Kazuo Ishiguro by When We Were Orphans (txt)

Japanese tatami mats fitted over the floors, and paper panels fixed to the walls, so that once inside at least according to Akira - one could not tell one was not in an authentic Japanese house made of wood and paper. I can remember the doors to these rooms being especially curious; on the outer, ‘Western’ side, they were oak-panelled with shining brass knobs; on the inner, ‘Japanese’ side, delicate paper with lacquer inlays.
    In any case, one sweltering day, Akira and I had been playing in one of these Japanese rooms. He had been trying to teach me a game involving piles of cards with Japanese characters on them. I had managed to pick up the rudiments and we had been playing for several minutes when I suddenly asked him: ‘Does your mother sometimes stop talking to your father?’
    He looked at me blankly, probably because he had failed to understand me; his English often let him down if I spoke out of context like this. Then, when I repeated my question, he shrugged and said: ‘Mother not talk to Father when he at office. Mother not talk to Father when he in toilet!’
    With that, he roared with theatrical laughter, rolled on to his back and began kicking his feet in the air. I was thus obliged for the moment to drop the matter. But having raised it, I was determined to get his view, and a few minutes later, brought it up again.
    This time he seemed to sense my earnestness, and leaving aside the card game, asked me a number of questions until I had more or less told him the nature of my worries. He then rolled on to his back again, but this time gazed thoughtfully up at the ceiling fan rotating above us. After a few moments he said: ‘I know why they stop. I know why.’ Then turning to me, he said: ‘Christopher. You not enough Englishman.’
    When I asked him to explain this, he once more looked at the ceiling and went quiet. I too rolled on to my back and followed his example of staring at the fan. He was lying a little way across the room from me, and when he spoke again, I remember his voice sounded oddly disembodied.
    ‘It same for me.’ he said. ‘Mother and Father, they stop talk.
    Because I not enough Japanese.’
    As I may have said already, I tended to regard Akira as a worldly authority on many aspects of life, and so I listened to him that day with great care. My parents stopped talking to one another, he told me, whenever they became deeply unhappy with my behaviour - and in my case, this was on account of my not behaving sufficiently like an Englishman. If I thought about it, he said, I would be able to link each of my parents’ silences to some instance of my failing in this way. For his part, he always knew when he had let down his Japanese blood, and it never came as a surprise to him to discover that his parents had ceased talking to one another. When I asked him why they did not scold us in the usual manner when we misbehaved in this way, Akira explained to me that it was not like that; he was talking of offences quite different from the usual misdemeanours for which we might be punished. He was referring to moments that disappointed our parents so deeply they were unable even to scold us.
    ‘Mother and Father so very very disappoint,’ he said quietly.
    ‘So they stop talk.’
    Then he sat up and pointed to one of the slatted sun-blinds at that moment hanging partially down over a window. We children, he said, were like the twine that kept the slats held together. A Japanese monk had once told him this. We often failed to realise it, but it was we children who bound not only a family, but the whole world together. If we did not do our part, the slats would fall and scatter over the floor.
    I do not remember anything more of our conversation that day, and besides, as I say, I did not spend much time dwelling on such matters. All the same, I remember more than once being tempted to ask my mother about what my friend had said. In the end, I never did so, though I did broach the subject