Dazai Osamu -Oblique Sun 5-4

There is a female snake with red stripes on a stone in her shoes on the porch, isn't there? Look at it.
　With a chill in my heart, I stood up and walked out to the porch, and looked through the glass door to see a snake stretched out on the shoe-stone, basking in the autumn sun. I was dizzy and giddy.
　I know you. You've grown a little older and older since then, but you're still that she-snake who had her eggs roasted for me. I'm well aware of your vengeance, so go away. Please go away.
　I stared at the snake, hoping in my heart that it would go away, but it refused to budge. For some reason, I didn't want the nurse to see the snake. I stomped my foot hard and said
"No, Mother. You can't rely on your dreams.
　The snake finally moved its body and slithered down from the stone.
　It's no use. Seeing the snake, resignation welled up in my heart for the first time. At the time of your father's death, there was also a small black snake by his bedside, and I saw a snake entangled in a tree in the garden at that time.
　She seemed to have lost the energy to get up on the floor and was always slumped over, leaving her body completely in the hands of the attendant nurse, and she hardly seemed to be able to finish her meals. After seeing the snake, I felt a sense of peace, or perhaps I should say happiness, that overcame the depths of my grief, and I decided to stay by her side as long as I could.
　The next day, I began to sit by her bedside and do some knitting. I was much faster than others at knitting and needlework, but I was not very good at it. So my mother would always take me by the hand and teach me what I was not good at. That day, I had no desire to knit, but I took out a box of woolen yarn and began to knit without a care in the world so that I would not be unnaturally attached to her.
　My mother stared at my hands and said, "Your socks.
She stared at my hands and said, "You're going to knit your socks, aren't you?　If so, you'll have to make eight more, or they'll be too tight to wear.
　He said.
　When I was a child, I couldn't knit very well no matter how many times she taught me, but I was just as confused as I was then.
　She didn't seem to be in any pain at all when she was sleeping like this. She hadn't eaten at all since early this morning, and I would only occasionally fill her mouth with tea on gauze.
I saw your picture in the newspaper, can you show it to me again?
　I held the section of the newspaper up to her face.
You've aged.
No, it's a bad photo. No, it's a bad photo. She looked so young and happy in the last one. You must be rather pleased with your age.
Why?
Because His Majesty has just been released.
　Her mother smiled sadly. Then, after a while.
"I can't cry anymore, even if I wanted to.
　She said, "I don't cry anymore even if I want to.
　I suddenly thought that her mother must be happy now. Happiness is like gold dust glittering faintly at the bottom of a river of sorrow, isn't it? If that is what happiness feels like, then His Majesty, your mother, and I are indeed happy now. It was a quiet autumn morning. The sun was soft in the autumn garden. I stopped knitting and looked out at the sea, which was shining high above my chest.
"Mother. I've been so naive.
　I wanted to say something more, but I was too embarrassed to say it to the nurse who was preparing an IV in the corner of the room.
What do you mean until now?
　Her mother, with a thinly veiled smile, stopped listening.
"So you know the world now?
　I felt my face turn red for some reason.
"I don't know about the world.
　I don't know what the world is," she said in a low voice, turning her face away from me, as if talking to herself.
I don't understand. I don't understand, and I don't think anyone else does.　No matter how much time passes, everyone is still a child. They don't understand anything.
　But I have to live. I may be a child, but I can't just be a child anymore. I have to compete with the world from now on. Oh, my mother was the last person who could end her life without fighting with others, without hatred or envy, and in a beautiful and sad way, as she did. Dying people are beautiful. To live. Surviving. I feel that it is very ugly, smells of blood, and is an awful thing. I tried to picture a pregnant snake digging a hole on the tatami. But there was something I couldn't give up. I will survive and fight against the world to accomplish what I want. When it became clear that my mother was going to die, my romanticism and sentimentality gradually disappeared, and I felt as if I was turning into a vicious creature that could not be traced.
　Just after noon that day, as I was standing beside her, soothing her mouth, a car pulled up in front of the gate. It was Wada's uncle, who had come with his aunt from Tokyo by car. When my uncle arrived at the hospital room and sat silently at my mother's bedside, my mother covered the lower half of her face with a handkerchief, looked at my uncle's face, and cried. But she only looked like she was crying, no tears came out. She looked like a doll.
"Where's Naoharu?
　Where is Naoji?
　I went upstairs and told Naoji, who was lying on the sofa in the western room reading a new magazine, that his mother wanted to see him.
"Your mother wants to see you," I said.
　I said to him.
He said, "My mother wants to see you again. How can you people put up with so much and hang in there? You have thick nerves. You're so heartless. Our hearts are burning, but our bodies are weak, and we don't have the strength to stay with you.
　I don't have the strength to stay with you," she said as she put on her jacket and came downstairs with me.
　As we sat together at her bedside, she suddenly took her hand out from under her futon, pointed silently at Naoji, then at me, and then turned her face toward my uncle and put both of her palms together.
　My uncle nodded his head and said
"Oh, I understand. I understand.
　I understand.
　As if relieved, your mother lightly closed her eyes and gently put her hands into the futon.
　I cried, and Naoji turned his head and sobbed.
　Just then, Mr. Miyake's old doctor came from Nagaoka and gave him an injection. Your mother must have felt that she had nothing left to worry about now that she had met your uncle.
She said, "Doctor, please hurry up and make me feel better.
　She said.
　The old doctor and my uncle looked at each other and kept silent, tears glistening in their eyes.
　I got up and went to the dining room, made the fox udon noodles that my uncle liked, and took them to the kitchen with my teacher, Naoji, and my aunt, and then presented my uncle's gift of sandwiches from the Marunouchi Hotel to my mother and put them on her pillow.
"You must be busy.
　She whispered, "You must be busy.
　Everyone chatted for a while in the room, and then my aunt and uncle had to go back to Tokyo tonight, so they handed me a package of money to visit her, and Mr. Miyake decided to go back with the nurse, so I told the attendant nurse how to treat him. He was still conscious, and his heart was not too bad, so even with just injections, he should be okay for another four or five days, so everyone drove back to Tokyo that day.
　After dropping everyone off, I went to the tatami room and found my mother smiling at me in a friendly way.
"You must have been busy.
　She said again in a whispery voice. His face seemed to glow with vitality. I thought that she must have been happy to see her uncle.
No.
　I smiled, feeling a little buoyant myself.
　This was the last time I talked to my mother.
　About three hours later, my mother passed away. In the quiet twilight of autumn, a nurse took her pulse and Naoji and I, her only two immediate family members, watched over her as her beautiful mother, the last noble lady in Japan, passed away.
　Her face was almost exactly the same as when she died. In the case of her father, the color of his face changed quickly, but the color of her mother's face did not change at all, and only her breathing ceased. It was hard to tell when the breathing stopped. The swelling in her face had gone down from the day before, her cheeks were as smooth as wax, and her thin lips seemed to be twitching faintly with a smile. I thought she resembled Marya of the Pieta.