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There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his father’s life
before he joined NHK. It was as if his father’s life began the moment he became an
NHK fee collector.
He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white
photograph. That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadn’t faded,
there was a thin membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It
was a photo of a family—a father,
a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less
than a year old. The mother, dressed in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby.
Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From the clothes they had on, it looked like
winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most likely New Year’s. The mother
was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The father, dressed in a
dark coat,
slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if to say he
didn’t take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold the
world could be.
The young father in the photo had to be Tengo’s father. He looked much younger,
though he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his
eyes sunken. It was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet,
stubborn, skeptical. His hair was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could
only be his father. This meant that the baby must be Tengo,
and the mother holding
the baby must be Tengo’s mother. His mother was slightly taller than his father, and
had good posture. His father was in his late thirties, while his mother looked to be in
her mid-twenties.
Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that
could be called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he
was little. They couldn’t afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never
had the opportunity to take any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now
he knew it was a lie. They
had
taken a photo together. And though their
clothes
weren’t exactly luxurious, they were at least presentable. They didn’t look as if they
were so poor they couldn’t afford a camera. The photo was taken not long after Tengo
was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the photo over, but there was
no date or indication of where it had been taken.
Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of
focus. If only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details.
Still, he could see most of her features.
She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose,
and plump lips. By no means a beauty, though sort of cute—the type of face that left a
good impression. At least compared with his father’s rustic face she looked far more
refined and intelligent. Tengo was happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but
since she had on a kimono, he couldn’t tell much about her figure.
At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call
them a well-matched
couple. There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his
parents meeting each other, falling in love, having him—but he just couldn’t see it.
You didn’t get that sense at all from the photo. So if there wasn’t an emotional
attachment that brought them together, there must have been some other
circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as the term
circumstances
made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude,
chain of events and nothing
more.
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Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman
who appeared in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized
he didn’t have any memories of the woman’s face whatsoever. The woman in his
memory took off her blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown
man suck her breasts. And
her breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. That’s
all he remembered—some man sucking his mother’s breasts. The breasts that should
have been his alone were stolen away by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see
this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to the man’s face.
Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His
father had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still
cherished Tengo’s mother. Tengo couldn’t remember his mother, for she had died
from illness when he was too young to have any memories of her. According to the
lawyer’s investigation, Tengo was the only child of his mother
and his father, the
NHK fee collector, a fact recorded in his family register. But official documents
didn’t guarantee that that man was Tengo’s biological father.
“I don’t have a son,” his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.
“So, what am I?” Tengo had asked.
“You’re nothing,” was his father’s concise and peremptory reply.
His father’s tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection
between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went
on, however, he wasn’t completely convinced that what his father had said was true.
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