Hardboiled & Hard Luck
Page 8
“You know, I bet that’s exactly what it’s like.”
“I wonder what Kuni’s last song was,” I said.
A chilly wind gusted down the street. We were walking through a residential area with very few people around; we were going to keep walking until we came to a place where we could get some tea. I wished the street would never end.
“I wouldn’t know what the song was either way, but doesn’t it depend on when she died? Was it when she lost consciousness? When her brain was damaged? Or did it happen when her brain died? Or when they took her off the respirator?” Sakai paused. “I guess we’ll find that out for ourselves sooner or later.”
These were hard words, but when he said them it didn’t anger me at all.
The trees on either side of the road stretched their bare branches over our heads, creating a tunnel of black silhouettes. I took out my MD player as we walked.
“There were only two tracks on the mix my sister was making before she died. I’ve been listening to them a lot. I mean, not that this is really related to what we were talking about before.”
“What songs are they?”
“'September' by Earth Wind & Fire and Yūmin’s 'Autumn Travels.'”
“What a pair! Was it an autumn theme or something?”
“I think that must have been it. I mean, I can see why the Yūmin song is there: Kuni was such a devoted fan of hers that she was actually hoping that her marriage to Matsutōya Masataka would fail.”
“Wow. You can tell her age from those songs, though.”
“Why don’t I put them on while we walk?” I said.
We listened to the songs, each of us using one earphone, the way Kuni and I did back in the old days. These songs had seen my sister through the last September of her life. They weren’t selected for that role, it just happened that way. If Kuni had lived, she would have kept editing the minidisc, adding songs, playing it in the car. She had spent her last September, her final days, gazing up into a distant sky that still bore traces of summer. By November, Kuni was gone.
“Come to think of it,” said Sakai, almost shouting, “my brother sings this song a lot when we go to do karaoke.”
“He sings ‘September’?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s pretty weird. But that explains why it’s on the disc.”
“Right, that must be it.”
“Is he good?”
“My brother doing Earth Wind & Fire, all on his own? Yeah, he’s good, but it’s scary as hell.”
“Oh.”
We kept walking, singing along with the music. Do you remember, we crooned, our voices light, the twenty-first night of September? And as the music reverberated in our ears, the road zoomed closer and the sky seemed to widen. I felt as if the world had grown a little more beautiful than it was before; all of a sudden the cold and the darkness of the night were transformed into a lovely splash of light. I realized that my feet were hitting the ground in time with the beating of my heart. And I felt as if the world where I had walked with my sister when we were kids was living again. I felt a rush of nostalgia. This feeling I have right now, I thought, this is what first pushed me into the world, what helped me grow up to be what I am.
The second song—Yūmin’s incredibly depressing “Autumn Travels”, which, for reasons I can’t fathom, was Kuni’s favorite—started playing.
And then Sakai spoke.
“I know that right now your heart is still reeling from the shock, and it feels like the middle of winter. But if I go to Italy to visit you when summer comes, will you take me around some towns out in the country?”
“Of course!” I said.
“It’s not like we’re out of luck, is it? We’re just too wrapped up in this mood, right? It wouldn’t work out now. But that’s because the timing is bad, right?”
“I think so.”
The image of those tubes, the sound of the respirator, and the painful light that streamed through the window were still etched into our memories.
“We’ll go out every afternoon for pasta, and the sky will be clear, and we’ll go and see all kinds of scenery. We’ll walk until our feet hurt, and drink wine, and we’ll sleep in the same room. We’ll look out new windows, and feel different from the way we do now with all that summer light pouring down around us, when it’s so hot we can’t stand it. I’ll wait until then—I won’t forget you. I don’t want things to end like this, only having known you during this strange time. But right now, I just can’t think about the future.”
Sakai nodded. “I know.”
The music kept ringing in my ears. The winter stars were always there, always the same when I turned my gaze upward, no matter who I was with. It was me who changed. The three stars in Orion’s belt were still there, just the same. Just as they had been in the days when Kuni and I raced to find them first.
... Yes, it will happen just like it does in the lyrics of Yūmin’s song, I thought. This autumn will never come back; it was one of a kind. And it’s setting out on its distant travels tonight, weaving away through the barren winter trees. And then, ever so quietly, a cruel , unknown winter will set in.
About the Author
Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964. She is the author of Kitchen, N.P., Lizard, Amrita, Asleep and Goodbye Tsugumi. Her acclaimed stories, novels and essays have won numerous prizes both in Japan and abroad. She lives in Tokyo.