Reconciliation by Naoya Shiga

Author:Naoya Shiga [Bilal, Parker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2020-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

IX

Shortly after the Kamakura trip, we learned my wife was pregnant again. I felt it was still too soon. Certainly we could have another child, but a bit more time should pass first. My wife, however, was elated. Grandmother was overjoyed as well. Since I’d held Grandmother partly to blame for the baby’s death, I was happy for her sake it had come so soon.

When M moved into his new home in the next village, Abiko grew more lively. Since I’d been living outside Tokyo for five or six years, this was our first chance to see each other regularly in a long while. As the days and months passed, I could feel my old love for M revive, this time in a new, expanded form. This reawakening was a happy event for me, one that influenced my whole being for the better. M really had a remarkable power to draw the best out of whomever he was with. He also relished direct heart-to-heart communication. I was always able to count on him. And so my days came to be filled with a feeling at once relaxed and alert.

Four years earlier in Matsue, finding myself unable to continue the novel-length work I mentioned earlier, I had resolved to lay down my pen for a while. Anyone whose state of mind was so bad, whose heart so wretchedly impoverished as mine, I thought, should never have committed himself to setting down his innermost feelings in the first place. Since then, I had scarcely written anything. The few attempts I did make quickly ended in failure. Though I didn’t want to give up writing, I did find it quite disturbing that I could feel none of the excitement I had six or seven years before.

It was February. A close friend who had also had to give up writing temporarily (in his case, for reasons of health) and I decided to meet on Saturdays to put together an informal literary journal to circulate among our friends. Our launching of this journal was meant half in jest. Still, we thought, what started as a joke might lead to something more serious. Unchastened by my prior failure, I started writing another long work to serialise there. I wrote instalments for the first three issues, broke it off to publish a short story in the next issue, then added another story in the next one. At that point, however, a blunt-spoken doctor gave my friend some distressing news about his condition. Our little journal naturally fizzled out. Nevertheless, I wrote one more short piece from sheer force of habit. I showed it to no one. I continued to scribble for one or two nights before each Saturday, but had no confidence and didn’t feel like publishing any of it.

Just about that time, someone from a certain publishing house came to ask my permission to publish one of my earlier works in a series they were putting out. They had originally broached this idea with M when

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