Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  ‘Hey,’ I said to Tilly, who lay on her bed pretending to read. ‘Nakamura-san’s gone.’

  She nodded without looking up. ‘Weeks ago, Noah.’

  ‘And …’ I drew the word out, ‘I can’t find a room to rent.’

  ‘Keep looking.’

  ‘No. I mean—’

  But Tilly checked her watch, swore and sat up, face groggy.

  ‘I have to work. Can’t you step outside while I get changed? Actually, go find something to do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re bugging me, standing there like that. Do something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like find somewhere to live.’

  I ended up watching Japanese TV for half an hour and, returning to the room, found that Tilly had left for work. I stood at the window, staring across into Nakamura-san’s apartment. I thought of the morning Mami first appeared, of the winter cold and Nakamura-san beating her futon. Even then her apartment had lacked personality, lacked life. Now, though, it was all bare concrete, nothing more; the lime-green balcony rail was the only obvious colour. The rooms were both hollow and I stared into them for close on a minute, morose, until I resolved to break in.

  The sliding door had two small, rectangular windows at its top, one of which had been left open for ventilation. It seemed possible to exploit this and I set my mind to doing so. Apartments like Nakamura-san’s—which required hefty, non-refundable deposits—were usually vacant for months before being let. I will not deny my pending eviction drew me to the place like a cat to fish, but there was something else too. This gloomy space across the two-metre alley seemed to be in communication with an equally hollow void somewhere deep inside me. The two were acting like magnets, this sense growing only stronger as I wrenched up my window and climbed onto the sill.

  But the height of it all gave me cause to pause—to think. Height—zooming up at me, faceless, depthless, wrapping itself around my heart and tugging lightly so my body recoiled backwards in panic—had to be considered. My toes curled around the sill’s edge and my hands gripped the sides. I crouched there, window digging into my back, worried I might faint, worried I might topple forward like a dead bird from a branch.

  In the end it was to avoid exactly this unceremonious death that I took a sharp breath and leapt out into midair. I came crashing down onto that lime green rail, wedging it between my chest and upper arms and scraping around with both my feet until one found a hold. I was too scared to take a breath. All the impetuous bravado that had facilitated my leap was gone. It was only a fear of being spotted from the street below that gave me the courage to pull myself over the railing, from which position I flopped like a hooked fish onto the cold concrete and resumed breathing.

  After a minute’s rest I stood and checked for witnesses. There were none. I tried the sliding door but it was locked. Whoever had locked it, had done so quickly, however. The bottom lock had only been slotted halfway into the groove on the adjoining door, leaving the handle sticking out at a seventy-five-degree angle. All I had to do was slide something heavy like a hammer through the open top window and drop it onto the bottom lock to flick it open. I picked up what little I had at my disposal—plastic slippers. I turned them over in my hands, one after the other. Both were heavier than expected, their bases thick. I decided to try to use them. I poked one through the open window and let go of it. But it missed and fell with a thud onto the tatami matting inside.

  ‘Shit.’

  I picked up the remaining slipper and repeated the process. The toe struck the handle squarely and I heard the latch fall open with a dull clunk. When I tugged on the door it slid back without difficulty.

  ‘Ha.’

  I quickly picked up both the slippers and dropped them back onto the balcony before stepping inside.

  The largest room smelt of cleaning products. I guessed that someone—maybe even Nakamura-san, if she was still alive—had cleaned the place from top to bottom before departing. There was no dust or grime. I stared at the white walls, at the beige cupboards and wood-veneer ceiling. I wandered from empty room to empty room—the living rooms, the kitchen and shoulder-width bathroom.

  Here, standing over my missing landlord’s immaculate toilet, I urinated while trying to decide what to do next; I had not devised a plan beyond getting in. Where was Nakamura-san? It made no sense. If dead, was someone else going to take over the hostel? Were we to be evicted? Or was she perhaps coming back?

  I returned to the first of the living rooms, sat down on the tatami and took a deep breath. These living rooms were separated from one another by nothing more substantial than thin, patterned sliding doors. I traced the pattern with my finger—an oriental scene featuring ducks in flight. I should have been scared, afraid of being found out, but I had no such concerns. For the first time in weeks nothing distracted me. I flopped onto my back and lay still, staring up at the fake grain of the wood-veneer ceiling. The lampshade and bulb had been removed from the light fitting and I suddenly felt sure whoever cleaned the apartment was never coming back.

  Then a remarkable thing happened—I slept.

  I am not sure exactly how long I slept but when I woke it was dark, which meant it must have been three or four hours at least. It had been years since I had slept so long without stirring, without jolting on the strings of muddled dreams. Confused, I rolled onto my side, aware of a tingling in my arm. I sat up and this same arm flopped into position beside me, lifeless and heavy. I had to wait for it to recover its full movement before standing, stretching and walking through the kitchen—past the deep, silver, distinctively Japanese sink and mounted hot-water unit— towards the front door. I opened the in-built, metal mailbox and, as hoped, found two identical silver keys. Without any hesitation I snatched one up, shut the mailbox and opened the door.

  I locked it behind me and, pocketing the key, walked back towards the hostel, passing the old man and his even older dog on the way. As always, the decrepit animal was circling, making tentative attempts to raise its tail and lower its anus over the gutter. Its back legs shook precariously and the old man, smoking a cigarette and holding the leash with both hands, casually propped the creature with an equally shaky foot.

  Harry had no intention of paying me back. He had the money—this much was obvious because he was frequenting a variety of ritzy snack bars and often bringing back the hostess from the first for sex. Sometimes, lying awake at night listening to Tilly snore, I would hear him with this girl. She had a piercing, put-on giggle. Harry always used Japanese with her, having somehow picked up a basic command of the language in mere months. Then they would fuck—loud, raucous, pounding sex that never failed to wake Tilly, so the two of us could stew on things we would have preferred to forget.

  To Harry, I was invisible. He left the hostel early every morning and stayed out late. If he did run into me, he was too busy to talk. And never once did he raise the matter of money. I lay awake most nights thinking about how much I hated him, polishing the barbs I planned to fling given half a chance. But I always put off challenging him. I needed him on side. Without that there was no hope.

  Around the hostel everyone discussed our missing landlady. They feared not for her, her fate, but for themselves. She could have been trapped in a well and I doubt any one of us would have thrown down a rope without first receiving a guarantee of accommodation. The more talk there was, the less credible the information. Eventually it was concluded, and generally accepted, that we had no idea where she was. No one dared put out rent in case it remained uncollected or was stolen. And in time most expected to be evicted or at least notified of a change in ownership. But no word came. It was as if we had stepped out of the vast economy surrounding us.

  I began regularly crossing the alley to Nakamura-san’s apartment, using it as an escape. Perhaps inspired by Harry’s progress, I often took a Japanese language textbook with me. Lying on the tatami I would try to study. I never stuck at it for more than ten minutes and afterwards
shut the book, fell backwards and slept. Something about the place invariably put me to sleep. Never a light, fretful sleep, but always a deep, refreshing slumber that could last hours.

  This odd routine might have gone on for the full duration of Tilly’s contract were it not for three Japanese men in summer suits. They were standing just inside the entrance of the hostel upon my return from an especially satisfying snooze. One was obese and it was clear that his pants were causing him discomfort around the groin. He was unashamedly sorting things out, making complicated adjustments while the other two tacked up A4 signs.

  I paused to read one.

  Due to the change in of ownership in this lodgement, this will be collapsing in eight weeks from today (the date above written inward.)

  ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  I stormed to Harry’s room and hammered on his door. He answered, chest bare, looking sleepy.

  ‘The money, right?’ he asked with a nod.

  ‘Right. Give it to me now, in full, or I’ll go to the police. Time’s up.’

  He rubbed at the mat of black, coarse, curled hairs coating his bloated little belly and stretched to his full five-foot-nothing.

  ‘You’ll have it tomorrow. My apologies.’

  And, like that, without another word, he shut the door.

  ‘It was stupid of me, wasn’t it?’ Tilly said, sliding half off the bed.

  ‘What was stupid?’ I asked.

  Her voice fell to a mumble. ‘Coming back was stupid. Everything’s changed. Not just us, but the whole hostel. Half the tenants who were here last time are gone. And now they’re just going to tear it down. It’ll be like it never existed, like we never existed.’

  I shut my book—Harry Potter and the something’s something. ‘I’m glad you came back,’ I said without conviction.

  Tilly slid the rest of the way from the bed, ending up with her back to it. ‘Of course you are. You’re thrilled.’

  ‘I am. Honestly.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, taking a sharp, tense breath. ‘We can’t rent this room much longer and I don’t see any point in forcing you out ahead of a demolition. You might as well stay until we’re kicked out.’

  She seemed to have more to say, so I waited.

  ‘I think I came back to Japan to break up with you,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you that, but it’s bothered me. All along I was planning to leave you. Even back at the farm, waiting for the train. Only it wouldn’t come out then.’

  ‘I see.’

  I stood and took two steps to the window. The heat had given out to a typhoon. Dark clouds whipped across the sky at an unnatural pace, gusts of wind whooped excitedly around the tallest apartment blocks, and the alley below dripped loudly.

  ‘Is all that okay with you?’

  ‘Well it has to be,’ I said, surprised by my anger.

  ‘I guess it does.’

  I had expected we would talk about things in more detail, but Tilly stood and left, looking miserable.

  Hours later the storm reached its peak, or what I guessed to be its peak. Tilly returned and said nothing as she prepared for bed, following the steps she always followed and which I had come to know well. While she applied moisturiser to her face—more patting than rubbing it in, her mouth ajar, her eyes on the ceiling—the hostel grunted in the frenzied, inconstant wind. Rain marched across corrugated iron and continued surreptitiously to leak in beneath the window sill. I watched Tilly return her toothpaste and other toiletries to a cheap plastic case.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘Why are you watching me?’

  ‘You look pale.’

  ‘I do?’ she said without interest.

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  Holding the ends of her baggy nightgown together she stepped over me and crossed to the door. There was a dark, apple-shaped bruise just above her ankle.

  ‘I’m putting out the light.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I was lying in jeans and a T-shirt on the thin, uncomfortable futon she had set for me on the floor. In the dark she stepped back over me. I could tell from the sound of her walk she was again holding together the ends of her nightgown. This seemed pointless, since I could see nothing anyway, but I shut my eyes out of courtesy. It saddened me to have to do it. I had once known her body so well and she had never been shy. Often during the previous summer she had performed her nightly routine wearing nothing at all. Everything she had to hide—freckles, a birthmark and a faint, cheap tattoo—I had seen.

  I fell into an uneasy sleep and woke at some indeterminate point in the night to discover the typhoon all but gone. Tilly was sobbing into her pillow, a wretched sound that cut out when I coughed.

  This unacknowledged sobbing continued for weeks. We fought during the day and missed each other at night. Even the fighting changed. Whereas once we had been able to say anything, we now watched our every word, aware there existed matters we could not address without the two of us quickly coming to hate one another. We knew too much and could wound too deeply, and instead fought about inconsequential things—wet towels, disposable razors, toenail clippings, hair, post-it notes and even stock cubes, which I accused Tilly of stealing. The two of us seemed always to be on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the tussle that would send us over.

  Perhaps because of this tension, Tilly fell ill. She took a week off work and I, exhausted, moved into Nakamurasan’s apartment. I reasoned Tilly would right herself in my absence. She would not let me nurse her and I was therefore only a cause of fatigue.

  I had been crossing to the apartment regularly, but rarely took much in the way of personal belongings— a book or a magazine at most. But after Harry departed without warning, leaving no forwarding address, I began to take food and stay for days, leaving this item or that behind until most of my belongings were secretly stowed in the apartment’s numerous cupboards. There was a real risk of being caught and I was careful to check nothing had been moved whenever I arrived. Night after night I slept from dark until sun-up and felt I was living dangerously, that there was some modicum of autonomy in my life.

  One afternoon, collecting things for the apartment, I found Tilly ankle-deep in bloodied tissues. All this blood had come from her nose, and when I asked her how long it had been bleeding she only shrugged and said, ‘What do you care?’

  This reply caught me off guard. ‘You can break up with me and still be nice, you know.’

  ‘You think this is breaking up?’

  ‘You said you wanted to, that you’ve wanted to since Australia.’

  ‘Yeah. But it’s words, isn’t it? Go somewhere, stop showing up pretending to give a shit. Why can’t you just leave me alone? Why can’t you vanish?’

  Her eyes, when she looked up, contained a trace of tears, and her face was drawn and tired. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is exhausting, Noah. There are no nice break-ups.’

  Later, I sat staring at her dark window. I wanted to hold her, but could not. Did I believe she had come back to Japan simply to break up with me? No. Why return for so long? And why plan to share a bed? It made no sense. I suspected now that with every push Tilly was inviting me closer, but I did not want to look at it. Not like that. Not now. Not at all. Holding on to her was as scary as letting go.

  The

  Deconstruction

  A week passed, then another. Tilly recovered from her illness and returned to work. I saw her head out each morning. By this time I was used to the apartment. I was living there in earnest—sleeping there, showering there, even keeping a toothbrush in a cup there. Tilly knew where I was. Occasionally she would catch sight of me moving around behind the dark glass and peer through. I liked this. I had not lost her, only found an adequate limbo. I soon forgot even to fear losing her.

  Lying on my side in that empty room between naps I often thought of my father. Who can say why he came to mind? Maybe it was because I was breaking the law simply by being there, and he had always promised to turn his back on me if I broke the law in
any serious fashion. Looking back, that had been something of an idle threat. He had not abandoned me when I hit Wang. If anything, he had saved my skin. But long before that he had clearly explained why I had to behave better than most children my age. I was not simply a son of God, but also the only son of a priest (or expriest, thanks to my mother). People expected more from me because, morally speaking, I had been given more.

  Growing up I had lived by my father’s rules and never questioned his beliefs. Yet they sat inside me now like a lump of metal, forced in and wholly foreign. The more I thought about it, the more I came to thank Nakamurasan’s apartment for enabling this realisation—my breaking into the space, my choosing to be at ease within it, my sleeping soundly on the smooth tatami. Day by day, as alone as I could bring myself to be, I sensed I was cutting the lump out, cutting it out messily and with little idea how to get at it, but it was certainly coming out. With no one there to watch, to judge, I had the time and freedom I needed to grope inside, to prise back muscle, tissue and fat, fingers wet with blood, and get some sort of a grip on it.

  One night at dusk—the dreariest hour of every day when I would drink a beer and cook a bowl of noodles with an egg—Phillip visited. He was irritated by my hermit-like existence and wasted no time telling me what to do.

  ‘Look at yourself. For fuck’s sake get some sun, Tuttle. You’re such a pasty, sad-looking fuck. I’d throw you money if I saw you on the street. When’s the last time you left this place? Do you realise it smells like shit?’

  I only shrugged.

  ‘Where are you sleeping anyway?’ he asked, flicking a light switch repeatedly, despite there being no bulb. ‘On the floor?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Get a job. Jesus! Get some cash—a life. You’re losing your mind here.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You need to get out. That Japanese couple I met—did I tell you about them? The pair I went to Guam with— they’re up for fun. There’s a group of us and—’ ‘I can’t afford it.’