A Cup of Salt Tears

by Isabel Yap

  “Enjoy yourself,” Makino says, with a smile.

  “Thank you very much. Merry Christmas,” Rui answers. Makino envies her; hates her, briefly, without any real heat. Rui whips off her apron, picks up her bag, and runs to the boy. They stride together into the snowy evening.

  That night, the foreigners are gone, and Kawataro is back. It tells her about the shogun’s daughter. How she would stand in the river and wait for him, her robes gathered around one fist. How her child, when it was born, was green, and how she drowned it in the river, sobbing, before anyone else could find it. How Kawataro had stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks and—Makino doesn’t believe this part—how it had grieved for its child, their child, floating down the river.

  “And what happened?” Makino says, trailing one finger idly along Kawataro’s shoulders. They are sitting together on the edge of the tub, their knees barely visible in the water.

  Kawataro’s tongue darts over its beak. Makino thinks about having that tongue in her mouth, tasting the minerals of the bathwater in her throat. She thinks about what it means to be held in a monster’s arms, what it means to hold a monster. Kappa nappa katta, kappa nappa ippa katta.

  Am I the leaf he has bought with sweet words, one leaf of many?

  Kawataro turns to her, face solemn as it says, “She drowned herself.”

  It could not save her, perhaps; or didn’t care to, by then? Makino thinks about the shogun’s daughter: her bloated body sailing through the water, her face blank in the moonlight, the edges of her skin torn by river dwellers. She thinks of Kawataro watching her float away, head bent, the water in its sara shimmering under the stars.

  Katte kitte kutta.

  Will I be bought, cut, consumed?

  She presses her damp forehead against Kawataro’s sleek green shoulder. Have I already been?

  “How will this story end?” she asks.

  It squeezes her knee with its webbed hand, then slips off the ledge into the water, waiting for her to follow. She does.

  She spends Christmas Day in the hospital, alternately napping, reading to Tetsuya, and exchanging pleasantries with the doctors and nurses who come to visit. She leans as close as she can to him, as if proximity might leech the pain from his body, everything that makes him ache, makes him forget. It won’t work, she knows. She doesn’t have that kind of power over him, over anyone. Perhaps the closest she has come to such power is during sex.

  The first time she and Tetsuya made love he’d been tender, just as she imagined, his fingers trembling as he undid the hooks of her bra. She cupped his chin and kissed his jaw and ground her hips against his, trying to let him know she wanted this, he didn’t need to be afraid. He gripped her hips and she wrapped her legs around him, licking a wet line from his neck to his ear. He carried her to the bed, collapsing so that they landed in a tangled pile, desperately grappling with the remainders of each other’s clothing. His breath was ragged as he moved slowly inside her, and she tried not to cry out, afraid of how much she wanted him, how much she wanted him to want her.

  On his lips that night her name was a blessing: the chant of monks, the magic spells all fairytales rest on.

  Now he stirs, and his eyes open. He says her name with a strange grace, a searching wonder, as if how they came to know each other is a mystery. “Makino?”

  “Yes, my darling?”

  His breath, rising up to her, is the stale breath of the dying.

  “So that’s where you are,” he says at last. He gropes for her hand and holds it. “You’re there, after all. That’s good.” He pauses, for too long, and when she looks at him she sees he has fallen asleep once more.

  The next time they meet, they spend several minutes soaking together in silence.

  She breaks it without preamble. “Kawataro, why do you love me?” Her words are spoken without coyness or fear or fury.

  “A woman in grief is a beautiful one,” it answers.

  “That’s not enough.”

  Kawataro’s eyes are two black stones in a waterfall of mist. It is a long time before it finally speaks.

  “Four girls,” it says. “Four girls drowned in three villages, before they fixed the broken parts in the bridges over the river. My river.” It extends its hand and touches the space between her breasts, exerting the barest hint of pressure. Her body tenses, but she keeps silent, immobile. “You were the fifth. You were the only one who accepted my hand when I stretched it out. You,” it says, “were the only one who let me lay my hands upon you.”

  The memory breaks over her, unreal, so that she almost feels like Kawataro has cast a spell on her—forged it out of dreams and warped imaginings. The terrible rain. The realization that she couldn’t swim. The way the riverbank swelled, impenetrable as death. How she sliced her hand open on a tree root, trying desperately to grab onto something. How she had seen the webbed hand stretched towards her, looked at the gnarled monkey face, sobbed as she clung for her life, river water and tears and rain mingled on her cheeks. How it tipped its head down and let something fall into her gaping, gurgling mouth, to save her.

  “I was a stupid little girl,” she says. “I could have drowned then, to spare myself this.” She laughs, shocking herself; the sound bounces limply against the tiles.

  Kawataro looks away.

  “You are breaking my heart, Makino.”

  “You have no heart to break,” she says, in order to hurt it; yet she also wants to be near it, wants it to tell her stories, wants its cold body to temper the heat of the water.

  It looks to the left, to the right, and it takes a moment for her to realize that it is shaking its head. Then in one swift motion it wraps its arms around her and squeezes, hard, and Makino remembers how kappa like to wrestle, how they can force the life out of horses and cattle by sheer strength. “I could drain you,” it says, hissing into her ear. “I could take you apart, if that would help. I could take everything inside you and leave nothing but a hollow shell of your skin. I do not forget kindness, but I will let you forget yours, if it will please you.”

  Yes, she thinks, and in the same heartbeat, but no, not like this.

  She pushes against it, and it releases her. She takes several steps back and lifts her head, appraising.

  “Will you heal my husband?” she asks.

  “Will you love me?” it asks.

  The first time she fell in love with Tetsuya, she was making tea. The first time she fell in love, she was drowning in a river.

  “I already do.”

  Kawataro looks at her with its eyes narrowed in something like sadness, if a monster’s face could be sad. It bows its head slightly, and she sees the water inside it—everything that gives it strength—sparkling, reflecting nothing but the misted air.

  “Come here,” it says, quiet and tender. “Come, my darling Makino, and let me wash your back.”

  Tetsuya drinks the water from Kawataro’s sara.

  Tetsuya lives.

  The doctors cannot stop saying what a miracle it is. They spend New Year’s Eve together, eating the osechi-ryori Makino prepared. They wear their traditional attire and visit the temple at midnight, and afterward they watch the sunrise, holding each other’s cold hands.

  It is still winter, but some stores have already cleared space for their special spring bargains. Makino mouths a rhyme as she sets aside ingredients for dinner. Tetsuya passes her and kisses her cheek, thoughtlessly. He is on his way to the park for his afternoon walk.

  “I’m leaving now,” he says.

  “Come back safely,” she answers. She feels just as much affection for Tetsuya as she did before, but nothing else. Some days her hollowness frightens her. Most days she has learned to live with it.

  When the door shuts behind him, she spends some moments in the kitchen, silently folding one hand over the other. She decides to take a walk. Perhaps after the walk she will visit her mother. She puts a cucumber and a paring knife into her bag and heads out. By now the cold has become bearable, lik
e the empty feeling in her chest. She follows the river towards the bridge where she once nearly lost her life.

  In the middle of the bridge she stands and looks down at the water. She has been saved twice now by the same monster. Twice is more than enough. With a delicate hand, she carves the character for love on the cucumber, her eyes blurring, clearing. She leans over the bridge and lets the cucumber fall.