Fracture

by Andres Neuman

  Disinclined to reproduce and having been unable for most of his life to look after a pet due to his constant travels, Watanabe has developed a certain fondness for plants. It is his humble way of bestowing life. He communicates with his plants in a uniquely sincere, precultural language. They say to one another: water, air, sun, wind, spring. No more, no less. If he is honest, this is already far more than he’d reveal to his neighbors.

  From what he can see, pets have assumed an overwhelming emotional importance to their owners. They have become substitutes for (not to mention optimized versions of) personal relationships. This explains why in the aftermath of the earthquake, special task forces were organized to search for people’s lost pets. He has always been a little skeptical of domestic animals, because they put their owners on the perpetual verge of loss. It’s possible that he belongs to an anthropological minority: human beings who, in spite of everything, prefer other human beings.

  * * *

  On this morning of sunshine and uncertainties, Mr. Watanabe has gone for a walk to Yoyogi Park. During his childhood, the U.S. Army officers were garrisoned there, which perhaps explains why visiting the park gives him a rare feeling of pleasure, as if he were reclaiming the place. At a brisk pace, it takes him approximately forty-five minutes to get there: just what the doctor recommends. Since he stopped practicing aikido, this is his only form of exercise. If he begins to tire, he will return on the Yamanote train and change to the Ōedo line.

  On the way, he passes several people clutching their pets with tenderness and unease. In recent years, he has watched with interest the animal business, which he imagines is more profitable than that of technology. Renting pets is a growing industry. Since his return to Tokyo, this custom seems to him increasingly natural. The city has become a place littered with obstacles to and dangers in raising animals: a jungle in reverse.

  Urban planning plays a part in this new demand, he suspects. Even when landlords allow pets, there is barely room to move in the minuscule apartments. No less important is the emotional aspect. With rentals, customers get the balm of physical contact without any of the responsibility. Money is paid for the fleeting pleasure of unconditional love.

  Close to Yoyogi Park, which Watanabe is now about to enter, is a shop that rents out animals by the hour. The customers, a majority of them men in late middle age, can sit and caress more than twenty different breeds, or take them on excursions through the park. A half-hour seated play session with a quadruped costs approximately one thousand yen. Wandering freely outside for an hour costs four times that. As he trails his fingertips over the tree trunks, Watanabe works out how many yen it would take to fill the solitary hours of the average adult.

  As soon as he leaves the park, he pauses in front of the stores displaying picnic candy, which almost no one has been buying this spring. The Takashimaya department store is still posting information about the cherry blossoms on its billboards, in Japanese, English, and Chinese. But this time the light is heavier, it possesses a different density.

  Watanabe considers himself athermic. As usual, he scarcely notices the faint seasonal breeze on his skin. He doesn’t know if this is some kind of aftereffect of the radiation, and he has no wish to find out. He accepts it as his own way of being, or not being, in the world. That’s why he has learned to heighten his other senses. Today, the chirping in the branches, the brightly colored flowers, speak to him of April.

  * * *

  The ringing of the phone in his bedroom startles him. Partly because hardly anyone calls his landline these days, and partly because it sounds odd. He’s always had the impression that, depending on from where and why they are contacting him, the phone rings in a different way. As if the device could register distance, urgency, and purpose: a seismograph of voices.

  It seems the journalist from Buenos Aires, this Pinedo guy, refuses to give up. Argentinians don’t know when to surrender, reflects Watanabe, a dangerous trait that reminds him of the Japanese.

  Pinedo says good morning and good afternoon, apologizes for calling again, and then persists with his objective. Still stammering slightly, but less nervous than last time, he repeats how much he would like to, to interview him briefly, at least, because in fact, he’s looking into the entire situation, that’s to say, this recent disaster would be only the starting point, and well, and besides they have a close friend in common, whom he’s sure he.

  Watanabe interrupts at this point. He doesn’t care about the friends they have in common, he replies. Not only is this intrusive, declares Watanabe, he considers it useless to talk about this now, weeks later, when the aftermath of the earthquake is no longer fresh.

  Pinedo points out that he, that he isn’t interested in the earthquake or the tsunami, what interests him is the, the nuclear power plant, and. Like everyone else, retorts Watanabe, like everyone else. Pinedo tries to defend himself and qualifies that this is very different, isn’t it? an in-depth approach, the topic is much more, it’s much more focused on collective memory, let’s say, this isn’t about current affairs, he is examining the way, the way different countries respond to disasters and, and to genocide, when circumstances don’t.

  Mr. Watanabe cuts in again. He is more agitated than he thought he would be. He tells Pinedo he has nothing to say about it. He wishes him luck with his work. And says goodbye abruptly.

  His quickened pulse resembles the beeping sound when someone hangs up.

  As night falls, he browses several Latin American newspapers. Reading about his country in a different language always gives him a feeling of awkward lucidity. Everything sounds much more remote and simple.

  In the area surrounding Fukushima, Watanabe reads, there are dead bodies still lying on the ground. Many refugees, who are continuing to flock to shelters, are angry at the authorities for burying their loved ones without permission, when their religion demands they be cremated. Since March 11, the tally of victims has reached more than ten thousand dead and nearly twenty thousand missing.

  This latest revelation causes Watanabe to leap from the sofa. He crosses the old striped rug. Goes to his closet. Rearranges hangers and drawers. Doing this helps him organize his thoughts, order them according to size. He flicks through his clothes swiftly. As swiftly as he’d decided, all those years ago, to leave Paris and move to the worst, to the best place possible.

  4

  LORRIE AND THE SCARS

  I REMAINED DOGGEDLY YOUNG for half of my life. And the next day, I realized I was growing old. I think he showed up right around then. Maybe that’s why everything happened so fast. We were both starting to appreciate what time does to you if you wait too long.

  Outlandish as it may seem, we met at a funeral at Green-Wood Cemetery. There was the scent of rain, but it wasn’t raining. The deceased, if I remember correctly, worked at the Japanese embassy’s press office. I assume we both knew him professionally. I was listening attentively to people giving their condolences. I focused on each speaker as though I were about to interview them. From those who spoke emphatically, as if they were afraid to appear vulnerable, to those who broke down without shame, who in my view were the wisest.

  I felt out of context, or maybe the complete opposite. After all, in a cemetery you are never more in context. So I wandered off to take a breather. I started to think of all the stuff you usually think about when you see a coffin. Work nonsense, a friend’s birthday, buying a new pair of shoes, the upcoming election, making an appointment with the hairdresser, your niece’s dress. Anything that takes you away from there. I was jittery the way you get at funerals. That urge to flee and change your life, just when you feel you’ve understood something.

  That’s when I bumped into Yoshie. We looked at each other and smiled. I’m not sure if we started walking together then, or if we had already been strolling side by side. We moved away from the mourners, supposedly to smoke a cigarette. And I don’t quite know how, but almost without exchanging a word, we started to fool around.

 
When we pulled apart to head back to the ceremony, he asked me my name. He repeated it several times, Lorrie, Lorrie (or rather, Lohie, Lohie), trying to hear it properly or to savor it.

  If I’m being honest, it wasn’t that I was especially attracted to him, more like my body was telling me what to do. I never admitted this to Yoshie, but in that moment, I suspect that I’d have done the same with almost any decent-looking guy who showed an interest in me. I imagine it was a sort of involuntary response. A physical protest at my surroundings. As a matter of fact, this had happened to me before. I don’t mean letting the first man who came along grope me. I just mean feeling horny when I was at a cemetery.

  * * *

  He’d been living in New York a few years. With the odd exception, he spoke decent English. I find that speaking any language other than your own is admirable. Yoshie was prone to exhibiting his linguistic efforts as those of us who aren’t bilingual tend to do. He was still able to marvel at everything he heard. In the middle of a conversation, for no apparent reason, he could look astonished or happy, and you knew it wasn’t because of what you were saying, but because he’d become suddenly aware of the language he was communicating in.

  He had trouble tolerating irony, and thanks to his difficulties, I realized that in English, we overuse it. We really do use it for everything, be it diplomacy, euphemism, or an insult. He attributed this to America being a modern empire, an expert on negotiation. I replied that Henry James was the one to blame.

  Yoshie struggled with phrasal verbs, which he would mix up in the funniest ways. He would confuse switch on with turn on, run out with run over, and so forth. These misunderstandings didn’t so much get in the way of our communication as feed my imagination. For example, according to him we lived in New Oak. I loved the idea of us being forest dwellers. Other good ones were the way he pronounced peace as piss or Coke as cock. Slipups like these were liable to turn any innocent topic into a risqué conversation.

  I remember one evening we were at a movie theater on the Upper West Side, the Thalia. No, the New Yorker. With the sloping floor and the legendary murals, it was as quaintly pretentious as we were. He asked the vendor for soft porn instead of pop corn. The girl looked at us, bemused. But he kept insisting we were both desperate for soft porn. I’m sorry, sir, stammered the girl, we don’t sell anything like that. Of course you do! Yoshie replied angrily. Why do you think all these people came here?

  But what confused him most was intonation. In a musical sense, he never stopped sounding foreign. I found that sexy. He maintained that in English we count and even narrate in an interrogative tone. As if to make sure the other person is still listening. Yoshie attributed this to a combination of pedantry and insecurity specific to the English-speaking world. He had theories about everything. Especially things he knew nothing about.

  He wasn’t entirely off base about the insecurity, though. I had this face, few curves, and more than a few misgivings about my body. I could go a whole day without eating and then scarf down half a dozen Milky Ways. As soon as I’d finished chewing them, I’d go brush my teeth. I did it quickly and guiltily, hurting my gums. Like I wanted to erase not only any traces of food, but also the memory of having eaten. I was skinnier than I am now. I liked to take up very little space when I spoke. I was under the impression that being skinny and being smart were related.

  I’m afraid that when we first met, I was still way too scared of getting old. Obsessed with staying young, just as I was ceasing to be that. It’s a trap we women fall into the minute we let down our guard, however much we think we’re feminists. I laugh now when I remember what I used to consider old.

  We’ve become both more understanding and more hypocritical on the subject of age. There’s no such thing as an old woman nowadays. No one would dare call us that in public. We’re all young seniors or happily mature, about to conquer our freedom. Go fuck yourself, honey. We’re old. Period. And proud of it. Well, not entirely. I’d love to be, I don’t know, not twenty or anything. That’d be awful. Or even thirty. But fortysomething or fifty? Definitely. If someone gave me the option, I wouldn’t choose to start over, I’d just ask for a second adulthood. God, I’d enjoy it so much better this time around.

  Of all the extensive and pathetic comments men permit themselves to make about women’s bodies, one I particularly despise is how good we look for our age. Not just because no one says this to a man, or even because, at this point, it’s the only flattery I get. But because it doesn’t make any sense. Do only women of my generation have an age? Don’t young women also have a very specific one that determines what we think about their appearance? Aren’t they better or worse for their age? Or are they a fucking absolute, until suddenly, they get old like us?

  My idea of old age is different. I just don’t want to depend on anyone to buy food or go to the bathroom. As long as I’m still able to do those things, personally I couldn’t give a shit how old I am. Beyond that, I don’t know. If things get unpleasant, one has other options. I prefer not to think about that too much. In the meantime, I have my adorable nieces and nephews who visit and make a fuss over me. I try not to let them see how excited I am when they come. Otherwise, they wouldn’t enjoy coming here so much. They have enough on their plate with poor Ralph.

  * * *

  My brother, Ralph, and I grew up in Washington Heights, like most of the Solomon family. My parents were liberal about everything unimportant, conservative about the important things, and Jewish very much in their own way. I dreamed of going to Hunter College, like my radical friends who didn’t want to stay virgins. I also had the occasional fantasy about studying physics at Swarthmore.

  Unfortunately, my parents listened to Grandpa Usher, who had been the shammes at a synagogue before I was born. Invariably, he ended each conversation on the matter by removing his pipe from his cavernous mouth and declaring: When you’re ready to have a serious conversation, my dear, we’ll pick up where we left off. And so they got me a scholarship to a liberal arts program at Barnard College instead. Which cost more than Hunter or Swarthmore and forbade skirts more than two inches above our salacious knees.

  After a whole semester of chaste behavior, during which I was permitted to attend a few classes at Columbia, I refused to follow my family’s plan for me. Thanks to a couple of good dramatic scenes, including threats of suicide I had no intention of carrying out, I finally got my way. And that’s how I ended up studying journalism at NYU, which had just gone completely coed. Those years were incredibly formative, as it were, with regard to my extracurricular education.

  After graduating, I spent some time at Stinson Beach and Topanga Canyon, California. There I read about Buddhism and did some other things I’d rather not get into. I soon tired of this and went back to New York, where I applied for every job available. I worked for a variety of publications, the most sophisticated of which was a weekly food-industry magazine. My task was to appraise canned products. The following year I landed my first contract with a tabloid, which, out of professional pride, I will permit myself not to name.

  As much as I despised that rag, it enabled me to earn a living and gain my freedom at last. Working there was my real training. I learned to pursue a story, whatever it might be. To make it sound more urgent, important, and controversial than it actually was. To write with one eye on the facts and the other on the readers. To produce open-ended, structurally flexible copy, in case anything changed at the last minute (and it always did). It was a lesson in raw journalism.

  What most intrigued me was how willing the victims of those dramas, or their relatives, seemed to be interviewed. I never quite figured out why. Did we pressure them too much? Did they need some sort of therapy? Had they spent their whole lives feeling like no one cared about them? Or were they simply more shameless than I’d imagined?

  I joined the Liberty Chronicle sometime after that. I had to work my way up the ladder, starting as the girl who made coffee, then replacement typist, then proofreader,
accidentally. With a bit of luck and patience, I finally joined the culture beat. It was my second choice after politics—the Chronicle’s forte, and probably the only reason people bought our newspaper. I instantly loved the job. It seemed to me ideal, a way to write without writing. To take part in a life of culture without the absurd pretense of being a creator.

  That paper spoke of a different world from the one we live in today. As ever, dissidents were in the minority. But here’s the difference, it was a minority that truly believed in the possibility of challenging the system. It believed that, however fucked-up things were, they could change. My nieces and nephews accuse me of being a pessimist. They insist that rebellion still happens, just not on the streets. When I ask their kids where the young radicals are nowadays, all they talk about is social media.

  How the hell can they expect so much from the tech industry? Don’t they realize it’s in the hands of Big Business? Of course, they reply, the same way newspapers like yours were owned by large publishing companies.

  The newsroom at the Chronicle was like a political convention with typewriters. There were Democrats, Socialists, Anarchists, Social Democrats, loyal and not-so-loyal Communists, moderate liberals, pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet Marxists, Black Panther sympathizers (my doing!), as well as the odd Maoist. And among all those men who confused revolution with testosterone, an increasing number of women. Two or three were connected to militant feminist groups. To be honest, I was never that radical. I was just happy if my male colleagues didn’t comment on my legs during meetings.