This Translation Tuesday, we’re thrilled to bring you three personal essays from pre-eminent Japanese author and poet Hiromi Itō, about her aging, beloved German Shepherd, Také. Unflinching in their portrayal of Také’s life, from her irrepressible youth to her gradual physical decline, Itō’s essays contemplate the often brutal inevitabilities of mortality in a quiet, understated prose, translated here by Jeffrey Angles with the aid of students in his translation seminar.
Canine Instincts
If I don’t write this quickly, I feel like I’ll be leaving Také behind, and I could hardly bear the thought of that.
Také is a German Shepherd who has reached the ripe, old age of thirteen. Meanwhile, I’m a fifty-six year-old human being. If I were a dog, I’d have kicked the bucket ages ago. Fifteen years ago, I came to Southern California with my two daughters, and we’ve been here ever since. A year and a half after our move, Také joined us. In other words, she’s been with our family for most of our time in California.
Today, I took Také on a walk to the park near our home like usual. Each time, she always wants to take the same path she’s walked her entire life. The route never varies, and once we start, she won’t be satisfied unless we go the whole way. That’s why I began to drive us back and forth—to decrease the burden on her tired, old body as much as possible.
Today, after we took our walk and returned to the car, I found my keys were missing. I must’ve dropped them somewhere. When I turned back to look, Také made a stubborn expression and refused to budge.
She hates turning around. She refuses to do anything other than what we usually do. To make matters worse, we walked more than usual today, so her old legs were no doubt creaky and tired. It was only natural for her to resist, but I couldn’t just leave her alone. So I used a special trick. I let go of her leash and started walking away without looking back over my shoulder. Reluctantly, she followed.
Také always walks behind me. Even if she isn’t on her leash, she follows me as if she’s got no choice in the matter. However, she’s the same dog who, when leashed, sometimes resists until no slack is left. There’s something dog-like in her that makes her do these things. She might resist her owner’s will, but she can’t resist her canine instincts—this is what it means to have the heart of a dog.
Those same instincts are what propel Také to hang her head and plod slowly along behind me. Today, as we walked, I had to keep saying, “Come on, Také! Just a little more!”
*
Thirteen years ago, when we started to walk that path, I worried about how long her little puppy body would hold out. Tomé, my youngest daughter, was going on three years old, so I had to take a stroller along, afraid she couldn’t walk the whole way. Také was four months old. She’d just come to us so we still didn’t entirely know how to handle her, and she hadn’t yet learned to trust me completely. To make things worse, her puppy energy was sometimes off the charts. If I let her off the leash, she’d start running and wouldn’t come back. I had to chase her, and she’d dash even further away. I chased her as fast as Tomé’s stroller would let me.
One day, Také stopped, too tired to go any further. She looked up at me forlornly so I asked her if she wanted a ride. She nodded and got into the stroller without any hesitation. Holding my own baby in my arms, I pushed Také all the way home. She was super cute back then, with two big ears standing straight up. As she grew, those ears shrunk. Well, that’s not exactly right—big ears don’t get smaller. It was just that they looked so big against her pointed, little snout, but they began to look smaller as her face grew.
As she developed into a young dog, It was tough to get keep her energy in check. Morning walks were my responsibility. In the evening, my second daughter Sarako took her out. Darkness falls early after daylight savings time ends, so during the winter, I always worried we’d get caught in the dark.
We started training her. I put Sarako in charge, but she was still in middle school and didn’t have a driver’s license or any money. That meant that of course, driving them to obedience school and paying for lessons fell to me. I soon found that in addition to her morning walks, feeding her, and taking care of all the other small necessities of life became my responsibilities too.
We took her to an obedience school that trained police dogs—this school was the real thing. We learned German Shepherds can get aggressive so training was needed to overcome those tendencies and to stop them when they kick in. Sarako and I’d dutifully train her day in and day out, and every Saturday, we’d all go back to the obedience school. Several times we left her there overnight for training. At first, she didn’t know the order “stay.” As soon as Sarako turned her back, Také would stand up, and when Sarako called her, she’d resist, run off, and hide behind me. Sometimes she’d run and jump into the car.
Sarako whined, “Také won’t listen to anything I say. She must be going through puberty.” Sarako was going through puberty too, and as an emotional teenager, she cried over Také’s behavior more times than I could count.
Once Také mastered the basics, we moved on to higher-level training. We taught her all sorts of things: how to bark ferociously at a criminal (who was really a trainer wearing protective gear), how to attack on command, and how to halt her attack with another command.
Training a dog to let out an intimidating growl can be useful when people show up at the house, and there was one time her attack training came in useful too. Sarako was walking Také when a security officer in the park started giving Sarako a hard time. Realizing something was wrong, Také bit the officer. When we realized what happened, me and my husband rushed out to apologize, but the officer’s story was vague and didn’t entirely make sense. Afterward, Sarako told us he’d been acting like a creep, trailing her while she was walking—this upset her and even made her cry. After that, we praised Také, saying, “Good dog, Také! You saved her!”
Another time, when we were having some work done on the house, Také bit an electrician who happened to be carrying a long ruler at the time. To Také, the electrician looked like a stranger, a man with a weapon, an invader—things which according to her training, were all bad. Everyone agreed it was an accident—thank goodness the electrician was a dog owner too—and he overlooked the incident.
*
Back then, Také was big, strong, and could do just about anything. I walked her around the park, but when Sarako and Tomé took her, they often got on a scooter and made Také pull them along, down the hill. They made lots of memories together, both fun and painful ones.
When Sarako or Tomé’s friends accompanied them, the canine instincts that Také had inherited from generations of dogs before her kicked in. She’d run around and around the group of girls. If one of them walked away from the group, Také tried to herd her back. I could almost hear Také count, “One, two, three people… Hold on, someone’s missing!”
Herding and counting are instincts bred into Shepherds. The breed was established in the late nineteenth century in Germany by crossing local sheepdogs with mixed breeds that were part wolf. The military used them in World War I, and Shepherds became well known around the world for their astonishing brilliance. For some reason, they’re not called German Shepherds in England, but Alsatian dogs instead.
Dog books describe them as big, strong, clever, faithful, outstandingly responsive to training, and naturally suited to become guard dogs. The descriptions are so over the top that you feel like you’re reading about baseball hall-of-famers who do nothing but hit homeruns all the time. After living with one though, I’ve got to say the books nail it. Shepherds are so far above all the other dogs I’ve had—mostly small dogs with Shiba-Inu and Spitz in them—that there’s no comparison at all.
Life with a Shepherd is really interesting. Apart from their big appetites and love for walks—both of which surpass the desires of any human—living with one isn’t too different than living with a person. When Také reached middle age, she laid in her dog bed with a depressed look. Family and friends would even whisper, “Don’t you think you should give her some antidepressants?” as if she was human.
In her old age, however, the depression subsided. Had she given up somehow? My mother also always had a depressive personality, but when she got old, hospitalized, and bedridden, the depression went away. (There was a time when she back into a deep depression as she began to lose feeling in her arms and legs, but that emotional slump eventually went away too.) In the end, Mother died a cheerful, gentle, old woman. Maybe that’s how things are meant to be.
*
In the park, there is a large grassy field and a bunch of eucalyptus trees, and beyond that, an area full of native plants growing wild. We walked around there freely, going where ever Také wanted. The field was eventually turned into a parking lot, and about half the eucalyptus forest was destroyed. A building was raised on top the hill—a community and senior center, crucial for the senior citizens in our neighborhood.
No one disturbed the wild plants, however. They left the natural area alone for the most part, simply creating a narrow path for walkers. They also fenced off the areas where no one was supposed to be, making them with signs that said, “Stay on path.” It didn’t even cross our minds to tear down the signs, but where there weren’t any signs, we often did slip in, close to the brush, which is so filled with the plants I love. I learned everything about the area—what kinds of plants grow where, when they flower, when they develop fruit and seedpods. I imagined myself to be a mountaineer with her dog—you know, like one of those folks who lived all alone long ago deep in the unsettled mountains of America, hunting for food, guiding the military, making bear steaks and venison jerky, speaking the language of the Indians fluently, and in the end, dying out in the wilderness with a trusty rifle in hand. But I wasn’t alone in the park. Places like that are perfect for dogs, so other mountaineers brought their dogs there too.
When Také is with children, her canine instincts kick in and she feels the urge to round them up like sheep, but when walking in the brush with me, her canine instincts to protect take over, and she treated me like the sheep she’s supposed to guard. Any dog we encounter looks like a wolf or bear to her, and she’s ready to fight for fight for all she’s worth to keep me safe.
Také is big and strong, so when she gets into fights, she’s not usually the one who takes the brunt of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve apologized and paid someone else’s vet bills. Lots. When I walk, I prick up my ears while watching carefully for any movement in the brush because I’ve got prevent Také from encountering other dogs before I can there. If she started to pull ahead of me, I raise my voice and say, “Me first! Me first!” Také learned those words, and she quickly falls back when she hears them.
Some of the paths through the brush are natural. There are places back there though where we see traces of people in places where we never set foot. There are also signs people sometimes spend the night in the brush. We’ve even found were used condoms on the ground. Také goesinto the bushes. Usually, she comes back right away when I call, but not always. The times when I called and she didn’t return were when other canine instincts took over—instincts that overruled her training and caused her to obsess about things. When she finally did come back, she’d be running her tongue around her lips, and I could tell what she’d eaten. I knew by the smell—sometimes the leftovers of people who had camped there or even human feces. I’d scold her, “Why’d you eat that? Disgusting!” but she always pretended not to hear.
*
Partway down the path, there is a steep precipice of red dirt.
When Také was young and strong, she could run for what seemed like ages without getting tired. I’d stand at the top of the precipice and throw a ball down for her to chase. It didn’t matter where it went; she’d look all over until she found it and brought it back. Watching from above, I wondered where dogs get their motivation.
Sometimes the ball would get stuck in some branches. Také would retrieve it by stretching her hind legs and pressing her belly against the tree as if trying to stand and climb it. She also sometimes rolled deep into the bushes. She’d dive in and return, covered in spider webs. Once out, she’d dive back in with renewed vigor. She’d repeat this over and over before until she eventually brought the ball back. Once that was done, it was just a plain, old, dirty ball, the kind that you can pick up anywhere, if you’d even pick it up, that is…
I’d have gladly thrown it if just give me the damn thing. However, letting go didn’t seem to be in her vocabulary.
She’d come back, holding the ball triumphantly in her mouth after all her trouble, but she wouldn’t let go, putting an end to our games. I scolded her angrily, sometimes trying to pry her teeth open and take it back by force, but still, she refused to let go. Her sharp teeth clamped down with such force that tools couldn’t pry them loose. just shut her eyes, clenched her teeth, and waited for my unreasonable burst of anger to subside, never letting go.
Také was obedient when it came to other things, but not the ball. The more stubborn she got, the more ticked off I’d be. Sometimes she made me furious. It was impossible for me to understand. Was there something about the ball more important for this dog than her master’s voice?
I’d give up. Quarrelling with my dogs makes me miserable. Whenever I raise my voice, I just feel stupid. Eventually, I found a new method to get it out of her mouth. I’d bring two balls along. As soon as Také fetched one, I’d throw the other. The instant the second one left my hand, she’d drop the first.
Her eagerness to fetch and her steadfast refusal to let the ball go weren’t rooted in her will or the genes inherited from her police-dog parents. No, they had to do with the canine qualities instilled in her. As I stood on the precipice, I often thought her tenacity represented some collective canine instinct passed down for generations and generations on end.
We started a new game. I’d stand at the bottom of the precipice and throw a stick to fetch. That was around the time she overtook my children, turning old enough that if she were human, she’d have been called “Mother” or “Auntie.” We spayed her. Také put on weight. I put on weight. Sarako temporarily left the house for college, and the task of walking Také twice a day fell to me. Tomé also came on the evening walk, but I worried about Také’s behavior when around other dogs, so didn’t want to leave Tomé in charge alone.
There are lots of eucalyptus trees growing under the precipice, and they grow quickly. Meanwhile, they shed leaves, branches, and bark, which grow tattered and cover the ground. There was no shortage of sticks to throw. I’d hold one, and Také would sit on her hind legs, ready to spring into action, eyes shining and fixated on my hand.
We played that way for a long time—in fact, for years.
Now, Také has gone blind and deaf. She can’t fetch any more. The two of us don’t go below the precipice any more she’d have to climb back up. There are two paths—a short, steep one and a long, gentle one—but they’re both getting harder and harder for her.
*
I found the key I dropped on the narrow path below the precipice. Také was silent on the way back. She walked along, out of breath and staring straight ahead. From the way she walked, I could tell her leg and hip joints hurt. Shepherds are notorious for bad joints. Také, had lived a relatively healthy life up to that point, but maybe in her old age, she’d finally developed the chronic joint problems of her ancestors. By this point, she was grown as old as my father, who was living alone in Kumamoto after my mother’s death. There she was, creaking along.
When Také first started living with us, I was in charge of her walks. That was when I came to the park the first time. Until then, I’d barely noticed the park down the street from us. It was the end of summer. The plants were completely withered. On our walks, I nicknamed the place “the wasteland.” Winter came, and it rained. Spring came, and flowers bloomed. The whole wasteland was covered in flowers. I looked wide-eyed at the quantity, variety, and brilliance of the flowers. Spring went by, and everything dried out and died. Summer ended, winter came. It rained, and I watched the flowers bloom again. And as always, Také was there at my side.
Také’s Big Illness
Také hates doctors.
We’ve had the same vet for years, but she’s never warmed up to him. She really hated the clinic. As soon as she walked in, she’d start trembling. When we were called into the examination room, she’d start whining pitifully. When she went back for treatment, she’d resist with her whole being. Every time.
A long time ago, she was hospitalized for a half a day because of runny ears. When she was separated from me, she whimpered, whined, and yelped. She cried even more than a human child. She stood so stiff that she had to be dragged along. In the waiting room, there were chairs, tables, and a reception desk. When I came back a few hours later to pick her up, she saw me through the door, and she jerked the man holding her leash so hard that he fell and let the leash go. Také bounded over the chairs, tables, and counter, and rubbed up against me for all she was worth.
Other than an ongoing problem with runny ears, Také lived a healthy life until two years ago when she got really sick for the first time. I don’t know what caused it. Maybe she got some rat poison, maybe she a spider bit her—who knows? I wasn’t with her; I was away in Japan. Také was staying at my friend’s house as their watchdog—I say “friend,” but actually, Také was born in his house. Since she’d come from him, she knew her way around that family. So anyway, Také suddenly got ill, and my friend took her to the vet. She contacted Sarako, and Sarako contacted me. Také stayed at the clinic for treatment.
The medical expenses added up to roughly seven thousand dollars. When I heard the bill, I gasped. Because my friend felt responsible, she paid half. Even so, that still left thirty-five hundred dollars. It knocked the wind out of me.
Sarako seemed really scared.
She kept calling me on her cell phone from the clinic. (Because it was an emergency, the neighbor hadn’t gone to our usual vet but to a twenty-four-hour clinic.) Sarako told me, they’re treating him my doing such-and-such and such-and-such, and it’ll cost about this much… Is that ok? I could’ve said no, but that would mean death. Sarako was still young and fragile. It would have been too much for her. She’d been with Také since she was thirteen. It crossed my mind that it was just up to me, I would’ve put her down. But then again, could I really do it? Would I really be able to stand firm and declare her time up?
Také was discharged. When I returned home, she’d returned to normal. She was old, but she still knocked a ball around with her feet, rode in the car, and went to the park. That made us wonder—where should we draw the line?
I could have been firm. My goodness, if I talked to the vet, he’d understand. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
In America, dog owners are quicker to euthanize their pets than in Japan. I’ve never taken a survey, but that the impression I get from everyone I know. They often do it before their pets experience lots of pain to spare unnecessary suffering. But Americans overreact, treating the aging and death of a dog just like the aging and death of a human being—they consider the pet’s life to be more important than money, so they do best to keep it alive.
Sarako and I had a heart-to-heart to discuss our options. But when it came to that option, we kept on putting it off. We came to an agreement. If Také fell that sick again, we wouldn’t treat her. She’d had a long life. If she got sick, she’d be sick. If she dies, she’d die. We could live with that, couldn’t we?
Dogs take medication for worms every month. It’s fairly expensive. Six months’ worth costs more than a hundred dollars, either in Japan or California. We’d given it to her for thirteen years without fail, but when we ran out a few months ago, I didn’t refill the prescription. After all, Také had reached a ripe, old age. If she got worms, she’d die of old age before the worms ever got her. That was the logic I used.
I’m always forgetting things. Také isn’t the only one who’s gone a little senile.
A few days ago, our youngest dog Niko, a Papillon, ran out of worm pills so we went to the vet. It had slipped my mind that we’d stopped Také’s pills, so I got hers refilled too. They told me the prescription had run out months ago so they couldn’t fill it. If she got infected while she wasn’t taking the worm pills, the parasites in her heart would die and their dead bodies would clog up her arteries and stop her heart.
While I was at the reception counter dealing with this, an unbelievably old dog came out of one of the examination rooms. I asked how old it was and learned it was sixteen—107 in human years—super ancient, like some ancient witch or something. In dog years, the owner would have been around ten, but alas, she was human, so seventy. She was using a special harness for elderly dogs, which pulled it to its feet to get it going. The owner told me they had put the dog to sleep to clean its teeth. In fact, the vet had advised me to do the same thing—not clean my teeth, I mean, Niko’s teeth.
Niko has an impressively long medical history.
When he was a puppy, he had diarrhea so we took him to an emergency clinic. The vet suspected something bad, so we did test after test, quickly running up a thousand-dollar bill. In the end, it turned out to be nothing. Next, the blood tests we did before having him neutered came back abnormal, so our vet sent him to a larger clinic, where they did test after test, resulting in another thousand dollars down the hole. That too turned out to be nothing. Next, he got stung by a bee and had to go into the clinic, which cost several hundred dollars. The pièce-de-résistance came when he was hit by a car in front of our house—two thousand dollars later, he’d come back to life. For a while, he had to wear a collar around his neck that made him look like an Elizabethan gentleman or a frilled-neck lizard. He couldn’t really go on walks, so I put him in reusable grocery bag, slung him over my shoulder, and took him for a walk. (I say this, even though I was the only one walking.) At first, he swung back and forth quietly, but as he got better, he started moving his feet excitedly like he was walking by himself. It was like a baby kicking in the womb.
The clinic told me a dental cleaning under a general anesthetic cost four hundred bucks. Enough to buy a nice set of clothes. If you were to ask me what was more important—my dog’s health or some clothes—I’d definitely answer my dog. Even so, I couldn’t help thinking a four-hundred-dollar dental cleaning didn’t seem all that necessary. Niko did have bad breath. That’s why the clinic suggested it, but his bad breath wasn’t something new. His breath had been stinky from the start, ever since he came to live with us at three months old. When I picked him up, he’d try to lick me on the mouth, so I’d say “No licking”—a phrase that I taught him specifically. We bought him a toothbrush but didn’t use it. Same with Také—a dog with dog teeth. I only brushed my children’s teeth when I had no choice, so what were the chances I’d brush hers? We still haven’t given her that four-hundred-dollar trip to the dentist yet.
*
The clinic recommended something for Také too. Cortisone shots, like the ones my arthritic husband gets. The vet told us they make life much easier for older dogs. I asked how much they were, and he said fifty. Low enough to give it a try.
I’m not sure how effective the cortisone shots were. There wasn’t any “a-ha” moment when her condition suddenly improved. No such thing. I got fed up with my vet’s over-eagerness to treat. I also got fed up with myself. I kept getting dragged along further and further. It’s not easy to balance frugality against a love for dogs.
I think about my mother.
Keep in mind, she was human. She started to lose feeling in her extremities while under the care of her primary doctor. She went into the hospital, and that was it. It took five years for her to die. The hospital staff were warm and gave her lots of attention. However, five years without feeling in your hands and legs is just too long.
I think of my father.
Keep in mind, he’s human too. (Obviously.) Parkinson’s is his most recent problem, but before that, he had stomach cancer. He also had quite a few mini-strokes, and something was wrong with his spine. Every day he took tons of pills for his blood flow, high blood pressure, and heart regularity. That’s how he survived one day to the next. However, other afflictions too him. He was lonely. Bored even. Loneliness and thoughts of death crowded their way into his head. When I called him, he’d just whisper into the phone, “Oh, I’m so bored, I’d be better off if I just died, but I can’t do it…”
There is one thing dogs can do that human beings can’t. They can grow old, fall ill, and die naturally.
Life in our family went on, as Také aged. We didn’t necessarily do anything special. We always gave her good food, prepared a warm bed, cleaned up her messes, and took her on walks—all to help her live out her natural lifespan. However, we did stop her worm medication. Her routine check-ups, too.
Recently, a large lump appeared on Také’s back. If I took her to the vet, he’d look into it. He’d say, “If it’s benign, we can do surgery or keep an eye on it until dies of other causes. If it’s malignant, we can care for her while she passes away or put her to sleep if she’s in pain.” But we won’t do either of those things right away. Nope. We’ll love and live with her, even if she does have a lump.
We’ll probably choose to put her to sleep if she does begin to suffer. At least it’d be in a familiar clinic with a vet who’d known her for years. But when I imagine her whining and resisting as she takes her last breath, the thought breaks my heart.
A fellow dog-owner told me some vets make house calls. She said you can’t always move big dogs, so the vet will come to your house and do it down there. However, the thought of letting Také die at the hand of a stranger breaks my heart too.
The Time Has Come
When the day finally arrived, Také didn’t go on her morning walk.
She was walking so unsteadily that I put a few cookies on the ground. She’d eat one, slowly walk a little further, then eat the next. This continued for about thirty feet before we turned back. At home, Tomé was ready to take Luis and Niko out for a walk. (After my father died, I brought his eleven year-old dog, a Papillon named Luis, back to California to live with us. I had been the one to twist his arm and get a dog in the first place.) Luis ran up to me. Without making a sound, Také bit him. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Luis yapped and ran into Tomé’s arms. She said, “Looks like you got a little bite,” as if it was nothing.
The burden got heavier and heavier. I was spending whole days caring for the dogs. Také was decrepit; Luis couldn’t behave, and Niko was constantly getting pushed around by the other two. Then we got Little Pea, a parakeet. She was usually in the cage or, more often, perched on my shoulder, but she didn’t have any freedom. She just grew and stared at me. My husband was getting older, grumpier, and more dissatisfied. My daughters only thought of themselves and didn’t seem to really think of me as their mother. (Sigh. They were probably right.) Every time I wiped up one of Také’s accidents, every time I washed her foul-smelling yoga mat, I wondered how much longer this would go on.
And then there was my father.
For eight years, I had been making frequent trips between California and Kumamoto. At first, every two months. As his health worsened, it became harder to leave him so long, so I started going every month and a half, then every month. For the last few months, I was wrecked with exhaustion. Unless I dragged myself along and forced myself onto the plane, I’d never have gone anywhere. When I got off the plane, I’d go see my father who was dying but not yet dead. Meanwhile, his irritation with the world spilled over. Every day was jam-packed. I thought that this last a while, but his death came all too soon.
After snapping at Luis, Také spent the rest of the afternoon asleep. I went out on the deck in the evening and saw Také trying to poop. She lowered her haunches and strained, but nothing came out. Next she started to puke, but nothing came out. She began tottering around in circles on the deck, then behind the house. By the cactus garden. If she fell in, she’d be in trouble. I followed her, but she just stood there like she was completely out of it. She moved a little, then stood still again, doing nothing. We went into the house for a bit, but then she went back outside behind the house again. Again, she didn’t poop or puke.
I tried to give her a walk that evening, but she was so unsteady that I called it off. Her fur was a mess. I gave her some milk, but she just gave it a single lick and left it alone. She didn’t touch dinner. Tomé said, “That’s how she behaved when she had that stroke when you were in Japan. She didn’t eat until you got back, then she started eating again and got better.”
It was around ten o’clock at night. I was in my study playing a video game. The computer gives you a pile of mahjong tiles; you find matching pairs and set them aside until the pile is gone—one of the simplest games imaginable. I know. I tend to get addicted to things. Over the years, I’ve been addicted to all sorts of things, sometimes nearly ruining myself. That’s how this was too. It was just a dumb game, but I’d start playing for a few minutes, only to find hours go by. The game wasn’t all that interesting; I was just addicted. The only difference from an alcohol or drug addiction was that it didn’t cost anything. Still, such things can ruin your life. I was falling more and more behind with work, but I’d keep playing. Deep inside, I worried I was on the path to ruin.
Také was in my study whimpering as I played. Her sounds were slightly different than her usual sighs. As my husband headed to bed, he stopped by and said, “The dog’s suffering. Don’t you think it’s time to put her to sleep?” I stopped the game and went to Také’s side. She looked at me without raising her head. I petted her for a while as she lay, head down. As I stroked her, her whimpers quieted. I felt sorry when I realized she wanted my attention, and I felt terrible I’d ignored her for a silly game.
I stroked her for a while. The strength to live seemed to be draining away right before my eyes. I thought about what my husband had said. Perhaps he was right. I texted Sarako’s phone, “Také’s bad. Put to sleep?”
Sarako, who was living an apartment by then, rushed home. Tomé came down from the second story. Everyone sat in my study, petting and stroking her as we talked.
Tomé wept, “I don’t want to put her to sleep.”
Sarako said, “But if Mom isn’t here, I’m at work, and you’re at school, we can’t help her. Also, Mom probably doesn’t want Také to die when she’s away.” I had plans for a work trip two days later.
I told them I wasn’t sure they should rush such a big decision just to fit my schedule.
They nodded, but Tomé insisted, “You’ve done it before.”
I explained, “The reason we could handle it before was because you were on summer vacation. But now you can’t take care of her because of school. Let’s just wait until tomorrow morning and see how she is. If she’s not doing well, we’ll call the vet then.”
“But Také can’t get in the car,” said Tomé.
“If I’m here, I can pick her up and put her in,” said Sarako.
“In any case, let’s have our regular vet take care of her. Not some vet she doesn’t know.”
Sarako cried, “I don’t want to put her down. I don’t want to take her to get killed. I hope she dies peacefully tonight so we don’t have to do it.”
Také grew quiet as my daughters stroked her, giving her their love and attention. A little life returned to her. When Luis peeked into the room, she lifted her head and made a scary expression at him.
Tomé said, “She seems to be doing alright. She’s getting better.”
I found she’d peed in the living room so I wiped it up. Like usual. Back in my room, Sarako came in and said, “Také pooped. It was a hard one. She probably had to squeeze it out.” She held up the plastic bag to show me. Everyone nodded, “That’s what she’d been trying to do earlier.”
Sarako went home, telling us she’d stop by again tomorrow morning. Tomé went to her own room. I started writing some e-mail. I needed to answer some messages, but that just took ten minutes. Maybe five. When done, I looked at Také lying nearby. She was dead.
I had heard her breathing as I typed. I kept writing, assuming I’d know if something went wrong. She’d been breathing really deeply—not the same tortured way she had been before my daughters came in to pet her. So I wrote. And for a moment, I got caught up. For just two or three minutes. When I clicked “send,” I realized I didn’t hear her breathing. That’s when I saw her.
I knew immediately. She was dead.
She looked like she was sleeping, except for the unnatural way her legs were bent. I looked at her belly. It looked the same as always but wasn’t moving. I touched her. Usually, she’d look up in surprise, but this time, she didn’t budge.
I went up to Tomé’s room. It was pitch black. I shook her awake and told her. My husband was reading in bed. I told him too. Then I texted Sarako, “Také died.”
Sarako rushed home and burst into the house. She’d just reached her apartment when she saw the text. My daughters took turns hugging Také and crying. Tomé brought down some incense from her room and quietly lit it. Sarako brought in an orchid and placed it near Také’s body. Sarako told us she was going to spend the night with us. Then all my daughters went to their own rooms to sleep. Even after the house grew quiet, I stayed in my study with Také and wrote two or three more e-mails. But Také wasn’t there any longer.
That morning, Sarako made arrangements with a pet crematorium. Eternal Friends Pet Cremation wasn’t far from us. We wrapped Také up in Sarako’s sheets. Niko kept coming up to her and sniffing. Her eyes remained closed, but her mouth was open and her tongue hanging out. Her belly looked full. Otherwise, she looked the same. But she wasn’t there any longer.
The undertaker came after Sarako and Tomé left. I called my husband to say Také was going. He usually doesn’t get up when I bother him, but this time, he immediately emerged from his studio.
The undertaker and I carried Také out on a stretcher. She was old and thin but even so, probably weighed sixty pounds or more. When she was young and fit, she’d weighed nearly ninety. She was wrapped in a sheet, but her legs stuck out a little. I carelessly bumped the heavy stretcher into some corners, and her legs shook silently. When we put her in the car, I fixed the sheets again and petted her. It was still her, but she wasn’t there any longer.
She had gone for good. When my parents died, we covered their deaths with make-up. We decorated and hid death so we didn’t have to see it. But death was on full view in Také’s furry face and legs. We make a big deal about somebody’s body, but what remains is only an empty shell. Také was there until just moments ago, but no more. That made me think about what had been there. And since then, I’ve never played a video game again.
Jeffrey Angles would like to thank the students in his translation seminar for their work on early drafts of the first two parts of this selection: Maria Carson, Nicole Furioso, Grace Gettig, Sabrina Gopshtein, Pamela Gudobba, Mariko Horikawa, Jasmine Kraemer, Jack Noble, Eimi O’Brien, Yurina Takahashi, Tim Thomas, Sara Wagner, and Chris Walters.
Itō Hiromi is an award-winning Japanese poet and essayist. She is well-known for her unconventional style and engagement with issues of gender and immigration, as well as for her deep attention to plant life. Much of Itō’s writing since the 1990s has explored her time living in Southern California in the United States. Her 1998 novella Hausu puranto (House Plant, Shinchōsha) was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize for Literature. Itō translated House Plant into English with the help of her late husband Harold Cohen, and it was published in U.S.—Japan Women’s Journal in 2007. Two books of her poetry have also been translated into English: Wild Grass on the Riverbank and Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō (both translated by Jeffrey Angles and published by Action Books, US, and Tilted Axis Press, UK). “Living Trees and Dying Trees” is excerpted from Itō’s 2014 essay collection Kodama Kusadama (Tree Spirits Grass Spirits), published by Iwanami Shoten.
Jeffrey Angles (b. 1971) is a professor of Japanese literature and translation at Western Michigan University. His own book of Japanese-language poetry Watashi no hizuke henkōsen (My International Dateline, 2016) won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, making him the first non-native speaker to win this prestigious award for poetry since the prize was founded in 1949. An award-winning translator, he has also produced English collections of dozens of Japan’s most important modern novelists and poets, including Shinobu Orikuchi, Hiromi Itō, Yoko Tawada, Mutsuo Takahashi, and Chimako Tada.
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