by Preethi Nair
‘The florist,’ I replied.
‘I thought Raj’s mother was doing that.’
‘No, we are.’
‘OK, I’ll come with you,’ she said grabbing her coat.
‘Ma, I can do this by myself seeing as you’ve both pretty much organised everything.’
‘I’m only doing it for you, beta.’
‘Are you?’ I wanted to ask. This was all her disappointments cancelled out by one big wedding; her wedding, the wedding she never had, the wedding she couldn’t give my sister. But I didn’t say anything as she had turned around and put her coat down.
‘And have you asked work for the time off to come to India with me?’
She was planning to go to India to do a whole wedding shop. And as much as I knew that if I went with her it would make every single one of her dreams come true, I couldn’t go. I could not leave the studio for two whole weeks. Even if it meant that on my wedding day I’d be wearing garish colours and jewellery like BA Baracus from the A-Team.
‘Ma, I don’t think that work will give me the time off, not with the honeymoon and everything.’
‘I will pray they give you the time – Bhagavan has listened so far.’
‘Better go,’ I said, feeling guilty and not wanting to involve Bhagavan in the whole proceedings.
‘I see, beta, maybe want to go and have lunch with Raj after,’ she said, smiling.
The grocer had some flowers; well, some dehydrated chrysanthemums. Perhaps I could buy a bunch and then ask him if he had any elderly relatives. I got in the queue and after he got an old lady her tomatoes he turned to me and asked what I wanted.
‘A bunch of yellow chrysanthemums please.’
‘Coming right up, miss.’
Not long before I’d be a Mrs, I thought.
‘Anything else?’
I couldn’t do it so I bought the flowers and walked away.
Where else could I find old Japanese people?
I stood back in the queue again.
‘Forgotten something?’
‘This is going to sound very strange but I’m doing some research into Japanese culture, things like cuisine, and I was wondering if I could possibly speak to your father.’
‘My dad’s dead,’ the grocer replied.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ I said, turning away, wanting to run off.
‘But you can speak to my mother if you like,’ he added.
I imagined Foruki as an elderly woman – no, it had to be a man, but I couldn’t suddenly say that his mother wasn’t good enough after raking up the death of his father.
‘That would be very helpful,’ I answered.
‘You can go and see her now if you’ve got time. She doesn’t really go out that much so she’ll be happy to see you. What did you say your name was?’
‘Nina.’
‘I’ll give her a call and let her know you are coming around. What was it you wanted to know about again?’
‘Japanese fashion, cuisine and art.’
I didn’t expect him to call up and ask her there and then. I didn’t expect her to say yes so eagerly either but he gave me her address and said she was waiting for me.
Three hours later I was still in Mrs Onoro’s sitting room, looking at the porcelain cats she had everywhere, drinking green tea, thinking that I had a wedding to organise and an elderly Japanese man to find in forty-eight hours, but instead I was sat listening to Mrs Onoro’s life story.
I had to interrupt her at some point so I asked if she knew any men.
‘You want marry my son?’ she enquired.
‘No, no that’s not what I meant. I’m getting married soon,’ I replied quickly, thinking I should have phrased the question better.
Then she blushed. ‘I seeing Hikito, he is a good man, but my son, he don’t know.’
‘Hikito?’ At last, an elderly Japanese man, this was sounding promising. ‘Where did you meet?’
‘Hikito, he is Reiki master, met at Japanese Association talk.’
It was just getting better, a whole association to pick from!
‘Would it be possible to come to this association with you, so I can get a man’s perspective on Japanese culture.’
‘We meet next week.’
No, next week was too late. ‘What about Hikito? Maybe he can help me.’
‘He don’t speak much good English.’
‘Perfect,’ I thought. An old Japanese man who said very little – just what I was looking for.
‘Can I meet him?’ I asked.
‘You want Reiki session?’
I didn’t quite know what Reiki was but I agreed, thinking that Hikito was the one – he was potentially my Foruki.
Mrs Onoro went off to make a phone call and came back saying that Hikito could see me in an hour and that she would come along as translator.
A short while later we made our way to his house. A Japanese man came to the door. If Mrs Onoro hadn’t told me that he was seventy-four I would have thought he wasn’t a day over fifty. His skin was smooth and unlined and he had twinkling brown eyes that shone with wisdom. There was no mistake: here before me stood Foruki. He took Mrs Onoro’s hand and he kissed it, then he looked at me and nodded.
‘Take off shoes,’ he instructed. They spoke in Japanese and when it went quiet I tried to ask him if he was free on Thursday afternoon but he put his lips together and his index finger to his mouth, indicating silence.
He led us to his sitting room. The curtains were drawn, there were lighted candles everywhere and the smell of incense. In the centre of the room stood a massage table that he pointed to.
What was going on? I shook my head. There was no way in the world I would let this man touch me, not after the Guru incident.
Hikito said, ‘I don’t hurt you.’
Tears were welling in my eyes. For some reason I had this overwhelming need to tell them about the filthy, dry hands that felt me; the Guru’s heavy, rhythmic breath that made everything seem much slower and more intense; his smell. How he made me believe in him, took away whatever I had left and made me feel dirty and worthless inside. I started to cry, uncontrollably so.
They stood silently for a few minutes. Hikito gave me a tissue. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Lie down,’ he indicated, pointing to the table.
‘I stay here,’ added Mrs Onoro.
I reluctantly got on the table. ‘Close eyes,’ Hikito instructed.
Half-closing my eyes, I watched what he did. Hikito had his hands six inches above my head. He made a sign with his palms and then his hands went around my body from one part to another without touching it.
‘Close eyes,’ he repeated.
He had his hands at the soles of my feet and I could sense heat, warm heat. He slowly moved up to my solar plexus and as I experienced more and more heat I had to open my eyes to make sure he wasn’t touching me.
‘It’s OK,’ Hikito reassured.
He moved from my solar plexus to my heart and I felt someone safely holding my left hand. I wanted to open my eyes but I couldn’t just in case the feeling left me.
It was the same kind of feeling that I had had as a child when I was in hospital and I thought Jana was there; warm and loving.
‘Your friend here,’ Hikito said. ‘She say you doing good. That she always hold your hand when you think you by self and you think you by yourself a lot.’
Tears streamed from my eyes and at that moment in time there were no questions I needed to ask or anything else I needed to know. I felt completely and utterly secure, as if things were exactly as they were meant to be.
‘She tell me to tell you that Chile is beautiful.’
Hikito’s hands stayed over my chest and not only did I see the most beautiful colours, I held them in my heart as if they were a part of me. Indescribable hues of indigo, violet and blues, colours beyond indigo that I could not possibly describe, all of them dancing within me, making me feel safe, and then as he moved towards my head I fell asleep. A deep, u
ndisturbed sleep that I thought had lasted for hours.
Only an hour had passed when I woke up and Hikito gave me a glass of water.
‘Drink lots of water,’ he said. ‘You do good.’
I had no questions; I understood none of it yet somehow everything made perfect sense.
Mrs Onoro was sitting on the sofa in tears. She got up and held me, saying something in Japanese. I wanted to give her flowers but she deserved more than the miserable-looking chrysanthemums that I had.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask Hikito to be Foruki; it didn’t feel right to bring him into the web of deceit, so I paid him, thanked them both again and left. As I turned to wave they had gone in.
I arrived home in the evening, still with the dreary bunch of chrysanthemums.
‘Hope they are not from the flower shop where you ordered wedding flowers,’ my mother said, looking disdainfully at them.
‘No. Couldn’t find any good ones, Ma, so I’ll just leave it to you.’
‘All day out to look for flowers and comes back with this,’ she gestured to my father.
Surprisingly, he didn’t comment. Just peered up from behind his newspaper, peered back down again and then said, ‘There are the flowers always for peoples who wants to see them.’
‘What, Dad? What did you just say then, Dad?’ My heart leaped. Maybe finally he had understood. It had been a truly magical day; maybe something that I was unaware of had happened.
‘Why we need flowers there in the wedding? Peoples can see them like your client who is not wasting money buying them from the petrol stations.’
‘Bhagavan, help me with this man, of course we need flowers; and beta, you didn’t even go and see Raj. You said you were going to have lunch with him and I told him that when he called.’
‘Why?’ I shouted and then I fell silent. There was no point in arguing, we were worlds apart, not even the biggest bridge would join the two worlds together. They would walk into mine and not see paintings, a Japanese healer, not notice any difference; because to them my world appeared exactly like theirs: stuffed with Land of Leather sofas, dodgy television sets, rotis and potential husbands.
‘Because that’s what you said. He’s waiting for your call,’ she replied calmly.
The sense of peace that I felt – that everything was exactly as it should be – quickly dissipated. It wasn’t right, none of it – not Raj, the wedding, the lies, none of it. What I felt for Raj was a brotherly type of love, it was nothing compared to what it was like with Jean. There was never any real inclination to touch Raj; maybe to take care of him but not to touch him or to run my fingers through his hair. My dad said that attraction grows the more time you spend with someone and that he hardly noticed now the fact that my mother had ‘the buckhead teeth'. Maybe it was a gradual thing. I dialled Raj’s number.
‘Hi Nina, Mummy said that you were coming to see me today.’ He had started calling my mother that the day we got engaged. It niggled at me but my mother touched her heart every time she heard it. I couldn’t quite get my lips around that for his mother so I continued to call her Auntie.
‘No, she just got a bit confused.’
‘What have you been doing then?’
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him any of it: the search for the Japanese man, the Reiki healer. He’d be more interested about hearing how the wedding preparations were going so that’s what I told him. ‘I went to find a florist to do the flowers.’
‘We could have done that together, baby,’ he replied.
Baby? Now that did irritate me. ‘No, it’s best if we do other things,’ I replied, meaning practical things like arranging where the guests sat and food sampling.
But instead I’m sure I heard him grunt, not laugh. ‘We’ll have plenty of time to do that.’
‘Do you want to go and see a movie tonight?’
‘No, I’m really tired but I’ll see you after work tomorrow night?’
‘Tomorrow, then. I can’t wait to finally put the ring on your finger,’ he replied.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’
‘Miss you. Do you miss me?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I mumbled.
Putting all thoughts of finding a Japanese stand-in out of my head, I ate some perfectly circular rotis and went to bed.
I got to the studio early the next morning and the boots had gone – I felt glad that the tramp had found them at last; perhaps it was a sign. Maybe they had disappeared days ago and it was the first time I had noticed them missing. I got changed, pulled out the dying bunch of chrysanthemums from my sports bag, put them on the table and took out the canvas that had been painted white all those many weeks ago.
I sat for hours thinking about the colours I had seen the day before, and when the light fell I began mixing paints. I mixed several colours in two palettes trying to replicate the tones in some way. Hours were spent doing this, trying to re-create warmth. Taking the chrysanthemums, I gently pulled off the petals and heaped them into a pile.
Before painting, I sat with my palm open. ‘I pretended to believe, Ki, every day, even when I couldn’t see. I pretended it was you but you know that, don’t you? Sorry about the things I said. I’m seeing Tastudi Mangetti tomorrow and I’m scared, really scared. It’s something you would do, not me. You were always far braver. Did you orchestrate that? Did you do all of this? Did you make me meet Gina? If it was you, you couldn’t have chosen a nicer person. Did you send me Raj? Is there something I’m missing there? I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s kind and everything but I can’t quite see you putting the two of us together. Is it about not having any expectations? See, if it’s that, it doesn’t make sense because you always told me not to accept second best. That sounds awful, doesn’t it? That makes Raj sound like a consolation prize. It’s not what I meant. It’s not as though I want to go back to Jean either. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s all happening too fast.
‘I’ve been up for most of the night thinking about all of this deceit; although I am lying to paint, painting makes me believe in myself again – I can’t remember the last time I did. During the time that I’m here in this room, the world looks like I want it to, and when I am painting I am me, the me that you know.
‘All I ever wanted was to believe that you were around so I wouldn’t have to do this on my own. I didn’t have the strength to do this on my own. And when it was hard, really hard, I pretended you were there and that’s how I got through it. Now that I know, really know, I don’t have that need to believe any more. Do you understand that? I want to let you go. It’s not that I don’t need you because I do, more than ever, but I want you to rest knowing that I love you very much and whenever I want to see you or hear you laugh, all I have to do is close my eyes. See, you’ve got me going again. I’m turning into a wuss.’
Wiping the tears, I outlined an enormous handprint on the canvas and then took the petals and individually painted them onto the handprint with hues of indigo, just as if they were lines running along a palm. Death and wastage stuck together with thick colour. I dipped my hand into the rest of the paint and covered the handprint with my palm. Then I slowly peeled the petals off one by one, leaving nothing but spaces of calm white light among a storm of indigo.
I met Raj briefly that evening for dinner and instead of yet another outright lie, I told him about an artist who painted hands.
‘You can tell a lot about a person just by their hands. It’s one of the first things I look at.’
‘Me too,’ he replied, taking mine.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
I told him about the artist who had done a huge imprint of a hand and all the lines running across it were painted from chrysanthemum petals.
‘Really?’ I couldn’t work out if the ‘really’ was out of interest or because he didn’t know what else to say.
‘It was a big palm. What do they say? The bigger the palm
the more generous the person. The fingers were long and delicate. This palm looked as if it should have longer lines but it didn’t.’
‘I love the way you get so involved with your clients’ work, Nina.’
When he said that, the urge to tell him about my painting didn’t seem so important. At least he appreciated that I cared about art.
‘Sometimes it doesn’t feel like work,’ I replied.
‘Every day seems like work, you’re lucky.’
‘Do you ever feel like you’d like to go off and do something different?’ I asked.
‘Not really, I don’t know what else I would do except travel, but even then there is only so much travelling you can do before you start getting homesick.’
‘I would love to paint,’ I added, answering my own question.
‘If you were to do it for a while you’d enjoy it, but then it’s like most things: once you have it, it becomes boring.’
This comment struck me as odd. It didn’t seem to fit in with the way Raj operated.
‘Boring?’
Sensing my tone he answered quickly, ‘I am just being practical.’
I didn’t feel the need to broach the subject about Mangetti and so I moved on to our wedding plans. His mother had asked us to check a whole load of details like the size of the mandir, the short-listed musicians and the selection of mementos for the guests to take away; so this is what we did for the rest of the evening. After dinner he dropped me home and kissed me goodbye. It was our first proper kiss and it bothered me. It was a suction-type movement where Raj engulfed the whole of my lips and hoovered them up with his mouth. Maybe it was wrong of me to think about how Jean kissed but they couldn’t have been more different so I couldn’t help it.
As soon as I crawled into bed I fell asleep and dreamed about paintings, Japanese waiters and boats, along with many other things that made no sense. When the alarm went off I lay there thinking about my meeting with Mangetti.
‘Get up, you’ll be late,’ my dad shouted.
I was immobilised by fear. What was I thinking of doing? It was ludicrous, Mangetti was a huge player in the art world. Word was that he was going to be one of the judges for the Turner Prize. He wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t a real artist or an artist’s agent; surely he would be able to spot that.