2
After their visit to the local clinic, Akari and Daio returned to the Forest House. The X-rays had confirmed Daio’s intuitive diagnosis: Akari’s lowermost thoracic vertebra had been crushed and he had muscular damage in his back as well. When I called to tell Asa, she gave me the name of a specialist at the Red Cross Hospital in Matsuyama who would be able to make a plaster cast. (At the time I was still feeling flustered by this new development and I mistakenly said that it was the thirteenth vertebra, but Asa was quick to inform me that the human anatomy contains no such bone.)
After lunch Akari and Daio headed out again, this time to Matsuyama. I saw them off (noting again that my son had placed his entire trust in the older man), then went upstairs and lay motionless on my bed, unable to summon enough energy even to read a book. I couldn’t stop thinking about Akari’s back trouble, which was unlike anything we’d dealt with before. I had felt uneasy about his evident discomfort while we were seated on the airplane, but why hadn’t I followed up right away? I thought, too, about the state of mind that had caused Akari to choose suffering in silence over sharing his pain with his father.
I heard the sound of someone loitering at the bottom of the stairs, and when I went down to check I found Unaiko standing in the entry hall.
“Ricchan’s back, and when I told her I was concerned about how dejected you seemed to be, she reminded me that Asa had told us about a place out in the boonies called the Saya,” she said. “We’ve been meaning to go there for some recon, since the location will have some bearing on our next public performance, and she suggested you might be willing to give us a guided tour.”
I returned to my room to change into the proper gear for traipsing through a forest, and when I went downstairs again I found Unaiko waiting for me in the elevated driver’s seat of the Caveman Group’s van, looking fresh and crisp after her own change of clothes. I climbed into the passenger seat.
“Even though Ricchan and I haven’t talked to Akari very much so far, he’s been very good about doing whatever we ask,” she said. “But he seems so sad and disheartened, and he doesn’t appear to do anything on his own initiative. Is that just the way he is these days? Asa told us that Akari always used to listen to music and study scores, while also working on his own compositions, so I guess we were expecting something different.”
I knew I would eventually have to explain what had transpired between Akari and me, but that prospect made me feel even gloomier than before. I suspected Unaiko wasn’t the type of person who would wait patiently for me to share the full story on my own timetable, but as it turned out she had already heard most of the details from my sister.
“I hope you don’t mind, but Asa told me pretty much everything she heard from Chikashi,” Unaiko said. “She mentioned that nowadays when you and Akari are together in the same place, he doesn’t listen to music at all. Apparently after the Big Vertigo struck you didn’t go out, aside from visits to the hospital for tests and so on, and you just puttered around the house day and night. As a result, there was never a time when Akari could relax by himself and enjoy listening to music, especially since the doctor had advised against prolonged use of headphones. I don’t know whether you expressly forbade Akari to listen to music, but apparently that was the impression he got.”
“Yes, Chikashi said I was probably sending that message unconsciously. There was just a little misunderstanding about the volume on the CD player,” I said, radically understating the problem.
“Well, it seems as if Akari has been feeling as though he did something bad and made you angry, and he hasn’t been able to forgive himself.”
“No, as I understand it, he simply decided not to share music with his father anymore, in any form.”
“Akari has a lot of pride, doesn’t he?” Unaiko asked.
“When families have offspring with cognitive disabilities, it’s very common to go on treating them like children long after they’ve reached maturity, and that has certainly been true in my own household at times,” I admitted. “Akari is a full-fledged adult now — he’s forty-five years old — but you’re definitely right about my son’s having an inordinate amount of pride.”
“Well, here’s an idea,” Unaiko offered. “You might not even be willing to consider something like this but I wanted to ask, at least. Actually, it’s about the van. In order to get the best use out of it, we converted it into a sort of studio on wheels. It’s furnished with high-end recording equipment, and we’ve already used it to record some radio dramas.
“So I was thinking that from time to time either Ricchan or I could take Akari out for a drive, maybe up into the mountains. We could park the van somewhere and then we could stay in the front seat doing paperwork or whatever while he would be in the back, listening to music with complete freedom. Does that sound like a workable plan?”
“If you’re able to persuade Akari to go for a drive, more power to you,” I said. “I would have no objections at all.”
“Well, as you know, Akari didn’t hesitate to go up to Matsuyama today with Daio at the wheel,” Unaiko pointed out. She sounded relieved. “That’s what made us think the system I just outlined might work. So I’ll wait for an opportune moment, and then I’ll try inviting Akari for a musical drive.”
We continued heading east on the national highway that runs along the Kame River, and then we took a secondary road through the bamboo grove where the farmers who took part in the famous insurrection cut bamboo stalks to make into spears. We emerged from the grove onto a smooth, well-maintained byway that led to a number of hamlets, then forked again. This time we headed north, following a serpentine lane into the wooded slope above the valley. Finally a meadow shaped like the sheath of a sword — the area’s local nickname, “Saya,” carries that meaning, among others — came into sight. At that point the road narrowed considerably, becoming no wider than a walking trail through the forest, so the only way to get to the Saya was on foot.
We left the van in a clearing and I led the way, since I had been there many times in the past. Scrambling down the slope, Unaiko and I entered a grove of broadleaf trees with dark, lush foliage and then climbed back up, following a slender path to a clearing drenched in sunlight. This was the lower end of the Saya. We were standing in a long, grassy, open space that had been carved out of the forest by a renegade meteor, with a little follow-up assistance from local residents. (It was perfectly suited for flower-viewing parties during cherry blossom season, but as yet there was no sign the buds had begun to swell.) We gazed at the gentle slope stretching above us to the north.
“Do you see the black rock just above the midway point?” I asked. “It’s part of a meteor that fell to earth, creating a clearing and this scabbard-shaped depression. I think what actually happened is that the meteor landed right in the middle of the virgin forest and the area below it, the Saya, was collateral damage — or should I say collateral construction? In feudal times, the young samurai supposedly turned this place into a makeshift racetrack or riding course, and used it to train for the tumultuous period of internecine strife that began during the last days of the Tokugawa Era. That’s another tidbit of the rich lore about this place.”
“I’ve heard that they leveled the flat area beyond the big black rock and then moved the timberline so it would seem to begin naturally right above there,” Unaiko said. “Asa told me about the time she and her colleagues put on a play here, as part of the film project; apparently they turned the whole lower part into audience seating, with as many as five hundred local women crowded in, going crazy over what was happening onstage — and then the scene was filmed. Asa was saying it was a once-in-a-lifetime event, bringing those local people together to participate in something so glorious and so inspiring.”