Anna and I had spent the last few weeks indoors, sleeping until noon, our world quietly shrinking around us. My initial shock at finding myself down on Earth had long passed, and was now replaced with an unrelenting curiosity. My first week with Anna had been exhilarating—I had walked among the people I only knew from afar, sharing with them the smell of perfume and katsu curry, the feeling of snow against my face. And yet ever since we fell asleep in that parking lot, Anna refused to go outside, let alone take me exploring. She was becoming dangerously withdrawn, and no amount of poking or prodding could get her to reveal why. Being attached to a shut-in was a difficult business.
That day, I watched through half-shut blinds as a fine snow settled over Sakita, unfitting of the rice paddies it covered. Anna was meanwhile glued to the TV set, unbothered by the city outside her window, the soft hum of CRT static filling the room. Playing across the curved screen was a martial arts demonstration of sorts, an older man sending opponents half his age flying across the floor.
“What are you watching?” I asked.
“It’s footage of a ki master. He’s able to harness his inner energies to throw people around like they weigh nothing.”
I moved to sit beside her to get a better view of what was happening. There was an old man dressed in oversized robes, surrounded by a group of eager disciples in his dojo. His students would charge at him one by one, the old man letting out a cry every time he sent someone barrelling head over heels. It didn’t matter who he touched, how heavy or how strong, they would be tossed aside just the same. The so-called “ki master” was barely making contact with any of them, most of the heavy lifting being done by whoever was being flipped instead. He then turned to the camera and began droning on about his pseudo-science.
“There are three types of ki. Heaven ki exists in the sky, controlled by the moons and planets. Earth ki exists in the ground, hidden in the surface and the Earth’s core. The final ki is an individual ki, existing in every one of us. By harnessing these three types, you too can…”
“You know these people are launching themselves, right?” I asked.
Anna thoughtfully ignored what I said, increasing the TV’s volume by a couple of notches.
“The only reason that old man can toss those people around like that is because they’re letting him,” I continued. “Power of suggestion. They’re only being thrown because they believe they can be thrown.”
“They don’t believe, Leo. They want to believe.”
I was confused. “What’s the difference?”
“Wanting to believe is much, much more powerful.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, and Anna was too wrapped up in the program to elaborate. I adjusted myself and found I had been sitting on a newspaper the entire time. I flipped through it out of curiosity, but avoided most of the headlines I saw. News on planet Earth is depressing.
“Do you want to see a movie?” I asked, hopefully.
She responded with a deliberate shrug, encouraging me enough to read out the listings in the entertainment section. “There’s Maximum Full Throttle II playing at seven, The Never That Always Was at eight-thirty, and Some French Film at five. That’s the name of the movie. It’s just called Some French Film.”
A second, lazier shrug. I was losing her.
“They’re also playing Lawrence of Arabia at this retro drive-in. Do those even exist anymore? I thought they only had those in the West.”
She looked up, called to attention. Had I been sitting close enough, I’m sure I would have noticed a 25% dilation of the pupils. Excitement.
“What time? Can we make it?”
“The movie’s about to start, and we’d have to go all the way to Kumamoto.”
“That’s fine, it’s almost four hours long. If we leave now we can catch the end. Without a car, it’ll be easier to sneak in, too.”
I was apprehensive about going all the way to Kumamoto in the dead of night, but held my tongue. Our only threads to the outside world were the delivery drivers Anna knew by name, and I wasn’t going to pass on an opportunity to leave the house. I was encouraged by the sight of her getting ready to leave, kicking up piles of laundry for something to wear.
By the time we arrived, Lawrence of Arabia was more than halfway through. The film was being shown in an old community baseball field abandoned by whatever club had played there last. Three massive off-white screens had been put up at different angles to accommodate viewing from anywhere in the park. A few of the drivers had neglected to turn off their car headlights, washing out the images playing across the screen. Peppered among the cars were a handful of young men, straining their voices to sell caramel popcorn.
Once we snuck past the gate, Anna led me by the hand, weaving between parked cars, frosted grass crunching under our feet. We eventually found a spot, a small clearing uncomfortably near one of the towering screens, too close for anyone to park. Other than a slight chill in the air, there was no longer any snow in Kumamoto. The strange ailment which hung over Sakita seemed to belong to her alone.
What we didn’t realize was that, in order to hear the audio track for the movie, each car was given a small speaker upon paying. Our error only dawned on us after we had settled in place, craning our necks upwards and watching the faded images of Anna’s heroes move their lips without making a sound.
“It’s fine. I watched the first half of this movie when I was a kid. I can work out what’s going on,” Anna assured me.
“How old were you?”
“Like, eight? I’m not sure.”
“Eight? There’s no way you remember anything. Who’s that guy?”
“I don’t know.”
I felt as though I’d been conned into watching a four-hour historical epic about which I understood nothing. In fact, that’s exactly what had happened. “What about him?”
“That’s Lawrence.”
“Of Arabia?”
“I’d imagine. He looks different than I remember. I think he’s a prince or something.”
“What’s a prince doing fighting in a war? Don’t they have people to do that for them?”
“Be quiet, I’m trying to focus. I don’t know if he’ll live or not.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Not only at being shushed during a silent movie, but at Anna not being sure if Lawrence would survive the current battle. We were only two and a half hours in; I didn’t imagine they would kill off the title character so far from the end. Of course, how would I have known? I couldn’t hear a damn thing.
Nonetheless, when I turned to Anna, giving my sore neck a break, I could see how utterly engrossed in the film she was. For the first time in weeks, her eyes were wide with life, reflecting the movie like miniature screens of their own. Her mouth moved when Lawrence spoke, and her face twitched in sympathy whenever anyone was struck down. I had forgotten that despite her being the smartest and, at times, most intimidating person I knew, Anna was still a child—excited by battles unfolding on the silver screen, enchanted by the handsome young hero, nervous about whether he would survive.
I had been so caught up in Anna as an idea, I had forgotten about Anna as a person. There was still something undefined about her, something no calculation regarding the tilt of the eyebrows or the angle of the lips could reveal. I was wrong to have assumed I understood her. At what point in Anna’s arc had we met? Was her trajectory already set before I came down to Earth? A slight pain emerged from that hole Anna had placed in my chest, the cost of becoming human. I leaned back, taking my eyes off the screen as the air filled with sounds from a silent battle.
When the movie ended, Anna turned to me. “Wasn’t that incredible?” she said, massaging the kink in her neck.
“I can’t really say, I didn’t see anything.”
“Why did you look away? Didn’t you like it?”
“No, I just though
t I would concentrate on the dialogue for a little while.”
She attempted to shoot me a reproachful look, but was betrayed by a half-smile.
“You know what my favourite part of the movie was?” I said.
“What?”
“The part when Lawrence said:…” I moved my mouth silently, miming his expressions without saying a word.
She paused, then burst out laughing. A bright and cheerful laugh, so different than the bitter chuckles I had heard from her before. I could almost swear the cool air turned a little warmer for it.
“Don’t make jokes, that was a serious movie. I bet you couldn’t recognize true cinema if it hit you over the head!” She brushed some loose dirt from the seat of her pants, momentarily lost in thought. “Do you know what the actual best part was? You would have liked this scene, if you had seen it.”
“No, what was it?” I asked, genuinely curious.
She stood up, towering above me and shaking with excitement as she prepared to act out the epic she had just witnessed. Anna stretched her arms out to the sides, receiving an invisible crowd, and began her one-woman show. “Lawrence rides over the hill to confront the enemy, and he sees the dunes panning out before him.”
I nodded in agreement. I hadn’t paid much attention to the film, but the desert was one detail I remembered seeing.
“He turns to his men, ready to spur them on to battle. This may be the last time they will ever ride together again.”
She puffed out her chest, building to the dramatic moment. I leaned forward, surprisingly invested in her performance.
“And he says:…”
I waited for Anna to finish her sentence, watching her speak without making a sound, before realizing that I had been bested. We started laughing at the same time, mine coming from surprise more than anything. I was glad that Anna was still capable of making jokes.
“Are you officially funnier than me now?”
She gave an over-the-top bow, basking in her smug glory.
“Okay, okay, but the actual best part was when Lawrence said:…”
“Nonono, the best best part was when he said:…”
We started giggling at just how unfunny our jokes were, working ourselves up from little snickers until we couldn’t contain it any longer. This was a new kind of laughter for me, one that came less from the gut than it did the heart. My footsteps felt less steady on the ground, as though gravity had loosened its grip on me. We laughed until we were laughing at laughter itself, tears running down our faces and dripping from our noses. The ugly kind of happiness. I wonder now if we cried because we knew we would never be like this again.
“All right, but if I’m being serious, the best part was when Lawrence was like:…”
We barely made sense anymore, fighting for air as we traded the same ridiculous jokes back and forth. Her face was contorted with laughter, body shaking, thin black hair getting into her mouth.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I could only imagine how she would have appeared to other people, standing alone, doubled over, cracking herself up to the point of tears. The cars filed out slowly, stopping to return their radios to the attendant manning the booth. What was left of my satellite’s brain counted them in the background. 1…27…84…Their headlights must have looked like the satellites Anna sees at night.
“We should come back next week,” she said. “I hear they’re playing the director’s commentary.”
“Really?”
“Of course not!” she howled, breaking into another fit of laughter.
We made our way to the exit, the other moviegoers around us chatting on car roofs and finishing the last of their snacks. A few cast concerned glances at Anna as she passed, the strange girl chuckling to herself alone. At one point, an older woman stopped and asked if she was all right, which only made us laugh harder.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Anna said, barely getting the words out. “Thanks for asking.”
The lady left, quickening her pace, visibly disturbed.
“You know what you should have told her?” I chimed in.
“What?”
“…”
Anna fell to the ground, holding her sides. “No more, no more.”
I think the reason this memory is so precious to me is that it gave me a glimpse of the Anna who might have been. The Anna who should have been. On January 29, 2000, I saw the life she could have had if she had never imagined me in the first place.
Walking home beside her, it felt wrong for me to have ever doubted Anna. Her laughter cleared my head of any doubts I had about her and The General, any doubts about why I looked like Soki or what she had been building underneath that tarp. Maybe it was an immature decision, one made while delirious with joy, but I resolved then to follow her to the ends of the Earth and beyond.
Anna was oblivious to all of this, and staggered to her feet, punch-drunk. “We should get home. I’m almost done with the paint job on The Machine.”
“Why won’t you show me what you’re making?”
Anna straightened herself, imitating Lawrence-I’m-assuming-of-Arabia’s proud stance. “I’ll show you when we get home. You’re ready now—tonight you find out what we’re doing.”
“We? I’m involved in this?”
“Of course. The Machine is mostly for you.”
A night breeze cut through my flimsy winterwear, my fingers and toes now numb from the cold. Yet somehow, I wasn’t shivering. I followed her the rest of the way home, boarding the train at the next station we found. I followed her farther and farther, until the street lights turned on and then turned off once again. And all the while, Anna continued chuckling to herself, repeating the lines Lawrence had never said over and over in her head.
SOKI
I WONDER IF THERE’S a god for curiosity. Would make sense. We have kami for everything else. Kami for the sun, for war, for the wind. Tenjin is the kami of learning, but I feel like that’s different. Curiosity is something else. More malicious.
The shrine charms my mom gave me make me wonder. Those little silk pouches that fit in the palm of your hand. They’re sewn in bright colours: red, blue, sometimes gold. The important part is what’s inside, though. Each charm contains a prayer, written on a folded piece of paper. Supposedly.
It’s kind of hard to believe. You go to a shrine and they have bins filled with them. I used to help Dad count and tally them like merchandise.
“Even the holy has a profit margin, Soki,” he once told me. This was back in Sapporo, before he stopped believing. I would have been a kid back then.
I remembered looking down at those bins, at the hundreds of identical charms inside. Our shrine was well known, so we’d get visitors from the rest of Japan, sometimes even Americans. Making all those charms ourselves would have been impossible. Ended up having to “outsource” them. They’d arrive in these massive plastic bags, which I’d help cut open over the summer. Once we’d counted and sorted them, we would arrange them in these woven baskets, so they’d look more authentic.
“Are there really prayers inside?” I asked during one sorting session. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that would be my last year in Sapporo.
“What do you mean?” my dad replied, examining a charm before adding it to the discard pile. The charms we got in this shipment were cheaply made outside of Japan, and Dad insisted on throwing out any that had loose strings or uneven lettering.
I struggled for the right words to say, trying not to lose count of the charms I was helping to sort. The dyed silk was staining my fingers, and I was starting to get a rash.
“Do you think whoever makes them still puts prayers inside? Or are some of them empty?”
Dad frowned and moved a charm that I had placed in the wrong bin. Love where Luck should have been. I plucked a charm out of the Wealth pil
e and started pulling at the strings, curious. Dad slapped it out of my hands.
“Don’t. It’s bad luck,” he said. “It’s disrespectful to the kami, too.” He went back to counting, a little quicker this time.
Dad told me it’s arrogant to want to see the prayer. You’re supposed to just trust that it’s there. Undoing the strings releases those sacred words. The charms work better in an enclosed space; they’re more powerful for being concealed. Like how shrines exist in their own enclosures, marked off by giant red torii gates.
The day after the gasoline incident, I told my mom what had happened. I said I was worried that the kami were punishing us for leaving Sapporo. Usually, Mom would just coddle me, tell me that it wasn’t my fault, and that Dad was just being mean. But this time, she went silent. Ended up taking me back to the shrine. Took us to the purifying water to cleanse ourselves before walking up the shrine stairs. Trip one thousand and one. When we got to the top, we both offered a five-yen coin. Rang the bell, bowed, clapped our hands, then prayed. Asked the kami for forgiveness.
Normally, I’d feel lighter after praying, but that day I kept feeling this weight deep inside. Like I was being pulled into the Earth. Maybe Dad was right. The kami had already left Sakita. It was too late. We had been pleading to no one.
When we got home, Mom gave me more charms than I’d asked for—for health, luck, and to ward off evil spirits. And just like at the shrine, I felt nothing. Those charms held nothing inside. The prayers had all escaped, flown out as we moved from city to city. Even worse, I recognized some of them as the same ones we’d imported back in Sapporo. Why would she hold on to these?
Carrying these cheap imitations tempted me. Mom knew just as well as Dad did that these charms weren’t authentic. That we didn’t actually make them at the shrine. But she still believed in them, still treated them with respect. How was she able to do that? Did she know something I didn’t?
I decided then that I had to open one of these charms, see for myself whether there actually were prayers inside. Have so many of them, I figured I could spare a few. I wanted to choose an unimportant one to undo. If I was wrong and actually released a prayer, I would cause the least damage that way. Ended up choosing a charm for Love. Things hadn’t worked out between Fumie and me, so it didn’t do its job anyway.
Satellite Love Page 17