CHAPTER 12

Tengo

THE RULES OF THE WORLD

ARE LOOSENING UP

After he finished breakfast, Tengo took a shower. He washed his hair and shaved at the sink, then changed into the clothes he had washed and dried. He left the inn, bought the morning edition of the paper at a kiosk at the station, and went to a coffee shop nearby and had a cup of hot black coffee.

There wasn’t much of interest in the newspaper. At least as far as this particular morning’s paper was concerned, the world was a dull, boring place. It felt like he was rereading a paper from a week ago, not today. Tengo folded up the paper and glanced at his watch. It was nine thirty. Visiting hours at the sanatorium began at ten.

It didn’t take long to pack for the trip back home. He didn’t have much luggage, just a few changes of clothes, toiletries, a few books, and a sheaf of manuscript paper. He stuffed it all inside his canvas shoulder bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder, paid his bill for the inn, and took a bus from the station to the sanatorium. It was the beginning of winter, and there were few people this morning heading to the beach. Tengo was the only one getting out at the stop in front of the sanatorium.

At the reception desk he wrote his name and the time in the visitors’ log. A young nurse he had never seen before was stationed at the reception desk. Her arms and legs were terribly long and thin, and a smile played around the corners of her lips. She made him think of a kindly spider guiding people along the path through a forest. Usually it was Nurse Tamura, the middle-aged woman with glasses, who sat at the reception desk, but today she wasn’t there. Tengo felt a bit relieved. He had been dreading any suggestive comments she might make because he had accompanied Kumi Adachi back to her apartment the night before. Nurse Omura, too, was nowhere to be seen. They might have been sucked into the earth without a trace. Like the three witches in Macbeth.

But that was impossible. Kumi Adachi was off duty today, but the other two nurses said they were working as usual. They must just be working somewhere else in the facility right now.

Tengo went upstairs to his father’s room, knocked lightly, twice, and opened the door. His father was lying on the bed, sleeping as always. An IV tube came out of his arm, a catheter snaked out of his groin. There was no change from the day before. The window was closed, as were the curtains. The air in the room was heavy and stagnant. All sorts of smells were mixed together—a medicinal smell, the smell of the flowers in the vase, the breath of a sick person, the smell of excreta—all the smells that life brings with it. Even if the life force here was weak, and his father was unconscious, metabolism went on unchanged. His father was still on this side of the great divide. Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

The first thing Tengo did when he entered the sickroom was go straight to the far wall, where he drew the curtains and flung open the window. It was a refreshing morning, and the room was in desperate need of fresh air. It was chilly outside, but not what you would call cold. Sunlight streamed in and the curtain rustled in the sea breeze. A single seagull, legs tucked neatly underneath, caught a draft of wind and glided over the pine trees. A ragged line of sparrows sat on an electrical line, constantly switching positions like musical notes being rewritten. A crow with a large beak came to rest on top of a mercury-vapor lamp, cautiously surveying his surroundings as he mulled over his next move. A few streaks of clouds floated off high in the sky, so high and far away that they were like abstract concepts unrelated to the affairs of man.

With his back to the patient, Tengo gazed for a while at this scene outside. Things that are living and things that are not. Things that move and things that don’t. What he saw out the window was the usual scenery. There was nothing new about it. The world has to move forward. Like a cheap alarm clock, it does a halfway decent job of fulfilling its assigned role. Tengo gazed blankly at the scenery, trying to postpone facing his father even by a moment, but he couldn’t keep delaying forever.

Finally Tengo made up his mind, turned, and sat down on the stool next to the bed. His father was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, his eyes shut. The quilt that was tucked up to his neck was neat and undisturbed. His eyes were deeply sunken. It was like some piece was missing, and his eye sockets couldn’t support his eyeballs, which had quietly caved in. Even if he were to open his eyes, what he would see would be like the world viewed from the bottom of a hole.

“Father,” Tengo began.

His father didn’t answer. The breeze blowing in the room suddenly stopped and the curtains hung limply, like a worker in the midst of a task suddenly remembering something else he had to do. And then, after a while, as if gathering itself together, the wind began to blow again.

“I’m going back to Tokyo today,” Tengo said. “I can’t stay here forever. I can’t take any more time off from work. It’s not much of a life, but I do have a life to get back to.”

There was a two- to three-day growth of whiskers on his father’s cheeks. A nurse shaved him with an electric razor, but not every day. His whiskers were salt-and-pepper. He was only sixty-four, but he looked much older, like someone had mistakenly fast-forwarded the film of his life.

“You didn’t wake up the whole time I was here. The doctor says your physical condition is still not so bad. The strange thing is, you’re almost as healthy as you used to be.”

Tengo paused, letting the words sink in.

“I don’t know if you can hear what I’m saying or not. Even if the words are vibrating your eardrums, the circuit beyond that might be shot. Or maybe the words I speak are actually reaching you but you’re unable to respond. I don’t really know. But I have been talking to you, and reading to you, on the assumption that you can hear me. Unless I assume that, there’s no point in me speaking to you, and if I can’t speak to you, then there’s no point in me being here. I can’t explain it well, but I’m sensing something tangible, as if the main points of what I’m saying are, at least, getting across.”

No response.

“What I’m about to say may sound pretty stupid. But I’m going back to Tokyo today and I don’t know when I might be back here. So I’m just going to say what’s in my mind. If you find it dumb, then just go ahead and laugh. If you can laugh, I mean.”

Tengo paused and observed his father’s face. Again, there was no response.

“Your body is in a coma. You have lost consciousness and feeling, and you are being kept alive by life-support machines. The doctor said you’re like a living corpse—though he put it a bit more euphemistically. Medically speaking, that’s what it probably is. But isn’t that just a sham? I have the feeling your consciousness isn’t lost at all. You have put your body in a coma, but your consciousness is off somewhere else, alive. I’ve felt that for a long time. It’s just a feeling, though.”

Silence.

“I can understand if you think this is a crazy idea. If I told anybody else, they would say I was hallucinating. But I have to believe it’s true. I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”

Again more silence.

“I took time off from my job, came to this town, rented a room at an inn, and have been coming here every day and talking to you—for almost two weeks now. But I wasn’t just doing it to see how you were doing or to take care of you. I wanted to see where I came from, what sort of bloodline I have. None of that matters anymore. I am who I am, no matter who or what I’m connected with—or not connected with. Though I do know that you are the one who is my father. And that’s fine. Is this what you call a reconciliation? I don’t know. Maybe I just reconciled with myself.”