Sunaga's story was much longer than Keitaro had expected.
My father died years ago. He died suddenly when I was very young, when I had no real understanding of the affection that exists between a parent and child. Since I have no children, my affection toward those of my own flesh and blood may still be comparatively weak, but the feeling of endearment I have toward the parents who brought me into the world has developed considerably since that time. I often wish that in those days I had had the love for them I now have. I was, in short, quite cold toward my father, although he himself never indulged me either. The portrait I have of him in my mind is merely that of a stern face, one with high cheekbones and a sallow complexion, a face that could scarcely endear itself to a child. Each time I look in the mirror, I'm reminded of the remarkable resemblance between my own face and the face of my father that I've stored in my mind, and this displeases me. I feel ashamed not only because I have to worry about giving others as unpleasant an impression of myself as my father gave of himself, but also because of the miserable feeling of a son remembering only the unfavorable surface of his father as the sole memento of that father. Judging from myself as I am now—I do have a warmer affection flowing in me than my own gloomy eyebrows and forehead suggest—I suspect my father to have had at the bottom of his heart tears much warmer than my own despite the callousness of his outward appearance.
A few days before my father died, he called me to his bedside. "Ichizo," he said, "when I die, you'll have to be looked after by your mother. You realize that, don't you?" Since it was my mother who had taken care of me from the day I was born, it struck me as odd to be warned anew in this way by my father at the last moment. I merely sat there silently, having nothing to say. My father—it seemed like he had to forcibly move the lines on his face, which was all skin and bone—spoke again. "If you continue to be as mischievous as you are now, your mother won't be here to watch over you either. So behave yourself." I knew quite well that my mother had taken care of me until that time, so I didn't feel like I had to change the way I'd been. Thinking that his rebuke was totally unnecessary, I left the sickroom.
When my father died, my mother cried a great deal. Just before the coffin was to be taken from the house, I was alone in the open hallway. I had changed into my funeral attire and, since I didn't have anything else to do, was looking up at the blue sky when my mother, dressed in the white silk kimono bereaved wives wear, suddenly came over to me. Taguchi and Matsumoto and the others who were to go with the coffin were all busily occupied in another part of the house, so no one was there except my mother and me. All at once she put her hand on my close-cropped hair and fixed on me her eyes, which were swollen from crying. Then in an undertone she said, "Even though your father has just died, don't worry. I'll look after you just as I always have." I didn't say anything. Nor did I cry. It was an incident that was over and done with in a moment, but I've since come to feel keenly that it was those remarks of my parents that have cast a shadow over the memory I have of the two of them.
Whenever I asked myself why I had harbored such doubts about those words, words that didn't need to have any particular significance attached to them, I found myself unable to explain the reason. At times I had half a mind to question my mother directly about them, but whenever I looked at her face, my resolve failed. And somewhere in my mind something cropped up and whispered to me that once I confided my secret thoughts to her, the close relationship of mother and son would be so damaged that we would never be given the chance to recover the harmony we were enjoying. If it didn't come to that, it was likely that my mother would gaze at my overly serious face and laugh everything away by saying, "Was there ever actually such a thing?" When I thought about the cruel effect that such an evasion would have on our relationship, I resolved to keep quiet at any cost about my secret doubt.
I was never an obedient son. As is obvious from the fact that I was called to my dying father's bedside to be scolded, I really had often disobeyed my mother during my childhood days. Even after I grew up and had enough sense to desire to be kinder to her because she was, after all, my mother, I still did not do as she wished. Especially during these last two or three years, I've caused her constant anxiety. On the one hand, I had the idea that no matter what might be said freely between a mother and child, they should always be just that—mother and child. On the other hand, I was afraid that if, relying on the fact that nothing had ever happened which had damaged, either seriously or slightly, this precious relationship, I broached the earlier matter and both of us received a wound that would leave an indelible scar of remorse, it would be a misfortune we'd never recover from. I suspected that this fear might have been created by my nervous temperament, though more often than not, it seemed to exist more clearly in the future than in the present. And that is why even now I feel sad that I wasn't able to forget my parents' words as soon as they had been uttered.
I have no idea how well my father and mother got along together. Since I haven't been married yet, I may not be qualified to say anything about such a relationship, but I think it's usual with any husband and wife, no matter how much they love one another, to have their disagreements. So I think that during my parents' long married life as well, there must have been times when they found in each other's minds some unpleasant stains and had to keep such discoveries to themselves, sometimes even harboring them bitterly, I guess. And yet to the very end of my father's life, I never witnessed any quarrel between them, for in spite of his having been a quicktempered man, he had a rather secretive personality. And my mother by her very nature cannot raise her voice unless it's to recite a classical song. I suppose that it would be rare to find a family as orderly and as serene as ours was. Even my uncle Matsumoto, who is so outspokenly harsh in his criticism of others, still firmly believes this was so.
Whenever my mother speaks to me about my father, she invariably describes him as having been among all husbands in the world the closest to perfection. This seems to me partly a defense of him due to her desire to purify that memory of him which lies somewhere muddied in the depths of my mind. Or it may be an attempt to bring more luster to her own memory by polishing it with the rag of time. Whatever the reason, whenever she introduced my father to me as someone totally imbued with parental affection, her own attitude underwent a sudden and thorough transformation. There were even times when I was so overwhelmed by her austere spirit that I wondered how the mild and gentle mother I was so accustomed to could change into such a serious one. It was when I was moving from middle school to college preparatory high school that I had that impression, but nowadays, no matter how much I plead with her to repeat those earlier words about my father, I can never experience those exalted sentiments of my earlier days. Perhaps my own feelings from that time to my graduation from the university have grown utterly desolate, like those of the heroes in recent novels. When I feel like cursing this self of mine, poisoned as it is by the modern age, I sometimes have the desire to touch once again that sublime feeling I had experienced with my mother. Yet at the same time I'm filled with the sad thought that this desire is a bygone dream I can never recapture.
My mother's character can be described most easily as that of an affectionate mother. From my point of view, she is certainly a woman who was born for the sake of those two words and who will die for them. Actually, that makes me feel sorry for her, yet since her one satisfaction in life is concentrated on this one point, I realize that as long as I do what I should as a good son, she'll find no greater delight than that. And it follows that if I go against her wishes too many times, it will cause her the greatest misery. Sometimes it gives me real pain when I think about that.
I've almost forgotten to tell you something else—that I was not an only child. Even now I can remember playing as a kid with my younger sister, Tae-chan. She usually wore a long coat with large patterns on it over her kimono. She had her hair cut short, hanging down like a doll's. She used to call me "Ichizo-chan," never "big brot
her." Several years before our father's death, she died of diphtheria. No serum had yet been discovered, so it must have been extremely difficult to treat. I didn't even know what the disease was called. Once Matsumoto came to inquire after her health and teased me by asking, "Are you diphtherial too?" and even now I can remember replying, "No, I'm not. I'm a soldier!"
For some time after my sister's death, the stern face of my father looked much more tender. When he said to my mother, "I'm truly sorry for you," the especially gentle expression on his face as he uttered that remark was engraved on my boyish mind, as were the very words he used at that moment. But I don't remember at all what my mother's answer was. No matter how much I try recalling it, I can't. It probably slipped out of my memory the moment she said it.
It seems funny, I guess, that for a boy who was keenly observant and sensitive toward his father, I didn't pay much attention to my mother. If it's true that people tend to want to know more about others than about themselves, I'd say that my father seemed more like a stranger to me than my mother did. To put it another way, my mother was so familiar to me that she wasn't worth observing.
Well, at any rate, my younger sister died. So from that time on I became my parents' only child. And long after my father's death, I am still my mother's only son.
So I think it's my duty to treat my mother as considerately as I can. But the truth is that the same cause makes me all the more perverse. From the moment I graduated from the university last year until now, I haven't troubled myself even once about getting a job. I graduated with a rather good record, so if I had chosen to make use of the custom of selection based on academic standing to get a job—the usual way nowadays—I could have had a position that would make me the envy of most of my friends. Actually, I remember having once been called in by a certain professor of mine, who was entrusted by some employer with the selection of a suitable job candidate, to be sounded out about my future intentions. And still I didn't make a move. You realize, of course, that I'm not telling you this to boast about it. It's really the reverse of boasting—it makes me feel uncomfortable about myself, since I'm revealing my diffidence, my utter lack of conviction. Nevertheless, I've since been haunted by the idle thought—I had it when I declined that offer—that to win esteem in the world by wearing myself to the bone from morning till night, what's the point? I don't think I was born to make a name for myself in the world. Had I majored in botany or astronomy instead of law, the fates might have bestowed on me some job suited to my personality. I think this way because while I'm extremely timid toward society, I can really persevere when it comes to myself.
I think you already know that it's the small bit of property my father left me that allows me to indulge myself as I do. When I think about the fact that if it weren't for that I'd have to use my law degree and fight the world no matter how painful it would be, I can only offer thanks to my dead father. At the same time I have to realize how very unstable and frivolous my perverseness must be, since it exists only by virtue of that inheritance. And I feel all the more sorry for my mother, who has been made a victim of my perversity.
As is usual with women educated in the old ways, my mother has above all else the notion that the primary duty of a son is to elevate the family name. But she has no real understanding about what that means, whether it's done by honor, property, power, or virtue. She merely has some vague idea that if any of these fall along the way, the rest will somehow come together one after another. I myself lack the courage to talk to her about this sort of thing. I don't believe I'd be qualified to until I've actually elevated my family's name in a way that fits in with my own view of the world. And yet I'm someone who cannot in any way whatsoever elevate his own family name. All I can do is to keep in mind some nobility of spirit not unworthy of my family's reputation. If I presented this idea to my mother, though, it would, far from pleasing her, only make her uneasy, since it's an idea quite alien to her. That also makes me feel sad.
Among the many anxieties I've given my mother, what I'd mention first is this shortcoming I've just spoken about. But she loves me enough to allow us to get along together even without mending my bad points, so without losing this feeling of being sorry for her, I believe we can push on as we are now doing. But what torments me secretly even more than my perverseness, for fear that it will give my mother an even sharper disappointment, is the problem of my marriage. Rather than a problem of marriage, it may be more appropriate to call it the circumstances surrounding Chiyoko and me. To explain all this in the proper sequence, I'll have to go back to the days before her birth.
The Taguchi of that time was neither a man of influence nor fortune, as he is now. But he was a young man of promise, so my father interceded on his behalf so that he could marry my mother's sister. Taguchi looked up to my father as his senior; he sought his advice and was given assistance in one way or another. The close relationship established between the two families was moving along more smoothly month after month by the time Chiyoko was born. I heard that my mother asked at the time, though I don't know even now what made her think of it, if the Taguchis would give this child in marriage to "her Ichizo" when she grew up. According to what I heard from my mother, they readily gave their assent on that occasion. Momoyoko was born later, and then they had a son, Goichi. Since there was a male heir now, the Taguchis could freely give Chiyoko in marriage to whomever they wished. I myself don't know whether they had definitely pledged to my mother that they would give her to me.
At any rate, there was that kind of tie between Chiyoko and me from that early time on even without our being aware of what was happening around us. But the ties binding us were rather uncertain ones. The two of us grew up as freely as skylarks soaring toward heaven. Even those who had twisted those ties might not have been aware that they were holding them so firmly at their ends. I feel a deep sadness for my mother in not being able to use the words "uncertain ties" as meaning the strange workings of fate.
When I entered college preparatory high school, my mother hinted at the affair concerning Chiyoko. At that age I was of course conscious of the other sex. But no idea had yet formed in my mind about who would be my future wife. I was not mature enough; I was still too restless to give the topic any serious thought. Actually, the girl who had played and quarreled with me since childhood and who was as familiar to me as if she had practically grown up in the same house seemed so very close to me that she looked too commonplace to provide the usual stimulus a man feels about the opposite sex. I think that these feelings were not mine alone but were probably the same with Chiyoko. As evidence, I cannot recall a single experience throughout our long association in which she treated me as a male. In her eyes, whether I'm angry or crying or posing amorously and making eyes at her, I'm invariably nothing more than her cousin. This comes partly, though, from her disposition, in which an inherent purity is dominant—this temperament of hers I know better than anyone else. But her disposition could not be the only thing that removes so completely the barriers set up to make us aware of the sexes. Only once did—well, I'll tell about that later.
My mother interpreted my deafness to what she said as coming from shyness, so she put the question away as though she were waiting for another occasion to mention it. I don't have the courage to deny that I was shy at the time. But my mother's interpreting the fondness I have for Chiyoko as shyness really amounts to acknowledging the exact opposite for a fact. The upshot of the matter is that all my mother's endeavors to bring us up on as friendly terms as possible in preparation for our future have only resulted in putting us further and further apart as man and woman. And yet my mother herself was quite unaware of this. And it was cruel of me to have brought it to her attention.
It really pains me to tell you what happened one day. Ever since that time during my high school days when my mother hinted about the question of Chiyoko, she seemed to have been brooding over it in her heart— until one night in my second year at the university, that is. During spring
vacation when news of the blooming of the cherry blossoms was being talked about, she laid the question gently before me. By that time I was much more mature, so I could afford to take up the matter quietly and examine it carefully from all angles. This time she didn't merely drop some remote hint, but took care in phrasing her hope in an appropriate form. I simply replied that I found the situation distasteful because a cousin is related by blood. To my surprise, my mother said that she had requested that Chiyoko be given to me as my wife—she asked this right when Chiyoko was born—so that I really ought to marry her. When I asked why she had made such a request, she answered that it was because she liked the child, and that there was no reason why I shouldn't either. Such a reply, hardly applicable to the baby I was at the time, made me feel embarrassed. I pressed her further until she said with tears in her eyes that it wasn't, in fact, for my sake, but for her own. And yet she would not give me the answer to my repeated question of why it would be good for her. Finally she asked if it was impossible to bring myself to accept Chiyoko as my wife. I told her that I had no dislike for Chiyoko, but that since she herself had no desire to become my wife, nor did her parents want her to, it was better not to make such a proposal because it would only cause them trouble. My mother insisted that no matter what trouble they might be caused, it involved a promise, nor was there any reason to worry about causing them trouble. She then proceeded to give a number of instances in which Taguchi had been helped by my father and had given trouble to him. There was no dissuading her, so I suggested that we put off the final answer until my graduation. With a gleam of hope amid such misgivings to light up her countenance, she asked me to think it over once again.
These were the circumstances which forced me to share this problem which until then had been carried only in my mother's heart. Are not the Taguchis brooding over this very same problem in their own way? If they were to give Chiyoko in marriage to another family, they would at least have to get our approval at the last moment. That must be a source of worry to my uncle as well.