by Asha Lemmie
She is lying in bed with her face turned up to the ceiling, completely unblinking. Her hair is matted with sweat; it will probably have to be cut.
But the worst is her skin. Her skin, which was once the most peculiar shade of almond brown, is now as gray as ash.
She is turning into a dead woman right before my eyes and there is nothing I can do.
“Nori,” I whisper.
She doesn’t stir. I don’t even know if she hears me. She has not spoken a single word since I told her of her brother’s death.
I go to sit at the stool by her bedside and am repulsed by the smell of her. She smells of death, of decay.
“Nori,” I say again, more forcefully this time, “there is a letter for you.”
Her cracked lips part. She mouths no and then turns on her side so that she is facing the wall.
I see red sores on her back.
When the police found her and took her to the hospital, it was I who went to fetch her and bring her back here. Once they pulled the glass out, the doctor said she would live and recover fully, but that she would have a terrible scar.
I almost laughed in his face.
I never got to see Akira-sama. He was already in the morgue. And anyway, he had no face. They told me he had no face.
I had to get Nori out of that place before her grandmother arrived. I had to do it, for Akira-sama.
“There is a letter from your grandmother.”
Nori-sama cranes her neck over to squint at me. “What?” she breathes, and her voice is that of an old, broken woman.
“Your grandmother sent a messenger with a letter for you.”
For the first time in days, she sits up. She has to grab hold of me to steady herself, but she reaches out her skeletal arm and takes the letter from my hand.
She removes the seal and opens the envelope, pulls out the letter. I see her eyes scan the page, once, twice, three times.
Her face betrays no emotion; her eyes are as blank as a doll’s.
She hands me the letter and turns her face back to the wall.
I find that my hands are shaking as I try to read it. The morning light streaming through the covered window is gray and dull, but I can still make out what it says.
February 28th, 1957
Noriko,
You will be glad to know that you have achieved your ambition. Your brother is dead. The future of our house is dead. My legacy, which I have worked so hard to protect, will end with my death.
Perhaps now you will believe me when I tell you that you are cursed, you are wretched, you are a child of the devil.
They will have told you that his beautiful face was ripped in two. He died on a cold road in the middle of the night, alone.
He was twenty-one for all of a day.
We, his family, your grandfather and I, have buried him with great honor in Kyoto, his ancestral city.
You have until the end of the first week of March to leave Japan and never return.
This courtesy is out of respect for my grandson, for God knows you deserve none.
You have killed your brother. You have destroyed your mother and your father too.
I will tell you now that he was a common farmhand from a common little state called Virginia, in America. His name was James Ferrier. He died in 1941, shortly after you were born.
I tell you this so that you are very sure that you have no one and nothing. You have no name, for I strip it from you. And you have no family, for you have ruined them all.
Leave Japan. See if you can find some wretched corner of the world that will have you.
Though for my part, I doubt it.
The Honorable Lady Yuko Kamiza
I press a hand to my mouth to stop myself from crying out.
What an evil woman.
“Nori,” I gasp, taking hold of her thin shoulders and forcing her to look at me. “You have to go.”
She blinks.
“Nori, they will kill you! This is no idle threat, they have no incentive anymore, there is nothing to hold them back!”
She tilts her head. “Good.”
I am dumbstruck. “What?”
She shrugs. “I deserve to die. Let her.”
I slap her across the face. I do it without even thinking. All of my grief, all of my rage at a random, cruel universe, comes pouring out.
“How dare you. How dare you say such a thing, you stupid girl. Obocchama risked everything for you, to give you a life, to give you a chance at a future worth having.”
Her cheeks flush. “Yes,” she spits, “and now he is dead.”
“And that was not your fault. It was an accident. It was an act of God.”
Her eyes well with tears. The mask cracks.
“What kind of God would allow this?” she sobs.
I cannot answer her. I don’t know.
I hold her to my chest, this frail little thing, and hold her as she cries.
“You have to live,” I tell her, my voice shaking with fervor. “You have to get yourself out of the country, somewhere safe. Go to your friend Alice in England. Leave Japan, leave all of this behind. Start a new life.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to live at all.”
I shake her, hard, and her head snaps back and forth.
“It doesn’t matter what you want. Don’t you dare insult Obocchama’s memory by allowing yourself to die. Now, get up.”
She hesitates.
“GET UP!”
I all but yank her out of the bed. She stumbles around the room on shaky legs. She looks like a doe learning to walk.
She collapses against the wall, and for a long time, she does not speak.
“Will you come with me?” she asks in a tiny voice.
Poor, sweet girl. I wish I could. I have never known any other kind of life, never even dreamed of one.
My place is here. The rest of the household will be dissolved; the estate will go into limbo until it is determined which relative it will pass to next . . . but I will remain here as caretaker.
With Akira-sama’s ghost. Perhaps he will see me now, as he never saw me in life. I am the only one left.
My face gives Nori-sama my answer.
She tries to smile, but her face spasms—clearly she has forgotten how.
“Well then,” she says quietly, “you had best pack my things.”
I am flooded with relief. I close my eyes to hold back the tears.
I will keep her safe for you, Obocchama. I know she was your most precious thing.
As you were mine.
* * *
The day she left Japan, the sky cried.
Shinotsukuame. Relentless rain. Rain that would never stop.
But she knew the tears were not for her.
She took with her these things: twelve dresses, two kimonos, the ribbons her mother had given her, six blouses and six skirts, all of her pearls. Her mother’s last diary, which she had not yet finished, and a miniature photograph that Ayame gave her.
It was a picture of Akira right before he came to Kyoto. He was unsmiling, staring straight at the camera. But there was a light in his eyes.
She took his violin. She took all the money from the safe, a small fortune, enough to take her far away. She took the forged papers and passport he’d had made for her, just in case.
And lastly, she took the locket Akira had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
Everything else was hers no longer. She was no longer Noriko Kamiza, the bastard girl.
She was no one at all now.
It was a terrifying prospect: to be free.
She stood in the rain, with her hair matted to the sides of her face, waiting for the boat to start boarding.
Ayame was speaking to the captain. Nori saw money being
exchanged. Probably a bribe, to make sure that she was well looked after on the long journey.
Nori looked up at the sky. A wild desperation seized her, a crack in the absolute emptiness she’d felt for days now.
One last time, she pleaded with God. Bring him back to me.
Take me instead. Please. I beg you. Let it be a dream, a horrible dream, and tell me I’m going to wake up.
Tell me life is not so random, so cruel, as this.
He was good, which is better than nice, and he was honest, which is better than kind.
Tell me you didn’t let him die.
Bring Akira back to me.
Please.
The thunder rolled, and Nori was positive, for the first time in her life, that God had heard her.
The answer was no.
Ayame came and took her by the shoulders, guiding her out of the rain and underneath the awning covering the ramp.
“It’s time to go now,” she whispered brokenly, “my sweet girl.”
Nori wanted to feel sadness at leaving Ayame. But she could not. The sun was gone; she couldn’t be sad about anything else.
“Thank you for everything you have done for me,” she said, and she meant it. “I’m sorry it ended this way.”
“It’s not your fault, my lady.”
Nori managed a small smile. “You don’t have to call me that anymore. It’s just Nori.”
Ayame kissed her on both of her cold cheeks.
“You remember who you are,” she whispered.
They shared one last long embrace. Deep in her frozen heart, Nori knew that they would never see each other again.
She climbed the ramp onto the boat.
Instead of going down into her first-class cabin, where there was a warm bed waiting for her, she went to the side of the railing and looked over it.
The ocean seemed never-ending. But somehow, somewhere, it did end.
Perhaps it was the same with her grief.
Though she could not see it.
She turned around to look at the country of her birth, the country she had wanted so desperately to love her, growing farther and farther away.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
Akira’s image came to her.
Goodbye, Oniichan.
The wind rustled, and she strained to hear his voice, as she had always been able to do even when he was far away. When she was deaf to God, when she was deaf to hope, his voice had always been there.
But not now. Now there was nothing.
Akira was gone.
PART IV
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SKIN
Paris, France
March 1964
The cobblestones were slippery. She hadn’t bet on that. Her plan had been perfect; there was no exit that she had not scouted, no route that she had not mapped out. She knew exactly what the last piece was, and she’d planned to slip out during the final six measures, before the lights came up.
No one would ever know she had been here tonight.
But she had not planned on the cellist collapsing in the middle of the Rachmaninoff. She had not planned on him grasping at his starched collar and falling against the screaming woman beside him.
She had not planned on the panic, on the lights coming on in the hall, on the pianist rising to scour the crowd in search of help.
And even then, things might have been saved. She tried to stay seated, with her head bowed. There were a thousand people here, she was wearing a black gown, there was no reason for her to be spotted.
Until the person beside her sprang up, saying that he was a doctor, and please could she move to let him through?
Then, as she stood, as the sapphire blue eyes of the pianist met hers, she knew that her plan was ashes scattered to the wind.
And she ran.
She had a head start, but he was faster. And she was in heels.
She made it out of the hall, made it out of the front doors, managed to tumble down the stairs and onto the wet cobblestones. She went down, hard, but managed to scramble back up and into a nearby cab. Mercifully, it had been right there, dropping off an elderly couple.
If it hadn’t been, he would have caught her.
She could see his face in the rearview mirror, calling out the name that had once been hers.
Nori!
She had no answer for him.
She had no answers for herself.
* * *
You fool. You never should have gone.
Nori looked at her reflection in her teacup. The tea was good here. That was one of the things she liked about this little room that she rented from a kindly French widow.
The other thing she liked was the privacy.
She knew she wouldn’t be found, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay here. The bubble had been popped.
For the past seven years, she had moved from place to place, never staying anywhere for too long. Vienna first, then Rome, then Malta. She’d spent a few months in Switzerland before coming to Paris. She’d been here close to a year now.
Chasing ghosts.
So many people she’d lost had loved this city of lights.
She’d hoped coming here would bring her some peace. Maybe she’d even feel compelled to stay, to build a fledgling life here.
At first, she hadn’t wanted to settle anywhere. She’d been content to go to the most beautiful cities in Europe, sit in the warm sunlight, and listen to the street musicians play.
It’s what he would have done on his days off.
She had become like a migratory bird, flocking from one place to another, never any thought but what to eat, where to sleep, and where to fly next.
But now she was tired. Very, very tired. And at twenty-three, she was a girl no longer.
He would have expected more from her.
Nori pushed her teacup aside. Thoughts like these were dangerous. She’d had to take special care over the years not to fall too deeply down that rabbit hole. She’d never make it out.
Time for a walk.
She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and descended the narrow spiral staircase. As she always did, she stopped to pet her landlady’s one-eyed orange tabby cat before walking out the door.
She liked cats. As far as she could tell, they made better companions than most people. Marriage, children . . . those weren’t for people like her, nor was she suited to either of them. But she’d like to have a cat one day.
It was a picturesque day. Not too hot, not too cold. The sun was half hidden behind creamy clouds, and there was a breeze that carried the scent of the baker’s bread from down the street.
Nori walked along the road, expertly avoiding the reckless bicycle drivers, until she came to a small bridge overlooking the Seine.
She wondered if her mother had walked here.
Perhaps Seiko had looked out at this water and watched the bold pigeons swoop in to steal the pastries from the hands of unsuspecting children. Perhaps she’d listened to the whirring sound the ferries made as they passed below.
Probably not.
Nori tightened her shawl. She had two dozen of these, in every color. She’d knitted them over the years to keep her hands busy and to occupy the sleepless nights. She’d also become halfway decent at a random assortment of things—gardening, jam making, upholstery, painting. She was always in the market for new hobbies.
Anything to quiet the voice in her head that whispered your fault over and over again.
But now she had enough shawls. She had enough shawls, and scarves, and quilts, and sweaters. She’d had enough rented rooms and cottages. She wanted something else now, but that was a dangerous thing.
There was no question of returning to Japan. There was no question of a joyous homecoming, because there was no such thing as home.
She’d been a ship blown from its mooring since the day he died.
A kingfisher swooped down from a branch beside her, pulling her back to where she stood.
It was probably time to leave. She had better pack. She could not delude herself into thinking that Will would have the grace to pretend he hadn’t seen her. He’d tell everyone who cared, which was exactly . . . one person.
It hit her like a bolt of thunder from this clear sky.
There was no somewhere for her. But maybe there was a someone.
Nori had never allowed herself to entertain this notion. Ayame had written a letter to London, a lifetime ago, but that had been the last of it.
Alice would be in her mid-twenties now, probably married, probably in the place she’d been born to. Maybe she’d forgotten. Or maybe she hadn’t forgotten and Nori was the last person she wanted to see.
Maybe it was too late. It was almost certainly too late.
But as Nori lay in bed that night, the embers would not flicker out.
She felt it burning in her belly, spreading out to her fingertips, to the crown of her head, to the soles of her feet.
She remembered this feeling.
Wild. Fickle. Treacherous.
Hope.
* * *
ALICE
Kensington & Chelsea
London, England
April 1964
In the moment of waking, I am happy.
I slip out of bed, careful not to wake my husband. There’s no fear of that. George sleeps like a dead man after a few drinks, and last night, he had more than a few.
I go inside the adjoining master bath without turning on the light, and I look at my face in the mirror.
I still have my looks. I am comforted by this, at least. My skin is flawless, my gray eyes are bright, and my hair is thick and shiny, still that rare shade of silver blonde that has me so renowned.
My figure is intact, even after two children. I still have the ability to make men walk into walls when I pass by.
But the older I get, the more I realize how empty this is.
