—Wikipedia
Why did whales enter water and not hippos?
Will one outsurvive the other?
What happened 54 million years ago?
* * *
*
THE 787 is two point two five times as long as the biggest known whale. It holds the Guinness World Record for the longest passenger jet. Seven is a lucky number in many cultures, and so is eight. At over 40,000 feet, even the 787 is like a fly squeezed inside a giant fist of air.
Also, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was bigger than the biggest known whale, and it vanished like it never existed.
* * *
*
“ERIN, DO you think they’ll open the torpedo?”
* * *
*
KATY’S COURTYARD ends at a wall, on the other side of which is a lawn, overgrown with thickets preparing to ambush the stone house with the faded patio, two lawn chairs sunning on it. Erin says he’s seen people lounging there, but I think what he saw were ghosts.
Can you see ghosts during the day? I asked Katy when she got home last night.
You mean me, personally? Or do you mean can you see them because they exist during the day? she asked back.
Both, I said, impressed by her fine distinction, up there with Spock and Sherlock Holmes, the Greatest Descendants of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment.
Well, I’ve never seen ghosts, day or night. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, she said.
Can you always see things that exist?
You’d at least see the evidence, I’d think.
Can you only see things that exist?
Katy thought about this. I hope so. But sometimes people see what nobody else does.
Like Sherlock Holmes, I said.
Heehaw heehaw. Mai’s in love with Sherlock Holmes.
I’m not in love with Sherlock Holmes.
Katy snatched my hand. Don’t, she said.
She’s been rubbing them like crazy, Erin told her.
Do they hurt? She peeled back my eyelids. It doesn’t look like conjunctivitis, but it doesn’t mean it won’t be. I’ll see if I can get some drops.
Katy’s Enlightened; she looks and also sees. But that doesn’t mean she always knows. Seeing is not always knowing, and seeing cannot always solve all problems. Humans often see only what they want to see or believe they’re seeing. Dad said that, believe it or not. Does that mean if nobody wants to see you, you don’t exist? What about if you want to see but you can’t? Or if you can hear but not see? I decided not to ask in front of Erin.
* * *
*
“GREAT. KATY’S going to kill you.”
Erin’s in the kitchen, jabbing me with his toe. I’m evacuating Katy’s below-the-sink cabinet: cleaner (chemical); dishwashing pods (chemical); recycling bag with twenty-three take-out containers plastic #6. “Did you have a good chat with Anja?”
Erin stops jabbing. He plods to the fridge and clatters out an ice cube. He leans on the counter, crunching it. The sound makes me shiver. “You’re a weirdo, did you know that?”
“You’re Prejudiced, did you know that?”
Erin walks away, and I lean into the cabinet. Then I close my eyes and open my pores and feel the cold peeling off the U-shaped pipe. The cabinet itself is warm and scratchy and smells like mold. I run my fingers over the braille of the wood, the nicks and chips like secret dimples, the damp patches like half-peeled scabs, then I touch something: a spongy nest. My fingers shriek, but I don’t let them shrink. Darkness is not the enemy; Fear’s the enemy—it’s the number one enemy of the human species. Jacki does not support Fear. Think what’d happen if you always reacted or made decisions only out of Fear. Jacki chooses to prepare by (a) doing what she can to prevent The Worst, and failing that (b) doing what she can to survive with Integrity.
* * *
*
DAD POOH-POOHS The Worst. Next thing you know, I’m doomed because I was born on a Friday the thirteenth, he says.
Dad believes in Reason; he believes it will prevail. Mother wishes he were right, but it’s humans she doesn’t trust. Look where Reason and technology and science got us, she says.
* * *
*
“I WANT to see the plane. I want to see it.”
* * *
*
KATY’S A doctor; she believes in all possibilities, fundamentally. Still, she lives like she doesn’t believe in The Worst. Yesterday, she had one tube of tomato paste, three apples, and one tub of organic hummus in her fridge. Katy doesn’t plan for Eventualities. When she sees a Lack, like in her fridge, she seeks Abundance, like in the supermarket. Katy fixes things. Which is how we ended up at the supermarket after she got home from work last night. And because it’s summer, it was still light out, the gray streetlights holding their breath, and Katy said, Look. I looked up and saw a shadow blip across the sky. When I blinked, the shadow lurched and swallowed the clouds. When I rubbed my eyes, the shadow smudged and strobed like distant lightning before breaking into pinpricks of light that fused into one pair of eyes belonging to one crow perched on the telephone wire, watching the passage of our groceries.
* * *
*
“MAI?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
And I do. Erin’s my brother; he doesn’t need to be in the same room to know what I’m doing. Jacki calls it the Mind’s Eye, which is a knowing that’s independent of seeing and that beats seeing because seeing doesn’t always add up to knowing. Feel that tingling on the forehead? That’s how you know you know.
I sit firmly on my hands and draw my awareness away from my eyes to my forehead and concentrate.
*
The term “human” refers to the genus Homo (H.). Scientists estimate that humans branched off from their common ancestor, the chimpanzee, about 5–7 million years ago and evolved into several species and subspecies now extinct. Debate continues as to whether a “revolution” led to modern humans (“the big bang of human consciousness”), or a more gradual evolution. According to the Out-of-Africa model, modern H. sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago and began migrating 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, replacing H. erectus, inhabitant of Asia, and H. sapiens neanderthalensis, inhabitant of Europe. Out-of-Africa has gained support from mitochondrial DNA research which concluded that all modern humans descended from a woman from Africa, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Both human and chimpanzee DNA, to which human DNA is approximately 96% identical, are undergoing unusually rapid changes compared with other mammals. These changes involve classes of genes related to perception of sound, transmission of nerve signals, and sperm production.
—Wikipedia
Why did humans split off from chimpanzees?
How come some humans survived and not others?
Why are we changing like no other mammals?
Are we all changing, or only some?
How rapid is rapid?
Who was Mitochondrial Eve?
Where was Adam?
* * *
*
“DO YOU think we’ll ever know who’s in the torpedo?”
* * *
*
5:45 PM. Two hours two minutes left. Out there in the world, there are gorillas who have learned to sign, and humans who have learned to see like bats and whales. Daniel Kish is such a human. And so is Ben Underwood. Ms. Alvarez-Johnson called it human echolocation.
*
Human Echolocation: A learned skill whereby humans use sound, such as palate clicks, to navigate the environment.
Clicks (mouth): Clicking sounds made by placing the tongue on the palate and snapping it back. Mouth clicks are used most often by the blind to determine the distance, size, and shape of objects and locate them, but they may also be valuable to rescue workers, such as fi
refighters.
—Wikipedia
But how do you stop the earth and sky and sea and people from erupting like a sudden sun blinding the bluest sky, leaving an endless archipelago of beached fountains leaking algae, a verdant hieroglyph of a lost civilization, fluorescing in the permanent dark.
* * *
*
“ERIN? JUST at first, will you read to me if I go blind?”
Erin looks up. At first his eyes are blank. Then they widen, tadpoles of fear darting across them. He wakes his phone: Mother won’t be home for another hour, and Katy even later. He drums the table. Drums and drums. Then he looks at me, pulls a chair next to his own, lifts the three point eight feet rule, and I know he knows, and he’s going to tell Mother.
*
The Sun is approximately halfway through its main-sequence evolution. In 5–6 billion years, it will enter the red giant phase, during which its outer layers will heat up and expand to eventually reach Earth’s current position. Recent research suggests that the Sun’s decreased gravity will have moved the Earth out, away from the danger of engulfment, but it will not prevent Earth’s water from boiling and its atmosphere from escaping into space. Long before that, however, as early as 900 million years from now, Earth’s surface will already be too hot for the survival of life as we know it. In another billion years, the surface water will have disappeared.
—Wikipedia
Will whales shrink to the size of moles and enter the earth?
Will they have learned to see underearth by then?
Where will humans be?
Will they have learned to see underearth too?
Why do we exist, Erin?
Is anyone else out there?
How will they find us?
Will they tell our story?
What’s going to happen to us, Erin? Are we going to bring about The End?
Are we, Erin?
Are we?
Are we?
AUTHOR’S NOTE
So many things—books, art, film, music, experiences—have catalyzed this collection into being, and it is impossible to list them all here. But I do want to mention a few. “I Stand Accused, I, Jesus of the Ruins” is in part a rewriting of Ishikawa Jun’s “Jesus of the Ruins” (1946), and the Rōjin and The Heavenly Curtain Hotel’s House of Hope are from Hotta Yoshie’s “The Old Man” (1952). Both short stories have been translated into English. “Pavilion” is in direct conversation with Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths” (trans. 1958).
I would also like to note that the snatch of lyrics reproduced in “The Garden, aka Theorem for the Survival of the Species” is from “The Hanging Garden” by The Cure, and the lines that appear in the Rōjin section of “I Stand Accused, I, Jesus of the Ruins” are my translation of lyrics from the song “Utsukushiki Tennen,” which was popular in Japan at the turn of the last century. The Wikipedia extracts in “Echolocation” are based on the following Wikipedia entries found at the time of writing: “Human Echolocation,” “Dinosaur,” Uncontrolled Decompression,” “Kaiten,” “Whales,” “Human,” “Sun.” I should also note that “Urashima Tarō,” the fairy tale that begins “Passing,” is a cultural staple in Japan. There are many variations; I’ve summarized the one I heard most often. Finally, the passage quoted toward the end of “Passing” is from Kimiko Hahn’s provocative zuihitsu-style poem “Blindsided,” found in her book Volatile (1999).
Over the course of writing this book, I’ve often been asked about its historical content—how much was drawn from real people and events—and whether I consider it historical fiction. These are deceptively complex questions. What I can say is that my concern was less to capture a time, place, or event than to responsibly represent that time, place, or event. For this reason, this book is foremost engaged with the texts and media, scholarly, popular, and fictional, that have represented and discussed this history, and the concept of history, from myriad perspectives.
As for historical fiction, I feel that, as a genre, it often takes for granted the fundamental accessibility of history—as though history is an objective occurrence bound to a time and place, and it’s largely a matter of pinning down the details: what people wore, how the streets looked, the “facts” of what happened. I hope this collection will complicate this idea and spark questions about how history is made, how it is lived, remembered, reproduced, and used, and how ultimately unbound it is by the time and place in which it is grounded. The Second World War didn’t start and end with specific people and events; its roots reach back to values seeded long ago, and its sundering effects have hardly lost their spark and propulsion. The consequences are still unfurling, and these days I find myself wondering how my philosophical grandfather, who worked for a Japanese company that built warplanes during the Second World War, would have evaluated our world’s trajectory. He died naturally four years ago, a full century after his birth in 1916.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This first book has taken so long to write that I have many people to thank.
Early writing teachers and advisers: Chris Tilghman, Steve Almond, Sheila Emerson, and Jonathan Strong for encouraging this direction long ago.
Friends and family who lent their energy at various crossroads: Alan Cohen, Allison Paige, Anna Ritter, Hsuan Wu, Janet Generalli, Janet Thielke, Jen & Keith Leonard, Patricia Grace King, Stan Tam, Shane Clifford, Shetal Shah, Steph Belmer & Aaron Richmond, Sophia Lin & Jake Hooker, Tal Zamir, Timothy & Tana Welch, and my community at FAWC that pivotal year. A special thank you to Maria Koundoura for the vital sanctuary of her home, table, and conversation; Joanna Luloff, my delightful friend, who engaged with many of these stories; Matthew Neill Null, one of the most discerning and supportive writers I know: I cannot thank you enough.
Thank you to my singular parents and lovely brother. To Barb Modica, Larry Mateja, and their geodesic dome where part of this book was completed. To Mary Bernardi and Rema Bernardi for keeping an eye on our journey. To Marty Luloff for opening his home (and pie stash) at a critical juncture. Thank you also to Mario Modica: I wish you were here to read the rest of the book.
I’m grateful to the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Beth McCabe, and the RJFWA jurors (I wish I knew who you were). I’m grateful to the invaluable Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Jaimy Gordon, whose words have bolstered me in enduring ways. Many, many thanks to Laura Furman and the O. Henry Prize Stories jurors, including Molly Antopol and Edith Pearlman. Thank you to Bill Henderson and The Pushcart Prize. Thank you: Copper Nickel, Witness, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and especially Paula Deitz and Ron Koury at The Hudson Review. Thank you also to the Vermont Studio Center, the Troedsson Villa (thank you, Anne Eastman!), and the network of libraries, especially in Boston, Brookline, Provincetown, Madison, Chicago, and Portland (Maine), without which I could not have written this book.
I must also forever thank absolutely everyone at Doubleday, especially Bill Thomas, Cara Reilly, Hannah Engler, my publicist Tricia Cave, and the brilliant cover designer Michael Windsor: thank you, thank you, for making this a reality! To my luminous agent, Heather Schroder, and my dynamic editor, Lee Boudreaux: my deepest gratitude and respect.
Finally, I must thank Matthew Modica, whose long companionship, unconditional patience, and twinkling mind made so much of this possible—and so much magical. I’m lucky.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Asako Serizawa was born in Japan and grew up in Singapore, Jakarta, and Tokyo. A graduate of Tufts University, Brown University, and Emerson College, she has received two O. Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. A recent fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she currently lives in Boston. Inheritors is her first book.
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