The Lake

by Banana Yoshimoto

  “Actually, I had a question I wanted to ask Chii. It’s not a big deal, though, if she’s in bed,” Nakajima said.

  “What are you talking about?” Mino replied. “She’s always asleep. Let’s go see her.”

  Then, for a long moment, he peered at me. And then he spoke.

  “You see, Chii, my younger sister, has been bedridden for ages. She’s not exactly sick, but her liver and kidneys aren’t in good shape, so she doesn’t have much energy—it’s hard for her to move around. So she really is always in bed. Even when she gets up to go to the bathroom, she has to sort of slide along the wall because her muscles have atrophied. She hardly eats at all, either: only one meal a day, and basically it’s just rice porridge and saké. She almost never gets up. I guess you could say she’s sick, then, in a general way. But she isn’t seeing any doctors, and I’m happy to give her as much attention as she needs, so we’re fine just as we are, living like this. I move her arms and legs for her sometimes and encourage her to walk around the house, but I try to be as gentle with her as I can.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just said, “I see.”

  “And—well, when Chii wants to say something,” he went on, “she looks into my eyes and says it inside of me, into my heart. Sometimes the information she passes on is special, and there are people who come to listen to her speak. That’s how we make ends meet. Only she doesn’t always have information, it’s not as if she has something to say to everyone, so as a rule we try to keep all this secret. So if you don’t mind, we’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

  “In other words … it’s like fortune-telling, in a broad sense?” I asked.

  “You could think of it that way,” he said. “But often it’s simply a matter of enjoying the conversation. For some reason, people find that talking to her seems to bring something into focus. Perhaps it’s because she spends all her time sleeping—she comes and goes just as she pleases in the world of her dreams, she’s free to go anywhere she wants. And that gives her access to much more information than people have who are up all the time.”

  “I guess that sort of makes sense,” I said. “And I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know. Because you had a reason to come here,” Mino said. He grinned again, and the twinkle in his eyes grew even more intense, like a star. “You’re welcome to come anytime you like. Only you’ll never think of this place, never, unless you’re meant to come.”

  It sounded like a riddle.

  “I understand,” I answered. Smiling.

  He was so wonderful, a smile was all I could give him.

  “Would you like to meet my sister? With Nobu?” Mino asked.

  “That’s okay. Nakajima deserves his privacy, and if I were her I know I’d be embarrassed meeting someone new from my bed,” I said. “I’ll see her next time, if I come again.”

  I knew how important seeing Mino and Chii was to Nakajima, and I didn’t want to get in the way. My role was over now, I thought: all I’d needed to do was keep distracting him, drawing him on until he arrived. I had done my duty, and now I preferred to hang back.

  “Why don’t you come?” Nakajima said. “After all, she’s always in bed.”

  “It’s okay, really. You have a lot to talk about,” I said.

  “But I want to introduce you to Chii, too,” Nakajima said.

  “Who knows, maybe she’ll have some information about you,” Mino said mischievously.

  I’m easily swayed enough that I was tempted by that, but when I thought about the past these three seemed to have shared I couldn’t help feeling a bit somber, and the temptation waned.

  “I’ll just say hello and come right back down and wait here,” I said.

  “All right, then, let’s go!” Mino said.

  Climbing a steep, creaky staircase, we came to the second-floor landing, which was brightly lit by a small window in the hall. There were two rooms, both with their doors shut.

  Mino opened one without saying a word. I tensed up, feeling a little nervous. A nice scent, like roses, wafted from the room. It wasn’t roses, though—it was like a sign. A sweet sign.

  “Oh, Chii! You haven’t changed a bit!” Nakajima said, almost sobbing.

  “Come on in,” Mino said, and so I stepped inside.

  There was a cheap wooden bed with a cheap pink fleece blanket on top of it, and almost buried under the blanket a small, thin woman was curled up, sleeping.

  She was so tiny she could have been a child, but she was just like Mino: looking closer, I could see that she was an adult. Her body was slight, and her arms were as scrawny as bare branches; her eyelashes, long and vigorous, were the only part of her that looked different.

  “Uh, she looks like she’s really asleep,” Nakajima said.

  “No, no, she’s completely awake,” Mino said.

  “Good, then she can hear me. Hey, Chii, it’s me, Nobu—long time no see!” Nakajima said. “Sorry I didn’t come visit sooner. Hey, I brought my girlfriend Chihiro along today. I wanted to introduce her to you. I’ve been doing really well. I went to college, and now I’m in grad school. Studying all the time.”

  Mino put his hands to his head. There was a pause, and then he spoke.

  “Well, that’s splendid. It sounds like you’ve been working hard!”

  The voice was totally different. Okay, I thought, so this is her voice.

  And what if all this is just a delusion of Mino’s—what if his sister is dying of some sickness of the heart, wasting away, and Mino, unwilling to acknowledge that, is making up this internal voice of hers?

  That would have been the logical response, but thoughts like that didn’t stand a chance in the unique, noble atmosphere of this room.

  “And, my, what a complicated woman friend you’ve brought along!” Mino said. “Don’t you find that it … hurts, not letting even half of your emotions out? I see you’ve overcome your hatred for your parents with that easygoing love you were born with. And in the process you started thinking about things, and you ended up taking on this docile personality—but aren’t you really more spirited and free, more spoiled, and extremely into sex? At the same time, I can see you can have genuine respect for other people. You’ll be coming here again before long, on your own. Let’s talk more then.”

  I was startled when I realized she was talking to me.

  The information was accurate enough, but not enough to prove this was genuine.

  Mino came to his senses.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My sister tends to be a bit harsh, and she’s not used to covering up the things in her heart—we used to get in trouble all the time, everywhere we went. It was so bad, sometimes I wonder if it might have been all the complaining she had to put up with whenever she opened her mouth that landed her in bed like this.”

  “Your sister is rather, uh, forthright, isn’t she?” I said. “Only not in an unpleasant way, not really—personally, I admire that sort of bluntness.”

  True, her comments were pretty over the top considering that this was the first time we’d met, but I couldn’t believe she was trying, for some inexplicable reason, to hurt me.

  “It’s kind of you to say that. And please, please don’t think that I’m actually the one who’s thinking and saying those things.” Mino smiled.

  I nodded goodbye and went downstairs. To tell the truth, I had absolutely zero desire to come back here and listen to her analyze my personality in even more detail. But it wasn’t as though I was offended. I couldn’t put my finger on the reason, but somehow I was really moved by the odd air of grace and nobility that clung to the two people who lived in this house.

  I don’t know what Nakajima asked Chii that day.

  All I know is that it wasn’t about us or how long he would live, but about a more cheerful topic. I could tell that right away from his face when he came downstairs.

  And I know what he told me: “You remember the other day I mentioned that eventually, if I can finish up my degree
, I want to go to Paris and work for this famous research institute? I asked her if that was possible, that’s all.”

  Paris. He wants to go to Paris. Knowing him, he’ll study like crazy and write articles and send them out like there’s no tomorrow, and he’ll get his degree in no time. And then I suppose this precarious life of ours will be over.

  I was startled at how sad the thought made me. I could almost hear my heart breaking.

  No, it’s not that, I tried to tell myself, because I didn’t want to admit how attached I had become to him. I’m not that heartbroken, it’s just that it’s so early in our relationship.

  “Of course it’s possible! How can you even doubt it?” I said. “I could have answered that question for you. You’ll definitely be able to go.”

  “I have the feeling I’ll find some way to sabotage myself,” Nakajima said. “Though according to Chii, this time next year I might already be in Paris.”

  Nakajima looked truly delighted. That alone, I thought, made it worth the trip.

  We had one last cup of tea and chatted a bit, and then Nakajima and I left that adorable little house behind.

  Mino stood under the light outside the front door and waved to us for the longest time. His silhouette was like a lovely little shadowgraph in a locket or something, and the lightbulb beamed into the dark, shining like a jewel.

  The lake had retreated into the darkness like a deep hole, turning such a deep black that only the contrast with the groves of trees indicated that there was anything there at all.

  “Are you feeling pressured?” I asked. “Like you have to go to Paris right away?”

  “No, I’m not rushing,” Nakajima said. “I just don’t really believe I can do it. I can’t really explain this very well, but it’s like I have this sense of guilt inside me, and sometimes it tries to mess me up. All I have to do is make myself think I can do it, just once, and then I’ll be fine, because I can work toward that. Basically, I’m happy to go whenever.”

  “Oh, good—so you won’t be going right away!” I said. “I’m so glad to hear that. Because right now I’d like to go on living like this, just as we are.”

  Nakajima didn’t reply. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or disturbed.

  It occurred to me that maybe he was planning to hurl himself into his studies immediately, so he’d go back to living in his own apartment. If so, I could at least look in on him from time to time, to make sure he didn’t overdo it. The thought gusted smoothly, cleanly through my mind, like a breeze sweeping across the lake’s surface. As though I’d been planning something like this all along.

  We were crunching our way along a gravel road now. The light from the streetlamps bled outward into circles, one white ring over the next.

  Without particularly thinking about it, I had twined my arm around Nakajima’s because it was dark and hard to see the road in places and I was afraid there might be snakes.

  I mentioned this to Nakajima.

  “No snakes yet, it’s too cold,” Nakajima said.

  “But there might be something else. Insects, say,” I said.

  His arms were like sticks, but they were warm.

  Suddenly he spoke. “I like this life, too. We get to go home together.”

  This was his response to what I’d said earlier.

  I felt as though we had been walking like this forever. At the edge of this lake. Through scenery so gorgeous it seemed like another world. I’m sure I’ll walk like this with lots of other people, I thought, but I’ll probably never feel this way again.

  Not because being with Nakajima made my heart ache, but because he made me feel how precious our time together was. It was so lovely there, and so incredibly quiet, that if even one more person had been with us I knew the mood would have been destroyed. Well, maybe it would be okay if it were someone like Mino. But it was true, I could feel it—all it would take for this delicate world of ours to come crashing down was just a single extra element. Sturdy as the bond between us was, it was also somehow terribly fragile.

  “Don’t go away, Nakajima,” I said. “I mean, I’m not talking about Paris or anything, you can go to Paris. I just want you to do your best to stay here, in this world.”

  “I don’t particularly want to—to go away,” Nakajima said. “Only it’s like there’s something inside me, in my body, that’s constantly telling me I don’t belong here.”

  “You’ve got to fight it, Nakajima.”

  “I am fighting, it’s just that I’ve lost so much, I can’t fight very hard.”

  “Don’t be a wuss,” I said.

  “Just look at me, though. I can hardly have sex with a girl I like.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m not into sex, anyway.”

  “Yeah, right, you can’t fool me. You’re actually extremely into sex!”

  “Now that’s rude!” I cried.

  My voice shattered the silence, and seemed to echo in the black night sky.

  Nakajima was chuckling.

  I sensed that he, Mino, and even Chii had something in common, though since Chii had just been lying there I didn’t have much of an impression of her.

  I saw it as a sort of desolate landscape, unfathomably lonely and hopeless, totally wrecked, its very foundation destroyed, but one that was being pieced together again from scraps.

  Where could they have gotten to know one another? I was slowly starting to figure it out. It wasn’t anything more than a guess, but I had a vague understanding, at least, of something.

  It was so dark, though, I didn’t even want to admit it could be part of the truth of life.

  I still believed, back then, much more than I do now, that the world was essentially a happy place, full of the sounds of families having dinner together, the smile on a mother’s face when she sees her husband off to work in the morning, the warmth radiating from a loved one in bed beside you when you wake up in the middle of the night.

  That’s not how it was with Nakajima, in his world. His universe included everything dark, and that darkness was always there. It had nothing to do, say, with him being a man and me a woman, it was a result of the different paths our lives had taken. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the world compared to other people my age, but that was nothing compared to the weight Nakajima carried inside him.

  Still chuckling, Nakajima took my hand in his, and we walked quietly on around the lake, heading for the station. It was peaceful. We decided to buy a bentō box for dinner and eat it on the train home. It felt, that night, as though each step we took brought us closer to the future.

  When we turned to look back, the lake had misted over.

  It seemed pale, vaguely warped.

  The next week, my mural-painting days got under way.

  I set out from the apartment at eight each morning, as if I were a construction worker on the way to a site. Because that’s when the light is best.

  I would plant a kiss on Nakajima’s cheek, then head straight for my wall.

  The first day, I painted a few frolicking monkeys. After that, I decided that I would paint a big lake on the left third of the wall. Of course, I’d put monkeys around the lake, too. Calm monkeys, and lots of trees. A monkey brother and sister, and a mother monkey and her son.

  I knew it would be painful to paint these things, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  A little girl came and said, “You’re drawing monkeys?” And that got things started: little by little, children began gathering around. I seriously bawled out a few boys who were about to start messing around with my paints, and then I apologized, and after that even they slowly started to appreciate what I was doing.

  One skinny little boy with big eyes and a flat nose came over and asked, “Does it mean the school won’t be closed anymore when it has your picture?” Clearly Sayuri and his parents had been talking to him. People called him Yotchan, and he was taking English classes.

  “No, I’m afraid not. Even with my picture, it may be closed.”

  �
�Then why are you drawing it?”

  “Because there’s a place to paint, and they asked me to paint it. Won’t it be nicer to have some pretty colors here, even if it’s only for a little while?”

  “It isn’t for art?”

  “Hardly,” I said, laughing. “Not by a long shot. It’s just a picture of some monkeys.”

  “Um, are those monkeys ghosts?” Yotchan asked.

  Following his finger with my eyes, I realized he was pointing to the four monkeys over by the lake. I had only sketched their forms, so they were just uncolored outlines, half transparent.

  “No, they aren’t ghosts. I’ll color them in later on.”

  “Oh,” Yotchan said. “I thought it was funny.”

  Children are incredible, I thought. It never would have occurred to me to paint ghosts into such a happy picture.

  I kept mulling over the composition as I brushed on the colors.

  The area around the lake was going to be the most colorful, and I wanted to keep it balanced with the rest of the painting, so I would probably be doing it last. But I couldn’t leave those monkeys as ghosts. I’d give them some fun-looking colors, but nothing too loud, since they lived quiet lives. I’d use the happiest tones I could come up with. And I’d paint in some tea, too. And cake. I’d fill in the area around that harsh sleeping beauty with lovely, lovely colors.

  Surprisingly, Nakajima didn’t stop living in my apartment even after I got wrapped up in the mural and began staying out as long as the sun was up.

  For some reason, somewhere in the back of my mind I’d thought that as soon as I started working on the mural, he would vanish.

  Sometimes I’d have a dream like that, and I’d wake up with my heart racing, bolting upright on my futon. Tears would be streaming down my cheeks—even I was startled. I had come home to find that Nakajima was gone, along with all his stuff. I rushed to the window, hurriedly slid it open, and looked out, but his window was dark. There was nothing to indicate that Nakajima had ever existed. To think that it was all over, so soon … That was how the dream went.