CHAPTER 24

Tengo

AS LONG AS THIS WARMTH REMAINS

Tengo took a morning special express train from Tokyo Station to Tateyama, changed there to a local, and rode it as far as Chikura. The morning was clear and beautiful. There was no wind, and there was hardly a wave to be seen on the ocean. Summer was long gone. He wore a thin cotton jacket over a short-sleeved shirt, which turned out to be exactly right for the weather. Without bathers, the seaside town was surprisingly deserted and quiet. Like a real town of cats, Tengo thought.

He had a simple lunch by the station and took a taxi to the sanatorium, arriving just after one o’clock. The same middle-aged nurse greeted him at the reception desk—the woman who had taken his phone call the night before. Nurse Tamura. She remembered Tengo and was somewhat friendlier than she had been the first time, even managing a little smile, perhaps influenced by Tengo’s nicer outfit.

She guided Tengo first to the lunchroom and poured him a cup of coffee. “Please wait here. The doctor will come to see you,” she said. Ten minutes later, his father’s doctor appeared, drying his hands with a towel. Flecks of white were beginning to appear among the stiff hairs of his head. He was probably around fifty. He was not wearing a white jacket, as if he had just completed some task. Instead he wore a gray sweatshirt, matching gray sweatpants, and an old pair of jogging shoes. He was well built and looked less like a doctor than a college sports coach who had never been able to rise past Division II.

The doctor told Tengo pretty much the same thing he had said on the phone the night before. Judging from his expression and his words, he seemed genuinely saddened when he said, “I’m sorry to say there is almost nothing we can do for him medically at this point. The only thing left to do is let him hear his son’s voice. It might enhance his will to live.”

“Do you think he can hear what people say?” Tengo asked.

The doctor frowned thoughtfully as he sipped his lukewarm green tea. “To tell you the truth, not even I know the answer to that. Your father is in a coma. He shows absolutely no physical response when we speak to him. There have been cases, though, where someone in a deep coma has been able to hear people talking and sometimes even understand what was being said.”

“But you can’t tell by looking at them.”

“No, we can’t.”

“I can stay here until six thirty tonight,” Tengo said. “I’ll sit with him all day and talk to him as much as possible. Let’s see if it does any good.”

“Please let me know if he shows any kind of reaction,” the doctor said. “I’ll be around here somewhere.”

A young nurse showed Tengo to his father’s room. She wore a name badge that read “Adachi.” His father had been moved to a private room in the new wing, the wing for more serious patients. In other words, the gears had advanced one more notch. There was nowhere else to move after this. It was a drab little room, long and narrow, and more than half filled by the bed. Beyond the window stretched the pine woods that acted as a windbreak. The dense grove looked like a wall, separating the sanatorium from the vitality of the real world. The nurse went out, leaving Tengo alone with his father, who lay on his back, sound asleep. Tengo sat on a small wooden stool by the bed and looked at his father.

Near the head of the bed stood an intravenous feeding device, the liquid in its plastic bag being sent into a vein in his father’s arm through a tube. A catheter had been inserted to catch urine, surprisingly little of which had been collected. His father seemed to have shrunk another size or two since the month before. His emaciated cheeks and chin wore perhaps two days’ growth of white beard. His father had always had sunken eyes, but now they were more deeply set than ever. Tengo couldn’t help wondering if it might be necessary to pull the eyeballs up from their holes with some kind of medical device. His eyelids were tightly shut at the bottoms of those caverns like lowered shutters, and his mouth was slightly open. Tengo couldn’t hear his father’s breathing, but, bringing his ear close, he could feel the slight movement of air. Life was being quietly maintained there at a minimal level.

The doctor’s words on the phone last night—“like a train, dropping its speed little by little as it begins to stop”—began to feel terribly real to Tengo. This “father” train was gradually lowering its speed, waiting for its momentum to run down, and preparing to come to a quiet stop in the middle of an empty prairie. At least there was no longer a single passenger aboard, no one to raise a complaint even if the train came to a halt. That was the only salvation.

Tengo felt he ought to start talking to his father, but he did not know what he should say, how he should say it, or what tone of voice to use. All right, say something, he told himself, but no meaningful words came to mind.

“Father,” he ventured in a whisper, but no other words followed.

He got up from the stool, approached the window, and looked at the well-tended lawn and garden and the sky stretching high above the pine woods. A solitary crow sat perched on a large antenna, glaring at the area with disdain as it caught the sunlight. A combination transistor radio/alarm clock had been placed near the head of the bed, but his father required neither of its functions.

“It’s me—Tengo. I just came from Tokyo. Can you hear me?” he said, standing at the window, looking down at his father, who did not respond at all. After vibrating in the air for a moment, the sound of his voice was absorbed without a trace by the void that had come to occupy the room.

This man is trying to die, Tengo thought. He could tell by looking at the deeply sunken eyes. He made up his mind to end his life, and then he closed his eyes and went into a deep sleep. No matter what I say to him, no matter how much I try to rouse him, it will be impossible to overturn his resolution. Medically speaking, he was still alive, but life had already ended for this man. He no longer had the reason or the will to continue to struggle. All that Tengo could do was respect his father’s wishes and let him die in peace. The look on his face was utterly tranquil. He did not seem to be suffering at all. As the doctor had said on the phone, that was the one salvation.

Still, Tengo had to speak to his father, if only because he had promised the doctor that he would do so. The doctor seemed to be caring for his father with genuine warmth. Secondly, there was the question of what he thought of as “courtesy.” Tengo had not had a full-fledged conversation with his father for a very long time, not even small talk. The truth was that Tengo had probably been in middle school the last time they had had a real conversation. Tengo hardly ever went near their home after that, and even when he had some business that required him to go to the house, he did his best to avoid seeing his father.

Now, having made a de facto confession to Tengo that he was not his real father, the man could lay down his burden at last. He looked in some way relieved. That means that each of us was able to lay down his burden—at the last possible moment.

Here was the man who had raised Tengo as his own son, listing him as such in the family register despite the absence of blood ties, and raising him until he was old enough to fend for himself. I owe him that much. I have some obligation to tell him how I have lived my life thus far, as well as some of the thoughts I have had in the course of living that life, Tengo thought. No, it’s not so much an obligation as a courtesy. It doesn’t matter if the things I am saying reach his ears or whether telling him serves any purpose.