said he would be sent to the front within two or three days. It occurred to
me that if I hadn’t transformed myself into a woman the same would be
true for me. He lifted me onto his back again and we crossed the stream,
and—what do you suppose he gave me as a memento?”
“What did he give you?”
“Cyanide.”
“Cyanide?”
“Yes. His girlfriend had been conscripted to work in a factory, and she
had asked for cyanide—as preparation for the worst. Of course at the time
that sort of thing was quite popular among young women working in the
factories. Apparently she had given a portion of it to the soldier. As
preparation for the worst. . . . But he was going to die anyway—that was
definite—so he said he didn’t need any drugs.”
UT »»
I see.
“I remembered that student again when I went to visit the nidoaka, the
old man. As you see, I’ve gone back to being a man again. . . . When I went
to the separate house the door was only open partway, it was very dim. It
was May but the kotatsu was still there next to the futon. The younger old
man, who had led me to the room, chased a fly. The ninety-seven-year old
had pushed the quilt down to his stomach—his right hand lay outside of the
futon, and he was sound asleep. His white hair and his white beard had both
grown long—he would have looked like a mountain immortal or a
Buddhist saint if his color had shown a little more evidence of suffering, if
he had borne scars of spiritual troubles—but the old man was too natural,
he looked like a child, innocent. But after looking for a while at the fingers
of his right hand, I noticed that his fingernails had separated from the skin
already, that his fingers were entirely drained of strength. The younger old
man called out in a voice loud enough to wake the older—Father,
