The Lake

by Banana Yoshimoto

  That’s what it’s like when you’re creating things. On the one hand, it really seems like you’re keeping it all moving on your own, and you can tell yourself that you’ve got inspiration raining down on you, but ultimately you can’t make anything happen on your own.

  I knew the kids would make it work. They would help me put something eternal onto that wall. Something that would last forever, even if the wall did end up being knocked down. And that was enough for me.

  I’d been through so many unfamiliar things recently, looking after my mom and managing her funeral and so on, and it was like this worldly grime had rubbed off on me from dealing with all that. I wanted to wash it all away, throwing myself into my work.

  Caring for my mom had taken all the energy I had, and I hadn’t had the mental space to think of anything but how overwhelmed I was. I’d always felt that I was striving for something good, though, reaching toward the light, and so it really hadn’t been that bad. Things had come to feel so normal that I could hardly believe it when I would remember I couldn’t call her up to talk whenever I wanted to anymore, about whatever was on my mind.

  I had always been thinking about her, about what I could do for her, but she would be unconscious, or in a daze, out of it. That was what really hurt.

  The meeting that afternoon went smoothly.

  I had a pleasant discussion with the managers of the Infant Development Center—a couple who had worked, apparently, in a preschool in the United States—and we agreed that I would paint a cheery group of animals or something along those lines. I was a bit troubled by the bumpiness of the wall, but it would take too long and be too expensive to fill in all the depressions, and I had the feeling I could obviate the need by brushing on a heavy undercoat. There was nothing but dirt in front of the wall, so I wouldn’t even have to spread a plastic sheet.

  These things would make the work a lot easier, and it sounded as if the local government could help out financially; I’d have about five hundred thousand yen, which was enough to allow me to hire a driver for at least a few days. Having a helper would make things much easier: it was a boon to have a car, of course, and he could help me lug the twenty or so cans of water-based paint I’d need back and forth every day. I got permission to borrow the school’s ladder, and with a bit of luck it sounded as if I might be able to leave my tools in the storage room, as long as there was space. Everything was getting off to a good start. When you’re working at a semipublic site like this, the least bit of friction at the beginning can make things drag on and on. It looked as though things were going to work out this time.

  I wonder if Nakajima will come stay over tonight, too? I thought as I stood gazing down the length of the wall, all alone.

  I wasn’t exactly excited, but I felt a warm glow inside.

  I felt like someone with a brand-new boyfriend.

  Sometimes, though, I imagined what it might be like if I happened to fall passionately in love with someone else, and it became inconvenient to have Nakajima around. What would I do then? At the moment, I wasn’t really sure. He’d had a tremendous influence on me, that was true, but that seemed kind of different from being head over heels in love.

  Right now it wasn’t really an issue, because I was enjoying myself, but it would be a pain if something like that happened after we had become more deeply involved.

  And what would happen to Nakajima if I did meet someone else and just chased him out? How did I know he wouldn’t kill himself, or go crazy?

  I couldn’t begin to imagine how someone like him, with his awful past, might feel because I had never suffered any terrible wounds. Of course, it would be even worse if I thought I could understand. Recognizing how totally ignorant you are is the only honest way to deal with people who’ve been through something traumatic.

  Still, I had the feeling it would be okay. I would go on liking Nakajima.

  I had taken such great care to reach this point, and now, little by little, I was falling in love. Even putting it in conservative terms, it would probably be fair to say that I needed him—no one else would do. I had the sense that he was the one.

  It’s like when you decide to build a house: some people want to go and find the land first, then hire an architect to help them draw up the plans, and then choose the materials for the walls and everything all on their own. I’m not like that. I prefer to wander around until I stumble across something, then do the best I can with it, scrutinizing this thing I’ve discovered, getting to know it for what it is.

  By the same token, some muralists will neatly fill in all the joints in a wall, transform it into a perfectly white canvas, come up with a motif that harmonizes with the colors around the wall, then carefully block out the sketch on their pad and enlarge it. That’s one method.

  But I’m not that type at all. I just lose myself in the joy of painting, getting the picture up there, and if something goes wrong in the creative process I find a way to fix it and finish the project, no matter what. I’m a real believer in working on site, and I’ll be there no matter what’s going on in my life, and I don’t put any stock in whatever it is that happens inside my head. I look, I sense time passing, I move my body, and I try as much as possible to stay outside.

  And usually, when it’s all over, I find that everything has come together surprisingly well. When that happens, I feel like I’ve been dancing, perfectly in time, with the world.

  That sense of having partnered with the environment, the land, of moving, entranced … and then I say goodbye to it all forever, and head for the next location.

  Sure, I knew perfectly well that my way was sloppy. But for me, at that point, painting murals was more like a hobby than anything else; it wasn’t a true profession. So I was content with what I did. At some point I would have to decide whether or not to make this my occupation, and I assumed that as time passed, the problems that arose because I did things this way would sort themselves out in a manner that was right for me. And who knew, maybe in the process I’d become a professional painter. I figured that if I could refine my method as much as possible, and if things went as well as I hoped, I was bound to produce good results. So I just kept pushing quietly ahead. That’s the stage I was at then. I was still at the very beginning.

  Of course, some people criticized me for doing things the way I did. Look at her, they’d say, painting those childish pictures, she has practically no technique, and then she has the nerve to do interviews as if she were some kind of famous artist! Stuff like that. But there was one area, just one, where I had honed my abilities to perfection, and I held to that absolutely.

  Since I was painting my pictures outside, I would think and think, extremely hard, until I was sure that even decades later my work wouldn’t look out of date.

  If I focus very hard, right at the beginning, on the scenery and the spirit that runs through the place, I start to get an image of colors and the motif that are right for it. As long as I don’t misread that, as long as I manage to put myself in complete harmony with my surroundings, and as long as I don’t lose my concentration, the picture I paint will last ten years, twenty years, maybe even a hundred without looking dated. That’s the one ability I have faith in.

  Just as the head carpenter takes pride in the house he’s built, I had made up my own mind, consciously, that I was right about this. That was settled, and I stuck to my guns. I was never wishy-washy about that. I stood up to the world, and I made my little mark. Sort of like a dog, I guess, pissing someplace to show it had been there.

  I don’t know if it’s appropriate to treat these things like they’re part and parcel of being in love, but Nakajima and I never talked about preparations or plans, even dreams. We just kept going on as we were, here and now. The two of us, on location.

  I couldn’t do anything. Because I could tell—I felt it.

  No one else is like Nakajima. No one in the world is as peculiar as he is.

  I’d never seen anyone who looked the way he did standing by the
window at night, so thin and detached. He didn’t have the slightest faith in this human society of ours; he stood on the outside looking in. There was something sad in his posture, and something strong, and I wanted to go on watching him forever.

  Looking back now, I can see that the way I sat gazing at his silhouette against the window in those days, I might as well have been a girl in junior high with a crush on some boy. I wanted so badly to hold his image in my mind’s eye. How can he look so beautiful just standing there, I wondered. And that’s really all it was.

  It hits so hard …

  I was staring up through leafless branches. They were spread out like a hand, and that special, weak light particular to the time when winter ends and spring gets under way was filtering down through them.

  I used to come to this school every day, so I knew this place through and through. I didn’t need to worry that I’d paint something weird. But still, just in case, I kept standing there. I’ll make the picture a little bit sad, and a little happy, I thought. Already, like a lovely shadow, a hazy image began to project itself upon the wall.

  “Heading home, Chihiro?”

  It was Sayuri, the woman who had gotten me the job. I assumed she had just finished one of her piano lessons. She must be taking a break, I supposed, before the next stream of kids comes in the evening.

  I love feeling the rhythm of other people’s lives. It’s like traveling.

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “You want to go to a café?”

  “I don’t think I have time for that,” Sayuri said.

  So I gave her one of the two cans of coffee I’d bought earlier.

  “Still thinking about that guy?” Sayuri continued. “The weirdo. The thin one. Smart, going to college.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I told you a little about him, I guess? Nakajima. I’m not just thinking about him anymore, actually—I think we’re dating, kind of.”

  “What did you say he studies?”

  “He said something about research on chromosomes, but I have to confess I have no idea what that means in terms of what he actually does. Right now he’s working on an article about Down’s syndrome and the presence of chromosome 21 and what happens when you … I forget, he tried to explain it to me a couple times, but it was too complex, I didn’t get it at all. Hardly a surprise, I suppose, seeing as he’s writing the article in English. I couldn’t sneak a peek even if I wanted to.”

  “So it’s too complicated for even you to remember. The main point is that you have no idea what the main point is—that much I get. You seem to be getting along all right, though, even if you can’t make heads or tails of something that must matter a lot to him.”

  “It’s true, I know. If only he were into cultural anthropology or folklore studies or French literature or something, it would be so much easier.…”

  “Then you’d be able to understand it, at least a little.”

  “Of course, sometimes it’s better not to understand. I kind of like how our days are now. I feel more at peace than I ever have,” I said. “Everything’s so calm, and quiet, and yet at the same time there’s something powerful—it’s like living underwater. The rest of the world keeps seeming more and more remote. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, I don’t imagine things will get any more exciting than they are now, but I can’t imagine us breaking up, either.”

  “You just started dating and already you feel that way?” Sayuri laughed.

  “I haven’t asked him about it,” I said next, “but it’s pretty clear that something happened to him, ages ago, something really bad. But you know how it is when you’re with someone, you kind of figure stuff out, right? So I decided there’s no hurry, I’m not going to rush him, and I guess now things have kind of settled into place. Do you think I should ask him?”

  “I don’t see the need. I mean, if things are going well. I just hope that whatever that awful thing is, it isn’t something really awful. Like he committed a crime, or ran away from his debts, or went bankrupt. Or maybe that would be okay, as long as it doesn’t become an issue now.”

  “Yeah, well, judging from his personality I’d say it probably isn’t anything like that. Who knows, maybe it’ll turn out not to be such a big deal. He did tell me that he was really close to his mother, and it was a huge shock when she died. But I get the sense he’s been hurt in some way much deeper than that.”

  “I hope whatever it is isn’t still an issue.”

  “Oh, I think it is—I feel it. I’m just hoping it’s not so bad that he can’t go on living with it. And hey, he’s made it this far, right? Maybe everything will be fine, and it’s just a matter of going on with his life, treating it as gently as possible.”

  I spoke like I was praying. Please, I thought, keep living.

  Nothing I could ever do would relieve Nakajima of his pain. That had only become clear once we started living together. I had seen him wake up screaming in the middle of the night and bolt up, trembling; I’d seen him break into a sweat when he found himself in a crowd; I’d seen certain kinds of music give him terrible headaches; and I’d had to listen to him telling me that for a long time after his mother died, what he wanted more than anything was to follow her. These were just fragments, but the longer we were a couple, the more I saw.

  When there’s a plus, there’s always a minus. If there’s a powerful light, the darkness that is its opposite will be just as strong. To me, Nakajima seemed like a creature in a legend, unable to control the forces raging within him.

  “In this line of work, I come into contact with kids who have all sorts of troubles,” Sayuri said. “Some are just cruel by nature, and some have mental problems, but other than that I get the sense that usually it’s the parents who are the problem. When something happens with the parent of a really young child, something seems to get paralyzed inside, or broken, and even if it’s a really tiny part, it has to be built up again. I see that pretty often. It’s really true, there’s something huge in people like that that can’t be whitewashed over. It’s like, you’re at a loss for what to do, because they’ve been broken in so many different ways, so subtly. I’m just a piano teacher so I don’t actually have to deal with that stuff, but if you’re a preschool teacher or something, you have to interact with the parents a lot more, and I just think that would be so hard. There are so many messed-up families these days, too many. Screwed-up parents.”

  I nodded. Even out by the wall, where I was painting the mural, I could tell. There were parents and children of a sort you never would have seen before, mixed in among all the rest. I didn’t think Nakajima was one of them, though. His problem was different.

  “I know something happened to him, that much is clear, and it obviously wasn’t a subtle sort of thing. There must have been some really big event in his past. Only in his case—well, from what I can tell, his parents were divorced, but I don’t have the sense it was particularly acrimonious, you know, and I know his mother loved him really deeply, and it doesn’t seem like anything happened with her, so I don’t think it was a problem with his parents. That’s the impression I get, judging from the bits and pieces I’ve heard. Above all, Nakajima himself is just such a nice person.… I know I keep repeating myself, but really the only thing I can be sure of is that something appalling happened.”

  “Appalling? Like how?”

  “Like he was kidnapped, or sexually abused, though not by his parents.”

  The moment I heard myself saying that, something clicked.

  Every so often, that happens. I say it, and I realize it’s true. Something close to an answer lay in the words I’d just spoken. I was convinced of it. But I decided just to keep talking.

  “Anyway, he’s not like other people at all, it’s like, I don’t know how to describe it, like he’s living in the clouds, maybe. Like when people talk about someone having transcended it all—he’s like that, I guess. So part of me thinks it’s just in his makeup, and he would have been this way even if nothing had happened. Fo
r the time being I’ll just keep watching, I won’t rush it. He and I are the kind of people who need to take things slow anyway. Getting to know each other, talking things through, everything has to go nice and slow,” I said.

  At some point, as I was talking, it hit me how deeply concerned about Nakajima I was. That I wanted to know, sort of, except that at the same time I didn’t.

  That was why I felt this way. As if maybe, maybe, I was starting to commit.

  Maybe I’d begun to love him, maybe at some point I’d actually fallen for him in a big way. For the first time in my life I seemed to be in love, not just playing—a woman loving a man.

  I could tell because I was cautious, the way my mom had been with my dad.

  That’s how she was: the deeper she loved, the more hesitant she was.

  “How about money? Does he have his own?”

  “Yes. He says his father will keep supporting him until he finishes his Ph.D., and I guess he has whatever his mother left, too. He still has his own apartment, but since he spends nights at my place he puts money in my account for food and utilities and stuff. Every month. And he calculates it all incredibly precisely. Down to the hour, down to the yen.”

  “He’s good about those things, then.”

  “You’re pretty down-to-earth yourself, huh, asking about that?”

  “Well, anyway, it sounds to me like everything’s fine. You can go on living together like you are for the rest of your lives. It’s kind of weird, but then so are you.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’ll just let things progress this way for a while,” I said. Thinking to myself, Assuming there’s any progress. “But enough about that. You came out because you had something to talk about, right?”

  “Right. I wanted to apologize. For making you go on TV, about the mural.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind.”

  “You’re really famous now, huh?” Sayuri said. “Features on TV and everything.”

  I laughed. “I’m certainly not really famous.”