A Gesture Life

Franklin Hata’s investment in creating a pristine, perfect house is symbolic of the tyrannically orderly life he has worked for years to build. Just as Hata has created a life of gestures for himself, the house is the physical manifestation of keeping up a reputation. It is clear how meticulously Hata works on every piece of the house, from the way he fixed Sunny’s bathroom, his detailed planning of the lawn, and the overall upkeep of its every part.

However, Hata’s detachment from his own emotions is also visually represented in the many instances in which he looks into his house. Upon reflection of the English novel of a man traveling by swimming from house to house, he suddenly feels as though he is outside of his house looking in. As the story progresses, the elderly Hata starts to feel out of place in his precious home. When his living room catches on fire, Hata is aware of the dark sensibility that he possibly caused the conflagration himself, symbolizing a desire for everything that he built—his reputation, life of gestures, emotional decorum–to go up in flames. Upon return from the hospital, Hata strongly feels his house to be a curated museum. Just as the man in the novel he alludes to swims a “fitful passage through the epic seasons of life” and returns to a locked and deserted home, Hata is slowly becoming unable to live the lie any longer, as if ready for the next season of life.

At the end of the story, Hata mourns that his house never became a home when observing the new family in late Mary Burns’ home. Just as Hata’s life remained significantly empty without true substance and love, his house was never blessed with the life of the daily happenings of life and a family. After finally agreeing to sell his house, Hata decides that he will finally be on the outside looking in when his house is full of life. Though selling his house finally means he is moving on from a life of gestures and decorum, it also represents a step towards embracing the raw emotions of life. Just as he will finally look into his house full of life, he will finally look into his own heart and come face to face with a lifetime of subdued emotions. As he sells his home, Hata’s passage to the next season of life begins with an awareness that he will still one day come around and “come almost home”—signifying a sensibility that what he now calls home was always removed from the true nature of a real home and was as carefully constructed and curated as his reputation. 

The act of swimming serves as a recurring motif that first appears as Hata’s main recreational activity. Hata’s near obsession with swimming every morning in his ornate pool becomes a marker for routine and normalcy. Before Hata’s living room catches on fire, he reflects on a story from an old novel of a man who “swims across the county” through people’s properties and finally returns home to find it locked up and deserted. Though mentioned in passing, Hata reflects deeply on its possible meanings—either the man began a sort of quest and finds himself in spiritual disillusion, wishes to escape the realities of his fallen station, or perhaps is making fitful passage through the epic seasons of life. Each of these analyses provide different perspectives as Hata begins to wonder if he is entering a significant period in his life of his own making. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Hata’s life is actually a fitful passage through life’s many seasons, and his act of swimming is a means of traveling through them.

When considering things through a dark sensibility, Hata ponders on the water quality of his pool. No matter the light or time of day, swimming through it feels as though the water is not material nor true, “but rather pulling yourself blindly through a mysterious resistance whose properties are slowly revealing themselves beneath you, in flame-like roils and tendrils, the black fires of the past” (151). After imagining K’s night visit, Hata dips beneath the surface of a tub full of hot water: “The intense heat felt so pure and truthful to me, so all-enveloping, that I wished there was a way I could remain within it, silently curled up as if I were quite unborn” (290). For Hata, swimming serves as a means of unveiling the truth, however dark.

It is after reflecting on the novel that Hata has the notion that he is viewing his home, the pool, and himself in the water from high above. The thought of the fitful swimmer leads Hata to begin burning old paperwork such as canceled checks and bank statements, which in turn leads to the living room catching on fire. The idea of swimming through the seasons of life troubles Hata to the point that he may have caused the fire himself in an attempt to burn down the life of gestures he has built for himself. Thomas’s obsession with fish and a desire to be able to breathe underwater inspires thoughts of transmogrification and the chance to have a “wholly different heart and shell and mien that would deliver me over to a brand-new life, fresh and hopeful and unfettered” (277). When Thomas nearly drowns at the Bedley Run pool, Hata is faced with the decision of saving either Thomas or Renny. When Renny believes that Hata saved him, Hata feels even more exposed as a cowardly liar, whom people revere as a doctor but in reality, is nowhere near it.