by Isis, Justin
—Is that your phone? he asked her, pointing to the small red mobile on the bench.
—No.
—Do you know whose it is?
—No.
—Well, let’s find out.
He turned the phone on and scrolled through the menu. He called one of the numbers in the memory at random.
—Hello, he said. This isn’t my phone, I found it on a park bench. I was wondering...
Ten minutes later, a man approached the bench.
—Are you...?
—Yeah.
He handed off the phone. The man took out his wallet and reached for a note.
—For your trouble...
—No, I can’t accept that.
—It’s for your time. It would have cost me that much anyway.
—I can’t accept it.
—Are you sure?
—Yes.
The man thanked him, bowed. He nodded.
—I’m glad I did that, he said to her. I bet most everyone I know would have just left that phone there. You didn’t even pick it up yourself. That’s something else I hate. No one wants to get involved in anything... completely selfish.
Hidemi said nothing.
—You know what else... just walking down the street... I’m sick of everyone dressing the same.
As he talked, the sun went down and the last of its light flickered across the pond.
Hidemi bit off one of her nails. Most of her nails were chewed-on. They stood out chipped and uneven on the tips of her stubby fingers. She rubbed her eyes. It was the weather. There was dust in the air.
He got up. There was a strange ringing in his ears. He walked towards the edge of the pond and looked out across its surface to the other side of the park.
A vision came to him. The horizon cleared and he could see the skyline at night, and then a plume of flame erupted before his eyes. The windows of every building lit up with a sudden blaze and from the heat he could tell that the branches behind him were burning. Maple leaves danced in the air, swept by the wind into ashes. A dull roar sounded from below, and for a moment he thought he could hear the fires burning in the heart of the earth.
•
—Let’s get out of here, he said.
It was his seventeenth birthday.
—You mean leave the city.
—Yeah. I can’t live here anymore. I’ve tried understanding people, but after a while I just end up hating everyone.
—Why do you hate them?
—Everyone’s an idiot. I can’t take them anymore.
—What exactly did they do to you?
—It’s hard to describe. I can’t decide whether I want to leave forever or stick around just to get back at everyone.
—Get back at them for what?
—Not giving a fuck about me. Nobody cares about anything I do.
—Who exactly are you talking about?
—Society... for one. My family, everyone in it’s an idiot.
—Oh...
—Look at your family, he said. They probably don’t really care about you... that’s why you’re out here so much, right? Hey what kind of stuff do you masturbate to, anyway?
—Pictures of myself, mostly.
He pulled away.
—I haven’t been feeling that well lately, he said. I’m too important and I can’t deal with it.
—What do you mean?
—When I went home yesterday I was walking up the steps and when I got to my room I realized there was no one else in the universe who knows it the way I do. I notice all kinds of little irregularities in the walls, black marks and things like that. Even the patterns in the floor...
—What are you talking about?
—I can’t stand that I’m the only one who knows these things. As big as the universe is, that kind of knowledge only exists with me. It might not seem important but the more I think about it, I start to get paranoid, because I realize how fragile it is. If I die, then it’s like the universe loses all knowledge of my room. It turns into a dark place.
Hidemi’s lips parted slightly.
—I want to live in the sky, she said.
—And set things on fire?
She began to cry a little.
He looked at her. She was wearing two coats.
•
—I wonder how long it’ll take before my writing gets famous? he asked her.
There was dust in the air. Earlier he had seen a ladybug sticking to the bars of the bench. He prodded it with his finger and it flew off. He watched it disappear into the air. First there was a buzzing haze, then nothing. The black and red dots of its shell stuck out in his mind like tiny chipped jewels.
The sparrows were back and the smell of the grass had spread. It was spring.
•
Now there were more children playing in the park. He watched them with narrowed eyes and peeled a blade of grass. He’d stopped smoking and needed something to do with his hands.
—I miss being young, he said. When I was a little kid I never worried about anything.
—It’s nothing special, Hidemi said.
—It’s a shame we had to go to school. I think little kids are like criminals, they can do anything...
—I was more of a criminal when I was younger, Hidemi said.
—Yeah? What did you do? Steal things? Set homeless people on fire?
—No. I went into libraries and rearranged all the books. When no one was watching I’d take books from the children’s section and put them in the reference collection. Sometimes I just switched books from shelf to shelf, or I’d peel off the call number stickers and change them so they didn’t match the books they referred to in the card catalogue.
—That’s stupid. How is that being a criminal?
—It’s irritating. No one can find the book they’re looking for. The librarians have to spend ages rechecking everything and putting it back. If you didn’t know where the book was moved to, it’d be impossible to find it.
—Well, he said. Did you masturbate after you did it?
—Sometimes.
He stretched his legs and got up. He wanted to jump in and swim to the other side of the pond, towards Kobe. It seemed as if something important was happening somewhere else.
The trouble with his life was that it wasn’t careless enough. No, it wasn’t careless enough by far. It lacked, lacked entirely, all sense of style and urgency. Even at this late stage of existence...
In order to remedy this it was necessary to go to another country. It was necessary to forget everyone he knew. And it was necessary to live desperately. There was no question of loving realistically. But how to effect this desperation?
—Sometimes I wish I had AIDS, he said. Just so I could appreciate things more.
—I have AIDS, Hidemi said.
—Really?
—No.
•
He decided there was a sense of overwhelming personal style that could pervade life. Before, he had dismissed clothing as trivial, but now it took on an exaggerated importance.
—It’s really important that people see us together, he said to her.
—Why?
—Just so everyone knows we’re together. If we’re walking down the street together and someone who’s alone sees us, us being together says ‘fuck you’ to him.
—Why would you want to do that?
This question, he felt, was not worthy of a response.
—Let’s go out some place in the city, he said eventually.
But she shook her head. It seemed strange to him that she could be so reluctant to go anywhere or do anything.
—Last night I decided to call my new story, the one about the fox, ‘I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like.’
Hidemi looked at him.
—You might be wondering what the connection between foxes and eating human flesh is. The truth is that there is none, but by calling my story that, I force whoever reads the story to make some kind of connection. That’s part o
f my strategy, to force the reader to make connections between things they wouldn’t normally connect. If it’s successful, it taints their everyday system of associations with new associations that I can impose. That’s the kind of power artists have, to reorder how people see the world.
He stood up.
—Even though most people don’t realize it, art determines consensus reality. It might not seem like a direct causal relationship, but it’s still power. I can’t believe no one realizes this.
Hidemi was still looking at him, but after a time, her expression changed. He could feel her becoming insincere. She made something like a smile, but it was an insincere smile. She looked away.
He was restless and tired. He’d missed out on so much. Something had to happen. To maintain proportion.
—Did you read the story I gave you? he said.
—I forgot about that, Hidemi said.
—You should read it.
—I forgot about it. I forget everything you tell me.
—Why?
He looked at her.
—You don’t believe me, he said. You don’t think I’m real.
—I don’t know what that means, she said.
Restless and tired. The sunlight was dying, now at its strongest — it warmed his face. The light on the pond rippled, he could see dust in the air — she was crying again.
—Jun told me that he...
She stopped.
He asked her who Jun was but she wouldn’t tell him. She closed her eyes, folded her arms, rocked back and forth against the bench. The final glow of the sun spread out behind the pond. Above, the planets were falling through space like snowflakes caught in the wind, but by the water’s edge it was warm.
He closed his eyes.
He dreamed of lost library books.
When he woke up Hidemi was gone.
•
Something was different about the bench. He approached it from behind, as usual, but the patterns of light had changed. He realized he could see through the bars. She wasn’t there.
He looked for her in both toilets, and behind the trees. She wasn’t there. He couldn’t find her.
He sat on the bench and looked at the pond.
The space beside him where she sat remained empty. Without her, he decided, the surroundings were less cohesive. The fixity of the park was lacking. As a snowflake forms around a mote of dust, so the park had frozen around her. Simply by remaining still, Hidemi had curved the grass towards her, bent the trees to her will... now these things were edging into illegibility.
Perhaps, he thought, she never actually existed. Perhaps he had been sitting in the park forever and only dreaming, talking to himself — just as still as she had been, unmoving—
It occurred to him that he should jump in the pond and swim to the other side. But she was right: it was too cold still. Also the matter of his new clothes, no sense ruining them.
He walked to the edge and circled the perimeter. He’d never been to the other side, but as he drew nearer he could see the skyline more clearly. Lights blinked on and off.
When he reached the other side he saw a figure standing by the banks, in the water up to its knees. As he came nearer he saw that it was Hidemi. She was looking out over the pond and wearing something, he realized as he approached, something hanging about her neck, from her arms, like lead weights on chains, she was carrying rocks—
—What are you doing on this side of the pond? he said.
Hidemi frowned, her half-closed eyes wet with tears — but they were not the mysterious tears she sometimes cried, only commonplace tears of disappointment that struck the surface of the pond. Her eyes continued to move, circling behind and above him, as if searching for a distant point in the sky.
—I couldn’t die, she said. I didn’t want you to find me.
The Quest for Chinese People
The quest for Chinese people, or what I have also termed the “Chinese epiphany,” began at breakfast one morning as I read the newspaper. In an article on niche marketing, I came upon the figure of 1.3 billion Chinese.
—How many people are there in the world, do you think? I asked Mieko, my wife.
—Six billion, maybe? Mieko said, finishing her breakfast and getting her things together.
I waited for her to ask why, but I knew she was already worrying about something insignificant from work. Mieko is a schoolteacher.
—Did you know that the population of China is 1.3 billion? I wonder if that’s just mainland or whether it’s the whole world.
—Mm what’s that?
—I don’t know, I guess it isn’t important.
Mieko was out of the apartment before I was. I tried to finish my breakfast, but before long I was scanning the article again. It didn’t specify whether the population figure was mainland or world-wide.
As I rode the train to work, pressed in tight against one of the rails, I examined those around me. Three businessmen stood next to me, looking at nothing in particular. On the other side of them a middle-aged woman was reading a paperback novel, and further along a group of high school girls laughed amongst themselves. Without giving myself away, I scrutinized their faces. In this way, my thoughts returned to the number. At first there was no connection; it seemed suspended in my mind, touching nothing. Then, as I looked at the students sharing a private joke, I wondered if they knew any more about China than I did.
I decided that I knew almost nothing. No, perhaps that’s not right — I knew as much as those around me, I supposed, which is to say very little. I don’t mean that I hadn’t, for example, at some point in my education memorized meaningless trivia about geography or the succession of dynasties or the Cultural Revolution. Nor did I imagine myself unaware of daily Chinese life. What I mean is that I had never been given, or developed for myself, an appropriate context within which to arrange this knowledge. Without this, without a pivot, I realized that everything that came to mind when I considered the word China was only a set of secondhand impressions — descriptive, perhaps, but baseless.
One of the girls laughed loudly, a sudden squawk that startled me out of my reverie. I felt as if I had missed something important, some product of my thoughts which had now vanished. I looked at the businessmen and they looked back at me.
Outside, through the window of the bakery that bordered my pizzeria, I took in the weary features of one of the part-time employees. It was seven a.m. now, and I knew that he had been there for several hours already. None of my employees arrive until 7:30.
I’ve heard that managing a pizzeria is not a serious aspiration for a chef, but this is elitism. I am good at my job — a banana cream dessert pizza I prepared was awarded second prize in an international contest held in New York. My pizzeria attracts a young clientele that is pleased I am making use of aoli, asparagus, prawns, soy, and other neglected ingredients.
But I am not talented enough to interest Mieko in anything beyond pepperoni or the classic Neapolitan.
—I have an idea for your next pizza, she’ll say, peanut butter and escargot with fresh basil, or something to that effect.
I’m not sure who decided letting her educate children was a good idea.
Yukino arrived precisely at 7:30. It is her way. Yukino is not much of a waitress, but it’s not for lack of trying. I met her at her high school, where I used to act as a substitute teacher for cooking classes.
—Looking forward to the weekend? I asked her.
—Yeah, she said, smiling a genuine smile.
I was glad Yukino had arrived first. Conversations with her, however trivial, never feel mechanical. When I first started employing young people I was still a young man myself, and in my desperation not to resemble any of the bosses I had worked under, I took great pains to ask my charges about their studies, their aspirations, beliefs, love lives, hourly moods. This stopped when I discovered most of them had no interest in talking, or the subtleties of pizza, or anything else. But Yukino is always happy to talk and listen.
—So what’s on the agenda?
—Well I’m probably going into Shibuya on Saturday with Yuko and Izumi, then I’ve gotta proofread one of Hee Ying’s assignments, and I think Shintaro’s supposed to come over some time.
—Who’s Hee Ying? I asked, turning on one of the ovens.
—Oh she’s this exchange student from Guangzhou that’s staying with us. She’s a second year at Josai.
—So she’s Chinese, I said.
To Yukino’s credit, instead of giving me the look this question deserved, she only nodded as if I had asked her whether there were many customers outside.
—I just read this article this morning and I was thinking about...
I couldn’t think of what to tell her.
—Oh that’s cool, she said, picking up on my silence as a cue to speak. I read this article yesterday about these scientists who were saying that everyone on Earth is descended from the same woman in Africa millions of years ago and there used to be these other people that weren’t really human but we killed them all, so it’s like everyone on Earth is kind of a big family... don’t you think that’s really weird?
—That’s... yeah.
I was becoming distant. I struggled for a while to reassert myself, but in truth I was pleased when, after the others had arrived and business commenced for the day, I could bury myself in work. I let my hands perform the familiar motions for me, kneading the dough and dusting it down with flour. Friday is our busiest night, and the steady flow of customers meant there was little time for me to waste in reflection.
—Mr. Yoshimori’s here, I heard halfway through the day from Shinya, one of my waiters.
Looking up, I saw a thick-necked man in a tasteless yellow shirt — my old friend Yoshimori, the owner of a restaurant a block up from mine.
—Still keeping all the attractive waitresses to yourself, I see, he said, shaking his head as Yukino entered the kitchen to drop off an order.
Yukino laughed.
—Nice shirt, I said.
—It’s camouflage. I can’t be seen in here by anyone important, you understand.
In truth I am a better chef than Yoshimori and more versatile as well; I have chosen to specialize in pizza out of personal preference. But it is an old joke between us that he must condescend to visit his friend, must take a grudging step down the culinary ladder.
