They can hear the sound of the earth giving away somewhere up above them, up higher in the forest on a nearby slope, but maybe coming here, and the crash of a tree makes Alec freeze, he is still shaking, this violence around them, but Kanae is pulling him still, and here are these little statues with their rubbed off faces and puddles of water now at their stone feet, and Alec is gripping Kanae’s hand too tightly now, a mixture of anger and relief because when he saw her nearly fall, when he saw the branch land on her—and he thought it hit her head, he thought . . . no, it doesn’t matter, she is okay, she is the one gripping him, crushing his hand, and her hands are shaking too, but she pulls him under the rock ledge, as far back into the natural cave as they can go, and the rocks are dry here and though the storm-ripped forest sounds like a war, they could almost hear each other if they would dare to speak.
He does not see her as she turns to him, only the outline of her face and the whites of her eyes and teeth, both so sharp in the storm darkness, but he can close his eyes and know her entire face, the tiny mole by her eyebrow and the uneven rise of her two cheekbones, the tight slope of her nose, the small round point of her chin, and this is the face that has been with him for a lifetime, his lifetime, now a finite period, and she is saying something to him now, she is throwing words at him, unblinking, and the look of her anger is as terrifying as the crashing and hurling of the typhoon as it rips up the forest, and then she stops suddenly, she listens, and he is breathing too heavily, all the adrenaline of his flight and his walk from the car now collapsing over him, and he is growing dizzy and her hand moves to his forehead and there is a moment when they cannot look at each other, when their hands, still touching, are empty and enraged.
What matters now is the geography of this little shrine, and what part of the forest it claims sacred, because this storm is always moving, and our Komachi is only a small town—quickly passed over, quickly damaged, quickly released—and although the wind is still driving down upon us, the storm has shifted its center, it has moved to a higher elevation and the peaks of the Fog Island Mountains are offering their resistance, slicing the wind, carving it up into lesser gusts and flipping it back upon the storm itself, and slowly, starting from now, right now, this storm will leave us.
Alec is still catching his breath and Kanae is staring at him, and he knows this frightened face of hers, the one she wore when her children got hurt, when Megumi announced she was pregnant and alone, when her father asked to come live with them after her mother died, and yes, he remembers this same face, too, from their period of courting when it would sneak into their more serious conversations, when it surprised them both in a moment of happiness, and he is nodding at her now, able to look at her again, because forever is such a terrifying thing but they have already managed one forever and they have done just fine with it.
Kanae now reaching around him, fumbling with the crannies of this rock ledge and finding her way to the little square of shrine and there tucked behind the box, still inside the rock wall, after so many years—perhaps someone has been keeping it safe—is Kanae’s little lacquer box, the one she showed him so long ago, and she is holding it out to him, and he is taking it, opening it, and there between his fingers are the slips of paper they once tucked inside.
He unfolds the papers to see that the words are gone, vanished completely, nothing left of his and Kanae’s forty-year-old hand-writing, and this betrayal is such a shock that he must blink back against it, wipe it away from his face.
But Alec presses the papers into Kanae’s hand anyway, and the words they wrote are coming to him, I promise . . .
She is holding herself now, she has not reached out to touch him again, and her arms are like a wall to him, wrapped over her chest and her eyes are wide and she is stepping back, moving toward the forest again, escape in her feet once more, but no, Alec stands now, bumping his head on the top of the overhang, the last time he will feel like a giant in our midst, and he is stepping toward her, pushing them both into the storm, into the rain and the wind that have been beating at them for days now. But this time they will stand here together, and watch their hands now, the strength of each hand as it holds the other, and their feet do not move, and although she hesitates the words come back to her as well, the words they first said together so many years before, and they are whispering the words because the sound isn’t important anymore, what matters is remembering how they did this once, and they are whispering and trembling as they step back beneath the rock ledge of this forgotten shrine, and they are the words. They are the words and this storm.
* * *
I am not near the shrine this time but I hear them all the same, we all hear them, all of us in Komachi as this storm crawls away from us, and as we are stepping out from our homes and these buildings and into the ragged sunshine and the still-strong wind, but this is no longer a typhoon, this is now the aftermath, the moment of retrieval, of taking stock, of wandering around our homes and looking at the damage. And so here I am checking on the animals, pulling at the ropes I’ve used to tie the shed and looking at the back window that has broken, just a crack really, but there is water on the floor and my grandfather’s cabinet has shifted again because the wood is rotting at the base, one of the sides will collapse soon and I know how I will spend the next few days, working to repair it, drying out the wood with a fan and patching, as I have patched it already so many times before. But the animals are fine, the hares have come out from their burrow-box and are looking at me, their ears up and alert, still wary of the sounds outside, but even they know the worst is over, and then it comes, it hits me hard and I must freeze, rope in hand, here is the yip and yowl and the flutter of wings and the grunting of the badgers, the skitter of the deer, all of them, every animal in my forest, and what could this mean?
I am dropping it all now, I am out of the shed and through the sugi and up into the woods and this slippery mud will not stop me, these fallen branches and the still-falling water from the tree tops, and the wind at my back, none of this will stop me because the animals are calling me, and my old heart is pounding now, and I’m wondering if this is my last day, if this is how it will go, that the animals will call me deep into the forest and of course I will go, I am ready to give myself up to them, I am, and so I am still running, still following the howl and grumble, the shree of the hawk, and where are they leading me, not toward the shrine, no, away toward the gorge, to the natural sulfur spots and hidden holes, here I must walk carefully, and then I need no longer walk at all, because here she is.
The animals are silent now, vanished away and hidden, and I fall to my knees, and I crawl to her body, to what hasn’t been broken, and there beneath my fingers is the whole flat panel of her red fur, this fiery broad side of her, the black socks of her feet, only three of them visible, the other twisted and muddied, and her white beard, and I am rubbing her down and telling her to come back, telling her she must be okay, but her body is still, her body will not move for me, and when I pick her up she is empty in my arms, she is only a memory, a child’s toy, a rumor, and I carry her back down through the woods, and we pick our way again through the mud and the branches, across the swollen stream and it takes twice the time to get her home, she is not heavy but I am weighed down, and then, unexpectedly, we are in my backyard and I can lay her out near the shed.
Watch me now, watch me looking up at the sky, because the wind has flattened itself out into a steady push, no longer truly violent, and the rain has stopped falling, and the air is already heating up again, this late summer air will fight against the coming of the autumn with all its might, and my hand is on kitsune and I am breathing deeply, and the sky is clearing now, we will all be able to breathe again, and I turn my thoughts to town, to all of us in our houses or looking outside, and there are so many faces at so many windows, and so many people on their porches, they too are looking up at the sky, watching this light change, growing lighter now, for an hour or so as the storm moves off of us, as our island
comes back to itself, and then it will grow dark again as the evening steals in, as the news reports are collected and the stories of what happened are broadcast to us all, some correctly, some needing correction, and already for this hour there are things we can repair, we can cover up the broken windows and move furniture from the water, we can collect garbage from the river, and wrap our injured elbows and our twisted ankles, find bandages for the small cuts and salve for the bruises, and husbands will be calling their wives, saying no, do not worry, I’ll be home soon, and mothers will be calling out to their children, saying, it’s over, it’s time to see what must be done, and lovers will be telling their beloveds that yes, I am ready, and slowly, quietly, all will be put right.
So I pick up this thin body again, wrap her up in the sheet I’ve laid her upon, take her up the steps into the house, the house that maybe, just maybe, she knew from before, and then for this hour until the darkness comes, I will sit with her, and so together we walk into the kitchen, into the house, and Grandmother is here again, and I am nodding to her, and there is Grandfather, too, and he is nodding to me, and I know that it’s time, now that the story has finished, and so I lay out my kitsune, and I pull out that first sheet of paper, and I am reaching for my pen and thinking hard for that first word, and when it comes to me, it will all come so easily, and there will only be one story to tell, and it is this one, and so I begin . . .
So this is our town, our little Komachi…
GLOSSARY OF JAPANESE WORDS
ai: love, a person’s sweetheart
aka-chan: baby
Ashi ga ippon shika nai kono kaeru: This frog only has one leg
bā-chan: grandmother
chashitsu: a room or small house meant for performing the Japanese tea ceremony
Gaijin-san: a way of addressing a foreign person in Japan, literally “Mr. or Ms. Foreigner”
genkan: entranceway; front door
irasshaimase: welcome; greeting
Jī-chan: grandfather
juku: a private school
kanji: system of writing
kaze: wind
kendōgi: uniform,; outfit for performing and practicing Kendō
Kirishima: The name of a mountain range on the Japanese Island of Kyūshū; the characters literally mean “Fog Island”
Kirishima Renzan wa kazan bakari desu: The Kirishima Mountains are nothing but volcanoes
kitsune: fox; fox spirit
koan: paradox
Komachi: The name of a town; the characters literally mean “small town”; also a synonym for beautiful or used as a noun to describe a woman or girl, literally “a beauty”
mado: window
matcha: tea
matte imasu: waiting
mochi: rice cake
moji: written character
neko-chan: cat
obi: sash for a kimono
ohayō gozaimasu: good morning
okāsan: mother
onigiri: hand-rolled rice balls
onsen: hot spring; bathing facility
natsume: tea caddy
ryokan: traditional inn
saru: monkey
senbei: rice cracker
shōchū: distilled beverage
shōshō omachi kudasai: please wait (a moment)
shujin: husband
shū jin: a prisoner; convict
shūjin: the public; the people
sō da nē: hmm, yes, it would seem so
sugi: cedar tree
Nani mo tabete nai desu yo ne: you haven’t eaten anything, right?
tatami: woven floor mats
tenisō: metastatic lesion
torii: red gate at the entrance to a shrine
yakiniku: grilled meat
yakusugi: 1,000-year-old cedar tree
yukata: robe; informal kimono
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Komachi is a fictional town, but it is located somewhere near the very real Kirishima Mountain Range of southern Japan. The grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu was the mythological ancestor of Japan’s first emperor and, according to Japanese legend, he descended to the earth for the very first time within these mountains. The quote from the Kojiki that opens the novel is taken from the description of that first descent. It is meant to highlight the privileged place these volcanic mountains occupy within Japan’s storytelling tradition.
Komachi literally means “small town,” and while there are a few villages named Komachi in various areas of Japan, there is no Komachi in the Kirishima area. Komachi is more often the name of a neighborhood, a district, or even a restaurant or business. When writing Fog Island Mountains, I was wary of using a real place. Mainly because the novel’s Komachi has its own internal geography, which—along with its relationship to the larger Kirishima region—is meant to be entirely fictional. But the word komachi can be used in a different way. A ninth-century Waka poet named Ono no Komachi was renowned for her great beauty and tragic love affairs, and komachi has since become a synonym for “a beauty.” As it happens, her story has been written and rewritten and shifted to suit its audiences. This was an influence on my conception of the effects of Azami’s own rumor-filled upbringing, as well as what she is doing in telling Alec and Kanae’s story.
“Come and Sleep” is the first known Japanese folk tale about a fox-woman bewitching a man and becoming his wife in human form. It is taken from the eighth- or ninth-century Nihon Ryōiki. The version I most often consulted comes from Miraculous Stories from the Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon Ryouiki of the Monk Kyouka by Kyoko Motomochi Nakamura (Harvard University Press, 1953).
Also, several other books became a part of my working bibliography for the novel: KOJIKI: Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Donald L. Philippi (Princeton University Press and University of Tokyo Press, 1969); Japanese Tales by Royall Tyler (Pantheon, 1987); Romances of Old Japan by Madame Yukio Ozaki (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1919); The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu translated by Seidensticker (Knopf, 1976); Japanese Love Poems: Selections from the Manyōshū edited by Evan Bates (Dover Publications, 2005); Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki (Knopf, 1963); and Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance and Humor by Kiyosho Nozaki (The Hokuseido Press, 1961).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the late Christopher Doheny and to his family. And to Beth Anderson at Audible as well as Noreen Tomassi at the Center for Fiction. Also to Dani Shapiro, Meghan O’Rourke, and Ann Hood for selecting Fog Island Mountains and giving it this chance for publication. I am extremely grateful to Ron Formica, Laura Colebank, Hilary Eurich, Amy Fernald, John Molish, and everyone else at Tantor for their enthusiasm and support, and especially to Karen Ang for her careful editorial eye and kind comments.
I would also like to extend my love and thanks to Mitchell and Mary Jones for giving me the extraordinary gift of being born in southern Japan. To Claude Bailat and Emiline Jones Bailat, thank you, always, for your love, enthusiasm, and boundless support. To Jennifer Jones Barbour and Josh Barbour, your love and friendship mean the world to me. To Nancy Freund Fraser, your editing skill and your friendship are invaluable gifts. To Steve Himmer, it is my great fortune to count you as a friend and writing colleague—thank you for everything. To Kimberly Bamberg, Rhiannon Kruse, and Liz Robertson for your incomparable friendships. To Rina Kanemaru for your willingness to answer my questions, no matter the time of day. To Matsumi Fukae (and your entire wonderful family) for years of friendship. To Nicola Slack, thank you for being the first to share my writing dream in our tiny studio in Kobayashi so many years ago. To Adam Meinig for not laughing. To Laura McCune Poplin, Sophie Knight, Margaret Saine, Iris Kuerten, Colleen Hamilton, Rosie Roberson, Emily LePlastrier Civita, Laurie Sanchez, and Martha VanKoevering for being my very first readers and all-around bookish friends. To Tony Bradman for your eternal kindness and encouragement. To Frederick Reiken and DeWitt Henry for your insight and mentoring during my MFA. And finally, t
o Mr. Ronald Norman for taking me seriously when it mattered the most.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Bailat-Jones is a writer and translator. Her novel Fog Island Mountains won the Christopher Doheny Award from the Center for Fiction in New York City. She translated Charles Ferdinand Ramuz’s 1927 Swiss classic Beauty on Earth (Onesuch Press, 2013). She is the reviews editor at the webjournal Necessary Fiction, and her fiction, poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in a number of journals, including the Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Quarterly Conversation, PANK, Spolia Mag, Two Serious Ladies, and the Atticus Review. She lives in Switzerland.
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