Manazuru

by Hiromi Kawakami

  Mother and I sit on the floor, working the scissors. I use the large Japanese scissors. Mother uses the gleaming silver Western scissors. I slip and cut my middle finger. A red bead of blood forms, then breaks, trickles down. While I suck on my finger, Mother brings a band-aid.

  I wrap the band-aid all the way around, squeeze it tightly down. I inhale the odor of the fabric around us.

  The smell isn’t as strong as naphthalene, but one can tell they’ve been packed away. They’re not damp, of course, but it’s kind of like that, this shut-up smell, Mother says, closing her eyes. She breathes in deeply, again and again, exploring the scent.

  THE WOMAN TALKED to me. The one who comes and follows.

  Lately I have been talking to them, but they rarely come to talk to me.

  “It’s time you started getting ready,” the woman said.

  “Ready?” I asked. She seemed unused to speech. That was why her eyes got crossed. Pupils angled toward the center of her face, as when a person tries to focus on the tip of her nose. Eventually they uncrossed. It’s eerie talking to a woman with crossed eyes, so I was glad.

  “You’re going, right?” the woman barked. It’s rare, too, for them to bark.

  “Where?”

  “Manazuru.”

  I expected this. “What’s in Manazuru?” I asked the woman.

  “In July, the boat sets out.”

  “The boat travels across the sea, far, far away,” she continued. This time she wasn’t hovering in the air, the way she usually did; she stood, the same height as me. We might have been two neighbors, chatting.

  “Did Rei go to Manazuru?” Once again, I asked.

  “Mm.” She was vague about Rei. Perhaps she only pretends not to know.

  She seems anxious to say more about the boat. It’s a . . . sort of boat . . . waiting at the . . . and brings them in. She speaks in fragments. Her voice sputters at points, it is hard to make out, as though a wind is blowing, making off with the sound.

  “Will you go on the boat?” I asked, and again her eyes crossed.

  “I won’t be on the boat. The boat will go . . . so, no, I can’t.”

  “Does this boat leave, by any chance, at nine at night?” I asked. Tentatively. But the woman made no reply. After her eyes crossed for the second time, it became even harder to catch her words. The wind droned. It wasn’t just a feeling, it was really blowing.

  “Will you go?” she asked finally, and then she was gone. Blown, perhaps, by the wind.

  Will you go? I asked myself. How could I go? I had no idea when the boat would depart, or from what port. And yet I wondered if I would go. To Manazuru, in July.

  “MANAZURU WAS A major source of obsidian,” Seiji told me.

  “You know everything.”

  “I looked it up. Manazuru is on your mind so much, it’s on mine, too.”

  “In the Jōmon period,” he said, “people fashioned weapons and tools out of obsidian. It was a good stone for making tools. I’m sure you learned about it in elementary school.”

  “I don’t recall,” I said, and he smiled. It felt odd imagining Seiji looking things up, thinking of me, in my absence. While I was resenting him, just a little, for being unable to be solely mine. Things change. Our relationship evolves.

  Lately, Seiji is growing closer. When he gets closer, I need more distance. Or I want us to be as close as we can. The truth is, I don’t want it either way. I like it exactly as it is.

  “Why don’t we go together, to Manazuru,” Seiji suggests.

  “How about July?”

  The woman’s words draw me on. Don’t pay any attention to the things they say. Only I can’t forget, I can’t forget.

  July. Seiji is thinking. I’ll see what I can do with my schedule. Give me some time before I commit, all right? With that, Seiji left. He never hesitates when he leaves. When I get ready to leave, he doesn’t want to let me go.

  Momo’s exams are approaching. June is nearly over. I’m going to the library to study, she says when she gets home from school, and goes back out. Momo’s skin looks firmer than it did a month ago. It changes so rapidly. Who is doing this to her? Some person I don’t know. A boy, perhaps. Or a girl. The span of my ignorance keeps widening.

  Please, Momo, don’t let me see the bits I don’t know. Preserve my ignorance, Momo.

  I think, almost praying.

  Momo fluttered her hand and left. I went into my office, leaden.

  JULY COMES QUICKLY. More than at the beginning of the year, or at the end, in the middle, time goes too fast.

  I think I prefer getting presents I’ve been anticipating, rather than just being given one all of a sudden, out of the blue.

  I remember what she said. I never did learn what she wanted.

  Time passes before you get around to asking. July came, bringing with it a ferocious heat. The hydrangea in the garden, the one Mother had tended so carefully, withered. It wasn’t only the blossoms that suffered; the stems and the leaves, too, turned brown, and although she watered the plant, and fertilized it, it never revived.

  This heat, it’s boiling, Momo says. If I get good grades, can I have two summer dresses? This is what she asks for. Is that what you were talking about the other day, what you wanted, dresses? I ask, and Momo shakes her head. No, that was something harder, probably.

  Sad when they wither like this, Mother says. I wonder if hydrangeas don’t do well in the heat. It doesn’t seem hot to me. I’m an old lady, I guess. My senses aren’t as keen.

  We took a trip, all three of us, to the botanical garden. We packed lunches. Rolled omelets and Spanish mackerel. Beef and kon’nyaku noodles boiled in a strong broth. Snow peas. Carrot salad. Rice balls. Momo cooked the snow peas. Don’t leave them on too long! Mother cautioned. I know, I know, you boil the water and take them right out. We chattered as we cooked, enjoying ourselves.

  At the back of the botanical garden there is a woods. People walk in silence there, avoiding the sun. Momo picked up a large leaf, still green, from the ground. Tiny veins line its surface, vertical ones and horizontal ones.

  “They’re so detailed,” Momo says.

  “Detailed? Don’t you mean minute?” Mother asks, laughing.

  “No, they’re extremely detailed.” Momo stares fixedly at the face of the leaf. We stop for lunch near the place where she found it. We spread a plastic sheet on the ground, take off our shoes, sit down. I feel the coolness of the earth beneath the sheet. All day long, this place lies in shadow.

  My, it’s hot, Mother says suddenly.

  It’s pretty cool here, Momo replies.

  Her voice is close, but distant. You’re so weird, Grandma, it’s much hotter at home. Momo cocks her head. Her voice grows ever more distant. This is dangerous, I think. Dangerous for whom? For Momo? For me? For Mother?

  But nothing happened that day. Taking our empty containers and the “detailed” leaf along, we rode the bus home. We were happy, exhilarated, through the night.

  MY INSTINCTS ARE seldom right.

  So when I felt, that day, a sense of danger, it was probably a coincidence.

  Momo disappeared.

  She wasn’t back by nine, so I ran to the library. It was long closed. I learned, what’s more, that it closed earlier, much earlier, than seven-thirty, when she usually returned.

  “Library Hours: 9:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.,” the sign said, clear enough for even a child to understand.

  She hadn’t been here at all. I understood immediately. For a second, I regretted not having given her a cell phone. Then I changed my mind. Even if she had one, she wouldn’t answer if I called. It made no difference.

  I hadn’t the slightest idea where she might have gone. I ran back home and asked Mother. Well, I don’t know, she said, very slowly, where could she have gone? I understood that she wasn’t slow, she was petrified. I couldn’t ask her for help.

  Her friends at school. What were their names?

  I couldn’t remember, not a single one. Hirose. T
hat’s right, Hirose Yukino. They were in the same class in elementary school, took the entrance exams for the same junior high school. I got out the class list, hurriedly rang her.

  “I see,” Hirose Yukino said, her voice unruffled. Momo probably uses the same tone of voice when she talks to adults she doesn’t know. From time to time, she uses it with me, too, and with Mother. I don’t know. That’s right. No, I can’t think of anyplace. Yes. No. Yes. Yes.

  Hirose Yukino can’t tell me anything. When I hang up the phone, I am at a loss. Telephone the police? Call her teacher? At a time like this, of all times, the woman comes. Vividly, thickly, she follows me.

  “Be quiet!” I shout. Mother walks in, frightened. I’m sorry. I apologize. As I apologize to Mother, the woman chuckles.

  “Naturally, I know,” the woman says.

  You know where Momo is! I scream, inside. Say it aloud, and I apologize again to Mother.

  “Very close.”

  Where.

  “Come.”

  I follow the woman. I have a hunch, just maybe, I tell Mother, and run out. The woman is fast. Several times, I nearly lose sight of her. We emerge from the wood that abuts the library, come to the river in the next district. The broad riverbed appears. There is a baseball game going on; the lights above the field are brilliant. The crack of a bat ricochets through the air. The soaring ball parts the night.

  Here, the woman says. Past the rows of soccer fields and the baseball field, from a dark expanse of grass, I hear the muffled whining of a dog. I think I can see it, a large black dog, lumbering about. Shrouded in the night, I can’t quite make it out.

  “Momo,” I called.

  Ah. There was a small gasp, and beside the dog a slender shadow rose. Another shadow, next to the first, also rose.

  “That’s you, isn’t it, Momo!” I cried, and the slender shadow rocked.

  I ran over and clasped Momo to me. She resisted. Stop it, Mom. She pushed me away, hard. The next shadow watched me without moving. Who are you? I demanded, turning to face it. It’s none of your business, Momo cried behind me. The shadow retreated, left, just like that. The dog, too. I looked about for the woman, but she, too, had gone.

  Only Momo was there, beside me. The heat of the day lingered over the grass.

  four

  I’M NOT TELLING you.

  Was all Momo would say. Who was with you in the field? However many times I asked, the answer was always the same. I’m not telling you. I don’t want to.

  I rebuked her for lying about going to the library, and she apologized, unexpectedly docile. I’m sorry. I really was at the library until six, though. I did study a little, too.

  “A little.” The words made my heart brighter, just a little. Brightening, I was still bewildered. I have no idea, anymore, on what basis I am scolding Momo. The idea that underage children should be supervised at all times by their parents? Or that kids ought to devote themselves to their studies? That young women must avoid dangerous places? Or is it the platitude, itself smacking deeply of untruth, that people should never lie?

  I’m not telling you.

  Sitting across from me, Momo holds her ground. So brittle. I am. As a parent. I was stronger before my husband disappeared. I scolded Momo, still a baby, without a thought. Right from the start, I knew when it was okay to scold her, how to scold her. Or thought I knew.

  There was a time when I didn’t think about family. Perhaps this is the same. You only start to think about it when you realize it is gone. You start thinking, and you no longer understand. You understand less and less.

  “Who was it?”

  One last time, I ask.

  Momo shakes her head. “I won’t tell.” She replies listlessly. We’ve been through this so many times, she’s weary of it. I begin to feel unjustified, I am bullying her.

  “Will you tell me one day?”

  I don’t know, she replies, her voice barely audible.

  She knows. Now Momo knows. I think suddenly.

  She didn’t know before. But now she does. Poor thing. I had pitied those who don’t know. But I was mistaken. Those who know are even more deserving of pity.

  I lay my palm lightly on Momo’s wiry shoulder. She flinches, just slightly, and I sense that she is allowing my hand to remain there, suffering its weight.

  FINAL EXAMS WERE over, the end of the term was approaching. Momo had shot up.

  “Look, you’re almost as tall as I am,” I said to her. And, just like that, Momo drifted away. Unwilling, no doubt, to stand beside me, comparing our height.

  “She outgrew me about a year ago, didn’t she?” Mother calls from the kitchen.

  “Yeah, around then,” Momo says, walking into the kitchen. There is a sound of metal rasping against metal. I hear a light ripple of laughter. I can’t be sure, with the wall between us, if it is Momo laughing, or Mother. At times like this, particularly, she comes.

  “It’s almost time,” the woman said. She came, hovering, by the kitchen door. The pattern on her clothing is usually blurry, but today it is clear. A sunflower-speckled dress that hugs her body, full white thighs, bare feet, a corn on the joint of one toe, luridly large.

  “Time for what?” I ask, and the woman goes cross-eyed.

  “The boat, to set out.”

  “What boat?”

  “The boat, I told you before.”

  Momo and Mother side by side. The curves of their backs, facing me—Momo’s slight, Mother’s deeply round. I hear, simultaneously, the sound of fine chopping, and water running.

  “You’re all women here,” the woman mutters. She cocks her head, and then, still hovering, twists her hip, stretching the sunflower pattern on her dress.

  Because there aren’t any boys in this house, Momo said, I remember, when she gave my laptop its name. That Momo is gone now. She is one who was here, but isn’t.

  What of my husband, then? I don’t know my vanished husband, not since he disappeared, the form he would take, and so there is a disjointedness. My husband is not one who is no longer here, he is one who has not yet come.

  The not yet come. The one who may, someday, appear.

  Only the things we are still holding on to can vanish into the past. If we no longer have it, it can’t be lost that way. Can’t vanish anywhere. Nonexistent, it is nonetheless unable, forever, to go.

  Once again, the woman said, “The boat.”

  What can I say, I’ll go. To Manazuru.

  I answered, and the woman vanished. As she vanished, it started raining.

  THE RAINY SEASON has ended, yet it is always raining.

  Momo is spending her whole summer vacation indoors. Listening, absorbed, to her music. Not out loud, with earphones in her ears, sometimes I hear snatches of rhythm.

  Often, she is asleep. She doesn’t come when I call her to eat, so I look in her room. She is stretched out, tall, on her bed. Her dark feet poke out from her summer bedspread. “Momo,” I call her name, and she turns the other way.

  She sure has shot up since summer vacation started. Like a weed, Mother says. Because of all this rain, maybe. Just amazing how she keeps growing.

  “I’m going to Manazuru,” I tell Mother.

  “Oh?” she replies. “Yes, another trip.”

  “Manazuru feels right to me.”

  I settled on a day without waiting for Seiji’s answer. I called to make a reservation at the guest house with the “Suna” nameplate. Sorry, we’re full up that day. It was the man who answered, the son. I called several other inns, but they were all fully booked.

  “We’ve got the festival, you see,” I was told when I called a place advertising “seafood fresh from the nets.” Finally, I remembered the “beachside resort hotel” where Momo and I stayed. I called. Yes, we have a room. One person. Three nights. Okay. Yes.

  The hotel was a distance from the port, perhaps that explained it. The ease with which I got a room. You’re going for four days? Mother said. It wasn’t a rebuke, not quite, but her tone had a crit
ical tinge. Yes, four days. I’m sorry. My response sounded a shade sharper than I intended.

  Three women living alone: it was getting oppressive. I had never left the house for so long, three nights, four days. Not once since Rei disappeared and we moved in with Mother.

  No need to be so solemn, Mother says, half laughing. Poor thing, she’s thinking. My poor daughter. Poor Kei.

  The rain outside made the floor darker. My eyelids felt heavy.

  THE RAIN CONTINUED into the morning, then it let up.

  On the Tōkaidō line, seated on the left side, one elbow propped on the windowsill, I watch for the ocean that flickers into view, from time to time, between mountains, between houses.

  It glitters. It looks like fish scales, layer upon layer. See you when you get back, Momo said as I was leaving. Lately when I talk to her, more so even than before, she looks away, annoyed. My fingertips go cold. When she ignores me. It’s true, I’m brittle. I feel it every time, as I go cold. Still I find Momo adorable. Testy, but adorable.

  Her voice echoes in my ear. See you when you get back. As the train barrels on, I feel a lightness in me. Emotionally, physically, I am cleansed. What ever inspired me to have a child? Before I gave birth to her, I never suspected it would be like this.

  It is impossible to get away. I must shoulder it. “Shoulder” is too grand a word, but that only makes it harder. In a sense, Momo is shouldering me. Things are vague, unsettled.

  “If things were settled, you wouldn’t have the energy,” the woman said.

  Startled, I glanced around. She was just outside the window.

  “You’re fast,” I said, and the woman smiled.

  “It’s not as if I’m running alongside the train.”

  “Oh.”

  My emotions become indistinct. I glimpse the sea through the woman’s semi-transparent form. It glitters. Momo, I love you, I think suddenly. Love can’t express it all, but I know no other word that will, and so I repeat it, once more, to myself. I love you.