Tuvalu

by Andrew O'Connor

  Inside, sections of corridor wall had been reduced to skeletal wooden frames. The ceiling was being pulled out, and I noticed tangled wires and makeshift-looking rusted pipes which all took an indirect route to their destination.

  Tilly was at work. Tracking down a pen and an old receipt I left a note for her. She was to visit me ASAP, since she could no longer stay in her room. On the way back to the apartment I passed the old man with his even older dog. He looked mildly annoyed. I had the impression he knew I was squatting in Nakamura-san’s apartment, and when I bent to pat the dog he abruptly pulled it away.

  I took the stairs two at a time and, a moment later, sat down beside Phillip and asked him if he was hungry. He looked to be in pain and immediately wanted pills.

  ‘Two,’ I said, standing to collect them from the kitchen.

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Only two for now.’ I brought him the tablets along with water in a small margarine container, and he swallowed the lot greedily. ‘You should eat,’ I said.

  ‘Eat what? More noodles? No thanks.’

  With the curtains drawn the room was dim and depressing. I had bought a bulb and was using the ceiling light, but it was hardly adequate. In fact, the whole place had lost its appeal. It had begun to feel like a prison. Outside, Moaning Man, who I had not heard shout for months and presumed long gone, let out a groan and kicked something—a wall. The sound echoed in the alley. Wanting light I pulled back a curtain and watched him drift by below, angrily smoking a cigarette, face scrunched in pain.

  Mami was immediately drawn in by the misery of the accident and my report of Phillip’s suffering.

  We met in Ikebukuro rather than our usual Odaiba coffee shop, and she dressed up for the trendy district. She wore a knee-length skirt, the material grey-green, heavy and patterned by texture rather than colour. It accentuated the sharp curve of her hips which sloped into a completely bare stomach, all abdominal muscle and ribs. Much of her upper chest was exposed, too, covered only by a white, bra-like top and an open, sheer, chocolate-brown cardigan. She made little effort to hide any aspect of herself when she sat down in front of me, crossing long, svelte legs. She leant forward to tap her cigarette in the Starbucks ashtray and people stared. In a city of prim women reluctant to show even a strip of skin between pants and shirt, Mami had decided to wear nothing more than a bikini top and towel. Were it not for the exquisite fabrics, she could have been at a beachside café.

  ‘I’ll take care of Phillip,’ she said. ‘Nurse him.’

  I put down my caramel macchiato and shook my head.

  ‘He’d love that. But I’ve got it under control. It’s just a few pills and—’

  ‘No. I want to.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m bored. It’d be interesting.’

  Neither of us finished our coffee that first Friday after the accident, pushing our way out of the store. Mami wanted to start on her new project at once and so we returned to the apartment. Phillip, a little shaky on his feet, was in the kitchen trying to make a sandwich with the same limited ingredients I had used prior to his arrival. He noticed Mami and ran his eyes down her full length.

  ‘What the hell’s she doing here, Tuttle?’

  Mami smiled patiently. ‘Me? I’m going to be your new nurse.’

  ‘I don’t need a nurse. I have one.’ He clucked his tongue and curtly added, ‘Nice outfit, though.’

  Mami glanced down. ‘You like Prada? Does your present nurse dress like this?’

  ‘Tuttle? Could do. Wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘And you like him in it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Phillip said carefully.

  Mami reached out and softly ran two fingers along the length of his jaw. ‘That settles it then. I’ll be better.’

  Phillip frowned, perhaps remembering Mami’s noodle snub. Eventually he shrugged his compliance.

  At that moment, Tilly appeared at the door, still thin and pale but more energetic than I had seen her in weeks. I let her in and Phillip rolled his good eye. ‘We’re trying to squat here,’ he said.

  She stared at the bandages. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Mami stepped forward. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  Tilly nodded a reply and quickly turned to me. ‘I got your note. What do you want?’

  ‘Good. Let’s go for a walk?’

  ‘If you had fifty thousand dollars, what would you do?’

  ‘Tuvalu,’ said Tilly without hesitation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s an island—a string of them.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the Pacific.’

  ‘Why go there?’

  She smiled. ‘Why do I have fifty thousand dollars?’

  ‘To make conversation. You haven’t said a word the whole way here.’

  ‘As I recall, Noah, you invited me. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me why.’

  ‘And now I’m waiting for you to tell me why Tuvalu.’

  Tilly entered a small civic park and took a seat on a creaking swing. It was a narrow park hemmed in by apartment blocks and filled with pine-like trees which cut out the light. The dusty ground undulated unnaturally, almost as though it were a golf course, rising up at its highest point to a half-moon which supported a drink fountain and toilet block. A nearby sandpit spread like a tentative weed to just beneath our feet. Two children took turns to jump and argued over the results.

  ‘See that tree?’ Tilly asked.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The thick-trunked, spindly-topped one near the toilet.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s a cherry tree.’

  ‘I hate cherry trees. I hate the week they bloom— everyone obsessing over them, taking pictures with their phones. What’s relaxing about thousands of people packed into a park, queuing to peer at petals?’

  ‘Someone at the hostel—a Japanese girl—told me this tree’s at least a few hundred years old. And there are others a thousand years old. That makes me wonder how many people have stared at them. How many people have stared, exactly as we’re doing, then vanished into the memories of their children, and then altogether? Look how thick that trunk is.’

  ‘People are remembered.’

  ‘Are they? Remember the ambulance when we first met? The man on the stretcher?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘In a few hundred years—just the age of this tree— there’ll be no proof he lived. That’s the size of time.’

  ‘You’re changing the topic.’

  ‘Because it’s as good as anywhere,’ Tilly said with a frustrated shrug. ‘Tuvalu. That’s my reason.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘That’s not a reason.’

  ‘It is. Once I was in a hospital. I was watching mid-afternoon TV. You know what it’s like at that hour, all kids’ shows—educational stuff. The one I was watching had a segment on Tuvalu and I’ve never forgotten the place. It wasn’t a remarkable show or anything, not at all. The presenter did a dive, went to a village and stayed in a bungalow. But to me, then, it looked like somewhere to go. Somewhere to want to go. Everyone has a place like that. A dream land or life they’re working towards, however vaguely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because without it we realise we’re obliged to die wanting.’

  ‘You don’t think you’re being just a tad melodramatic?’

  ‘Am I? Some people probably have more than one Tuvalu in a life. It changes as they grow. Or maybe they get to the first and find it’s nothing like they imagined and need a new one. You must have had at least one?’

  ‘Maybe it was Tokyo.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’re here because it’s the perfect place to be alone— no one pushing. You can hide out, be as selfish as you like.’

  ‘And you? Why are you here?’

  ‘To be alone,’ Tilly said, ‘but for differen
t reasons.’

  For a moment we were both quiet. I sat staring at the cherry tree, thinking about my place in Tokyo, which was no place at all.

  ‘Tell me more about Tuvalu,’ I said finally.

  ‘I guess for me Tuvalu’s always done the trick. I’ve never been anywhere near it. I’ve never even studied it. For all I know it might well have sunk. But that one word’s taken on a meaning all of its own.’ At this she grinned. ‘Don’t look so puzzled. Haven’t you ever once looked into the future and pictured a different life for yourself, made it a destination in some abstract way? A place in which you’re content and from which you never look forward, except maybe to hope for more of the same? You must have. You’re just not telling.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe you’re busy making one?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  We watched the children take turns to jump, leaping ineffectually and falling well short of the sticks they had set down to determine points.

  ‘Why don’t you just go there?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A moment ago you said it was the first thing you’d do with—’

  ‘—fifty thousand dollars. Exactly.’

  ‘I think you should see what’s there and get it out of your system. Do it before it’s too late, before someone’s sitting here, staring at this trunk, thinking about you.’

  Tilly shifted on the swing and frowned. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why not? What’s the point of a dream without trying to live it?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a dream, not exactly. It’s similar but different.’

  ‘I don’t have a Tuvalu, granted, but if I did I’d sure as hell make an effort to go there.’

  ‘I think I know what your Tuvalu is,’ Tilly said sadly.

  ‘What?’

  But she ignored the question and went on. ‘It serves a purpose as it is. Perhaps once, perhaps in that hospital, it was somewhere I wanted to go. Now it’s just what it is.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  She shrugged. ‘We all have to look forward to something, don’t we?’

  ‘But if it’s fake, why—’

  ‘It’s not. It’s real. That’s the problem. There is no perfect place to live. If all I knew was satisfaction it’d soon develop colours, shades, some of which I’d take to calling dissatisfaction since they’re not half as pleasing as the original. After a while those differences would feel very severe to me and I’d be back where I started. I’d be back here. And knowing that, in order to keep Tuvalu I have to keep away from it. Anyway, if I really believed I was going there, going to find a Tuvalu, I’d never live. I’d live only in waiting.’

  ‘So how do you keep it and keep away? By lying to yourself?’

  ‘In a way. And by accepting this is life. I’ll be me anywhere. I just sometimes picture the place and pretend it’s still coming. It’s my answer to this tree, to what I said before—the size of time.’

  I felt irritation at her pessimism. ‘I don’t agree.’

  ‘Then you haven’t worked it out yet,’ Tilly said, standing.

  Tilly seemed upset with me for asking so many questions about Tuvalu, for laying it bare like some dead fish, and I never got around to asking if I could help with her living arrangements or flight home. She returned to the hostel and did not even give me a parting smile as she walked past the builders, dust and scattered nails, and on into a barrage of noise.

  I wished I had kept my mouth shut.

  When at last I stepped into the apartment Mami, fully dressed but with wet hair, was just stepping out of the bathroom. She looked at me blankly, as though perhaps I had entered a house in which I had no clear business, in which she was the wife and I was a common thief. Then she averted her eyes and roughed up her hair with a towel.

  ‘You’re back,’ she said casually.

  ‘That’s right.’

  I walked past her into the room where Phillip lay on his makeshift bed, one leg crossed casually over the other, both his hands up behind his head. He did not seem to be in pain and I guessed he was drugged. He looked sleepy and his T-shirt was lying crumpled beside him. He was bare-chested and began to play with what little hair was growing back from an old photoshoot shave.

  Mami touched me on the shoulder and said she would return in the morning. She left quickly, not bothering to listen for people outside. I heard her say good evening to someone, then the muffled sound of her feet taking the steps two at a time. The door banged and I moved to lock it. For a moment I stood perfectly still in the alcove, then I resumed my old post at the entrance to the living room, staring at Phillip.

  ‘Tuttle …’ he said dreamily.

  ‘Feeling better?’ I asked.

  ‘Much, much, much …’ And his voice evaporated like a fog into morning sunlight.

  Then came the final destruction of the hostel.

  We watched it from the apartment, realising that the deconstruction was over, that the place needed to fall in on itself and be forgotten.

  The Deconstructionists worked like termites, sawing, hammering and drilling until the building was set to collapse of its own accord. I sat with Tilly, Mami and Phillip on the apartment balcony and watched the bulldozing. The hostel toppled in on itself neatly, almost like a house of playing cards. There was no great dust cloud or explosion, and precious little left to bemoan. No one said a word for a while. We were not sad, nor happy. We were like rats on a life raft, impassive so long as we were safe.

  Deep in the rubble I saw a corner of the old vending machine—a sort of burial at last. It surprised me to note the Deconstructionists had left it, unsparing as they had otherwise been. The cats circled the ruin cautiously and eventually stepped into it, gingerly moving over jagged steel edges and splintered wood. Even without the building standing they appeared at home, weaving in and out of crevices.

  ‘What will become of them?’ Tilly asked our party on the balcony.

  ‘Soup,’ said Mami.

  This, as it turned out, was not wrong. Two days later Tilly called my attention to the killing of the cats. By the time she rushed me to the scene, half were dead. The other half—some fifteen-odd animals—were being herded into a corner by five men with shovels.

  It was a hot, dry morning, a remnant of the summer. Out of breath, Tilly pointed to the dead cats. They were battered out of shape and lay in small pools of bright red blood. Here and there tufts of fur floated across the concrete. I looked from one cat to the next. Four stark, white eyeballs had popped whole from battered skulls creating a cartoonish sense of alarm, and yet others had burst, forming flaccid sacks which drained a transparent, tear-like liquid into damp fur.

  ‘It’s a massacre,’ Tilly shouted at me, voice panicky. I had to nod. The scattered carcasses lay in a five-metre-long court. Anyone could see this dead end had been purposefully selected for the gruesome task at hand. It had been sealed off at its open end with miscellaneous building products such as plywood and corrugated iron. Those cats awaiting their turn beneath the shovel circled and hissed while steadily moving towards the back wall.

  ‘Don’t you see what they’re doing, Noah? Do something!’

  The men raised their shovels in anticipation, their chests heaving, their rigid faces dripping sweat. I watched them move further and further forward, but action seemed beyond me. The sun glinted across the base of a shovel, blinding me. One or two of the cats hissed and the men shortened their steps, lowering their heads a fraction and exchanging glances. When it finally happened Tilly hit me across the shoulder angrily, fist clenched. I heard her screaming at them but the men ignored her, lining up the cats one by one and bringing their shovels down forcefully. They only raised them as high as their shoulders. Sometimes a shovel would smack concrete, other times there would come a thud.

  In the end, the hairless cats and the kittens held out longest. The former were, as Tilly had insisted long ago, the strongest and smartest. They seemed almost to run with their eyes up,
looking for shovels. They also knew to vary their speed and direction. The kittens, not nearly as smart, only survived because their rat-like bodies made them a hard target. The last three cats were killed messily and completely without compassion.

  Tilly did not stay to see all this. She stormed off after watching a man scoop up a kitten with his shovel and heft it into a wall. He was close to the barricade and she spat on him as she passed. He stared at her, then at her white, bubbled saliva on his jacket, and finally wiped himself clean with a handkerchief. Tilly walked away without a word.

  Escape

  Phillip and I took work in hotels—work procured by Mami. We taught English to the staff and occasionally helped out with the foreign guests, but neither one of us could get more than twenty hours a week. Initially Phillip embraced this sustained state of poverty as he had his previous hiatuses from clubs and drugs, throwing himself into high-rep weights. But when this particular hiatus did not end he began to despair.

  There was no question of him modelling, even after the bandages came off. There was a nasty gash crossing his face. It started to the right of his hairline, crossed his forehead, passed between his eyes just above the nose, and ended in the middle of his left cheek. It was healing well, though the scar would require plastic surgery. Slowly, we watched the swelling and bruising surrounding it falter and vanish.

  But there was another injury too, one Phillip rarely discussed. He had sustained a bruise on the top of his head. This bruise had faded, but well after everything seemed back to normal he continued to suffer debilitating headaches. If anything, they worsened with time. To my way of thinking, the blow to his head and the headaches were linked, but Phillip would not concede the point. He self-medicated with painkillers which he became all too adept at conning from doctors citywide. Somehow he avoided going to hospital and paid only what he had to for an almost constant supply of drugs. Anyone could see this was a patch-up job but Phillip would not listen. Medicated, he did sit-ups and push-ups until exhausted.