“Cocaine is all we’ll need. There shouldn’t be much pain. If an injection doesn’t work I’ll apply the anesthetic topically as I go deeper and that should do it.”
Spoken as the doctor swabbed the area clean, these words terrified Tsuda and at the same time struck him as nothing to worry about.
The local anesthetic worked well. Peering intently at the ceiling, he had no idea what sort of major incident was occurring below his hips. From time to time he was merely aware in one sector of his body that someone was applying pressure in a distant place. In that area he could feel a dulled resistance.
“How are you doing? No pain, is there?”
There was abundant self-confidence in the doctor’s question.
Tsuda replied with his eyes on the ceiling.
“It doesn’t hurt. I feel a heaviness.”
The words he needed to express appropriately the feeling of oppressiveness eluded him. Out of nowhere he found himself wondering if the ground might feel that way, the nerveless ground, when a shovel dug into it.
“It’s a strange feeling. I can’t explain it.”
“I see. Any dizziness?”
The doctor’s tone of voice, as if he were concerned about impeded blood flow to the brain, effectively churned the calmness Tsuda had been feeling. He had no idea whether it was customary in such a case to give a patient wine or something else to drink, but he hated the idea of receiving emergency treatment.
“I’m all right.”
“Good. We’re about finished.”
The doctor’s attitude as he conducted this conversation with the patient while his hands moved incessantly seemed to radiate the competence that can only have come from mastery.
The procedure, however, was not wrapped up as quickly as he had indicated.
From time to time there was the ping of a blade against the tray; the amplified echo of what sounded like scissors shearing through flesh reached him menacingly. Each time, he saw with a rich, fulsome bloodiness in the eye of his imagination the red gushing that had to be stanched and swabbed with gauze. His nerves as he lay there not allowed to move grew strained and taut to a point where holding still was agony. The feeling was of insects swarming in his veins.
Opening wide his eyes, he stared up at the ceiling. His beautifully attired wife was on the floor above. What she was thinking, what she was doing at this moment, he had no idea. He was overcome by a desire to call out to her in a loud voice. Just then the doctor’s voice sounded from down at his feet.
“Finished.”
He felt gauze being packed inside him endlessly, and a terrible itchiness, and the doctor spoke again.
“That scar was surprisingly tough so there’s a danger of hemorrhage. Try to lie as still as you can for a while.”
With this final word of caution, Tsuda was at last helped down from the operating table.
[43]
THE NURSE followed him out of the procedure room.
“How are you doing? You’re not feeling ill or anything?”
“No — do I look pale?”
Somewhat concerned himself, Tsuda couldn’t help asking. His wound had been stuffed with the maximum quantity of gauze that would fit inside it, and the feeling of oppressiveness it produced was beyond what anyone could have imagined. The best he could manage was a languid shuffle. Even so, climbing the stairs it felt as though the gauze and his torn flesh were rubbing abrasively.
O-Nobu was waiting at the head of the stairs. The minute she saw Tsuda, she called out.
“It’s over? How did you do?”
Tsuda entered the room without venturing a clear reply. As he had expected, a futon mattress wrapped in a white sheet had been unfolded on the floor to its full length, beckoning him to recline in comfort. Throwing off his kimono jacket, he stretched out on it. With a wan, deflated smile, O-Nobu, who had been holding up by the collar with both hands the silk jacket padded with gray flannel she had sewn for him with the intention of helping him into it from behind, folded it once again and placed it at the foot of his mattress.
“Is he taking any medicine?”
O-Nobu addressed the nurse, turning to her.
“Nothing orally. I’ll be bringing his meal in just a minute.”
The nurse turned to leave.
Tsuda abruptly broke his silence without getting up.
“O-Nobu — if you want something to eat you should tell the nurse.”
“Yes—” O-Nobu hesitated.
“I’m wondering what to do—”
“It’s already past noon.”
“Yes — it’s twelve-thirty. Your surgery took exactly twenty-eight minutes.”
Springing the lid on her watch and looking at its face, O-Nobu announced the time precisely. All the while that Tsuda had been submissively enduring, laid out like a fish on a chopping block, O-Nobu, above the ceiling at which he had been obliged to stare, had been keeping track of the time, eyeing her watch as if in a competition to see which would blink first.
Tsuda spoke again.
“There’s no point in going all the way home now.”
“I know—”
“Then why not have them bring some Western food and eat here?”
“I suppose I could—”
O-Nobu’s responses continued to lead nowhere satisfactory. Finally the nurse went back downstairs. Like a man who feels in his fatigue a desire to avoid the stimulus of light, Tsuda closed his eyes. But O-Nobu’s reaction was to call his name repeatedly just above his head, obliging him to open them again.
“Are you feeling poorly?”
“I’m fine.”
Having persisted, O-Nobu immediately added,
“The Okamotos send their best. They intend to drop in shortly, as soon as you feel up to a visit.”
“Is that so?”
Tsuda started to close his eyes again, but O-Nobu wouldn’t allow it. “They insisted I should come along to the theater — would that be all right?”
Little was lost on Tsuda. A light came on his mind that illuminated all of O-Nobu’s behavior since that morning: her choice of an outfit too bright and showy for a trip to the hospital, her protest that today was Sunday, her distraction after arriving at the hospital, and her eagerness to phone Okamoto — all of this he now saw as part of the excitement provoked by a single word, “theater.” Seen from that vantage, it was impossible not to discover a seed of suspicion even in her motive for tracking so meticulously the passage of time the surgery was taking. In silence, Tsuda turned aside. His eye fell on the books, the scissors, the envelopes and stationery neatly piled on the tatami mat in the alcove.
“I asked the nurse for a small desk to put your things on but she hasn’t brought it yet. I put them there for the time being — would you like something to read?”
O-Nobu rose quickly and picked up a book.
[44]
TSUDA DIDN’T take it.
“You didn’t say no to Okamoto?”
Looking more disappointed than suspicious, he turned away, and as he shifted his weight on the mattress the floorboards creaked as if in accordance with his mood.
“I did. I declined.”
“And they insisted you come along even so?”
Tsuda looked at his wife for the first time. But no hint of what he was searching for appeared in her face. On the contrary, she smiled.