by Ruth Ozeki
If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into a lot of detail about what happened next because just thinking about it makes me feel sad and sick, and I haven’t even had time to take a bath yet. Let’s just say that the bed wasn’t round and it didn’t have a zebra-skin cover, but the rest of my imagining was pretty accurate. When we got to the room, he didn’t waste any time, and while he did things to my body, I just went to the silent frozen place in my mind that was clean and cold and very far away.
And really I don’t remember very much, only that partway through, I was lying on my stomach when my keitai started to ring, and I drifted back to this world just enough to wonder who was phoning me. I thought maybe it was Jiko, and the tears started leaking out of my eyes because I knew how sad she would feel if she could see me now, and I missed her and wanted to talk to her so badly. Then the thought occurred to me that maybe she knew I was in trouble, and that’s why she was calling, and maybe right now she was clicking her juzu beads and saying prayers for my well-being. And maybe the sound of the phone ringing actually did save me, because thinking of Jiko made me realize that I didn’t want to end up being one of those girls who the police have to find on the floor days later, because that would break her heart, and if you live to be a hundred and four, you don’t deserve to have your heart broken by your careless great-granddaughter. And just at that moment, my date did something that hurt so much, the pain shocked me back into my body, and I heard myself cry out, and then I reacted. I pushed him off me long enough to twist out from under. Ryu had taught me how sometimes men enjoy a little ijime, so I summoned up my superpower and pushed the hentai down onto his back, and then I straddled him and started smacking him hard across the face. And wouldn’t you know it, he was delighted. I used his belt to tie his wrists together, and I didn’t even have to hurt him too much to get him off. It’s amazing how quickly a man can turn from a sado into a maso. I know what old Jiko would say. Sado, maso, same thing.
As soon as he fell asleep, I got up and checked my phone, and sure enough, the call was from her. She knew and she had saved me! But when I read the text message, I saw that it wasn’t from Jiko, after all. It was from Muji. Just one line. I read it, but I couldn’t take in the meaning. I read it again.
..149
I stood there in the middle of the tacky mirrored room, staring at the little screen. My so-called date was snoring on the bed. I looked up and caught sight of a naked girl in the mirrors, endlessly reflecting. Her body was raw-looking, gawky and awkward. I hugged myself and the girl did, too. I started to cry and we couldn’t stop. I turned away from her and quietly gathered up my school uniform and put it on. I tiptoed over to the pile of clothes belonging to my date and quickly went through his pockets. I emptied his wallet and took the last remaining bills. I bundled his clothes up into a ball and forced myself to stop crying long enough to turn the doorknob. As I slipped out of the room and the door clicked behind me, I heard him call. I started to run. I pictured him frantically searching for his clothes, so I dumped them in the stairwell at the end of the hallway. I could have taken them with me and thrown them on the street, but I didn’t need to. I guess I’m a nice person at heart.
When I got outside, I kept running, cutting through the crowded narrow alleys of Electricity Town. Akiba at dusk is really something, a huge, strobing hallucination of neon lights and giant manga action heroes that loom down at you like they’re going to crush your head. And then there’s the noise, the crazy jangle of the pachinko parlors and game arcades, and the screaming hawkers and kyakuhiki150 calling out to the drunken salarymen and tourists and otaku who merge and swell like plankton in the sea.
Usually I love it. Usually I feed off all that energy, but you have to be in the right mood, and I wasn’t. I pushed through the crowds, keeping my face down to hide the tears. All I wanted was to get home to my dad. I needed my dad. I needed to tell him that Jiko was dying, so he would drop everything and take me to the station, and together we would catch the next express train bound for Sendai, and since it was night and the buses wouldn’t be running, we could take a taxi all the way from the station up to the temple. We could be there in no time at all. Maybe five or six hours. And when we arrived, everything would be peaceful and quiet, and Muji would come running out to greet us and tell us that Jiko was fine, and it was all just a false alarm, and she was so sorry for calling us and disturbing us for no reason, but now that we were here, would we like to have a bath?
This was what I wanted. To find my dad, to know Jiko was fine, and to take a bath. I concentrated on these thoughts on the train, all the way to my stop, keeping my head down and wiping my nose with the cuff of my uniform sleeve.
The apartment was quiet when I got home.
“Tadaima,” I said softly. My voice sounded hoarse from all the crying.
There was no answer, which was not unusual if my dad was on the Internet and couldn’t hear me. I wondered if my mom was still at work. Had Muji phoned them? Maybe they’d already left for Sendai without me.
“Dad?”
I heard the toilet flush, and then a shaft of light cut across the darkened hallway as the washroom door opened. I took off my shoes and stepped up into the entryway. There was a shopping bag from the local supermarket on the floor, in the place where we put things we don’t want to forget. I opened the bag and looked inside, and then I closed it and walked toward the light.
I found him in the bedroom, dressed in his dark blue suit, neatly shaved and putting on his socks.
“Dad?”
His bony feet looked sickly white. He looked up. “Oh,” he said. “Naoko. I didn’t hear you come in.”
He was looking right through me, and his voice was flat and lifeless. He bent down to adjust the sock. “You’re home early,” he said. “You’re not going out with your school friends tonight?”
Wow. He still believed I had school friends. That shows you how clueless he was. I watched him from the doorway. There was something strange about him, even stranger than usual, like he had turned into a zombie.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“Zangyo,”151 he said. He stood and straightened out his trousers.
“Are you going out or something?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding a little surprised. He was even wearing a tie. It was the tie I bought for him that first Christmas, when he was still pretending to have a job. It wasn’t silk, but it had a nice butterfly pattern on it.
“Where are you going?”
“To meet a friend,” he said. “Someone from my university days. We’re going to have a drink for old times’ sake. I won’t be long.” He spoke the words like he’d written them down and memorized them. Did he really think I’d believe that?
Zombie Dad was putting on his suit jacket.
“Did anybody call?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No.” He put his wallet in his suit pocket, and then he paused and frowned. “Why? Were you expecting someone?”
It figured. Muji was such a space case, and besides, she knew he never answered the phone.
“No, I just wondered.” I studied him as he stood there. He looked okay in his suit. It was a cheap, ugly suit, but it was better than the dirty old trainer he wore in the house.
I followed him out into the hallway and watched as he used the shoehorn to slide his heel into his loafer.
“Don’t forget your bag,” I said.
He reached for it automatically, and then he froze. “What bag?” Pretending like he was confused. Like he didn’t know.
“That one,” I said, pointing to the bag next to the door.
“Oh. Right. Yes. Of course.” He picked up the bag and glanced at me, and I could tell he was wondering if I’d looked inside. I turned away and went into the kitchen.
“Ittekimasu . . . ,” he called, but there was a catch in his voice, like he wasn’t sure.
Ittekimasu is what you say when you know you’re coming back. That’s literally what it means: I’m going a
nd I’m coming back. When somebody says “Ittekimasu” to you, you’re supposed to answer “Itterashai,” which means: Yes, please go and come back.
But I couldn’t say it. I stood next to the sink with my back to the door, picturing him standing there with his shopping bag full of charcoal briquettes and his Nick Drake songs. Time Has Told Me. Day Is Done.
He must have thought I hadn’t heard him the first time, because he said it again, “Ittekimasu!”
Why didn’t he just leave! A moment later, the door clanged shut.
Liar, I whispered, under my breath.
That was last night.
I didn’t need my dad after all. I caught the last train to Sendai and then transferred to the local and managed to get to the town closest to the temple. The buses had stopped running for the night, but even with the hentai’s money, I didn’t have enough for a taxi up the coastline to Jiko’s village, so I sat on a bench in the dinky little station and waited. I thought about calling the temple. I could imagine how the ringing of the phone would break the deep, dark silence of the night, and it seemed wrong, so I texted instead. I knew nobody would answer, and I really felt like talking to someone, so I wrote all these pages to you. I knew you wouldn’t answer, either. I guess I fell asleep then.
The sky was just turning grey when the stationmaster woke me up and showed me where to catch the bus. I got a hot can of coffee from the vending machine, and now I’m waiting here for the first bus to come. I tried calling the temple, but nobody’s answering, so I don’t know what’s going on there. I hope Jiko’s okay. I hope she isn’t dead already. I hope she waits for me. I’m praying. Can’t you hear me praying?
I know this is stupid. I know you don’t exist and no one is ever going to read this. I’m just sitting here on this stupid bus stop bench, drinking a can of too sweet coffee, pretending that I have a friend to write to.
But the fact is, you’re a lie. You’re just another stupid story I made up out of thin air because I was lonely and needed someone to spill my guts to. I wasn’t ready to die yet and needed a raison d’être. I shouldn’t be mad at you, but I am! Because now you’re letting me down, too.
The fact is, I’m all alone.
I should have known better. I knew when I started this diary that I couldn’t keep it up, because in my heart of hearts, I never believed in your existence. How could I? Everyone I believed in is dying. My old Jiko is dying, my dad is probably already dead by now, and I don’t even believe in myself anymore. I don’t believe I exist, and soon I won’t. I am a time being about to expire.
Babette was right. I am selfish, and I only cared about my own stupid life, just like my dad only cared about his own stupid life, and now I’ve gone and wasted all these beautiful pages and failed to achieve my goal, which was to write about Jiko and her fascinating life while I still had time, before she died. And now it’s too late. Talk about temps perdu. I’m sorry my dear old Jiko. I love you, but I screwed up.
It’s cold. The blossoms in front of the station have mostly fallen, and the ones still clinging to the branches of the trees are an ugly shade of brown. There’s an old man in a blue-and-white jogging suit sweeping the petals from the sidewalk in front of his pickle shop. He doesn’t see me. The stationmaster is opening the station doors. He knows I’m here but he doesn’t look at me. A dirty white dog is licking its balls across the street. An old farmer woman with a blue-and-white tenugui on her head is bicycling by. Nobody sees me. Maybe I’m invisible.
I guess this is it. This is what now feels like.
Ruth
1.
The storm blew in from the northeast at dusk, rounding the Aleutians, sliding down the Alaska coast, and funneling into the Strait of Georgia with gale-force winds that knocked out the power and extinguished the entire island in the blink of an eye. One minute the island was there, its presence marked by clusters of tiny glinting lights, and the next instant it was gone, plunged into the darkness of maelstrom and sea. At least that’s how it must have looked from above.
Over the next couple of hours, the wind continued its assault on the clearing in the tall trees. The little house that usually blazed far into the night was now discernible only by the insipid glow that emanated from the small square bedroom window.
2.
“. . . this is it,” Ruth read, straining to make out the letters in the dim light of the kerosene lamp. “This is what now feels like.”
Her voice sounded so small in the howling vastness of the storm-whipped night, but for a single long moment, the words brought everything to a standstill. The lamp flickered. The world held its breath.
“She caught up with herself,” Oliver said into the silence.
They sat there, side by side in bed, thinking about what Nao had written, conscious that they were waiting for the wind to pick up, but when the quiet persisted, Oliver finally spoke. “Go on,” he said. “Don’t stop.”
Ruth turned the page, felt her heart miss a beat.
The page was blank.
She turned another. Blank.
And the page after that. Blank.
She skipped ahead further. There were perhaps twenty pages still remaining in the book, and all of them were blank. The wind started up again, lashing the trees and pummeling the tin roof with sheets of rain.
It made no sense. She knew the pages had once been filled because on at least two occasions she had checked, riffling through to see if the girl’s handwriting had persisted to the end of the book, and indeed it had. The words had once been there, she was sure of it, and now they weren’t. What had happened to them?
She groped for her headlamp, which was hanging on the bedpost, switched it on, and slipped the band around her head. The bright LED beam was like a searchlight. Carefully, she raised the book and glanced down at the bedspread, scanning the small hillocks and vales, half expecting to catch sight of the letters scurrying away into the shadows.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered, searching the blank pages once again, in case a stray word or two had gotten left behind, trapped in the gutter or stuck in the spine.
“What do you mean, nothing?” he asked. “Keep reading. I want to know what happens.”
“Nothing happens. That’s what I mean. The words are all gone.”
He exhaled, softly. “What do you mean, all gone?”
“I mean they were here, and now they’re not. They’re missing.”
“Are you sure?”
She held the book up to show him. “Of course I’m sure. I checked. Several times. The writing used to continue all the way to the very last page.”
“Words can’t just disappear.”
“Well, they did. I can’t explain it. Maybe she changed her mind or something.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? She can’t just reach in and take them back.”
“But I think she did,” Ruth said. She switched off the headlamp. “It’s like her life just got shorter. Time is slipping away from her, page by page . . .”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. She lay there for a long time, listening to the storm. The rain was blowing sideways now, beating against the window like a creature trying to come in. The kerosene lamp on the bedside table was still lit, but the wick wanted trimming and was sputtering badly. She would need to reach over and blow it out soon, but she disliked the stench of kerosene and smoke, and so she waited. Oil lamps and LEDs. The old technologies and the new, collapsing time into a paradoxical present. Did whale oil smell any better? In the jittery light, she was aware of Oliver lying next to her, a dim, unstable silhouette, moving in and out of darkness. When at last he spoke, as though no time at all had passed, the proximity of his voice startled her.
“If that’s the case,” he said, “then it’s not just her life that’s at risk.”
“What do you mean?”
“It calls our existence into question, too, don’t you th
ink?”
“Us?” she said. Was he kidding?
“Sure,” he said. “I mean, if she stops writing to us, then maybe we stop being, too.”
His voice seemed farther away now. Was it her ears or the storm? A thought occurred to her.
“We?” she said. “She was writing to me. I’m her you. I’m the one she was waiting for. Since when did I become us?”
“I care about her, too, you know,” he said. His voice sounded close again, right next to her ear. “I’ve listened to you read the diary, so I think I qualify as part of you by now. And besides, ‘you’ can be either singular or plural, so how do you know she wasn’t referring to both of us from the beginning?”
It was hard to tell with all the racket of the wind, but she thought she caught an undertone, a simmering amusement, in his voice. She switched on her headlamp again and turned the beam on his face.
