“My mother realized that sending my father and Akari off to Shikoku together under the current circumstances could create problems for you, but she did it anyway. I think it was because she wasn’t confident she would survive the surgery, and she felt uneasy about having my father and brother around during a time like that. Before she went into the hospital she tidied up a lot of loose ends, and after she was admitted she wouldn’t let either one of them come to visit her. I think sending them to stay on Shikoku was her way of forcing them to find a way to go on living together after she was gone, and she was hoping their time down there would help.
“When I went to the airport to see my father and Akari off to Shikoku — and also to meet my aunt Asa, who had just flown in — I got the sense that Akari knew what was going on with our mother and was aware of what the worst-case outcome could be. He seemed so lost and depressed that I impulsively blurted out, ‘Mama is going to come home from the hospital around the beginning of May,’ even though I knew as I was saying those words that they could undermine my mother’s intentions.
“Akari’s response was typical of his peculiar sense of humor — in fact, it was a playful variation on one of his quotes from the little book I put together. He said, ‘Oh, is that so? Mama’s coming home at the beginning of May? Well, even if she comes home then, right now she’s dead. Mama is really dead!’”
Kogii, I can’t help thinking about one of the terms you’re so fond of: “rebirth.” Isn’t that the essence of what Akari is talking about here and in My Own Words as well?
Chapter 10. A Memory … or the Coda to a Dream
1
When Unaiko was offered a four-week job as guest director at a large theater — a far cry from the small-scale venues where she had been mounting her own productions — she naturally jumped at the opportunity. There was nothing more for Ricchan to do, so she left Tokyo as soon as she had finished attending to some personal business of her own.
Ricchan’s first task after returning to the Forest House had been to rearrange the room she shared with Unaiko to create a designated space for Akari. He immediately settled into his downstairs pied-à-terre and busied himself with organizing the CDs Ricchan had brought back from Tokyo for him. After spending half a day lining up the discs according to his own method of classification he began listening to one track from each CD, starting with a Piazzolla piece for guitar, until he’d worked his way through the entire stack.
Meanwhile, Ricchan came upstairs to clean my study/bedroom. While she worked, she told me about her farewell conversation with Chikashi at the hospital, although of course (as Ricchan knew) Asa had already given me a partial recap. While she was bundling some sheets, pillowcases, and pajamas to be laundered, Ricchan caught sight of the photograph of Unaiko’s heroic onstage pose, which I had tucked away on the bookshelf with my big dictionaries, and she quietly moved it to a more conspicuous place. Then she mentioned having noticed that Chikashi had only one photo of her late brother, Goro, on display in her hospital room — and even that was just a book cover rather than a framed photo.
“It’s been ten years since Goro died,” I said, “and some books are finally coming out now that aren’t completely tainted by the tabloid newspaper scandal everyone was obsessed with immediately after his death. The photo was probably taken by a young photographer friend of Goro’s, whom we’d heard about but never met. Chikashi said it was an unusually relaxed-looking photo of Goro, and she added that for someone who was in the film business, he was surprisingly self-conscious about being photographed.”
Ricchan nodded. “I mentioned to Chikashi that I couldn’t help noticing there weren’t any photos of Akari, or of you, Mr. Choko. I was really just making small talk, with no particular agenda, but she seemed to be thinking carefully about how to reply. Finally she said there was one photo of Akari she particularly liked — a black-and-white portrait that was on the cover of a magazine after sales of his second CD took off — but it was too large to bring to the hospital. She also mentioned that something she’s noticed about photographs of young people with brain damage (and she seemed a bit hesitant about saying this) is that most of the photos somehow seemed to emphasize those disabilities. She thinks it has as much to do with the photographers as with the subjects. But in the magazine photo, she said, Akari looks completely natural and relaxed. Then she went on to add, ‘As for a photograph of my husband, there’s one Goro took when they were both in high school, but it’s the polar opposite of a candid shot. It was posed within an inch of its life, but it’s still oddly unforgettable.’
“When I said I would very much like to see the photograph, Chikashi told me it was published in The Changeling, as an illustration amid the pages where you talk about what was going on at that time in your life. So while Maki and I were at your house, sorting through Akari’s CDs and choosing a few for me to bring here, I helped myself to a copy. I haven’t had time to read it yet, and I haven’t looked at the photo, either.”
2
While she was in Tokyo, Ricchan went to the university hospital to pick up some of Akari’s prescriptions, and she asked the pharmacists for advice about the major seizure Akari had experienced in the forest. They told her increasing the dosages of any of his meds wasn’t an option and cautioned that special care should be taken to ensure he was getting enough exercise. As soon as she got back to the Forest House, Ricchan instituted a more rigorous fitness program based on walking and calisthenics interspersed with rest periods. She added a water flask to Akari’s portable kit (this was a new addition), and on her first morning back they set out together.
Not long afterward, Daio dropped by. After touching on several innocuous household matters, the conversation soon progressed to a more volatile topic: Unaiko and Ricchan’s latest dog-tossing project.
“Since my training camp went bust I haven’t really gotten together with any of my former disciples, but a number of them have become quite influential, both in the local prefectural government and elsewhere,” Daio began. “One way or another, I hear things, and they’re apparently keeping tabs on me as well. The other day I happened to run into a man who’s in touch with some of those guys; he’s in the shipping and transport business, so I guess he gets around quite a bit.
“Anyhow, this person was expressing concern about Unaiko’s theatrical work and also about my own involvement with her group. He kept harping on the open-discussion format in the latter part of the plays — which, as you’ve surely heard, was the talk of the countryside around here (and not always in a good way!) after the performance at the junior high school. He was saying the faction that opposed whatever opinion she was espousing always seemed to be on the losing side of the dog-tossing battles, and he was complaining because he felt the other side (which was, in his opinion, making a fair point) inevitably ended up being ‘covered in dead dogs,’ as he put it. He believes Unaiko’s plays are biased, and he seemed to be blaming you, Kogito, at least in part. He said you didn’t come back here for the longest time, but as soon as you arrived, earlier this month, there was a sudden spike in what he called ‘subversive activity’ at the Forest House. (Apparently his spies are everywhere.) Suffice it to say he and his right-wing cronies have never been your biggest fans — and as you know better than anyone, that’s putting it mildly — and now they’ve gotten themselves all worked up with righteous indignation about Unaiko and her avant-garde approach to drama. This isn’t over, by a long shot.”