A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  “Yes,” Benoit said. “It is a very famous song. By Barbara.” He pronounced the name in French, wrapping his lips around the three syllables, giving each equal weight and caressing the guttural r’s deep in his throat.

  “No, actually. It was a singer named Monique—”

  He flapped his hand impatiently. “Serf, yes, yes, it is the same. Barbara is her stage name, for her many fans. Are you a fan, too?”

  “Well, I’ve actually never heard her,” Ruth said. “I just ran across the lyrics in a book and wondered what they meant . . .”

  Benoit closed his eyes and began to speak. She had to lean in to catch what he was saying over the steady din of the crusher’s motor.

  “Le mal de vivre, ‘the pain of life.’ Qu’il faut bien vivre . . . ‘that we must live with, or endure.’ Vaille que vivre, this is difficult, but it is something like ‘we must live the life we have. We must soldier on.’ ”

  He opened his eyes. “Does that help?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, I think it does. Thank you.”

  Benoit studied her. “Is this all you want? You do not need help with the rest of the translations? There is still the booklet in French, non?”

  She eyed the crusher’s gaping maw. “Muriel?”

  “Dora,” Benoit answered. He grinned, exposing the hole where a front tooth should have been.

  “Of course.”

  “Mais, j’adore Barbara,” he said, “and now I’m interested to help you. Here is too noisy. Perhaps we should adjourn to the library?”

  He hollered for one of his dreadlocked dump punx to replace him, whistled for his dog, and then led her through the parking lot, up a dirt embankment that had been elaborately terraced with geranium-filled truck tires, to a small room at the back of the garage where the forklift was parked. His little dog ran ahead, barking.

  The room was surprisingly neat, with windows overlooking the Dumpsters below. The furnishings were sparse and what you might expect: a banged-up metal desk in the corner; two office chairs on wobbly casters; a dented metal filing cabinet. But above the desk and covering the two adjacent sides of the room were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, lined with books. The fourth wall was decorated with discarded paintings, mostly stoner art, faux native iconography, and paint-by-numbers northern landscapes of moose and grizzlies that were so bad they were good. Tacked to the wall, as well, was a sheet of ruled binder paper with a copy of the Serenity Prayer, neatly written by hand. God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . .

  “Voilà,” Benoit said, spreading his arms. “Ma bibliothèque et galerie. Welcome.”

  He sat down on the chair at the desk. The little dog, a wiry-haired mutt with a lot of terrier in him, jumped up onto one of the chairs, but Benoit called him off, and then used a rag to wipe the seat and offered it to Ruth. The dog gave Ruth a rueful look, then curled up at Benoit’s feet.

  She walked slowly past the shelves, scanning the spines. Some titles were in French, but many were in English, a good collection of the classics, interspersed with some science fiction, history, and political theory. It was better than what she could find at the library.

  “All from the dump,” he said, proudly. “Help yourself.” He watched her, intently, as she pulled a collection of Kafka’s stories from the shelf. “You look very much like your mother,” he said, as she sat down across from him.

  She looked up from the book, surprised.

  “Ah, you didn’t know?” he asked. “Your mother and I were great friends. She was one of our most loyal customers.”

  She remembered then. Oliver used to bring her mother to the dump every Saturday morning. They had a standing date, and her mother never forgot, even when the rest of her world was fading.

  “Masako,” Oliver would say, loudly, into her ear so she could hear him even without her hearing aids, which she’d stopped wearing by then. “I don’t suppose you’d like to accompany me to the Free Store this Saturday?”

  Her face would light up with a great toothless smile. She’d stopped wearing her dentures by then, too. “Well!” she’d exclaim. “I thought you’d never ask . . .”

  She loved a bargain. She had grown up during the Depression and used to shop at thrift stores near her home before they moved her west. Soon after she arrived on the island, they brought her to the Free Store and left her to rummage through the racks. She was standing in the sweater aisle, examining a cardigan, when she called Ruth over.

  “Where’s the price tag?” she whispered. “The price tag is missing. How do I know how much it is?” Her voice sounded agitated. Missing things upset her. Missing price tags. Missing memories. Missing parts of her life.

  “There’s no price tag, Mom,” Ruth said. “It’s free. Everything here is free.”

  She stood there, stunned. “Free?” she repeated, looking around at the aisles of clothes and shelves of toys and books and housewares.

  “Yes, Mom. Free. That’s why it’s called the Free Store.”

  She held up the sweater. “You mean, I can have this. Without paying? Just like that?”

  “Yes, Mom. Just like that.”

  “My goodness,” she said, looking at the sweater and shaking her head. “It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  Every Saturday after that, Oliver would drive Masako to the dump in the pickup. He’d park and help her down from the truck, and then escort her carefully up the hill, over the rocky terrain, and past the mounds of rusting junk to the door of the Free Store, where he’d hand her over to one of the volunteer ladies. They soon got to know her and saved her all the best things in her size. When he was done with the recycling, Oliver would collect her and escort her back downhill, where Benoit would be waiting to ask her how her shopping had gone and if she’d found any good bargains. This joke always made her laugh.

  When her closets got full and her dresser drawers no longer closed, Ruth slipped things out from the bottom of her piles and returned them to the Free Store, where her mother could discover them all over again.

  “Isn’t this pretty?” Masako said, showing Ruth a blouse she’d just brought home. “I’m so glad I found this. I used to have one just like it, you know . . .”

  Benoit laughed when she told him this story. “Your mother was very funny,” he said. “She probably knew exactly what you were doing. Was there ever a memorial for her? No? I didn’t think so. It’s too bad.”

  He leaned forward in the chair. His dark eyes gleamed. “So, now, what can I do for you?”

  He had already heard about the freezer bag and knew all about the contents. He asked to see the sky soldier watch, and so she took it off and showed him. What was it about men and that watch? He whistled through the gap in his teeth, waking the dog, who lifted his head, expectantly. When he was done admiring it, she took the letters and the composition booklet from her backpack and carefully unwrapped them. The little dog yawned and went back to sleep.

  “The letters are in Japanese,” she said, setting them aside and holding up the booklet. “But this is in French.”

  She hesitated, looking at his stained, work-hardened hands. Black grime caked the cracks in his calloused skin and under his nails. She wished she’d thought to make a photocopy. The slim booklet looked antique and flimsy between his thick fingers, but he handled it gently, turning the tissue-thin pages with a careful reverence that surprised her. He started to read aloud:

  “10 décembre 1943—Dans notre grand dortoir, les soldats de l’escadron et moi, on dirait des poissons qui sèchent sur un étendoir. Seule les nuits de pleine lune, quand le ciel est dégagé, me procurent assez de lumière pour écrire . . . Mes dernières pensées, mesurées en gouttes d’encre.”

  He looked up. “Do you understand any of that?”

  “Only a little,” she admitted. “December. Something about fishes and the full moon. And maybe someone’s last thoughts . . . ?”

  His smile was tinged with pity. “Perhaps you would allow me to keep this
and make a translation for you?”

  The condescension in his tone irritated her, but she could get over that. Her real concern was for the safety of the old notebook. She didn’t want to let him take it away, but she didn’t want to offend him, either. The dog woke up, and sensing that the meeting was almost over, stood and nudged his nose into Benoit’s hand.

  “All right,” she said, watching as he leaned over to scratch the dog’s head. “Do you think it will take you a long time?”

  He shrugged. Questions about time were meaningless on the island, but then his black eyes lit up. “Ah,” he said. “Is this for your new book?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m just curious.”

  He looked disappointed. He folded the booklet back up and reached across the small table for the wax wrapping and the envelope. At least he was careful. The stack of folded letters caught his eye.

  “Are these all written by the same man?” he asked.

  “I don’t actually know,” she said. “I haven’t read them yet. The Japanese handwriting is hard . . .”

  He seemed uninterested in her excuses. He picked up the stack of letters and flipped through it. He unfolded one and spread it flat on the table. The dog, tired of waiting, lay back down.

  “Don’t tell me you read Japanese, too,” she asked.

  “Of course not. To me, this is the scratching of a chicken. But look. The pen is the same, and the ink.” He opened the composition book again and laid it next to the letter. “And see? The handwriting is similar, even though your man is writing in different languages.”

  He was right. The writing had a similar feeling, precise and delicate, but full of energy and life. Ruth wondered how she could have missed that. “What makes you think the writer is a man?”

  “Absolutely he is a man,” Benoit said, tapping on the paragraph he’d read out loud in French, and then he read it again, only this time he translated into English.

  “December 10, 1943—We sleep together in one large room, my squadron members and I, laid out in rows like small fish hung to dry.”

  He reached across the table and tapped the face of her watch. “It is only my guess, but I believe these were all written by your sky soldier.”

  2.

  On her way home from the dump, she noticed that the wind was picking up again, so she stopped at the Squirrel Cove store to buy groceries and top off the gas. She didn’t have the spare gas can with her, but if the tank in the truck was full, Oliver could siphon out gas if the generator ran out. Provided the generator was working again. The clouds hung low on the mountains, and the waves in the mouth of the inlet were choppy and crested with white. A small fishing boat was crossing to the government dock. A bald eagle wheeled in great arcs overhead. It was only early afternoon, but the sky was already growing dark, and the lights from the Klahoose reservation twinkled on the far side of the cove.

  The lights at home were still on, too. She parked the truck and unloaded the box of groceries. As she passed the woodpile she heard a crow cawing. She stopped and looked around, wondering if it was the Jungle Crow, but she couldn’t see it. Did they have a different call? This one sounded alarmed. She heard it again, from farther away this time, followed by the low, drawn-out baying of a wolf, coming from over by the inlet. She continued into the house.

  Oliver, anticipating the storm, already had the generator hooked up and ready to go. She put the groceries away and then followed the trail of extension cords upstairs. His office door, which was across the hall from hers, was open, and so she looked in. He was sitting at his desk, wearing his noise-canceling headphones and whistling a tuneless tune as he surfed the Internet. Next to him, the cat was asleep in the old swiveling office chair they’d gotten for him from the dump. They called it his co-pilot chair, and it was where he most liked to be. They’d gotten the cat from the dump, too.

  The noise-canceling headphones had belonged to her, but she’d given them to Oliver when she saw how much he liked them. He liked the way they squeezed his head. The pressure helped him to think, he said, and now she had to shout to make herself heard.

  “Hey!” she yelled from the doorway, waving her arm.

  The cat blinked and opened one eye. Oliver looked up and waved back. “You’re home,” he said, too loudly. “I didn’t hear you come in. Any luck?” The cat, annoyed at all the noise, opened the other eye.

  She motioned for him to take off the headphones. “Sorry,” he said, in a normal voice. “Any luck?”

  “He’s going to translate it. He thinks it was written by the sky soldier.”

  “Haruki Number One,” Oliver said. “Interesting.” He nudged the arm of the co-pilot chair and watched Pesto slowly rotate. “I wonder why he wrote it in French . . .”

  “So nobody could read it? Benoit said he was hiding it from the other soldiers in his squadron.”

  Oliver pensively spun the cat. “ ‘An excellent security feature,’ ” he said.

  The minute she heard it, she recalled the reference. How could he remember things he’d heard with such clarity?

  “ ‘Who would pick up an old book called À la recherche du temps perdu?’ ” he continued. “That’s what Nao wrote. So she’s hiding her diary inside Proust, and he’s hiding his diary by writing in French. Secret French diaries seem to run in the family.” He gave the co-pilot chair one last happy spin and withdrew his hand quickly as Pesto, fully awake and disgruntled, swatted at him, catching his hand with a claw.

  “Ow!” he said, putting his finger in his mouth.

  “Serves you right,” Ruth replied. The cat jumped off the co-pilot chair and stalked down the stairs and out the cat door. “I heard the wolves as I was coming in,” she said. “They’re really close. It’ll be your fault if he gets eaten.”

  Oliver shrugged. “It would serve him right if he got picked off by a wolf. Karmic retribution for all the baby squirrels he’s killed.” He put his headphones back on, but she could tell he was worried. Good. She crossed the hallway to her office.

  Secret French diaries run in the family. Of course. Why hadn’t she made that connection?

  She entered her office and saw the meditation cushion on the floor, and it occurred to her that in her present state of mind, maybe she should try sitting zazen again—maybe it would help her memory—but she didn’t. She sat down at her computer and logged on to Gmail, instead.

  Still no reply from Professor Leistiko.

  3.

  It had been more than a week since she’d sent the email, and now she had a sudden thought: Had she actually sent it? Perhaps she had written it and forgotten to hit send. Or perhaps the connection had failed and the email hadn’t gone out. These things happened more frequently than she liked to admit. She checked her sent-mail folder. No, there it was, stamped with the date and time. Good. She counted back. Nine days! Where had the time gone?

  The cursor pulsed with steady impatience. She made a copy of the email, adding a polite little note of apology for her persistence, and sent it off again. She didn’t want him to think she was a stalker, but nine days?

  Her face was flushed and she put her hands on her cheeks to cool them, feeling vaguely guilty, but for what? For bothering the professor? For neglecting her own work? For all the time she was wasting online trying to track down clues about Nao? The sudden disappearance of “The Instability of the Female ‘I’ ” had upset her. It was the corroboration from the real world that she’d been waiting for, and it had slipped away. Was she cheating to want to know more than what the girl had written? The world of the diary was growing increasingly strange and unreal. She didn’t know what to make of the girl’s ghost story. Did Nao really believe what she was writing?

  The professor was her only hope. As she stared at the restless pixels on her screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. How to describe it? A temp
oral stuttering, an urgent lassitude, a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind. It reminded her of the peculiar arrhythmic gait of Parkinson’s patients in the hospice where her mother spent the last months of her life, the way they lurched and stalled as they made their way down the hallways to the dining room and eventually to their deaths. It was a horrible, stilted, panicky sensation, hard to put into words, but which, if she were to try to represent it typographically, would look something like:

  stops

  4.

  “I think I’m going crazy,” she said. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”

  They were lying in bed. Oliver was checking his email on his iPhone. He didn’t reply, but Ruth didn’t notice.

  “I’ve been having premonitions,” she said. “Do you remember that dream I had about old Jiko? I told you about it, right? The first one that felt so real? She was typing something into her computer, and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew what she’d written.”

  She waited. When he didn’t respond, she went on.

  “She’d written, ‘Up, down, same thing.’ And then later when they were at the beach, Jiko said those exact same words . . . ‘up, down, same thing.’ I had that dream over a week before I read about the beach, so how did I know that?”

  “How did you know that?” he repeated.

  “Well, it was like old Jiko was texting me the message, too, only telepathically. Is that crazy?”