“What!” Naoji looked at me with an odd expression.
Just then the nurse called. “Your mother seems to want you for something.”
I rushed to the sickroom and sat beside her bed. “What is it?” I asked, bending my head over hers.
Mother remained silent, but I could tell that she wished to say something.
“Water?”
She shook her head faintly. After a while she said in a small voice, “I had a dream.”
“What kind of dream?”
“About a snake.”
I was startled.
“I believe you’ll find a female snake with red stripes on the step in front of the porch. Please go and look.”
I stood up with a feeling of growing cold all over. I went to the porch and looked through the glass door. On the step a snake was stretched out full length in the autumn sun. I felt dizzy.
I know who you are. You are a little bigger and older than when I saw you last, but you are the snake whose eggs I burned. I have already felt your vengeance, so go away at once.
This prayer went through my head as I stood there, my eyes riveted on the snake, which gave no indication of stirring. For whatever reason, I didn’t want the snake to be seen by the nurse. I stamped my foot. “No,” I cried in a voice that was louder than necessary, “there’s no snake here, Mother. Your dream was not true.” I looked again at the step and saw that the snake had at last moved and was slowly gliding away.
There was no hope, none. Resignation first began to germinate in my heart after I saw the snake. I had heard that when my Father died there was a small black snake by his bed, and I myself had seen a snake twisted around every tree in the garden.
Mother seemed to have lost the strength to sit up in bed and remained in a perpetual doze. I put the nurse completely in charge of her. As for food, it now could barely pass Mother’s throat. After seeing the snake the tension in my heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony. My only thought now was to be with Mother as much as I could.
I spent the whole of the next day close to Mother’s bedside, knitting. I am much faster than most people at knitting or sewing, but not very proficient at it. Mother used always to point out place after place in my knitting that was poorly done. That day I did not feel particularly like knitting, but I took out my box of yarn and for appearance’s sake, so that Mother would not think it strange that I spent all my time glued to her bedside, began to knit with a determination that suggested I had no other thought in the world.
Mother stared at my hands. “You’re making socks for yourself, aren’t you? Don’t forget, unless you increase the length by eight they’ll be tight when you wear them.”
When I was a child I could never knit properly, no matter how much Mother helped me, and now I discovered myself just as upset as I used to get then, only to be swept by nostalgia at the thought that this was the last time that Mother would ever guide me. I could not see my knitting for the tears.
Mother did not appear in any pain as she lay there. She had not taken any food since morning, and all I had done was to moisten her lips occasionally with gauze soaked in tea. However, she was quite conscious and spoke to me from time to time in a composed tone. “I seem to recall having seen a picture of the Emperor in the newspaper. I’d like to look at it again.”
I held that section of the newspaper above Mother’s face.
“He’s grown old.”
“No, it’s a poor photograph. In the photographs they printed the other day he seemed really young and cheerful. He probably is happier these days than ever.”
“Why?”
“The Emperor has been liberated too.”
Mother smiled sadly and said, “Even when I want to cry, the tears
don’t come any more.”
I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once one has exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness—if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now.
A calm autumn morning. A sunlit, mellow autumn garden. I put down my knitting and looked off at the sea sparkling in the distance. “Mother,” I said, “I have been very ignorant of the world until now.” There was much more I wanted to say, but I was ashamed lest the nurse, who was making preparations in a corner of the room for a vein injection, should hear, and I stopped abruptly.
“You say until now.” Mother with a wan smile caught me up on my words. “You mean that now you understand the world?”
Inexplicably, my face crimsoned.