なくても変わらないものと、暖かい気持ちと Things that don’t change anything when they’re gone, and warm feelings
およそ二十年ぶりに、仕事で或るメルヘンランドに行った。
私はかつてのそこを覚えているが、それはそれ。現在と比べることなど問題にならず、仕事を楽しんだ。その場にいた一期一会のメンバーが気持ちのよい人たちばかりで、一人、高校生のときに好きだった子に似ているなんて思ったけど、一晩寝ると、再体験が上手くいった世界と、上手くいかなかった世界と、どちらであってもそれほど変わりはなさそうだという実感だけが、体を占めていた。
それはもう圧倒的に、もしもこの記憶がなくても、何も変わらないし、 もしもあの子の笑顔を一度も見られなかったとしても、何も変わらない。 そういう経験があるのだ、と確信に満ちてその日を思い返すとき、夜道を歩きながら、すごく暖かい気持ちになる。
あれは自立している出来事なのだ。私よりもよく記憶している人間がきっといることだって、露ほども関係ない。心が動いたことは決して消えず、その住処は脳ではなく体だ、心臓だ。だから私はあの日を思い出すと照れてしまったように微笑むけれど、忘れても何の問題もない。
小説家にとって、日課である小説に容易く奉仕しない経験、愛していて、直接ペンでは触れない経験こそギフトだ。それから、
「歩いていて不意に、記憶のほうも、私がいなくても大丈夫だなと思う。 私に連動せずにいてくれるから、いとしい。 私に従わないでいてくれるから、助かってる。 共に歩いているけど、表現と記憶と私は独立して人の目に触れることもできる。 こう考えたほうが、何だか心地良い風が吹く。」
とメモしてあるのは、翌日銀座の街路樹（大木）が風を受けてざわめくのを二階の喫茶店から眺めていて現れた思いだ。はじめは風が吹かないとただ静かで、揺られるときの美しさにはかなわないと思っていたが、葉があることがはじまりなのだと考え直した。
どのような風が吹こうが、その風に吹かれる様子を誰がどう見ようが、葉があり風が止んでも消えないことがすべてだ。そこに生きて心を動かされたことがはじまりで、どのように覚えているか、どのように表現するかはまた独立しており、自由に三方に駆けていく。手をつなぐばかりが愛じゃない。
この認識をキープしたまま「満州写真全史」で80年以上前に子供だった方の写真を観ると、全く感傷的にならなかった。この人は生きていたから、今も生きているという確信があり、撮影者が絵画のような構図で処理していることも気にならなかった。
別の人間の感性に組み敷かれることをつい懐かしんでしまいそうになり、出かけたところで、写真を撮られ一瞬その状態に置かれた人達と呼応し合う感覚を得た。時を超えてなどいない。生活において互いが、つまり私にとって彼らが、80年前のその人たちにとって私が、灯である。
After about 20 years, I went to a certain Märchen Land for work.
I remember how it used to be, but that was then. Comparing it with how it is now wasn’t a problem, and I enjoyed my work. It was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with the members there, and they were all pleasant people. One of them resembled a kid I had liked back in high school, but my body was filled with the feeling that if I slept with them for a night, there wouldn’t be much of a difference between the world where the re-experience went well and the world where it didn’t.
Overwhelmingly, it was so: nothing would change even without that memory, and nothing would change even if I could never see that kid’s smile again. As I think back on that day, filled with the confidence that such experiences exist, I am overcome with an incredibly warm feeling as I walk down the street at night.
That is an independent incident. Even the fact that there are people who remember it better than I do is totally irrelevant. The fact that my heart was moved will never disappear, and the dwelling-place of that movement isn’t my brain but my body, my heart. That’s why although whenever I remember that day I smile like I’m embarrassed, there wouldn’t be a single problem if I forgot it.
To a writer, experiences that don’t easily give themselves over to the stories that are our daily work are what we love, and experiences we don’t directly touch with a pen are gifts. That’s why, when I wrote the following:
“As I’m walking, I suddenly think that it would be okay, not just if the memories weren’t there but if I weren’t there. You’re dear to me because you’re there without moving with me like a gear. You’re helping me by being there without following me. We’re walking together, but my expressions, my memories, and I can be seen independently. Thinking about it this way somehow makes a pleasant wind blow.” These were the thoughts that appeared in my mind as I watched the roadside trees of Ginza rustle in the wind from a second-floor cafe. At first I thought that it was just quiet without the wind, and the beauty when the trees shook was beyond compare, but I thought again: it all started from there being leaves.
No matter how the wind blows, no matter who will see the trees in the wind and how, the fact that there are leaves and they don’t disappear when the wind stops is everything. The fact that I was alive and my heart was moved was the start; how I remember it and how I express it are independent matters that run freely in three directions. Just holding hands isn’t love.
When I held on to this realization and looked at the photographs of people who had been children over 80 years ago in the exhibition “The Development of Japanese Modern Photography in Manchoukuo”, I didn’t become sentimental at all. Because these people had been alive, I had the confidence that they were alive today as well, and it didn’t bother me that the photographer had used a composition like that of a painting.
I had the feeling of acting in concert with the people who started to yearn to be pressed down by the sensitivity of others, and who went out to change their mood, only to have their photograph taken and be put in the same state for a moment. We weren’t transcending time or anything like that. In life, we were to each other - that is, they were to me and I was to them 80 years ago - a light.
