CHAPTER 48

When my brother arrived, my father was lying in bed reading the newspaper. My father had always made a special point of looking through the newspaper every day, and since he had taken to his bed, boredom had exacerbated this urge. My mother and I held our tongues, determined to indulge him in any way he wanted.

“It’s wonderful to find you looking so well,” said my brother cheerfully as he sat talking with him. “I came expecting you to be in a pretty bad way, but you seem absolutely fine.” His boisterous high spirits struck me as rather out of keeping with the situation.

When he left my father’s side and came to talk to me, however, he was much more somber. “Isn’t it a bad idea to let him read the newspaper?”

“I think so too, but he won’t take no for an answer, so what can we do?”

My brother listened in silence to my justifications, then asked, “How well does he understand it, I wonder?” He had apparently concluded that my father’s illness had affected his grasp of things.

“He understands just fine,” chimed in my sister’s husband, who had arrived at about the same time. “I spent twenty minutes or so at his bedside talking about this and that, and there was no sign of a problem. He may well last a while yet, to judge from how he seems.” He was far more optimistic than we were.

My father had asked him a number of questions about my sister. “You mustn’t let her rock about in trains, in her condition,” he had told him. “It would only be a worry for me if she endangered herself by coming to see me.” And he added, “Don’t worry, I’ll be better in no time, and then I’ll take the trip up there myself for a change and meet the baby.”

When General Nogi committed ritual suicide soon after the emperor’s funeral, stating that he was following his lord into death, my father was the first to learn of it from the newspaper.

“Oh no, this is dreadful!” he exclaimed.

We, of course, knew nothing of what had prompted these words, and they gave us quite a shock. “I really thought he’d turned a bit odd,” my brother said later to me. “It sent a cold shiver down my spine.” My sister’s husband agreed that he’d been alarmed as well.

Just then the paper was filled daily with news that made us country folk eager to read every issue. I would sit beside my father going carefully through its pages, and if I didn’t have enough time, I quietly carried it off to my room, where I read it cover to cover. The photograph of General Nogi in his military uniform, and his wife, who had died with him, dressed in what looked like the clothing of an imperial lady-in-waiting, stayed with me vividly for a long time.

These tragic winds were penetrating even our distant corner of the land, shaking summer’s sleepy trees and grasses, when suddenly I received a telegram from Sensei. In this backwater, where the mere sight of someone dressed in the Western style would set the dogs barking, even a telegram was a major event.

My startled mother was the one to accept its delivery at the door, and she called me over to hand it to me in private.

“What is it?” she said, standing expectantly beside me as I opened the envelope.

The telegram simply stated that he wanted to see me and asked if I could come. I cocked my head in puzzlement.

“It’s bound to be about a position he’s found for you,” declared my mother, leaping to conclusions.

Perhaps she was right, but if so, it seemed a bit strange. At any rate, having called my brother and brother-in-law to come because the end was near, I certainly couldn’t turn my back on my father’s illness and run off to Tokyo.

I talked it over with my mother and decided to send a telegram replying that I was unable to go. I appended a very brief explanation that my father’s illness was becoming critical, but that was not enough to satisfy me. “Letter follows,” I added, and the same day I sent off a letter detailing the situation.

“It’s such a shame it’s come at such a bad time,” my mother said ruefully, still convinced the summons had to do with some position he had found for me.