While I was upstairs Daio had apparently been looking at a monochromatic woodblock print on the wall next to the sofa in the great room, which was the only decoration.
“What’s the story behind this piece of art?” he asked. “This dog looks really ferocious, as if with the proper training it could be taught to kill people.”
“Ah, you’re wondering about the print?” I said. “Well, I originally brought it down on my previous trip with the intention of hanging it in the space where I thought I would be working on a novel about my father, before and after his death. (That project is now defunct, as you may have heard.) When I went back to Tokyo I simply forgot to take it with me.”
“Maybe leaving it behind was just another symbol of your decision to give up on your drowning novel,” Daio said. “Asa was saying that it almost seemed as if the project was doomed from the start.”
Unaiko had returned from escorting Akari to the downstairs restroom and now she, too, was gazing at the woodblock print on the wall. “Maybe I’m being obtuse,” she said, “but I don’t see any great significance in your having forgotten to take this picture back to Tokyo. On the other hand, it’s certainly true that you did make a special point of grabbing this one particular work of art and lugging it all the way down here.”
I responded with an account of the print’s provenance. “I really don’t think this dog has the sort of evil mojo Daio seems to be ascribing to it,” I said. “On the other hand, I won’t pretend it’s a tranquil and pastoral image, either. As you can see, the date is written in pencil under the author’s signature. This piece was created in 1945, the year my father died, by a printmaker in Mexico, but I didn’t acquire it until the seventies. It’s actually a rather interesting story. At the time, just after the war, the government was oppressing some newspaper companies in Mexico City, and the reporters for those papers staged a major strike. They solicited support from every sphere of culture and the arts, and the printmakers helped raise money by selling work from their private collections. From what I heard, this print was one of them. I bought it at a gallery several decades later, when I was teaching in Mexico City.
“For those reporters, having their freedom of expression thwarted was exactly the same as if their newspapers had been physically trampled into the ground, and this print could be interpreted as a symbolic depiction of the dilemma they faced. In the foreground, the angrylooking dog that’s facing in our direction, just beginning to bark, is shown in extreme close-up. But is the dog meant to symbolize the newspaper reporters who were resisting the government’s interference, or does it represent the oppressive wielders of authority? I talked about this with some of the cultural movers and shakers who took me to the exhibition where I bought this print, and their opinions were divided between those two interpretations. But the truth is, I just bought this piece, in all innocence, because I liked it. At the end of my term at El Colegio de México (the national graduate school), I received a half year’s pay as a single lump-sum payment, and I used it to buy the print. It’s signed by the artist: Siqueiros.”
“Oh, you mean the Siqueiros?” Unaiko asked. She looked genuinely surprised and impressed. “I had no idea. I’ve seen photos of his big public murals in art books. The funny thing is, I’ve been thinking all along that whoever created this little print must be quite an exceptional artist. Asa was even saying the other day that we should try to make some stuffed dogs with this same kind of visual impact!”
“That reminds me, when you were in tech for your dog-tossing play at the theater in the round, Asa mentioned something about wanting to hang this in the auditorium lobby,” I said.
“Yes, she was saying that the only complaint she had about the production was that there were some people in the audience who thought the stuffed dogs were cute,” Unaiko said, wrinkling her nose. “She wanted to hang this fierce picture in the lobby to dispel that impression. Next time we do a show, would you please let us borrow it? And, if you didn’t mind, it would be great if we could photograph this print and put the image on T-shirts for our entire crew to wear, like a uniform.”
“Please put me on the list for one of those shirts, too!” Daio said brightly. I had noticed earlier that he was rather stylishly dressed (especially for someone his age) in a beige corduroy jacket worn over a shirt of heavy brown cotton, and it occurred to me that his fashion sense appeared to have evolved considerably during the years since I’d seen him last.
We all trooped into the dining room, where Unaiko had laid out a meal of eggs, toast, and coffee. Daio had eaten breakfast before he came, so he only wanted coffee. Holding his cup, he stood behind Akari’s chair. “Akari, your back’s hurting, isn’t it?” he asked. “Especially here at the very base, on this side?”
“Yes, it hurts a lot,” Akari replied in a voice unusually full of emotion. “It’s been hurting all the time, for a while now.”
“Please just go on eating,” Daio said. “I’m going to try touching your back in a few places but it won’t hurt, I promise.”
As he spoke those reassuring words Daio knelt next to Akari’s chair and began to apply light pressure in the vicinity of Akari’s lower back, using his right hand. (Since he didn’t have a left arm, Daio had to lean his upper body against the back of the chair for leverage.)
“How about here, Akari? It probably felt sore when you were lying in bed, am I right?”
“Yes, very sore,” Akari said.
“I’m not actually going to touch this spot, but I want to ask you about the bottom of your spine — your backbone,” Daio said. “Did you by any chance fall and land on your backside?”
“Once when I was having a seizure I fell down in the entryway at home,” Akari replied. “It started feeling bad after that.”
“Akari, I know your back hurts, so I haven’t been touching the area around that bone. But now Uncle Daio is going to touch the sore place, just for a second. All right?” As Daio continued poking around, Akari’s torso, which was rigid with tension, gave an involuntary start.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Daio said. “You’re a very stoic person, aren’t you, Akari? I mean, you’re very patient and brave. You have had some discomfort when you were in bed at night, but you never mentioned it to anyone?”
“No, I didn’t tell anybody,” Akari replied, looking up at Daio.
Daio turned to me. “Kogito, after my training camp closed, one of my former disciples got some medical training and then came back and opened an osteopathy office in Honmachi. Some years later, the man’s son-in-law went to a university med school, and when he returned after graduation he converted the osteopathy offices into a regular medical clinic. We ought to take Akari there and get some X-rays, for starters. I think we’ll find that one side of the lowest thoracic vertebra in his spinal column has somehow gotten crushed. I have to say it again: Akari is being exceptionally patient and brave about this.”
Akari had gone back to staring down at his plate, but it was apparent that he had already come to trust the much older man (slightly built but with perfectly erect, military-style posture) who was kneeling beside his chair. Daio appeared extremely flushed: his entire face was suffused with blood, from his shriveled, walnut-colored cheeks all the way to the base of his neck, evidently from pride about his amateur diagnosis.
Perhaps because I didn’t immediately concur with Daio’s suggestion, Unaiko shot me a critical look, then said, “The X-rays should probably be done as soon as possible. Ricchan is using our car this morning, so could you please take Akari to the clinic you mentioned in your car, Daio? I’ll ride along, if that’s okay.”