1q84 by Haruki Murakami
“I think so.” His classes at the cram school began again today, Monday, but for something like this, he would be able to get out of them.
“I’ll take the first express train. I should be there before ten.”
“I would appreciate it if you would. There are all sorts of formalities that have to be taken care of.”
“Formalities,” Tengo said. “Is there anything in particular I should bring with me?”
“Are you Mr. Kawana’s only relative?”
“I’m pretty sure I am.”
“Then bring your registered seal. You might need it. And do you have a certificate of registration for the seal?”
“I think I have a spare copy.”
“Bring that, too, just in case. I don’t think there’s anything else you especially need. Your father arranged everything beforehand.”
“Arranged everything?”
“Um, while he was still conscious, he gave detailed instructions for everything—the money for his funeral, the clothes he would wear in the coffin, where his ashes would be interred. He was very thorough when it came to preparations. Very practical, I guess you could say.”
“That’s the kind of person he was,” Tengo said, rubbing his temple.
“I finish my rotation at seven a.m. and then am going home to sleep. But Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura will be on duty in the morning and they can explain the details to you.”
“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Tengo said.
“You’re quite welcome,” Kumi Adachi replied. And then, as if suddenly remembering, her tone turned formal. “My deepest sympathy for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Tengo said.
He knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, so he boiled water and made coffee. That woke him up a bit. Feeling hungry, he threw together a sandwich of tomatoes and cheese that were in the fridge. Like eating in the dark, he could feel the texture but very little of the flavor. He then took out the train schedule and checked the time for the next express to Tateyama. He had only returned two days earlier from the cat town, on Saturday afternoon, and now here he was, setting off again. This time, though, he would probably only stay a night or two.
At four a.m. he washed his face in the bathroom and shaved. He used a brush to tame his cowlicks but, as always, was only partly successful. Let it be, he thought, it will fall into place before long.
His father’s passing didn’t particularly shock Tengo. He had spent two solid weeks beside his unconscious father. He already felt that his father had accepted his impending death. The doctors weren’t able to determine what had put him into a coma, but Tengo knew. His father had simply decided to die, or else had abandoned the will to live any longer. To borrow Kumi’s phrase, as a “single leaf on a tree,” he turned off the light of consciousness, closed the door on any senses, and waited for the change of seasons.
From Chikura Station he took a taxi and arrived at the seaside sanatorium at ten thirty. Like the previous day, Sunday, it was a calm early-winter day. Warm sunlight streamed down on the withered lawn, as if rewarding it, and a calico cat that Tengo had never seen before was sunning itself, leisurely grooming its tail. Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura came to the entrance to greet him. Quietly, they each expressed their condolences, and Tengo thanked them.
His father’s body was being kept in an inconspicuous little room in an inconspicuous corner of the sanatorium. Nurse Tamura led Tengo there. His father was lying faceup on a gurney, covered in a white cloth. In the square, windowless room, the white fluorescent light overhead made the white walls even brighter. On top of a waist-high cabinet was a glass vase with three white chrysanthemums, probably placed there that very morning. On the wall was a round clock. It was an old, dusty clock, but it told the time correctly. Its role, perhaps, was to be a witness of some kind. Besides this, there were no furniture or decorations. Countless bodies of elderly people must have passed through here—entering without a word, exiting without a word. A straightforward but solemn atmosphere lay over the room like an unspoken fact.
His father’s face didn’t look much different from when he was alive. Even up close, it didn’t seem like he was dead. His color wasn’t bad, and perhaps because someone had been kind enough to shave him, his chin and upper lip were strangely smooth. There didn’t seem to be all that much difference from when he was alive, deeply asleep, except that now the feeding tubes and catheters were unnecessary. Leave the body like this, though, and in a few days decay would set in, and then there would be a big difference between life and death. But the body would be cremated before that happened.
The doctor with whom Tengo had spoken many times before came in, expressed his sympathy, then explained what had led up to his father’s passing. He was very kind, very thorough in his explanation, but it really all came down to one conclusion: the cause of death was unknown. None of their tests had ever determined what was wrong with him. The closest the doctor could say was that Tengo’s father died of old age—but he was still only in his mid-sixties, too young for such a diagnosis.
“As the attending physician I’m the one who fills out the death certificate,” the doctor said hesitantly. “I’m thinking of writing that the cause of death was ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ if that is all right with you?”
“But actually the cause of death was not ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma.’ Is that what you’re saying?”
The doctor looked a bit embarrassed. “True, until the very end we found nothing wrong with his heart.”
“But you couldn’t find anything wrong with any of his other organs.”
“That’s right,” the doctor said reluctantly.
“But the form requires a clear cause of death?”
“Correct.”
“This isn’t my field, but right now his heart is stopped, right?”
“Of course. His heart has stopped.”
“Which is a kind of organ failure, isn’t it?”
The doctor considered this. “If the heart beating is considered normal, then yes, it is a sort of organ failure, as you say.”
“So please write it that way. ‘Heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ was it? I have no objection.”
The doctor seemed relieved. “I can have the death certificate ready in thirty minutes,” he said. Tengo thanked him. The doctor left, leaving only bespectacled Nurse Tamura behind.
“Shall I leave you alone with your father?” Nurse Tamura asked Tengo. Since she had to ask—it was standard procedure—the question sounded a bit matter-of-fact.
“No, there’s no need. Thanks,” Tengo said. Even if he were left alone with his father, there was nothing in particular he wanted to say to him. It was the same as when he was alive. Now that he was dead, there weren’t suddenly all sorts of topics Tengo wanted to discuss.
“Would you like to go somewhere else, then, to discuss the arrangements? You don’t mind?” Nurse Tamura asked.
“I don’t mind,” Tengo replied.
Before Nurse Tamura left, she faced the corpse and brought her hands together in prayer. Tengo did the same. People naturally pay their respects to the dead. The person had, after all, just accomplished the personal, profound feat of dying. Then the two of them left the windowless little room and went to the cafeteria. There was no one else there. Bright sunlight shone in through the large window facing the garden. Tengo stepped into that light and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no sign of the dead there. This was the world of the living—no matter how uncertain and imperfect a world it might be.
Nurse Tamura poured hot roasted hojicha tea into a teacup and passed it to him. They sat down across from each other and drank their tea in silence for a while.
“Are you staying over somewhere tonight?” Nurse Tamura asked.
“I’m planning to stay over, but I haven’t made a reservation yet.”
“If you don’t mind, why don’t you stay in your father’s room? Nobody’s using it, and you can save
“It doesn’t bother me,” Tengo said, a little surprised. “But is it all right to do that?”
“We don’t mind. If you’re okay with it, it’s okay with us. I’ll get the bed ready later.”
“So,” Tengo said, broaching the topic, “what am I supposed to do now?”
“Once you get the death certificate from the attending physician, go to the town office and get a permit for cremation, and then take care of the procedures to remove his name from the family record. Those are the main things you need to do now. There should be other things you’ll need to take care of—his pension, changing names on his savings account—but talk to the lawyer about those.”
“Lawyer?” This took Tengo by surprise.
“Mr. Kawana—your father, that is—spoke with a lawyer about the procedures for after his death. Don’t let the word lawyer scare you. Our facility has a lot of elderly patients, and since many are not legally competent, we have paired up with a local law office to provide consultations, so people can avoid legal problems related to division of estates. They also make up wills and provide witnesses. They don’t charge a lot.”
“Did my father have a will?”
“I can’t really say anything about it. You’ll need to talk to the lawyer.”
“I see. Can I see him soon?”
“We got in touch with him, and he’ll be coming here at three. Is that all right? It seems like we’re rushing things, but I know you’re busy, so I hope you don’t mind that we went ahead.”
“I appreciate it.” Tengo was thankful for her efficiency. For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient.
“Before that, though, make sure you go to the town office,” Nurse Tamura said, “get his name removed from your family record, and get a permit for cremation. Nothing can happen until you’ve done that.”
“Well, then I have to go to Ichikawa. My father’s permanent legal residence should be Ichikawa. If I do that, though, I won’t be able to make it back by three.”
The nurse shook her head. “No, soon after he came here your father changed his official residence from Ichikawa to Chikura. He said it should make things easier if and when the time came.”
“He was well prepared,” Tengo said, impressed. It was as if he knew from the beginning that this was where he would die.
“He was,” the nurse agreed. “No one else has ever done that. Everyone thinks they will just be here for a short time. Still, though …,” she began to say, and stopped, quietly bringing her hands together in front of her to suggest the rest of what she was going to say. “At any rate, you don’t need to go to Ichikawa.”
Tengo was taken to his father’s room, the room where he spent his final months. The sheets and covers had been stripped off, leaving only a striped mattress. There was a simple lamp on the nightstand, and five empty hangers in the narrow closet. There wasn’t a single book in the bookshelf, and all his personal effects had been taken away. But Tengo couldn’t recall what personal effects had been there in the first place. He put his bag on the floor and looked around.
The room still had a medicinal smell, and you could still detect the breath of a sick person hanging in the air. Tengo opened the window to let in fresh air. The sun-bleached curtain fluttered in the breeze like the skirt of a girl at play. How wonderful it would be if Aomame were here, he thought, just holding my hand tight, not saying a word.
. . .
He took a bus to the Chikura town hall, showed them the death certificate, and received a permit for cremation. Once twenty-four hours had passed since the time of death, the body could be cremated. He also applied to have his father’s name removed from the family record, and received a certificate to that effect. The procedures took a while, but were almost disappointingly simple—nothing that would cause any soul searching. It was no different from reporting a stolen car. Nurse Tamura used their office copier to make three copies of the documents he received.
“At two thirty, before the lawyer comes, someone will be here from Zenkosha, a funeral parlor,” Mrs. Tamura said. “Please give him one copy of the cremation permit. The person from the funeral parlor will take care of the rest. While he was still alive, your father talked to the funeral director and decided on all the arrangements. He also put enough money aside to cover it, so you don’t need to do anything. Unless you have an objection.”
“No, no objection,” Tengo said.
His father had left hardly any belongings behind. Old clothes, a few books—that was all.
“Would you like something as a keepsake? All there is, though, is an alarm clock radio, an old self-winding watch, and reading glasses,” Nurse Tamura said.
“I don’t want anything,” Tengo told her. “Just dispose of it any way you like.”
At precisely two thirty the funeral director arrived, dressed in a black suit. He moved silently. A thin man, in his early fifties, he had long fingers, large eyes, and a single dry, black wart next to his nose. He seemed to have spent a great deal of time outdoors, because his face was suntanned all over, down to the tips of his ears. Tengo wasn’t sure why, but he had never seen a fat funeral director. The man explained the main procedures for the funeral. He was very polite and spoke slowly, deliberately, as if indicating that they could take all the time they needed.
“While your father was alive, he said he wanted as simple a funeral as possible. He wanted a simple, functional casket, and he wanted to be cremated as is. He did not want any ceremony, no scriptures read, no posthumous Buddhist name, or flowers, or a eulogy. And he didn’t want a grave. He instructed me to have his ashes simply put in a suitable communal facility. That is, if there are no objections …”
He paused and looked entreatingly at Tengo with his large eyes.
“If that is what my father wanted, then I have no objection,” Tengo said, looking straight back at those eyes.
The funeral director nodded, and cast his eyes down. “Today would be the wake, and for one night we will have the body lie in state in our funeral home. So we will need to transport the body to our place. The cremation will take place tomorrow at one thirty in the afternoon in a crematorium nearby. I hope this is satisfactory?”
“I have no objection.”
“Will you be attending the cremation?”
“I will,” Tengo said.
“There are some who do not like to attend, and it is entirely up to you.”
“I will be there,” Tengo said.
“Very good,” the man said, sounding a little relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you with this now, but this is the same amount I showed your father while he was still alive. I would appreciate it if you would approve it.”
The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.
The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for a moment—a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldn’t really follow their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably everybody knew everybody else.
Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlor’s small van was parked just outside. Except for the driver’s window, all the windows were tinted black, and the jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his white-haired assistant moved Tengo’s father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van. The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in prayer.
Tengo and
“Your father entrusted me with his will. The word will implies something significant, but this isn’t like one of those wills from a detective novel,” the lawyer said, and cleared his throat. “It’s actually closer to a simple memo. Let me start by briefly summarizing its contents. The will begins by outlining arrangements for his funeral. I believe the gentleman from Zenkosha has explained this to you?”
“Yes, he did. It’s to be a simple funeral.”
“Very good,” the lawyer said. “That was your father’s wish, that everything be done as plainly as possible. The funeral expenses will be paid out of a reserve fund he set aside, and medical and other expenses will come out of the security deposit your father paid when he checked into this facility. There will be nothing you will have to pay for out of your own pocket.”
“He didn’t want to owe anybody, did he?”
“Exactly. Everything has been prepaid. Also, your father has money in an account at the Chikura post office, which you, as his son, will inherit. You will need to take care of changing it over to your name. To do that, you’ll need the proof that your father has been removed from the family register, and a copy of your family register and seal certificate. You should go directly to the Chikura post office and sign the necessary documents yourself. The procedures take some time. As you know, Japanese banks and the post office are quite particular about filling in all the proper forms.”
The lawyer took a large white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.