Manazuru

by Hiromi Kawakami

  The beginning of the end, maybe.

  “The end.”

  Yes. That little Kei isn’t here anymore, she’s someone else now, that kind of end.

  “Come on, I don’t think it was a big event like that, was it?” I say, laughing. Mother laughs, too. It’s true, people don’t mature so easily. They can’t. It’s true, though, I suppose, even now, I’m not that consistent. We talk, back and forth, still laughing.

  You want to touch Momo more, don’t you? Mother says quietly.

  But it’s not so easy, is it, to get someone to let you touch them, she adds.

  I don’t know what she means, yet it startles me. I look Mother in the eye. Her expression is ordinary. Even your own child? Flesh and blood, carried in your womb? I ask, quickly.

  My goodness, Kei, now you’re the one being childish. Once again, Mother laughs. Whatever has come over you? You were the same way with me, you know, back then.

  There is a tension in the softness of her voice. She, too, has been hurt, by me.

  Do you want to try some sardines? I boiled them with konbu in soy sauce, I thought it might be good. It won’t affect your blood pressure, if it’s just a taste. It’ll go well with tea, I say, trying to force my way back into the ordinary. In Tokyo, we have a life. We can hide in our everyday lives. There is nothing in Manazuru.

  Well, maybe I will try some, just a taste. Mother says, in her most ordinary voice, and then, together, as if this is the routine, we sit and sip our tea.

  THE NIGHT IS not yet deep.

  In the imperfect darkness, diluted by innumerable lights, Seiji waits.

  Seiji, I cry aloud, entering, falling into his arms.

  “Are you okay?” He is surprised.

  I missed you.

  “Not being so aloof tonight, I see.”

  Aloof? I’m never aloof.

  Oh, you think not? Seiji says, stroking my chin with his fingertip. Tonight, my body desires Seiji. His skin, his smell, his movements, his feelings, everything, my body desires it all.

  Let’s get a room right now, before dinner. I say, clutching his hand. I am sweating. Even though the air is chilly. Already, the persimmons are almost fully colored. Are they ripe? I heard Momo asking Mother. Not yet. You have to watch out, too, sometimes the persimmons on that tree can be very astringent, you know. You remember, a long time ago, your friend Yukino bit into one, and right away she spat it out, just like that, Mother answered.

  We walk, entangled, into a hotel, and take a room. In the elevator, I kiss him.

  “What’s with you today?” Seiji asks, withdrawing slightly. The elevator comes to a halt. The doors slide open; at the end of the hall there is a door with a light over it.

  Come on, that’s the room, down there. I walk, pressing Seiji’s back. What’s up with you? Seiji asks again. I want to make love. I want to do it, with you, I tell him, speaking very fast.

  Ah, I see, Seiji says, and removes his jacket. He puts it carefully on a hanger, straightens the slanting shoulders. I sit down on the large bed. I’m moving too fast, the bed bounces me.

  I want you, I say out loud, I want you. Each time I say it, the yearning subsides, so I continue to repeat it. But it is only the surface wanting that subsides. The unyielding core of my desire, held back, deep inside, will not be quieted.

  Please, don’t run away from me, I say.

  I’ve never run away from you, Seiji tells me, quietly.

  I am confusing things. It wasn’t Seiji who went away, was it. Who was it, who went away? I bury my face in Seiji’s chest. He caresses my hair. You’re so gentle today. Yes, because I can see that you want me to be gentle, I guess.

  Don’t be gentle, though. Not when we do it, don’t be gentle then, I say, still speaking very fast. Seiji covers my lips with his. His large tongue enters my mouth. It is moist, it has a nice smell.

  He sucks my tongue, very strong.

  WE DID IT, and it was deep, but it was not enough.

  And yet, even so, I was tired. We left the hotel hand in hand, our expressions mild.

  “I feel like eating meat,” Seiji says.

  “Yes. Some animal that used to run around, in the fields, or in the mountains.”

  Not hard to figure out, tonight, are we? Seiji says, smiling.

  The wildness lingers in my body, even in the restaurant, as we order. First, I had the waiter pour me a tall glass of mineral water, and gulped it down. Now there was a path for the water to follow within me; I felt a little better.

  “Are you okay?” Seiji asked.

  I don’t know, I told him.

  “Why are you so on edge?”

  I seem on edge?

  “Aren’t you?”

  I raise forkfuls, wordlessly, from the plate to my mouth. When there is a bone, I suck on it. Water brims in a silver bowl, and I rinse my finger in it. I dab them on the napkin, patches spread, wetting the fabric. Pushing the blade of the knife into a piece of meat, I slice down, sharply. It makes no sound, and yet it clamors.

  “Are you tasting it?”

  Yes, I tell him, my heart clamoring.

  Seiji sighs. He peers straight into my eyes. I look down, maneuvering my knife and fork. I feel sauce at the edge of my mouth. I wipe it off with my napkin. It is hot, where I wiped.

  Don’t stare at me.

  “Tell me, what is it, what are you scared of?” Seiji goes on staring. He ignores my entreaty. The tang of blood fills my mouth.

  “Why are you scared, when I’m here with you?” His tone is calm. The clamor recedes. But a moment later, it is back.

  I was remembering. I tell him, in my heart, without saying the words. I was remembering. In Manazuru. On the beach.

  Seiji extends his hand, traces the bit of sauce still left at the corner of my mouth.

  WHEN I GOT home, Momo was there.

  She was turning the page on the calendar. It was a monthly calendar, only two months left, the pages before November torn off.

  “Are you planning something?”

  “No,” Momo replied, brusquely.

  She quickly looked away, then, changing her mind, looked back.

  “How old would Dad be now, if he were alive?”

  Ah, I gasp. I can’t tell if it is the words, if he were alive, that made me gasp, or her asking, How old would Dad be now? Forty-seven, I guess, I answer simply, he’s two years older than me.

  “Dad was born in the fall?”

  Was he? It’s not fall, anymore, is it, in November? It had never even occurred to me, what season Rei was born in. Does she always think about these things? About her father, absent?

  “I was born in spring.”

  That’s right. You were a spring baby. Hey, would you like some cake? I change the topic. We hardly ever eat pastries together anymore. Lately, she just turns away.

  “Cake! Yeah, great!” she says happily. I take plates down from the cabinet, saying nothing, careful not to disturb her cheerful mood. Cautiously I raise the box’s lid, revealing the gorgeously decorated cakes.

  Momo takes the cake with the chestnut on top that Seiji chose. Girls tend to like this kind of thing, don’t they? he said, speaking softly, when the desserts arrived, and asked the waiter to place it, especially for Momo, in a box.

  “This is good. Where’s it from?” Momo asked, mashing the fine lines of whipped cream.

  A place in Ebisu. It was a working dinner. I have not spoken Seiji’s name to Momo. Work, is the word I use to simplify, to gloss over, just about everything.

  “Who did you go with?”

  Momo knows, by now, of my simplifications. She is poised to extract the ambiguities, the subtleties, that lie concealed within that word: work. Because she has not yet learned that even if she were to uncover the details, in the end, she would not care.

  With a man.

  “Someone like Dad?”

  No.

  It is scattering. Not like a spray of sparks, nothing so dramatic, but like a blink, an incision, the sense of hatred sh
e feels, scattering.

  How much do you remember, Momo, about Dad? I ask, ignoring her question.

  “I was only three. You know that. I don’t remember anything.”

  It’s true. When Rei disappeared, Momo was only three. She has no idea where to channel what she feels. I feel pity for her. It has been a long time since I felt this way. Pity. Her mouth, full of whipped cream, her cheeks, firmer now than before, and her wrist as she brushes a loose hair from her face in irritation, all these things fill me with pity.

  A step creaks. Mother must be coming down. Would you like some cake? I call brightly. Once again, Momo radiates hatred. No, I don’t think so. Mother replies listlessly, on the other side of the wall.

  A LETTER CAME from Rei’s father.

  “I have decided that my son is dead. I have settled on a posthumous name for the memorial service, and I have had a mortuary tablet prepared. Please accept my apologies for not consulting with you beforehand. No doubt I will be joining my son in the next world before long. Have you had yourself removed from the family register yet? Please feel free to arrange matters in whatever way seems best. Take care of yourself.”

  I recalled the house, midway up the hill in that town near the Inland Sea. The houses there were built touching adjacent houses. The town was like a maze, linked only by alleyways, perched on a steep slope. As evening descended, the smells of cooking drifted up the hill. They did not drift very far. The noises of people readying dinner in the next house down, one step down the slope, drifted up as well.

  Thirteen years have passed since he disappeared.

  Perhaps at last the tide is turning. All at once, all of us are accepting Rei’s death.

  “He got a mortuary tablet,” I tell my mother.

  “What’s his posthumous name?”

  “That wasn’t in the letter.”

  Rei and I walked in an alley filled with cats. With every step we took, white and black and striped cats scurried across our path from gardens and gutters.

  “They’re like wind-up toys,” I said, and Rei laughed.

  We were on our way to Rei’s house, to tell his parents that we were engaged to be married. It’s just how it goes, you know, my parents and my sister, they were all raised here, they never left, Rei told me. It’s all they know, this little town near the ocean.

  They served us fish from the Inland Sea. Sashimi, grilled fish, boiled fish. It was more tender and milder than the fish in Tokyo. The soy sauce, too, was different, thicker, sweeter. I sat too long on the floor in a formal posture, my feet tucked under my rear, and my legs went to sleep. Unobtrusively, I slid them to one side.

  Two years after we visited, Rei’s younger sister married a man from the next town. She wore a white kimono with a hood, in the traditional style. An old man sang a wedding song. Rei and I attended the ceremony, leaving the newly born Momo with Mother. In the short time before Rei’s disappearance, his sister bore her first son, Rei’s mother died soon after, and the next year his sister had her second son. It seemed a very busy period, and yet it all happened in only four or five years.

  “I wonder if he really died. Rei.”

  Mother did not answer. You’re getting more white hair, aren’t you? she said instead. How the everyday helps us, with its concealments. Covering up what we don’t want exposed.

  HOW WOULD YOU like to write a novel? Seiji asked.

  I guess I’ve written stories, sort of. But I’m not good with fiction.

  We sat, facing each other, in a café. How many years has it been, I wonder, since Seiji and I talked about work? Not since my first essay collection, so almost a decade.

  “What gave you the idea of working again with me?”

  You’re avoiding me, I think. There may be people who like to mix work and sex, but I am not one of them. Seiji was never that way, either.

  “No particular reason,” he said, and then continued, “It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?”

  “That I’ve always loved your prose, Ms. Yanagimoto.”

  Love. The word pains me, disgusts me.

  “But why now?”

  “I’ve always been interested in the possibility.”

  Don’t talk to me like I’m a stranger. I almost speak the words. But Seiji has always been that way. He never laughs aloud, he speaks politely, in ten years these things have not changed.

  “It’s all over, then, between us?”

  I sound like a desperate woman. I am, in reality, a desperate woman.

  “No, that’s not it,” Seiji replies, quietly.

  “I’m not thinking of Rei, I don’t think of him at all,” I say, like a tiny scream.

  “I wonder about that.”

  It scatters. The way it did with Momo. Not like a spray of sparks, but like a fist hurling small, sharp fragments, Seiji’s emotions scatter, and spread.

  “Didn’t you say, before, that you were jealous?”

  “Jealous may not be the right word.”

  Then what is? I ask. Seiji’s emotions scatter, keep scattering, they do not subside.

  “Maybe, it’s just that I have no hope.”

  Hope? Pain seizes the pit of my stomach. The word love and the word hope give me the same pain.

  Please, let’s go. It’s hot in here. Let’s go out, walk on a windy street, I say, clinging to him, verbally. Seiji looks down, opens his appointment book. There is beauty in his stony profile.

  SEIJI, I SAY his name, twining my arms around him.

  I can’t take it, I say, leaning my face against his chest. I can’t take it, if you go away from me.

  “I’ve never once tried to leave you,” Seiji says, hailing a cab. The words to leave you are engulfed by the sound of the taxi pulling up.

  Tokyo Station, Seiji says.

  No, not the station, someplace warm, I whisper in his ear.

  “I thought you said you were hot.”

  I look at Seiji’s face, stunned. He glares right back. He is deathly pale. How could you say something like that, a slap in the face? I ask, peering into his eyes. Without saying it.

  Because I’ve given up, he answers, with his eyes. You’ll never forget your husband.

  It was obvious, this is what his fixed gaze was saying. Suddenly the taxi screeched to a halt, I fell over, onto Seiji. I hurriedly righted myself. Anger welled up at the slap he had given me. What right did he have, with no warning, to lash out like that? All of a sudden, like an animal bristling at another animal’s attack, inside me, the rage is strong.

  But almost immediately, it withers.

  Seiji, I say, aloud. Seiji, don’t go away.

  “You’re a terrible person,” Seiji says, his voice low.

  Why? I ask, trembling from the exhaustion that follows rage.

  “You don’t believe in anything.”

  The deep red bricks of Tokyo Station were dull, settled in the fading light.

  Seiji. I speak his name again, just to see what will happen. He plucks change from his wallet, has the driver write him a receipt, then calmly gets out of the car.

  I can’t take it, I murmur. Seiji walks off toward the station, his back to me. Um, excuse me, the driver says. Excuse me, what do you want to do?

  A huge truck drives by, rumbling. Cold air brushes lightly under my raised collar. Seiji keeps moving away. I can’t take it, I murmur, once again.

  I NOTICED THAT I was pulling the petals from a flower.

  I had climbed out of the taxi, dashed across the road. There was a navy blue car, honking. The driver glared at me with twisted lips.

  The second our eyes met, the tension faded from his face, quietly, it lost all expression.

  Everything looks so sharp. I thought. Each minute motion of the man’s face, I noted them all. He drove off, gripping the wheel. The encounter lasted only a moment, but it felt like a very long time.

  I found myself standing in front of a florist. I walked in, bought some white flowers. A bouquet of a flower I didn’t recognize, fewer
petals than chrysanthemums but more dense than gerberas. I took them to the register, paid with a thousand-yen note, had the flowers wrapped.

  I remember putting the change into my wallet.

  Then, in a flash, time had passed, and I was sitting on a bench. One bench plunked down among a cluster of skyscrapers, surrounded by tall, overgrown trees that cast thick shadows, blacker even than the black of night.

  Now that the sun has set, there is no one around. During the day, secretaries no doubt sat here eating their lunches, chatting, but now it is quiet, there is not even a breeze.

  It feels good, watching white petals drop, in the darkness. Slowly, they flutter to the ground. I pluck one, then another.

  There are so many flowers on each stem, my fingers never rest.

  A small white heap forms on the earth at my feet. The poor things, don’t you feel sorry for them? I remember the sound of my voice, chastising Momo, when she was two. Poor Mr. Flower, it hurts, it hurts him very much, you know, when you do that. Momo had pulled up a yellow flower blooming in a field, she was pulling out its petals, lost in it, and I had said those words to her.

  Mr. White Flower, it hurts, it hurts, Mr. Yellow Flower, it hurts, I say to myself, with my voice, in my head.

  It’s nauseating. This made-up voice of mine. And the words I’m speaking.

  A flower’s pain, what do I know? I’ve never known it. How could I tell Momo such a thing? And yet, she stopped. Puwa flower, huwt, huwt, Mommy? She said, beaming up at me.

  We got up, left the field behind. Momo tossed away the flower. I pretended I hadn’t seen, and we went back home, having fun together, holding hands.

  WHEN I GOT home, Momo and Mother both looked utterly ordinary.

  “I’m home,” I said, and they both greeted me, hello. The second I stepped into the living room, something was wrong.

  There, on the wall, in a white, open space, stuck there.

  “Rei!” I blurted out.

  Old photographs, a number of them, were pinned up.

  “I was going through some old things, and I found them. There were lots,” Mother said, turning away, just a little.