I knew other authors who had died suddenly of cerebral hemorrhages or
heart failures, of coronary strictures—but I had never heard of anyone
being saved but paralyzed, as old Akifusa had been. If one views death as
the greatest misfortune of all, one would have to say that Akifusa was
extremely fortunate to go on living, even though he lived as a patient with
no hope of recovery—as a disabled man. But that sense of good fortune
was rather difficult for most of us to feel. It was also difficult for us to tell
whether Akifusa himself felt that he had been fortunate.
Only eight months had passed since Akifusa suffered his stroke, but from
what I’d heard the number of people visiting him had already become quite
small. It can be difficult to deal with an old deaf man, but it’s no less
difficult to deal with a man who is able to hear but can’t speak. He
understands what you say to him, though you don’t understand what he
wants to say to you—it’s even stranger than talking to a deaf person.
Akifusa’s wife had died early on, but his daughter, Tomiko, had
remained with him. There were two daughters, but the younger one had
married and moved out—Tomiko, the older daughter, had ended up staying
to take care of her father. There was no real necessity for Akifusa to
remarry, since Tomiko took care of all the household chores—indeed, he
had relished the freedoms of single life—and one might say for this reason
that Tomiko had been obliged to make certain sacrifices for her father. The
fact that Akifusa remained single, despite having had numerous affairs,
suggests too that the power of his will was such that it overcame his
emotions—or perhaps something else was going on.
The younger daughter was tall and had exceptionally fine features—she
resembled her father somewhat more than her sister did—but this wasn’t to
say that Tomiko was the kind of young woman one would expect to remain
unwed. Of course she was no longer a young woman—she was
approaching forty, so she wore almost no makeup at all—but one sensed a
purity in her. She seemed always to have been a quiet sort of person, but
