appalled, Chikashi unexpectedly began to cry. He had no choice but to admit that for these past few months he had been so engrossed in living by the Rules of Tagame that he had forgotten there were rules about living as part of a family, too. On another level, he had been startled by the aside Chikashi had tossed out in the middle of her speech: It isn’t that I think you’re doing these late-night séances as a way of gearing up for your own journey to the Other Side, but still ...
8
“But I just can’t do that!” Kogito wailed. He was alone in his study, lying facedown on his army cot with the sheets pulled tightly over his head, talking to himself. “I know my behavior has been shameful—getting so immersed in Tagame to the point where it’s become a kind of crazy obsession. But there’s another person involved in this. I can’t very well just announce, unilaterally, ‘Sorry, pal, it’s over.’ Think about poor Goro, all alone on the Other Side. How terrible would that be for him?”
Without getting up, Kogito quickly turned over and thrust his head into the darkness next to the bed. Years ago, one of his former college classmates had been admitted to the hospital with leukemia and had thrashed around on the bed so violently that, as the man’s wife confided in Kogito, they were afraid he might end up bursting a blood vessel in his head. (And the fact that the doctors had chosen to conceal the true diagnosis from the patient had probably amplified his anxiety.) But maybe that desperate behavior—that sort of secret, private struggle—was just a reflection of the buttoned-up attitude toward life shared by the men of Kogito’s generation.
Kogito got up, switched on the light, and pulled the duralumin trunk out from under the bed. He had just remembered something Goro had said on one of the tapes, and now, using his own topical annotations on the labels as a guide, he found the tape in question, popped it into Tagame, and hastily cued up the relevant passage. Then, as if urged on by the slow, whirring vibration of the tape recorder, he gave a decisive nod and pressed the PLAY button.
“Of course, you’re always like this,” Goro’s voice began, ragging on Kogito right out of the gate. “But from what I hear these days, true to form, you’ve been acting like a mouse trapped in a bag. When you get right down to it, you’ve brought all your suffering on yourself, and now you’re floundering around helplessly. Chikashi’s been complaining to me, you know,” Goro went on. “She says that same big-shot scumbag journalist has been denouncing you again, in the nastiest, most contemptible way, making a point of saying things like ‘Of course I don’t read that guy’s novels, but I’ve heard from some young people that he’s been putting me in his books, as a villain.’ That so-called journalist even published a showy, slanderous book exploiting the fact that you won a major international award. That vendetta has already been dragging on for twenty-five years now—don’t you think it’s time for you to let it go?
“Lately you’ve been in pretty low spirits, and you’ve brought Chikashi and Akari down as well. There’s no way you can say that’s a good thing. Even without having to cope with a depressed husband, Chikashi is someone who’s experienced more than her share of hard times. When the busybodies say that your familyappears to have a pretty cushy life, you should just reply that the pleasant things pass soon enough, as if they’d never happened, but the painful experiences tend to linger on for a long, long time.
“The sort of person who’s forever reveling in every little delight with an excessive, borderline-abnormal kind of euphoria, and who does nothing but cling to those lovely airbrushed memories—that, in my opinion, is a thoroughly unhappy and unfortunate person. Chikashi has been through far too much suffering already, but in spite of that she has never turned into
8
“But I just can’t do that!” Kogito wailed. He was alone in his study, lying facedown on his army cot with the sheets pulled tightly over his head, talking to himself. “I know my behavior has been shameful—getting so immersed in Tagame to the point where it’s become a kind of crazy obsession. But there’s another person involved in this. I can’t very well just announce, unilaterally, ‘Sorry, pal, it’s over.’ Think about poor Goro, all alone on the Other Side. How terrible would that be for him?”
Without getting up, Kogito quickly turned over and thrust his head into the darkness next to the bed. Years ago, one of his former college classmates had been admitted to the hospital with leukemia and had thrashed around on the bed so violently that, as the man’s wife confided in Kogito, they were afraid he might end up bursting a blood vessel in his head. (And the fact that the doctors had chosen to conceal the true diagnosis from the patient had probably amplified his anxiety.) But maybe that desperate behavior—that sort of secret, private struggle—was just a reflection of the buttoned-up attitude toward life shared by the men of Kogito’s generation.
Kogito got up, switched on the light, and pulled the duralumin trunk out from under the bed. He had just remembered something Goro had said on one of the tapes, and now, using his own topical annotations on the labels as a guide, he found the tape in question, popped it into Tagame, and hastily cued up the relevant passage. Then, as if urged on by the slow, whirring vibration of the tape recorder, he gave a decisive nod and pressed the PLAY button.
“Of course, you’re always like this,” Goro’s voice began, ragging on Kogito right out of the gate. “But from what I hear these days, true to form, you’ve been acting like a mouse trapped in a bag. When you get right down to it, you’ve brought all your suffering on yourself, and now you’re floundering around helplessly. Chikashi’s been complaining to me, you know,” Goro went on. “She says that same big-shot scumbag journalist has been denouncing you again, in the nastiest, most contemptible way, making a point of saying things like ‘Of course I don’t read that guy’s novels, but I’ve heard from some young people that he’s been putting me in his books, as a villain.’ That so-called journalist even published a showy, slanderous book exploiting the fact that you won a major international award. That vendetta has already been dragging on for twenty-five years now—don’t you think it’s time for you to let it go?
“Lately you’ve been in pretty low spirits, and you’ve brought Chikashi and Akari down as well. There’s no way you can say that’s a good thing. Even without having to cope with a depressed husband, Chikashi is someone who’s experienced more than her share of hard times. When the busybodies say that your familyappears to have a pretty cushy life, you should just reply that the pleasant things pass soon enough, as if they’d never happened, but the painful experiences tend to linger on for a long, long time.
“The sort of person who’s forever reveling in every little delight with an excessive, borderline-abnormal kind of euphoria, and who does nothing but cling to those lovely airbrushed memories—that, in my opinion, is a thoroughly unhappy and unfortunate person. Chikashi has been through far too much suffering already, but in spite of that she has never turned into
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