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in any form
. And, according to her
husband, it was better for Tengo to know nothing about either the reason or its
consequence.
. . .
Still unable to sleep, Tengo was sitting on the floor, listening to the Duke Ellington
record at low volume, when the phone rang again. The hands of the wall clock were
pointing to 10:12. Tengo could think of no one other than Komatsu who might call at
a time like this, but the ring didn’t sound like Komatsu’s, which was always more
high-strung and impatient. It might be Yasuda again; perhaps he had forgotten to tell
Tengo something else. Tengo did not want to answer. Experience had taught him that
phone calls at this time of night were never very pleasant. Thinking of his current
situation, however, he had no choice but to answer it.
“That is Mr. Kawana, isn’t it?” said a man. It was not Komatsu. Nor was it
Yasuda. The voice belonged unmistakably to Ushikawa, speaking as if he had a
mouthful of water—or some other elusive liquid. His strange face and flat, misshapen
head came to Tengo’s mind automatically.
“Uh, sorry for calling so late. It’s Ushikawa. I know I burst in on you the other day
and took much of your valuable time. Today, too, I wish I could have called earlier,
but some urgent business came up, and the next thing I knew it was already this late.
Believe me, I know you’re a real early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, Mr. Kawana, and
that’s a very admirable thing. Staying up until all hours, frittering away your time,
doesn’t do anyone any good. The best thing is to go to bed as soon as possible after it
gets dark and wake with the sun in the morning. But, I don’t know, call it intuition, it
just popped into my mind that you might still be up tonight, Mr. Kawana, so even
though I knew it was not the most polite thing to do, I decided to give you a call.
Have I caught you at a bad time?”
339
Tengo did not like what Ushikawa was saying, and he did not like it that Ushikawa
knew his home phone number. Intuition had nothing to do with it: he had called
because he knew perfectly well that Tengo was up, unable to sleep. Maybe he knew
that Tengo’s lights were on. Could someone be watching this apartment? He could
almost picture one of Ushikawa’s “eager” and “capable” “researchers” observing
Tengo’s apartment from somewhere with a pair of high-powered binoculars.
“I am up tonight, in fact,” Tengo said. “That ‘intuition’ of yours is correct. Maybe
I drank too much strong green tea.”
“That
is
too bad, Mr. Kawana. Wakeful nights often give people useless thoughts.
How about it, then, do you mind talking with me a while?”
“As long as it’s not about something that makes it harder for me to sleep.”
Ushikawa burst out laughing. At his end of the line—someplace in this world—his
misshapen head shook in its own misshapen way. “Very funny, Mr. Kawana. Of
course, what I have to say may not be as comforting as a lullaby, but the subject itself
is not so deadly serious as to keep you awake at night, I assure you. It’s a simple
question of yes or no. The business about the, uh, grant. It’s an attractive proposition,
don’t you think? Have you thought it over? We have to have your final answer now.”
“I believe I declined the grant quite clearly the last time we talked. I appreciate the
offer, but I have everything I need at the moment. I’m not hard-pressed financially,
and if possible I’d like to keep my life going along at its present pace.”
“Meaning, you don’t want to be beholden to anyone.”
“In a word, yes.”
“I suppose that is very admirable of you, Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said with a
sound like a light clearing of the throat. “You want to make it on your own. You want
to have as little as possible to do with organizations. I understand how you feel, but
I’m concerned about you, Mr. Kawana. Look at the world we live in. Anything could
happen at any time. So we all need some kind of insurance, something to lean on, a
shelter from the wind. I hate to say this, Mr. Kawana, but at the moment you have, uh,
exactly nothing that you can lean on. Not one of the people around you can be
counted on, it seems to me: all of them would most likely desert you in a pinch. Am I
right? You know what they say—‘Better safe than sorry.’ It’s important to insure
yourself for when the pinch does come, don’t you think? And I’m not just talking
about money. Money, ultimately, is just a kind of
symbol
of something else.”
“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,” Tengo said. That intuitive sense of
distaste he experienced when first meeting Ushikawa was creeping up on him again.
“No, of course not. You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t
understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain
age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are
important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb
losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless
imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your
convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade
away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear
all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get
them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful—as
painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr.
340
Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight
portion of life—you will be getting older. You are probably beginning to grasp that
painful sense that you are
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