I thought we should stay where we were. If the incendiary bombs started dropping, my wife, carrying the baby on her back and leading the five-year-old by the hand, could flee to the fields on the outskirts of town while my sister-in-law and I stayed behind and protected the house, fighting the flames as best we could. If it burned down, it burned down; working together, we could build a little shack on the ruins and make our stand.

This was the plan I suggested, and everyone agreed to it. We dug a pit to bury food, a set of kitchen utensils, umbrellas, shoes, toiletries, a mirror, needles and thread—all the barest necessities, to avoid being reduced to utter wretchedness should the house be destroyed.

“Bury these, too.” My five-year-old daughter held out a pair of red geta clogs.

“Ah, yes. In they go,” I said, taking the clogs and stuffing them into one corner of the pit. I felt for a moment as if I were burying a person.

“At least now we’re all together,” my sister-in-law said. She was, perhaps, experiencing the faint glow of happiness one is said to feel on the eve of annihilation. No more than four or five days later, in fact, the house went up in flames. It came a good month earlier than I’d expected.

For the previous ten days or so, the two children had been going to a doctor for eye problems, namely epidemic conjunctivitis, or “pinkeye.” The boy’s condition wasn’t all that bad, but his sister’s grew steadily worse. Within about a week—two or three days before the bombing—she had temporarily lost all use of her eyes. Her eyelids were so swollen it distorted her features, and when you forcibly pried the lids apart, you saw an inflamed, festering mess that resembled the eye of a dead fish. Thinking that perhaps this was no mere pinkeye but a virulent bacterial infection of some sort that had already done permanent damage, I took her to a different doctor, but again it was diagnosed as conjunctivitis. It would take quite a while to clear up entirely, we were told, but it would clear up. Doctors frequently make mistakes, however. In fact, they’re mistaken more often than not. I’ve never been one to put undue faith in anything doctors say.

I just hoped she’d regain her eyesight soon. I drank heavily, but couldn’t get drunk. One night I even vomited on the way home from a place I’d been drinking at, and I’m not joking when I say that as I squatted there by the roadside I pressed my palms together in prayer. Please let her eyes be open when I get home. When I reached the house I heard her singing innocently. Thank God, I thought, dashing inside, only to find her standing there alone with her head bowed in the dimly lit room, singing to herself.

I couldn’t bear to watch her. My child went blind because I’m a penniless drunk. If I had led the life of a proper, upstanding citizen, perhaps this calamity would never have occurred. The sins of the father are visited on the child. It was divine retribution. I went so far as to tell myself that if this child’s eyes remained closed for the rest of her life, I would give up all thoughts of literature and personal glory to be permanently at her side.