Goodbye Tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto

  And every time I thought about this, I’d wonder.

  Had Tsugumi felt the same way?

  One day my father broke his leg.

  Apparently he’d been climbing a ladder in his company’s storeroom when he tumbled off and plunged to the floor, still clasping a big load of materials that he’d taken from one of the highest shelves. My mother and I sped to the hospital in a chaos of agitation and found my father in bed, smiling sheepishly. Emotional pain really gets to him, but he can handle physical pain.

  My mother and I went back home, both feeling very relieved, and then my mother headed out to the hospital again to take my father the clothes he would need for his two or three days of hospitalization. I was left at home all alone.

  It was then that the phone rang.

  Something told me this was a phone call I wasn’t going to like. The first thing that drifted into my mind when I heard the ring was an image of my father’s face. So I lifted the receiver very slowly.

  “Hello?”

  But it was Yōko.

  “Are your mom and dad around?”

  “Nope. As a matter of fact my dad broke his leg, and he’s in the hospital. He must be the biggest bozo around.” I laughed.

  But Yōko didn’t join me in laughing.

  And then she said it. “Something’s wrong with Tsugumi.”

  I fell silent. I was remembering Tsugumi’s white profile, the way it had been when I went to visit her, how she had insisted that she was going to die. Come to think of it, these instincts of hers never missed the mark.

  “What do you mean?” I finally managed to say. “What’s wrong?”

  “Until noon today the doctors were saying that she’d probably pull through all right, but she’s hardly been conscious at all since yesterday, and she has this terrible fever . . . All of a sudden things seem to have gotten worse.”

  “Is she allowed to have visitors?”

  “No, not right now. But my mom and I are staying in the hospital.”

  Yōko’s voice was very calm. I could sense how difficult she was finding it even now to accept that all this was really happening.

  “Okay, I’ll come down first thing tomorrow morning,” I said. “No matter what her condition is like, we’ll take turns watching over her, okay?” My voice sounded as calm as Yōko’s, precisely the opposite of how I felt inside. It echoed with the force of a pledge. “Have you told Kyōichi?”

  “Yeah, I called him. He said he’d be right over.”

  “Yōko—” I said, “if anything should happen, you know, I want you to give me a call right away, even if it’s the middle of the night.”

  “Sure, of course.”

  The call was over.

  I told my mother the bad news when she got back home, and she suggested that we leave my father to his own devices the next day and go down to help take care of Tsugumi. We set about preparing for the trip.

  I pulled the phone into my room and set it close to my pillow before I went to bed. What if it rings . . .? In the depth of the night, my sleep was shallow. And all during that ambiguous sleep, within the coming and going fragments of dreams, I continued to feel the existence of that phone. All night it was there, a sensation as cold and unpleasant as a rusty mass of iron.

  Yōko and Tsugumi were never absent from my dreams. The scenes were infuriatingly disconnected, and each time I got a glimpse of Tsugumi through that fury I would slip into a mood that was sacred, slightly sweet. The look on her face was as surly as usual, and she would be out on the beach or back at the Yamamoto Inn, making various apparently impudent comments, just the way she always had. And vet as ordinary as it all was, I felt uneasy being with her. Being with Tsugumi, just like always.

  The morning sunlight came streaming straight down over my shut eyelids, and I groaned and sat up. The phone hadn’t rung. Wondering how things were going with Tsugumi, I opened the curtains.

  It was a lovely morning.

  Autumn was definitely here. The sky echoed with the clear tones of a pale faintly greenish blue, the blue stretching on and on as far as your eye could see, and the trees swayed slowly back and forth, cutting wide arcs into the sweeping autumn wind. Everything was steeped in the tranquil fragrance of autumn, and it all came together to form a soundless and translucent world. It felt as if it had been ages since I’d tasted the joy of a morning this dazzlingly bright, and for a while I just sat there with a blank mind, gazing out at the land before me. It was all projected so clearly into my head that it made my heart ache.

  We had no idea how Tsugumi was doing now, but my mother and I made up our minds that either way we should go and see. We were eating breakfast in preparation for starting out when the telephone rang.

  It was Aunt Masako.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  And my aunt began, “Well, to tell the truth . . .” There was a slight twinge of embarrassment in her voice. She laughed.

  “You mean she’s okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, she’s okay,” said my aunt. “To tell the truth, she’s made a complete turnaround and is doing so well now that it’s as if nothing was ever wrong to begin with. I guess maybe we went a little overboard.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I felt all the tension draining from my body.

  “Late yesterday afternoon her condition suddenly took a turn for the worse, you see, and since that sort of thing hadn’t happened for quite a while we may have jumped to conclusions a bit too quickly. The doctors decided that things were looking bad, and they did absolutely everything they could, they were just wonderful . . . and they were all amazed at how strong Tsugumi is, you know, her will to live. For a while I really thought we might be headed for something awful, but this morning she’s just as settled as she could be, as if yesterday were all a lie, and she’s in there sleeping like a baby . . . We’ve been through all sorts of agony because of Tsugumi’s health, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to deal with anything like this. Of course, you can be sure lots more unexpected things will happen in the future, but . . .” Aunt Masako said this with resignation, but her tone was bright. “Anyway, I’m sorry we gave you such a scare. If something really does happen we’ll give you a call right away and make you come give us a hand, so don’t worry about coming today. Just stay put and take it easy. Sorry again for making you anxious.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear she’s all right,” I said. Together with the feeling of relief that hit me, I felt a stream of something warm surging up into my heart, as if my blood had just started circulating again. I lobbed the phone over to my mother and went back to my room, then snuggled down into my bed. Washed in morning sun, I closed my eyes and went to sleep listening to the distant murmur of my mother’s delighted voice. This time I was able to fall asleep right away, and I was very solidly out.

  It was a deep, gentle sleep.

  A few days later, exactly at noon, I got a call from Tsugumi.

  “Howdy, ugly wretch!” I’d hardly finished lifting the receiver and saying hello when her voice came hurtling out of the phone, and all at once, in some space beyond thought, the knowledge crashed over me that it would have been absolutely unthinkable for me to lose this voice. Never to hear the familiar, faltering, past-recalling, high-pitched quiver of Tsugumi’s voice. I could hear a clamor of voices on the other end of the line, names being called out over a microphone, the screams of children crying.

  “What’s up with you? Are you still at the hospital?” I asked. “Are you feeling okay now? You aren’t sick anymore?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. And yes, I’m in the hospital,” Tsugumi replied, and then started saying things that made no sense. “Kinda sounds like it hasn’t gotten there yet, though, doesn’t it? Very odd. I can’t believe stuff like this actually happens. That dumb pinhead of a nurse must have heard the address wrong. She must be the biggest ass in the world.”

  “Tsugumi? What are you talking about?” I asked, wondering if maybe the fever had done something to
her mind. But she made no response, provided no answer to my question. The silence lasted so long that I found myself calling an image of her into my mind. A single composite Tsugumi, pieced together from all the different situations I had ever seen her in . . . Her fine, flowing hair, the fiery light in her eyes, her thin wrists. The lines of her ankles when she walks barefoot, her perfectly white teeth when she smiles. The tilt of her eyebrows as she scowls, her face turned to the side, and the ocean she’s looking at. The shore swept by shining waves . . .

  “See, I was dying,” Tsugumi said suddenly, very clearly.

  “Oh give me a break!” I said, laughing. “You come trotting down the hall of the hospital just as healthy as can be, and then come out with this dying stuff? You ought to know better than that, Tsugumi.”

  “God, you’re such an idiot! I almost died, really! My sense of everything slipped way off into the distance, and I saw this enormous light, and I felt this urge to go toward it, you know . . . but then as I drew closer, my dear departed mother appeared and called out, No, no, you mustn’t come here! . . .”

  “Lies from start to finish. Just which mother of yours has died?”

  Tsugumi hadn’t been this lively in a while, and I was glad she was.

  “True, that was a lie. But I mean it, things really did get pretty dangerous. I just kept getting weaker and weaker every day, you know, and I seriously felt that this time I couldn’t make it,” Tsugumi said. “So I wrote you a letter.”

  “A letter?” I blurted out, startled. “To me?”

  “That’s right,” Tsugumi said. “It’s pretty damn hard to believe I could be such a wuss, but there you go. And here I am, still alive. Of course moaning about it doesn’t change a thing. The nurse I asked to take care of the damned letter says she’s already sent it, so there you go, I couldn’t get it back if I tried. I’d tell you to throw it away without opening it, but you’re such a nasty little weasel that you’d read it anyway. So what the hell, go ahead and read it.”

  “Which is it, Tsugumi? Should I read it or not?”

  Tsugumi has written me a letter . . .

  The thought was strangely exciting.

  “I don’t care. Go ahead and read it,” Tsugumi said, a laugh in her voice. “After what I’ve just been through, I do sort of feel like I’ve died and come back. So maybe what I said in that letter was true. I get the feeling that from now on I may start changing, little by little.”

  I didn’t quite understand what Tsugumi was trying to say. And yet I had the feeling that somewhere down inside I did understand, and for a moment I found it impossible to reply. Then Tsugumi spoke.

  “Listen, Kyōichi just walked over, so I’ll put him on. Ciao.”

  I tried to call her back, but apparently she was already gone.

  At first all I heard was Kyōichi shouting, “Go on, get back to your room!” Then he picked up the receiver and said hello, without having any idea at all who he was talking to.

  You just can’t get any more egocentric than Tsugumi. She was probably already striding down the hall toward her room. Her small body, sticking her chest out with all the pompous self-assuredness of a king.

  I smiled wryly and returned his hello.

  “Oh Maria, it’s you, huh?” Kyōichi laughed.

  “I hear things were pretty bad with Tsugumi,” I said.

  “Yeah, but she sure seems to be in awfully good shape now,” Kyōichi said. “I don’t get it at all. I mean, for a time they weren’t even letting her have visitors or anything, you know, that’s how bad things got. It sure gave me a fright, let me tell you.”

  “Well, give her my best, will you? We didn’t get to talk much,” I said. And then, very smoothly, the question slipped from my mouth. “Kyōichi? Tell me, do you think that when Tsugumi goes off to live in their new pension in the mountains the two of you will just naturally drift apart?”

  “Hmm. I don’t think I can really say what the future will bring until I’ve actually seen what it’s like being apart, but I find it hard to believe that I’ll come across many girls as intense as Tsugumi. She’s such a great kid, she really is, you just can’t beat her. I’m sure I’ll never forget this summer. And even if we do break up, she’s been carved so intensely into my mind and my heart that the mark she’s left will stay in me my whole life. I can tell you that for sure,” Kyōichi said, speaking very calmly. “And don’t forget that from now on our hotel will be here for you all, even if the Yamamoto Inn isn’t. You can all come and stay whenever you like.”

  “So I guess we’ll still be connected somehow or other even after this, right? Just like we were this summer?”

  “I bet you’re right.” Kyōichi chuckled. “Hold on—Yōko just walked into the lobby. Wow, she’s got a bunch of lilies with her and, oh, oh . . . oh man! She just smashed into a patient at the corner of one of the halls, and now she’s apologizing to the person . . . all right, yeah, here she comes, here she comes! Okay, I’ll pass you over to her. Bye.”

  Yōko came on the line, saying, Hello? Who on earth am I talking to? and I answered. It occurred to me that it was like a parade—they just keep coming. I sat down on the chair next to our phone and kept chatting with Yōko, gazing up at the sky outside. The noon sun poured down, lighting up the room and its squareness. And I felt a quiet sense of determination rising up into me, slowly flooding me, but without assuming any particular shape, and, of course, for no reason I could understand. From now on this is where I will live.

  Dear Maria,

  Well, things have turned out just as I said they would.

  In fact you may be on your way here to attend my funeral when this letter arrives. This is the real “Haunted Mailbox.”

  Having a funeral in autumn is so lonely, no fun at all.

  Over the past few days I’ve written you a hell of a lot of letters. I’d write one and then tear it up and then start writing again. I don’t know why it has to be you, of all people. But for some reason I can’t help thinking that of all the people around me, only you can really read the meanings of the words I use, and understand what I’m saying.

  And so, now that death really does seem to be bearing down on me, this notion of leaving a letter behind for you has become my only hope, the one wish left in this heart of mine. When I imagine all the rest of them standing around crying until it no longer even has any meaning, coming up with their own pleasant interpretations of who I was—let me tell you, it makes me want to puke. Kyōichi is worth keeping an eye on, I’ll give you that, but love is a battle, and you can’t ever let your lover see your weaknesses, not even when you arrive at the very end.

  Why is it that as much of an airhead as you are, you still manage to take stock of things, to look at the world in such a bighearted, reliable way? I just don’t get it at all.

  One other thing. Right after I came to the hospital this time, I read a novel called The Dead Zone. I only started reading it to help make the time pass, but it was much more engaging than I’d expected, and I ended up reading it straight through. I started feeling worse and worse, my breath was coming in gasps—but for someone whose body is as fragile as mine, watching the main character keep growing steadily weaker and weaker was a pretty heartrending experience. The main character gets smashed up in a car accident, and it’s about what happens after that, one thing piled on top of another, all these horrible things that keep pushing him on toward death, and the final chapter has these letters addressed to his father and his father’s girlfriend that he leaves behind when he dies. They’re letters from the dead zone. And you know, when I read that part even I couldn’t help shedding a few tears. And I found myself feeling extremely envious of the guy, really yearning to be able to try this business of writing a letter and having someone receive it. That’s why I’m writing this now.

  Those days when I was digging away at my hole, hoping to drop that wretched little brat down into it, I kept thinking about all sorts of things. To pass the time while I worked, you know—on-the-job enterta
inment. And then, the night everything happened, as I listened to all that stuff Yōko said through her tears, knowing that the big idiot might very well go on looking after me just as she always has, never even going off to get married—listening to her then, I began to understand things even better than I had outside, in an even more violent rush. I felt as if I had gotten a clear look at the boundaries of who I am. I saw myself as nothing but this pale little girl surrounded by people barely able to keep her flimsy body from collapsing, a girl who has lived her life from one day to the next thinking only of herself, running around throwing tantrums, and I realized that I would probably be like this for the rest of my life.

  Of course it’s not like I’m having second thoughts about the way I’ve lived or anything, and I’ve known about all of this for a long time.

  It’s just that it felt strangely good to let these thoughts drift through my mind while I was in that state, working at the outer limit of what my body could take, feeling as if I might faint—and soon I found myself unable to shake the feeling that I would be dying within just a few days. After all, it seems reasonable to say that digging a hole as deep as the one I made would be a pretty major undertaking even for someone in good health. I found it a painful task, very well suited to be the last of my life.

  And since I was digging that hole in the neighbors’ garden, not ours, there was no way I could let anyone find out. I only worked at night. Dragging the soil out and away little by little, I continued to dig.

  Toward the end the hole really got deep, and when I looked up from the bottom I could see the stars. The earth was hard, and my hands got cuts all over them, and every day I would stare into the coming summer dawn.