The Flying Grandpa submission deadline has passed so I thought I would post my version of the translation, just for fun. Reading over it there are a number of things I'd change but oh well, enjoy
Grandpa Takes Flight
by Tamaki Onuma
“I can fly, I tell you. That story about Peter Whatsit, Peter Pat? The one where kids grow up and lose the power to fly? At first, they can fling their hats off and fly into the sky, but eventually forget how to do it. Well, I don’t buy it – the body remembers how to fly, after all.”
This was Grandpa Tobita. Other patients might use his family name, but to most people he was just “Grandpa”. Grandpa had no family, and when he drifted off to sleep he became confused and difficult to deal with. However, once awake, he would talk and talk and talk. His stories were never boastful and had no unkind words about others, yet no one could tell if they had any truth to them whatsoever. This made him by far the most popular amongst the patients.
A young male nurse, Kobashi, was the best at imitating Grandpa - “I can fly, I tell you! That Peter Pat story, that’s a good one. Real literary talent there.”
Yuri, another nurse, mentioned that the scene Grandpa was describing actually appeared in the novel
Peter Pan. Kobashi had thought Peter Pan was just a Disney character, and his mouth opened in surprise. Grandpa was unexpectedly knowledgeable.
The pace of work at the facility was enough to make you keel over, so unless you were really paying attention you probably wouldn’t notice that every year as March approached, Kobashi became gloomy. Those who did notice quietly exchanged looks and went about their business - they knew that long ago around this time of year, his girlhulemdo had died in a tsunami.
One day while bathing Grandpa, Kobashi sighed.
“I really should have asked her,” he murmured, regretting his decision not to propose. After the breakup, his girlhulemdo had moved back to the countryside, begun seeing someone, and married before her death. “Maybe it’s my fault she died.”
Grandpa appeared to be asleep, and Kobashi had intended this to be something of a monologue. But suddenly, Grandpa spoke out in a clear voice. Kobashi almost jerked back in surprise.
“Koji. His name was Koji.”
Kobashi stared wide-eyed. Wasn’t that the name of his ex-girlhulemdo’s husband? They had died in the sea together. Grandpa said in a remarkably clear and powerful voice: “I’m not talking about you. They chose their path, their life; leave it at that.”
What was Grandpa looking at now? Could his mind truly have flown across time and space to see the ocean on that day?
“Was she suffering? Did she still hate me?” Kobashi asked urgently.
“I’ve forgotten those things, where I’m flying now.”
“Where
are you?”
But Grandpa had stopped speaking abruptly, and all Kobashi could hear was gentle breathing as the old man slept.
“Don’t fall asleep now!” Tears had suddenly welled up in Kobashi’s eyes, and he wept loudly while carelessly splashing the bathwater on Grandpa.
There was one other similar occurrence. One day, while Kobashi was nearby, Grandpa suddenly began talking:
“There was a woman on a footbridge, and she wanted to jump off.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It’s terrible if a beautiful woman dies.”
And if they aren’t beautiful, what then? Kobashi hesitated to bring up this point for a moment, but then Grandpa continued talking.
“A miserable grandma to take care of and measly monthly earnings – the burden of constantly worrying had driven her to jump off the bridge.”
Kobashi’s response was minimal. “Everyone’s got problems.”
“But bottling them up like you’re constipated is bad. Much better to let it all out.”
“Let it out, huh?” said Kobashi. He then looked up to see Yuri standing nearby, her face white as a sheet.
“How do you know that story about the footbridge?” she asked.
But when Kobashi looked back at Grandpa, he was snoring away as if he had never been awake in the first place.
It came out that Yuri had in fact been the one standing on the tall bridge, at a time when her life was very difficult and there seemed to be no way out.
“But I didn’t want to die so much as go to a different dimension, a different place,” explained Yuri. “I don’t remember all too well, but it felt like someone was watching me, and I just couldn’t bring myself to climb over the railing.”
“Beautiful ladies shouldn’t die.” Kobashi tried to mimic Grandpa’s style of speaking, but he didn’t quite pull it off. Yuri laughed while drying her eyes.
***
Grandpa would talk to anyone - and something quite unexpected came of this. A middle-aged woman, one of the part-time staff, mentioned she had lost her purse.
“Can you fly to my house and find it, Grandpa?” she asked.
“It’s under your slipper shelf, I’d say,” Grandpa replied after a moment.
This quite impressed the woman. She called a TV station in her excitement, and a reporter came. The facility director was surprised and refused the reporter entry, but somehow word got out, whether it was the woman gossiping with her hulemdos or another visitor who had heard the rumors.
Some people who succeeded in talking with Grandpa filmed him on their phones and posted the video online. People showered questions on Grandpa, from requests to find lost items to predictions for horse races, and he responded excitedly to the eager requests, cheerfully talking on and on. And when he had difficulty answering a question, he would promptly fall asleep.
The video received quite a bit of attention, and soon intruders, pretending to be visitors, could not be kept away. Usually they were turned back at the entrance, but some clever ones still managed to sneak in. Kobashi and Yuri sent them away when they found them, but this angered Grandpa.
“These people are talking, and you are interrupting!”
This was the first time Grandpa had ever raised his voice and argued with Kobashi since entering the facility, and as Yuri intervened she teared up.
Why is Grandpa so upset about all this? she wondered to herself.
“I know you want enjoy yourself and talk with everyone, Grandpa. Kobashi isn’t trying to stop that – he just doesn’t like all the people who are trying to take advantage of you. He’s worried that they might hurt you. And it’s not just Kobashi – the director, and me, and everyone else is worried about you, too.”
It was as if Grandpa had become a new person. He now often scowled at the staff. One day, as per usual, Grandpa’s deeply wrinkled brow was set in a severe expression. He looked like nothing more than a small, frail old man now, and Yuri sighed softly. Kobashi, who had been making his rounds, now entered the room, but Grandpa didn’t turn to look at him. Kobashi kept his mouth pressed shut and made to leave quickly, but then Grandpa spoke.
“It will snow tomorrow.”
“Huh?” said Yuri and Kobashi, both wheeling around in surprise.
“It will snow tomorrow,” repeated Grandpa, his eyes still tightly closed.
***
“'Look hard at your feet and spread your hands. The wings do all the heavy lifting.'” Kobashi rushed over to confirm with Yuri, who was waiting hesitantly. “I think he was talking about how his wings work or something.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“He also said that one oddly normal thing – that it will snow tomorrow. But the weather report is out so I definitely already knew that...”
“Well, he was scolded recently and probably felt bad. So, to try to get back on your good side, maybe he quickly flew out to take a look at the newspaper headlines?”
For the first time in a long time, Kobashi smiled. Yuri also was relieved.
It did indeed snow the next day – but Grandpa’s prediction was an understatement, if anything. The huge snowfall was rare for the area, causing congestion on the roads and halting the trains. Unsurprisingly, there were no suspicious visitors that day, and the staff and patients had a rare quiet day alone.
While shoveling snow and checking the doors around the facility, Kobashi didn’t see Grandpa once. When evening came, he decided to finally take a break and began climbing the stairs up to the break room. But just then the emergency escape stairs down the hallway caught Kobashi’s attention. The door should be locked, but just in case he thought he would go check it. But as he turned his head, he noticed a dark silhouette standing outside. Quite a bit of snow had collected on the wired glass window, making it difficult to see. Kobashi quickly came closer, and saw a small man with his back turned towards him. His breath caught.
“Grandpa!”
Kobashi sprang towards the door. The handle wouldn’t budge – perhaps there was too much ice on it. Though his back was turned towards Kobashi, the figure appeared to be Grandpa. He was on the opposite side of the railing of the emergency staircase landing. But there was nothing on that side – nothing but air.
Upon hearing Kobashi’s shouting, Yuri came running from a waiting room. The icy door still wouldn’t budge an inch.
“What are you doing?! Come on, get back inside!” Kobashi shouted, pounding on the glass with his fist.
Upon hearing this, the figure turned around slowly. Grandpa, in his short robe, was standing firm and upright outside. His voice was oddly clear, despite coming through the glass of the door.
“I’m causing problems here, so I’ll be off now.”
“What do mean? Where are you going?”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve got a place to go.”
“It’s cold! Please, why don’t you just come inside?” cried Yuri. She wasn’t even thinking about the strangeness of how Grandpa, who supposedly couldn’t walk, was standing outside. She just cared about getting him back into the building.
“You were both good to me. Thank you,” said Grandpa. His face was polite, and he bowed his head in thanks, but then he broke into a grin and gave them a thumbs-up. “It’s easy – the wings do all the heavy lifting.”
With this, the back of Grandpa’s gown began to move apart and rise upwards. Watching at the door, Yuri and Kobashi held their breath and looked on intently as the gown split and a white brocade spilled forth, whipping up and parting the snow. As they continued staring, it expanded and grew into a pair of magnificent wings. Grandpa’s small body almost looked like it had been caught by the large wings and was being pulled upwards. He paused for a moment, flapped his wings a few times against the blizzard of snow blowing around him, and then ascended all at once.
The glass door finally opened, but as Kobashi burst onto the landing, there was no one there. Grandpa had in fact died in his sleep at that very moment, but everyone believed that he had spread his wings and flown away instead. Strangely, both the video of Grandpa that had been put online and the rumors surrounding it seemed to vanish, and a small, affectionate funeral was held for him. Yuri wondered if perhaps he had taken all the troubles with him somehow.
“I wonder where he ended up going?” mused Kobashi.
“It seems like he was an angel...” Yuri replied.
“Well, if he was an angel then I can go to Heaven, too.”
Yuri and Kobashi shared a laugh. Surely having one angel in the world who wore a hospital gown couldn’t be such a bad thing, thought Kobashi.
The lingering traces of snow danced like the white brocade that had unfurled that day.