Could it be possible that she suspected he was planning to kill himself this coming Friday, he wondered a trifle uneasily as he sipped his cold miso soup. The taste of the soup was just as it used to be. He could guarantee that it was made by his mother. Only his mother would be capable of making a soup like this. So it stood to reason it could only be his mother sitting in front of him now, he thought.
His mother seemed to be harbouring some doubts about whether this man was her son or not, as well. There’d been no particular strangeness there when he’d called in four months ago. Of course, there’d never been any hint of a need to reconfirm that they were indeed and undoubtedly mother and son. They just were, without saying so.
No, maybe what was disturbing her so much now was the kind of sharp intuition that came precisely from her being his mother. Did he really look so suspicious?
Whatever, he couldn’t stay long. His plan had been to just drop in, have a meal, and leave again. But his mother seemed to find something dubious in the way he was behaving. She drew a deep breath, and finally decided to speak.
“You’re very quiet. What are you hiding? You’ve been acting strange ever since you got here.”
Rather than go over the same conversation again, Kita said, “Do I look to you as though I want to die?”
There was no way to guess what his mother was thinking, but she looked like she’d seen through him somehow. Kita pulled a funny face, in an attempt to cover up his thoughts. But his mother barely glanced at him. Eyes down, she murmured, “No, I was just thinking how quickly people age. You must be tired, surely? You seem to have aged six years in three months. Is anything worrying you?”
“I feel like I look about normal for my age really. Surely you haven’t forgotten how old I am?”
His mother looked puzzled, and said nothing. She picked up the thermos and topped up the teapot with hot water in an apparent attempt to fill the silence. Then she turned over the two cups that were sitting face down on the tray and, pouring tea by turns into each, she murmured, “I thought you were your father when you first arrived.”
“Just walking in out of the next world to say, ‘Here I am,’ huh? I had a look in the cupboard in there just now and found that collection of our old clothes, Dad’s and mine. I even came across those old reference books you bought me when I was a kid.”
“Well I can’t get things organised properly. There’s mountains of stuff I’d like to throw away, but if I just did it without asking, you and Daddy would complain.”
“Dad couldn’t complain if he wanted to. OK, if you want to keep things Mum, go right ahead. This house is too big for you on your own, after all. Having some junk around won’t bother you, I imagine.”
“What are you saying!” exclaimed his mother, astonished. “Your father’s due back at any moment.”
“You’re living with a ghost, I see. Good thing ghosts don’t take up any room.”
His mother made no attempt to smile at the joke. She simply looked as if she couldn’t follow his thread. She didn’t even seem to recognize that it was a joke. Could it be that she wasn’t putting it on, that she really was going senile?
“Dad died four years ago, right?” The only thing for it at this stage, if she really did have the illusion that he was still alive, was to come straight out with it.
“Yes, I guess he did, didn’t he? Four years ago already?” His mother turned her empty gaze to left and right, like a puzzled child groping for the answer to a math problem.
“Hey come on, pull yourself together.”
“But it’s very strange. He came home as usual last night. And when he went out this morning he said he’d be able to come home by three today.”
“Where did he go?”
“He said he had something to do in Shibuya.”
Shibuya was precisely where Kita was headed next himself. Did she dream it? Or was she still playing out the dream now in her sitting room? Or had the clock inside her head broken, so that the past tense had changed into the present continuous? No wonder she couldn’t figure out what was going on, if her son of around twenty suddenly turns up looking thirty-five.
Had living alone done this to her? Was she watching television? Was she communicating with the neighbours? He’d telephoned from time to time, but their only conversation had been of the “How are you?” “Same as usual, thanks” variety. And now this “same as usual” life had somehow become one in which the son had come to announce his self-appointed execution, while the mother had grown senile.
“You haven’t been in hospital with some problem like a stroke or a brain tumour or something, have you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I forget.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You can’t live on your own if you go senile, you know.”
“If I go senile, you and Daddy will come back and look after me. We’ll be able to live here all together just like the old days, won’t we?”
“Why are you like this? Go and get some treatment, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got to get a grip on reality again. Dad’s dead, OK? And I can’t come back home. So I’m begging you… please.”
“Please what?”
“Please don’t go senile, I’m saying.”
Here he was begging his senile mother not to go senile, he thought. He felt like going down on his knees and praying, although he knew prayer wouldn’t get his mother’s brain back to the active brain it had been fifteen years ago.
“Is it wrong to go senile?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I just stay here in the house, you know, I don’t bother anyone. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s because you stay in the house all the time that you’re going senile.”
“I go out shopping. If you’re worried about me, come back and live here. There you are just messing about, not getting married. I’ll bet you don’t think about anything much.”
“I’ll look after you in your old age, Mum.”
“I don’t need you to. I’ll freeze being looked after by such a cold fish of a son. No, I’m the one who’ll look after you. You can’t do anything on your own, Yoshio. Just when I think you’re improving yourself with some zazen, you go and give it up—”
“Stop talking about stuff that happened twenty years ago. The problem is how you’re going to cope with the present.” A fine thing for an intended suicide to say, he heard a little voice saying inside him. Still, he went on berating her.
“When you get up in the morning, check your face in the mirror. Put on a bit of make-up. And go out for walks. Take a good look at the world getting on with things all around. Talk to children whenever you get the chance. Children grow up fast, you know. And keep a constant check on where you are right now and what you’re doing. You can do that, can’t you?”
Tears began to flow from his mother’s misty eyes. She didn’t attempt to wipe them away. She sighed, with an expressionless face that registered no particular sadness or pleasure. Maybe her tear ducts just leaked a bit these days.
“What can it be, I wonder? My face looks weird when I look in the mirror, and this area’s all changed too – there are all sorts of faces around that I don’t know. It’s like I’m left behind all alone somehow. Though there’s nowhere else to go, mind you.”
If his Dad was still alive they could go off on a trip together, have a few quarrels, make up again, drink sake, make love. Maybe while they were in Atami someplace eating dried fish or noodles his father would suddenly declare, “It’s splendid weather, darling. Why don’t we commit suicide?” If his Dad showed up right now and made such a suggestion, his Mum would probably go off with him with pleasure.