Despite the heat and their exertions in the garden, the two older boys are still lively, filled with a seemingly boundless vitality; they never stop talking, even while eating, and Takashi keeps kicking the leg of the table. I scold him and, instantly, in that moment, the mood changes; both boys stop speaking, just silently eating their lunch now, and my wife says nothing, too, her eyes downcast and filling with tears; once again, yet again, I have failed, as a father and as a man, as a human being, wracked with guilt and regret, knowing I bring only pain and misery to the ones who have the misfortune, the curse of loving me, knowing they’ d be better off, they’ d be happier if I disappeared, if I wasn’t here, was never here, was gone.
I get up from the dining table, go back up the steep ladder, up to my study and back to the desk. I pick up the autobiography, stuff it into an old envelope, scrawl ‘RUBBISH’ on its face and put it by the bin to be burnt; I don’t have the strength to go on writing it, to go on feeling like this, living on like this –
Is there no one kind enough to strangle me in my sleep?
I sit back down at the desk and turn back to ‘Man of the West’, this ‘Man of the West Continued’ –
If I can only finish this manuscript today, by the end of this day, then I’ ll find peace, can die in peace. And so, with a trembling hand, I pick up my pen again, this chipped and narrow sword again, and I start to write again, in these meagre, shabby words of a useless, washed-up literary hack, to write and to write ‘My Christ’ –
‘… who in these last days I have come to love, who is no longer a stranger, but who is yet still a spectre, a spectre on the Cross at which I stare and I stare, though most have tired of looking, though many have tried to bring it down, yet still I stare and I stare at ‘My Christ’ on his cross …
‘… who was born for me in Japan, born to Mary – an ordinary woman we sense in all women, in the burning fire of the hearth, in the abundant harvests of the field, her life lived with a ceaseless patience in “the vale of tears” – born to Mary and the Holy Ghost – neither a Satan nor an Angel, the Holy Ghost who walks on the other shore, beyond Good and Evil …
‘… who eluded Herod, who escaped his machine, the machine that is always necessary for those who wish to avert change, to avoid revolution; this Herod in fear of change, his machine in terror of revolution, slaughtered the children and the thousands of other Christs all mingled among them; yet with his hands of crimson, his face of melancholia, we cannot hate him, cannot despise him, only pity him, dying among the olive and the fig trees, leaving not one line of poetry …
‘… who spent time in Egypt, returned to Galilee, and then lived in Nazareth, just as the children of naval officers are transferred to Sasebo, next to Maizuru, then to Yokosuka; perhaps these forced and sudden changes helped to forge the Bohemian Spirit of “My Christ”?
‘… who knew he was not the son of his father Joseph, a superfluous man, who realised he was a child of the Holy Ghost, who in the gloom of this revelation, who after the solitude of his childhood, who then encountered John, a Christ born before him, a Christ come before him, John who in his last lament would ask of him, Was it you who were Christ, or was it me?
‘… who walked alone into the wilderness, who fasted for forty days and forty nights, who entered into a dialogue with Satan, but who refused to succumb, who rejected temptation: materialism, power, all the worldly desires of our hearts, and who vanquished Satan, “for a season” …
‘… who then travelled from village to village, first on his own, then with disciples, who began to speak, who began to talk, in allegories and in parables, an ancient Bohemian and an ancient journalist, who in the genius of his examples, in the passion of his poetry, brought new wood to the old fire, to burn and to illuminate, who in all his masterpieces – the Sermon on the Mount, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son – and in all his words trampled on the conventions of all ages, and turned the world upside down, our world upside down, but who then sowed the seeds of fear, the fear of change, and who then made enemies, so many enemies …
‘… and yet who loved and was loved by many, and most by Magdalene, with a poetic love which transcended her profession, with a poetic love which forgave her sins, a love still as fragrant as an iris …
‘… who saw the lilies of the field, with whom even Solomon in all his glory could not compare, yet who in such poetry vanquished tomorrow …
‘… who performed miracles, though he hated miracles, for they pandered to the people, drained him of his strength, made him question the strength of his words, his words and his self, and left him human, all too human …
‘… who could not bear the tears of Martha and Mary, who raised Lazarus from the dead, to stem their tears, too human, all too human …
‘… who then rejected his mother and all such love, who chose Jerusalem, chose a known and certain death, to show us what we are searching for, the absence which torments us still, who revealed to us what lies beyond, beyond our world, within our souls: the Kingdom of Heaven, of Heaven on Earth …
‘… who
