by Ruth Ozeki
“No,” Ruth said. “I’ve still got a few pages left to go.”
Muriel shook her head. “I don’t understand you,” she said. “I would have sat down and read the damn thing from start to finish, and found out everything I could, before looking for evidence to support my conclusions. Nothing would have stopped me from getting to the end.”
Ruth gazed up at the wispy clouds in the sky and thought about how best to answer this. “Well,” she said. “I know what you mean, but I was trying to pace myself. I felt I owed it to Nao. I wanted to read at the same rate she’d lived. It seems silly now.” She paused, wondering whether or not to continue. “And then there’s the problem with the end . . . ,” she said, finally.
“What’s wrong with the end?”
“Well, nothing. It’s just that it keeps . . . changing.”
“Changing?”
“Receding,” Ruth said.
“Interesting,” Muriel said. “Would you care to explain?”
So Ruth did. She explained how she had riffled through to the end of the book to ascertain that all the pages were filled, only to have those same pages suddenly go blank, just as she was about to read them. She looked at Oliver for confirmation. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
“Weird,” Muriel said. “Excuse me for asking, but have you guys been smoking a lot of pot?”
“Of course not,” Ruth said. “You know we don’t smoke pot.”
“Just checking,” Muriel said. She sat down on the splintery deck chair, which groaned ominously, causing Oliver to glance up nervously. The deck furniture, like the deck, and the entire house for that matter, was in disrepair, and he was always waiting for the weather-worn planks to give way and for someone to fall through.
“What you’re describing is interesting,” Muriel said, twisting the end of her braid around her finger. “The reader confronting the blank page. It’s like writer’s block, only in reverse.”
Ruth thought about this. “You mean, as her reader, I’m blocked, and so her words disappear? I don’t like that. Besides, it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Hard to say. Agency is a tricky business. What was she writing about when the pages went blank?”
“She’d just caught up with herself. With the now of her story. She was sitting on a bench at the bus stop in Sendai, and her last words were ‘I guess this is what now feels like.’ And then, nothing. Blank. She ran out of words, that is until . . .”
She hesitated. The part about her dream was even weirder, and she felt unsure as to whether she should tell Muriel about it or not, but Muriel was looking at her intently, so she described how the Jungle Crow had led her to the park bench in Ueno where Nao’s father was waiting for his suicide hookup, and how they’d talked about Nao, and he’d gone off to Sendai to find her.
“And then, the next morning, when I checked the diary, she’d written a whole new entry about old Jiko’s death and funeral, and her reconciliation with her father, and her promise to Muji to return to the temple every March.”
“That sounds like a happy enough ending,” Muriel said.
“Well,” Ruth said. “It would be, except I still haven’t reached the end. Every time I open the diary, there are more pages. Like I said, the end keeps receding, like an outgoing wave. Just out of reach. I can’t quite catch up.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Muriel said. “Okay, I have two more theories. In indigenous myth, crows are pretty powerful. So let’s assume this Jungle Crow is your familiar, your totem animal, just like the cat was Oliver’s.” She broke off and turned to Oliver. “I was sorry to hear about Pesto,” she said. “You know Benoit lost his little dog, too, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, tersely, keeping his back turned. “It sucks.” He was still hoping that Pesto would return safely—his spine was rigid with hope—but as the days passed, this outcome seemed less and less likely. Muriel, who had lost a favorite cat to a cougar, sighed deeply, and her whole body seemed to deflate into the rickety chair.
“It does suck,” she said. “I keep telling myself we’re lucky to live in an ecosystem that’s intact enough to support large predators, but I miss my Erwin.” She stared at her lap, and then she took a deep breath and roused herself. “Anyway,” she continued, “my theory is that this crow from Nao’s world came here to lead you into the dream so you could change the end of her story. Her story was about to end one way, and you intervened, which set up the conditions for a different outcome. A new ‘now,’ as it were, which Nao hasn’t quite caught up with.”
Muriel sat back in her chair, looking pleased with herself.
Ruth laughed. “And you call yourself an anthropologist?”
“I’m retired,” Muriel said.
“I see. So what’s your second theory?”
“You might not like this one.”
“Try me.”
“Well, it’s akin to my reader’s block theory. That it’s your doing. It’s not about Nao’s now. It’s about yours. You haven’t caught up with yourself yet, the now of your story, and you can’t reach her ending until you do.”
Ruth thought about this. “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t like it. I don’t like having that much agency over someone else’s narrative.”
Muriel laughed. “That’s a fine way for a novelist to talk!”
“I’m not a—” Ruth started to say, when Oliver interrupted.
“Look!” he said, aiming the lens at the maple tree. “Over there. In that low branch. Isn’t that your crow?”
Muriel leaned forward and held up her binoculars. “Looks like a Jungle Crow,” she said. “Handsome bird. What do you think?” She passed the binoculars to Ruth.
It took Ruth a moment to get her bearings amid the tangle of branches and pale hanging wisps of old men’s beard, but then she saw it, a glossy black wing against a bright green mat of moss. She focused the binocular lenses. The crow was far away, but the image stabilization allowed her to get a good look. “Yes, that’s the one. I recognize the aquiline profile. I’m almost sure.”
The crow stretched its neck and turned its head.
“She sees us,” Ruth said. “She’s staring right at us.”
Oliver took a few more pictures. “They’re not great,” he said, “but maybe they’re good enough for identification purposes. I wish I could get a better shot.”
He aimed the lens again, but just as he did, the crow hunched its shoulders, spread its wings, and took off.
Ruth lowered the binoculars. “Where’d she go?”
“There,” Muriel said, pointing up.
The crow had cleared the branches and was gaining in altitude as it flew across the meadow toward them. When it was directly overhead, it released something from its talon. The small object fell through the air and bounced on the deck at their feet, rolled a little, and came to rest in the gap between two rotten planks.
“Weird,” Ruth said. “What was that?”
“A nut,” Oliver said, bending to retrieve it. “It’s stuck in the crack.”
“A nut?” Ruth felt disappointed. What was she expecting?
Oliver got to his knees. “Looks like a hazelnut,” he said. He took out his multitool and extracted a blade. “Probably from one of our trees last fall.” He pried out the nut and turned it over in his hand.
Ruth looked up. The crow was circling overhead, climbing higher and higher on each orbit. She thought about Haruki’s Crow Captain. “Do you think she was trying to bomb us?”
“I doubt it,” Muriel said. “Crows drop nuts and clams on rocks to crack them.”
The crow was still overhead, but higher now, just a speck in the sky. “Do you think she’s waiting for us to crack it?”
“She doesn’t seem to be waiting,” Muriel said. “She seems to be leaving. Maybe it’s a parting gift.”
“Here,” Oliver said, dropping the nut into Ruth’s hand. “If it’s a nut, it must be for you.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said, rolling the har
d little object around on her palm. “I’m going to try not to take that personally.”
Oliver was still on his knees, folding up his multitool, when something under the deck caught his eye. The house was built on the rise of a hill, and the deck extended out over a slight downward slope, creating a large crawl space underneath.
“Something’s moving down there,” he said. He leaned over and peered between the rotting planks, pressing his face to the crack where the nut had been lodged. “It’s too dark. Hand me a phone, will you?”
Ruth turned on the flashlight app and passed it to him. He directed the beam down into the darkness.
“What is it?” she asked, but Oliver didn’t answer.
He scrambled to his feet and ran across the porch. He leaped down the stairs, stomping and beating his way through the thick clumps of fern, and then he dropped to his hands and knees and disappeared under the deck. From up above, they could see the beam of light as he groped his way forward in the dirt, and then they heard a thin sound, something in between a squeak and a whimper, and Oliver’s voice, crying out, “What are you doing here?”
“It’s Pesto,” Ruth said, clutching Muriel’s arm. “He’s come back from the dead.”
3.
The cat had been attacked and was badly hurt. The incident must have taken place several days earlier, because the wounds had closed over and were infected. His tail, of which he’d been so proud and which usually stood up straight in the air, hung limply down, dragging on the ground. He was emaciated. His fur was matted with blood and thick with dust, and his eyes were dull and distant, as though he’d retreated deep inside to some inviolable animal place where he felt no pain. Oliver carried him out and held him while Ruth found a box and lined it with a towel. When they put him in the box, he tried to stand, but immediately fell over. His back legs weren’t working.
“This is not good,” Oliver said. “These gashes are really deep. They’re abscessed.”
He took a deep breath and then ran his hands over the cat’s hindquarters. When he touched the injured tail, Pesto raised himself and tried to snarl, but even that was too much for him, and he sank back onto the towel.
“He’s in too much pain,” Oliver said. The pitch of his voice was high, and his words sounded brittle. He straightened and stood up next to the box, staring down into it. “Stupid cat. He’s not going to make it.”
“How do you know?” Ruth said. “He might—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off. “The infection’s spread through his body. We have to put him down.”
“Do you want me to call Dora?” Muriel asked.
“No,” Ruth said. “We have to take him to town. We have to take him to the vet.”
“There’s no point,” Oliver said. He wheeled away and went to stand by the deck railing. “I knew this would happen. Stupid cat. Running out. Getting into fights. It was just a matter of time.”
“We can catch the two o’clock ferry if we leave now,” Ruth said.
“It’s not worth it,” he said. “He’s dying. He’s just a stupid barn cat.”
“We can phone the vet from the boat.”
“No. The vet’s expensive. We’ll get all the way over there and they’ll just have to put him down . . .”
He stood there, back turned, gripping the railing. Ruth looked at his rigid spine. He was so angry. Angry at her, at the cat, at the world, for breaking his heart. She went into the house and got the car keys. She came out again, picked up the box with the cat, carried it over to the hatchback, and loaded it in. She backed the car out and rolled down the window. “Hurry,” she called to him.
He turned his head and hesitated.
“Go,” Muriel said, pushing him toward the car.
On the ferry, he stared straight ahead out the window at the waves, while Ruth phoned to tell the clinic they were coming. “Stupid cat,” he kept saying. “Stupid cat.” But when they got there, he carried the box in and held Pesto on the table while the vet shaved him and lanced his wounds to clean and drain them. The wounds were bad, the vet concurred, as bad as he’d ever seen, gashes from teeth and claws, probably a raccoon or a pack of raccoons. Pesto had been trying to escape, which was why the injuries were so severe on his hindquarters, but the real threat was the infection, which had spread throughout his body. The prognosis was not good. They would have to keep the wounds clean, and lance them back open if they started to close, so they wouldn’t become abscessed. They needed to keep him on antibiotics, keep him contained, and soak his body in a warm Epsom salt bath three times a day. Oliver asked questions, made notes, and then asked the vet for a scalpel. Ruth sat in a chair and tried not to faint as the vet explained how to open up the wounds and drain the pus. Oliver looked grim, but his determination was back. He was going to save his cat.
She was still feeling queasy when they left, so he drove. Pesto, knocked out from the anesthesia, slept in his box in the back. In the ferry lineup, she wedged her head between the seat back and the car door, closed her eyes, and listened to Oliver process. He was going around in circles, trying to make sense of what had happened.
“At least we know,” he kept saying. “Even if the Pest doesn’t make it now, at least we know what happened. That’s what was driving me crazy. Not knowing where he’d gone, or if he was alive or dead. But at least now we know. We’ll do our best to save him, but even if we can’t, even if he dies tomorrow, at least we’ll know we tried. Stupid cat. There’s nothing worse than not knowing . . .”
4.
Dear Ruth,
My efforts have borne some fruit, though perhaps my results are not as satisfying as we would have liked. Since we last corresponded, I was able to recover some of my missing computer files and locate an old email that Harry must have sent me, which, I must confess, I hardly recall ever receiving. I wrote to him immediately, but have yet to receive a reply. I took the liberty of sending him your email address and telling him about your urgent concerns, so it’s possible you may hear from him directly, but then again, you may not. I am forwarding you his email, and when you read it, you will see what I mean.
Of course, this email predates the earthquake and the tsunami, so I doubt this will be of much use to you, or answer your questions as to the current whereabouts of my enigmatic friend and his family, but I can’t help feeling that there are things in this email that you might find interesting. At the very least, I felt you should be privy to our most recent exchange, even though by now it is several years old.
5.
Dear Ron,
Thank you for not forgetting your old friend who is neglecting for so long to write to you. First let me answer your kind questions. My family is well. My wife continues her job in the textbook company and recently she has a new hobby of deep sea diving. I am very grateful to her for supporting me during my trouble times, and also to my daughter, Naoko. When at first we returned from Sunnyvale to Tokyo, she had many trouble times as well, and for a while she even dropped out of the school. But later on she was able to apply herself strictly for passing the equivalency exam, and she was successful to receive a good scholarship for an international high school in Montreal, where she became very interested in studying the culture and language of French.
And for me, several years ago, I was able to launch my new Internet start-up company, which is an online encryption and security system called Mu-Mu157 Vital Hygienics. I cannot tell you many details because of the agreements of nondisclosure, but Naoko gave me this idea. In her junior high school days, she was a victim of harsh bullying when her classmates teased her, including making videos of her shame that they posted onto the Internet. When I saw these, I cried many tears. I was very angry! As her father, it is my duty to keep my daughter safe, but I failed to keep her so. I was like a blind man, too selfish because I couldn’t see, and only my concern was for myself.
But when I finally woke up, I began to research and was able to develop a neat little spider that could crawl up search engine databases a
nd sanitize all instances of my daughter’s name and personal information, as well as all the pictures and nasty videos, until there was not even one trace of her shame left. It was all clean again. “Super squeaky clean!” Naoko said, and she was very happy to make fresh start in her new life in Montreal, Canada.
So all that was a very good outcome, but then I got an idea that maybe my cute little spider, who I am calling Mu-Mu the Obliterator, can be useful for other people, too. For example, there are many people who make a mistake and would like to correct it, and my little Mu-Mu can help. Or, many people would like to disappear, and Mu-Mu can make it so no one can find you. For example, if you are a famous person and you are tired and want to be like an ordinary man.
For this purpose, we have developed two Mu methods. Method #1 is a quantum one that we call Q-Mu, which causes Mu to search for all the instances of you from the Internets of many worlds, and then exchange all of the instances for naughts. I don’t know how to explain it, except that this one is like playing origami with time. It is most difficult and costly method because Q-Mu must collaborate between worlds and switch possible pasts, so it is only practical if you are very wealthy, and even then, some people are too famous to ever attain perfect Super Squeaky Clean, because they are too famous in too many worlds.
Method #2 is simpler and mechanical, because this Mu can alter only present and future. This one is called MechaMu, and it is more gradual, but just as successful over time. In this method, MechaMu targets only the search engines and eats your name to keep them from finding you. So when nobody can find you, you will stop being famous pretty quick, and before long you will disappear. It’s like a slowly becoming invisibility cloak, and is the most cost-effective way.
I have many famous clients, who you have already never heard of! (That is joke, but it is very true.)
You see, Ron, now I understand that suicide is old-thinking, from old-fashioned materialist days. It is also messy and unnecessary. Now, with my Mu-Mu, one does not need to bother with such messy things, because my little spiders can neatly undo you if you stop wanting to be. Naoko made up a funny theory of unbeing that she calls Muyū.158 She says Muyū is the New Yu.159 It is new-thinking. She says anonymity is the new celebrity. She says the mark of new cool is no hits for your name. No hits is the mark of how deeply unfamous you are, because true freedom comes from being unknown. I don’t know if this is true or not, but maybe it is somewhat true because my Mu-Mu is doing very well, and for the first time since the dot-com bubble burst, I can provide a comfortable lifestyle for my family again.
