A Quiet Life by Kenzaburō Ōe Page B

“zone” could put degenerate mortals back on their feet. After the guide's wife takes him to bed and lulls him to sleep, she suddenly turns to look straight at us, as though replying to the camera in an interview, and starts telling us her innermost thoughts. Whether or not this is a common technique employed in movies of this kind, I don't know. Even though my mother's father was a movie director, and my uncle is one now, like O-chan I have seen only a few movies. Anyway, I really liked this scene a lot. The woman recalls that, as a young man, her husband had been the laughingstock of the town. He had been called a slowpoke and a ne'er-do-well, and at the time of her marriage, her mother had objected that, since the guide was accursed, no child they had could be normal. The woman says she chose to marry the man despite all this, because she preferred a hard life with its few happy moments over a monotonous one. She confesses she may have started thinking this way after the fact, and had glossed things over, but in any event she says she presumes this is what led her to marry him. Here I wanted to cry out, “No, lady! You haven't glossed over things! You've always thought this way! And I believe your way of thinking is correct!”
    In connection with this, I asked O-chan the next morning about another related scene I thought was important but didn't understand very well. I asked him about it because his character is such that once he discusses a movie with me, it sets him to thinking, and though it was long, he appeared to have carefully watched this one straight through, using his study time, after Eeyore and I had retired to our bedrooms.
    “O-chan,” I began, “I want to ask you about the girl who had that gold-colored kerchief around her head. Platok , it'scalled? Remember Papa bought one like that in Moscow? Twice in the movie, her mother calls her an ‘accursed child,’ and in the scene where her mother comes to the bar to take her husband home, she has crutches with her. So the child must have had some affliction in her legs, but other than this, she didn't seem to have any other handicap. A very beautiful child. …”
    “I think the child has the power to move objects with just her own consciousness,” O-chan remarked. “Psychokinesis, I think it's called, In this sense, I suppose she's endowed with an ability that's newer and stranger than the guide's. The long scene where she moves three glasses with the power of her eyes—it was interesting to watch it in reverse, because then the glasses looked like they were being pulled toward her. And I guess ‘accursed child’ means she's a child with supernatural powers which neither she herself nor the people around her understand very well.”
    “The glasses moved in two scenes,” I said, “in the beginning and at the end. In the first one, the girl is sleeping. Then the rumble of a train becomes loud. You begin to hear it before this, and it's filmed in a way that makes you think the things on the table slide because of the tremor of the train that's approaching the apartment building. I wonder if this isn't a technique Tarkovsky likes. At first you just can't figure out what he's trying to get across, but as the story develops, important meanings are communicated to you. … You can say the same for the scene where the guide tells the professor and writer to tie ribbons to the nuts. Thinking of it this way, don't the glasses move as a result of the train's vibrations?”
    “As a science student,” O-chan replied, “I'm inclined to see it as due to the vibrations of the train, but isn't it in fact psychokinesis? While watching this scene, I thought, Ah, this must be a precautionary measure against the ‘technicians.’ You see, Papa once told me that in the Soviet Union it's the ‘technicians’who, as representatives of the local masses, write letters to the newspapers criticizing various forms of art, like literature and the movies. Because these