A Stately White Barge
I wonder if that really was death. I don't feel the slightest fear. I don't feel the slightest anxiety. I don't even remember resigning myself.
I heard a rumour that my father found out that I had died and he suddenly died himself. I think of how my father had been in bed for four years with the same illness and had not died. Then he died from shock because I died from a sudden illness. Two weekly magazines came out with my father's biography right away. Then it seemed that my wasted shank and father's sickly shank stood side by side like two pestles and without thinking I wept. Lying in bed with my left hand under my head, I resembled too closely that attitude of my father lying in bed with his left hand under his head and I wept again.
I easily confuse my grandmother and my mother. I think it is because my mother's age now is close to my grandmother's when she died forty years ago. Anyway, I think it is my mother because it is a living person.
My youngest daughter had been married in Kagoshima and I was often asked later if I knew that she had been up. It was a way of suggesting that perhaps I didn't know. But I did know about it. I did not know that she couldn't get through by phone or that she missed her plane and arrived late. I didn't know either that going home she took a first class train. But it seemed that she was gone in two or three days. One of those days I think she went to visit at a friend's house. She wore a two-piece dress but it looked like a soiled, ordinary one she wore at home.
My daughter's family had a fairly prosperous bakery, but I had it in my head that they were fishing folk who moved about everywhere following the fishing seasons and that they had moved out of Kagoshima and were now in the country. For that reason it did not seem to be an awfully attractive existence. I would see Satsuma port opening up in the distance and a very poor house with a stone mortar tipped over in front. Or I would catch sight of my daughter going to a border town in Kagoshima Prefecture and buying various goods in a way she wasn't accustomed to. She appeared moody and not very cheerful. I felt that way about my daughter, but the real daughter was different. l wept when I found out later that I received a part of the expenses for my recovery and a set of bedding from her. A grandchild was born two or three months later but I didn't even know that she was pregnant then. My oldest daughter was pregnant too and gave birth at New Years but I still haven't seen the grandchild. Two grandchildren were born and both of them were girls. I shall be able to see my grandchildren by the grace of having escaped death. If I had died I could not have seen them.
I hear that in the beginning my immediate family, that is my son and his wife, my younger sister and my oldest daughter and her husband did everything for me, but I don't remember at all. It seems that they took turns doing everything. After two or three days a tall nurse was brought in and it seems that she overlooked my uncontrolled urinating, but she was physically weak and so in two or three days she was exchanged for a different nurse.
I was en route home eastward from Kyushu following night and day the small ship lanes of the Inland Sea and then following a river in the care of Mrs. Ishitani. The nurse's boat was a stately white barge.
I couldn't sleep at night and so I was given a sedative. Still, I woke up early in the morning while it was dark. Then the furnishings in the room appeared jet black as though they were burned. My bedclothes looked like a floating island in the middle of everything.
One night I read a well-known Christian sermon in the supplement of a large newspaper. It was all a dream and I don't remember anything about it, but it was carried in the original text. I have forgotten what the content was, but since the newspaper was a large, representative Christian or Catholic one, it would also carry the original text. A party of Christians in Japan endured cruel persecutions and so they wrote about them like an adventure story. Some of the Christians wrote pilgrims' diaries full of all kinds of troubles. These were all written in the original language. I read each of the original English texts. When I read them in the original they were really short and I finished them right away. I was having difficulty getting to sleep and when I would finish reading one I would wake up. It seemed just as if they had carried the short original texts in order to make my sleep shorter. An exotic Christian incense overflowed the short texts.
When I got well the nurse put a cushion in the sun and leisurely read weekly magazines. She read books just the way a silkworm gobbles up mulberry leaves and so she might have devoured those smelly works like that.
Once the nurse asked me "Did you know that one night I slept holding you?"
My room was all painted with white enamel and only one electric cord came into the room. I took a walk around the town two or three times a day and was surprised that this town was made of things like very beautiful shells. It would go up like the rising of electric wires or again, become like wires swallowed up by snow. When I went walking in the town it made me wide awake.
The thirtieth day of this year, the ninetieth day since I entered the hospital, we decided to discharge the nurse. The young folks hated her meddling in our private affairs and I agreed because I was annoyed by her superior attitude. For instance, I would wake up early in the morning and want to turn on the light, but she wouldn't allow it. So at about ten o'clock the nurse hurried and got ready and went away.
I wanted to leave the hospital right after that. The weather was just beginning to get warmer day by day. But the doctor in charge said that it still wasn't warm enough and that they wouldn't be well enough prepared at home to take me in, and so I should put off leaving the hospital. However, the doctors who had been there longer, like the assistant director of the hospital, said frankly that the weather was just right and that it would probably be good for me to leave the hospital.
Soon the day came to leave the hospital. Early that afternoon my son and the ambulance driver came and put me on a stretcher. I didn't see a single nurse in the corridors. I looked for the nurses I knew, but I didn't see them. As we went down each flight of the winding stairway, I began to smell human beings. My eyes were drawn to the pictures and medical advice that are always on the walls in any hospital. I felt that I had returned to the human world. All kinds of footgear were left scattered about.
Although I say that I left the hospital, my right arm and leg and my speech are impaired. Translated by Warren Carisle.
A Stately White Barge(Shiroi Yakatabune)
The author who wrote acknowledged works of “ill wife series” depicting companionship with ill wives, after losing his wife, was stricken with cerebral apoplexy with partial paralysis and speech impediment. Through the course of overcoming this mishap he came up with another line of works, “disability series” so to speak. A Stately White Barge (Shiroi Yakatabune) appearing herein was first published in the August 1965 issue of Shincho Magazine and was later included in the author’s anthology “A Stately White Barge.”
――――――――――
The work appearing herein was completed by the diligent care and dictation support on the part of his younger sister. The story covers the 90 or so days span of his hospitalization due to cerebral apoplexy. Based on the true exchange with relatives and friends depicting a companionship with both living and dead related to the protagonist, the author sublimed to a short story the whole monotone world without colors symbolized by the stately white barge that is said to come to the death bed, and the visionary mixed image of reality and illusion while drifting between life and death, all drawn from the author’s own experience. This work shows the author’s maturity as personal experience writer who always tried to find truth in reality. This anthology received the 16th Yomiuri Prize. A Stately White Barge (Shiroi Yakatabune)was translated by Japan P.E.N. Club in February, 1966.(From The Japan P.E.N. News No.17)
I heard a rumour that my father found out that I had died and he suddenly died himself. I think of how my father had been in bed for four years with the same illness and had not died. Then he died from shock because I died from a sudden illness. Two weekly magazines came out with my father's biography right away. Then it seemed that my wasted shank and father's sickly shank stood side by side like two pestles and without thinking I wept. Lying in bed with my left hand under my head, I resembled too closely that attitude of my father lying in bed with his left hand under his head and I wept again.
I easily confuse my grandmother and my mother. I think it is because my mother's age now is close to my grandmother's when she died forty years ago. Anyway, I think it is my mother because it is a living person.
My youngest daughter had been married in Kagoshima and I was often asked later if I knew that she had been up. It was a way of suggesting that perhaps I didn't know. But I did know about it. I did not know that she couldn't get through by phone or that she missed her plane and arrived late. I didn't know either that going home she took a first class train. But it seemed that she was gone in two or three days. One of those days I think she went to visit at a friend's house. She wore a two-piece dress but it looked like a soiled, ordinary one she wore at home.
My daughter's family had a fairly prosperous bakery, but I had it in my head that they were fishing folk who moved about everywhere following the fishing seasons and that they had moved out of Kagoshima and were now in the country. For that reason it did not seem to be an awfully attractive existence. I would see Satsuma port opening up in the distance and a very poor house with a stone mortar tipped over in front. Or I would catch sight of my daughter going to a border town in Kagoshima Prefecture and buying various goods in a way she wasn't accustomed to. She appeared moody and not very cheerful. I felt that way about my daughter, but the real daughter was different. l wept when I found out later that I received a part of the expenses for my recovery and a set of bedding from her. A grandchild was born two or three months later but I didn't even know that she was pregnant then. My oldest daughter was pregnant too and gave birth at New Years but I still haven't seen the grandchild. Two grandchildren were born and both of them were girls. I shall be able to see my grandchildren by the grace of having escaped death. If I had died I could not have seen them.
I hear that in the beginning my immediate family, that is my son and his wife, my younger sister and my oldest daughter and her husband did everything for me, but I don't remember at all. It seems that they took turns doing everything. After two or three days a tall nurse was brought in and it seems that she overlooked my uncontrolled urinating, but she was physically weak and so in two or three days she was exchanged for a different nurse.
I was en route home eastward from Kyushu following night and day the small ship lanes of the Inland Sea and then following a river in the care of Mrs. Ishitani. The nurse's boat was a stately white barge.
I couldn't sleep at night and so I was given a sedative. Still, I woke up early in the morning while it was dark. Then the furnishings in the room appeared jet black as though they were burned. My bedclothes looked like a floating island in the middle of everything.
One night I read a well-known Christian sermon in the supplement of a large newspaper. It was all a dream and I don't remember anything about it, but it was carried in the original text. I have forgotten what the content was, but since the newspaper was a large, representative Christian or Catholic one, it would also carry the original text. A party of Christians in Japan endured cruel persecutions and so they wrote about them like an adventure story. Some of the Christians wrote pilgrims' diaries full of all kinds of troubles. These were all written in the original language. I read each of the original English texts. When I read them in the original they were really short and I finished them right away. I was having difficulty getting to sleep and when I would finish reading one I would wake up. It seemed just as if they had carried the short original texts in order to make my sleep shorter. An exotic Christian incense overflowed the short texts.
When I got well the nurse put a cushion in the sun and leisurely read weekly magazines. She read books just the way a silkworm gobbles up mulberry leaves and so she might have devoured those smelly works like that.
Once the nurse asked me "Did you know that one night I slept holding you?"
My room was all painted with white enamel and only one electric cord came into the room. I took a walk around the town two or three times a day and was surprised that this town was made of things like very beautiful shells. It would go up like the rising of electric wires or again, become like wires swallowed up by snow. When I went walking in the town it made me wide awake.
The thirtieth day of this year, the ninetieth day since I entered the hospital, we decided to discharge the nurse. The young folks hated her meddling in our private affairs and I agreed because I was annoyed by her superior attitude. For instance, I would wake up early in the morning and want to turn on the light, but she wouldn't allow it. So at about ten o'clock the nurse hurried and got ready and went away.
I wanted to leave the hospital right after that. The weather was just beginning to get warmer day by day. But the doctor in charge said that it still wasn't warm enough and that they wouldn't be well enough prepared at home to take me in, and so I should put off leaving the hospital. However, the doctors who had been there longer, like the assistant director of the hospital, said frankly that the weather was just right and that it would probably be good for me to leave the hospital.
Soon the day came to leave the hospital. Early that afternoon my son and the ambulance driver came and put me on a stretcher. I didn't see a single nurse in the corridors. I looked for the nurses I knew, but I didn't see them. As we went down each flight of the winding stairway, I began to smell human beings. My eyes were drawn to the pictures and medical advice that are always on the walls in any hospital. I felt that I had returned to the human world. All kinds of footgear were left scattered about.
Although I say that I left the hospital, my right arm and leg and my speech are impaired. Translated by Warren Carisle.
A Stately White Barge(Shiroi Yakatabune)
The author who wrote acknowledged works of “ill wife series” depicting companionship with ill wives, after losing his wife, was stricken with cerebral apoplexy with partial paralysis and speech impediment. Through the course of overcoming this mishap he came up with another line of works, “disability series” so to speak. A Stately White Barge (Shiroi Yakatabune) appearing herein was first published in the August 1965 issue of Shincho Magazine and was later included in the author’s anthology “A Stately White Barge.”
――――――――――
The work appearing herein was completed by the diligent care and dictation support on the part of his younger sister. The story covers the 90 or so days span of his hospitalization due to cerebral apoplexy. Based on the true exchange with relatives and friends depicting a companionship with both living and dead related to the protagonist, the author sublimed to a short story the whole monotone world without colors symbolized by the stately white barge that is said to come to the death bed, and the visionary mixed image of reality and illusion while drifting between life and death, all drawn from the author’s own experience. This work shows the author’s maturity as personal experience writer who always tried to find truth in reality. This anthology received the 16th Yomiuri Prize. A Stately White Barge (Shiroi Yakatabune)was translated by Japan P.E.N. Club in February, 1966.(From The Japan P.E.N. News No.17)
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