I was oddly comforted by a desire to double back, and likewise by the impossibility of doing so. I sat and thought about Tokyo, about Mami, the hostel and the cats, until at last I was too tired to think. Gums began to roll by, faster and faster. Then came the edge of a town: a greasy garage, a milk bar, a school bus merging onto the highway and paddocks cut into hills. I let my head fall back and tried desperately to sleep.
A Tantrum
I returned to my father, as I was expected to do. But, having noted my absence, he spoke to me only when it was unavoidable and we kept to opposite ends of the apartment. In deference to his mood I did not visit my mother again. Instead, having made a note of Celeste’s number, I phoned whenever he went out shopping or to church.
The day of my flight back to Japan I dropped my suitcase and backpack at the front door and sat at the table. My father said grace and we began slurping at tinned soup. There was no bread.
‘Do you remember Miss Sinclair?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
Noting my tone, he looked at me threateningly, then went on. ‘I meant to tell you, she passed away the other day.’
I said nothing.
‘I said she passed away, Noah.’
‘Okay.’
‘Well, she was your prep teacher. You could send a card before you scuttle back.’
‘It’s a bit late for that.’
He took an unhappy slurp of soup. ‘I went to the funeral. People asked after you.’
‘I’m not sending anything.’
Exasperated, my father threw his spoon down. Soup splashed onto his tie. I hoped that finally, after days of silence, he would raise the matter that was gnawing at him. But he persisted in circling it.
‘What did the woman ever do to you, Noah?’
‘What did she do? Aside from telling me God was listening to my thoughts and didn’t like me? Aside from making me sit by myself at a desk because my letters were sometimes back to front? Aside from making me stand in a corner when she knew standing in a corner only made me wet myself? Nothing. She was a saint.’
‘You hold on to all that?’
‘It was my childhood.’
‘Everyone’s childhood is difficult.’
‘I disagree.’
But he ignored me, saying only, ‘It’s how you view it that matters.’
There was more coming and I waited for it, welcomed it. He was riled, tired of dancing around my mother’s departure, as was I. I felt a furious excitement. My body fluttered.
‘You’re not just immature, but selfish,’ he finally blurted, eyes set fixedly on his paper napkin. I gently put my spoon down, afraid I might otherwise throw it; I had expected a less barbed outburst.
‘Why?’ I asked coldly.
But my father did not have a chance to answer. A bird flew head-on into the kitchen window with a thunk. I looked up, startled. Ordinarily I would have gone straight outside to capture it before it regained consciousness. I pictured the creature staggering and falling and hoped its stupidity would not rob me of my showdown.
‘Why?’ I asked again.
‘I know you saw your mother. You came home to help but all you did was hold secret meetings—all the two of you did was plot against me. Is that my thanks, Noah? For supporting this family? For giving everything to it? Is this how you both intend to repay me?’
‘Screw you.’
‘Charming. I talk to you like an adult. I extend you respect and you talk to me like I’m muck under your shoe, like I’m not human.’
‘You respect me?’
‘I said I speak to you with respect and I expect the same in return.’
‘Fine. I’ve seen Mum. That’s because I’m her son. I’ve seen you for the same reason. And if you’re expecting me to be involved in this—whatever this is—then forget it, because I’m not going to be dragged into it. It’s between you and Mum and I hope you sort it out. I really do. But I can’t be in the middle.’
‘You are in the middle, Noah. This is your family. You leave now and there’s no telling what might happen. You’re needed.’ His voice faltered and he averted glassy eyes. His reading glasses, wrapped in cloth, were off to one side and he ceremoniously put them on, as if to forecast the importance of his words. ‘You have a responsibility to—’
‘She left you, not me.’
My father leapt to his feet, pulled the glasses off and tossed them onto the table where they slid to a stop just before falling off.
‘How dare you!’
‘What? Talk to you like that?’ I jumped to my own feet with an equal ferocity. ‘Get off your high horse and listen for one—’
‘You’re a dropout, Noah. A loafer. Nothing more. Run back to your atheism, to your cosy hedonism.’
‘No wonder Mum left you. You’re a bully, like Sinclair.’
These words seemed to slug my father in the stomach. He crashed heavily back down onto his chair. Looking at his hunched shoulders, at his palms on his knees, I felt a stab of regret and even wonderment at the depth of my cruelty. He seemed to be crying. His upper back, the ribs clearly visible, shuddered slightly.
‘Do as you please,’ he said finally, waving me away.
‘I will.’
I picked up my suitcase and backpack, walked out the front door and down the empty street, feet loud beneath me in the suburban quiet. I felt I was being watched but could not look back towards the house. Blood thudded in my ears as I listened for him, hoping he would call out, that we could somehow part on better terms. He must have followed as far as the garden because, after perhaps a hundred metres, I heard the front door bang shut. But there was nothing after that. No shout. Only the alarmed squawk of birds and the sound of a passing taxi, its tyres loud on the newly laid, stony bitumen.
I had no choice but to press on for the airport.
Mami Hangs
Herself
I resumed my job in the public school. It was as if I had never left. Every morning I woke at eight, queued to shower and dressed in tan slacks and a crinkled white shirt. To this semi-formal concoction I normally added a thin blue tie from my school days, the only tie I owned—a pathetic attempt at respectability.
After work I would lie in my room reading. Occasionally I did a workout or studied Japanese, though mostly I just read. Never good books, but soft-porn bestsellers which Harry slipped under my door as a sort of running joke (and, no doubt, as an attempt to have me join him on his outings to the city’s seedier districts).
I spent a lot of time around Harry the first two weeks back. Phillip was working on the Japan Rail shoot, so it was Harry who accompanied me to the convenience store every evening for bento box meals and beer. I needed him. I was missing Tilly, the idea of her as a partner. I would stumble into the memory of her like a puddle and suffer an insidious gloom, Tokyo having lost its cushion. Her possessions surrounded me, filled the room with colour and clutter, but I had no idea whether or not she would return, whether they would ever be reclaimed. It seemed unlikely.
I thought about contacting Mami but lacked the nerve. I fell deeper into an eddy, and soon the Tokyo weather was as it had been when I first met Tilly. Occasional unseasonably hot days took people by surprise. Girls, reluctant to cover their legs even in the depths of winter, happily returned to wearing impractically short skirts, modestly holding the backs down with one hand whenever they encountered stairs or escalators. Businessmen swapped their heavy black suits for lighter, less black ones. And children showed a predictable disregard for the slight chill that came only at the very end of the day.
The weather and the sad meowing of a cat outside my door sought to draw me back a year. I thought of that first day I met Tilly, of standing outside the hostel as the car door startled the proud cat, and of all that followed.
I stood and paced my room. Tilly’s running shoes sat in the open cupboard, off-white and with the stitching starting to come apart. They had been a new white when I met her, a white that cut swathes in the dark room, insid
e the dark bed when we both half stripped and made love in a giggling, rough-and-tumble, come-what-may fashion. The shoes then, the way they had been used to pin me down, had almost scared me. As had the sex. Afterwards I had often felt a certain panic at the intimacy inherent in the heady yet irrevocable act, as if I would forever be indebted to the girl, as if I had stolen from her.
Now, such a concern seemed absurd. Things had apparently run their course.
I went to the doorway to shoo the cat, but it led me to a discarded suitcase beside the vending machine, where I heard a softer meow. Lifting the lid, a large ginger kitten shot out, almost tumbling down the steep staircase before daring to glance back. Obviously it had stepped in, upset the lid and trapped itself, and I knew at once which kitten it was. It was bigger now, but unmistakably Tilly’s favourite. I had saved the skinny quiet one with the sad but shiny eyes. Fed up, I kicked the suitcase after it.
Then came the official onset of the rainy season. Hemmed in by cloud and awaiting rain, I received a letter by courier from Mami. I opened it in Harry’s room and read it aloud while Harry, pushing back the skin above each fingernail with a rusty butter knife, lay on his futon listening.
Well, it’s clear you want nothing to do with me (or with your stupid jacket), but I’m going to go ahead and write to you anyway. This probably sounds melodramatic. But today, at exactly midday, I, Mami Kaketa, intend to hang myself in my hotel room. Perhaps you don’t care. M.
‘How about that,’ Harry said, sitting up. ‘Who’s this girl again?’
‘Someone I know.’
‘A hoax, I’d say.’
‘Maybe.’ I tapped the eraser end of a pencil on my knee, thinking. ‘What time is it?’
‘About eleven.’
‘Exactly, I mean.’
Harry rummaged through a cardboard box on the floor. His room had a transient feel to it, as if he planned to move out any day.
‘Eleven-oh-three,’ he said, plucking out a tacky digital watch with a green band and scratched face.
‘You sure that’s right? She was clear about the time.’
‘I’ve had it since I was a kid.’
‘Then we can get there.’
‘We?’ Harry smiled and shook his head. ‘Not me. I’ve got a meeting—to transfer money.’
‘I don’t want to hear about some hotel hanging on the news. Not after this.’
‘Then get moving.’
I stepped out into the corridor, only to glance at my wrist and duck back in for the watch. It had only one hole punched in the band and the LCD screen flickered, sections of numbers vanishing. I strapped it on as best I could and made a dash for Shinbashi Station, boarding a Yamanote Line train which ground through Yurakucho. Sweat dripped from my face onto the carriage floor, flashing sharply in the sunlight striking in between low-rise apartments and offices.
When the doors at last opened on Tokyo Station I ran through its various tunnel-like wings, and then down a wide street towards Mami’s hotel. The air was thick and soggy and at some point Harry’s watch flew off my damp wrist without my noticing. I crossed the hotel lobby at a half-run and slipped into the open lift. I watched the numbers above the door. People got in and out at each floor and one woman holding a German novel smiled at me.
Wiping sweat from my face and trying to catch my breath, I located Mami’s door and hammered on it. ‘Mami?’
It was a heavy door and my hands bounced off. To lessen the pain I used the sides.
‘Mami! Mami! Open up!’
I gave up hitting and placed an ear to the door but could hear nothing more than my own breathing.
‘Open up, damn you!’ There were no clocks in the corridor but I guessed the time to be around midday— a little after maybe.
‘Mami!’
I kicked the door, stepping back and raising one leg with the aim of dislodging the lock from its frame and smashing the thing in. It shuddered and I hopped backwards, swearing between gulps of air until I noticed I was not alone. A maid hung back a few metres, fearful.
‘Keys,’ I said first in English and then in Japanese. She shook her head and took a few steps towards her cleaning cart, piled high with individual shampoos, conditioners and soaps. Pretending to peruse these items, her hands shook.
‘Emergency!’ I shouted. ‘Kiken!’
At the word ‘danger’ she took another step back.
‘No,’ I corrected myself. ‘Hijou! Kagi kudasai.’
She said something in a mumble.
‘What?’ I screamed, infuriated. ‘Just give me the key. Hayakushite.’
She suddenly changed her mind and nodded, tossing me the keycard from around her neck.
‘Thank you.’
She started to walk away, broke into a run and sounded like a terrified waterfowl the moment she was out of sight. A green light flashed on the door, and after a click I flung it open.
Mami was not in her front room. Nor was she in the bathroom, the hallway, the dining room or the conference room. This fuelled my panic, legitimised it. I did not worry about the maid or police. I was set on saving the day. I paused outside the Japanese-style room, tried the handle and found it to be locked. When I put my ear to it I heard a definite click, like the cocking of a gun.
‘Mami? It’s Noah.’
‘Stay away.’
Without the slightest hesitation I burst through the door.
Having never burst through a door before, and having been so coldly and effectively rebuffed by the front one, I expected significant resistance. When I hip-and-shouldered this particular door, however, taking a run up and striking it flush, it popped straight off its hinges as if made of plastic. For a moment I was confused, lunging. Then I crashed down on top of it and tumbled forward onto tatami, more sliding than rolling. I had banged my head. There was no pain but the sound of my skull striking wood lingered long after I came to a stop. One hand went to my hairline, groping blindly for blood.
I lifted my head to survey the room. Mami was standing on a chair, completely naked and with a noose around her neck. This was tied off to an aluminium bar of a type I knew well. I used an identical one to hang my laundry—an inch thick, but hollow with plastic caps at either end. Mami had set it on two right-angled windowframes in a corner of the room, forming a triangle; a crude but effective set-up. For a moment we stared at one another in silence.
‘Take it off, will you? Please. This is stupid.’ Speaking, I became aware of a swirling pain in my forehead.
Mami’s lips curled into a smile. ‘I told you I would.’
‘I know, but take it off.’ My voice hardened as I noticed further details. Mami had tied her feet up with the same kind of rope used for the noose—fluorescent yellow climbing rope. She held a short length of it and was trying to tie off her wrists without success. Her feet were purple and there was something small in her hands. Whatever this was, she seemed to be keeping it hidden from me.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked.
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No.’
I moved to stand up but Mami rattled the chair beneath her.
‘Don’t come any closer.’
‘Okay. But why send me the letter? If you’re so damn bent on killing yourself, why warn me?’
‘How can you be sure I’m bent on killing myself?’
‘Don’t play games.’
‘You think I’m playing? Or you hope I am?’
‘Take off the noose.’
‘You know,’ Mami said, ‘it’s a real noose. It’s a good thing my father keeps a laptop in the conference room. The internet’s useful.’ She paused, waggling the noose with a wry smile.
‘Mami, please …’
‘My father comes here once a month. Did you know that? My family’s from Nagoya but he comes and inspects the hotels.’
‘Really?’
‘Mmm.’
‘He didn’t notice the porn on the walls or the noose, or anything like that?’
‘I lock this room w
henever he visits.’
‘Get down and get dressed, will you? If you slip on that chair you’ll die. Really die. It’ll snap your neck and you’ll be dead and none of this will seem funny.’
‘That’s the idea. Most people—well the ones who kill themselves like this—they strangle themselves. That’s what happens. Death by suffocation. That didn’t appeal to me so I learnt how to tie this knot and position it properly.’
Mami waggled the knot again, smiling.
‘Just take it off.’
‘Is that all you can say?’ Her voice contained a trace of annoyance now. ‘I might as well get on with it. Be on my way.’ She widened her stance on the chair. ‘Like you said, a split second and it’ll snap my neck. Nothing to fear.’
She rattled the chair and I tried to stand. My headache was worsening by the second. Glancing back towards the door I wondered where the hotel staff were. Surely the maid had reached the lobby, alerted people.
‘You’ve told them,’ Mami said, noticing my interest in the doorway. ‘You complete idiot.’ She reached up for the rope. The chair abruptly went onto two legs and it seemed to me she was finding leverage to fling it from beneath her.
I leapt towards her just as the chair fell back onto four feet. For a split second Mami was still, her hands up, her eyes wide, her mouth ajar. She stared at me coming at her. No doubt she believed she was going to die. I hardly noticed the chair. I collided with her, clamped my arms around her hips, boosted her up and held her, my mouth puffed like a blowfish.
But in my haste to cover the distance I had moved too quickly, and my momentum caused us both to teeter. The chair, Mami’s weight no longer on it, toppled, and I felt myself falling forward with no way to prevent it. I knew I had to let go of Mami, but could not.
Mami screamed. ‘Get off me!’
I tripped on the upturned chair and fell awkwardly across it, losing my hold. Mami swung out and away. Above me, her bound legs jolted like a hooked fish. For a moment she appeared to be hanging by her neck, then I realised she had one hand beneath the noose, the other high up the rope. Whatever she had been holding was gone, flung out into the room.
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