According to Dr Imai, dad of Kōsuke (seven years old), Fujita-san’s colleague: ‘Read dinosaur books together, take them to the aquarium to see the fish, answer all their questions, including the embarrassing ones.’
chapter
nine
‘BELL GARDIA?’ THE WOMAN ASKED the two strangers. She had a hunched back and an apron with large pockets sewn onto each side. A black dog sat beside her, happily chewing on something; the weight of its torso, leaning to one side, balanced on two slender paws. ‘Is that where you’re off to?’
‘That’s right. Is it nearby?’
The last stretch of road, the most emotional part, was mediated by the presence of this little old woman. She must have been over eighty and walked with one hand resting on her crooked back and the other dangling by her side.
She offered to accompany them to the entrance of the house of Suzuki-san, the custodian of Bell Gardia. ‘Come,’ she said with a benevolent smile, as if she were leading them to the outermost room of her home.
She was originally from Kyūshū, but it didn’t much matter anymore where she was born, because she’d spent her whole life here. She’d moved in with her husband straight after their wedding; he was a fisherman, she told them. He had said this was the most beautiful place on earth and she had believed him. So they tidied up his childhood home and began a life governed by the ocean, their days cut in two because his ship would set out once it was dark and return when the sun came up.
At the beginning, she said, she’d been especially shocked by the gigantic crabs her husband brought back as gifts when he occasionally went up north, with their long gold-and-crimson legs. She thought they were terrifying creatures, their pincers like nothing she’d ever seen before. ‘But they’re delicious, you must try them.’
Looking out towards the sea, Yui could see the red pinheads of buoys bobbing on the water. She imagined the woman’s body lengthened out, the years shaken off like dust from an old tunic, her wrinkles pulled away to the sides of her face. She imagined her, young and erect, with an extremely short fringe, as was fashionable in those days, standing in the doorway to the house, examining the ocean; a different dog at her heel and a baby in her arms, an older child gripping the hem of her kimono. Scouring the horizon with the anxiousness of a young wife, she would search for her husband’s ship. Then she’d lift her arm. Look, she’d exclaim, and point her index finger at the tiny speck puncturing the expanse of water.
The old woman’s kindly intrusion was perhaps to blame for Yui and Fujita-san’s unpreparedness on arriving at Bell Gardia. They had devoted all of their attention to this woman and her dog, and then suddenly the garden opened up before them, like the curtain of a street theatre.
‘Goodbye, good luck,’ she called out over and over with her hand raised in the air. They watched her for some time, bowing repeatedly to say thank you. The woman, meanwhile, slowly made her way back down the road, the wind escorting her home.
In the school where Yui had been displaced for weeks, amidst the boxes of fruit, packages of freeze-dried food, clothing and blankets that were flowing in from all over Japan, she had examined hundreds of faces and all of them, indiscriminately, had slipped from her memory. There was just one that returned to her daily, always at the most unexpected times.
It was the face of a man, and the item he had with him.
He must have been around fifty; he was a big man, and had a lopsided mouth and enormous bulging eyes like a fish.
The man, whose name Yui never knew, held an empty blue plastic picture frame in his hand that he never put down, even when he slept. He would use it to look at the sky, the ceiling, and all the other things in the gymnasium: the mats, the piles of clothes, the people. Observing him with a curiosity she could never muster for others, Yui watched as the man seemed to create a title for each of the scenes he had captured, something she was certain nobody else had noticed. Every so often he would stop and solemnly study the view through the frame, then appear to write something down with his free hand.
In normal day-to-day life, outside that place, mad people were perhaps lonelier than the others. But here they were less so. The very things that drove sane people mad with pain somehow liberated the mad ones, made them feel less different.
Yui even had her doubts as to whether this man had really been displaced. She got the impression that the damage he had suffered hadn’t been caused recently, but a long time ago, and that any news he received here wouldn’t hurt him. Everybody would go to the information centre at least once a day to enquire about their family, but not him; and nobody would come to talk to him about anything other than meal pick-up times, the shower timetable, optional medical visits and exercises to improve circulation. Everybody would cry or try to restrain themselves from doing so in front of others, but not him. He had likely come just to mix with people; maybe he even had a home but felt the need to soothe his solitude.
In the evacuation centre no one second-guessed anyone else; they couldn’t afford to. There was too much fear of causing more pain to people who were already hurting. But Yui remained on guard anyway: if someone had approached that man, if they had asked him the reason for that rectangular piece of blue plastic he was sharing his life with, she would have intervened. ‘He’s playing a game, he made a promise to his grandson,’ she’d have responded. And if anyone had asked what the game was, whether his grandson was OK, if he was safe, she would’ve remained silent, and they wouldn’t dare ask any more.
The truth, or at least Yui’s theory – that simply observing the world from behind the frame was reassuring, that everything seemed more manageable from there – wouldn’t have satisfied them.
It was easier, in there, to accept mad people when you weren’t sure, deep down, whether they were mad or not.
Yui, lying down at night on the canvas sheet in the gymnasium, alternated her daughter’s and mother’s faces, ruins of their previous life and visions of the sea with the image of that bovine man in his house, which she imagined full of knick-knacks.
In truth, she didn’t know why she was so fixated on him but he returned to her constantly. Unable to sleep, Yui would project his stocky and disproportionate figure onto the high ceiling of the gym as he randomly came across a framed photo, picked it up, popped open the clips on the back and removed the print that was inside. And she would replay the subsequent scene (the one where the man brought the frame up to his face, and the room, the street, all the things overflowing from the world outside the window, became at once appealing and peaceful) over and over again. Imagining that scene was comforting.
She felt the same now, sitting on the bench at Bell Gardia, observing Fujita-san’s profile divided into small squares by the wooden rods of the telephone box (one long vertical one and four short horizontal ones) that held the pieces of glass in place. Inside each square there was a piece of Fujita-san, a fraction of his arm, a slice of his leg.
She averted her gaze many times, worrying she was being indiscreet.
But Fujita-san didn’t realise. He continued talking to his wife about Hana: ‘She’s stopped talking, yes, but I’m optimistic, and so is the paediatrician.’
It was just a matter of time, the paediatrician had said, because in children, feelings can sometimes turn into solid substances and it is quite common for these substances to get lodged in the throat. It’s much less unusual than people realise.
‘My mother is well. She’s a very attentive grandma.’
Then there were the neighbours, the teachers at the kindergarten and Hana’s friends. Ultimately, she was loved and she’d get better. It would just be nice if it happened before she started elementary school.
The square that Fujita-san’s neck had been occupying suddenly became vacant. The man was bent over, occupying the lowest frame. He picked up the backpack he had put on the floor, and turned around.
She could see he was emotional but smiling. As if to say, ‘Everything’s all right, it’s all right, I’m all
right, you can do it.’
It wasn’t until a year on from that day that Yui would tell Fujita-san about the picture-frame man from the shelter. She would tell him how she too had once appeared inside that blue rectangle, and how, on that day, she had felt seen, truly looked at, for the first time in weeks.
It never happened again: three days later the man disappeared. Nobody said anything about him, and she didn’t ask any questions.
There’s nothing to say about those you know nothing of.
Nothing really matters about those you know nothing of.
Later, Yui realised she had learned another important thing in that place of confinement: that silencing a man was equivalent to erasing him forever. And so it was important to tell stories, to talk to people, to talk about people. To listen to people talking about other people. Even to speak with the dead, if it helped.
chapter
ten
The Frame Man’s Frame
Dimensions: 17.5 cm × 21.5 cm.
Colour: Sky blue.
Purchased in a 100 yen shop on 6th March 2001.
Paid 105 yen, including VAT.
Made in China.
chapter
eleven
ON THE FIRST DAY, YUI preferred to sit and watch things happen.
The garden murmured incessantly, as if the voices from nearby villages were merging and flowing into this swathe of land.
Yui wondered if the conversations between the old woman who had brought them to Bell Gardia and her dog were also roaming around here. She was sure that in that loving relationship there were many long discussions about the sea and the woman’s children, who now lived in faraway cities.
After using the Wind Phone, Fujita-san had gone into the custodian’s house and was browsing the library that had been curated at Bell Gardia over the years, with the help of various NGOs. Then he studied the calendar of monthly events that were held there.
The meeting was friendly but polite and Suzuki-san welcomed them both with great geniality.
As Fujita-san handed over his business card, the motion of bowing seemed to drag the old man’s features upwards, into a smile. Yui chose to observe the exchange at a distance; she wanted to be absorbed into the figure of her travel companion, to be seen as part of him. Fujita-san might have sensed this, but he made no move to specify who Yui was or wasn’t.
Suzuki-san also acknowledged her without prying, his eyes lingering for a short moment on her unusual hairstyle that, at this time, was two-thirds blonde and the rest dark. He warmly repeated ‘Welcome’ and invited them in.
Yui found the garden beautiful, almost movingly so. She asked if she could stay there, to sit and look at it for a few minutes alone.
‘You can stay much longer than that. There’s a boy coming later, perhaps in around half an hour, but he’s often late. Just make sure the phone box and the space around it are free. He comes quite often. I know him well; he won’t mind you being here.’
Yui nodded, struck by the familiarity with which he talked about this boy. Maybe one day he’d talk about her in the same way.
Her eyes followed the two men as they walked into the house. The building stood humbly behind the garden. It was white with black timber slats cladding the external walls. She remembered seeing something similar in a glossy book of photos of Germanic Europe.
Thousands of people, every year, went to Bell Gardia to speak to the people they had lost.
There were many like her, those left behind on 11th March 2011, people who came mostly from Ōtsuchi. But there were also those who had lost relatives to illnesses, in car accidents, older people who came to talk to parents who had disappeared in World War II, parents of children who had vanished without a trace.
‘A man once told me that death is a very personal thing …’ Suzuki-san said. ‘To some extent, we try to build our lives exactly like everybody else’s. But not death. Everyone reacts to death in their own way …’
As Yui walked slowly, careful not to tread on any of the plants, she wondered whether the man he was talking about might be the same one who had called in to her radio show.
She was surprised by the wind at Bell Gardia, which didn’t come and go in gusts, like normal wind, but was constant and seemed to be blowing faster and faster by the minute.
Then it struck Yui that the function of the telephone, rather than to channel and guide voices into a single ear, was to broadcast them out onto this wind. She wondered if, perhaps, the dead people we remembered in life here, weren’t in fact holding hands over there, if they had ended up getting to know each other, making new memories that the living were completely unaware of.
How could the feeling of lightness here be explained otherwise? Death, in this place, felt like a beautiful thing.
As she walked around the garden, Yui imagined those people’s spirits being called out in a register; she thought of them sitting at school desks, raising their hands and making friends. Perhaps her little girl was playing with Fujita-san’s wife, perhaps they were singing together. A world was emerging where it wasn’t just the survivors who took care of each other, but where the dead also loved one another and carried on, getting older and eventually dying. There must be an expiry date on the soul like there is on the body.
That thought unsettled her, as if something momentous had occurred while her mind was elsewhere.
Sitting down on the stump of a tree, Yui opened out her right hand, followed by her left. She looked at them in turn. Was her little girl still walking somewhere, held up by somebody else’s hands?
Around half an hour had passed when Yui lifted her eyes and saw a young man in school uniform. He cut across the garden confidently, heading towards the entrance of the phone box. She was moved by his slouching gait, typical of boys his age. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
He knocked into the archway at the start of the path with the holdall he was carrying over his shoulder, embroidered with his school’s emblem. The bell jingled.
Yui saw him open the door and pick up the handset with assuredness.
She turned her back, so as not to be intrusive. She was sitting under a persimmon tree and looked up. There were a few pieces of fruit left, but otherwise all she could see was the branches spreading out in the air, expanding in all directions above her.
From that angle, the sky appeared full of cracks.
chapter
twelve
Favourite Topics of Conversation Between the Old Woman of Kujira-yama and her Dog
How romantic her husband had been when they were young.
That time they made love in the orchid greenhouse.
Her daughter Marie, who lived in Kōbe and had married an engineer.
The awful neckties her daughter Marie’s husband wore.
Namiki, her two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, who would greet her warmly on Skype and then forget that the screen was on.
How delicious those crabs from Hakodate were, and how nostalgic she felt when she ate them.
Her son who lived in Germany and was bringing his new wife home for New Year.
chapter
thirteen
‘SHE WAS CRAZY ARGUMENTATIVE, ALWAYS giving me grief,’ the boy laughed, emerging from the phone box. As he walked towards Yui to let her know he was finished, Suzuki-san interrupted them from the doorway of the house. The tea was ready.
The boy was called Keita; he came from two villages away. He was in his last year of high school. He would walk there because the bus left a minute before he came out of the gym after kendō practice. He had lost his mother to a tumour that was discovered too late.
‘My mother graduated from the University of Tōkyō, Tōdai. She was obsessed with our studying, both mine and Naoko’s.’
‘His younger sister,’ Suzuki-san clarified. ‘She’s fourteen.’
‘We were always arguing with Mum,’ the boy continued. ‘I thought she was on my back too much.’
‘We’re all the
same,’ Fujita-san laughed. ‘My dad irritated me for the same reason, and I’ll probably be no different with my own daughter.’
‘I wish I’d been kinder,’ Keita went on, ‘but I just couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t even do it at the end, but by that point it was different. I was scared that if I was too kind, she might think I’d stopped believing she’d pull through.’
Suzuki-san moved behind them, into the kitchen; he would nod every now and then, as if he knew the story by heart.
‘If she was here now, I can guarantee we’d start arguing all over again.’
The kitchen window shook and a rust-red leaf was pressed against it. Then the wind dropped and the leaf peeled away.
‘My father lets us do whatever we want. He always says, Carefully consider all your options and then decide. I trust you,’ the boy said. ‘But I don’t trust myself.’
‘Everything is difficult at your age,’ Suzuki-san remarked.
Yui, who had been quiet the whole time, was impressed by the lucidity of their exchange. She had always imagined high-school students to be thoughtless, shallow, not this self-aware. Perhaps pain is what gives our lives depth, she pondered, regretting the thought.
‘At least she can’t interrupt me when I’m speaking anymore,’ Keita joked.
‘Do they know you come here?’ Fujita-san asked. He was fiddling with his cup, tapping his fingernails on the yellow ceramic in a rhythm he would often replicate when he was deep in thought.
‘Only my father knows, because I usually end up being late for dinner when I come here. I haven’t told my sister though.’
Keita didn’t admit this, but it was mainly because he wanted to be the one who told his mother about the family, because he had spoken to her less than the others when she was still around.
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World Page 3
