The Phone Box at the Edge of the World

by Laura Imai Messina

  When his sister put lipstick on before going out and looked like a woman.

  Every time one of them came into the house and didn’t hear Mum call out, Okaerinasai.

  chapter

  sixty-three

  TAKESHI DID NOT REALISE YUI had disappeared until later.

  For days they had been worrying about Suzuki-san’s health and talking about the emails they had exchanged with his wife. It was hard to tell how he really was, whether it was just a passing problem or something more serious.

  Takeshi had seen how upset Yui was at the idea that Bell Gardia would no longer be freely accessible, that somebody who needed it might not be able to go.

  That garden saved lives, she repeated over and over again; it had to be available at all times.

  But wasn’t that the very point of all the seminars and events that were held there? Takeshi had replied. To make people independent of the phone box, to free them of their attachment to it. If they learned to separate the idea from the place, they could create a private phone box in their own garden, or a post box into which they could put letters with no address.

  It had been ten o’clock in the evening when they turned on the TV. They only meant to check the weather forecast, to find out whether to hang the washing outside tomorrow; whether they should get Hana’s rubber boots out of the cupboard. Only the edge of the typhoon would pass through Tōkyō.

  On the right-hand side of the screen, a man wearing a waterproof jacket, holding a yellow microphone in one hand and clutching the edge of his hood with the other, illustrated the impending typhoon with words and facial expressions. On the left-hand side, a thin presenter with a strained smile pointed his baton at a map that was covered in lines. The contrast between the drenched correspondent and the impeccable man in the studio seemed cruel.

  ‘Who’s going to protect Bell Gardia?’ Yui had asked, a hint of worry in her voice.

  Unsure how best to respond, Takeshi said that even if the garden was damaged in the storm, it wouldn’t take long to fix it up again; there was no need to worry. They were always saying that, weren’t they? That even if it was a different telephone, in a different place, the important thing was not the object itself but what it stood for.

  Yui made a vague gesture; she accepted his point, but his words didn’t seem to have cheered her up. Takeshi changed the subject, talking about things they needed to get from the supermarket, then about the absurdity of his mother’s obsession with mats, which she filled the house with, like the flowery doormat in the living room and the stripy ones in the bathroom. Then he began tidying up, listing his upcoming shifts at the hospital, repeating rumours he had heard about the new head physician who would be taking over in April.

  As Yui was preparing Hana’s bentō, and he was somewhere behind her, the explosive phrase had slipped out of his mouth.

  He didn’t tell Yui exactly what it was he loved about her, seeing as he loved so many things. It was not just to do with Hana, though she was undoubtedly an important factor; there were, on the map of his emotions, certain paths that led back to Yui alone. The businesslike way she approached new subjects, for example; the sensual way she shook out her hair, which fell in waves down her back; the habit she had of holding on to gates and shelves with both hands; the eternally measured tone of her voice.

  Although in the past he had always been attracted to curvy, bubbly women, he found himself mesmerised by the distinct lines of Yui’s anatomy and her slim silhouette. Looking at her body, especially in the summer, he could trace where one piece slotted into another, where each vein began and then flowed into the next.

  And yet he had told her he loved her in the most banal way possible, merely repeating one word: suki.*

  Had he made a mistake?

  She had smiled, but given no clue as to how she felt. He feared that she would resist him, which was perhaps the most likely reaction of a person who had become accustomed to having love torn away from them, who found it difficult to accept the joy that was the inevitable end to grief. But he refused to be pessimistic. No, the more he thought about it, the more he told himself he had to have faith. Love can be persuasive, given time.

  He fell asleep in that state, ruminating on how, in the morning, he should demonstrate his certainty to her. Perhaps by placing his hand over her slender fingers, showing how happy he was that she was still there for breakfast. How nice it would be if every day was like this.

  * Suki means ‘I like you’, and is often considered more sincere than ‘I love you’.

  chapter

  sixty-four

  Details of the Scene Where Takeshi Declared his Love for Yui

  In the background, the end credits were rolling for In the Mood for Love (2000) by Wong Kar-wai, one of Yui’s three favourite films. Takeshi’s first word fell at the exact moment the photography credits appeared on the screen.

  Takeshi was wearing soft jeans from Uniqlo and a black Darth Vadar sweater. Yui was wearing a onesie with Rilakkuma on it, which had been a birthday present from Hana.

  Both were barefoot.

  Note 1: Yui’s birthday was on 23rd June.

  Note 2: Star Wars were Takeshi’s favourite films.

  Note 3: Takeshi’s sweater wasn’t a gift from anyone; he had bought it for himself.

  chapter

  sixty-five

  SOME HOURS LATER, SHIO, THE young man who always carried the Bible around with him, started his shift at the hospital. He immediately recognised Yui and Takeshi and joined them in Yui’s room. It had been a while since they had seen him at Bell Gardia, and Yui and Takeshi had wondered whether something might have accidentally slipped out during his conversations with Suzuki-san. They had worried that Shio might have been avoiding them as a result, Suzuki-san’s reassurances not convincing them fully. They both knew all too well the fear of evoking pity in others, a more depressing feeling than that of pitying yourself.

  However, the truth was that in recent months Shio had started to see changes in his father. He couldn’t say what exactly the changes were. He was withering, it seemed. And the more signs his father showed of fading away, the more determined Shio was to watch it until its conclusion. He had not let him out of his sight for a moment; he wanted to be there when it happened.

  He’d had a tenacious fever from night until morning. Nobody had dared call a doctor. He had made a point of that; that if he shouted out, they should let him be. Shio agreed: it was important not to interfere with the things that determined life.

  His father had been delirious for a week, and the thing that everyone had found most extraordinary was that his body, which after the disaster had turned grey and swollen, was still able to produce such a crystalline voice, a sound that could cut through the roar of the ocean and command the waves.

  In the daytime he confused the curtains in the house for the sails of his boat, the fusuma sliding door for the side of the captain’s cabin. Shio’s aunts would enter the semi-darkness of their brother’s room to bring him a tray with a light meal on it. But he didn’t want to eat. If his days had once been reduced to counting down the hours to the next meal, now they were defined only by the process of weakening. ‘He’s killing himself,’ the women whispered gravely when they went, in the evening, to collect the tray full of day-old food. ‘He needs to eat or he’ll die of starvation.’

  But then the typhoon arrived. The wind created an infernal noise, and a pot was blown through the bathroom window, causing great commotion.

  ‘The dead are returning,’ he shouted, and everybody in the house covered their ears. It was a frightening thing to hear.

  Outside, everything was creaking and screeching; it sounded like the discordant tune of a marching band, the melody disintegrating as it moved further and further away.

  When the glass in the front door shattered and he heard the agitated footsteps coming and going, trying to fend off the ruinous wind, the branches and the mud, Shio’s father got up to go and see what was happening. So
used by now to ignoring him, nobody realised that the man had seen the truth behind the scene in front of him.

  If it was the universal deluge of Genesis that had broken him, this flood was the baptism of the New Testament, which, instead of finishing him off, had roused him from his slumber.

  Shio’s father had begun to wail; he curled up into a ball and shook for a long time. He cried with his entire body, his eyes, his back, his throat. Nobody had seen him do that since Shio was a child and his mother had died, which felt, to his father, like the mainmast had fallen.

  ‘He’s still crying now,’ Shio told Yui and Takeshi. ‘Nothing can make him stop, and he keeps saying he’s sorry. But he’s much better; you can tell.’

  Yui was lying on the bed with a thick bandage around her head and plasters on her arms, which were emerging from the sheets. Seeing her like this, calm and happy, the hospital suddenly felt like a private house, with Takeshi, standing by her side, the guest who had been invited round for tea.

  ‘The doctor said it would be best to do some neurological checks,’ Shio continued, looking at his friends. ‘But he seemed quite optimistic.’

  Shio had been feeling euphoric for some hours, since the moment he had sat on his father’s hospital bed and leaned over his chest with a stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs. The man had tried to stay as still as possible, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to stretch his hands out towards his son’s face. As if he were seeing him for the first time in years, he had whispered, ‘Look how talented you are!’

  Shio had fumbled with his father’s shirt buttons, trying to hide his face, but as he blinked, tears fell from the corners of his eyes.

  Takeshi was visibly happy for him. ‘Great! Brilliant! What wonderful news, Shio!’

  It had taken Takeshi a whole day to get to the hospital because of the typhoon, and in the meantime Yui had woken up and managed to recite her date of birth and Takeshi’s phone number from memory. She asked what condition Bell Gardia was in, and Keita had reassured her: it would all be back to normal in just a couple of days.

  Takeshi was scared to death when he had received Keita’s phone call. He still could not fathom how it had turned out like this. He must have used up all of his luck in one go.

  A few moments before Keita’s car pulled up in front of accident and emergency, his father and Yui in the back, the typhoon had finally rolled off the land and into the sea. A tear in the thick blanket of cloud revealed an infinite expanse of blue on the other side, pouring abundant light over the earth. As the minutes passed, the opening expanded. Day had finally arrived.

  Children, restless from being trapped indoors for hours, looked out of their windows and saw the clouds fleeing rapidly eastwards. The temperature rose substantially, the air became humid.

  When she got home from school, unaware of the extent of the danger Yui had been in, Hana sent a message to her father saying that in Tōkyō it felt like summer again, like the evenings of O-bon. Takeshi replied that it was the same where he was. Out of the window, in the garden that surrounded the hospital, the last cicadas of the year resumed their deafening song.

  The next day, a short while before Yui was discharged and they started the journey home, Keita and his father came to see them. They wanted to know all the details of Yui’s recovery. They felt, having been on the frontline of her rescue, a duty and a right to be better informed than everyone else.

  Keita’s sister Naoko was with them. She was a young woman with an obstinate face and a tense jaw that let no words escape. Her father did not make the error of apologising on her behalf or of pushing her to speak, which softened the atmosphere.

  And then Shio arrived, with his distinctive features, wearing a white lab coat that billowed at his sides. ‘Here we come,’ he announced, and the meaning behind his use of the plural materialised before their eyes, Suzuki-san appearing immediately behind him, followed by the diminutive outline of his wife.

  Their voices rose in a chorus of surprise and concern: ‘Suzuki-san!’, ‘How are you Suzuki-san?’, ‘But shouldn’t you be resting?’

  He was fine, absolutely fine; it was just a minor illness, nothing serious. They had thought it might be something much more significant, but the tests dissolved their fears. ‘Just a little scare, really,’ he assured them.

  His wife, standing beside him, apologised at length to Yui and the others, for having made them worry. She was upset; she should have taken more time over the notice that she had written in a hurry and posted on the website. She wasn’t good at that sort of thing, and she had obviously made a mistake this time.

  She apologised again, struggling to hold back her emotion. Her husband put his arm around her, squeezing her tight, but she kept bowing and repeating ‘Gomennasai’ and ‘mōshiwakearimasen-deshita’ – ‘I’m so sorry, please forgive me.’

  ‘There is no need to apologise, really,’ Takeshi interrupted. ‘Yui loves that place so much she probably would have gone regardless.’

  ‘He’s right, I was reckless,’ Yui agreed. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, I can assure you.’ She stepped closer to the couple. ‘Just imagining something happening to Bell Gardia, to the phone box and to everything you’ve built for us over the years, I was out of my mind with worry. I’m sorry, everyone!’ she said. She extended her bow to the rest of the group.

  For her, she concluded, who no longer dared ever say anything about the future, the future had, once again, arrived at her feet. That was the magic of Bell Gardia.

  Moved by her observation, everybody nodded, apart from Keita’s sister who, embarrassed by the strange atmosphere that she didn’t really understand, had turned her gaze beyond the window, where serenity now reigned.

  ‘It’s the same for him,’ Keita’s father said, turning towards his son. ‘He wasn’t making any plans, and I kept telling him it was strange, that at his age life should be all about the future.’ The boy nodded, but it was clear he wanted to change the subject.

  ‘All of us, in our own way, love Bell Gardia,’ Shio intervened. ‘In the past forty-eight hours hundreds of emails have arrived from people who have visited the garden and were worried about the typhoon. It will take us days to respond to them all.’

  Another tacit we, which this time enveloped everyone in the room. A room that, with so many people in it, felt as though it had shrunk.

  Other patients and visitors peered in as they passed by, intrigued by the accumulation of voices. Then a nurse looked in to say that Yui was ready to go home now and politely hinted that it was time for everybody to leave.

  ‘There really are rather too many of us,’ Suzuki-san laughed. ‘Either somebody needs to pop open a bottle of champagne, or we should all go home.’

  chapter

  sixty-six

  The Brief Exchange that Yui and Takeshi Had in the Car About Keita’s Sister

  ‘She seemed like a calm girl.’

  ‘She was extremely embarrassed, I think.’

  ‘Didn’t she seem calm to you?’

  ‘It’s hard to say whether she was calm or not. Kids are impossible to read at that age, except when they’re among other teenagers.’

  ‘To me, teenagers represent that surrealist principle … what is it again …?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Wait, I can’t remember. It’s something like only the incredible can be beautiful.’

  ‘Incredible in the sense of extreme?’

  ‘Yes, everything is black or white, beautiful or revolting. Being a teenager is like that – no half measures.’

  ‘What were you like as a teenager?’

  ‘Like everybody else: no half measures.’

  ‘I wonder what Hana will be like …’

  ‘Like everybody else: no half measures.’

  chapter

  sixty-seven

  SHIO ACCOMPANIED HIS FRIENDS TO the exit, observing their various outlines as they moved through the whirl of patients, nurses and stretchers. He followed Takeshi’s rig
ht hand as it relieved Yui of her bag, as the fingers on his left hand intertwined with hers; he saw Keita’s sister, Naoko, point at the remaining clouds, which had begun to slow down by that point; he alternated between waving at Suzuki-san and his wife and resting his hand by his side as the automatic doors opened and closed in front of him.

  ‘Were they your friends?’ a nurse he often had lunch with asked from behind him.

  ‘Yes, they’re people with whom I have a lot in common.’

  ‘How nice.’ She smiled. ‘Are you finished here? Will you join me for something to eat?’

  Shio nodded and as he fell into step beside the woman he pulled the book of Job from his pocket.

  Everyone at the hospital knew about his obsession. That very nurse, after a moment of incredulity (‘So you’re a Christian? No? So why do you read the Bible?’) had made the suggestion that he buy another copy, one that was separated into pocket-sized volumes, so that he could carry it around more easily. Now that Shio had read it once from cover to cover, he would open it at random, as if expecting a revelation.

  ‘What does your Bible say today?’ she asked him as they went through the doors into the canteen. ‘Any prophecies for me?’

  She wasn’t teasing, just asking. She was also convinced that words, the ones you heard or read (not necessarily in the Bible, but anywhere), came to you by chance but not without reason.

  She also openly admitted to voraciously reading any horoscopes she could get her hands on, even if she didn’t believe in them, and the two things (astrological predictions and the Bible) were not entirely different in her mind.

  ‘So, have you found anything good?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ Shio murmured pensively. The young woman placed her handbag on one corner of the long row of tables as she waited for his response.