The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe

Author:Kenzaburo Oe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2010-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

2

Kogito’s “quarantine” in Berlin lasted for a hundred days, so it actually ended up being more than twice as long as the forty days mentioned in the dictionary definition, based on the word’s Italian etymology. When he traveled from Tokyo to Berlin, Kogito had almost no ill effects from the time difference, but he knew that the return trip would be a different story. Sure enough, he ended up suffering horrendous jet lag for ten full days.

During that time, Kogito was searching for a way to get a firm grip on reality once again—he had made a conscious point of not putting fresh batteries into Tagame—and he would sometimes lie on the army cot in his study and daydream about telephoning one friend or another. That’s when the stark reality would hit him. Goro’s criticism, on the Tagame tapes, that Kogito didn’t have any intimate younger colleagues was true. Professor Musumi, Takamura, and some more relaxed, easygoing friends as well—practically everyone Kogito might have felt like calling up was dead!

Not only that, but he couldn’t seem to find a book that would soothe his head, which always seemed to be throbbing hotly from jet lag and sleep deprivation. There was a pile of packages at the door of his study, and while he was unwrapping them he would idly browse through the books. He might, for example, be enticed by the style of a Japanese translation of Proust, and that might put him into a mood of leisurely remembrance of all things past. When that happened, Kogito found himself thinking with newfound serenity about his own death as an event that wasn’t too far off. He couldn’t bear to think that he would still be hanging around for another fifteen or twenty long years after this, and rather than Time Regained (the title of the final volume of Proust’s magnum opus), the phrase “Death Regained” popped into his overheated head.

“That’s it!” Kogito exclaimed out loud. “‘Death’ is ‘Time’!” In his deliriously befuddled state, wild thoughts that would probably have been rejected if he were fully awake now struck him as profoundly persuasive epiphanies. He even felt as if his own death was something that had already taken place, some time ago. It seemed as if things that had occurred in the recent past were rapidly receding into the mists of time, and even Goro’s death seemed to have happened a hundred years before, or more. And then he saw himself, too, as someone long dead, dwelling on the Other Side along with Goro, who seemed to have died ages ago. And if Kogito was indeed a shade, then it didn’t seem unnatural for him to be half dozing and nodding off all the time.

When he was “thinking” along these lines, Kogito (who was absolutely certain that his epic jet lag would prevent him from ever falling asleep) was actually sleeping, and what seemed to be conscious, waking thoughts were in fact dreams that were visiting him in his shallow sleep.

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