‘Stop! Wait,’ shouted a voice. ‘What are you doing?’
Waist-high in the water, weighed down by the stones, Y turned his face back to the bank. And there, at the water’s edge, stood an old man, his arms outstretched, his palms open, beckoning and beseeching him: ‘Stop! Stop! Come back, come here …’
But over the sound of the waves, the call of the current, Y shouted, ‘No! No, I do not deserve to live. I am resolved to die.’
‘Then I will come to you,’ said the old man, stepping into the river, wading through the water, out towards Y, ‘and join you.’
The wind was rising now, the river moving faster now, the old man already unsteady in his footing, the old man quickly slipping under the water. And Y shook his head, and Y cursed his luck; he could not even die in peace. And Y turned back in the river, and Y waded back through the current, pulling the old man back above the water, dragging the old man back to the bank, until they reached the river’s edge and fell upon its bank –
Now side by side, Y and the old man lay upon the land, their faces turned towards the sky, gasping for air and panting for breath, soaked through their skins, soaked to their bones –
‘Thank you,’ said the old man. ‘You saved me.’
Y laughed, Y snorted and said, ‘You left me no choice.’
‘No,’ said the old man. ‘There is always a choice.’
Y laughed again. ‘Yes. Hobson’s choice.’
‘It’s still a choice,’ said the old man. ‘To take it or leave it, to act or not.’
Y sighed. ‘Well, I had made my choice. And I had decided to act. But thanks to you, here I am again, on the riverbank, having failed even to die. So thank you, for nothing.’
‘Don’t despair,’ laughed the old man. ‘You may yet die of hypothermia. But assuming you don’t, I still owe you a debt of thanks for saving my own life. And so if you should survive this night, when you first sense the light of the morning sun, then you will wake to find your reward. Use it or don’t, take it or leave it; that choice will be yours.’
His teeth chattering, his limbs trembling, Y closed his eyes and laughed. ‘If you’re gone, that will be reward enough for me …’
2
The winter sun strangely warm upon his face, its piercing rays dancing on his lids, the sound of boats upon the river, the scent of fukujusō on the breeze, yet with an aching pain in his back and in his neck, Y now opened his eyes. The sky above him was a brilliant bright December blue, with not one single cloud or wisp of smoke from a factory yet. Even the ground on which Y lay seemed no longer hard, his clothes no longer sodden, yet still this dull crick, in his back and in his neck. Rubbing his face, massaging his neck, Y now sat up and looked around him: he had been resting his head upon a pillow, the pillow a large furoshiki, the cloth a pattern of red and white waves, enfolding a giant bundle, held together in its knot.
Uncertain if he was dreaming, Y slowly undid the knot, Y slowly opened up the cloth, and then he froze, froze until Y blinked, and blinked again, and rubbed his eyes, and rubbed his eyes again. Now Y looked away, now Y looked around: the empty bank, the busy river; all here, all real. Y rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Certain now he was not dreaming, Y slowly reached out and touched the contents of the furoshiki: piles and piles of banknotes, all crisp and new, all neatly bound, more than he had ever seen, could ever have imagined. And there, lying on top of the piles of banknotes, was a sheaf of manuscript paper and a fountain pen. Y picked up the pen and the manuscript and quickly began leafing through the papers; all were blank but for the first page, on which was written: A Postscript.
Swiftly now, glancing about him, Y put the papers and the pen back on top of the piles of banknotes. Swifter still, Y retied the knot, picked up the furoshiki and began to hurry away, as fast as he could carry the bundle, to stumble away, back to the city – under the blue sky now bleaching white, to the shrill chords of factory whistles – back to the city, back to its lights, and back to the life, the life he’d thought lost …
In the course of one night, Y had become richer than he had ever dreamed possible, and Y wasted no time in purchasing both a house in Hongō and a villa in Kamakura. But Y knew he had been given a second chance, a second chance he had not deserved, and so he was determined to cherish this chance, this gift he had been given. And so Y began to write again, with the paper and the pen he had been left, soon completing a short shishōsetsu novel that, naturally enough, he called –
A Postscript.
Immediately upon publication, the book was hailed as a masterpiece, embraced by readers of all ages, and welcomed as an antidote to these ever-darkening times of naked self-interest and spiritual bankruptcy.
But lauded and loved as he was, Y struggled to write another work, succumbing once again to the temptations and vices of the Literary Life in the Big City, its pleasures of the flesh, its distractions of the mind. For Y was not short of pleasures and distractions now: friends old and new, all fake now, lovers old and
