To Natsuko, this man, fast asleep with his belly exposed to the water, seemed also to be asleep to the wide, open sea of unreasonableness that comprised the world.
Without seizing on the identity of her feelings, her sense of not properly belonging in her family, Natsuko, in her constant state of anxiety, had made a truly spur-of-the-moment decision to bring this stranger into her life. Her family’s illness would infect him too, and consume him from within, she thought. He would be a hapless victim, but it was her fate to find a necessary sacrifice, so there was no way of helping it. He would ultimately end up being absorbed by her family, by that life. That was what she had believed.
When she looked back on it all, it was a strange, miraculous turn of events. A thorny ivy of arrogance and waste, built up over three generations, had entwined itself around her, trying to rob her of her very soul. And it had been swept away in an instant thanks to one average man’s cerebral attack. She wondered whether he really was so pitiful. If not for those seizures, he would have been destined to have everything he ever had be torn away from him by her family. He had managed to avoid that fate in a way that no one could have foreseen. Indeed, the attacks had begun with exquisite timing, without even the slightest margin of error. Quite as if they had been lying dormant in wait from the very beginning. Natsuko had found no means of her own to escape from her family. And Taichi—he was a simple, good-natured person, the kind of person who, even feeling ill at ease around his wife’s family, even knowing that they were exploiting him, would give them every last ounce of what he had. This was the kind of couple that the cerebral attacks had fallen on. It was an attack on their very lives.
The wind was growing colder.
Natsuko woke her husband, and they went back the way they had come. She looked at the footprints that he left in the sand. He dragged his feet when he walked, so his tracks stretched longer than normal.
They returned to the plaza in front of the station.
Why don’t we try out the foot bath? It’s gotten cold, don’t you think? Natsuko said. What foot bath? Taichi tilted his head. Come on, she urged, nudging him along.
Several people were sitting there with their legs submerged. Steam was rising from the water. What’s this? Taichi asked. You can put your feet in, Natsuko answered. Come on, it’ll feel good.
Do you want to go in? a woman asked them. Does it cost anything? Taichi responded. No, it’s free, but the towels do. You can buy one if you want, but you don’t have to.
Let’s buy one, Natsuko said. I took one from the hotel, so we’re okay, Taichi answered. It’ll make a good memento, she insisted.
She wanted to buy something for her husband, no matter how trivial it was, no matter how unnecessary to their lives. But he hadn’t realized that. He would probably never realize it—or maybe, after several years, she would finally find herself able to tell him everything.
She couldn’t enter the foot bath with him. If she didn’t hold onto him, he might lose his balance, and fall over backward. So she decided to support him. It was the sensible thing to do.
Taichi took off his shoes and socks. Natsuko and the woman helped support him. He slowly dipped his legs into the water, one by one, and sat down.
Wow, it’s so warm! Taichi shone her a fully satisfied smile. He didn’t question for a second whether she would soak her feet too. That was fine.
Is something wrong, Mister? the woman asked. Taichi nodded. It was only Natsuko’s family who condemned him for the way his body was, and he made no effort to hide his disability. What’s wrong? she asked again. My brain, Taichi answered. Oh my, your brain, that’s awful, the woman said, feigning surprise. There’s an electrode in my brain. The battery’s attached to my chest, Taichi continued. Really? There’s a machine here? The woman touched his chest. Taichi nodded, letting the woman leave her hand there. Really, there’s a machine here… Oh my, yes, here it is. Taichi laughed, as if being tickled. He looked to be enjoying himself.
He was always on the move, always pushing his body in spite of his disability. He wasn’t able to help himself, always going out to buy sweets, manga, adult DVDs, and the like. And now he had set himself on the idea—and not a bad one at that—of buying an electric wheelchair. It was no doubt that unwavering drive to action that had spread to Natsuko, that had prompted her to set out on this trip in pursuit of her family’s lingering regrets, chasing after things that couldn’t be looked on directly.
“Where are we going now?” Taichi asked innocently.
“We’ll take the bullet train home. We’re finished here.”
“There isn’t anywhere else you want to go?”
“No. There’s nowhere else to go. Nothing left to see. Nothing at all.”
Taichi sat in silence for a while, staring off into the distance, likely still unable to comprehend the meaning that lay behind those words.
Even if she explained to him that it was all over, all finished, he still wouldn’t understand. So Natsuko said nothing.
The bullet train began to slide out under that sky, too ripe in color to properly call dusk, as the two of them left the sea.
Taichi pulled out a handful of tissues. He used them to blow his nose with all his strength, before rolling them into a ball and stuffing them back into his pocket. To Natsuko, watching on beside him, he seemed to resemble nothing so much as a figure who had taken the various joys and sufferings of life, put them all into one picture after another, rolled them all up, and stuffed them deep into his pocket.
She felt herself overcome by a sense of awe at her husband’s actions. And then she asked, as if the words had been bubbling up inside her all along: Was the foot bath good? He nodded. Was the trip fun? He nodded again. Do you want to go to somewhere else some time, together? Taichi paused for a while, seemingly deep in thought, before nodding once more.
He didn’t say anything, merely watching the scenery flow by. But he had indeed nodded to each of her questions.
The two of them sat in silence for a while. Eventually, the in-car sales trolley began to make its way down the aisle. But Natsuko wasn’t paying attention. If she had been her usual self, she might have been driven by a sense of self-sacrifice, a force that might be described as almost sensual, to buy her husband a snack of mixed nuts or something like that.
The short journey was nearing its end. Hey, what exactly do you see in that man? came her mother’s voice. You don’t honestly think he’s handsome, do you? But Natsuko couldn’t really explain what she liked about him, not in words. Her mother, every now and then, would say, her voice dripping with sarcasm: What an unfortunate man. Such a shame. Coming down with that disease, but still clinging onto life. Unable to work, having to be taken care of by his wife all the time. The nerve. At such times, Natsuko would be secretly grateful that she had married him.