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A nurse came before three o’clock, changed the plastic bag of intravenous fluid,
replaced the bag of collected urine with an empty one, and took his father’s
temperature.
She was a strongly built, full-bosomed woman in her late thirties. The
name on her tag read “Omura.” Her hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her
head, with a ballpoint pen thrust into it.
“Has there been any change in his condition?” she asked Tengo while recording
numbers on a clipboard with the ballpoint pen.
“None at all. He’s been fast asleep the whole time,” Tengo said.
“Please push that button if anything happens,” she said, pointing toward the call
switch hanging over the head of the bed. Then she shoved the
ballpoint pen back into
her hair.
“I see.”
Shortly after the nurse went out, there was a quick knock on the door and
bespectacled Nurse Tamura poked her head in.
“Would you like to have a bite to eat? You could go to the lunchroom.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry yet,” Tengo said.
“How is your father doing?”
Tengo nodded. “I’ve been talking to him the whole time. I can’t tell whether he
can hear me or not.”
“It’s good to keep talking to them,” she said. She smiled encouragingly. “Don’t
worry, I’m sure he can hear you.”
She closed the door softly. Now it was just Tengo and his father in the little room
again.
Tengo went on talking.
He graduated from college and started teaching mathematics
at a cram school in
the city. No longer was he a math prodigy from whom people expected great things,
nor was he a promising member of a judo team. He was a mere cram school
instructor. But that very fact made Tengo happy. He could catch his breath at last. For
the first time in his life, he was free: he could live his own life as he wanted to
without having to worry about anyone else.
Eventually, he started writing fiction. He entered a few of his finished stories in
competitions, which led him to become acquainted with a
quirky editor named
Komatsu. This editor gave him the job of rewriting
Air Chrysalis
, a story by a
seventeen-year-old girl named Fuka-Eri (whose real name was Eriko Fukada). Fuka-
Eri had created the story, but she had no talent for writing, so Tengo took on that task.
He did such a good job that the piece won a debut writer’s prize
from a magazine and
then was subsequently published as a book that became a huge bestseller. Because the
book was so widely discussed, the selection committee for the Akutagawa Prize, the
most prestigious literary award, kept their distance from it. So while it did not win
that particular prize, the book sold so many copies that Komatsu,
in his typically
brusque way, said, “Who the hell needs
that
?”
Tengo had no confidence that his story was reaching his father’s ears, and even if it
was, he had no way of telling whether or not his father was understanding it. He felt
his words had no impact and he could see no response. Even if his words were getting
511
through, Tengo had no way of knowing if his father was even interested. Maybe the
old man just found them annoying. Maybe he was thinking, “Who gives
a damn about
other people’s life stories? Just let me sleep!” All Tengo could do, though, was
continue to say whatever came to his mind. He couldn’t think of anything better to do
while crammed into this little room with his father.
His father never made the slightest movement. His eyes were closed tightly at the
bottom of those two deep, dark hollows. He might as well have been waiting for
winter to come and the hollows to fill up with snow.
“I can’t say that things are going all
that well for the moment, but if possible I’d like
to make my living by writing—not just rewriting somebody else’s work but writing
what I want to write, the way I want to write it. Writing—and especially fiction
writing—is well suited to my personality, I think. It’s good to have something you
want to do, and now I finally have it. Nothing of mine has ever been published with
my name on it, but that ought to happen soon enough. I’m really not a bad writer, if I
do say so myself. At least one editor gives me some credit for my talent. I’m not
worried on that front.”
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