After Death
…I have a habit where, if I do not read a book or something I am unable to sleep, even if I am in bed. And it is not uncommon that I cannot sleep no matter how much I read. So at my pillow there is always reading material, an electric light, and a bottle of Adalin sleeping pills. On that night, as usual, I had two or three books inside the mosquito net and had the light on.
“What time is it?”
This was the voice of my wife, who had already been napping in the neighboring bed. She was cradling the baby in her arms and looking at me from right beside me.
“It’s three.”
“Three already. I thought it was still around one.” With that lukewarm reply, I did not engage her at all.
“Be quiet. Be quiet, go back to sleep.”
Mimicking me, my wife giggled in a small voice. But, after just a little while, she pressed her nose upon the baby’s head and at one point returned quietly to sleep.
Still facing towards them, I was reading a book called Excerpts from Sermons on Destiny. These were selections from eight volumes of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian stories collected by a monk in the 1700s. But naturally interesting stories were hard to come by. In the middle of a story about the Confucian relationships—master and servant, father and mother, man and wife—I felt drowsiness steadily overtake me. Then I shut off the light at my bedside, and I immediately fell into sleep…
In my dream I was walking with S— through a sweltering town. The width of the gravel path was no more than six or nine feet. And over that were hanging, from every house, identical orange sunshades.
“You didn’t think you would die,” S— said to me, waving a fan.
Though I had, unfortunately, thought as such somehow, it was a disgusted-sounding voice which was expressing that feeling so bluntly.
“It seemed you would live a long life.”
“Is that right?”
“You were all saying so! You’re, um, five years younger than me!” S— counted on his fingers. “Thirty-four? Dead at around thirty-four.” At that point he suddenly fell silent.
I was not exceptionally regretting having died. But I felt, somehow, that being in front of S— was embarrassing.
“Were you in the middle of something?” S— asked again, reserved.
“Yeah, I was writing something on the long side.”
“And your wife?”
“In good health. The kids aren’t sick either.”
“Well, that’s the most important. I don’t know when I’ll die…”
I looked for a bit at S—‘s face. As would be expected, S— was delighted at my death without having died himself: I felt that clearly. Then, it looked in that instant that S— had understood my feelings, and he made a sour face and stopped talking.
After a little while, walking with his mouth shut, S—, using his fan to block the sun, came to a stop in front of a canned goods store.
“Well, excuse me.”
At the store, within the gloom there were many potted white chrysanthemum flowers. With a fleeting glance at the store, for some reason I thought, “Oh, S—’s house was an Aoki Goods franchise.”
“Are you with your father now?”
“Yeah, for a little bit.”
“Okay, see you later.”
After parting from S—, I turned into the next available alley. In the shop window on the corner was placed an organ. A side panel had been removed so that you could see its insides, and inside stood many green bamboo pipes. When I saw this, I thought, “Huh, so you can even use bamboo.” Then—suddenly I was standing before the gate to my house.
The ancient gate and black fence had not changed a bit. No, even the branches of the cherry trees above the gate were as I had seen them yesterday. However, on a new nameplate was written: “Kushibe Temporary Residence.” When I stared at that nameplate, I truly felt my own death. And yet, entering the gate and going into the house from the porch, of course, did not feel dishonest in the slightest.
My wife was sitting on the porch of the living room, making some armor out of bamboo. The area around her was littered with dried bamboo, from that work. However, of the armor upon her knees, all that had been done was the torso and one of the upper legs.
“How are the kids?” I asked, sitting down.
“Yesterday they all went with my aunt and grandmother to Kugenuma.”
“And your uncle?”
“He’s on his way to the bank.”
“So there’s nobody here?”
“No, just me and the quiet.”
Her head down, my wife stuck a needle through the skin of the bamboo. But I had suddenly felt a lie in that voice, so I raised my own.
“But isn’t the Kushibe Temporary Residence nameplate out there?”
Surprised, my wife looked up at me. She was making the face she always made when she had been scolded, eyes at a loss.
“It’s out there, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“So is he here?”
“Yes.” The life went out of her, and she was only fiddling with the bamboo armor.
“I don’t mind if he is! I mean, I’m dead already—“ I had half convinced myself. “You’re young, you don’t have to say those sort of things. But if he’s a good guy…”
My wife looked up at me again. Looking into her eyes, I felt I had done something which could not be undone. At the same time I felt the blood drain from my face. “He’s not a good guy?”
“I don’t think he’s a bad guy…”
However, I understood clearly that my wife held no respect for Mr. Kushibe. So then why had she married such a person? Even if I could still forgive that, my wife putting on a brave face at Mr. Kushibe’s baser points…I felt an unbearable unpleasantness in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you make them call him ‘Dad?’ The kids?”
“Saying that sort of thing…”
“No! No matter what the justification.”
Rather than shout over me, my wife had already hidden her face in her sleeve, making her shoulder quiver.
“What an idiot you are! So I can die without regret, huh?”
Unable to bear looking at her, I went into my study. There, from the doorframe, was hanging a firefighter’s hook. It was wrapped in black and crimson lacquer. Somebody had held it—while recalling this, I was suddenly walking on a road lined with orange fences.
It was already dusk. And the coal-covered path was soaked completely through with drizzle or dew or something. Still feeling angry, I set off walking as quickly as I could. But no matter how far I walked, besides me was only that orange fence stretching on.
Naturally, I opened my eyes. It seemed my wife and the baby were sleeping soundly. However, the night was already tinged with whiteness, and the strangely serious cries of cicadas rang out clearly from some faraway wood. While listening to those cries, fearful of being exhausted tomorrow (today, really), I tried to get to sleep quickly once more. But, not only could I not sleep easily, I also recalled clearly my recent dream. My wife in the dream unfortunately performing her wifely duties as the unburied. S—, perhaps, indeed, even in actuality. And I—I am becoming a terrible egotist where my wife is concerned. And particularly if I think that my dream self is of the same character as myself, I am becoming an even more terrible egotist. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing that is not the same as my dream self. Both so that I could sleep, and to avoid my aggravated conscience, I swallowed a half gram pill of Adalin, and sank into a dead sleep…
(September 1925)