A Quiet Life (19 page)

There obviously wasn't anything I could do about this, except to sink my head under the pillow, though by the time Mother returned, I was sleeping.
The Neverending Story
reminded me of what I had heard that night, and despite his bewilderment at my question, the very asking of which was a rare occasion, I followed it up with another the next day.

“Oh really?” he replied. “So after Dr. W passed away, it wasn't only Mama who heard me expound on the pain of death. … Come to think of it, though, my anxiety over such pain was very vague in those days. The simple fact that Dr. W died a painful death was the sole cause of such fear in me. Beyond this, though, I believe the core of my fear at the time consisted of the thought that, after death, I would turn into nothing.”

“Me, too,” I said. Frankly, I am no good at communicating with Father, but feeling encouraged by
The Neverending Story
, which I held in my hands, I was ready to at least ask him this, even for the mere sake of asking. “I'm afraid of becoming nothing, too,” I said, “but I have a friend who says she shudders at the thought of her having been nothing for billions of years before she was born.”

“Oh? That
is
a problem, isn't it?” he said. “For my part, I don't much think about it anymore; not that I have gained any wisdom to encourage you with, but only because age has made me insensitive to the fear of my becoming zero. In terms of the scale of human history, though, I would say that people have always contemplated the rebirth of their dead.”

“Even if there were rebirth,” I said, “if you remember nothing of your previous existence, it's the same as turning into nothing, isn't it? Bastian in
The Neverending Story
is the same way.”

Nevertheless, when I think of rebirth these days, I feel it's better to become a new person—perhaps an animal, some vegetation,
or anything that has life—who's totally oblivious to who I am now. I don't feel that if I forget this existence, I'm going to turn into nothing. Rather, I find it comfortable to think that, after being reborn, I won't remember anything of my previous life; and during this lifetime, I'll never know what form of life I'm going to assume next time around. …

If there are such rebirths, then Eeyore, O-chan, and I must have experienced many lives before this one, about which we remember nothing. And we're going to chance upon many more that we can't even imagine. If so, there couldn't be any profound meaning in our family feeling mortified over—as though there were no possible atonement for—Eeyore's brain, which had accidentally been destroyed when he came into this world this time.

When Father published Eeyore's music, at his own expense, and distributed copies to his friends and acquaintances, not a few of them said that they had heard in it a mystical voice that transcended the limitations of human beings. Such sentimental impressions, I thought, though as usual these were words I uttered only in my heart. Eeyore starts working on each piece after carefully deliberating what he wants to express in it, which is what he did even for pieces like “Summer in Kita-Karuizawa” or “Requiem for M.” He's accumulated his technique through years of listening to FM programs and records, along with Mrs. T's patient instruction. He can't comment on his music the way ordinary musicians so cloquently do about theirs, but I think he creates his music by employing the themes and syntax of the music of the people who walk or have walked this earth, and not at the suggestion of any heavenly will.

To use Father as an example of someone who writes, it was after several years of reading Blake—in his study or on the living
room sofa, from morning to night—that he wrote a set of short stories about Eeyore by overlapping images from the poet's Prophecies together with events that delineate Eeyore's growth and development. Characters based on me and O-chan are portrayed in them. So I said to O-chan, “A pain in the neck, don't you think, even if it's been done favorably, that he writes about us from his one-dimensional viewpoint? It's all right with my friends who know me, but it depresses me to think that I'm going to meet some people who, through his stories, will have preconceived ideas of me.”

“Just tell them it's fiction.” cool-headed O-chan replied.

Neither O-chan nor I read all the stories when it came out as a book, but a woman—a mother of a girl with cerebral palsy who I helped about two years ago through volunteer work at the university—recommended that I read at least the short story that rounds off the anthology, and so I did. I wasn't as impressed with it as I was with the Blake poem he had translated and quoted.

This reminds me: the day Father finished this anthology, he dug a hole in the garden and then burned the bundle of cards he had prepared while reading Blake. When Mother told him he should perhaps keep at least the translations, he gave it some serious thought, and then replied, “A specialist would say it's full of mistakes.” That would be
a matter of grave concern to the family
, I thought, and with the branch of a tree I quickly poked away at the mass of cards, so that brisk flames would rise.

“Jesus replied: ‘Fear not, Albion: unless I die thou canst not live. / But if I die I shall rise again & thou with me; / This is friendship & brotherhood; without it man is not.’ / So Jesus spoke, the Covering Cherub coining on in darkness / Overshadowed them & Jesus said: ‘Thus do men in Eternity, / One for another to put off by forgiveness ever sin.”’

Father had explained in his story that these lines were from “Jerusalem” in the Prophecies, and so I went to his upstairs library and took out the big facsimile edition from the shelf of his Blake-related books, and looked at the illuminations Blake himself had done. White outlines of a tree float up, silhouetted against the entire blackish background. It's the “Tree of Life.” Christ is crucified here. As I understand it, Albion, standing at the foot of the tree, listening to Christ's words, has the role of representing the whole of humanity by himself.

I went to bed after reading these lines over and over, until I could recite them almost by heart, and dreamed I was standing at the foot of the “Tree of Life” in Albion's stead—the story is becoming high-flown, but then I, too, belong to mankind. … I can't see Christ very well, for even in our dreams he is too awesome for our eyes to behold, and in the dark only the platinum rays, which the outline of the tree emits, are conspicuous. But when Christ's voice says, “But if I die I shall arise again & thou with me,” the covering cherub glides through the pale dark with his accustomed grace, and throws the shadow of a deeper darkness over me. While wondering whether to
act this way
means, in other words, to act with grace, I'm enticed by the form of the familiar shadow; and when I lift my eyes, Eeyore, who has sprouted wings, is floating in the sky with a facial expression that suggests he is stifling a smile.

Christ must have gone through many deaths this way, I thought, and then been reborn many times; and Eeyore has stood witness to each one, which is why he appears so accustomed to them. … While I was telling Mother about this dream, Father, who as always was reading a book on the sofa, heard me with his sharp ears. I didn't care how, but I think I actually wanted Father, too, to hear me talk about the dream that Blake had caused me to have. Anyway, he came over and said, “I don't think Christians would accept the thought that Jesus
has repeatedly entered into the history of the world—a world bound by time. I should ask you to exercise caution when you speak with your Christian friends. It's an important matter for those who have faith.”

I was unable for a while after this to hold my head up when walking past the congregation in front of the cathedral at my university, which I had to pass on the several Sunday mornings our volunteer group met on campus. One morning, a group member, who had been waiting where we were supposed to meet, and was watching me come, perplexedly said. “What happened, Ma-chan? I thought I saw a repentant virgin coming this way!”

Some time after this letter, Father wrote me another one, from which I could tell he was genuinely concerned about the rebirth question I had on my mind.

“Regarding
Stalker
, which you say you and O-chan watched on a late-night TV program, well, I don't have any video equipment here, so I thought I might read the novel it's based on, and went to look for it in a San Francisco bookstore that has a selection of Russian novels in English. Unfortunately, they didn't have
Roadside Picnic
by the Strugatsky brothers, but they had a novel by Aitmatov, a contemporary writer, one that has as its theme the Crucifixion and the question of rebirth. I will forward the book by separate post for you to deliver to Mr. Shigeto, though he may have already read it in Russian.

“Presenting in a novel the philosophical implications of the Crucifixion through Pontius Pilate's interrogation of Christ: I found this arrangement also in Bulgakov's novel, so I wonder if this isn't a technique Russian writers like, including Dostoevsky with his Grand Inquisitor. The setting of Aitmatov's novel is one in which two millennia have passed since Jesus's death and resurrection. The protagonist is a modern young man who has taken it upon himself to worship Jesus Christ in his own way,
different from the way churches do—which in itself is nothing new—and who strives to see to it that Christ has not died in vain. The young man is strung from a tree and murdered by some men who hunt elk in a remote area of Russia—men who had come from the city, having been hired to procure meat, and who have a savageness different from that of the local people. This is the central plot.

“Also before this, the young man had once penetrated a gang that illegally procured hallucinogenic plants. His motive was to report the gang's circumstances to a newspaper. But the other gang members found out, and they booted him off a speeding freight train. Though he's had only two such experiences, the young man takes them to be forms of his reliving the drama of Christ's death and rebirth. In the novel, Christ is crucified and reborn three times. In other words, the young man relives each of Christ's sufferings on the cross—the first time in his mind, the two other times as a direct physical experience.

“Come to think of it, no novelist today could write a story on so grand a theme as Christ's Crucifixion and resurrection in one vertical flow. What Aitmatov does with the Crucifixion, therefore, is portray a character who leaps over history in order to experience synchronicity with Christ. This is how the writer traces the original death and rebirth of Christ. As a novelistic technique, it was invented in desperation, but perhaps it runs parallel to what moves in the minds of those who have faith.

“I myself have never written a novel like this, directed toward something that transcends the real world, but I have come to understand the efficacy of this technique through reading many excellent works. And this is what I think of as I reread this work by a Kirgiz-born writer, an Asian writer like myself. … Ma-chan, I'm afraid that this letter has ended up a
mere confession of a vulnerable writer who has sought emergency refuge in a quiet place in a foreign land, and that it serves no purpose as regards the question on your mind.”

Well, from what I have written so far about my relationship with Father, it might strike you as strange when I say that I'm a student of French literature. It's no big deal, though: nothing I meant to hide. Actually I'm a stranger to literature, yet through my own decision, independent of Father, I ended up choosing to pursue it in college. But would I confuse you more to tell you that Céline steered me toward this decision, and that I'm planning to write my graduation thesis on him? My thesis adviser quite frankly told me that Céline's French, with all its slang, would be too difficult for me. He also said he wasn't sure if a girl from today's affluent society could enter into Céline's sensitivity and way of thinking. Blunt as he was, I think his intention was neutral, and his advice—well, pedagogical.

In any case, from about the end of my sophomore year, I started reading Céline every day, making reference cards as I read. When some of my seniors in graduate school found out about this, one flung at me some words laced with toxic implications: “You say ‘Céline.’ … An innocent princess reading Céline, huh? … feigning the villain. When did Céline turn into a cute hobbyhorse?” My sheepish reply on such occasions: “I'm not really reading him. I'm a cat lover, and I'm thinking of making a list of quotations of what this writer said about cats.”

From the very start, though, I had made up my mind as to how I would approach Céline. I would try to understand him through the children he calls
nos petite cretins, our little idiots
, the children who live under dire circumstances but who live life for all it is worth. And fortunately, I was allowed to participate in the university's volunteer program for handicapped children. I haven't written in “Diary as Home,” let alone
talked to my family, about the friends I made there, for their privacy is a complex matter. And I intend to live by this ethic, always. But it's through my encounters with handicapped children and their parents—not only with members of the group I belong to, but with people at other colleges as well—that I have been able to somehow re-create my inhibited character, one that's led me to wish always to live like someone who isn't there. … With the experience I have gained through working with this group—and I've got Eeyore, too, of course—I think I have some idea of what it takes to enter the world of children with handicaps.

Nevertheless, every time I reread the various episodes where Céline vividly portrays
our little idiots
, I always discover, to my amazement, freshly bizarre expressions. For I find truly villain-feigning exaggerations, not so much in the way he addresses the children as in the way he expresses his attendance on them. On the other hand, though my fellow able-bodied countrymen may not express it in words, experience has taught me that they sometimes take a startlingly vicious attitude toward handicapped children, as on the stairs at a railway station, when a child with a handicap desperately reaches out for a helping hand—though granted this may be a situation that reflexively brings out the bigot in them. I believe Céline, in contrast, was a person to whom this sort of meanness, at least, was never to his liking.