A Quiet Life (6 page)

Honestly, it was with such a feeling that I reacted to Father's speech and conduct. Nevertheless, sometime before my parents departed for the United States I began to sympathize with Father, who looked after Eeyore. I remember one Sunday when Father returned home pitifully worn out from a charity event for handicapped people he had taken Eeyore to, a performance by the Metropolitan Orchestra called the Joining of Hearts Concert. By contrast, Eeyore was in high spirits. Come to think of it, Father's “pinch” was clearly apparent to us from about that time. I had taken Eeyore to these concerts twice before, and Irom these experiences, I worried about Father
accompanying him there. It's only my personal impression, but at such charity concerts, the emcee and conductor are oddly spirited, while the members of the orchestra often betray a natural fatigue. So I worried that Father, who was accustomed to concerts of first performances of new works by his composer friends, would be shocked by the slack atmosphere created by such an orchestra. But the night before the Joining of Hearts Concert, he seemed inclined to switch with me and said in his usual sportive manner, “Who're you going to the concert with tomorrow, Eeyore?” Eeyore then pointed his nicely shaped finger shyly, as if to hide it under the table, in Father's direction.

Father had Eeyore wear his old suit to the concert, a suit Father had worn just once or twice a long time ago and saved for Eeyore upon finding that it looked better on him, and they had dinner at a nearby Ikebukuro restaurant afterwards, and came home. His positive attitude seems to have lingered awhile after the concert, for he brought back some ice cream he had bought at the restaurant, but when he got home after sundown, he looked totally frazzled.

The Joining of Hearts Concerts that I have been to have been gatherings of handicapped people with truly diverse idiosyncrasies, and the equally idiosyncratic members of their families. Their different backgrounds are especially apparent in the mothers of mentally retarded children of high school age. They are banded together, and on each is imprinted the dark, indelible mark of the wheel of suffering to which they boldly put their shoulders. I respect them for this, which is why I usually stay with these mothers when I go to these gatherings. But I also feel there is nothing quite like the complex and fervent mood in the assembly of various handicapped people with their families and the volunteers.

But I wonder if Father, who is used to working by himself, didn't find the excitement-echoing atmosphere more enervating
than encouraging. When Eeyore and I are in public, at concert halls or on trains, I'm frequently led to reconfirm the oddity of his facial expressions and movements, which are strikingly different from those of ordinary people, though at home they are an integral part of the family and something we like a lot. The oddity is often made more conspicuous in the company of other handicapped people, each of whom unwittingly punctuates their own dissimilarity. So I imagine Father received quite a shock when he began to see unfamiliar impressions in Eeyore at the Joining of Hearts Concert.

And so I felt both sorry for and angry with Father. I possessed no concrete evidence on which to justify my presumptuous intrusion into his inner thoughts when I surmised that his exhaustion was due to his having reconfirmed Eeyore's handicap, which in the presence of other handicapped people had supposedly seemed more obvious to him. I was led to think this way by the various experiences I myself had gone through. Even now, whenever I take Eeyore to these gatherings, or when I help as a university volunteer, I notice that the mothers of handicapped children, however sad they look, appear to have a firm grip on themselves, whereas the fathers, especially those of Father's age, wear expressions of doleful apprehension. Each appears to be nursing a fear that the outline of his own child's handicap, which he has sketched in pencil, is being retraced and accentuated with a magic marker by the other fathers. They also appear to be meditating plaintively on their own future, seeing families caring for handicapped members even older than they are. …

At such times, I fix my gaze on these fathers and repeat to myself, “
Hell, no! Hell, no!
The road ahead may be pitch black, but let's brace ourselves and push on!” Were these fathers to see only my exterior, they would merely think that a girl who had been intently looking at them, a skinny girl with a small,
round head, had quickly dropped her eyes the moment, they had turned to look at her. But the reason I hear such voices calling out within me is because, in the same concert hall, I also notice despondent mothers who, like me, harbor the repelling forces of
Hell, no! Hell, no!

The honest impression I get at such concerts these days is that, time has passed. “Time has passed!” I think to myself. I guess I feel this way because I compare these performances with the ones I used to go to when Eeyore was in the secondary division at. the special school for the handicapped. Whenever I accompanied Mother to the school, I felt that not only the students, but the teachers and guardians as well, were in good spirits. And the mothers, especially, were so unaffected: their unconstrained laughter always took me by pleasant surprise. But now I don't hear such laughter ring out in the Joining of Hearts Concerts now. Assuredly, each concert is quite festive with, on the performers' side for example, an elderly musician whistling out—his fingers between his lips—a double-octave, ear-piercing tune, while his daughter trills an Italian folk song, flailing the microphone in pop idol fashion. But during the intermission, which immediately follows this, the mothers keep their eyes fixed on their laps or something, while the fathers look around unnaturally with unsettled eyes.

That's why I feel good when a young person with a handicap sometimes makes a positive, aggressive response at a concert, hall. In my heart that voice exclaims,
“Hell, yes! Hell, yes!
The road ahead may be pitch black, but let's brace ourselves and push on!”

My letter to Mother in California. … Weekly visitors, mail, and budget report aside, I'll just transcribe the part that pertains to my thoughts and feelings.

“…Going to the welfare workshop, where he enjoys the company of his co-workers, and to Mr. Shigeto's music lessons seem to relieve Eeyore of the strain of not having Papa and Mama in Japan. As for his fits, he had two relatively minor ones last week.

“Remember when the whole family was here, he would occasionally become too dependent, and unless someone reminded him, he would forget to take his anticonvulsants? He takes them regularly on his own now—morning, noon, and night—so usually all I have to do every morning is look in the box to see if the medicines for the previous day have disappeared. I plan to take him to the hospital for a checkup when I go there for his medicines at the end of the month, so I have asked the welfare workshop to give him a day off then.

“O-chan's the sort of person who sets up a program for himself and then carries it out alone, so he systematically studies for his entrance exams at the desk in his room. During his breaks he listens to music through headphones at the dining table. I imagine he's working off his stress with this well-coordinated combination of study and music.

“Now about the condition of my stress. As you know, I often burden myself with anxiety, because I'm so clumsy in coping even with matters that, in the eyes of others, might be hilariously simple. I even feel that, in going to America, Mama, next to your worry about Eeyore's
physical
condition, your main concern has been about me sinking into
psychological
stress.

“But now we're stable. The worrywart that I am, though I'm maintaining my usual vigilance, in the event that beyond a higher level of stability might come an even higher level of instability. Please don't be too concerned about this point. Even if something were to come and hit my head with a clunk, it would certainly not be “a clunk from an unexpected blow.”
I'm sure Eeyore and I would tide ourselves over pretty well. And though O-chan remains thoroughly reserved, we have his moral support, too.”

Now about what happened the following week right after we went to the Shigetos, and Eeyore's music composition lesson started: Mr. Shigeto, who came out of the music room leaving Eeyore to himself, which he usually does not do, approached my side as I was reading a book and said, “I lope I'm not being too inquisitive, but can you answer one question for me?”

These words themselves petrified me. They had been uttered in a manner no different from the way he usually speaks, playfully unconcerned and aloof. But when I looked up. I saw on his face, and in his eyes, which were fixed squarely on the thick staff paper he held in his hands, the ebb and flow of so distressed an ire that a chill came over me. Frightened to the bottom of my heart, I waited for his next words.

Turning toward me a pair of bloodshot eyes that were filled with resentment and agony, he resumed speaking.

“Ma-chan, this is a piece Eeyore started working on immediately after K and Oyu-san left for California, and finished for today's lesson. While he was working on the details, I was thinking more about music theory, which isn't my forte … and because I often saw him calmly smiling right before my eyes, it didn't occur to me to think of what was being expressed in the composition in progress. Besides, I was looking forward to the pleasure of playing the piece straight through upon its completion.

“Eeyore made a clean copy of the entire score and showed it to me today, and I played it, only to discover that it's such a dreadfully sad piece! Why is this?”

Mr. Shigeto cut his words short and swallowed, whereupon the blotches on the flesh of his quivering throat appeared to
have turned darker and more pronounced, giving the impression of an old man, an impression he usually does not project. My flinching ears heard his voice itself, an echo entreating me, “… a
dreadfully sad piece. Why is this!”

I finally took into my dully shaking hands the large sheet of paper that had been thrust before me, and I hesitated as I thought, ‘What for? I don't read music.' Yet when I saw in the upper margin of the staff paper the title “Sutego”
^*
in penciled letters, I thought I was able to understand the reason for the painful rage in Mr. Shigeto's voice.

“What,” I asked, “is he doing in there now, all alone?”

“He's playing the newly completed piece, using the draft.”

“Does he look sad?”

“…No. Very cool, as usual … But Ma-chan, what on earth do you think he means by ‘Sutego'?”

“I don't know. I didn't know until now that such a word existed in his mind….”

“Does K have the slightest idea of what Eeyore's going through?” Mr. Shigeto and Father have been friends since before I was born, but the way he bitterly called him by name, without using any honorific, sounded like he was calling down an archenemy or something. “Oyu-san says K's in a ‘pinch,’ but does this allow her to leave the children to care for themselves? And Ma-chan, you had to go through that molester incident right after they left. You had a very terrifying experience. And now Eeyore's made this very sad piece that seems to wail, and the title he's given it, one he's thought up himself, is ‘Sutego’ of all things!”

Faint piano chords were coming from the other side of the soundproofed wall beyond the dark, narrow hallway to the
right of the living room. The hall was further narrowed by bookcases and shelves along the walls, on top of which were stacked more books, one over another. And above them all were handicrafts, woven goods, and toys from Eastern Europe. Eeyore was playing his music just the way he composes it, not by tracing the melody horizontally, as it were, but by playing sound units the way he pencils them on the staff sheets, as though he were assembling building materials, one kind on top of another. Listening to this deliberate, pause-laden way of playing, it didn't sound to me like a “very sad piece that seems to wail,” and so I was able to somewhat recover from my restlessness.

Moreover, Mr. Shigeto himself appeared to be regretting his words, which had rung as if he were upbraiding me. Then he continued, this time directing his rage inwardly at himself.

“I hear K's gone to California, with Oyu-san attending to him, in an effort to cope with his pinch,” he said. “‘Oyu-san informed me of the circumstances, and I understand. From the time he was young, K's been more of the forbearing type. When his kind of person reaches a point where, either through action or some other means, he howls that it's dangerous to continue living like he does, then neither Oyu-san nor I could object to his taking emergency refuge. But if his action, which is basically self-centered, causes Eeyore to wonder whether he's become an abandoned child … I would be suspicious of the sort of power of observation he's exercised over Eeyore.”

The atypical atmosphere had prompted Mrs. Shigeto to come out from the kitchen and listen to her husband, with her head drooping and the silver rim on her glasses mirroring a grayish black. For my part, I sensed a dire need to say something, anything, to lift their heavy hearts.

“I think there's an element of humor in his usage of an expression like ‘abandoned child,’” I said. “It just, occurred to me that once, when he was watching a monster film on TV, an infant stegosaur
^*
appeared, and Father explained to him what the name meant.

“Stegosaur!”
Mr. Shigeto exclaimed, his voice mixed with grief and laughter. “… But he
did
entitle it ‘Sutego,’ knowing very well what an abandoned child is!”

“Mr. Shigeto, why should you be so forward and emotional?” his wife asked, addressing her husband by attaching “Mister” to his family name, which gave me a glimpse into their life in Eastern Europe. “Ma-chan's got it the roughest, shouldering all responsibility for Eeyore, and you shouldn't add to her cares by bursting out like that.”

“True,” Mr. Shigeto reiterated, “very true.”

“If Eeyore titled it ‘Sutego,’ doesn't this mean he's objectified his feelings through his music? And this very moment, too, he's playing it very calmly. Perhaps he may have a different understanding of ‘abandoned child’—the theme itself— from what you, Mr. Shigeto, infer from it. … So let's have some tea, shall we, and try to calm down a bit.”