the slightest hesitation, I said to him:
“Your absurd argument boggles my mind! That’s total nonsense. Father stays in his room, and you guys never visit him: Isn’t this the same as his not existing? Can’t you at least overlook his existence? Sure, he eats with us every day, but he eats fast and he never sticks around long. And especially recently, he eats hardly anything. He just sits there going through the motions and then he leaves. How can he affect you so much? I think you’re inwardly depressed and you can’t do anything, so you want to extricate yourself and you blame others for this. But whom do you blame? An old man approaching death, the least important person in the family, a loner who has never meddled . . .”
“Hold on!” my brother interrupted me, and staring me in the face, he said, “Do you really think—do you really think that’s what our father is like? You don’t need to act so arrogant. I can’t figure out what’s going on between you, but at meals, I see your knees trembling.”
“What have you heard?” I asked tensely.
“What could I have heard? None of this concerns me. The only reason for telling you what’s on my mind is for our mutual benefit. Why can’t you understand even this? Of course I don’t intend to plot anything. What can I do? To be precise, all I’m doing is grumbling about the status quo.” Moving closer, he whispered to me: “There were some suspicious sounds in his room just now.”
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at him scornfully. All of a sudden he blushed, and his eyes opened wide. Pointing straight ahead, he shouted: “Look! Look!”
At the end of the dim hallway, Father—wearing gray underwear—was wobbling as he stood on a square stool. He was pounding a nail into the wall. His bare arm—only skin and bones—was extended from his unbuttoned sleeve, and he held a rusty hammer in his hand.
Faltering, Father got down from the stool and frowned as he said earnestly to me: “I want to hang a notebook here, or it could be called an account book, so that everyone will know where things stand. Rushu, you’re good at keeping accounts, so of course you know: I’ve been retired all these years and have turned over all of my money to you and your siblings, but how much have I actually spent? You’ve noticed that I never go out. Except for food, I have no expenses, and recently I’ve eaten very little. Yet you tell me that you can barely make ends meet. Where has my money gone? These clothes—” With that, he pulled at the front of his undershirt. “These are my best clothes. All of you figure that since I don’t go out, you don’t need to make outerwear for me. This never even crosses your minds. The two jackets I have were both made by your grandma fifteen years ago when she was still alive!” He almost shouted this last sentence.
I was totally defeated. I was looking frantically in all directions. I was looking for my brother, but this slippery fellow had glided away without a trace. Father was holding the hammer high, as if preparing to fight.
“Papa! Papa! What are you saying?” Tears were mixed with my shouting.
“Rushu, help me hang that account book on this nail.” His voice was composed and strong.
“No.” I retreated a few steps and glared at him in desperation. “Father, don’t force me. I can’t do it.”
“Okay. I’ll do it myself.”
He went back to his room and took the black notebook out of a cupboard. The book was fastened with fine hemp rope. As he entered his room, I noticed that all of the old books and letters had disappeared. The floor had been swept clean. Even the space under the bed was empty. When he walked out, he staggered again onto the square stool. The fine ropes on the book were tangled together, and it took him a long time to straighten them out and hang the notebook on a nail. While he was doing this, the stool kept swaying and creaking. I don’t know why he hadn’t steadied the stool before stepping onto it. His actions made me feel extremely tense, like an arrow held in a bowstring.
None of us knew what was recorded in the black notebook. We tacitly agreed that since Father had humiliated everyone in this despicable way, we’d better just ignore it. Would ignoring it put us at ease? I observed the four of them and found that didn’t seem to be the case. They were fretful and uneasy. Every noon when Father was with us, he staggered up on the square stool, took the black notebook down, and carried it back to his room. One of us could never keep from saying: “Look, he’s doing it again.” The person seemed to be speaking scornfully, yet his hands were shaking. After a while, all of us looked down, and one by one we slipped out.
=
One day I was asleep and having a long dream when Nishu knocked on my door. I looked at the clock: it was two in the morning. Nishu was pouting, and she was worriedly digging at her ear with her little finger. She hesitated a long time before saying:
“It was raining. I suddenly remembered the clothes hadn’t been brought in from the courtyard, so I ran out there. I saw a light on in Father’s room, and someone was standing in front of the window. It didn’t appear to be Father because he was much taller than Father. Who was it? Someone had actually come calling on Father at midnight: Wasn’t this frightening? The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt, so I ran into Father’s room. The door was unlocked; it opened with a slight push. The strange thing was that Father was the only one in the room! Really. I peered into every corner. Maybe he had run into the hallway through that door. I didn’t dare follow him into the hallway for fear that Father would get angry. In the incandescent light, Father’s face was quite frightening. He kept laughing. I wasn’t sure if he was angry or happy, so I retreated step by step all the way to the courtyard. By then the rain had stopped and the clothes were drenched so there was no point in bringing them in. I went back to my room. The more I thought about this, the more wrong I thought it was. So I came to find you. What do you think?”
After saying all of this in one breath, Nishu seemed very weary and couldn’t keep her eyes open. She fell onto my bed in confusion and covered herself with my quilt. Soon, she was asleep. Nishu’s news wasn’t anything new, but after listening to her, I couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a good idea to have the light on at midnight, so I turned it off and sat up in the dark. When I was half asleep, I seemed to hear the sound of something stirring in the hallway. As soon as I was more clear-headed, I realized that nothing was stirring. I was just hallucinating. That night, I opened the door twice and looked toward Father’s room at the end of the hall. I noticed that his light was out. Not until daybreak did Nishu awaken. Rubbing her eyes, she said:
“The old shark had gone so far as to come out with that. I was arguing with him in my dream about that lost letter. Are you listening? I shouted until I was hoarse. Now my throat is burning.” Nishu used to call Father “shark” behind his back.
“From now on, you mustn’t wander around at night. You overreacted when it was raining. It’s no big deal if laundry gets wet. Just leave it.”
“You’re talking nonsense again.” Laughing, she bent to tie her shoelaces. “I’ve tried not to meddle, but it didn’t work. While I was in bed, I thought and thought. I thought of Father as an old spider in this house. His webs are everywhere. You run into them when you lift your head or stretch your hand out.”
Then she finished lacing her shoes, leapt up, and ran out.
=
I did my best to recall what day it was that Father had assumed control over the family. It seemed it had begun not long before, but it also seemed a long time ago. Maybe it had begun when I was in the cradle. The more I thought about it, the more blurred that boundary line became. In the end, I couldn’t grasp it. On the surface, he had dropped out
