A Quiet Life
Also by Kenzaburo Oe
from Grove Press:
A Personal Matter
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
Hiroshima Notes
Copyright © 1990 by Kenzaburo Oe
Translation copyright © 1996 by Kunioki Yanagishita and William Wetherall
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Originally published in Japan as
Shizuka-na seikatsu
by Kodansha
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United Stales of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ōe, Kenzaburō. 1935—
[Shizuka-na seikatsu. English]
A quiet life / by Kenzaburō Ōe: translated from the Japanese by
Kunioki Yanagishita with William Wetherall.
p. cm.
ISBN 9780802195425
I. Yanagishita, Kunioki. II. Wetherall, William, 1941–
III. Title.
PL858.E14S4913 1990
895.6'35—dc20 96-25795
Design by Laura Hammond Hough
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
contents
Abandoned Children of this Planet
a quiet life
T
his all happened the year Father was invited to be a writer-in-residence at a university in California, and circumstances required that Mother accompany him. One evening, as their departure drew near, we gathered around the family table and had our meal in an atmosphere slightly more ceremonious than usual. Even on occasions like this, Father is incapable of discussing anything important concerning the family without weaving in some levity. I had just come of age, at twenty, and he started talking about my marriage plans as if they were a topic for light conversation. I had never been much of a talker, and more recently had fallen into the habit of not disclosing my private thoughts to him. So while the table talk now centered on me, I merely listened to it, though attentively.
“At any rate, present your minimum requirements,” Father, who had been drinking a beer, suddenly said to me, undaunted by my reticence. Expecting only a perfunctory reply, however,
he kept glancing at me with his somewhat impatient smile. Quite inadvertently, I brought myself to tell him about an idea I had now and then entertained.
“My husband has to be someone who can afford at least a two-bedroom apartment, since Eeyore will be living with us. And I want to live a quiet life there,” I said, the blunt tone of my own voice ringing in my ears.
I detected bewilderment in both Father and Mother the moment I closed my mouth. Their first reaction was to smother what I had said with laughter, as if to suggest that my idea was merely an amusing, childish fantasy. But this is the way conversation in our family usually proceeds, the way Father orchestrates it, his forte. Eeyore, as my brother is called, is four years older than I, and he works at a welfare workshop that employs people with mental handicaps. Now if I were a new bride, and were to bring someone like Eeyore along to live with us, how would my young husband react? Even if I had told him about my plans before our marriage, wouldn't he simply dismiss them as strange and irrelevant? And then, on the very first day of their life together, his new brother-in-law, a giant of a man, shows up at the small apartment he had gone to such trouble to find—how surprised the inexperienced young man would be.
Sensing that there was some serious motive behind my parents' jocular conversation, I felt tense and hung my head to avert my eyes. What I said may have sounded unreasonable, but having said it, it became all the more im portant to me.
“I've been told all along that I don't have a sense of humor, and I quite agree,” I continued, unable to stay quiet any longer. ‘Maybe there's a hidden message in what you're saying. … In any event, that's what I think. I can't conceive of marriage in concrete terms yet, because I don't have anyone particular in mind. I consider all the possible situations, but run into a
dead end, no matter where I start, and that's why I think this way.
“The present conversation, too, tells me that my obsession is ludicrous … for I don't think anyone would marry me with Eeyore along. … Anyway, Papa, Mama, you're not telling me how to actually get around that dead end, are you?”
This was all I said, though I was abundantly aware I needed to elaborate. Every so often I revert to my childhood habit of standing beside Mother, as though in attendance, and talking to her while she puts on her makeup in her bedroom. I spoke to her the next morning this way, picking up from where I had clammed up the evening before. I had
sort of—
to use my younger brother O-chan's
*
pet phrase—rehearsed what I would say to her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something had
made
me rehearse it subconsciously. …
I, too, was disappointed with what I had said the night before. I probably would have been better off saying nothing at all. I retreated to my bedroom, but sleep evaded me. I thought about all sorts of things, and with frayed nerves, I was seized by the premonition of a terrible dream, a nightmare in which I saw myself standing all alone in an empty, desolate place. An awareness of the reality that I was still awake lingered within me, and mingled with the dream. I remained in this state of mind—sad, lonely, detached—knowing full well that my body was lying on the bed.
In time I realized that behind and to the side of me in the dream stood another person with feelings the same as mine. Without turning around to look, I knew that this was the
Eeyore-to-be
. This Eeyore-to-be, who at any moment would step out obliquely from behind me, was an attendant to a bride,
and the bride was me. Primly dressed in my wedding gown, I stood lonely in that desolate place with the Eeyore-to-be as my attendant, with no idea who the groom was. Dusk was setting in on that vast, vacuous wasteland. Such was the dream I dreamt. …
Deep in the night I awoke. And as I recalled the dream, the loneliness welled back up in me with a vengeance, and with such vividness that I could no longer lie in the darkness of my room. So I went upstairs and turned on the night-light, which Eeyore uses so as not to stumble when he goes to the bathroom, and entered his room, through the door which he lets stand ajar. I bunkered down at the foot of his bed, wrapped my knees in the old beat-up blanket I had unconsciously brought with me—an act reminiscent of my childhood behavior—and listened to the sound of his heavy, deep-sleep breathing, which seemed to surpass the norm for human lungs. Not an hour had passed when, in the pale darkness, he got out of bed and quickly went out to the bathroom just across the hall, He took not the least notice of me, and I felt all the more lonesome.
The loud gurgle of urination seemed to last forever, but when Eeyore returned, be came to me. Like a big dog nuzzling at his master, he crouched and pushed his head against my shoulder and sat down beside me with his knees drawn up, apparently intending to sleep that way. I suddenly felt so happy. After a while, like a discreet adult stifling laughter, yet with a soft, pure, and childlike voice, he said, “Is everything all right with Ma-chan?” Feeling utterly whole again, I helped him back into bed, waited until sleep revisited him, and went back to my room.
The fall semester abroad was about to start, and this took place the last day of summer, just one day before their departure. Father was reading the paper on the sofa by their over-stuffed,
heavy-looking suitcases when he suddenly exclaimed, “Eeyore's got to start doing something for exercise again! Like swimming!” He was addressing neither Mother, who was working in the kitchen, nor me: rather he sounded like he was talking to himself after a lot of painful deliberation.
“Exercise? I'm a very good swimmer,” Eeyore would have replied after a moment of belated thought, evoking laughter from everyone in the family—if, as usual, he had been there beside Father, lying flat on his stomach on the carpet, composing music.
Had Eeyore been there, Father's words would not have come rolling down on me, like a log or something, and just remained there. Eeyore is the buffer in the family—he's not wholly unaware of it—and he plays his role humorously.
But Eeyore wasn't there when Father suddenly mentioned exercise. If I remember correctly, I had already returned home after taking him to the welfare workshop in the morning, and was helping Mother clear the breakfast table when Father, the only one who had slept in, blurted out those words about exercise as he put down the morning paper. As I said, I felt weighed down by an unknown, loglike object. Then, when I started tidying up the living room, soon after Father had gone up to his study, I saw, in the morning paper he had left sprawled on the table, an article reporting that a mentally retarded youth had assaulted a female student at a camp school. The assault appeared to be motivated by sex.