Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa

by Benjamin Constable

  * * *

  I came out through the glass-domed entrance to the metro and into the Cour de Rome. The roll-down shutters were half-closed over the archways into the station and I guessed that meant it was about to shut for the night. I passed near the statue of the suitcases, then as I came into the Cour du Havre I could see the sculpture I was looking for—about four metres tall, from its base a single finger pointed upwards made from a hundred institutional clock faces, frozen randomly to misinform train passengers and other passing traffic. The odd car pulled up at the lights and then moved on as they turned to green. I sat waiting on a bench, looking at the clocks. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. And then Cat turned up.

  ‘Hello, Cat,’ I said, and he sat and looked at me for a moment and then circled the statue and stopped and rested back on his hind legs, looking up as though he thought he could jump onto the concrete plinth.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Cat. You can’t jump that high.’

  He jumped and managed to get his front paws onto the top, pulled himself up in one reasonably deft movement, and then sat down looking back at me. I stood up and walked over.

  ‘I don’t even know which clock to look at, Cat. There must be a hundred. And if I start climbing to the top of the statue, I’ll get arrested. Besides, I’ll never get up the bottom bit. I’m too old and tired and my bones ache.’

  Cat looked at me, unimpressed. A few feet above his head was a clock that said twenty past three. It was tucked away with its back to the street. It didn’t look like a very easy place to hide something, but as Sherlock Holmes may once have said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ Had I eliminated the impossible?

  I looked around. There had to be something—like a wheelie bin—to stand on to make things easier. There was nothing. Fuck it. I stretched and rolled my neck. I hadn’t climbed anything since childhood.

  I reached up and got my fingers on the top of the plinth. I tried pulling and could get my feet off the ground.

  ‘Oh Cat, I can’t be bothered. Even if I get up, how do I get down? I can’t believe that Butterfly would be capable of climbing this thing, anyway.’

  Cat stood up and kissed my fingers.

  ‘Can you at least watch to make sure nobody is coming?’

  I could hear cars pulling up at the lights, but I didn’t have a direct view of them so I presumed that they couldn’t see me. The concrete pushed into my fingers and I pulled and got my elbows up and then a leg. Great. What the hell do I do now? I could feel myself slipping back and had images of falling seven feet onto my arse. I grabbed one of the clocks and it didn’t fall off. I felt bad; I didn’t want to damage the statue. With a big heave and some precarious balancing, I was suddenly sitting up. I raised my hand and there, stuck almost invisibly behind the three twenty clock, was a neat layer of black duct tape. I peeled it off and there was a brown envelope placed in the middle of the underside of the tape. Inside the envelope was a notebook. On the cover it said ‘Stranger’ and inside it was filled with blue handwriting. I put the sticky bundle in my pocket and lowered myself down, scraping the skin from my forearm and grazing my legs. I held up my hands to help Cat, but he moved to my side and jumped down on his own.

  ‘Quick, let’s get out of here,’ I said, and we ran.

  5

  Stranger (?–2001)

  It’s difficult to put a date on it. It could have been the day I was born, or the day I lost my first tooth. Maybe it was the day I broke my heart. (Notice that I hold no one else responsible for this act of barbarism; I did it myself because I wanted to know what it would feel like. The curious thing is that when it happened I recognized the sensation; my heart had been broken a hundred times already.) Maybe it was the day that Daddy died, or when my best friend (who was also my nanny) died too. Maybe it was the day I lost my virginity, or who knows which of a thousand other potential candidates? But by the evening of the day of this story I had been dead a long time. My body was just an empty shell as I watched the tens of thousands, or even millions of flickering lights blown out all over the city as people felt the impact of the meaninglessness of their existence; understood that they would never change the world and that their highest hopes could be shattered, dreams and beliefs crushed and disposed of like an unwelcome insect, because life has no value in this city. If it did, the loss would be too painful and no one wants to be in pain.

  And the ashes of the dead fell down on us like snow. Death was on the sidewalk and in the street, drifting up Broadway on the warm air and settling on the windowsills of Upper West Side apartment blocks, forming thick layers of dust on the roofs of cars, and in our hair as we walked aimlessly, spectators or voyeurs into intimate moments of doubt and incomprehension of the people we passed.

  And now that I write it down, I realize the futility. To think that by putting it on paper I might get some kind of relief, or recognize in myself a trace of the humanity I doubt I ever had. There is no salvation in these pages, just a grim record of a curiously interesting day. It was perhaps on that day we found the justification we’d been searching for all our lives (or nonlives) for the fuckups that we are. Now there was a good excuse. We would never recover and that was acceptable, but the truth was darker, the truth was that we had never wanted to recover anyway.

  By the end of the afternoon I couldn’t stay inside anymore so I moved out onto the streets, leaving my footprints in the dust. I followed the Hudson, ebbing uptown, hoping I might find a world where life continued, but there was no avoiding the casualty in the stunned faces of all I passed, limping along the sidewalks of this ghost town. And I envied the dead, blowing over my head. I decided to head downtown and feed my curiosity. Anything near the water felt too exposed, so I cut inland and zigzagged down and to the east.

  When I arrived at Tompkins Square Park, dusk was diluting the colors and the world was becoming flat. I sat on a bench near Avenue B and stared at nothing until a man walked by with long strides. He was unlike the rest of New York. Something didn’t fit, as though this was not his day. And I would have let him go (another passing ghost) because all I wanted was a little distraction, but he looked at me as he walked by and caught my eye. It seemed that he was wandering for no other reason than to be moving. I would have liked to say something, exchange a sign of complicity, a nod of recognition, but by the time I had found the courage to speak he had moved too far ahead. I would have had to raise my voice, and in the shadows he wouldn’t have been able to see my face. Besides, I didn’t know what to say. So I got up and walked behind him at a distance.

  The light had gone and in the shadow of the trees, flakes of orange streetlight spread out, dappling the ground. I caught an occasional glimpse of the half-moon slowly waning. And I dragged my feet a little so as not to trip or be caught out by a sudden step. He walked down to Houston and crossed over onto Clinton Street, then doglegged at Delancey, still heading south. He cut between two buildings and some trees along another street and we were on East Broadway. He never slowed and he never turned his head. I tried to make my footsteps sound unthreatening. He cut down to the tower blocks by the East River but I didn’t falter in my stalking (although I closed some ground so as not to feel alone). He weaved his way left and right, disappearing and then coming back into view as I turned each corner. I kept looking over my shoulder to check where the river was, and not lose my sense of direction. He was walking in circles. I rounded the corner of one of the brown towers and he was nowhere. Gone. I didn’t flinch or change my pace. I just walked straight toward the Manhattan Bridge, which was looming above me.

  “Why are you following me?” he whispered, and I jumped. He was standing four feet away in a doorway, calm and curious.

  “What?”

  “You’ve been following me since Tompkins Square. What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I said, and walked off toward the bridge.

  For a moment he was uncertain, as though that mig
ht be the end of it. I could feel his eyes on me as I moved away. After twenty yards he called out quietly, “Wait,” and I stopped and turned as he walked with feigned ease to catch me up, stopping a few yards from me to keep a respectful distance.

  “Why are you walking on your own?” he asked.

  “For the same reason as you,” I said, and he looked briefly perplexed that I could know why he was walking.

  “Where are you going now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  There was silence and I felt powerful. I turned and started walking again, but after a few steps I stopped and looked back. He hadn’t moved.

  “Are you coming?” I said.

  He smiled and kind of skipped toward me and we walked on, but now I was leading and at every junction he watched to see which way I would choose, never voicing a preference. We headed toward city hall and then turned onto the Brooklyn Bridge. We strolled like lovers on an evening promenade with our backs to the city. We didn’t speak and neither of us turned our heads to look at Manhattan until we were well between the towers of the bridge. Then we stopped and leaned on the iron barrier and stared. We could see the dust cloud drifting in the night. The bridge felt vulnerable; I guess everybody had the same sensation. Nonetheless, there were occasional silent figures walking; some stopped and prayed, a couple of others were taking photographs. We went as far as Fulton Street Mall, but Manhattan kept calling and so we almost U-turned, doubling back on Jay Street toward the Manhattan Bridge and its caged walkway, almost back to the place he had waited for me in the doorway. We meandered without speaking, cutting left here and right there, and passed people drunk in the street and a small group breaking up a fight. I started to feel my feet aching. I’d been walking for hours. Eventually, we came to Union Square. Hundreds of people had gathered with candles.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, a sickly feeling growing in my stomach. “Take me anywhere,” I was saying with my body language. “I’ll go wherever you go.” I wasn’t counting the blocks, I couldn’t even remember what direction we were walking, and then we entered a building and were standing in an elevator, staring straight ahead. He took a key and opened the door to an apartment. The place was spacious and modern, well thought out, tidy; it was a man’s apartment.

  “Do you live alone?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He opened a cupboard and then slumped down on the sofa with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

  “Can I use the bathroom?” I asked, and he pointed to a door and then stared at the table and the whiskey. When I came back in the room, he was standing by the window, looking over the top of nearby buildings, toward the East River. He’d poured himself a generous glass and there was a similar-sized one on the table for me. I picked up the glass and stood not too close. We were high up.

  “By the time the second plane hit I was on the roof, watching with everybody else in the building,” I said, half spilling my mind and half making small talk. “When I looked around I could see people on all the other rooftops doing the same as me. I could hear the people next to me whispering, ‘Oh my God,’ over and over.”

  He went and slouched on the sofa. I stayed by the window.

  “I was meant to meet my ex-wife in her office in the North Tower. She’d hooked me up to freelance for one of her clients. The meeting was supposed to be at nine but I told her I’d be there early so we could get a coffee. I spent ten minutes driving around, looking for somewhere to park, then gave up and went to a lot on John Street. When I came out, there were sirens and police blocking off the road. I was trying to call her on my cell, but I couldn’t get the network. I waited until the first tower fell and then ran with everybody else. I couldn’t get back to my car and now I can’t remember what level I parked on.”

  “Have you heard from her?”

  “She’s dead, I think.”

  It was like a strange piece of modern theater. He walked back to the window, closer to me this time, and I didn’t flinch.

  “When I was out walking, it hit me.”

  “What did?” I asked.

  “Everything I had been doing was about building a life, changing a life, starting again, turning the page. Carrying on toward this undefined goal. Pursuing my dreams.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to carry on now. It seems like too much effort.”

  “I know what you mean. Today it all seems much clearer.” He wanted to think I’d understood him, and maybe I had.

  God knows how we ended up in bed. I can’t plot the exact moves like chess: man’s hand to woman’s hip. Woman’s hand takes man’s hand. Check. I like to think he was the one who did the work, but I didn’t make it difficult, maybe I even made sure it happened. And suddenly I wonder whether in fact it is important. I’d presumed not, but now I’m not so sure.

  It was no intense or passionate experience. Our clothes peeled off listlessly, lustlessly. There was no emotion or explosive orgasms, just slow, rhythmic sex; vacuous, and wholly appropriate. We lay staring at the ceiling. And then I looked at him. I clicked my fingers in front of his open eyes and he blinked. I sat up and turned around to face him, kneeling like a geisha. I picked up a pillow and his eyes settled on me, but his expression didn’t change. I pushed the pillow down onto his face, gently at first, but then harder, holding my hands firmly in place, pressing hard on his mouth and nose. He didn’t move or try to resist, he just lay there still and let me suffocate him. I held on, resting my full weight over his mouth and nose. Minutes went by. Black liquid pumped through my veins and glorious darkness exploded behind my eyelids, filling me, as it does, warming and comforting.

  This is the last time I do this, I thought. We both got what we needed.

  He remembered playing hide-and-seek as a child. He was small enough to fit into the linen cupboard in his grandmother’s house. He loved the smell of the dry cotton as he curled up like the cat did. It would lie there all day, happy as can be on the piles of clean sheets and towels. Only when Grandma opened the door would it raise an eyebrow, then run off before it could be dragged out by the scruff of the neck or she could say “Shoo!” Yes, he was like the cat in the linen cupboard. It was a good hiding place. It smelled good. He closed his eyes.

  6

  Tomomi Ishikawa’s Paris

  Tomomi Ishikawa and I had spoken many times about writing. We talked about plot and structure, choice of words, about pace and voice for hours into drunken evenings. But it had always been about my writing, my excitement or concern over putting words on paper, not hers. I had never considered that Tomomi Ishikawa might be a writer as well. I should have guessed from her emails, recognised it in her syntax. I felt uncomfortable that she had never felt the need to mention it. The rhythm of her words echoed in my head and my mind was racing.

  Did Butterfly kill that man? Is that what I just read? Is this the factual account of what she did on September 11, 2001, or a fantasy where events bleed into one another and death seeps through the delicate barrier separating truth and construction, and into the imagination? Did Tomomi Ishikawa kill someone? It seems an important question, but it drifted downstream to be catalogued under unsolved curiosities, and my mind was already flitting to other things.

  The clue to the notebook about killing a stranger had come from the writing about Saint-Lazare. The walk in the rain through the arcades came from the ‘My Paris’ folder as well. Maybe her computer was the starting point for all the clues in her treasure hunt. It seemed almost disappointingly easy, but the moment had come to check out the rest of the things she’d written about Paris.

  And as I clicked my way through the files, Butterfly talked about streets, architects and artists. She knew where to find bars where poets had drunk and lodgings of authors I had never heard of. She had collected a museum of knowledge on Paris, unexpected histories and hiding places, the colours and smells, the way the light came down in the afternoon. Was this a guidebook? Or was this to be an education for me, who admit
tedly knows nothing of the city where I live and walks with eyes closed, observing little more than the thoughts in my own head?

  And now I wanted to walk with her. I wanted to hear her voice drone on, telling facts that would drift in one ear and then effortlessly and completely out of the other seconds later, leaving just a memory of the sound.

  Belleville/Ménilmontant

  Belleville is an area in the east of Paris that has traditionally housed workers and various waves of immigrants. It was constructed on Paris’s second-largest hill and stretches from the park of Buttes Chaumont in the north to Père Lachaise cemetery in the south. It was an independent town until 1860, when it was annexed by the expanding city of Paris, which took care to divide it over four arrondissements for fear of its militant community spirit. Nonetheless it has managed to maintain a unique sense of neighborhood identity, and when the Commune of Paris briefly became independent from France in 1871, the barricades of Belleville and the incorporated neighborhood of Ménilmontant were the last to fall against the state’s reconquering army.

  Despite having been adopted by artists and those attracted to bohemian living, modern-day Belleville has thus far resisted gentrification. It is culturally diverse with large East Asian and North African populations and woven with narrow cobbled streets that dip and rise and that host workshops, bars, performance spaces, commerce, houses and gardens as tokens of pride for its community riches and mementos of its small-town past. The low level of many of the buildings (as opposed to the six-story Haussmannian façades of much of the rest of the city) is largely dictated by ground instability due to natural subterranean waterways and consequent erosion. Additionally, the area was heavily mined, leaving a maze of tunnels, although, unlike the networks beneath the streets of the Left Bank, those of Belleville have been rendered virtually inaccessible through a program of structural reinforcement.