久しぶりに実家に帰って、夜中にベッドに潜っていると、隣の父の部屋から爪を切るパチン、パチン、という音が聞こえてきた。子どものころ、「夜中に爪を切ると親の死に目に会えないよ」という日本の迷信を父から何度も伝えられてきたことを思い出す。でも、そうだね、今の父は、お母さんも、お父さんもこの世にいないのだから、もう関係のないことだ。
I’m back at my childhood home for the first time in a while, and lying in bed late at night, I hear the snip, snip of nail-clipping coming from my father’s room next door. I remember how, when I was a child, my father would often tell me the Japanese superstition: cut your nails at night and you won’t be there when your parents die. But then — yes, of course. His mother, his father, they are no longer in this world. So it no longer applies to him.