I Called Him Necktie

by Milena Michiko Flašar

  15

  The sound of him clearing his throat. He pulled himself together. At first his chin quivered, then it became still and he didn’t blink. With a cigarette between his lips, he went behind the bushes. A zipper whizzed open and closed again, twigs crackled. I had seen too much. Even before he got back, I was on my feet and had run away. Out of the park, beyond the intersection, past Fujimoto’s general store. Home. Into my room. The click of the lock. I was in a safe place. As dust whirled, I drew the curtains shut.

  The next morning I slept longer than usual. I heard the alarm clock ringing next door, stayed in bed, went to sleep again. I dreamed of an invisible thread robbing me of air. I finally woke up gasping. Nothing had happened. Guided by this principle - nothing had happened - and its corollaries - nothing happens, nothing will ever happen - I went on my way.

  As I entered the park he sat bent over his newspaper. Beside him his empty bento box. He was snoring. Spread on his knees, the Giants and the secret of their success, I read, creeping past him. He had undone his tie. It dangled loose round his neck. Hair crumpled at the back. I gave in. And that too was a decision. To give in, and give him, sleeping there, a name. It had gone that far, I gave him a name. Not Honda. Not Yamada. Not Kawaguchi. I simply called him Necktie. The name suited him. Redandgray.

  16

  So, Necktie.

  It is the tie that wears you, not the other way around. Later that was a joke between us. The tie wears you. At which he smiled, then laughed, a great roar broke out. You are right. It’s a mistake to think that I’m the one who wears it. I don’t wear anything, nothing at all. At which point he broke off abruptly, then fell silent, stayed silent. If I could have foreseen this silence, I would have given him a different name. Yet it was worth it, for the sake of his laugh, the laughter that preceded the silence. He laughed much too seldom.

  The name binds me to him. Like the vague sympathy beforehand, I began to feel a vague responsibility. To be with him, not to leave him alone. It’s grotesque to feel responsibility for a person about whom you could no longer just say: I would recognize him again. Rather: I know him. I know how he breathes, when he sleeps. The name entangled me. I no longer felt the freedom to simply get up and leave. That a name should possess such power.

  17

  Two weeks passed. He appeared every Monday, exactly at nine, every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. He only stayed away on weekends. I missed him then. I had gotten so used to his presence that in his absence my presence in the park seemed somehow pointless. Without him and the questions he posed, I was a question mark with no purpose. There it is on a sheet of white paper, questioning the void.

  Once, on a cloudy Friday in June, he was just about to nod off when it began to drizzle. He sat up, startled, stuck his newspaper over his head, whereas I, fortunately prepared, opened my umbrella, drew in my legs, and huddled under the protective shelter. First it dripped, then the drops soon turned into ribbons. He extended his hands into the rain, let the paper fall, closed his eyes. I watched as the water collected in his hands. He had formed them into a bowl. Plip-plop, it sprinkled on him. I was surprised. No salaryman likes to sit out in the rain. The park all around was indistinct and blurry. People scurrying everywhere. Nobody who is healthy sits out in the rain. Completely absorbed, already soaked to the bone, he seemed to experience no greater joy than to get wet like that. I stared transfixed at his happy face. He opened his eyes. He looked at me unexpectedly through the rain. I jumped up. I hadn’t counted on that. Not with this unexpected, knowing look. I am not alone, it said, you are there. Then he closed his eyes again.

  18

  I had fallen out of my anonymity, out of my cocoon. But that’s not quite right. His glance and the recognition he shined on me had merely illuminated the space around me a little. In the mornings he nodded to me. I nodded back. In the evenings he raised his hand as he left. I raised mine. A silent understanding. You are here. I am here. We both have the right to simply be here.

  What changed between us was just one thing. I guessed it. Since he had seen me, I had become an image within him. Now he had a conception of me, and his daily greeting related to the image he had of me. He regarded it. Quietly. His look was not invasive. It was stored in his memories. He remembered a day by the sea, with fine sand, rough dune grass; he remembered his father’s beard, hard stubble on his chin, a certain light, how it fell on his wife’s back one morning in late autumn, a smile in a shop window, by chance, the warm fur of a cat that snuggled up against him. He had thousands of memories, thousands of images, and now, since he had noticed me, I was one of them.

  I let it happen. I offered him my profile, held still, so he could absorb it. Looked over at him as well. Absorbed him further within me. So out of our minimal acquaintance grew a minimal friendship.

  19

  To speak with one another would still at this point in time have been going too far. There was a frontier, the gravel path. Here my bench, there – his. Between them were blades of grass, a rolling ball, a child tumbling after it.

  I had practiced forgetting how to speak for two years. Granted, I had not succeeded. The language I had learned permeated me, and even when I was silent, my silence was eloquent. I spoke inner monologues, spoke incessantly into the void. But the sound of my voice had become alien to me. At night I sometimes woke bathed in sweat from a nightmare, only to find it continuing in the hoarse Aah forced from my belly, my lungs, my throat. Who is that shouting there, I asked myself, and fell asleep again. Wandered through a landscape in which every sound echoed as it was uttered. The last sentence I had spoken had been: I can no longer. Period. A vibrating period. After that something snapped shut. The effort it would cost to go on talking from where I had stopped was outweighed by the futility of expressing the inexpressible in words.

  My room was like a cave, as always. I had grown up here. I had essentially lost my innocence here. I mean, growing up signifies a loss. You think you are winning. Really you are losing yourself. I mourned the child I had once been, whom I heard in rare moments pummeling wildly in my heart. At thirteen it was too late. At fourteen. At fifteen. Puberty a battle, I lost myself by the end. I hated my face in the mirror, the growing, the surging within. The scars on my hand all stem from the attempts to make it better. Countless mirrors smashed. I didn’t want to be a man who thinks he is winning. Didn’t want to fit into any suit. Not to be a father who tells his son: You must work. Father’s voice. Mechanical. He worked. When I looked at him I saw a future in which I would slowly, too slowly, lose my life. Nothing works, I replied. And then: I can no longer. This last sentence was my maxim. The motto that defined me.

  20

  Defined in that way I was sitting on my bench when he suddenly reappeared, exactly at nine. It was a Thursday, I remember: He arrived hunched over, as if under a heavy load. I thought he’d aged overnight, with wrinkles on his neck as he nodded to me. So there you are. I nodded back. And more than that: I nodded an invitation. To my own amazement I nodded to him, who had aged, and even nodded again when he came towards me, warily, across the frontier, and offered me a cigarette.

  Ohara Tetsu. He bowed slightly. Hajimemashite.* You don’t smoke? That’s good. Better not to start at all. It’s an addiction. I need it, you see. He sat down beside me, his briefcase between us. The clicking of the lighter, he puffed away. One of those things I can’t stop. Again I nodded. I’ve tried everything. No use. Can’t get away from it. Don’t have the willpower. I’m sure you know about that. A husky voice, he coughed quietly. In the firm, he continued, everyone smokes. It’s the stress, it never stops. In the firm. He bent down, stubbed out the cigarette. We spent the rest of the morning in silence on our bench.

  Now and then someone came by. A mother pushing a stroller. A man limping. A group of truants in crumpled uniforms. The earth was turning, birds were flying. A butterfly landed for a few seconds on the bench across from me. Sitting together we watched as it swooped away. A faint recognition t
hat from now on there was no going back.

  21

  Kyōko made this, he said, as he unpacked his bento at midday. Karaage* with potato salad. My wife. She’s a wonderful cook. Want some? No? He smiled in embarrassment. You know, she gets up every morning at six o’clock to prepare my bento. For thirty-three years. Every morning at six. And the best thing about it: It tastes wonderful! He rubbed his belly. Almost too good, he hesitated, for someone like me. But I’m lucky, aren’t I? And with that he started eating.

  In my inner eye I saw Kyōko, his wife, in her nightgown standing in the kitchen. Sizzling oil. A fleck of marinade on her sleeve. She chops and stirs. Peels. Cuts. Salts. The whole house is filled with the sound of chopping and stirring. Of peeling. Cutting. Salting. He wakes up. Still half asleep he thinks: I’m lucky. He thinks it with a sadness almost unbearable in its infinity: I have damned good luck. He gets up. Goes into the bathroom. Bends over the sink and turns on the cold, very cold, water. Puts his face in it, his hair, his neck. Turns the tap further. Comes up. Turns it off. Stays under. Hears the glugging in the drain. Turns it on. Off. On. Off. Watches how the water separates into drops, the drops into dribbles. A smear of toothpaste on the edge of the sink. White on white. He pushes his finger in and – Kyōko doesn’t know. A faint burp. He spoke as if to himself: Kyōko doesn’t know that I come here. I haven’t told her. Stretched syllables: I ha-ven’t to-ld her that I lo-st my jo-b.

  22

  The pause afterwards. I had become a confidant. As soon as it was uttered, his secret made us allies. It weighed on my feet, and it was impossible now to get up and go. He had confided in me, me alone. I regarded my shoes, which pinched. Shapeless and worn out. He stretched his heels out half a meter in front of him. Black leather, polished smooth. Father’s shoes, it went through my head. I wonder whether he too sometimes has a longing to confide in someone. With some bitterness I noticed: I knew less about him than about the person whose name I had only discovered barely three hours ago. One more reason to stay sitting beside him and to nod to him over his briefcase and beyond.

  It was pretty strange. He continued speaking. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell Kyōko. No, I wanted to. But then I couldn’t bring myself to. Something held me back. Habit, maybe. Gray smoke escaped from his mouth. The habit of getting up early and washing my face. She puts on my tie. As I leave I call out: Have a good day. She calls out: You too. She waves goodbye. At the first bend in the path I turn back towards her. Her figure in front of the house. Like a fluttering flag. I could run back. But there’s the bus coming. I get in. It goes to the station. Onto the express train. To the A. Into the subway. To the O. In its way, it works. I don’t. He was still laughing. It works.

  23

  And you? What brings you here? I shrugged my shoulders. No idea? Hm, you’re still young. Eighteen? I froze. Nineteen? Twenty? Incredible, so young. You have everything before you. No past. He sighed. Incredible, to have been so young once myself. Although what does that mean? There is only one age for anyone. I was and am, will always be fifty-eight. But you. Be careful what age you end up. It sticks to you. It seals you shut. The age you choose is like glue, it sets around you. This wisdom is not mine, you know. I got it from a book. A movie. I’m not sure. You notice things. It’s incredible. Your whole life you notice things.

  As he read the newspaper I considered what he had said. Yet the more I considered it, the What escaped me and instead, the How took hold of me. The weary note that gave the words a bitter taste. Whether young or incredible, both had, the way he said them, acquired a stringent, heavy tone, and both were, as I had heard them, one and the same word. That’s how you speak, I thought, when you have been silent for a long time. All words are the same to you then and you can hardly understand how one differs from another. Whether glue or life, it didn’t make all that much difference.

  24

  His sleep came suddenly. On page two of the sports section it caught him. Leaning back he’d dozed off, his head bowed. His palms open over a picture of the Giants baseball team. A network of lines. Crossing the heartline. Grimy black print on his right forefinger. Again he looked like a child. Harmless. Vulnerable in his innocence. And again I felt the need to cover him, a natural desire to protect him somehow from harm.

  When he woke up it was already past five thirty. Yawning, he stretched and wiped the dust from his eyes. A few more minutes, he said, blinking, then the day will be done. No overtime today. He folded up the newspaper. The nicest thing about working is the coming home. My first words when I come through the door, standing inside the entrance. It smells of garlic and ginger. Freshly steamed vegetables. I stand in the entrance, savor this smell and say: The nicest thing about working is the coming home. Kyōko calls me an idiot. From her it sounds so gentle. No offense meant. Do you understand. She could call me a lot worse things. A liar, a deceiver. And yet it would be with the same tenderness, I really hope, as when she calls me an idiot. Although. I’d rather not know. So long as there is hope, I’d rather not know how it would be if I told her the truth. What’s the point after all? She deserves better than the truth, so much better.

  25

  Five to six. He straightened his tie. Not too fast. Rather as if he had to restrain himself. A horse in harness, pulling at the reins. Again and again he shook his hand above him, pushed back the shirtsleeve, looked at his watch. I’m going now. Three minutes to six. No, wait a bit. Two minutes to six. Now, really. One minute to six. So then? Till tomorrow? I nodded. He spoke quietly, almost too faint to hear: Thank you so much. A last glance at his wrist. Exactly six. He got up with a jerk. I imitated him. We stood eye to eye, the same height. Goodbye. My voice. After two years of silence it was as translucent as glass. Goodbye. That was it. A crisp conjunction of consonants and vowels. Once more I was mute. Then it shot out of me: My name is Taguchi Hiro. I am twenty years old. Twenty is the age I have chosen. I bowed, awkwardly, stayed in the bow till he had gone. A strange satisfaction: I can still do it. Introduce myself to someone. I have not forgotten. Even though my name might dissolve on my tongue.

  26

  As I walked home, I imagined how his story would unfold. Perhaps it was enough that he had confided in me, and he would go home and speak up. But perhaps not. Perhaps he would delay it until the last savings were exhausted. And perhaps that was what he was waiting for: That Kyōko would figure it out. That she would wake up one morning with an uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right. She would start to investigate, find him out, put him on the spot. And perhaps we really were like each other in that way. We watched as everything slid away from us, and felt some relief at not being able to set things straight. Perhaps that was the reason we’d encountered each other. To simultaneously and irrevocably realize that it was impossible for us now to change what has happened to us. So perhaps his story was my story too. It concerned what he had neglected, what could not now be changed.

  So many people going home. So many shoes in step, I was out of step. There ahead of me under the street lamp I saw Father coming from work, past a flowering bush, his gaze on the ground. He did not see me. I had quickly hidden behind a vending machine. I wanted to spare us, him and me, the pain of meeting outside on the street and not knowing what to say. Only when he had gone around the corner did I feel sorry that I had not wished him good evening, at the very least.

  27

  A lovely day, isn’t it? When the sky is so blue, one would love to drive out to the seaside. Too bad, really. He looked down at himself, shaking his head. I am free and yet I am not. But tomorrow is another day. He sat down. Sighed. So, Taguchi Hiro. I thought you were mute and somehow that would have been alright by me. Not really of course, if you see what I mean. He scratched his chin. In the green of the trees behind him, a runner flung her arms in the air. She trotted on, wearing a red headband. From the street came a gentle honking. The sound of cars rising and falling away in the surrounding bushes, staying outside the innermost circle that contained us.


  He picked up where he had left off. Really it would be alright if Kyōko found out that I come here. It’s a comfort to me, the idea that she may know, instinctively, in her heart; it would make her, if she knew, my accomplice, did it for my sake. Sad, isn’t it. The idea that she would play along, willingly. Early this morning, when she tied my tie, she said, and she said it seriously: If only one were crazy enough to do everything differently. To break out for once, she said and drew a breath. That would have been the moment to admit to her that I’ve been outside for a long time. But then she finished tying the tie and what remained was only the shame. I’m ashamed of my shame. How much effort I use, to conceal it from myself and from Kyōko. It’s like this: it’s not just my job that I’ve lost. The biggest loss is self-respect. That’s where the descent begins. When you stand at the end of a crowded platform, see the lights of the approaching train and find yourself calculating the exact moment when a leap onto the rails would mean certain death. You take a step forward. You think Now! Now! Now! And then: Nothing! Such a dark Nothing! You’re not even up to that. The train rolls in. It’s full of people. You see your reflection in the windows as they glide by and you don’t recognize yourself anymore.