The Gossamer Fly

by Meira Chand

  He spoke out firmly and fluently. She knew this was what he had come to say, what he had been waiting three days to tell her. She wished then he would go. Hiroko would have told all kinds of cunning tales. It was useless explaining. He would not believe her. All she wanted now was to be left alone. She felt weary. The sight of him, sitting on the end of the bed, tired her out. Closing her eyes she silently willed him to go away. She wished she could spend her life in this calm, light room, and never go home. Never see any of their faces again.

  She found the thought in her then. She allowed herself to think it for the first time, I hate them. Yes. I hate them. The thought was round and solid, filling her up. So that she did not need to look at him. So that she could turn her head to the window, and not hear his questions, nor bother to answer them. And she knew then, the thought would never leave her. It would be with her always, holding her up, making her strong. She could depend upon it always.

  ‘Well then. Perhaps I had better go. I can see you are still very tired. Perhaps tomorrow you will be more yourself, and feel like talking.’ He stood up at last, kissed her again and left.

  The door clicked shut. Opening her eyes immediately, she resettled herself purposefully in the bed, to think more comfortably. She poured the thought through her again and again, examining it, feeling it build up, hard as iron. I hate them. I hate them. And suddenly she felt as if a door were shut behind her, closed for ever. Nothing and nobody could ever hurt her again. Just now, in these few moments, the change had taken place. She was no longer the same person. The old, shivering Natsuko was gone. Now she could do whatever she wanted. Each moment was there to do with as she wished, each situation was hers to manoeuvre. She felt she had made a great discovery, although she could give it neither form nor name. Exhilaration made her suddenly more tired than any physical weakness. She would never need any of them, ever again. She turned on her side then, cheek against the cool pillow, and smiled. Closing her eyes she allowed the thought freedom, feeling it wash deeper and deeper, silently fortifying every cell.

  I hate them. I hate them. I hate them …

  11

  It was the day of the Summer Festival. From noon the sound of the drum reiterated down from the small shrine up the hill. It was hot, the hottest day yet of the Summer. And he was away in Tokyo again, for a conference this time, without Riichi. But it was all right. It did not matter to her any longer. He had told them the day before, at breakfast, wiping toast crumbs from his small mouth with a napkin. And she felt nothing. She had only thought of the things she planned to do.

  Even the brass knob of the french doors was warm. The white net curtains, gathered tautly on wire up against the glass, smelled hot and dusty. She bent, pulling up the bolts, and pushed open the floor length windows. Stepping down on to the patio, hot concrete burnt through her bare feet. She ran quickly across it and down on to the lawn.

  Sun glared harshly in the garden, heating colours to a molten pitch. The greens of leaves and grass ran easily into one another, acid and lime. The pinks, blues and oranges of flowers were sharp points or dazzling masses. In the fir trees cicadas unleashed hysterical whirring screams. She screwed up her eyes against the sizzling light, and looked back at the house. Behind the open french windows the lounge looked cool and secret. Usually in Summer the doors were wide open, filled by a netted screen. On the patio outside were garden chairs and her mother, reading magazines or writing letters. There were jugs of homemade lemonade, and a huge plastic pool they sometimes inflated and filled with water. Now there were only the shutup rooms, heat seething and stagnant within them. Summer lay around her like a lake devoid of movement, languid, sun reflecting glassily as far as she could see.

  It was this stillness that obsessed her most. It was something she could see and feel, lurking beneath the centre of each long day. Sometimes, in the middle of a room, or half-way up the stairs she would stop, feeling it close in about her, knowing it was there, waiting, for what she did not know. Stillness was there in the hot polished wood of the piano lid, closed and burning beneath a fine dust. It was in the tidy deserted kitchen after the midday meal, and on muddy toned pictures staring vacantly from walls. She saw it on the loquat tree, in rotting unpicked fruit, the soft brown sores crawling with maggots. In the dead of lazy afternoons it inched nearest, breathing gently at her side. It followed her into the heat and lay just below the harsh whirr of cicadas. In thick fleshy leaves and the shadow of bushes she saw it move. It was a sweet stench in the perfume of roses, and the cool soil under stones.

  In the morning the walls of her room were white and fresh, and the stillness rested. She could play then as they told her, quietly, lying when tired on her bed. But she could fit the blue sky and the Autumn forest of the jigsaw by heart, the dolls had been dressed and undressed many times, the plasticine models of dinosaurs were sticky to touch in the heat, the books all read several times over. She no longer felt fretful or weak, it was over a month since she left the hospital. And through the day the stillness grew, crawling and threading its way through her mind. A gossamer-fly. An intangible thing with transparent tracks, it filled her body with restlessness, and left mad thoughts flitting through her mind. It drove her to run wilfully then, to the empty rooms of the house, touching, looking, seeking things she could not see, secrets she did not understand.

  Sometimes then, she went into her parents’ bedroom, locking the door behind her, and opened the cupboard. From the limp crush of dresses, silently dejected on their hangers, came the smell of her mother’s body, reaching out faintly, stirring the air. On a shelf above handbags were stacked, dust in the folds at their sides, and old shoes, carryingthe soft bulge of her mother’s toes. She pushed her head deep into the cupboard, rubbing the dresses over her face, trying to find limbs and bones, the hard packed body beneath the folds. But she found only cloth, lifeless and empty, imbued with the smell of perfume and sweat. In the drawers scarves, gloves and nylon stockings were no more than piles of rag, only a fine ladder or frayed seam gave them for a moment reality.

  At night crickets purred loudly near her window, frogs croaked wetly, piercing her dreams. So that she woke abruptly through splintered fragments of nightmare to hear, always, small sounds in the room next door. The whisper of voices too low to be caught, the soft opening and shutting of doors, the sustained creaks of the bed. Once, she wandered out and saw Hiroko, naked but for an underslip, disappearing quickly downstairs. She heard her father running water in the bathroom. The bedroom door stood open wide. A low lamp diffused the room, lighting the bed to a huge white square. She went in and stood beside it. The covers were all heaped back, half on the floor, the pillows dented and crumpled, a few tight hairs curled upon the empty sheets. Beyond was the window, black with night, the curtains undrawn, the lights of the town like a forest of fireflies. Natsuko’s feet touched something rough. Forgotten on the floor beside the bed were Hiroko’s beige raffia slippers. She felt ice again in her belly, and the shivering began again. She ran back to her room, but the shivering persisted. It ripped her apart and sleep floated out of reach.

  For two days she had watched the gardeners pruning and trimming the fir trees. With light ladders and ropes they crawled over the trees like a species of insect, wide straw hats on their heads, scissors at their belts. The trees were inspected, old needles thinned out, young shoots snipped off, and obstinate branches trained along thin bamboo sticks. She waited impatiently for them to finish. At last they were gone. She walked, across the lawn to where the hollyhocks grew, towering up against a wall. She had made up her mind, there were two things to be done this afternoon. Crouching down before the hollyhocks, she reached in among the tall stems. Half buried in the soil, right at the back, against the wall, were the toy cups and plates she had used the Summer before, when Riichi still helped her make mud pies. She had mixed mud on the large flat leaves of the hollyhocks. And Riichi brought her water from the garden tap, carrying it carefully in the small red cups. Now she hardly saw him.
School had finished. He had a Summer holiday job, working half day in a garage at the bottom of the hill. Even when he was home he spent the hours silently, in his bedroom or the bathroom, behind locked doors.

  She pushed the cups aside, except for a broken one which she used as a trowel, digging quickly into the soil. It was dry and firm, she pressed hard and the broken rim of cup pushed uncomfortably into her palm. Once she dug up the soft white bodies of centipede nymphs, their few red legs clustered at one end. Hollyhock leaves brushed her neck and ears. From the shrine up the hill the sound of the huge drum was loud and constant, filling the garden. Somewhere, not far down in the soil, was the metal cough drop box in which she and Riichi had buried the birds. They had found them one Spring, tiny bald fledglings with waxy beaks, fallen from the guttering around the house. Riichi climbed up and discovered the empty nest, and the discarded skin of a snake. He brought it down and made her touch the diaphanous papery tube. Holding her finger he ran it over the transparent scales until she screamed for him to stop. Then they had found the metal box and buried the cold, bald birds.

  Green paint and the picture of brown cough drops was still visible on the tin, after she brushed off clinging soil. Her fingernails were clogged with earth. The lid of the tin was closed securely, it took a few moments to pry it off. As it loosened she paused, taking a breath before pushing it up. A bad odour lifted in a slab, then equalized in the air. The little bodies were all shrivelled and brown, like twisted bits of leather. There were no maggots, nothing rotted. Relieved, she looked at them, still able to make out the line of a beak.

  She had forgotten about them until a few nights ago. But remembering, the contentment of that last Summer came back to her. Of her mother stretched out to the sun in a deckchair, on a table beside her a frosty jug of lemonade, the ice cubes bobbing at the surface. The sweet sour taste of it filled her mouth while the coldness flowed down into her body. And Riichi, coming across the lawn to her, smiling. In his hands the little red cups of water, his fingers wet and dripping, his knees clinging with earth and bits of grass from kneeling beside her.

  And remembering the birds then, she knew at once she did not want them there, peaceful and sealed beneath the soil. They were relative to memories that were now no more than the substance of dreams. Then and there, in the middle of the night, she had wanted to get up and dispose of them.

  She carried the cough drop box over to the gate, walking down the steps into the narrow road. The sound of the drum pulsed in her ears, vibrating from the shrine, ricocheting down the hill. Suddenly, cutting through the beat, came the sound of a plane, droning overhead. From it, an amplified voice, advertising a new supermarket down in the town, filled the sky, colliding with the rattling cicadas and the beating drum. The prices of onions and summer vests echoed resonantly down from the clouds above. The plane circled twice and flew on, the voice trailing away fainter and fainter, the cicadas and drum taking precedence again. Looking out over the slope, across the panorama of the town, she saw the new supermarket. Floating up on long streamers, from the roof of the building, were six gigantic red balloons. She threw the cough drop box away from her as hard as she could. It came apart against the sky, the remains of the birds tipped free and dropped silently into the grass. The box and its lid followed with a rustle. Satisfied, Natsuko turned back to the house.

  The kitchen was deserted. A wall of creeper near the window hampered light any time of day, the room was always dim. The only sound was a hum from the refrigerator, a defrosting trickle somewhere in the back. Upstairs Natsuko had heard the shower in the bathroom, pattering against tiles and the plastic curtain. Hiroko was in there, bathing. Natsuko listened, making quite sure before she went into Hiroko’s room, closing the door behind her. For a moment she stood, not moving, feeling the room and the smell of Hiroko. Slowly it settled about her, allowing her in.

  She began then, touching gently, turning things over, looking, not knowing exactly what it was she must do, but sure it would be shown her. The room was stifling hot. The matted floor held the heat, sweat broke through her tee shirt in wet patches, and collected at the back of her neck beneath her hair. She switched on the standing fan in a corner, and immediately the heat was whipped and beaten. Natsuko looked round the room hesitantly, unsure of where to begin. Then, stepping forward she knelt down before the mirrored cosmetic box on the floor. It was like a small dressing-table, but legless, a stout wooden box with a mirrored stand. She pushed her face up close to the glass, filling it with herself, nose against it, her breath stamping fuzzy patches. There were several bottles and jars on its flat top. Unscrewing them, Natsuko smelled each in turn. Her nose bloated with the thick scents, as she breathed them deep into herself, and blew them out again into the room. Sticking her fingers into the jars of smooth cream, she left long holes in them, and a cool, soft residue on her skin. She rubbed this into her hands until they were moist and shiny and smelled like Hiroko. Pulling out the drawers of the cosmetic box she examined lipsticks, pencils, a nail file and comb, a wristwatch, a tube of burn cream and a bottle of pills. Slipping off the cap of the lipstick she broke the coral stick at its base, and thrust it back again into the case. Red grease was left all over her fingers. She wiped them on the matted floor. Then she continued, picking up each thing, turning it in her hand, weighing it, pressing her fingers lightly about it. Opening the deep Japanese cupboard in the wall, she pushed her hands between the folded quilts of bedding in the lower half, and on the shelf above fingered a pile of blouses and underwear. Turning back to the room, she saw a blue biscuit tin in a corner of the floor, a green exercise book and pencil rested on top. It was filled with accounts, rows of neat kanji characters and figures. With the pencil Natsuko drew fine scribbled lines over each page, breaking the smart columns and the neat little totals. In the biscuit tin were bright spools of thread, scissors; and a red felt cushion shaped like a strawberry, stuck with needles and pins.

  Touching each thing Natsuko thought, all this is hers. This is where she sits, this is where she sleeps, these things touch her body, her skin, her nails and hair. And all the time she kept each thing in her mind, pressing it into herself so that, after she left the room, she would still be there, at the centre of each object. Every secret particle of Hiroko would be lessened by her knowledge of it. Then, at last, there would be nothing Natsuko did not know, no more deception, no more secrets. As she went on, touching and thinking, she felt power rise up in her. There is nothing now she can do to me, she thought. I know about her now. I know each secret thing.

  Standing by the window she trailed her fingers over the blue curtains, remembering how she and her mother had hung them there, the day before Hiroko came. The room looked out on to the same creepered wall and washing line as the kitchen. A large laurel bush spread below the window, its pale speckled leaves touching the glass. In the fork of a stem a large praying mantis crouched, looking at her, moving its head as she trailed her fingers across the glass. Its bulbous green eyes never left her, watching, anticipating, front legs drawn up ready to strike. The quality of its gaze disturbed her. She turned quickly from the window and was caught by her own reflection in the mirror of the cosmetic box. In the cheap glass she was all distorted, her body too small, her head too large. In her face the eyes were squashed into a narrow band under the high precipice of her forehead. As she moved the band across her face wobbled and sank, condensing next her nose and mouth, pushing her eyes up high and wide. Behind her a circle of sun glinted on the window, lighting up the room.

  She saw then it had all been for nothing, this soft looking and touching. Instead of secrets she knew only the shape and colour of things, only walls and cloth, bits of metal and plastic, a thought, a smell. Nothing. In this room even her reflection was manipulated as she watched, wiping out everything, reducing her to no more than squat features and obedient curves.

  Deep in the house she heard the dull bang of a door, and drew a sharp breath, alert. But only Riichi’s soft whistling came, a
nd the sound of his feet walking upstairs. It was not Hiroko. Her body relaxed, then filled with anger and frustration. Something hard knocked within her, seeking a way out. Something. There must be a way to leave a trace of herself upon these things. At once the thought came quickly into her mind. She bent first to the sewing tin, and then from the cupboard took a clean folded blouse from the top of the pile. The Japanese scissors were difficult to hold, a small handleless shear. She had to bring the two blades together with pressure from the palm of her hand. But soon the cloth began to cut. The soft threads parted before the blades, shredding quickly, even the double cloth of the collar and the frilly edgings of lace gave way. As she cut Natsuko felt strong again. The feeling surged up in her. She thought, there is nothing now I cannot do. For she saw she had only to find the right way. Snip. Snip. The scissors moved quickly in the cloth. A sleeve came away in her hand, the threads all frayed at the edges. Snip. Snip. She understood now. Each strength in Hiroko must be met with an equal strength. From now there could be no half measures, no turning back. She saw it clearly. If she dared, there was always a way.

  There was no mistaking the steps now. They came briskly down the stairs, turning, coming along the passage to the kitchen. There was no time to hide the blouse. She left it all there, the scissors and little snipped pieces, in a soft pile on the floor. Running out quickly into the kitchen she ducked under the table. The green checked cloth hung low each side, she saw only Hiroko’s bare legs and the beige raffia mules passing by. As the door pushed shut behind Hiroko, Natsuko crawled out, running from the kitchen. Behind her she heard Hiroko shout.

  There was nowhere else to run to, nowhere else she had thought of to hide but in her father’s study. For it was weeks since she had been inside the room. By day she deliberately avoided it, ordered to play quietly or rest. And in the evenings, since she had been ill, she went to bed extra early, no longer required to sit with her father and Riichi. They were as relieved as she.