Underground (32 page)

It was an easy birth. He only weighed five pounds. The older one was eight pounds, so Eiji was a lot smaller. It was a natural birth, over in an hour and a half, no need to call in the doctor. With his big brother, though, what an ordeal!

We didn’t have any choice but to raise goats. Had lots of grass all around anyway. So I’d milk the goats and drink their milk to give me lots of milk so I could breast-feed Eiji. That’s how I got Eiji to grow up healthy. Always stayed a little skinny, though, never put on much weight. But we never once had to put him in the hospital.

He was an undemanding child. Whatever it was, he could always do it for himself. When he went for an interview with Japan Tobacco, we asked, “Would you like one of us to go with you?” which only annoyed him: “Who’s gonna come with me? I’ll go alone!” (laughs) Or when he was living alone, I’d say, “Shall I come and houseclean for you?” and he’d say: “Housecleaning I can do for myself!” These last ten years there’s been only three times I had to go out of my way for Eiji: when he got engaged, then for the wedding, and then when we had to bring back his body.

The older boy, he’s more the quiet type, but Eiji was active, a whiz-bang do-it-yourselfer. Even did his own cooking. That’s why we never had any problem bringing him up. He’d decide everything for himself.

When it came time for high school, we told him, “Why not try and go on to university?” But he said, “I like electrical stuff, so I’ll go to a vocational school and not go any higher.” The boys had talked it over. The elder one said, “It’ll be easier if I just stay on here and take on the family farm,” and Eiji said, “I don’t expect anything from here, so I’ll go off on my own.” The two of them decided it between themselves.

The older boy did try going to university in Tokyo, but said he couldn’t see himself living in that crazy mixed-up place and came back to agricultural school here. But not Eiji. That boy could make it anywhere. He took to city life straightaway. After graduating from the electrical program, he went to work for Japan Tobacco in 1983. My sister’s husband worked there already. When he was about to retire, he said, “Why doesn’t Eiji join Japan Tobacco?” This was just around the time they were computerizing the machines, and when Eiji went in for the interview, he said, “I want to join so I can learn these computer systems,” so maybe that’s why they gave him the job. At the training in Nagaoka everyone else was a university graduate, he told me, only two out of twelve were straight out of high school.

He said that in Nagaoka the snow piled up a meter deep. So the next thing he’s saying he wants to learn to ski. He needed equipment so could I send him money? Which I did. So then he really got into skiing, was skiing all the time. It was on a ski slope that he met Yoshiko.

At Nagaoka he was away from home, starting a new life alone, but he didn’t seem lonely. He made lots of friends, he was making money for himself and was free to have fun with it.

When they told us Eiji had died, honestly, my head went totally blank. You hear about people “blanking out,” but it really did happen. Didn’t know what was what.

Wasn’t anybody home at the time. His company and the police rang up, but everyone was out. Before that I’d been putting up miso, like I always make up a batch in April, but since I had to go and help with Eiji’s baby, I put it up a month ahead of time. That kept me busy. On the twentieth the weather was clear, so I washed the laundry that had been piling up, ran all sorts of errands. Father had gone to prune the apple trees in the orchard that morning, and my blood pressure was up a little, so I went to the hospital for medicine, which is why nobody was at home.

Eventually they got through to my elder sister, who said, “I call you a thousand times and there’s no one there. Haven’t you seen TV?” On the way back from the hospital I was going to buy some flowers, it being Higan [the Buddhist equinox], but first I went home for a bit. That’s when the phone rang.

“Such good weather, why would anyone be watching TV? If it rains I’ll watch, but now I’m just too busy.” That’s when she said, “Listen, don’t get alarmed. Brace yourself.” And I was like, “Brace myself? What’s this all about?”

And it was, “Just now on the TV, they said Eiji’s dead.” That’s when everything went blank. That was it. I can’t recall another thing. It came that hard. The shock, it just wiped out everything …

It was a year before they married that he brought Yoshiko home. Brought her in the wintertime. Eiji only ever came home twice a year, at Obon [the Buddhist festival of the dead, in August] and at year-end, and this was in the winter. Because we’d just finished all our winter preparations. As I recall, Yoshiko didn’t stay with us that time, she went back home the same day.

All along I’d been saying, “Wouldn’t it be better to get a bride from the country? So it’d be easier to come up here, it being home country to you both.” And Eiji would say, “No, a country girl would be just as much a bother. I’ll find my own, don’t you worry, Mother. I’ll worry about that myself.”

FATHER
: That was fine by me. Let him choose who he likes and stay with her, that’s all that matters. A parent has no right to interfere in a child’s marriage. Let them do it for themselves, is what I say.

MOTHER
: Their wedding was at a chapel in Aoyama. A small ceremony. “Dozens of people wouldn’t fit in the hall,” he told us, so only really close relations attended. But when I said, “We’ll have to throw another ceremony again when you come up to the country,” he told me, “I’m the second son. Brother’s the one going to carry on the family line. Me, who knows whether I’ll even end up back here or not, so there’s no need to do anything special for me.”

We heard that Yoshiko was expecting when they came to visit at New Year. I’d somehow sensed it when they came up in August. The color in her cheeks hadn’t looked so good then, and I thought to myself, well, just maybe. So I asked her and she said, “I suppose I could be.”

FATHER
: On March 20, like my wife said earlier, I was pruning the apples out back. Been at it since morning. Have to finish before the end of March. We got forty apple trees in all.

Our eldest lives with us, but under a separate roof. Meals and everything we take separate. He’s got his wife and kids with him. So if our phone rings, you can’t even hear it over there. And anyway his wife was pregnant then too, and she was out getting medicine at the birth clinic.

But it just so happens the older boy was listening to the radio at work when the name “Eiji Wada” came out. Then he flew over to our place. He’d called and called on the phone but nobody answered, so he guessed we were out in the field. But even before him, my wife’d come home and got that phone call first.

Word came from the police, too. Headquarters had phoned the local police post, told them to go straight out and find us, is what happened. And just when my wife was on the phone, the police came driving up.

MOTHER
: I didn’t want Father to keel right over in the field if he suddenly heard about it, so we went out to the apple orchard and told him, “Come here a second.” Four of us went to Tokyo. Father, me, our eldest boy, and my sister’s husband, who pushed Eiji to join Japan Tobacco. We caught the
2:00
train from Ueda, and we got into Ueno Station around
5:00
. It was still light out. Someone from Japan Tobacco came to meet us and took us by taxi to the Central Police Headquarters. No one breathed a word on the way. It was dead silence. We just kept quiet in the car and got out when we were asked.

But by then the body was no longer with the police. It had been sent over to Tokyo University Forensics. So after all that we couldn’t even see our Eiji that day and we were put up overnight in the Japan Tobacco guest house. I couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning at
9:00
we all went to Tokyo University Hospital and finally got to see him. Without thinking, I touched Eiji and they yelled at me.

How was I supposed to know you weren’t supposed to touch him? I just couldn’t help myself. Apparently Yoshiko touched him and they shouted at her, too. But to a mother, she’s got to touch him and feel he’s cold before she finally admits to herself, “It’s too late.” Otherwise nothing’s going to convince her.

Everything in my head was just wiped clean away. I couldn’t understand anything. But I kept control, you know, so I didn’t cry. I was reduced to a complete idiot, my body still moving but that was it. We had to send him to meet Lord Buddha and give him a funeral. When your head goes empty, even tears don’t come.

It’s strange, but in my head all I could think about was preparing the rice fields. Two children … grandchildren on the way, rice planting to do, gotta do this, gotta do that, my mind was keeping me busy. So there I was, getting ready to transplant the rice seedlings when the TV crew showed up.

FATHER
: I didn’t answer nothing to the reporters. I got so mad at them. They even followed us to the crematorium. Even took pictures of the birthing clinic. I told ’em please go away, but no matter what I said they just wouldn’t go. They pushed themselves on the neighbors. And they asked us, “They want us to talk, so what should we do, Mr. Wada?” but I told them, “Don’t say nothing.”

Just once, when I was riding my tractor and they came up shoving a mike at me, saying, “Mr. Wada, any comment?” just once I answered. I said: “I’d like to see the killers get an immediate death penalty for their crime. And they’ll have to amend Japan’s Constitution. That’s all. Now please go home.” I just wouldn’t have anything more to do with them and I went straight back to the field. The TV station set up a camera in front of our house, aiming for when I came home. So I just scooted around back on my bike. At the time, there was just so many people come to report on us. Saying they were writing something for magazines or whatever.

I just barely hung on, knowing the rice planting had to get done or else. And when rice planting was done, I just collapsed. All sorts of thoughts were in my head, but think and think there’s just no end to it. No matter how much you think, the dead boy’s not coming back. I had to tell myself, can’t keep feeling this way forever. Still, there’s no forgetting, either. Every time I think back over it all, I get these feelings stewing again in my gut.

I’m not much of a drinker, but I like my sake. So whenever Eiji came home, us three’d drink together, father and sons. That sake always tasted the best, like nothing else. A little drink in us and the talk’d just spring to life. We’d put away a
sho
[
1.8
liters] in an evening. We’re a close family. Never once argued.

MOTHER
: He was a kind child. When he got his first pay, he bought me a watch. And also whenever he came back to visit, he’d always bring something for his big brother’s kids. When he went to America and Canada on business, he bought us souvenirs.

He even bought souvenirs for Asuka before she was born. A while back, when Asuka came up to visit, she was wearing clothes that Eiji had bought her in America. That’s how much he looked forward to the child being born. I mean he really was looking forward to it, and yet … when I think how those idiots went and killed him, it’s so pathetic.

FATHER
: At the time of the Matsumoto incident, why didn’t the police do a better job of investigating? If they’d done that, this whole mess would never have happened. If only they’d pushed harder on the case back then.

MOTHER
: Still, his wife and baby are fine; she bore us a splendid grandchild. I try to remember that. If I hung around here sobbing all the time, I’d be no good helping her after the birth, so I had to pull myself together, and it’s gotten me through this far.

FATHER
: There’s farming to be done, what we’ve always done. Once the rice seedlings are set it’s time to transplant them to the rice fields, once that’s done it’s picking the apple buds, then it’s pollinating the blossoms … there’s no rest, the work keeps on coming. Working like that wears you down physically and when you’re tired out you sleep like a log. We’ve got no time for neuroses or tranquilizers. That’s just how it is for farmers.