‘I can’t explain. I didn’t mean to mess with you. I promise you, I’m being manipulated too.’ Her voice was soft and strained. ‘I was happy being your helper. It’s been fun. You’re fun. Now I have been made a part of it against my will. I don’t like that. It puts me in an awkward situation and now I have to lie and not tell you stuff, just to make sure your adventure goes according to plan.’
‘Whose plan?’
‘Your friend—Butterfly.’
‘Butterfly’s dead.’
‘You keep saying that, but there are lots of things that suggest otherwise. You’re supposed to be the one who can understand clues.’
‘What lies? And what stuff haven’t you told me?’
Beatrice walked over to me and kissed my cheek. Just once.
‘Come on. I’ll show you the small tree.’
‘What was the kiss for?’
‘Because I’m sorry.’
Beatrice led me round a chimney stack and down some wooden steps into a little garden and the light reflected green for a second on the leaves of climbing plants. Then she pointed down to a bonsai in a pot resting on two bricks on the ground.
‘Low like broccoli,’ she said, and I thought that I would like to kiss her. Kiss her mouth. But I didn’t.
I crouched down and looked at the tree. It was pretty. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to uproot it in order to find what I was looking for. I lifted the pot and between the two bricks was a tin. An old-fashioned tin for boiled sweets. I prised the lid off and inside was a sheet of lined A4 paper folded into a small square with a large 3-D letter B drawn on it, and what looked like two boiled sweets, hand wrapped in see-through plastic. The note said:
There’s just one more thing for you, Ben Constable; one last treasure and it’s very precious. You’ll find it underneath a tree that nurtures young butterflies before they are grown, on a patch of green where I have lingered with many a book, and got my hands dirty weeding and planting. The space next to Jefferson Market Library was the nearest patch of green to where I lived and the closest thing I ever had to a garden of my own. The sweets are adapted from a recipe my nanny taught me: bitter toffee almonds, I call them. I made them myself. Hope you like them. There is of course so, so, so much more to say, to find, to do. I have loved losing myself in the streets of Gotham Town with you. It’s such a treat to be able to show someone the places of your past. I wish I could have seen the streets where you grew up. But time has run out and we have gone from parenthesis to parenthesis and the opening clause is still unresolved . . .
Butterfly.
X X X G X X X O X X X O X X X D X X X B X X X Y X X X E X X X.
I turned it over, looking for more, a PS or a last parenthetical note. There was nothing. Suddenly I thought I would burst into tears. It all seemed to be coming to an end too quickly. I passed it to Beatrice when I’d finished. She read it, folded it up and handed it back to me and I put it in the tin.
‘The bitch,’ said Beatrice, and I laughed louder than I would have expected.
‘Do you really think so?’
‘God knows. I just wanted to say it.’
‘Want a homemade sweet?’ I held out the tin.
‘No. I wouldn’t eat anything with a name like that. Especially coming from your friend Butterfly.’
‘Do you think she’d try to kill me?’
‘I don’t know anything. In fact the more I think about it, the more I think you definitely shouldn’t eat that shit.’
I tapped my finger on the lid of the tin, thinking, then put it in my bag.
‘Shall we go?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you want to look at the view from this great and historic building? As an artist it’s part of your cultural heritage.’
‘No thank you.’
‘OK.’
We walked down through the nonalarmed door and Beatrice said, ‘Even so, we ought to take the stairs so you can get a feel for this place.’
‘OK,’ I said. The stairway was white and had a kind of pop art mobile hanging from the skylight, dangling into the empty space that the stairs wound themselves around, and there was an occasional painting on the wall—more like an art gallery than a foyer. We plodded down the stairs without speaking. Beatrice said goodbye to the man on reception. I didn’t even look at him so I don’t know what expression he wore, seeing us come down five minutes after having gone up.
‘Where to now?’ said Beatrice.
‘The West Village again.’
‘It’s a pity. There’s so much of New York that you haven’t seen. You’ve really been running around the same corners since you got here.’
‘Well, I got from Battery Park to Central Park, from West Thirty-Third Street to Brooklyn. And I’ve only been here a week.’
‘It feels much longer,’ she said. ‘Did you ever get a map?’
‘No.’
She was silent with the weight of unsaid things and we walked down Sixth Avenue, and I was silent with the weight of unasked questions.
* * *
I led the way through the gate into the little garden next to Jefferson Market Library. Cat was lying on the grass and Beatrice and I went and sat on a bench next to him and I looked around.
‘Can you see any butterflies?’
‘No, but young butterflies don’t live on the same things grown-up ones do.’
‘Really?’
‘Come on, think about it. What are young butterflies?’
‘Caterpillars!’
‘And what do caterpillars eat?’
‘Lettuce?’
‘Isn’t that slugs?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘The only thing I know that’s a great host for caterpillars is pussy willow, like that one there.’ She pointed to a small willow tree.
‘You actually do know everything, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, you can call me a coward for not digging underneath that tree in broad daylight, but I’m going to wait until it’s dark.’
‘Sounds like a good plan to me,’ she said.
‘Tell me something.’
‘Yes?’
‘How do you pay your rent?’
‘With difficulty. I had some money saved, but that’s all gone. I need an income quick.’
‘No, I mean how do you do it? What happens? What actions do you make to get the rent to your landlady?’
‘I write a cheque,’ she said bluntly.
‘Where do you send it?’
‘To an address in Chelsea.’
‘Near the hotel?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Who do you make it payable to?’
‘Butterfly.’
‘Tomomi Ishikawa?’
‘Yep.’
‘Whose name do you write on the envelope?’
‘Her mother’s.’
‘Do you know her mother?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, and I could feel it all unfolding.
Cat looked at me and I thought for a moment.
‘Will you take me to meet her?’
‘I’ll give you her number. You can call her.’
‘I think you should come with me,’ I said.
‘No. I don’t think I should.’
‘What does it matter?’
‘I think we should leave things as they are,’ said Beatrice.
‘I’m going to ask her questions. She might tell me stuff. Even if she doesn’t, that will tell me stuff.’
‘I don’t want to be there.’
‘Take me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’ll make things easier. I’m shy.’
‘You don’t seem shy to me.’
‘Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not. You’ve been withholding stuff, you said so yourself. I’d like to see you faced with something true. I’m grateful for all your help, but I think you owe it to me to come to Butterfly’s mother’s.’
‘Owe it to you? Yeah, I t
hink you got me confused with someone else. I don’t owe you anything. Quite frankly, I’m not even sure why I’m still here.’
She was right. She could get up and leave and I’d never hear from her again. She looked capable of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I still think you should come. I can’t make you. It’ll have to be your choice.’
She looked hard for a second, as though she was deciding whether to spit at me or just get up and leave.
‘I’ll take you tomorrow. Come on.’
‘Come on what?’
‘Come on, I’m taking you for a drink,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘To say goodbye.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because I don’t think you’ll want to know me after tomorrow.’ She stared at me hard, with no expression on her face, and I stared back.
‘I’m going to take you to a new place. There’s an area near here called the Meatpacking District. It’s very weird and industrial and it smells of raw meat. It’s also very now.’
‘Like me,’ I said.
She kind of laughed without smiling. ‘We’re going to sit down and have a beer and we’re going to talk about some other stuff. You can tell me about England and what it’s like growing up as a limey colonialist and I’ll tell you about childhood holidays in Pennsylvania, or we can compare notes on France or something, and we can laugh and say stupid things and then we’re going to say goodbye, I’m going to go home and you can come back and get your last treasure.’
I stared at her. I didn’t know what to think. I guessed I’d offended her at some point. I should never have thought about kissing her. She was probably psychic.
We got up and left and Cat watched us. He seemed happy enough. See you later, Cat.
* * *
The gate to the garden was padlocked when I got back. Feeling bold with beer, I walked round to the back corner of the library on Tenth Street, had a quick look in both directions, climbed over the fence and walked directly to the willow tree. Cat came and sat down next to me. I cursed myself for still having nothing to dig with but a stainless steel pen. I pushed it down into the earth a few times in the vain hope that I might be able to locate what I was looking for without digging an opencast mine. How deep would a child bury something?
I started carefully digging round the roots so as not to cause any stress or alarm to the tree. It was like an archaeological dig, but after a few minutes I was scraping with my fingers, pulling at chinks of earth, stabbing the ground to get deeper. And there, enmeshed in the roots, was a plastic container, a small Tupperware-type thing. I pulled it out and pushed the earth back, carefully patting it down. I don’t think I’d damaged it. Cat and I went and found a shadowy spot and sat down. I took out the sweets from the Chelsea Hotel and smelled one. ‘I don’t like almonds, Cat. Do you want one?’ Cat ignored them so I put them back in my pocket and opened the treasure chest. On the top, covering the rest of the contents, was a shit of paper with child’s handwriting on it.
Time Capsyul
(Not to be opned til the yer 2000)
Mach 15th 1980
My name is Tomomi Ishikawa but pople corl me Butterfly. I live in a big citee called New Yorc wich is one of the bigist sitees on aer planit wich is coled Eath. I go to elimntree school and then I woud like to go to colij. I like reading and riting and dansing. Wen I gro up I would like to be a techer. My favrit bilding is Jefoosn Marcit Libree becus it has an unyooshul stile for the west vilige wich is neer the hudson river in the Unitid Stats of America. The werld trade senter is the talist bilding in New Yorc. Jimee Carta is the presidunt of awer cuntree.
Underneath the letter were three black-and-white photographs showing a small child with long, straight, black hair in the garden where I was sitting. In one she was on her own, looking up at the camera, in another she was sitting on a bench with a woman, and in another she was squatted down over a flowerbed, concentrating intently on the trowel in her hand. There was a postcard of the Eiffel Tower with nothing written on the back, a marble, a ribbon, an antique-looking subway ticket, and (rather disturbingly) the head of a Barbie doll with much of its hair cut off. I laughed out loud and Cat looked around, slightly alarmed.
I put everything back in its plastic container and lay back on the grass and closed my eyes. I dreamed that Butterfly was standing over me or maybe it was Beatrice. She bent down and kissed my head and scratched Cat behind his ears, which he liked (that’s how I know it was a dream).
23
In Which Some Unsaid Things Are Said
When I got back to the hotel I didn’t have my keys. I searched my pockets and my bag over and over, but they really weren’t there. I thought about going back to the community garden, but at this time of night it felt a very long way to go to not be sure of finding them, so eventually I conceded to ringing the bell and disturbing the Night Guy.
The Night Guy smiled when he saw me through the glass.
‘Ah, I have your keys. You should tell your girlfriend that she was lucky, I don’t normally let people up into rooms like that. Next time you want somebody to come and get something for you, you should call at least. Anyway, it was no problem this time, it was obvious she knew you and we did try calling, but your cell wasn’t on.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and wondered why I wasn’t asking questions and kicking up a stink.
‘Oh, and the manager told me to ask you if you knew when you would be checking out yet.’
‘That’s a good question. I was thinking about maybe the day after tomorrow. Could I confirm that tomorrow?’
‘No problem, sir.’
As I climbed the stairs, I got my phone out of my bag. It was off. When I put it back on it had plenty of battery. There was no reason for it to be off, but phones do that sometimes. In the room everything was normal except that all of Butterfly’s journals were gone. They’d been in a pile on the bedside table. I climbed into bed fully clothed and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
The next day I met Beatrice in a dimly lit Spanish restaurant called El Quijote, just underneath the Chelsea Hotel, and we sat at the bar drinking bottled beer and staring straight ahead without really speaking much.
‘I know it’s a stupid question, but I don’t suppose you came to my hotel last night before I got back, did you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Somebody did.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. A girl.’ I played with my beer bottle. ‘I do hope there’s an interesting twist to this story. I feel like I know where it’s going, but I’d prefer a surprise. I’m getting this kind of sinking feeling of inevitability. And I’ve got travel sadness as well which means I’m leaving soon.’
‘What’s travel sadness?’
‘It’s the sad feeling you get before you make a long journey. Don’t you get that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Hey, there is something you don’t know!’
‘So, what are you going to do if it all comes to the end you’re expecting?’
‘Contemplate getting very annoyed. Ask a lot of questions while keeping my cool and come to the irritating conclusion that in life, unlike fiction, you rarely get all the answers you need, and that there probably won’t be any satisfactory resolution to all this, and I won’t understand why. And I’ll go home and be frustrated. And for a few months it’ll all come back into my head unexpectedly, like Cat does, and I’ll think, “If only I could understand why,” and then gradually it won’t be so important anymore, and it will just become an interesting story I tell whilst lingering in bed with a favourite lover, or who knows, maybe I will write it down one day. Not yet, though. I think I need to let it get some distance.’
‘Well, Ben, I may know some things that you don’t, and you’re going to find out about them because I’m going to explain everything to you later on today—I didn’t want to, but I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’m going to do it—but what I can tell
you now is that I don’t know the end of the story. Maybe I ought to be able to guess, but I can’t. It could be a surprise, or it could be obvious. Either way, I don’t know.’
‘It’s interesting how we choose to define endings.’
‘This sounds like the beginning of an intellectual conversation.’
‘Stories don’t normally carry on until everyone is dead, which would be nice and clearly defined. We arrive at a moment and then we just say “the end”, but that doesn’t mean that nothing else interesting happened; it just means we stopped telling the story. Maybe this one should finish now.’
‘What, before we get to the dénouement?’
‘But what if that doesn’t happen? Or the explanation’s a disappointment?’
‘Jeez! Stop thinking about how disappointing everything might turn out and get on with it.’
She was right. ‘Come on then,’ I said, and jumped off my stool.
We finished our beers and I followed Beatrice out of the restaurant and in through the door of the Chelsea Hotel. We smiled and said hello to the man on reception on our way to the lifts and Beatrice pressed the button for the sixth floor.
We stood on opposite sides of the lift with our hands behind our backs, leaning against the walls, and looked at each other in the mirror and kind of smiled.
‘You were here yesterday,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean before you came with me.’
‘Yeah.’
The doors opened.
‘Can I just check, we’re going to see Butterfly’s mum, right?’
‘Right. She’s expecting us.’ Beatrice led the way down a white-marble-floored corridor and knocked on one of the doors. It opened and a Japanese woman, younger than I expected, looked at us and smiled.
Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa Page 21
