“Only … I don’t mean to go on and on about this, but I can’t get it out of my mind. I really think the two of us — you still having the same dream after all these years, and me still obsessed with trying to figure out the truth about that night — are the only people left in the world who can even spare a thought for Choko Sensei anymore!”
At this point, I remembered a question I had been wanting to ask. “Daio, you seem to have very lucid memories about the night of the big flood and the following morning, but what about the red leather trunk I took to my father when he was already on board the boat? Do you know how much time elapsed before that trunk was finally returned to my mother?”
“Oh, the trunk,” Daio said. “Yeah, apparently it floated downstream and finally washed ashore a few kilometers past the spot where the boat capsized. It was retrieved by some fishermen and taken to the police station, and eventually (it could have been weeks, or months) the cops went to your house and returned it to your mother. As for the letters and papers that were inside, those had already been sifted through and censored by the officers. Whether the war had ended in victory or defeat for Japan, there was nothing left in the trunk to raise a warning flag for anyone on any side. No incriminating evidence at all — the officers made sure of that. Of course during that time of crisis, with the Occupation and whatnot, those local policemen certainly didn’t have time to be poring over an English-language edition of The Golden Bough looking for evidence of subversive activities! Until recently the only people who had seen inside the trunk in recent memory were your mother and your sister, as far as I know. And even though the trunk had been more or less sanitized by the officers, I guess those two strong women decided to keep the remaining contents out of your hands to avoid any possible negative repercussions from the drowning novel you wanted to write. In retrospect, maybe they were being overly cautious, but I guess they felt it was important to try to protect the family name from any hint of scandal.”
Daio paused for a moment, then continued. “Choko Sensei was — and still is — the most important teacher I’ve ever had, but to be honest, I hold your mother in even higher esteem. In my personal ranking system, she’s at the very top, above your father. From the time you were a child, I always believed you were no ordinary person. But since we’re ranking things, I’m sure you know your mother always thought Asa was a more balanced human being than you are, in a practical sense, and I think she died happy, knowing that Asa would outlive us all.
“I remember your mother used to say that in the House of Choko, the women never fail to outshine the men. Apparently it’s been true going back to your grandmother’s time. Or if you wanted to go even further, maybe you could include Meisuke’s mother. Your mother always said she might have been a distant relative of yours!”
PART THREE. These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins
Chapter 12. All About Kogii
1
Very early one morning I heard the sound of something stirring outside, behind the Forest House. After lying awake, listening, for the better part of an hour, I finally got out of bed and ventured downstairs.
Masao Anai was standing in the back garden, gazing intently at the large, round poetry stone, and it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d seen him during my current sojourn in the forest. Masao raised his head and looked at me calmly, but his expression seemed to bear a tinge of disappointment. (My phrasing may be a trifle disingenuous, since I had been directly responsible for dashing his hopes.) At the same time, I discerned a kind of pellucid freshness in his gaze, as if he might be ready to let bygones be bygones and begin anew. When I caught Masao’s eye, through the window, I got the sense that he was picking up a similarly positive vibration from me.
I glanced at the small clock on the kitchen counter and saw that it was only five A.M. Then I set to work brewing four cups of fresh coffee in the coffeemaker Maki had recently sent down from the house in Tokyo; the amount was based on my expectation of visiting with Masao for the time it took to drink two large cups apiece. Ricchan was asleep in the west wing of the house, while Akari was in his room upstairs, and I knew no one else was likely to be up and about for another couple of hours, at least.
When Masao came inside, I caught a strong whiff of tobacco. He didn’t make any move to light up another cigarette, and I surmised that he had been lingering in front of the poetry stone for the primary purpose of having one last smoke before entering the house. Typically for him, Masao didn’t bother to break the ice with anything resembling the customary “long time no see” greetings. Instead, he resumed our conversation where we had left off, jumping right back into a topic he had evidently been continuing to think about during the intervening months.
“Lately Unaiko and Ricchan have been spending a lot of time here, pouring all their energy into the new project, so I’ve been holding down the fort at our headquarters in Matsuyama by myself,” he began. “I’ve kept busy taking inventory and getting organized, and in the process I reviewed all the works of yours that we’ve converted into stage plays so far.”
“Asa was saying how sorry she was your plan for dramatizing the drowning novel in conjunction with my own work on that book came to naught because of what happened on my part,” I said by way of indirect apology.
“Well, this has turned out to be the end of an era for us, so it’s given me a good chance to reflect and gain some perspective,” Masao said graciously. “Until now, converting Kogito Choko’s fiction into stage plays has been the mainstay of our work, which has caused some theater critics to suggest facetiously that the Caveman Group ought to change its name to something like ‘the People Who Live in the Cave of Kogito Choko.’ You know, the usual sarcasm and cheap plays on words.
“If your drowning novel had been completed, we were planning to find a way of combining it with whatever we had cooked up along the way to create a kind of contrapuntal synergy, to put it in musical terms. Capping off our ‘Choko phase’ with a big finale would have been a great way to thumb our noses at those cynical critics. Unaiko was approaching the project from a different angle, as usual, and some of the younger guys were talking about staging what they called ‘a living wake for Kogito Choko’ and using that as a selling point. I only heard the rough outlines, but I gathered it would have been a sort of retrospective.
“Anyway, as you may recall, the opening scene we had sketched out, before the whole project went to hell in a handbasket, depicted the launching of your father’s little rowboat onto the flooded river. That scene was inspired by your recurrent dream, so if the critics had wanted to make rude remarks about the Caveman Group’s dependence on the works of Kogito Choko … well, they might have had a valid point. It’s all moot now, of course, and today I’m more interested in discussing your uncanny alter ego, Kogii, who was in the boat with your father. As you know, we were going to give the vision physical form by making a Kogii doll and suspending it in the air above the stage, and even now, I still find myself wondering how that might have turned out. That’s actually what moved me to drop by this morning to talk to you.
“This may sound like a simplistic question,” Masao wound up, “but in the final analysis, what exactly was Kogii to you, anyway? Do you by any chance feel like kicking that question around for a while?”