A Quiet Life (12 page)

“I especially liked the actress who did the wife's part,” Mrs. Shigeto said, while scrupulously rubbing grated garlic into the ribs of lamb she was preparing for Eeyore and me. She had removed the fat on the edges of the bones, and they looked like short comb teeth. “It was great the way she smokes her cigarette like a juvenile delinquent. And she isn't fat like most Russian women. No particular reason, but I wonder if she wasn't Jewish.”

“He's so vulnerable,” Mr. Shigeto said. “He's the sort of man whose entire heart is exposed on the surface. So I imagine that, until then, his wife protected him quite well. And with that child, too, it must have been tough for her.”

I thought of Mrs. Shigeto, who was busily preparing dinner at our side, for although they had no children, she, too, must have a hard time, standing by her husband, encouraging him to do only the kind of work that suited him. When I turned a casual glance in her direction, I saw a slight pink flush come to her face, as if she were feeling abashed, but she kept rubbing garlic into the ribs with her forefinger, which was bent at a charming angle.

Mr. Shigeto, who also had turned to his wife, an expression of surprise on his face compounding his usual solemnity,
continued. “I thought the murky and dangerous would-be criminal side of the guide was also very well portrayed. And the irate reaction of one of the clients, who says ‘What the hell are you trying to do’ when he almost gets a crowbar thrown at him tor innocently trying to uproot a tuft of grass, was very true to life. A vulnerable and easily hurt somber and passionate, and ultimately criminal-like guy is really fearsome. … And Ma-chan, about this child, I don't think she's Christ in his Second Coming. You can't associate her father's criminality with Christ—though of course you could argue that she was born of a virgin mother. But the child herself, her eyes, struck me as harboring some kind of malevolent force. She could easily grow up to be a person whose role is to destroy everything—in other words, the antichrist—which is my conclusion for the moment.”

“Then why,” I wondered, “do we hear the ‘Ode to Joy’ together with the rumble of the train? Eeyore got all excited and started conducting it.”

“Exactly!” Eeyore chimed in.

“There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn't there?” Mr. Shigeto said. “Isn't Jesus Christ's Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with ‘millenarian’ joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards. …”

“The story line's getting a little complicated, Mr. Shigeto,” his wife said, supplying me with a rescue boat, for actually I was having a hard time trying to follow his thoughts. “You can't tell Ma-chan a realistic story unless you first organize your own ideas better. … Well now, Ma-chan, why don't you switch your mind to cooking? I want you to learn the ratio of herbs and salt to pepper. Lamb is readily available these days. Even supermarkets have frozen lamb, and they do a good job of
thawing it. Foreigners here say it's the only quality meat they can afford. See how you like it this evening, and if you do, then now and then you could make some for Eeyore.”

While Mrs. Shigeto and I busied ourselves in the small but amazingly well-kept kitchen, Mr. Shigeto piled on the table a mountain of old LP records and tapes he had recorded from radio. He and Eeyore, acting very professionally, were preparing to listen to and compare the many versions of the “Ode to Joy.”

When dinner started, Mr. Shigeto commended Eeyore for his ability to make accurate, educated guesses on how long each “Ode” was—even on the recordings he had never heard before. As I listened to Mr. Shigeto say to his wife, by way of explanation, that it was all a matter of understanding a conductor's style, I realized he had been so impressed with Eeyore that he had discussed this problem with him as one adult to another.

“The moment you hear the first few notes of some of these versions, you think they're going to be up-tempo,” he said. “And sure enough, when you've listened until the end, you tell yourself you were right, and remember them this way. Then there are those you remember as being slow, the way you remember the versions of Furtwängler or Toscanini we usually hear. But very often, these memories become distorted through your own stubborn imagination. Take me, for example. I would have carried such distortions to my grave if not for what Eeyore just pointed out to me. We were comparing only the introductory parts of the ‘Ode’ by different conductors, and as we discussed the tempo of each one, I learned that the way I perceived the various renditions was different from Eeyore's. He said calmly, but with conviction, that the recording times on this, that, and the other pieces were almost the same. So I picked out a few I believed were of a quite different tempo, and when
I timed them on my stopwatch, it was just as he said. They weren't even thirty seconds apart!”

Mrs. Shigeto rolled at Eeyore her thought-immersed eyes, which watched attentively from deep behind her silver-rimmed glasses, and exclaimed with childlike admiration, “A difference of only thirty seconds is almost no difference at all!”

“I guess it's almost the same,” Eeyore cautiously replied.

“Eeyore really has an extraordinary ability to judge music, doesn't he?” Mrs. Shigeto said. “Shigeto-san, you'll have to work hard to teach Eeyore.”

“The ideal teacher-student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher,” Mr. Shigeto returned, unperturbed.

While we ate, Eeyore made us laugh with what seemed to be well-calculated jokes. The discussion of
Stalker
continued with Mr. Shigeto at the center, as before. But when we talked again of the scene where the guide piggybacks his daughter back to their apartment, he remarked upon the excellent acting of the dog in the scene, and there followed quite a heated exchange of words between him and his wife. Mrs. Shigeto first directed his attention to the fact that fine acting on the part of dogs is mere coincidence, with the exception of super movie dogs like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. And even their acting, she claimed, wasn't acting in its truest sense, for their roles were always the same. Her knowledge of the movies, abundant to the point of anarchy, stunned me as she then cited example after example of memorable scenes of dogs acting out. their parts. It was also interesting, though, because as she argued, she sometimes unwittingly provided supporting evidence in favor of her husband's contention.

Soon Mr. Shigeto steered the conversation to what I think he wanted to present as a conclusion, at least for the evening.

“To sum it up,” he said, “entirely intentional performances
by animals may be limited to the animated films of Disney. By the way, the first Betty Boop was a bitch. I saw it at a private showing by a collector.”

“Then you agree with me,” Mrs. Shigeto said. “… But I don't understand why Betty Boop has to intrude into the discussion,” she objected in part, though on the whole she appeared satisfied.

Smiling, she asked Eeyore if he cared for more lamb. But Eeyore, after being cautioned at the welfare workshop about his weight increase, never ate more than what was first apportioned to him, and when I explained his attitude of refusal for him, Mrs. Shigeto promptly changed the subject and asked, “Eeyore, you saw the big dog in the movie too, didn't you?”

“Remember, Eeyore, you were watching it too, beside me, making music?” I said. “You liked the part where the little girl goes home piggybacked on her father's shoulders, because they proceeded across the screen in a crooked way. And there was a dog there, too?”

“Unfortunately, I couldn't observe the dog well,” Eeyore replied. “It kept moving around a lot.”

“You're right,” Mr. Shigeto remarked. “The focus of the dog's role in the scene was to just keep moving around. You have a firm grasp of the meaning of the scene, Eeyore.”

Then Eeyore said, “I used to piggyback a lot a long time ago!” He said it as though it was an idea he'd been sitting on for a while. “Yes, I often piggybacked Papa.”

“
Papa
piggybacked
you
, Eeyore,” I had to put in. “Besides, Papa was fat and heavy in those days.”

“I was healthy then.” Eeyore said. “My fits hadn't begun yet. I piggybacked very often.” We all happily laughed. Eeyore, too, was laughing. He was in high spirits throughout the evening we were there. And because I optimistically saw him as though I were seeing the Eeyore of long ago, I gradually
became careless. On our way back from the Shigetos, following Eeyore, who walked hurriedly down the road in front of their house, I actually thought of the days when he was truly able to move very sprightly. Every summer in Kita-Karuizawa, when we jogged, as our daily routine, I could have passed him had I wanted to, but O-chan could never keep up with Eeyore's speed and stamina. Long ago, I reminisced, Eeyore was really very healthy. …

But as I now replay that scene of our return home from the Shigetos, I recall that when we reached the station and started going up the stairs to the gate, Eeyore looked unusually tired. We were lucky the train to Shinjuku, where we had to make a transfer, wasn't very crowded, and we were able to sit together, side by side, and rest comfortably for a while. Eeyore no longer talks to anyone in the family when we are out among other people.

That evening, too, he sat beside me in silence, wearing a solemn expression on his face that was somewhat different from Mr. Shigetos. Even so, I wasn't, worried about helping him make the transfer to the crowded outbound Odakyu Line from Shinjuku Station. On the express platform, however, I sensed for the first time, as we stood side by side at the head of a long line, that untoward changes were taking place inside Eeyore's body. Outwardly, his body looked defenseless and unstable, much like a big papier-mâché mannequin propped up against an invisible wall, and on his neck was a flushed face with bloodshot eyes, half-open yet showing no trace of seeing. With blood rushing to my head, and aware of my powerlessness, my inability to do anything, I desperately seized—hung on to—and tried to support Eeyore's body, which was emitting a high, stifling temperature, and was evidently suffering a fit. The upper half of his body, with its uncertain center of gravity, gave me no clue as to which way its weight would fall. At times,
though, it would suddenly bear down on me with such force that my shoulder bones creaked. …

After all the passengers had gotten off the other side of the incoming commuter train, Shinjuku being the end of the line, I heard the doors on our side open behind me, and my entire body chilled with fear. Immediately, the lines of boarding passengers started moving in, and although I was somehow supporting Eeyore's weight, which had become substantially heavy, the irresistible force of the crowd thrust me back two or three steps. I couldn't even scream at, let alone explain anything to, the passengers who were pushing and shoving to get in and scramble for a seat. I had been holding Eeyore at the front of the line, facing the visibly irate passengers, who merely saw two ostentatious young lovers hugging each other in public, blocking their path. I thought the work-weary, angry people, among whom were several drunks, were going to crush us. They would trample over us, perhaps kick Eeyore in the head with the toes of their hard leather shoes, kick him in the back of his head where his protective plastic plate was embedded. But no voice escaped from my open mouth; only tears of fear and desperation rolled down my cheeks. And all the while, people were gruffly shoving us back toward the end of the queue, and we were barely able to keep ourselves from falling. …

Then I noticed that Eeyore's body, which I thought I had been supporting, was in fact shielding me from the procession of the line. Moreover, it had slowly but steadily managed to switch positions with mine. Some clearly vulgar words were hissed beside our ears then, but Eeyore, who was standing so precariously off-balance that I thought he would be crushed at any moment, pushed back with great strength. And holding me with outstretched elbows, he confronted the inrushing passengers, looking them straight in the face. At this point, the pressure of people thrusting and shoving at our sides and backs
subsided, and the movement of those who dodged us became in some sense a natural, flowing stream. By this time, passengers who had given up on getting a seat were proceeding through the doors at a calmer pace. Yet as I looked up, my tear-drenched eyes saw Eeyore still staring straight over my head at the people beyond, his face suffused with an expression that reflected less an open, spontaneous hostility toward others and more a sedate, menacing force. …

Because Eeyore was soon able to walk on his own, we moved, avoiding the people who were forming new lines, to a place behind the stairs that led to another platform above, and rested there with our backs against the wall. This time, too, Eeyore thrust his arm between me and the wall, and kept it there, enfolding me. His breath was foul with that metallic stench he gives off when he has his fits, but the expression on his face was soft, and he was already his usual self. If there hadn't been any strangers passing us, I would have kidded him with a joke that I myself would be laughing at for I too was cradled in that sense of relief that comes after riding out a crisis.

Before long, a
peculiar resolve
welled up in my heart. I began wondering if Eeyore deep inside, embraced a malevolent force like that of the antichrist. Even if he were the antichrist, though, I would follow him wherever he went. As for why I associated the antichrist with Eeyore, the only reason I could think of was that the girl with the golden
platok
in
Stalker
had acted as a catalyst, for in almost all of his childhood pictures, I had seen Eeyore with a bandage or cloth around his head, or sometimes a woolen cap fully covering it. …

Still, in the manner of a light that penetrates through my constitution and emanates refracted rays upon leaving it, the joy that came over me then was clearly that of a violent, malicious jubilation. For I no longer had another soul in mind, no one in this whole world but Eeyore and myself. And mingling
with the rumble of the express train now departing from the next track, I heard within me, although it could never bear comparison with Beethoven's Ninth, an “Ode to Joy” of a kind that, together with Eeyore's plump earlobe, which nestled just above my head, I seemed to embrace with an overflowing courage.