Asleep

by Banana Yoshimoto

  “I'll bring a chair.”

  Shiori runs into the room where I've just been sleeping and comes back carrying a chair. She has a kind of proud expression on her face, a big smile. And so without thinking I say, “You're always smiling, aren't you, Shiori?”

  “Where did that come from? Besides, it only seems that way because my eyes are so narrow.” Now she's standing on the chair, and I'm gazing up at her throat from below. “This one?”

  I'm gazing at her hand as it opens the cabinet.

  “Right, it's in that box there, the really long one.” I point at the box.

  “Could you take it?” she asks.

  I open the long box she's handed me and take out a large round black vase. I rinse it out, wipe it with a cloth, and pour water inside. The gurgle of the water echoes powerfully through the night.

  “I bet they'll stay in place now.”

  Shiori steps down from the chair, gasping slightly, and for a second she grins at me. I nod back at her. She's better at arranging flowers than I am, so I pass the beautifully scented white tulips over to her, one by one. Even now she's arranging them, ever so carefully. . . .

  I awoke with a start.

  “What?” I cried, and sprang up in bed, naked.

  Shiori . . . wasn't there.

  But it had been so vivid! Suddenly I'd just tumbled down into some place that wasn't the place I'd been in, and there was a man sleeping next to me. The night was dark, the room was steeped in gray. The headlights of the cars driving past under the window looked bleary.

  I sat gazing at my surroundings for a moment, and felt myself zooming back toward reality. The force of that dream had been so great that my head was booming with pain, and everything my eyes settled on seemed like a lie. Only the feeling that I'd just been back with Shiori seemed real.

  I understood. Finally I felt as though I really understood what it was all about. To have someone sleep next to me—that was exactly what I needed. It was perfect for people like me. If Shiori had been lying next to me, there was no doubt at all that she'd have ended up having a dream just like the one I'd had, powerful and hot. A second reality that lures the dreamer in, ever so realistically colored, seen from a realistic angle, with the same sense of presence. . . . I sat gazing down at the bedcover in a state of shock.

  “Hey,” he said.

  It was so sudden that I shivered. Glancing around, I saw that his eyes were wide open—that he was gazing at me. A thought slid into my brain.

  So here we are again, at the edge of night.

  “Why'd you sit up so fast? Were you having a bad dream?”

  “No. It was a good dream,” I said. “A super dream. It was great. I was so happy I didn't want to wake up. God, it's awful having to come back to a place like this. It's a total fraud!”

  “She must still be half asleep,” my boyfriend mumbled, as if to himself, and took my hand. Just then I felt tears welling up into my eyes. A hot teardrop plopped down onto the bedcover, and he was startled, and he pulled me back down into the covers, and even though it wasn't his fault, not really, he started being extremely earnest.

  “I'm sorry . . . I didn't realize how tired you were. But it's okay, I guess we can . . . well, we won't be able to meet any more this week, but maybe next week we can get some really delicious food somewhere. Will that be all right? Hey, the fireworks are next week, aren't they? Why don't we go to the river and see them? Okay?”

  His skin felt hot against my ear. I could hear his heart beating.

  “But it'll be so crowded!” I said, giggling.

  Tears were still trickling from my eyes, but I was feeling a little brighter.

  “We should be able to see at least a little as long as we're somewhere in the neighborhood, even if we don't go right down to the riverbank. I know! Why don't we go for some eel?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Do you know any good restaurants?”

  “Let's see . . . is that big place right on the road any good?”

  “No, they're hopeless. They serve tempura and all sorts of other things there, you know, not just eel. That's the wrong way to go about it. Hold on, isn't there a place on one of those streets around back?”

  “Oh yeah, there's that shop behind the temple. Let's go there!”

  “With eel it's important that you have the feeling it's just been caught, you know, and that it's being served immediately. You've got to have that.”

  “The consistency of the rice and the sauce are crucial too, of course. But only, I should note, when the eel is actually being served with rice.”

  “Right, right. It makes you feel like you're about to throw up when the rice is mushy. God, you know eel used to be a real delicacy when I was a kid. . . .”

  The two of us talked on and on about eel. And then, little by little, the trickle of our words began to dry up, and before long, at almost the same time, we'd both drifted off into a tranquil sleep. A sleep that was deep and warm, a sleep from which no dream would rouse us.

  His wife must be in the very deepest depths of night.

  Maybe Shiori is nearby? The darkness must be so dense . . .

  Perhaps sometimes in my sleep I wander there, too?

  These thoughts drifted through my mind just before I woke. Then the leaden clouds hanging in the sky outside the window slipped into my eyes, and I glanced over to my side and saw that my boyfriend was gone. Looking over at the clock, I was surprised to see that it was one in the afternoon. I was completely stunned—I shook my head as I climbed out of bed. There was a letter lying on the night table.

  You sure sleep well for someone who doesn't work.

  It seems like every woman I know is fast asleep.

  I won't wake you, you're sleeping too soundly. I've extended the room reservation until two. Take your time. I'm off to work. I'll call you.

  Each individual letter was as clearly printed as if he'd been practicing his handwriting—it was beautiful. Is this actually how he writes? I thought, and found myself overwhelmed by the illusion that what I had before me was an image of his form, a contour more palpable than the man I'd embraced the previous night. I kept staring at that letter for ages.

  I'd been sleeping in a T-shirt, and even though it was summer my whole body was trembling with cold. The clouds lying over the open town gleamed with silver. I gazed down at the streams of cars, the fog that addled my head still refusing to disperse, and got into my clothes. Even after I had washed my face, even after I had brushed my teeth, I felt completely unawake, and felt my drowsiness spreading, seeping slowly down into the very core of my being.

  I went down to the café and had lunch, but my limbs were just floating through space, my mouth and stomach and heart were all messed up, and it was so extreme it made me sad. Several times, as I sat bathed in the enchantingly pale sunlight that streamed through the window, I felt my eyes starting to close. I tried counting my way back through the hours I'd slept. But no matter how many times I counted, the total always came out to be more than ten. Why on earth am I still so sleepy, why don't I wake up? However sleepy oversleeping leaves me, I'm usually fine after half an hour. . . . But even these thoughts, absorbed in them as I was, seemed not to belong to me.

  My head was reeling as I climbed into the taxi that took me back to my apartment. After putting a load of clothes in the wash, I sat down on the sofa and promptly started dozing off again.

  It was hopeless.

  At some point I noticed that my head was drooping down ever so slowly toward the back of the sofa. I sat up with a start and began leafing through a magazine, but soon noticed that I'd been reading the same place over and over again. God, this is just like being in class in the afternoon, falling asleep staring at a textbook, I thought, and then closed my eyes again. The cloudy sky swept into the room . . . it was like I was having some kind of attack. Even the rumble of the washing machine couldn't keep me awake. I no longer cared about anything. I slipped out of my blouse and skirt and let them drop t
o the floor, then climbed into my bed. The cover felt cool and comfortable, the pillow settled gently into a lusciously sleepy shape.

  I'd just begun listening to my breath as it deepened and slowed when I realized that the phone was ringing. Of course it had to be my boyfriend, that was obvious. It rang on and on, like an expression of his ever patient love, but however earnestly I tried, I just couldn't open my eyes. It's like some sort of curse, I thought. My mind is perfectly clear, but I can't get up.

  A certain doubt fluttered up briefly in my mind.

  Maybe his wife put this curse . . . ?

  It disappeared. I could tell from the way my boyfriend spoke of her that his wife wasn't the kind of person who'd do something like this. She was an extremely gentle person.

  I was much too tired. My thoughts kept changing directions, heading one way and then circling back, like someone wandering around outside at dusk, no destination in mind.

  No doubt I myself am the enemy.

  I felt the truth of this as my consciousness faded. Sleep slid around me like silk, slowly strangling me, sucking away my life. Then . . . blackout.

  Several rimes I heard the phone ringing in my sleep.

  The calls were from him.

  The room was steeped in gray the next time I awoke. I held up my hand and looked at it, and saw that its outline was vague and dark. A thought rose weakly through my vacant mind. It's evening already.

  Of course the drone of the washing machine had stopped by then, the apartment was completely still. My head ached, my whole body was stiff, all my joints were sore. The hands on the clock pointed to five. I was extremely hungry. I can eat one of the oranges in the fridge, or that pudding, I think there was some pudding. . . . I climbed out of bed and put on some of the clothes that were lying scattered on the floor.

  It was very, very quiet. It was so quiet it felt like I was the only person left alive on earth. That feeling was so strange I can't even begin to describe it. Then when I flicked on the lights and glanced outside the window, when I saw the paper boy putting newspapers in the mailboxes, and saw that there were no lights on in any of the surrounding buildings, and that the sky to the east was orange . . . suddenly I understood.

  “It's—but it's five in the morning!” I cried.

  My voice sounded stale. I was afraid, seriously afraid. How many times had the hands circled the clock? What day was it? And what month? I hurried out of my apartment and down the stairs, feeling like I was trapped in a nightmare, then took the newspaper out of my box and unfolded it. Relief flooded me. It's all right—I've only slept one night. Yet there was no denying that I'd slept for an unusually long time. I had the sense that my whole body was slightly out of tune. I felt dizzy. The dawning blue had crept into town now, the beams of the street lamps had turned transparent. The very thought of returning to my room frightened me so much that I couldn't think of what to do. I know I'll only fall asleep again, and I'd rather wait until I'm so desperate I no longer care. I felt like I had nowhere to go.

  And so I just walked outside.

  The sky was still dark, and the suffocating scent of summer hung thick in the cool air outdoors. The only people out on the street were joggers and dog walkers, people returning home after spending the night elsewhere, and the elderly. Everyone had some purpose in mind, and compared to them I must have looked like a ghost out wandering in the dawn as I plodded along, dazed, dressed in whatever clothes I happened to have grabbed.

  There wasn't really anywhere I wanted to go, so I just kept on walking slowly in the direction of the local park. It was a very small place, tucked in a little cranny on a street of houses that ran behind an apartment complex. Shiori and I used to visit it a lot on early morning walks after we'd stayed up all night. There was nothing there but a bench, a sandbox, and a swing set. I sat down on the aging wooden bench and clutched my head in my hands, like someone who's lost her job. My stomach was growling, but somehow I couldn't think of how to make it stop. What on earth had happened to me? It seemed as if I'd finally reached the point where I couldn't make myself do anything, where I no longer had the will to act. I was so sleepy I couldn't even think clearly.

  The air was filling with mist, and the different colored toy animals that lay in the sandbox looked smudged, as it I were seeing them through smoke. The entire park was filled with the scent of moist greenery and the fragrance of soil. I went on holding my head in my hands, struggling to keep my eyelids from dropping. I gazed at the pattern of my skirt, which was darkened by my shadow.

  “Are you feeling ill?”

  A woman's voice rang out just inches from my ear. I was so horribly embarrassed that for a moment I considered acting like I really did feel sick, but the thought of how much trouble it would be if she got seriously worried made me give up on that idea. So I lifted my head. The woman was sitting right beside me, staring into my face, except that she wasn't a woman, she was a girl—she looked like she was probably in high school. She was wearing jeans. And she had these really enormous, mysterious eyes. Eyes that seemed to be gazing off into some vast distance, eyes like two crystals.

  “No, I'm all right. I'm just a little tired,” I said.

  “Your face looks pretty pale,” she said, sounding concerned.

  “I'm fine, really. But thanks anyway.”

  I smiled at the girl, and she smiled back. The greenery shook gently in the wind and a cool fragrance swept around us and then drifted off. The girl kept sitting there next to me, she wasn't moving, and since I couldn't very well stand up and walk off myself, I kept on sitting where I was, too, staring straight ahead. She had this odd sort of aura about her—this feeling of not-quite-rightness, like she didn't belong in these surroundings. Her long hair streamed down over her shoulders; she was a lovely young woman. Yet I had the impression that something about her was off. The thought crossed my mind that she might be slightly mad. All the same, I could feel myself starting to relax, ever so slowly, just from being with her, being with someone.

  Shiori and I used to sit here like this, looking at the swings, I thought. We'd stay up all night watching videos and then in the morning we'd be so filled with energy that we couldn't get to sleep, so we'd buy a can of hot tea and a few seaweed-wrapped balls of rice at a convenience store and then come here to eat. I always hated the ones with the tuna packed in the middle, but Shiori loved that kind. . . .

  “You better go to the train station right away.”

  The girl spoke so suddenly that I jumped. I'd been falling asleep again. I turned to look at her and was met with an extremely severe expression. Her eyebrows had come together to form a single dark shadow. And her tone of voice was completely different now, much sharper and deeper.

  “What? The station?”

  I didn't know what to say. It looks like she is crazy, I thought, and started to feel slightly afraid. She stood up, positioned herself directly in front of me, and looked straight into my eyes. Her eyes really were strange. She was staring right at me, but the look in her eyes gave the impression that she was focusing on some point way off in the distance. I was mesmerized by those eyes, charmed. I couldn't say a word.

  The girl continued, “Once you're there, go to the newsstand and pick up a copy of the Job-Hunter's Journal. Then look through it and find yourself a job. Even if it's only for a very short period of time, just do it. You could be some kind of model or an usher at a show or something. An office job is no good because you'll fall asleep. You need some kind of work that'll keep you standing up and moving your hands and feet around. Just go do it, all right? I can't even stand to look at you. If you go on like this you'll end up getting trapped in this mode, you know, you won't be able to go back to being what you were—that's the way you look. It frightens me.”

  There was nothing I could do but sit quietly and listen. It's strange, but for some reason I had the feeling that this young woman was quite a lot older than me. And it was eerie how all the things she was saying hit me so hard, how her words pierced
straight through to my heart. She was entirely serious, but she didn't sound like she was angry at me. How can I explain it? She was motormouthing, and she sounded a little desperate, and at the same time a bit irritated.

  “But . . . why?” I muttered.

  “I doubt that we'll meet again after this. We probably only ran into each other now because you've come so near to where I am,” she said. “And I'm not just suggesting that you get a job, you know. That's not the point. You see, your spirit and your psyche are both so drained, you're terribly exhausted. It's not just you, there are lots and lots of people like you. But I have this feeling that I'm the reason you're so exhausted, that you're . . . it really does seem that way. I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry. You know who I am, don't you?”

  She was still staring straight into my eyes when she asked this question. Her tone made it sound as if she were casting a spell.

  “Why, you're . . .”

  I'd actually said this. My voice sounded peculiarly loud—I opened my eyes with a start. There was no one there in front of me, nothing but the cold mist that shrouded the park, blurring the section of the world that I could see as it drifted and eddied.

  Had it been a dream?

  I stood up shakily and walked from the park, still not quite sure what was what. For a moment I actually considered going to the train station, but then I've never been one of these meek fools who goes along with whatever people say—actually, I tend to be rather contrary. Even supposing it had been a dream, the simple fact that I'd had such a dream was extremely irritating; and so in the end, I just went back to my apartment and went to bed.

  I didn't care anymore.

  * * *

  Things were awful when I woke up.

  I was starving, my entire body ached, my throat was parched—I felt like I'd turned into a mummy. My mind was clear, which was what you'd expect, but my body felt so heavy and drained that I couldn't even make myself get out of bed. On top of everything, it was raining.

  The clock said it was noon, but even so the room was sunk in darkness, flooded with the thick rush of the falling rain. I didn't feel like putting on any music, so I just kept lying there listening to the rain, and before too long I found myself thinking of Shiori in that silent room of hers. Shiori unable to fall asleep anywhere that was soft and comfortable, swinging in that hammock, asleep.