was awake I couldn’t say, but he spent the entire day in bed. He lives in a
separate building apart from the old main house—he’s been living there for
fifteen years. After the war the landlord’s farmland was taken away, so that
now the landlord has to work even harder than his old tenants just to make
ends meet, and though there’s a woman who looks after the old man, she’s
so busy with her work that he doesn’t get much attention. I was told that
she sometimes forgets to open the storm doors at the second house. At best
she opens two or three of them about half way, just enough to let the light
in. But on really bad days she just leaves them closed. It may be warmer if
the doors are left closed on snowy winter days, I don’t know. The point is
that the old man seems to have no idea whether she’s opened them or not.
He doesn’t even seem to notice when she leaves them shut, even when she
leaves him in the dark at noon. I think that might be taken as evidence that
the old man isn’t looking at anything.” “How strange. And it isn’t that he
can’t see?”
“I don’t know. There are no signs that he has cataracts, his pupils are
dark and clear—it seems most likely that he can see. I suspect that his mind
has just stopped looking, though his eyes can see,” said Uryu. His own eyes
seemed to be seeing a vision of the ninety-seven-year-old man.
“Clear eyes would seem to be in your blood. ’ “The old man’s eyes are
so clear I sometimes think there must be Ainu blood in him. He’s always
been pale, but since he hasn’t been out in the sun for years his white skin
has turned even more bluish and transparent. The way his skin looked I
almost thought it would feel cold if I touched it, and when I looked at his
arms it seemed that the color of the blood flowing in them must be thin,
almost clear.
His hair and beard were white, glittering with silver. The seventy-plus
son still had some black hairs mixed in with the white, but the old man
didn’t— there wasn’t a single black or even slightly brown hair left on his
head. And in the midst of all that bluish-white skin and silver-white
