The Setting Sun

“I don’t understand the world.” Mother turned her face away. She spoke in a low voice, almost to herself.

“I don’t either. I wonder if anyone does. We all remain children, no matter how much time goes by. We don’t understand anything.”

I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can’t go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling with no one, neither hating nor betraying anyone. In the world to come there will be no room for such people. The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive—those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood. I curled myself on the floor and tried to twist my body into the posture, as I remembered it, of a pregnant snake digging a hole. But there was something to which I could not resign myself. Call it low-minded of me, if you will, I must survive and struggle with the world in order to accomplish my desires. Now that it was clear that Mother would soon die, my romanticism and sentimentality were gradually vanishing, and I felt as though I were turning into a calculating, unprincipled creature.

Shortly after noon, while I sat next to Mother, moistening her lips, an automobile stopped in front of our gate. My uncle Wada and my aunt had arrived from Tokyo. My uncle at once went into the sickroom and sat himself without a word by Mother’s bedside. Mother hid the lower part of her face with a handkerchief and, not taking her eyes from my uncle’s face, began to weep. But there were no tears. She made me think of a doll.

“Where’s Naoji?” Mother asked after a while, looking at me.

I went up to the second floor. Naoji was sprawled on a sofa reading a magazine. “Mother is calling for you,” I said.

“What—another tragic scene? O ye of strong nerves and shallow feelings, have patience and do your duty! We who truly suffer—though indeed the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak—we by no means have the energy to sit with Mama.” He flung on his jacket and went downstairs with me.

When we had seated ourselves side by side near Mother’s pillow, she suddenly thrust her hand out from under the covers and silently pointed first at Naoji and then at me. Turning next to my uncle, she joined her hands together in supplication.

My uncle nodded expansively. “Yes. I understand, I understand.”

Mother shut her eyes lightly, as if his words had relieved her. She slipped her hands back under the covers.

I was weeping, and Naoji, his eyes down, sobbed.

Dr. Miyake arrived at this moment and at once administered another injection. Now that Mother had been able to see my uncle, she must have felt that nothing remained for her to live for. She said, “Doctor, please put an end to my suffering soon.”

The doctor and my uncle exchanged glances. They did not speak, but tears shone in their eyes.

I went to the dining-room where I prepared some lunch. I took the four plates—for my uncle, the doctor, Naoji, and my aunt—to the Chinese room. I showed Mother the sandwiches my uncle had brought us as a souvenir of Tokyo and put them next to her pillow.

“You are kept so busy,” Mother murmured.

We chatted for a while in the Chinese room. My uncle and aunt apparently had business that night in Tokyo which necessitated their return. My uncle handed me an envelope containing some money. He decided that they would return together with Dr. Miyake, who left parting orders with the nurse about the treatment to be followed. It was assumed that Mother would last for another four or five days with the help of the injections. She was still perfectly conscious, and her heart was not too seriously affected.

After I had shown everyone to the gate I went back to Mother’s room. She smiled in the particularly intimate way she has always reserved for me. “It must have been a terrible rush for you,” she said in a little voice scarcely more than a whisper. Her face was so full of animation, that it seemed almost to shine. She must have been happy to see Uncle, I thought.

Those were the last words that Mother spoke.

About three hours later she passed away … in the still autumn twilight, as her pulse was being taken by the nurse, watched over by Naoji and myself, her two children, my beautiful mother, who was the last lady in Japan.

Her face in death was almost unaltered. When my father died his expression had suddenly changed, but Mother’s was exactly the same as in life. Only her breathing had stopped. And even that had happened so quietly that we did not know exactly when she had ceased to breathe. The swelling in her face had gone down the previous day, and her cheeks were now smooth as wax. Her pale lips were faintly curved, as though she were smiling. Mother seemed more captivating even than she was in life. The thought that she looked like Mary in a Pietà flickered across my mind.

CHAPTER SIX

OUTBREAK OF HOSTILITIES

Outbreak of hostilities.

I could not remain forever immersed in my grief. There is something for which I absolutely have to fight. A new ethics. No, even to use the word is hypocrisy. Love. That and nothing else. Just as Rosa Luxemburg had to depend on her new economics for her survival, I cannot go on living unless now I cling with all my force to love. The words of teaching spoken by Jesus to his twelve disciples, when he was about to send them forth to expose the hypocrisies of the scribes and Pharisees and the men of authority of this world and to proclaim to all men without the least hesitation the true love of God, are not entirely inappropriate in my case as well.

Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses,

Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves:

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.