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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
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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.”
Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.
“During the summer, you were still conscious. Your
mind was muddled, but your
consciousness was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again.
After they took you to the examination room she
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