About 20 years ago, around 8:30 in the morning when the morning meeting for teachers finished, I had a telephone call from Kyohei Kato’s mother. Kyohei was a first year student at N Senior High School which I worked for as an English teacher. He was one of my homeroom students.
“Hello, this is
Matsuoka speaking,” I answered.
“This is Kyohei Kato’s
mother. I am sorry to call you so early in the morning, but I thought it
important to inform you of this: my son Kyohei and I won’t be at home any more.
So please don’t visit us.”
I did not comprehend
thoroughly what she meant, because I was in a hurry; the morning homeroom class
meeting would start in a few minutes.
“All right, thank you
for calling,” I said hanging up the phone.
After coming back
from my homeroom class, I thought about the telephone call. What did she mean
by telling me that I didn’t have to visit their house? Why wouldn’t they be
there any more?
I had been visiting
Kyohei at his house several times for the past three months, because he did not
come to school. Since I did not have class on Monday morning, I used to visit
him then.
Usually his mother
was at home when I visited him. She used to tell me Kyohei locked the door of
his room from the inside and did not come out. She said, “I am sorry that you
had to come to my house all the way from school.” She suggested that Kyohei and
his father hated each other. She told me that she and her husband had often quarreled
since Kyohei was a little child. She said she was scared of the bad relationship
between them, because they even fought with weapons. His father had threatened him
with a pair of pincers and her son had a drill. I was shocked. It was like
killing each other in a gangster movie.
While I was
wondering what the matter was with them, I was seized with a terrible fear;
they might commit suicide!
I told Mr. Sato,
one of my colleagues, about the problem to.
“Call and ask her
to tell you about the matter in more detail,” he said.
I called her three
or four times but there was no response. So we decided to visit his house.
When we arrived at his
house, we found his father alone. He was apparently drunk, because he was
unable to articulate properly. I told him about the call from his wife, and
asked him if he knew where they were.
“I don’t know. They
have gone away,” he said in an irritated voice.
“Is there anywhere
they might have gone?” I said.
“Why are you meddling
with us? It’s none of your business!”
“But I am Kyohei’s homeroom
teacher. I have to know where he is,” I said sharply.
“I don’t care where
they are,” he said as if they were total strangers.
“I think,” Mr. Sato
said. “You should report this to the police, otherwise, they might…,” he
stopped abruptly. I thought he was going to say, “They might commit suicide.”
“I don’t care. I don’t
care about them at all!” he said in a loud voice.
We gave up talking
with him and returned to school.
The next day, there
was no news about them in the media. I was not able to teach English well nor
sleep well.
On the afternoon of
the third day, the telephone in the teachers’ room rang. It was for me. I was
afraid something bad had happened to Kyohei.
“Hello, this is
Matsuoka speaking,”
“This is Kyohei’s
mother,” she said.
So, she was alive and
Kyohei was alive, too.
“Mr. Matsuoka, we are
sorry to have troubled you. You might have wondered where we went. We are now
staying at a hotel near my house. So don’t worry about us.”
Weeks later, Kyohei
came to school. I talked with him. He told me how he had been raised by his parents.
“My parents were
always quarreling when I was a child. I thought this was normal for family. I
thought every married couple were quarreling, but when I was a fourth grader, I
visited my friend’s house and I was surprised that his parents did not fight.
Every time I visited him, they never argued. So I thought my family was
unusual. I have been brought up in an abnormal family.”
He had had such a
wretched childhood.
What has become of
him? I don’t know, because he quit school when he finished the first year.
I hope he is doing
fine.
