CHAPTER 49

The letter I wrote to Sensei was a fairly long one, and both my mother and I assumed that this time he would answer. Then two days later another telegram arrived for me. All it said was that I need not come. I showed it to my mother.

“He must plan on sending a letter about it,” she said, still insisting on interpreting things in terms of the position that Sensei was helping me procure. I wondered if she might be right, though it did not fit the Sensei I knew. The proposition that “Sensei would find a position for me” struck me as out of the question.

“Anyway, my letter won’t have reached him yet,” I said firmly. “He clearly sent this telegram before he read it.”

“That’s true,” said my mother solemnly, appearing to ponder the matter, although the mere fact that he had sent the telegram before he read the letter could have given her no fresh information.

That day the doctor was coming with the hospital’s head physician, so we had no more opportunity to discuss the subject. The two talked about my father and gave him an enema, then left.

Ever since the doctor had ordered total rest, my father had needed help to urinate and defecate. Fastidious man that he was, at first he loathed the process, but his physical incapacity meant he had no option but to resort to a bedpan. Then perhaps his illness slowly dulled his reactions, for he gradually ceased to be concerned by excretion difficulties. Occasionally he would soil the bedclothes, but although this distressed those around him, he seemed unperturbed by it. The nature of his illness, of course, meant that the amount of urine lessened dramatically. This worried the doctor. His appetite too was gradually fading. If he occasionally wanted to eat something, it was only to taste it—he actually ate very little. He even lost the strength to take up his accustomed newspaper. The glasses by his bedside lay untouched in their black case.

When he received a visit from Saku-san, a friend since childhood who now lived about two miles distant, my father merely turned glazed eyes in his direction. “Ah, Saku-san, is it?” he said. “Thanks for coming. I wish I was well like you. It’s all over for me.”

“You’re the lucky one,” Saku-san responded. “Here you are with two sons graduated—a little illness is nothing to complain about. Look at me, now. Wife dead, and no children. The best you can say for me is I’m alive. What pleasure’s mere good health, eh?”

A few days after Saku-san’s visit, my father was given the enema. He was delighted and grateful at how much better the doctor had made him feel, and his mood improved. He seemed to regain some of his will to live.

Perhaps swayed by this improvement, or hoping to boost him further, my mother proceeded to tell him about Sensei’s telegram, quite as if a position had already been found for me in Tokyo as my father wished. It made me cringe to sit there listening to her, but I couldn’t contradict her, so I held my peace.

My father looked happy.

“That’s excellent,” my brother-in-law remarked.

“Do you know yet what the position is?” asked my brother.

Now things had gone so far, I lost the courage to deny the story. I prevaricated with some vague reply, incomprehensible even to myself, and left the room.