The Changeling (6 page)

Kogito Choko, as a writer of his own original books, would eventually cease to exist in the public mind, and all that would remain was the great writer whose “rediscovery” he had orchestrated by easy, leisurely stages. And then after a little more time had passed, when the imaginary master finally “died,” his previously unpublished work would be brought forth posthumously, like water pouring out of a broken dam. And the reclusive writer (whom no one had ever laid eyes on) would be remembered as a truly great artist—maybe even a Japanese Kafka.

“We really got into the story of that mythical writer, didn’t we, Kogito?” Goro chuckled. “It was just when Borges’s work was being introduced in Japanese translation for the first time, and we were thrilled to find someone else who thought the way we did. And then, before long, you dug up English translations of the writers who were persecuted by Stalin: Bulgakov, Bely, and so on. In a way, I almost felt as if we were growing old along with our great imaginary
littérateur
!” Then Goro added something that made Kogito feel that his friend had come dangerously close to crossing the line as far as the Rules of Tagame were concerned.

Rule Number Two: Never, ever speak about plans for the future.

“This is what I want to say to you, Kogito,” Goro announced. “Right now you’re already older than the phantom writer was when you and he first ‘met.’ From here on, isn’t it time for you to gird your literary loins and try to make one last creative leap, to ensure that you yourself will be remembered as a unique writer, at least? (I won’t go so far as to say ‘great.’) I’m hoping that the words that are pouring out of Tagame right now will somehow prime the pump and get you fired up. In your own past—or rather, in the past we share—surely there’s a rich vein of experience that hasn’t yet been mined?”

One day during the period when Kogito was indulging in long, intense Tagame dialogues (including the one above) on a nightly basis, Chikashi cornered him and, typically, burst out with a torrent of words that had obviously been germinating in her mind for quite a while.

“After all this time,” she began, “when I hear you carrying on in your study every evening into the wee hours, complaining to Goro and then seeming to strain your ears for a response,
I can’t help wondering whether this isn’t exactly the sort of ‘absurdity’ you dislike so much. I don’t see what good can possibly come of indulging in this sort of charade night after night, and I’m really at my wits’ end. Every time I hear you talking so impassionedly to Goro I can sense that you’re waiting for a reply, and I know it must be terribly painful for you. I sympathize completely, and I truly do feel sorry for you. It’s the same as if by some chance you suddenly died in an accident or something—I think about how puzzled and devastated Akari would be and how sorry I’d feel for him. It isn’t that I think you’re doing these late-night séances as a way of gearing up for your own journey to the Other Side, but still ...

“In any case, because your study is right above our bedrooms, it’s really hard on us when your voice comes floating down. It’s a bit like water dripping slowly through a bamboo strainer, and I think it’s probably bothering Akari even more than me. No matter how low you keep your voice, and even when it’s obvious that you’re just listening to Goro’s tapes on your headphones, I don’t think it’s possible for Akari to simply ignore what’s going on. So I’m just wondering whether you might be willing to put an end to your sessions, for us?”

And then while Kogito watched, appalled, Chikashi unexpectedly began to cry. He had no choice but to admit that for these past few months he had been so engrossed in living by the Rules of Tagame that he had forgotten there were rules about living as part of a family, too. On another level, he had been startled by the aside Chikashi had tossed out in the middle of her speech:
It isn’t that I think you’re doing these late-night séances as a way of gearing up for your own journey to the Other Side, but still
...

8

“But I just can’t do that!” Kogito wailed. He was alone in his study, lying facedown on his army cot with the sheets pulled tightly over his head, talking to himself. “I know my behavior has been shameful—getting so immersed in Tagame to the point where it’s become a kind of crazy obsession. But there’s another person involved in this. I can’t very well just announce, unilaterally, ‘Sorry, pal, it’s over.’ Think about poor Goro, all alone on the Other Side. How terrible would that be for him?”

Without getting up, Kogito quickly turned over and thrust his head into the darkness next to the bed. Years ago, one of his former college classmates had been admitted to the hospital with leukemia and had thrashed around on the bed so violently that, as the man’s wife confided in Kogito, they were afraid he might end up bursting a blood vessel in his head. (And the fact that the doctors had chosen to conceal the true diagnosis from the patient had probably amplified his anxiety.) But maybe that desperate behavior—that sort of secret, private struggle—
was just a reflection of the buttoned-up attitude toward life shared by the men of Kogito’s generation.

Kogito got up, switched on the light, and pulled the duralumin trunk out from under the bed. He had just remembered something Goro had said on one of the tapes, and now, using his own topical annotations on the labels as a guide, he found the tape in question, popped it into Tagame, and hastily cued up the relevant passage. Then, as if urged on by the slow, whirring vibration of the tape recorder, he gave a decisive nod and pressed the
PLAY
button.

“Of course, you’re always like this,” Goro’s voice began, ragging on Kogito right out of the gate. “But from what I hear these days, true to form, you’ve been acting like a mouse trapped in a bag. When you get right down to it, you’ve brought all your suffering on yourself, and now you’re floundering around helplessly. Chikashi’s been complaining to me, you know,” Goro went on. “She says that same big-shot scumbag journalist has been denouncing you again, in the nastiest, most contemptible way, making a point of saying things like ‘Of course
I
don’t read that guy’s novels, but I’ve heard from some young people that he’s been putting me in his books, as a villain.’ That so-called journalist even published a showy, slanderous book exploiting the fact that you won a major international award. That vendetta has already been dragging on for twenty-five years now—don’t you think it’s time for you to let it go?

“Lately you’ve been in pretty low spirits, and you’ve brought Chikashi and Akari down as well. There’s no way you can say that’s a good thing. Even without having to cope with a depressed husband, Chikashi is someone who’s experienced more than her share of hard times. When the busybodies say that your family
appears to have a pretty cushy life, you should just reply that the pleasant things pass soon enough, as if they’d never happened, but the painful experiences tend to linger on for a long, long time.

“The sort of person who’s forever reveling in every little delight with an excessive, borderline-abnormal kind of euphoria, and who does nothing but cling to those lovely airbrushed memories—that, in my opinion, is a thoroughly unhappy and unfortunate person. Chikashi has been through far too much suffering already, but in spite of that she has never turned into the sort of weak person who’s always longing to return to happier days. Don’t you agree?

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about your situation, and I was wondering—how would it be if you took a little breather and left town for a while? You’ve been toiling away at the novelist’s life for all these years, and I really think you could use some quarantine time right about now. I think if you just got away from your novels for a while ... If you left for good it would be rough on Chikashi and Akari, that’s why I say ‘for a while.’ What I mean is, you need to impose a quarantine on yourself and take a break from the sort of life where you’re being confronted by the distressing gutter journalism of this country on a daily basis.”

“Give me a minute to check something in the dictionary,” Kogito replied. “When you first mentioned this, some time ago, I had a passing familiarity with the word
quarantine
, so I didn’t take the time to look it up and find out exactly what it meant. But the word hasn’t taken root in my mind to the point where I would actually use it.”

After pressing the
PAUSE
button, Kogito brought out one of his dictionaries and flipped the pages until he found what he was looking for:

quarantine
(kwor-ãn-teen)
n
. 1. A state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious diseases are placed.
v
.[with object] to put a person or animal in quarantine. 2.
n
. The period of this isolation. Origin: mid-seventeenth century, from Italian
quarantin
a, “forty days,” from
quaranta
, “forty.”

After he had finished reading the definitions, Kogito turned back to Tagame, making an effort to keep his voice as low as possible while simultaneously striving to pronounce every word with perfect clarity. “Listen, Goro,” he said, before pressing the
PLAY
button again. “I know you’re using this word to try to advance a certain agenda, and I understand exactly what you’re driving at.”

“Of course, it doesn’t have to be exactly forty days,” responded Goro’s recorded voice. “You might have a chance to stay away longer. But what do you think about Berlin as a temporary haven, to put some distance between you and that journalist? (On the bright side,
he
isn’t getting any younger, either!) For me, at least, Berlin is an unforgettable place. If someone asked me what connection that city might have with your self-imposed quarantine, I couldn’t say exactly, but....”

“Berlin, eh? Now that you mention it, I did receive an invitation to go there, for considerably longer than forty days!” Kogito exclaimed, hearing the surprise and excitement in his own voice, which had grown suddenly loud as he momentarily forgot about the need to whisper. “I’ll check now, but I think the offer’s still good.”

Whereupon Kogito stopped the tape and went to his study to look for the file in question. S. Fischer Verlag, the publisher
who had put out the first German translations of Kogito’s early novels, was still doing so, even though sales weren’t what they used to be. Every few years—or, more usually, every ten or twelve years—a new translation of one of Kogito’s novels would come out in hardcover, but as a rule the subsequent printings would be in paperback. Whenever Kogito gave readings at places such as the Frankfurt Book Fair or cultural associations in Hamburg and Munich, there would be a book signing afterward, where they were always able to sell quite a few of the colorful, beautifully designed paperbacks of his work. And now he had been offered a lectureship at the Berlin Free University to commemorate S. Fischer, the founder of the eponymous publishing house. The course was to begin in the middle of November, so he still had time to accept. The department’s offer was generous, and they even said that they would keep the slot open for him through the first half of the term.

By the time he climbed back into bed, Kogito had dug up the most recent fax from a secretary in S. Fischer Verlag’s editorial division and learned that he still had three days to let them know whether he wanted to accept the position of guest lecturer at the Free University. To his own amazement, in a matter of a few minutes he had made up his mind to take Goro’s rather drastic advice and get out of town for a while.

The tape on which Goro suggested a “quarantine” had been recorded several months earlier, but now his casual suggestion had become a necessity, for a different reason: namely, Kogito’s need to pull himself together and get over his addiction to talking to Goro through Tagame. Even after Chikashi’s heartfelt complaint earlier that evening, Kogito hadn’t been able to leave the tape recorder on the bookshelf for even this one
night. And, as it turned out, it was Goro, his Tagame partner, who had dropped the hint that had galvanized him into positive action. Somehow, mixed in with his decision to make a bold move, Kogito felt a resurgence of his old dependence on Goro.

He was just about to ask, “What’s going to become of our sessions with Tagame?” But then, without pressing the
PLAY
button, he answered his own question. Or, to put it more precisely, he consciously crafted a response along the lines of what he thought Goro might have said in real life.
That’s for you to decide. But when Chikashi criticized your behavior last night, rather than any annoyance or inconvenience to her and Akari, she was probably more concerned about finding a way to free you from your addiction to our Tagame sessions, don’t you think?

Nevertheless, right up until the night before he was scheduled to leave for wintry Berlin, Kogito was unable to give up his nightly ritual of talking to Goro by way of Tagame—although he did, at least, make every effort to keep his voice low. The thing was, when he told Chikashi the next day about his decision to go into Tagame-free quarantine in Berlin, she naturally interpreted this action as a direct response to her request: a way for Kogito to take a break from his “séances” with Goro. That being the case, no matter how much he lowered his voice Chikashi was probably still aware that the conversations were continuing, but because the end was in sight her silence on the matter seemed to constitute a sort of tacit approval or at least forbearance.

Then one morning, as Kogito’s departure date was rapidly approaching, Chikashi (who had been busying herself every evening with packing and repacking his trunk) said: “Last night I felt like going through Goro’s letters, and I came across a
watercolor painting that he sent from Berlin. Would you like to see it? It’s a landscape, on lovely paper. It’s actually drawn with colored pencils, then blurred with a wet brush so it ends up looking like a watercolor. The painting seems to have a really buoyant, happy feeling. On the back is written ‘This morning is the only day that’s been this clear since I’ve been here,’ and on the front, in the lower corner, is Goro’s signature.”