Manazuru

by Hiromi Kawakami

  No one says the things they most want to say. This is not a place to say them. Listening to this litany of “how our children have been lately,” I lose all sense of how, ordinarily, I engage other people in conversation. I become bewildered.

  I went to Parents’ Day today, I told Momo when I returned. She gave me a petulant nod. You didn’t forget this time. Twice in the past it had slipped my mind. You weren’t there today, were you? she asked me the first time, and the second. Before the parents go to talk with the teacher, they sit in on the class. So she could tell right away. She didn’t blame me for having skipped it, but it occurred to me that perhaps unconsciously I had been avoiding a place I couldn’t grow accustomed to, and I felt ashamed.

  “What did you say?”

  “That you seem to be enjoying school, you know.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Sorry.”

  A sigh escapes me. I take care to keep Momo from hearing. She’s that age. I say the words in my mind. She seems so much more confident than me. Confident in her ability to survive her life. Confident because she has no knowledge of what lies beyond the edge.

  Or maybe she knows. Maybe her young world contains within it all of life, the way a drop of water holds the universe. What was it like? I can’t remember. Your mother really is a dunce. I speak the words aloud. You’re a dunce? Momo asks, astonishment written on her face. She comes over, grinning. I love you, Momo. You’re such a cutie, such a good girl. My thoughts are in a whirl. I want to hug her. And yet I hold back. When she was close, I never hesitated. To fold her into my chest, to gather her in.

  I forget my fear, and give her a tentative hug.

  Laughing, she slides deftly from my arms, away.

  COME WITH ME to the department store? Mother asked.

  She wanted to send a thank-you gift. I needed to send gifts to two or three people myself, so I agreed without hesitation. At the store, several things came and followed me. One in the thronging basement grocery, near the end of an isle, near the corner. On the side of the escalator where no one was standing, I noticed another.

  They are always faint in the department store. Any number of them, faintly fading and then coming back, following and drifting off. Too dim for me to know if they are female or male.

  “How would dried shiitake be?” Mother is saying. Dried shiitake? Maybe, I say to keep the conversation going. It is better not to speak too clearly, better to seem unsure, I wonder rather than that’s a good idea—because this is how we keep it going. To acknowledge explicitly that anything is good is a weight on both of us.

  We filled out the shipping labels to send a package of dried shiitake to four people, her one, my three. I was writing an address when another thing came. This one was a woman, clearly. Not faint at all, even though we were in a store.

  “I’ll be back, I’m going to the restroom.” Quickly completing the address and handing the labels to Mother, I hurried to the restroom in its out-of-the-way location—invisible, dead space. The blurry reflection of a woman in the mirror was all it was. Watching it out of the corner of my eye, I stepped into a stall. I was sick to my stomach. I vomited, just a little.

  Soon I felt better, and I rinsed my mouth at the sink. I tipped my head back and gargled. The woman stayed. Perhaps she wanted to tell me something. This had never happened before. I had never thrown up before, either. Though I didn’t know if she was to blame.

  Mother was standing, waiting, when I returned.

  “What should we do about lunch, Kei?”

  “One of the restaurants upstairs?”

  “I feel like having chirashi-zushi.”

  The woman wavered. The air around her bent into darkness for a second, then brightened again, like the flickering of a candle flame. I didn’t feel sick again after that. The unpleasantness had already left me, through my mouth. We ascended to the restaurant floor, the woman trailing. Mother ordered eel; I had the chirashi-zushi. The restaurants in department stores have such high ceilings. Voices resound. We ate everything, leaving nothing. When we left the store, just like that, the woman was gone.

  SOMETIME LATER, THE same woman came and followed me two days straight, so I decided to go again to Manazuru. I had a feeling this woman had been involved, somehow, with Rei.

  “I want to go to the beach,” Momo said.

  So I asked her, “Do you want to go with me?”

  And she nodded.

  Dress warmly, it’s still cool. Okay. The train may rock, you know. Sure.

  Momo suffers from motion sickness. It’s okay, I’ve gotten over it now. I have to take the train to school, after all. When Momo announced that she wanted to attend a private school, I worried less about the entrance exam and the tuition than about the daily commute. You’re so out of date, Mom, Momo teased.

  “Is it for work?” Momo asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “No particular reason.” It’s the wrong season for a holiday.

  “I wonder if Grandma will come, too?” Momo says happily.

  “Grandma says she won’t come.”

  “Why?”

  I don’t want to go anywhere too strong. That’s what Mother had said. Strong places wear me out. You two go on, by yourselves. She was saying no, and yet she spoke the words as though she were singing. Mother is close, I thought. This is how it is, three female bodies, singing, laughing, something unknown that comes and follows, here in this house.

  Manazuru, I’ve never been there before. Momo smiles. It was my first time, too, the other day. We smile together. For a second, I recall how, when the sky suddenly opened out at the tip of the cape and I gazed down at the ocean below, the wind had teased my cheeks, my ears.

  two

  THERE’S NO NOISE from the tracks, is there? Momo said. Noise from the tracks? I asked. Then Momo tilted her head and answered, very quietly, Tatan tatan. Tatan tatan.

  With that she turned and looked out the window. We sat in diagonally facing seats, having left Tokyo Station before noon. Momo was inside, I was near the aisle. She was right, we couldn’t hear the pulsing rattle of the heavy iron car. The air brimmed with noise, but nothing emerged, no clear-cut rhythmic line that the human ear might hear as sound. I felt as though the carriage were simply hovering, my body within it, in a raucous place.

  I wasn’t exactly looking at Momo’s neck. So thin. Still, years have passed since it outgrew the alarming thinness of her first years, when it seemed the slightest pressure would snap it.

  Tea? I asked, aligning two small plastic bottles on the windowsill. Momo took one, then immediately put it back. I twisted off the cap of the other and drank. The liquid coursed down my throat. It felt cool and good. You should have some, I suggested, and again she took the bottle in her hand. Indecision. No, I’ll wait, she said, and gave the bottle a small shake. Bubbles rose.

  Don’t play, I scolded, taking the tone I would use with a small child. I’m not playing. There is an edge in her voice. The edge cuts unexpectedly deep. Momo has no intimation of this, of my hurt. She is simply on edge. It is just a reply, automatic.

  Only Momo can wound me like this. She is merciless. She presses, unconcerned, into the softest places. Ignorant of the oozing pus, the scars. Because with her, I can reveal only the softness. The parts of me I ought to cover, crust over, protect. I remember how, very long ago, she was of my body, and I am unable to raise a barrier, rebuff.

  “A BEACHSIDE RESORT hotel,” Momo says aloud.

  “Resort. Kind of makes you blush, doesn’t it?” When I grinned, she grinned.

  I wouldn’t stay with Momo in the guest house with the “SUNA” nameplate. The woman and man who ran it, mother and son, I thought, exuded too adult an atmosphere—I was unwilling to spend the night there with a child. I worried that it might overwhelm the boundaries of our togetherness, her and me.

  The beachside resort hotel was recommended to us at the information kiosk. Are we really going here? Momo peered at th
e photograph. Such an innocent expression. The woman in the kiosk was talking on the phone with the hotel. Momo went outside. There was a whitish sky. The temperature wasn’t that cool. Tokyo was bone-chillingly cold. Yes, it’s warmer by the sea. There are plum trees blooming everywhere, the woman in the kiosk says. Just one night, right? You can check in whenever you like.

  Let’s go to the seaside, Momo says, her feet picking up into a dance.

  This whole place is the seaside.

  I haven’t been to the beach in ages.

  The three of us used to go to the shore. Rei and Momo and I. Every year, without fail. She and I kept going even after he disappeared, until she turned ten.

  The first time, Momo was just over three months old, an infant with a lolling head, and the instant we strode out onto the sand I was seized with fear. It was all right as long as I told myself I was nothing but my own body, but when I let my feelings shift toward Momo’s infant weight in my hands, I became terribly afraid.

  All this was too intense for a baby. The wind, the tide, the crashing waves. I leaned over Momo, sheltering her. She began to wail. What are you doing that for, can’t you see she’s hot, she’s crying, Rei said.

  It’s so obvious. It frightens her. Of course she’s crying. And yet Rei had no understanding of this. He chattered to Momo. Look, see how big the ocean is! I’m going home. Now. Rei was taken aback when I insisted. Startled to the core.

  In the end, we cowered for an hour, as though in hiding, in the beach house, and then left. What a strange person you are, Kei. On the train back, Rei chuckled to himself, several times. Momo was sound asleep. Mother scolded me later. What were you thinking, taking an infant to a place like that, with such strong sunlight! She hasn’t even begun to teethe! The next year, around the same time, we went to the beach again. We three. By then, I was no longer afraid.

  IT BEGAN TO rain. Sudden gusts of wind.

  This sucks, huh. No point being at the seaside with weather like this. Momo nudged closer. Beyond the expanse of glass, we could see the ocean. The choppy waves. A small terrace jutted out beyond the building, two white plastic chairs. Look, Mom, it really is a resort. Momo pointed. The chairs were drenched.

  Together we pressed our faces to the window and looked at the rain. Momo’s body was warm. Her breath came rapidly. Poor thing, I thought. Pity the young. Pity those who don’t know. Not that knowing, or maturity, frees us from pity. But it lessens.

  Together we stretched out on the bed and read the hotel guide. They’ve got a fancy dinner. The word fancy is tinctured with laughter. What do you say, should we enjoy a fancy dinner at our beachside resort? Yeah, let’s! It’s expensive, you know. Are you short on cash, Mom?

  The rain beats down, driven by the wind. So far nothing has come and followed me, even though we are in Manazuru. Our room is bright, very clean. In one of the deep drawers in the built-in chest, I discover two white robes, two pairs of white pajamas. Before long Momo is trying on a robe, putting it on over her clothes. It feels lumpy, she says, peeling it off; she starts removing her clothes as well. Once she is down to a T-shirt and underwear, she puts the robe back on. She sits at the edge of her chair and slouches against the backrest, folds her arms behind her head, stares at the ceiling.

  “I always wanted to wear a robe,” she says, sitting up and fiddling with the pile at the hem.

  I recollect the smell of the hospital. Because the room is so bright, perhaps. The smell of the private room where they put my father after his heart attack, when they moved him, for the time being, out of intensive care. I was struck by the hospital’s brightness, and by its silence. In bed, my father was hardly there. We took off the gown they had given him in intensive care and helped him into his own pajamas. Mother, the nurse, and I, trying to be gentle as we changed his clothes. He was conscious now, but kept his eyes shut tight. Tubes ran into his mouth and nose. The first time he went to the hospital, he was discharged, after a while; the next year, after his second heart attack, he wasn’t.

  “It looks good on you,” I said, and Momo smirked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got enough cash for our fancy dinner.”

  “Great.”

  “When the rain lets up, we can go outside.”

  “Do you think it will stop?”

  “It will stop, eventually.”

  “Eventually—”

  She broke off, toying again with the hem of her robe.

  IT STOPPED AS suddenly as it had begun.

  After a rain, the scent of the grass is deeper. Young grass, not even high enough to count as undergrowth, grass like the fuzz on a baby’s skin, exuding its smell. We went out for a walk, circled back. Momo slung the strap of her small bag diagonally across her shoulder. The gusts had not stopped blowing. Our hair was whipping about. Momo took out a clip, gathered her hair, fixed it with a sharp snap. A stray strand fell across her forehead.

  “Did Dad—”

  “Did Dad what?”

  The sand over the beach was darkly wet. We spread handkerchiefs on a boulder and sat down, side by side.

  “Did Dad smoke?”

  “Occasionally.” I had to think before I replied. I couldn’t remember.

  Momo didn’t ask anything else. Around the time I first considered taking down our nameplate, it became possible to speak about Rei. Until then, I acted as though nothing had happened. I couldn’t talk about him, I couldn’t think about him, I didn’t dream of him. I’ve heard that when you start to dream of what you have lost, it means the hurt is healing.

  When I learned to speak of Rei, I showed Momo his photograph. She never asked until I was able to talk about him. She comprehended. Her body knew. Knew it was useless to ask.

  I told her only that he had vanished. I couldn’t think straight. We fell in love and married, we lived happily together, a child was born. We lived happily with our child, right up until the time he vanished. It would have been fair to tell her all this, but I didn’t.

  Momo was eight when I told her, and she didn’t say much of anything. Only later, when she entered junior high, did she tell me how she had felt.

  Back then, I didn’t really understand your explanation. Daddy left, you told me, right, and so I just thought it was a terrible thing to do. He wasn’t there anymore, so it didn’t matter, he could be terrible or not, it didn’t matter. This is what she told me in junior high.

  “Did you and Daddy love each other?” she asked. Perched on the boulder.

  “Yes.”

  Even as I replied, I was jolted by the words: love each other. The stray strand of hair drifted up lightly on the wind. Her forehead is bare. Her eyebrows are like Rei’s. The easy, gentle curve.

  “I wonder what it would be like if he were here.”

  “There’s no telling.”

  “You had a father, you must know.”

  “He was a totally different person from your father.”

  “So it’s different, then, with different fathers?” Momo said, blinking her eyes. “It’s chilly, huh? Do you want to head back?”

  The handkerchiefs we had spread to sit on were damp, the colors vivid. For the first time in ages, Momo and I held hands. Such a sturdy hand. It’s as big as mine. We don’t talk much about Dad, do we? I said as we headed back. I never dream of Rei, even now.

  ON THE WAY back, something followed. It was the woman.

  She stayed for dinner, too. Snatching food, eating. Momo’s food, mine. She appeared to be fond of shrimp, kept plucking them from a plate of seafood in tomato sauce. She stole the same pieces repeatedly, as long as they stayed on the plate. The food itself remained even after she had taken and eaten it, so she could steal it again and again.

  “You must be famished,” I said. The woman nodded.

  “I’m just getting started,” Momo replied, too.

  I wasn’t talking to you. I spoke the words inside, not aloud. What a good child, responding so politely—a good, obliging child. I gave Momo a warm, cheerful s
mile. The woman grimaced. Like a burst of electric current, a flash of numbness.

  Eventually I realized that I was angry. The woman fled. I will not allow anything to come between Momo and me. This, I realized, was the thought I had been thinking.

  Out on the shore, I had become closer. Closer with Momo. I want to be close with Momo. That’s what I am after. But not Momo. She becomes distant. Draws slightly closer. And then withdraws again. So smoothly, aware or unaware, she repeats the cycle.

  I will not allow it. I hadn’t felt like this since Momo was a baby. In those days, it wasn’t even a matter of allowing, forbidding, nothing could intrude between Momo and me. Because we were close in those days—every day, all day. It was far from fun. It was exhausting. I held myself still, like a crouching animal, passing time. Nursing, cooking, sweeping, dusting, drying, folding, my body was ceaselessly busy, forever active, but my gaze was never turned outward. Frozen, crouching, my gaze still.

  “Something went by just now,” Momo said.

  “What?”

  “An airplane, maybe.”

  It wasn’t the woman. Momo was looking at the sky. Our round table was by the window, nothing outside but the sweep of ocean and sky. From time to time, the waiter came to check how much food was left on our plates.

  That was delicious, Momo said, glancing up at the waiter when he came to clear the table. Thank you, I’m happy to hear that, the waiter replied, beaming. The woman came back over.

  DO YOU KNOW Rei? I asked the woman.

  Momo was asleep. In the other bed, curled up, a tight, delicate bump. I couldn’t hear her breathing. Only a sort of sigh that escaped when she turned.