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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
.
Tengo sat on the stool by the bed once again and began to narrate a summary of his
life to date, beginning from the time he left the house and started living in the judo
dorm when he entered high school. From that time onward, he and his father had lost
nearly all points of contact, creating a situation in which neither had the least concern
for what the other was doing. Tengo felt he should probably
fill in such a large
vacuum as best he could.
Ultimately, however, there was almost nothing for Tengo to tell about his life in
high school. He had entered a private high school in Chiba Prefecture that had a
strong reputation for its judo program. He could easily have gotten into a better
school, but the conditions offered him by that school were the best. They waived his
tuition and allowed him to live in the dormitory, providing him with three meals a
day. Tengo became a star member of the judo team, studied between practice sessions
(he could maintain some of the highest grades in his class without having to study too
hard), and he earned extra money during vacations by doing assorted manual labor
with his teammates. With so much to do, he found himself pressed for time day after
day. There was little to say about his three years of high school other than that it was a
busy time for him. It had not been
especially enjoyable, nor had he made any close
friends. He never liked the school, which had a lot of rules. He did what he had to do
in order to get along with his teammates, but they weren’t really on the same
wavelength. In all honesty, Tengo never once felt totally committed to judo as a sport.
He needed to win in order to support himself, so he devoted a lot of energy to practice
in order not to betray others’ expectations. It was less a sport to him than a practical
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means of survival—a job. He spent the three years of high school wanting to graduate
so that he could begin living a more serious life as soon as possible.
Even after entering college, however,
he continued with judo, living basically the
same life as before. Keeping up his judo meant he could live in the dormitory and thus
be spared any difficulty in finding a place to sleep or food to eat (minimal though it
was). He also received a scholarship, though it was nowhere nearly enough to get by
on. His major was mathematics, of course. He studied fairly hard and earned good
grades in college, too. His adviser even urged him to continue into graduate school.
As he advanced into the third year and then the fourth year of college, however, his
passion for mathematics as an academic discipline rapidly cooled. He still liked
mathematics as much as ever, but he had no desire to make a profession of research in
the field. It was the same as it had been with judo. It was
fine as an amateur endeavor,
but he had neither the personality nor the drive to stake his whole life on it, which he
well knew.
As his interest in mathematics waned and his college graduation drew near, his
reasons for continuing judo evaporated and he had no idea what path he should next
pursue. His life seemed to lose its center of gravity—not that he had ever really had
one, but up to that point, other people had placed certain demands and expectations
upon him, and responding to them had kept him busy. Once those demands and
expectations disappeared, however, there was nothing left worth talking about. His
life had no purpose. He had no close friends. He was drifting and unable to
concentrate his energies on anything.
He had a number of girlfriends during his college years, and a lot of sexual
experience. He was not handsome in the usual sense. He was not a particularly
sociable person, nor was he especially amusing or witty.
He was always hard up for
money and wasn’t at all stylish. But just as the smell of certain kinds of plants attracts
moths, Tengo was able to attract certain kinds of women—and very strongly, at that.
He discovered this fact around the time he turned twenty (which was just about the
time he began losing his enthusiasm for mathematics as an academic discipline).
Without doing anything about it himself, he always had women who were interested
enough to take the initiative in approaching him. They wanted him to hold them in his
big arms—or at least they never resisted him when he did so. He couldn’t understand
how this worked at first and reacted with a good deal of confusion, but eventually he
got the hang of it and learned how to exploit this ability, after which Tengo was rarely
without a woman. He never had a positive feeling of love toward any of them,
however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other’s
emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to
any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him.
Tengo recounted these developments to his unconscious father,
choosing his words
slowly and carefully at first, more smoothly as time went by, and finally with some
passion. He even spoke as honestly as he could about sexual matters.
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