“Is that so?”
It was the first time I had heard this.
“I really wonder why my father wrote a novel like that. The book scares
me now—now that he’s like this. My father isn’t mad, and I can’t be like
that mother and read him a novel that hasn’t been written down—but I do
wonder if he isn’t writing a novel in his head even now.”
It struck me that Tomiko was a peculiar person— able to say things like
this even though old Akifusa probably heard every word. I didn’t know
how to respond.
“But your father has already written numerous outstanding works—he
and that literary-minded boy are entirely different.”
“Do you think so? I think that my father still wants to write.”
“Of course, not everyone would agree.”
Personally I thought he had written quite enough already, but if I were in
old Akifusa’s condition, I had no idea what I’d think.
“It’s just that I can’t write for my father. It would be nice if I could write
^What a Daughter Can Read, but I can’t. . . .”
Her voice sounded to me like the voice of a young woman in hell. The
fact that Tomiko had turned into the sort of woman who said such things—
could it mean that by being in constant attendance on her father, who was a
sort of living ghost, she had been possessed by something in him? It
occurred to me that she might write a book of horrifying memories when
Akifusa died. I began to feel a powerful hatred.
“What if you were to try writing about your father. ... “
I refrained from adding—while he’s still alive. Suddenly I remembered
some words of Marcel Proust’s. A certain nobleman has abused lots of
people in his memoirs, which are at long last about to be published, so he
