The next day Yui and Takeshi would search, each on their own phone, for the NHK video clip in which two young boys, one bleach blond and the other with smoky black hair, were on a rubber dinghy in their underwear, sneering at their friend who was yelling at them from above (from the riverbank? or was it a bridge?). The shot lasted just a few seconds because they were quickly dragged away by the current, out of the frame, and it stopped there. The NHK video replayed the sequence three or four times, alternating it with panoramas of the river and the damage the typhoon had caused to houses in the area. The journalist’s voice, aided by subtitles, recounted the details of how it ended: after four hours of combing the riverbed (prolonged by the adverse weather conditions), an underwater video camera was lowered and eventually they were found.
‘The boys were floppy as rags,’ the man said. ‘Fish were nibbling at them. There was even a crab in Kengō’s hair.’
Takeshi and Yui, who until then had only sent text messages to each other, that night decided to speak on the phone for the first time. They were both distressed, imagining, above all, the number of times (tens? hundreds?) the father must have replayed that clip, alternating between desperation, shock, maybe rage, and a superhuman effort to console himself with the idea that, at the end of the day, the boy had at least been having fun.
‘An idiot, a true idiot. How on earth did he think he’d get away with it?’ the man had resumed. The fact that his friend had drowned, too, he added, had helped him to accept his son’s death, as had the third one’s suicide. Not because he would ever wish such a thing upon the other boys, but because each of the three families could thus exonerate themselves of having brought up their children the wrong way.
This man and his wife, extremely strict, had laid a road paved with ‘nos’ in front of Kengō. The parents of Kōta – the friend who drowned with him – on the contrary, had been permissive, convinced that if they always said ‘yes’, the boy would work out exactly what he wanted, without inventing conflicts for himself. And then there was the third, Katsuhiro – his personality the complete opposite of Kengō’s and Kōta’s – who hadn’t been able to bear the guilt of having survived. He hadn’t tried to stop his friends; in fact he had pushed them to venture further.
‘The fact that all three of them died, though at different times, convinced us that however we’d behaved, it would’ve ended up like this. That sometimes, to cross over to the other side, you just have to be unlucky.’
The man, full of scorn, repeated the sentence: ‘One stupid stunt is enough, just one. And everyone pulls in some way or other when they’re young …’
Bad luck. All it took was a stroke of bad luck. He had been a cretin when he was young too. And them? Of course Yui and Takeshi had done foolish things, hadn’t they? And it all turned out OK, didn’t it? There. It was luck, pure luck.
‘I felt ashamed to tell the truth for a while. People come here to Bell Gardia crying for people who have died despite themselves, people who did everything they could to avoid dangerous situations. But that’s how chance works, and life is a game of chance.’
There could have been space here for words of comfort and consolation, but the man couldn’t handle the silence, and neither Suzuki-san, Yui nor Takeshi had time to formulate the right words.
‘I pour all of these thoughts into that receiver, and many more,’ he took off again. ‘I don’t censor myself in the slightest. I tell him he was an idiot. I talk and talk and nothing comes back, just silence. But then, in the night, and I know it sounds absurd, I dream, and he responds to everything I’ve said, blow by blow. It sounds like the lines of a script cut in half.’
Yui believed him; she remembered her own dream, the one she’d had for an entire year, where she reconceived her daughter. Takeshi also recalled the lessons he had given Hana in his sleep, so it didn’t take much for him to understand the man either.
‘I know it’s illogical. I’ve never remembered a dream in my whole life. But that’s how I converse with my son now, in my dreams. Well, it’s not exactly conversing. Each of us says his part, in turn. That way we don’t argue at least, and we have time to think about what to say back.’
Behind the counter, Suzuki-san dried his hands. He brought the kettle of boiling water to the table and told the man that whatever form conversation takes, it is a wonderful thing.
‘Today, for example,’ the man went on, ‘I told him his mother had found a drawing pad from when he was in elementary school.’
He took his phone out of his bag and found the photo.
In the centre of the picture was a crayon drawing of Kengō as a child, stretching out his arms right to the edges of the page. And everybody was inside that extraordinary embrace, the man said, even the house, even the planet, which he had drawn smaller than his own face, in blue.
His wife had stuck the drawing up in the kitchen, in a place where she could look at it while she made dinner, and where he, walking past, would feel soothed. Whenever he looked at it, he said, he felt like a father again.
‘We’re still parents, even when our children are no longer here.’
chapter
twenty
Two Things Yui Discovered from Googling ‘Hug’ the Next Day
As part of a study conducted by the Kyōto Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), an unspecified number of people were asked to have brief fifteen-minute conversations with their partners. At the end of the meeting, some of the participants were told to hug. The research found a significant decrease in cortisol levels (the stress hormone) in the blood of the subjects who had been hugged compared to those who hadn’t.
A famous citation from the American psychotherapist Virginia Satir (1916–1988) reads: ‘We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. And we need twelve hugs a day for growth.’
chapter
twenty-one
THAT DAY, ON THE JOURNEY home, Takeshi was more talkative than usual. The man’s story had really affected him. He had noticed severe psoriasis on his elbows, all his fingers and behind his ears, which he scratched at regular intervals. He internally diagnosed him with a neurosis that would require a long course of treatment.
Yui, at the wheel, remained silent.
When night fell, the landscape seen from the car became a single mass of darkness dirtied by the ugly smears of headlights and street lamps. Yui didn’t like looking at it. The glare from vehicles hurtling in the opposite direction made her tense.
Takeshi said he would never be able to listen to other people’s stories like Suzuki-san did. Once a month was one thing; it was quite another to do it every day.
As they came out of a tunnel, the road stretched away through a wide valley. Yui directed her gaze into the distance, up to the mountains that rose steeply to their right and left.
‘You know the thing about the hug?’ Takeshi said. ‘That guy’s son’s drawing …’
Yui nodded, her eyes on the road.
‘Hana pretends to be asleep when she wants a hug.’
Yui turned to look at Takeshi for a moment. Long enough for him to understand that she was listening.
‘She does it when she’s tired, or a bit sad. She’s done it ever since she was tiny and really believed that if she closed her eyes nobody would be able to see her.’
How many things a hug can fix, Yui wondered. It can even realign your bones.
‘Does she not let you hug her when she’s awake?’ she asked.
‘She does, but she’s a bit shy about it. As if she’s embarrassed that she needs it.’
In a flash, Yui felt her own daughter’s little arms wrapped around her legs, her joyful grip not letting her move. I’m going to fall, she would say. Be careful!
She had to stay quiet to stem her tears.
Recently the pain of others had become quieter to her. She still suffered, she didn’t like it, but it didn’t deafen her either. She knew that was a good thing, deep down.
‘And so I wait for her to fall asleep, or pretend to fall asleep, and then I hug her,’ Takeshi said as they passed under the sign that informed them they were crossing from Saitama into Chiba. ‘I’ve also told my mother to do it when they’re together. She’s not a very physical person, she wasn’t with me even when I was a child, but I think she likes it too.’
‘You’re doing the right thing. A person can never have too many hugs,’ Yui said, and immediately thought about how often, in reality, banality coincided with the truth.
‘I’ve always thought the best hugs are the ones you give without anyone realising, just for the sake of it. Ones given selfishly, just for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I used to do it with Akiko, my wife, you see, when I had night shift after night shift in A & E, and I wouldn’t get home until after she had gone to bed. She’d be angry, she was sad, sometimes we’d argue in the morning and she would say she felt as if she’d married me just to spend time alone. Sometimes she was so angry she would burn the breakfast on purpose,’ Takeshi said, laughing. ‘Maybe she hoped I would complain so that we could argue more, but I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Burn it?’
‘Yep, actually burn it! The fish would be black on one side, and the toast was like charcoal,’ he said. ‘You know, it might sound strange, but on the nights when I held her in her sleep, I mean without waking her up, when I hugged her just because I wanted to, we’d greet each other in the morning and she’d be in a good mood. She was happier; we wouldn’t argue.’
‘And the toast?’
‘Decisively less burned!’
It was almost morning by the time they got back into Tōkyō. Takeshi and Yui agreed that the things you end up missing most about somebody when they’re gone are their flaws: the most ridiculous or annoying things.
‘I wonder,’ said Takeshi, ‘whether it’s because you had such a hard time accepting those things at first that now it’s impossible to forget them. It’s like every time they do something that irritates you, you try to balance it out with the positive things about them. It’s a bit like repeating in your head each time, I love this person because …’
chapter
twenty-two
(1) Akiko’s Punishments When Takeshi Came Home Late and (2) Akiko’s Techniques for Making Peace with him Afterwards
Burn his breakfast, hide his house keys, dress particularly attractively and, on leaving, deny him a kiss at the door.
Bump into him around the house, pretend to be asleep and let him hug her, burn his toast and exclaim, laughing, ‘Oh I’m sorry, it’s just a little bit burned!’
chapter
twenty-three
YUI HAD NEVER BEEN INSIDE the telephone box at Bell Gardia. But every time she was there, she would imagine going in. In fact, if someone had asked her to, she’d have been able to conjure up a clear image of herself standing behind the glass with the receiver pressed to her ear.
In reality though, Yui would just wander around the garden, while Takeshi (who did make use of the phone) told his wife what had happened in the last month and what he and Hana had planned for the next one.
They would get to Bell Gardia at around eleven in the morning, park at the edge of the property and say hello to Suzuki-san, who was usually walking down the driveway to greet them. Takeshi always seemed desperate to talk to his wife, as if their long journey would only truly be over once he had picked up the receiver. Suzuki-san must have sensed his restlessness too as, after the first couple of times, he stopped inviting them in for tea. ‘See you later,’ he’d say. ‘I’ll be in the house.’ And he would go back inside.
Takeshi would hurry over to the telephone box and close the door behind him. Yui would wait for him on the bench a few metres away, watching as he bent over the receiver and dialled a number that only he knew.
Sitting there, Yui memorised every detail in the frames that divided up Takeshi’s body. His erect posture, his long legs and angular knees. The many moles peppering his arms, only revealed in the summer when he wore short-sleeved shirts. Tufts of his thick, grey hair appearing in the highest squares, and his jovial eyes in the row below. But of all the segments, her favourite was the middle right one, where she could see the fingers of his free hand rhythmically drumming the shelf. She always wondered what music was playing in his head.
As time went on she began to notice herself feeling tender towards the shape of this man. Yet, each time, she stopped herself from feeling anything more.
When Takeshi was finished, they would go into the house and, if Suzuki-san didn’t have anything urgent to do, they’d drink a cup of mint tea or hōjicha together, or eat one of the banana-shaped cakes they always brought as a gift from Tōkyō. They’d talk about the events he was holding in the library, the emails he had received, publications that were coming out inspired by the magic of Bell Gardia.
‘A professor at Harvard is including the Wind Phone in a clinical psychology course.’
‘Really?’
‘Indeed, and apparently he might come and visit Bell Gardia next summer. He’d like to write a long article in an American magazine.’
‘Congratulations, Suzuki-san, what an honour!’
‘That’s wonderful news!’
At one point in the middle of the conversation, Yui became silent and left the room with a small bow. She wanted some time to walk around the garden on her own and, although nobody said a word, they all hoped today might be the day.
But Yui only weaved in and out between the flowers and plants. She let the wind caress her and almost drag her along; like a puppy on a lead, pulling just to burn off the excess joy of being in the world.
Yui still didn’t feel strong enough to go into the phone box and talk to her mother and daughter. Just standing on the threshold drained any courage she might have had. She was still alive, despite herself; even without them, she was surviving.
On the trains in Tōkyō, changing between one line and another, she sometimes put conversations together, questions to ask her daughter; she would come out of the radio station and imagine telling her mother how the recording had gone, about the expert who wouldn’t stop saying ‘therefore’ or about the caller who sounded as if he was on the toilet. Light-hearted things, like about a new colleague who had invited her out but she’d said no. He’s nice, Mum, quite attractive, but there’s something missing, I don’t know, a certain complexity; I don’t think he’d be able to understand me, truly.
But then she would replay the last time she had seen her mother. In the morning, when she dropped her daughter off in a hurry because she had to get to the other side of the city to renew her driving licence. The little girl had a fever so she couldn’t go to kindergarten.
She remembered what clothes her daughter had on, because she had got her dressed. But her mother – what was she wearing? What had she picked out of her wardrobe that morning?
If the Wind Phone had been available during the weeks Yui was living in the school gym, she probably would have asked her, ‘What did you put on that morning, Mum? Were you wearing a skirt or trousers? What colour? Any pattern? I need to know. I need to tell the police, so that they’ll recognise you straight away when they find you. We can’t let too much time pass, because your documents are in your handbag, and I have no idea where that is.’
Every time they passed Ōtsuchi and began the climb up to Bell Gardia, Takeshi tried to encourage her: ‘Do you want to go in first?’ But Yui would just smile and lower her eyes.
She’d head off at her usual meditative pace, roaming the garden, enveloped by the wind.
After a year had passed, Yui began to wonder whether she’d ever do it. Whether she’d ever be able to lift the receiver and speak into the wind.
chapter
twenty-four
What Yui’s Mother and Daughter Were Wearing on the Morning of 11th March 2011
Yui’s mother: a beige jacket with a belt tied around the waist, a pair of black
trousers, a white blouse with a light tan-and-white striped V-neck pullover, black moccasins with tassels, a necklace with an inscription of Yui’s name.
Yui’s daughter: a little green skirt with black leggings, a white jumper with a small bear on the right-hand pocket and the same bear on the back with its paws covering its eyes, a pair of Hungry Caterpillar socks, pink-and-white trainers with a strip that flashed as she walked.
chapter
twenty-five
AS THE MONTHS PASSED, THE two of them and the custodian of Bell Gardia got to know each other well. Suzuki-san learned each of their stories, memorising the details of their lives: they both lived in Tōkyō, she worked on the radio, he was a surgeon. He had a three-year-old daughter and a mother, she had nobody anymore. He was thirty-five, she thirty-one. They had met there, and had become friends. They would come once a month, then twice a year for the next thirty years, even once he was no longer around. After around ten months Suzuki-san sensed that they were falling in love, but he didn’t tell anyone. He would often reiterate to his wife: ‘Love is like therapy, it only works when you believe in it.’
‘But most importantly,’ she would echo, ‘it only works when you’re ready to work at it.’
Yui and Takeshi tried to participate in the initiatives and events that took place at Bell Gardia, as long as they coincided with the days they had planned to go. They contributed small amounts to the collection of funds for seminars that doctors and therapists from all over Japan would attend. On those occasions, managing grief was transformed into something that could enrich entire communities. Yui would mention these meetings on the radio. She was convinced that Bell Gardia worked, and that others, like her, would be able to find a bit of comfort on that hillside above Ōtsuchi.
The Phone Box at the Edge of the World Page 5
