Still Life and Other Stories. Junzo Shono. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Junzo Shono
Издательство: Ingram
Серия: Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature
Жанр произведения: Историческая литература
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780893469900
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asleep beside the child. This hadn’t prevented the husband from starting in on dinner, yet he didn’t feel like he should just leave her sleeping indefinitely, so he went upstairs to wake her. But what could be the matter? She would not wake up. Normally, no matter how tired she was when she dozed off, she’d spring right up as if hit by a jolt of electricity. He never had to call her more than two or three times.

      “Hey, wake up,” he said again, this time poking her on the shoulder. She went on sleeping. If he raised his voice, he might disturb the child, so he called the same way again but tried grabbing her shoulder and shaking it as well. Still no response. His irritation mounting, he got rougher. “Wake up I said! Hey!” he shouted, shaking her shoulder hard enough to make the flesh on her face jiggle limply. Her eyes remained closed.

      The thought that flashed through his mind at that moment made the blood drain from his face.

      “Hiroko!” he cried, his voice now at high pitch. He brought his face close to hers. She was breathing. He put his hand to her fore head. It felt normal. She had not changed out of the dress she’d

      worn that day. He leaned over her and shook her again.

      “Hey, Hiroko, what’s wrong?”

      Finally she stirred. She opened her eyes a crack and looked at him. Her lips moved as if she were trying to say something, but he couldn’t tell what.

      “What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”

      Twisting her head back and forth as though in pain, she groped for his hand. When she found it, she said, “I drank . . . some . . .”

      “Some what?” he demanded sharply, and this time his voice woke his daughter. Sitting up, she stared at her father for a few seconds before starting to crawl up onto her mother lying next to her.

      “Ohhh. I feel like I’m gonna die,” his wife groaned, writhing back and forth in pain and sending the child tumbling. The child wailed. That moment, for the first time, the husband noticed the smell of alcohol.

      “Was it whiskey?” he demanded.

      She nodded.

      “And nothing else but whiskey?”

      She nodded again. A surge of relief spread through his body. The child wailed louder and louder.

      He went to check the closet downstairs. The bottle of the cheapest whiskey was missing. He’d had doubts about that whiskey when he first bought it and tasted it, so he’d always been careful to drink only small amounts at a time. Even then, it gave him headaches, and his worried wife had finally gone to buy him a better brand. The last third of the cheap brand had remained untouched since he’d gotten the second bottle.

      When he found the bottle in the kitchen, completely empty, it sent a shudder through his body. Is she out of her mind? he thought. Even I played it safe and never drank more than three shots at a time. I don’t suppose it’ll kill her, but it sure wouldn’t be funny if it did. What could she have been thinking?

      When she first failed to respond, he’d turned blue in the face with the thought that she might have taken a massive dose of sleeping pills. Back in college the wife of a friend in his apartment house had tried to kill herself with Calmotin, and the things his friend had told him then had suddenly flashed through his mind. It hit him at once that his own wife was acting just like his friend’s wife had acted. His friend’s wife had finally come back to life after being in a coma for two full days and nights. The dose had been barely short of fatal.

      No! he’d screamed inwardly as the worst fear burst upon his mind. Not suicide!

      Panic ripped through his body like the lash of a savage whip. A moment later, when he discovered it was not suicide at all, his alarm and dismay quickly changed to indignation.

      “Mrs. So-and-so, age twenty-something, died at approximately such-and-such o’clock on such-and-such a day, of methyl alcohol poisoning from the whiskey she drank while waiting for her husband to return home from work. She and her husband were the parents of a three-year-old daughter. Their home had always been a peaceful one, with nothing to suggest a possible suicide.”

      Some such article would appear off in the corner of the newspaper, drawing the final curtain. The headline: “Methyl Alcohol Kills Housewife.” Could anything be more absurd than this? His neighbors and colleagues at work would see him and not know what to say. Some would express their sympathies; others would stare at him suspiciously, as if wanting to know what he had to hide.

      He would learn to endure such stares from the world at large, no doubt, but he couldn’t bear to think what a blow his wife’s death would be to his girlfriend. It would instantly and cruelly shatter all the sweet memories he and the girl shared, and then the wounded girl, irreparably scarred, would leave him. Deprived of both wife and girlfriend in a single stroke, he’d find himself standing alone, in an utter daze, with a child in arms. How was he to build a life for himself after that? The rest of his life would proceed under a curse. A brand would be burnt upon his forehead, and all he could do would be to contritely endure his punishment. But what about the child? Why should she have to suffer?

      Such were the husband’s visions of the unhappiness that would follow his wife’s suicide. They were quite predictable, for the most part, but they lacked one crucial element: reverence for the individual human life. And in place of this reverence stood nothing but a fearsome personal egotism. The husband was oblivious to this truth.

      In a fit of temper, the husband took the more expensive bottle of whiskey from the closet, knocked back ten shots one after the other, wildly shoveled down the rest of his dinner, and went to bed.

      The wife woke up in the middle of the night and pulled herself precariously to her feet, propping herself against the wall. She almost fell several times on her way down the stairs, but made it safely to the kitchen, where she gulped down a glass of water. When she started to fill her glass a second time, she suddenly felt sick, and she barely managed to stagger into the bathroom before vomiting. A dark, tea-colored liquid came up, over and over and over, and her nausea did not subside even after there was nothing more left to come.

      When she raised her head, a face as ashen as a corpse stared back at her from the mirror. With her head spinning, she stumbled back into the kitchen, where she fell to her knees, then collapsed full length onto the floor. Was she going to die? she wondered, as she felt her consciousness slipping away. She did not awaken again until morning.

      When she could no longer suppress her desire to paint, the wife would leave the child with the lady next door and set out with her box of watercolors and drawing board.

      Attending art exhibits had always been her greatest pleasure, and even after the birth of her child she had done her best to make time for them. Though she had no favorite artist, she usually found one painting she really liked at every exhibit she visited. Finding that single painting always brought her an indescribable joy. When she was especially fond of the painting, she would go back for another look. The second time, she would go straight to that painting, and then go straight home again without looking at any others.

      Of all the paintings she had admired, a seascape by Dufy remained most vividly imprinted on her memory: sky and water, the same deep blue; smoke rising from the stacks of a steamship in the distance; sailboats like white butterflies; red-parasoled figures standing on the beach and gazing out to sea; a large starfish on the sand. No doubt the actual picture was somewhat different, but these were the images that came back to her. Two or three people were looking at the sea, she thought.

      She had been strangely moved by that painting, and the emotional currents it had stirred within her still flowed. What had moved her so? she wondered. Was it perhaps a recognition of human loneliness?

      People who stand looking at the sea are people deep in thought.

      They gaze as though without concern, and before them stretches the vast expanse of deep, blue water. The wife liked the idea of standing on the beach and gazing at the sea with no thought for anything else. She could feel the loneliness of the sea. Or should