Manazuru

by Hiromi Kawakami

  THE TRAIN TO Tokyo Station was packed.

  My body tilted as the train pulled out, I could not move between stations. I had become a branch, and when I looked around we were all the same, a branch, a clinging vine, some parasitic plant, all in a tangle, chaos.

  At each station, it was like a breath: a human exhalation, and then the sucking in. It was mesmerizing agony. Mesmerizing, perhaps, because I was empty. I could never accept this rapture when my body brimmed with business, so many plans to be made, people to meet, like tight rows of insect eggs planted there.

  I got off at Tokyo Station, boarded an outbound train. I sat on the ocean side. I could not yet see the ocean, but I could smell it.

  “Looks like rain,” a woman, diagonally across, said to the man with her.

  Outside, the sky was faintly colored. Not gray, not blue, either, it was a pale color, like when you squeeze a brand new watercolor from its tube, and a tiny bead of colored water, a diluted red, if it’s red, a diluted black, if it’s black, trickles out, slowly, around the rim of the thick, viscous blob of paint, the sky was pale like that.

  The smell was rain, then, not the ocean. It started falling soon after Fujisawa, pricking the ocean’s surface, which had been passing in and out of view since Ninomiya.

  I recall the pain on Mother’s face, as I was leaving.

  And Seiji’s, too.

  The first time I visited Manazuru, the season was, just a little, closer to spring. Kites were flying. The sky went on so far you couldn’t tell how far it went.

  “We’ll have to buy umbrellas somewhere, I guess,” the woman says.

  “We’ll be okay, once we’re in the car,” the man replies.

  The couple’s fingertips, lightly intertwined, are too clear to me. Her nails are painted red, his ring finger has a hangnail, she has a tiny mole on her pinky, a callus at his second joint, all of it appears to me with such clarity, it is like looking into a microscope.

  “You won’t die, will you?” the woman says.

  Have I misheard? I do not listen more closely.

  The man makes no response.

  “Don’t die, please?” she says, once again.

  I did not mishear. But I do not have the energy.

  Soon we are at Manazuru. Her thin fingers toy restlessly with his.

  IT IS A fierce rain.

  I buy a clear plastic umbrella at the kiosk, hurry out onto the street. There is no bus to the shore for an hour. I will go on foot, I decide, hug my bag tightly to me.

  Mud splashes up my legs. I’m back, I call, to the woman who always comes and follows, in Manazuru.

  There is no answer.

  After twenty minutes’ walking, I begin to grow numb. I peer up through the clear umbrella. The plastic is clouded by the spattering rain, I can’t make out anything at all. The bottom of my coat, soaked, clings to my legs.

  Where the road begins to drop, there is a cluster of stores. A soba shop with its name on a tall, narrow banner, is open. It is lunchtime, it is packed. I order nabeyaki udon.

  Sipping the soup, I burn my tongue. As I eat, slowly, the crowd thins out. There’s a guesthouse near here, isn’t there, run by some people named Suna? I ask the young woman serving me. For no real reason. Oh, the place near the shore, Minatoya, you mean?

  Something like a woman’s shadow comes.

  I scoop up the last bit of soup in my spoon, gulp it down. The shadow crouches, wavering, by my waist. You always come where there is food, I mumble, and it tightens, just a little.

  When I leave the restaurant, the rain has stopped. The sky is darker than when it was raining. Treading carefully on the gray road, I head for the shore.

  THE WAVES ARE high.

  I try to think of Seiji, but I can’t.

  When you come to Manazuru, give yourself to Manazuru. It is the woman’s voice.

  She was a shadow, but now, suddenly, she has a form, perfectly visible. She has long hair, she is even more lovely than before, and her voice is clear.

  “Did you get a room?” the woman asks.

  “No, I don’t know if I’ll stay here tonight.”

  “You’d better, or you might not be able to get back.”

  What do you mean by that? I ask, but she won’t say.

  I walk out onto the beach with her. We’re like friends, the two of us, I say, and she smiles. She offers me her hand, and I take it, firmly, in mine.

  “It’s the first time. The first time we’ve been this way, so together,” she says, very quietly.

  We sit on a damp rock, gaze out into the offing. There is a long bridge that spans the bay. We are still holding hands. I feel her warmth, it is like a living hand.

  “Why?” I ask, and the woman tilts her head.

  “I’m not sure, maybe it’s that we’re closer, now, than we were,” she replies.

  She is so very close, now, is that what drew me back to Manazuru?

  “I want to see Rei,” I say, earnest, just to see.

  “Do you really?”

  “I do.”

  “If you can’t go back?”

  “I won’t go back.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “My daughter has gone, too.”

  Has she, really? The woman frowns. It’s not so easy, you know.

  “It doesn’t have to be easy,” I say, lingering over each word. I squeeze the woman’s hand, strongly. It crumbles. Where her hand was, there is only empty space. She herself is gone.

  Don’t go. I call to her.

  The waves are high. Two black trucks speed by, rumbling, one after the other, over the bridge. The woman does not return.

  DID IT ALWAYS feel this way, such a lack, of presence?

  I have been wandering now, for a long time. From the beach, I climbed a slightly steep hill, prayed at a shrine to Sarasvatῑ. A few statues shone dimly in the dark wooden building. There is something in these remote areas, in the place where a god lives, even in the midst of decay, that soothes. You feel that you are in a place you recognize.

  I huddled for a while, wondering if something familiar would come, but nothing did.

  I grew cold, and walked on. I descended the stairway, skirted an isolated cluster of houses, gazed at the trees in their neat, well-kept gardens. The windows of all the houses were shuttered. There is no feeling of presence here, at all. I climbed the steps, putting all my weight on them, slowly, one at a time, to Chigo Shrine. Here, too, no sense of presence, either within the shrine itself, or in the space around it.

  I returned to a path that led off to the side, partway up. The way was narrow, lined on both sides by houses. Every gate was shut. Satsuma oranges, tiny fruit, hung heavy from the trees. A bird came, and cried. Only the bird’s raucous cry breaks the silence.

  It is hard, climbing, descending. I see an elementary school and listen for children’s voices, but here, too, I do not feel a presence. Wind gusts across the puddles in the playground, raising tiny waves. A bell sounds. I wait, wondering if someone might come out of the school. But no figure appears. The classrooms are all dark, settled in their stillness.

  Hey, I call, to no one in particular.

  Hey. Once again.

  I walk faster, pass stone figures of the two Dōsojin, guardians of travelers, arrive at the fire station. Red fire trucks are parked in a row, looking cold, not moving here, either. I decide to leave the back streets, go down to the road that the bus takes.

  I do not see a single car, no matter how far I walk. No buses pass. At a stop, I check the schedule. The next bus is in ten minutes. During the festival, in the summer, it was around here that the boat capsized. I am cold, I look around for a store to enter, but all are closed.

  Sitting down on the bench, I realize how thirsty I am, and I go to buy a can of coffee from the vending machine. I never drink sweet coffee, but that is what I select. I return to the bench, wrap my hands around the can, and wait. It was hot, but soon it cools.

  I pull the tab, and drink. I look at the bus
schedule, again, and check my watch. The next bus is in ten minutes. After I finish my coffee, I check my watch again. Ten minutes until the bus.

  Alone, a kite flies. Tracing small circles, it stays near the water.

  TEN MINUTES UNTIL the bus.

  How many times have I checked?

  What sort of place have I wandered into?

  The wind blows, weakly. A few seagulls perch on the booth where tickets are sold for the boat tour around the peninsula. Grass grows on the sagging roof. The seagulls’ cries are shrill.

  The fish market, the cluster of ramen shops and bars at the edge of the market, the quarry on the mountainside, everything, I realize, is crumbling, decaying. The blacktop is laced with a web of cracks, and here, too, thin stalks of grass have grown, in clumps.

  A swarm of mosquitoes rises in a column over the bench at the bus stop. It is winter, and yet the bugs buzz about, thickly.

  Come back.

  It is the woman’s voice.

  But I cannot tell where she is. Ten minutes until the bus. I am petrified, afraid to leave the bus stop. I am thinking of Rei, like a ringing in my ears. I loved him. The truth, though, is, even now, I do not know the meaning of that word. Love. Maybe, I should just accept that the feeling I had within me, then, when I thought of Rei, was loving. Useless as it is, this loving. Especially in a place like this. Still, I loved Rei. I think about this, now.

  Even after he went away, I loved him. I could not cease loving him. It is hard to love what is not there. The feeling of loving, somehow, insinuates itself into your love. Like a bag turned inside-out, the feeling is turned on itself.

  Does love, reversed, become the opposite of love?

  It doesn’t.

  Is love’s opposite hatred? Or is hatred a synonym of love? It was never neat, either way. It was never so easy.

  It became indistinct, stagnant, obscure, different.

  Ten minutes until the bus.

  It is cold. The kite keeps flying, around and around, in one place.

  I WALKED WITH Rei through a field, one spring.

  Holding Momo, walking, in a vast field of yellow forsythia and white snow willow.

  “Look, a swing,” Rei said.

  I passed Momo to him, got on the swing. I soared, looked down over Rei and Momo. Each time I catapulted forward and up, or back and up, Momo squealed with glee.

  I relaxed my legs, let momentum carry me, and immediately the swing began to settle into smaller arcs. I thought it would stop soon, but it continued. On and on, in small arcs.

  Rei sets Momo on the ground, walks around behind me. He pushes my back. Once again the swing swings widely. Momo tries to stand up. She is incapable, still, of walking by herself. For a moment she rises, stands, feet planted firmly on the ground. Then she plops down on her bottom. She opens her legs where she sits, claps her palms together, delighted.

  Rei stands behind me, pushes me, strong, each time the swing returns.

  That’s enough, stop, I say, but Rei just laughs. Bright, strong laughter.

  When I close my eyes, the arcs feel bigger. I am swinging, not over a space of two meters, forward and back, but up into the heavens, then back down to earth, is how it feels.

  If I let go of these two chains, how far would I be thrown?

  I think, deep in my head, not near my eyelids, but at the core.

  Each time Rei’s palm presses into my back, my body returns to earth, but there is something else, not my body, not my heart, either, something unknown, indistinct, that has ascended into the heavens, that will not come back.

  When I opened my eyes, it was just a field, and when Momo and Rei turned to me, they had the same look in their eyes.

  I threw my feet against the earth, strongly, stopping the swing. Momo kept clapping.

  Scooped up, high, in Rei’s arms, Momo laughed even louder.

  IT WAS AUTUMN, in the same field.

  At the edge of the field, there was a station for a gondola lift.

  Over the mountain, along a low-hanging steel cable, like a beetle scrabbling over the earth, a small, angular gondola crept.

  Let’s take it, Rei said.

  I didn’t want to ride it, but we did.

  There was a second station partway up, everyone disembarked but Rei and me. Only we were left in the gondola, pulled mechanically along, a recorded voice playing over the loudspeakers.

  At the third station, the lift stopped. The voice fizzled, the gondola appeared to have broken down, and yet Rei sat gazing, perfectly calm, out the window.

  “Maybe we can climb out and cut the gondola free from the cable,” Rei suggested, with the air of one struck by inspiration.

  It will never work, I said, realizing that this must be a dream. And if I’m dreaming, I think, maybe it would be all right to cut the gondola free?

  We stepped out onto the windswept platform, pressed the emergency button, and slowly the gondola descended to earth. Crashing down onto the slope, the metal buckled, dug in.

  “Rei, I’m scared. What are we doing here, in this place?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s always like this, we’re just living our lives,” Rei answers.

  Fierce gusts blow, let up, then come again. It seems we will be carried away. Even though it is a dream, there is nothing tentative in the chill of the wind, or its fierceness.

  Far below, I can see the autumn field. I put my arm around Rei’s waist. Yesterday, come to think of it, when Rei came home from work, as I was arranging his suit on its hanger, I found myself calling up the image of a gondola crushed in the earth, screws scattered, the glittering silver of twisted steel.

  Yes, it’s true, you live, and these things happen, all the time.

  Yeah, tell me about it, all the time.

  We say, to each other. The autumn wind tousles our hair. I wait, slightly annoyed, wondering what I will cook for dinner, hoping the next gondola will come soon.

  THE SAME FIELD, again, but it was neither spring nor autumn, but late summer.

  I was getting on his case.

  About the woman. The one with the mole on her neck.

  Rei said nothing. He won’t even make excuses, I thought, chilled, and turned to look at him, he was staring straight ahead, no expression on his face.

  My Rei had withdrawn, deep down, into the container of Rei, what stood before me now was nothing but the shape.

  I slapped his cheek.

  Rei blanched. But still he did not speak.

  It’s not her fault, he said quietly, after a time.

  You don’t love me now? I asked.

  Love, Rei murmured, uncertain. I can’t get used to words like that.

  Once again, I am chilled.

  I had the sense that all the words we had spoken together, Rei and I, had whirled in the air, becoming something else, taking on different meanings.

  I clung to Rei.

  He didn’t push me back, but for just an instant, he pulled away.

  I had thought we were family, the borders between our bodies indistinct, Momo and Rei and I, the three of us, mingling, dissolving.

  In the field, in late summer, Rei’s body repelled me.

  Still, I clung. Pressed my lips to his ears, whispered, Don’t go.

  Lightly, he held me. We were closer, and yet he seemed to be distancing me. Though he held me, because he was holding me, I felt lonely.

  I won’t let you go, I screamed.

  Rei held me tighter. Like a child having a tantrum.

  Suddenly, fury seized me. If I had a knife, how I’d plunge it into you, I thought.

  My body drenched in the blood shooting out from him, I would wait until the last drop had trickled out, make sure it was over, then strongly, strongly, clasp Rei to me, I would press my face against his body, if I could.

  Rei looked at me, calmly.

  I couldn’t even cry. He looked at me, and my body wanted him, madly. I should not have loved, I thought. It would have been better if none of this had happened.

 
Rei’s gaze hurt me. It hurt, and I was glad. I was so sad, so lonely, and yet I was glad.

  Rei. I called his name.

  Kei. He called me back.

  In the field, in late summer, a column of mosquitoes whirled, thick.

  Ten minutes until the bus. I sit on the bench near the shore in Manazuru, feeling numb, the mosquitoes droning.

  A LARGE SHADOW passes.

  As I glance up, a bird sails by. I hear its white wings slice the wind.

  “A heron.”

  I say the word, and my body, seemingly stuck to the bench, loosens, just a little.

  The heron crosses the peak, out of view. I check my watch. The short hand and the long hand have both stopped, ten minutes before the time when the bus is to come. And yet the second hand is moving.

  The heron returns. It was alone, but it flies back with a second trailing behind. The first lands on the roof of a house by the mountain. The second settles on the roof of the next house over, finds a place to stand, its long legs slightly bent, and freezes.

  Half the tiles have slid from the roofs. Moss has filled the gaps between those that remain, and some sort of thatch has grown up around the moss. The rain shutters, pulled halfway out along their tracks, are starting to decay.

  Abandoned houses stand empty, foreboding, for a decade or so, but if they are left longer than that, they begin anew, they are reborn as living things. Vines have squeezed through the cracked glass, where the windows are not shielded by the shutters. The leaves are mostly brown and withered, but underneath, already, tiny shoots of new green are visible.

  The walls are blackened, cracked. The fissures run boldly up and down, side to side, as if they were drawn there by someone, on purpose. It is not that the house is losing its form, ceasing to be what it was as it is taken over by the snaking vines, rising grasses, it is that the decaying structure itself is acquiring a new life, different from before, that is how it seems.

  I stand, walk over to the houses where the herons stand.

  They are facing in opposite directions. Their feathers are white. Their beaks are black. The tips of their feet, powerful, gripping the roofs, are yellow.