CHAPTER 52
In his delirium my father sometimes spoke aloud.
“General Nogi fills me with shame,” he mumbled from time to time. “Mortified to think of it—no, I’ll be following His Majesty very soon too.”
These words disturbed my mother. She did her best to gather everyone at his bedside. That seemed to be what my father wanted, as whenever he was fully conscious, he constantly complained of loneliness.
He was particularly upset if he looked around and found no sign of my mother. “Where’s Omitsu?” he would ask, and even when he did not speak the question, it was evident in his eyes. I would often stand and go to call her. She would leave what she had begun to do and come to the sickroom, saying, “Is there anything I can do?” but sometimes he would simply gaze wordlessly at her. At other times he would talk about something quite irrelevant. Or he would surprise her by saying gently, “You’ve been very good to me, Omitsu.” At this my mother’s eyes would always fill with tears. Then, however, she would remember his earlier, healthy self and remark, “He sounds so tender now, but he was quite a tyrant in the old days, you know.”
She told the tale of how he had beaten her on the back with a broomstick. My brother and I had heard the story many times before, but now we listened with very different feelings, hearing in her words a precious recollection of one, as it were, already dead.
Though the dark shadow of death hovered before his eyes, my father still did not speak of how he wished his estate to be managed after death.
“Don’t you think we should ask while there’s still time?” my brother said, looking anxiously at me.
“Yes, I guess so,” I replied. I could see arguments both for and against bringing up the subject when he was so ill.
We decided in the end to take the question to our uncle before making a final decision, but he too scratched his head over the problem. “It would be a great pity if he died leaving things he wanted to say unsaid, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem right to press things from our side.”
The question ended up bogged down in indecision. And then my father slipped into unconsciousness. My mother, as innocent as ever, mistook it for sleep, and was quite pleased. “It’s a relief for everyone around if he can sleep as well as this,” she said.
Occasionally my father would suddenly open his eyes and ask after one or another of us, always someone who had only just left his bedside. He seemed to have dark and light areas of consciousness, and the light part wove its way through the darkness like a discontinuous white thread, now there, now gone again. It was natural enough that my mother should confuse his comatose state for sleep.
Then his words grew tangled. Sentences he began would end in confusion, so that often his speech made no sense. Yet when he first began to speak, it was in a voice so strong it seemed incredible that it emerged from one on his deathbed. Meanwhile whenever we spoke to him, we had to raise our voices and bring our lips close to his ear.
“Does that feel good, when I cool your head?”
“Mm.”
The nurse and I changed his water pillow, then laid a fresh ice pack on his head, pressing it gently to the bald area above his forehead, until the sharp little fragments of chopped ice inside the bag settled with a harsh rustle.
Just then my brother came in from the corridor and silently handed me a postal item. My right hand on the ice pack, I took it with my left, and as my hand received the weight, I registered puzzled surprise.
It was considerably heavier than the usual letter. It wasn’t in a normal-size envelope; indeed, it was too bulky to fit in one. The package was wrapped in a piece of white writing paper, carefully pasted down. As soon as I took it from my brother, I realized it had been sent by registered mail. Turning it over, I saw Sensei’s name, written in a careful hand. Busy as I was just then, I couldn’t open the letter right away, so I slipped it into the breast of my kimono.