Asleep

by Banana Yoshimoto

  “Do you want some tea? Or maybe something alcoholic?”

  Shiori's leisurely gestures and the little smile that always flitted at the corners of her mouth were wonderfully familiar. I felt the incomprehensible exhaustion that had been building up inside me slipping away, just as it had when she'd lived in my apartment.

  “Something alcoholic,” I said.

  “Well then, maybe I'll open a bottle of gin.”

  Shiori took lots of ice from the freezer and put it in a dish, cut a lemon, and brought out an unopened bottle of gin.

  “You don't mind opening it?” I asked.

  I was almost buried in the sofa. I picked up my glass.

  “Not a bit. I hardly ever drink.”

  She was sipping orange juice. The room was strangely quiet.

  “It's quiet here, isn't it?” I said.

  I wasn't getting at all drunk, I just felt completely calm. I wasn't feeling sad about anything in particular, so there was nothing for me to say.

  “Has something happened?” Shiori kept asking. She sounded extremely eager, like someone's loyal dog.

  And I replied, “No, not really.” But the moment I said this I realized how grave it sounded. “Nothing's wrong, really. I guess I was just thinking, you know . . . don't you watch TV anymore, or listen to music?”

  Shiori's apartment truly was quiet that night. Every sound but our two voices slid off into nothing, as if we were huddled inside an igloo on some snowbound night. The thinness of Shiori's voice only emphasized the silence.

  “Not really,” Shiori said. “Why, is it too quiet for you?”

  “Don't be silly. I'm not the sort of person who comes to visit and then complains like that. I'm not that rude,” I said. “I just have this feeling like something's wrong with my ears.”

  “Recently every little noise has been bothering me,” Shiori said. Her eyes were utterly empty. “But seriously, what's wrong? Does it have something to do with Mr. Iwanaga? Did you have an argument about his wife? I can always tell when you're feeling depressed, you know. We did live together.”

  “No, everything's still the same. Nothing has—it's just that I'm . . .” I shuddered at what I'd been about to say. It was something horrible.

  It's just that I'm tired of waiting.

  “It's just . . . ?”

  “That I'm afraid I've been telling him some lies. And we had a bit of an argument because of that, you know, that's all. Nothing's changed. He doesn't like talking about his wife, but it sounds as if having to deal with her relatives is pretty hard for him, and that's only natural, and it seems like he goes to the hospital a lot. But I really don't mind. Not at all.”

  “Really? Well then, that's all right,” Shiori said, smiling. “You know, I really hope the two of you stay together like this, on good terms. I was in on this relationship right from the start, after all.”

  “Don't worry. We won't break up.”

  It's strange, but I started feeling increasingly sure of myself as I said this, so that before long I felt completely carefree. I don't really remember what we talked about after that. That's how casual it all was. Just memories of our life together, stories from work, tidbits about makeup and about programs on TV, that sort of stuff . . . and all the time that hammock was hovering there in the space behind my head. Shiori's white shirt, water coming to a boil in her red kettle, steam rising over the hot green tea we drank, yes, that's all I remember now, just things like that.

  “Well, I'm off.” I stood up.

  “Why don't you sleep over?” Shiori asked.

  It was tempting, but somehow the idea that I'd get to sleep in the bed while Shiori took the hammock made me feel a bit uncomfortable—after all, I was the guest. I decided to go home.

  “Do you feel any better?” Shiori asked in the entryway.

  For the first time that evening I swallowed my pride.

  “Yes, I really do.”

  Shiori's eyes narrowed.

  “Maybe you need me to come sleep with you?” she said.

  Evidently she was teasing me.

  “Sure, if you like,” I said.

  I laughed and walked out of her apartment.

  The door closed. I took two or three steps towards the elevator . . . and then suddenly I felt something tugging me violently back, as if someone had pulled me by the hair. I yearned to see her face once more, but even if I turned around again—she was already on the far side of that iron door, she'd already stepped back into her own time, I could feel it, and besides there was nothing I wanted to say, nothing to say even if I did go back. And so I just walked into the elevator. . . .

  I was still a long way from my apartment when I became too exhausted to go on walking, and so like an idiot I ended up taking a taxi back. And then I dropped off into a deep sleep, I was sucked into a darkness that was perfectly black, in which I had no thoughts at all. A sleep so profound it was as if some switch had been flicked off.

  Nothing exists in this world but me and my bed. . . .

  * * *

  Suddenly the telephone rang, jolting me from sleep. Already sunlight was streaming through the window, and the room was bright.

  It's him. I lifted the receiver.

  “Have you been out?” he asked immediately.

  His voice sounded strange, different from usual.

  “No.”

  I glanced at the clock. It was two in the afternoon. I couldn't believe how soundly I'd slept. I'd gone to sleep long before midnight the night before.

  The voice that came through the receiver sounded unconvinced.

  “You've really been there all along?”

  “I really have. I was asleep.”

  “I called a few times, but you didn't pick up. It seemed kind of odd.”

  He sounded as if he still wasn't quite sure what to think. I was pretty surprised myself. Here I'd been thinking I had these supernatural powers . . . maybe they've started breaking down? It had never even occurred to me that things might progress to the point where I'd no longer be able to tell when my boyfriend called; that hadn't even seemed like a possibility. I started feeling extremely uneasy. But I spoke cheerfully even so.

  “God, I didn't even notice. I just went right on sleeping.”

  “Oh. Anyway, you and I didn't get to talk very much yesterday, so I thought maybe we could get together again tomorrow. . . .”

  My boyfriend was generally pretty blunt, but he'd never come right out and suggest that we go spend the night somewhere or say that he wanted to have sex with me or anything like that. That was another thing that I kind of liked about him.

  “Okay, that'll be fine.”

  I never tell my boyfriend that I'm busy when I'm not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don't agree with me. So it's always okay, it's always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.

  “I'll get a room, then,” he said, and hung up.

  Once again I was alone in my apartment. It was late in the afternoon. Too much sleep had left me feeling a little dizzy.

  Ever since I was a child I've been good at falling asleep. I suppose one of my most impressive points—apart from the knack I have for identifying phone calls from my boyfriend—is that I can fall asleep whenever I want. As a kind of hobby, my mother worked nights at a snack bar run by one of her friends, and though my father was just an ordinary businessman he had a peculiarly large streak of generosity, so that he not only thought it was okay for my mother to do work like that, but even stopped by the bar fairly often. Since I was an only child, I ended up spending most nights at home alone. And since our house was much too big for a child to stay in all by herself, I made it my policy just to hold my breath and count to three and hurl myself headlong into sleep. The thoughts that twirled through my head when I turned out the bedroom lights and lay there gazing up at the dark ceiling were always so deliciously sweet and full of loneliness that I hated them. I didn't want to start liking t
hat loneliness, so before I knew it I'd be asleep.

  The first time I started remembering all this as an adult was after my boyfriend and I spent our first night together, as we were driving back. We'd gone up and spent the night in Kanagawa Prefecture, done a bit of sight-seeing the next day, and then started back in the evening. I'm not sure why, but somehow the fact that the day was about to end really terrified me, left me wallowing in despair. I sat in the car, cursing all the green lights, and every time we got caught at a red light I'd feel a gush of relief, and a wave of joy would surge up within me. It was extremely hard to have to return to Tokyo and then head back again to our separate lives, our individual daily routines. I suppose this was because we'd just slept together for the first time, and—yes, this most of all—because I'd been thinking about his wife the whole time. I'd never felt this nervous before. I kept imagining the moment when I'd arrive back at my apartment, when I'd be all alone again, and every time I'd get so scared it felt like my skin was being peeled away.

  I was sinking down into the depths of the scene before me, into those long lines of continuing lights—that's how I felt. My body shrank into itself. I can't really explain why I felt so lonely. My boyfriend was the same as always, just as gentle and kind as always, and he was cracking jokes, and I was laughing. But the fear never went away. It felt as if I were turning into ice.

  At some point as we were going along like that, for whatever reason, I fell asleep. You could almost hear a little splash as I dropped off, that's how sudden it was. I had no idea when it happened. All I remember is his shaking me awake a few moments later, saying that we'd arrived. I realized then that we were parked in front of my building.

  Oh, that was great. That wasn't bad at all!

  The few minutes I'd expected to be the saddest and most painful of all had vanished in a puff of smoke, and so having reached the point where it was necessary to say good-bye—and now that the time had come I could see that it was really nothing at all—I just smiled and waved back at him. Yes, sleep is on my side, I thought. Once more I was amazed.

  Yet lately a certain question had been fluttering through my head right at the moment I awoke. But isn't this eating away at my life? I began to feel a little bit afraid. It wasn't just that I'd started sleeping right through my boyfriend's calls, utterly oblivious to the ringing, it was also that recently I'd been settling into a sleep so profound that, every time I woke, it was like I'd died and was just returning to life—I could almost believe that, and sometimes it even occurred to me that if I were able to look at myself while I slept, all I'd see would be my perfectly white bones, nothing else. Sometimes I'd find myself in a dazzled haze, wondering if maybe it wouldn't be best for me just to rot away as I lay there, without ever waking; to slip away to that place called eternity. It occurred to me that I might be possessed by sleep, just as Shiori had been possessed by her work. The thought scared me.

  My boyfriend never spoke in any detail about what was happening, but lately when we were in bed together I could sense how utterly exhausted everything was making him. He didn't tell me anything specific about how things were with his wife, and on top of that I don't know the first thing about medicine, so I can't be sure that this is right, but I'm guessing that his wife's family probably wanted to keep her alive no matter what, and since my boyfriend said they were all “wonderful people,” I'm sure they must have told him that he should feel free to apply for a divorce if he wanted one. But every time he went to the hospital his wife was still lying there sleeping, and so he'd think, She's still alive, and that must have been really painful for him, terribly painful, and I'm guessing that he'd feel he had a kind of duty not to leave her until she dies, that it was this kind of attitude that made him sort of cool, that made people respect him. And of course he couldn't tell anyone about me. He'd been so worn out by everything that was going on that he couldn't have married me soon even if it had all ended, and he was wondering how much longer I'd be willing to go on seeing him with things as they were, and that made him uneasy, just as Shiori had said. Yes, yes, in the end it's always the same. It turns into a vicious circle. The only thing I can do for him now is not say anything. All I can do is worry that he'll come down on me too heavily, now that he's on top. He's just gotten older and older during the year and a half we've been together, but nothing I can do will stop that. Maybe it's because I was exhausted myself, I don't know, but I'd be in a sort of haze the whole time we were doing it, just thinking thoughts like these, and it didn't feel good at all. It felt like the darkness that filled the room was seeping down into me. The electrified town glittered brightly through the thin curtain, stretching on and on through the darkness, looking as far off as a dream. I found myself gazing outside every time I turned. I thought of the vast growl of cold wind that was probably blowing across the roofs.

  We were lying side by side, falling asleep. Suddenly he spoke.

  “How many years have you lived alone?”

  “What? Me?”

  His question was so completely unexpected that I shouted. The lights of cars passing by outside glimmered softly on the floor, which somehow took his question and whirled it around, leaving me momentarily bewildered, my memories of past and of recent events hopelessly mixed up.

  Huh? What? Why am I here? What have I been doing all this time? For a moment I couldn't remember anything about the time before my boyfriend and I got together.

  “Oh, oh, right. . . . Just a year, actually. Before that I was living with this friend of mine, you know? Another woman.”

  “Really? Actually, now that you mention it, I remember there used to be some girl who'd answer the phone every once in a while when I called. What's she doing now?”

  I told him a peculiar lie. “She married. She ran off and left me.”

  “That wasn't very nice,” he said, laughing.

  He lay there on his back. I watched his broad chest move.

  Suddenly, quite casually, I asked him a question.

  “Do you think your wife would be mad if she knew?”

  His face stiffened a little, then gradually softened into a smile.

  “Not at all. Of course if she were conscious it's pretty unlikely that this would have gotten as far as it has, you know, so you can't really tell, but if she could see the position I'm in right now, and if she could see what you're like, I doubt she'd be mad. That's the kind of person she was.”

  “A wonderful woman?”

  “Yeah. I really think I've been blessed where women are concerned. I mean you're wonderful, and she was a wonderful woman too. . . . But then she's no longer in this world, is she? Not anymore.”

  Hearing him make this statement in his sleepy voice scared me, and I fell silent. For some reason those words made me shiver. Then as I lay there watching, my boyfriend drifted off to sleep, all alone, his breathing calm, and I stared at his closed eyelids, and listened to those deep breaths, and it began to seem like I might see all the way into his dreams.

  A single consciousness wandering all alone in a distant night.

  “You start matching your breath to theirs, slowly, those deep breaths,” Shiori had said, “maybe you're breathing in the darkness they have inside them. Sometimes I'm thinking to myself, You mustn't go to sleep, even as I'm dozing off, having some terrible dream.”

  Shiori, it's really true, isn't it? I think lately I've started to understand. I think maybe as I'm sleeping next to him, stretched out here like his shadow, maybe I take in his very being, his heart and mind, just like breathing in the darkness. And maybe if you keep on doing that, if you come to know lots of different people's dreams, like you did, maybe you reach a point from which you can't return, and maybe that weighed down on you so heavily that in the end there was really nothing you could do but die.

  No doubt it was because I was thinking about all this immediately before I tossed myself into sleep—charged in the way I always do—that I dreamed of Shiori that night, for the first time since she'd died. I could see
her perfectly clearly. Everything in the dream seemed absolutely real, it was all as vivid as the world before my eyes.

  I awake with a start in my room.

  It's night. I can see Shiori sitting at the round wooden table in the next room, a combined kitchen and dining room, arranging flowers in a vase. She has on a pink sweater that I've often seen her in, and khaki pants, and she's wearing the same slippers she always wears.

  I sit up, feeling muddled. “Shiori?” I say in a voice blurred with sleep.

  “You're awake?”

  Shiori glances over at me, and her stern profile becomes a soft, smiling face. Dimples dot her cheeks. Seeing her, I can't help laughing.

  “Hey, you know what? I was just dreaming about Mr. Iwanaga,” I say. “It was an incredibly real dream—we were sleeping together. We were lying next to each other in bed, right, and we were talking about you.”

  “What! Who gave you permission to bring me into your dreams?” Without looking my way, Shiori grins.

  “Somehow I just can't make these look any good.” She's trying to put a huge bunch of white tulips in the glass vase on the table. But the flowers’ heads keep twirling restlessly in all directions, refusing to come together. There are still several tulips lying on the table.

  “What if you just cut the stems?” I say.

  “I don't know . . . doesn't that seem kind of cruel?”

  Once again the desperate battle begins. I can't stand to just sit and watch her, so I get up and walk over. Since I've only now woken up my arms and legs move sluggishly, and the air in the room feels fresh.

  “Here, let me try.”

  I take hold of the vase, my hands brushing lightly against Shiori's white fingers. But no matter what I do, the flowers always end up spinning around to face in whatever directions they like.

  “Yeah, you're right. The tops just won't stop bending.”

  “Hey Terako, didn't you have a slightly taller vase? I think it was black, and a bit wider than this one?”

  “Oh, that's right! Get that one, bring that! I still have it!” I say. “I think it's up toward the top of the cabinet.”