had been one of the themes that had shaped his life’s work—wasn’t it possible that Goro, too, had been burdened with the same lingering concern, all along? And could it also be true, then, that Goro was thinking about
THAT
on some level when he made all his films?

Kogito realized that the experience he had shared with Goro (he couldn’t recall exactly when he had taken to referring to it as “
THAT
,” but Goro had soon followed suit) stood with his father’s fatal “insurrection” on the day after the war ended as one of the principal incidents of his life. But
THAT
wasn’t terribly important for Goro—or was it? Kogito had been wondering about that from early on.

The first cause of his uncertainty was a three-volume set from Iwanami Bunko, which he still had in his library today.
He had bought the books when they were first published; according to the colophon, that was the summer of the ninth year after the war ended, so it would have been two years after the incident in question. At the time Goro hadn’t shown any particular interest in the Iwanami paperback books that Kogito had lent him, but nearly forty years later Kogito learned (via Tagame) that Goro
did
remember something about those books, when the topic came up during one of Goro’s tapes.

Kogito was surprised, and pleased, by Goro’s animated response on that tape. When Kogito thought about it, he realized that during the two years after
THAT
, he and Goro had only once spoken to each other face-to-face. Goro had gone to live with his mother, who had remarried and moved to Ashiya, and when he did come back to Matsuyama it always seemed to be when Kogito was away in Tokyo, where he was attending a huge “cram school” that specialized in helping students prepare for the rigorous college entrance exams. Considering the circumstances, it’s likely that Kogito sent off the Iwanami paperbacks on a childish impulse, hoping Goro would corroborate his memory of the nightmarish event the two of them had shared. And when Goro threw cold water on Kogito’s youthful enthusiasm by making a show of his utter lack of interest in the books, that (Kogito realized now) was just a charade.

“Your reading habits always were a bit peculiar,” was how Goro raised the subject on Tagame, as if it were an ordinary reminiscence. “I remember when you were counting the days until the publication of the Iwanami paperback translation of some classic of German literature, remember? It was the year you entered Tokyo University, after a year as a ‘masterless samurai.’”

Kogito pressed Tagame’s
PAUSE
button and answered with a mixture of surprise and nostalgia, “The book was Grimmelshausen’s
Adventures of a Simpleton
.”

“As I recall,” Goro went on, “you were taking a course in the history of German literature as part of your liberal arts curriculum, and you said that you wanted to read a certain German baroque novel because the contents had some special significance. That was the year my mother became convinced that you had lots of free time, and she asked you to go to some secondhand bookstores in Tokyo and try to find copies of the prewar Iwanami paperback of
The Best of Man’yo Poetry
, as well as some Winnie-the-Pooh books (those were for Chikashi). You did manage to find a copy of
The House at Pooh Corner
, as I recall, and you sent it to Ashiya. The correspondence that ensued was the beginning of your relationship with Chikashi. But more than that, you were concerned with the story of Simplicius Simplicissimus, which was scheduled for publication in the fall. I remember one day you came to the commercial design studio where I was working as an assistant to my stepfather’s younger brother, who was an artist, and you were talking about it then. You said there was a certain episode that you wanted to read very carefully, and when the book finally came out, we talked a bit more about it, and you lent me the book. It was interesting in its own weird way, I have to say.

“If I remember correctly, the governor of Hanau and his retinue decide to make a fool of Simplicius by convincing him that he has gone to heaven, or maybe hell, and has been turned into a calf, so they dress him in calfskin and ‘asses’ ears,’ whatever that means. Trying to be a good sport, Simplicius goes along with the joke and pretends to be a calf, whereupon he
ends up becoming the official court jester. But deep down inside, Simplicius was a rebel at heart.”

At that point Kogito pressed the
PAUSE
button again, went to the bookcase, and took down three volumes, so old that the paraffin-paper covers had begun to turn black from decay. He read a passage aloud: “I was thinking secretly, ‘Just you wait, Your Excellency! I’ll get you for this. I’m like a sword that’s been forged in the fires of hell. Let’s take our time and see who wins this bewitch-off.’”

“Mikhail Bakhtin also made a point of emphasizing the toughness and fortitude of the fool, didn’t he?” Goro said when the tape resumed. “You had already been focusing on that concept before you ever took Professor Musumi’s class on Rabelais. No doubt that’s because at the core of your character, there’s a definite jocular streak. I mean, when I saw O’Brian again in London the last time, he was saying that he’d never met an Asian with a better sense of humor than yours. But he was complaining that when he reads your novels in English translation, you’re so relentlessly serious and so bloody earnest. I really don’t think you’re ‘relentlessly serious,’ but anyway, I explained to him that when you speak English you’re freed from the repressive shackles of Japanese, and that’s why you’re able to clown around with impunity.”

After that evening’s session with Tagame, Kogito continued skimming through
The Adventures of a Simpleton
and was reminded of how surprised he had been, as a college student, to discover that there were significant discrepancies between what he had imagined while listening to lectures about German literary history and what he had actually read in the translation. During the university lectures that dealt with German baroque
novels, Kogito’s interest had been aroused by the way in which the young man was changed into a fool, and then a jester, by the machinations of his superior officers, who conspired to deprive him of his powers of reason.

The story begins with a rite wherein the unworldly young Simplicius is marched off to “Hell” by servants of the governor who are dressed up as evil minions of Satan. There, he is plied with large quantities of Spanish wine (the implication seems to be that it’s the cheapest sort of plonk). On top of that he’s severely tortured and spews out bodily wastes from every imaginable orifice, but in the end, he is welcomed to “Heaven.” The lecture seemed to give the impression that, after these weird tribulations, Simplicius subsequently wakes up in a goose pen and finds himself inexplicably dressed in the pelts of calves. Kogito took this to mean that Simplicius’s body was shoved into a freshly harvested calfskin, still warm and drenched in fat and blood.

That inevitably reminded him of the outrage that had been perpetrated by the sadistic young disciples at the training camp, during the ordeal known as
THAT
. As will be related later, Kogito and Goro had been sitting on a tall, wobbly platform when a freshly skinned calf’s pelt, about the size of a tatami mat, had been thrown over them from behind. Enveloped in the thick, heavy, wet membrane, it was impossible to breathe; they were overcome by fright and deprived of the use of their arms, and all they could do was to kick out impotently with their legs. It was only after Goro (having seemingly lost the strength to struggle anymore) had collapsed onto Kogito’s chest that the loathsome calfskin was finally pulled off them. Surrounded by the drunken laughter of the young disciples, Kogito wiped away
the blood, grease, and tears, then stole a glance at Goro, who was sitting next to him, so still that Kogito wondered whether he might have fainted. Then, slowly, Goro’s eyes (looking exactly like those of a sulky child) popped open.

As it turned out, the lecture had only touched on the high points, and when Kogito actually read Grimmelshausen’s text he discovered that when Simplicius opened his eyes after having been made a fool of, he was not, in fact, wrapped up in a raw, bloody, freshly harvested calfskin. He was, rather, dressed in conventional garments made from processed cowhides: that is to say, leather. Even so, when Goro read the words “clothes of calfskin,” surely he would have been reminded of that nightmarish ordeal and the unbearable stench.

That was the kernel of the bafflement Kogito felt when Goro returned the book with a casual, noncommittal comment. “This is a fairly entertaining book,” he had said, “but I don’t see why you were waiting so eagerly to read it.” Kogito (who was then nineteen) didn’t have the courage to confront Goro and say: “You seem to have no problem remembering the mundane details of our daily life in Matsuyama, so how is it possible that you would have forgotten something as momentous as
THAT
?”

Having pursued his memories of himself and Goro to that point, Kogito pushed the call button over his head, even though he knew that the beverage service had already ended. He was hoping that the stewardess who answered the call wouldn’t be the same one to whom he’d said, “No, thanks,” earlier, when she offered him a drink. Kogito, who hadn’t drunk anything more potent than wine the entire time he was in Berlin, suddenly felt the need for a glass of whiskey—the stronger, the better.

3

On this day, Kogito took the airport bus from Narita and arrived at his house in Seijo Gakuen, via Shinjuku, before evening. By Berlin time, it was still early morning, so his circadian rhythms were in complete disarray. During the long hours that followed, as he alternated between trying to grab some sleep and jumping up again in insomniac frustration, Kogito found himself looking for ways to pass the time. Fortuitously, an unusual package was delivered that night, and Kogito became totally engrossed in dealing with it. The return address was a town close to his boyhood home in Shikoku, and someone had paid extra to specify the exact time of delivery. When Kogito opened the box, he understood why: it contained a live turtle.