Nothing like that had happened before, or ever happened again. It fills me with horror, though, just thinking that I could have such a premonition. How frightening are the things we have inside us! Who knows, maybe at some point, somewhere along the way, Aunt Midori had exactly the same sort of baseless intuition that I had? How can we be sure that she didn’t? When we played cards, she was always so proud that she could sniff out what her opponents were thinking — her nose was even better than a pointer’s. Oh, just the thought makes my blood run cold. Of course, I know it’s silly of me to worry, that she probably never knew. And it’s all over now. The secret has been kept. No, it wasn’t just kept — Mother died to protect it. I’m sure of that.
On that awful day, just before Mother began suffering so terribly — her pain was so excruciating that I couldn’t even watch, even though it lasted only a little while — Mother called me to her side. Her skin was so eerily smooth then that she looked like a puppet. “I took poison just now,” she said. “I’m tired, too tired to go on living.” Her voice was so strangely clear that it was like listening to music from heaven, as if she weren’t speaking to me at all, but through me to God. And then I heard, very distinctly, the sound of that stack of words I had seen in her diary the night before—SIN SIN SIN, piled as high as the Eiffel Tower — crashing down on top of her. The whole weight of the building she had erected from her sins over the course of the past thirteen years, all those floors, was crushing her exhausted body, carrying it off. And then, as I sat on the floor by her futon, weary and dazed, following her distant, unfocused gaze with my own, I felt a sudden surge of anger, like a tempest blowing up from a valley. Something like anger, anyway. An indescribable resentment towards something, seething and boiling away inside me. I kept looking at Mother’s sad face, and I said nonchalantly, as though none of what was happening had anything to do with me, “Oh? Did you?” And the next second, my heart felt cold and clear, as if someone had poured water over it. I got up, so calm and collected that even I felt kind of surprised at myself, and then, without taking a short cut across the room to go out the other side, I went into the hall and turned the corner, feeling like the floor was made of water — this was when I heard Mother start screaming from the pain as death’s muddy torrent surged over her — and I went down the long hall into the little room at the end where we kept the telephone, and called you, Uncle. Five minutes later someone threw the front door open on its track with a great clatter and stumbled up into the house, but it wasn’t you, it was Aunt Midori. And so, when Mother breathed her last, Aunt Midori, whom she had been closer to than anyone, and whom she had feared above all else, was holding her hand, and it was Aunt Midori who spread a white cloth over Mother’s face as she lay there, unable any more to feel pain or sadness.
*
Uncle, Uncle Jōsuke.
That first night, the night of the wake, the house was so quiet it was almost unearthly. The stream of visitors coming and going all day — the police, the doctor, the neighbours — had stopped just like that when night came, so only you and Aunt Midori and I were left kneeling in front of the coffin, and not one of us said a word, as if we were all concentrating on the soft lapping of water somewhere outside. Each time an incense stick burned out, we took turns rising to light another and pray before Mother’s photograph, or gently open a window to clear the air. You seemed saddest of us all, Uncle. Whenever you got up to light a new stick, you would peer intently at Mother’s picture, unmoving, a look in your eyes that was calmer than anything, and then, still wearing the same sorrowful look, you would smile ever so faintly — so faintly that no one else would even see it. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself thinking, that night, that however much Mother suffered, maybe in the end one has to say that she lived a happy life.
Around nine o’clock, when I had stood and gone over to the window, I suddenly burst out crying. You came and rested your hand gently on my shoulder, and stayed for a moment without speaking, and then you went silently back and sat down. What made me cry, then, wasn’t a sudden welling-up of sadness at Mother’s death. I had been remembering how, earlier in the day, when Mother spoke for the last time, she hadn’t mentioned you or even said your name, and then I’d started wondering why, when I called and told you what had happened, you hadn’t come rushing over yourself, you, not Aunt Midori, and as I thought about it all a deep sadness suddenly took hold of me. It struck me that your love for each other, the love that had made it necessary for you to keep play-acting until the last, was as unfortunate as that petal crucified in the glass. Then I got to my feet and opened the window, and as I was standing there looking up at the cold, starry sky, struggling to keep my sadness from overflowing, I had the thought that at that moment Mother’s love was climbing up into the blackness, unknown to anyone, unseen, speeding up through the stars, and then I just couldn’t bear it any more. My own sadness at the death of the woman I had known as my mother couldn’t compare, I thought, to the profundity of the sadness of that love that was rising into the sky right then.
At dinner, as we were about to start eating our sushi, I burst into tears again.
“You must be strong,” Aunt Midori murmured quietly, gently. “It hurts me so that I can’t do anything to help.”
When I wiped away my tears and glanced up, Aunt Midori was watching me, her eyes brimming just like mine. I gazed into those beautiful, moist eyes and shook my head without saying anything. I doubt she paid any attention to that gesture. But the truth is, I had started crying because suddenly I pitied her. Aunt Midori arranged some sushi on a plate as an offering to Mother, then took some for you, and for me, and then finally for herself, and as I watched her transfer the pieces of sushi onto each of the four plates, for some reason I felt that she was the most unlucky of us all, and that feeling came out of me in the form of sobbing.
I cried once more that night. This was after you and Aunt Midori told me I should get some sleep so I would be ready for everything the next day, and I spread my futon in the other room and lay down. I was so worn out from dealing with people all day that I fell asleep immediately, but then I started awake, drenched in sweat. I looked at the clock on the staggered shelves in the alcove and saw that about an hour had passed. The next room, where the coffin was, was still just as quiet as before; apart from the occasional click of your lighter, I didn’t hear a sound. Then, after thirty minutes or so, you and Aunt Midori had a brief exchange.
“Why don’t you rest a little,” you said. “I’ll stay up.”
“I’m all right. Why don’t you go.”
That was all. After that, it was silent again; no matter how long I waited, nothing broke the stillness. I sobbed violently three times as I lay on my futon. You and Aunt Midori probably didn’t hear me that time. I cried then because the whole world seemed so lonesome and sad and scary. You and Mother, who was a Buddha now, and Aunt Midori — the three of you were all there together, in the same room. Each of you was silent, lost in your own thoughts. The adult world was so lonesome, scary and sad that I could hardly bear it.
*
Uncle, Uncle Jōsuke.
I know I’ve been rambling. But I wanted to explain to you exactly how I feel right now, so that you will understand the favour I am going to ask of you.