by Ruth Ozeki
“Hm,” Oliver said.
“It felt like a premonition. What do you think?”
“Premonitions are coincidences waiting to happen,” he said, without looking up.
“I suppose, but it’s weird, right? Stuff appearing out of nowhere, like the freezer bag and then the Jungle Crow. Stuff disappearing, like that article. I tried to find it again, but I couldn’t. And the publication? The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics? Gone, too. I can’t find it anywhere.”
“Stuff doesn’t usually just vanish,” he said, typing a message with his forefinger. “It’s got to be somewhere. Can’t you do a search for the author and find out where—”
“I tried! That’s the problem. I can’t even find the author’s name. I could have sworn it was listed in the academic archives site, but when I went back to find it, it was gone. Vanished! And Professor Leistiko won’t answer my email. It’s like the harder I look, the more stuff slips away. It’s so frustrating!”
“Maybe you’re looking too hard . . . ,” he suggested.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He tapped his screen and she heard the whoosh of an email being sent.
“Are you listening to me or checking your email?”
“Listening, checking email, same thing . . .”
“No it’s not!”
“You’re right,” he said, looking up from the small screen. “Okay, I was checking my email, and at the same time I was listening to you, and at the same time something came up in my newsfeed that might be pertinent. And I now have two thoughts and one nice piece of news. Which would you like to hear first?”
“The nice news, please.”
“I just got an email from an artists’ collective in Brooklyn. They want to publish my monograph on the NeoEocene.”
“That’s fantastic!” she said, her annoyance vanishing. “Who are they?”
He smiled, modestly, trying not to show how pleased he was. “They call themselves the Friends of the Pleistocene.”
“Amazing.”
“It is. I mean, it’s not perfect. I’m more of an Eocene guy myself, and they’ve got some pretty newfangled ideas. But hey, you know, one million years, fifty million years . . .”
“They’re interested. That’s what matters.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding doubtful. “I just hope they don’t disappear, too.”
“They won’t. Not if they’ve been around for that long.”
“You’re right,” he said. “The Friends of the Pleistocene make The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics sound like lightweights.”
“Was that your thought?”
“No.” He held up his iPhone so she could see. “First of all, this came up in my newsfeed.”
On the tiny screen was an article from New Science about a recent development in the construction of qubits for quantum computing.
She squinted to read the tiny text. “So?”
Oliver enlarged the font and pointed. She saw it then. The name of the researcher filled the tiny screen: H. Yasudani.
“Oh my god,” she cried, sitting up. “Do you think that’s him? It could be, right? Or it could be a typo. That’s so crazy. Email me the link. I’ll see if I can get in touch—”
“Already done,” Oliver said.
She was half out of bed, one foot in its slipper, heading upstairs to her computer to go online and start the search.
“Don’t you want to hear my other thought?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said, fumbling for her glasses.
“It’s just that I’m wondering if maybe there’s a quantum element to what’s happening.”
She sat back down and let the slipper dangle. “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, but I’m just thinking that if everything you’re looking for disappears, maybe you should stop looking. Maybe you should focus on what’s tangible in the here and now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve got the diary and you’re reading it. That’s good. Benoit is translating the composition book. That’s good. But there’s still the letters. You could get someone to help you with them.”
Ruth frowned. It made sense, and it didn’t. “I showed them to Ayako, but she said she couldn’t—”
“Not Ayako,” Oliver said. “Arigato. Hang on, let me check the weather . . .”
“What does the weather have to do with this?”
“Great,” he said. “The storm is just missing us. Should be a calm crossing tomorrow.” He looked up. “I need to bring that damn generator into the shop before it craps out again. You feel like going for sushi in the Liver . . . ?”
5.
Campbell River, or Scrambled Liver as it was called by islanders, was the closest city of any size to Whaletown, although “close” and “city” are relative terms. A trip to the Liver required two ferry rides and a drive across an intermediary island and took close to two hours, not counting ferry lineups, which in the summer season could be interminable. Once in the Liver, there was not much in the way of entertainment, just some big-box stores and half-vacant strip malls, a court, a jail, a hospital, a scattering of thrift stores and pawnshops, a couple of peeler bars, and a derelict pulp mill that left many people jobless when it closed.
Still, the ferry trip to town was beautiful, a slow chug across the steely sea, past tiny green islets that glowed under the brooding skies. Sometimes a pod of dolphins or porpoises would race the ship or play in its wake. In the distance, the snowcapped mountains rose high up above swathes of low-hanging mist.
They didn’t go to town for the scenery, though. There were practical real-life reasons for the trip, like hospital visits or car repair, buying insurance, and stocking up on staples and supplies. It was customary for islanders to wince and exhibit a kind of exquisite pain at the thought of leaving their paradise for the bleak but necessary reality of the Liver.
Ruth, however, enjoyed her trips to town. For her, Campbell River felt refreshing. She liked shopping, and if they stayed overnight they could eat dinner at an ethnic restaurant, although compared with Manhattan, the choice was not huge: two Chinese buffets, a Thai restaurant, and her favorite, a Japanese sushi bar called Arigato Sushi.
The chef was a former auto mechanic named Akira Inoue, who had emigrated with his wife, Kimi, from Okuma City in Fukushima prefecture. Akira was an avid sports fisherman, and had brought his family to coastal B.C. for the world-class salmon fishing, before the runs went dry. They opened their restaurant, choosing the name Arigato as an expression of their gratitude to Canada for giving them a nice lifestyle, and in exchange, they worked hard to refine the palettes of their Campbell River neighbors. They had raised their son here and sent him to university in Montreal, but now that they were getting older and the salmon runs were in decline, Kimi had finally managed to convince Akira to sell Arigato Sushi and retire to their hometown in Japan. The meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant changed all that. Overnight, Okuma City had turned into a radioactive wasteland, and now Akira and Kimi were trapped in the Liver.
“Okuma City wasn’t very special,” Kimi said. “But it was our hometown. Now nobody can live there. Our friends, family, everybody had to evacuate. Walk out of their homes. Leave everything behind. Not even time to wash the dishes. We invited our relatives to come here. We told them Canada is safe. No guns. But they don’t want to come. For them, this is not home.”
Restaurants closed early in the Liver, and Kimi had taken a break from washing up in the kitchen to sit with Ruth and Oliver at the sushi bar, while Akira cleaned his knives and put away his fish. Their son, Tosh, had graduated from McGill University, and now worked in Victoria, but on the weekends he often drove up to help his father behind the sushi counter.
“Is this home for you?” Ruth asked Tosh.
“Do you mean Canada or Campbell River?” Tosh asked, looking amused. He was a tall, quiet kid, well-spoken, who had majored in politi
cal science. “Canada, yes. Montreal, absolutely. Montreal felt like home. Victoria, less so. Campbell River, uh, not so much.”
“How about you?” Ruth asked Kimi.
Kimi hesitated and Akira answered for her. “She never care about fishing.” He nodded to Ruth. “How about you?”
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what home would feel like.”
Akira tore off a length of plastic wrap and laid it over a gleaming slab of bright red tuna. “I think you are more big-city girl. But you . . .” He leaned over the counter to refill Oliver’s saké and then raised his glass in a toast. “You are country boy. Like me. Campbell River is plenty good for us, eh?”
Beside her, Ruth could feel Oliver hesitate, but he raised his glass. “To the Liver,” he said.
It was getting late. Ruth pulled her backpack onto her lap and took out the letters. She had explained her problem earlier, and Kimi had agreed to try and help. Now Ruth watched as Kimi wiped down the countertop before accepting the letters with both hands and a formal little bow.
“Yes,” Kimi said, inspecting the envelope on top. “It is a man’s handwriting. The address is in Tokyo. The postal mark says Showa 18.” She counted on her fingers. “That is 1943. This canceling mark is not so clear, but I think it is from Tsuchiura. There was a naval base, so maybe you are right, he was a soldier.” She opened the letter and spread it on the counter in front of her, gently smoothing the creases. Tosh came around the counter and leaned over her shoulder.
“It is very nice handwriting,” she said. “Old-fashioned, but I can read this. I will write down the translation, but please forgive my poor English. I have lived here for twenty years but still . . .”
Tosh put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “No excuses, Mom,” he said. “I can’t read the Japanese, but I’ll help you with the English.”
Akira gave a short laugh. “Yes,” he said. “No excuses. Now we have lots of time to practice.”
They spent the night at the Above Tide Motel and the next morning got coffee and muffins and made it to the terminal in time to catch the first ferry home. At that hour there wasn’t a lot of traffic—only three vehicles in the lane bound for their island. One of the ferry crew, a beefy young Campbell River kid in shorts, came over and stood in front of their car, waiting to give them the signal to load. He eyed the vehicles in their lane and radioed the count to the bridge.
“Three for Fantasy,” he muttered into his walkie-talkie.
Ruth had her window down and was feeding muffin crumbs to the sparrows.
“Did you hear that?” she asked Oliver, who was reading an old New Yorker in the passenger seat beside her.
“Hear what?”
“What the ferry guy just said.”
“No. What did he say?”
“Three for Fantasy.”
Oliver looked out the window at the kid. “That’s a good one.”
“How would he even know? He’s too young to remember the show.”
Oliver smiled. “Maybe. But he knows the island.”
Nao
1.
I wasn’t sure whether to tell Jiko about meeting the ghost of Haruki #1. First of all, I was afraid it might make her sad, because what if he hadn’t visited her? Maybe he’d only visited me because I’m an ikisudama? And then if she knew, I would have to confess how I’d blown it by not asking him good questions or making him feel welcome. Probably there’s a proper way you’re supposed to treat ghosts, stuff you’re supposed to say and special presents you’re supposed to give them. Maybe Jiko would be upset with me for not doing it right, but how was I supposed to know?
Or maybe she would think I was lying. Maybe she would think I’d made the whole thing up to cover for the fact that I was snooping around the altar and broke the picture frame and stole the letter. By the next day, I was beginning to think I’d made the whole thing up, too, and it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of opportunities to talk to her, so I decided just to wait to see if Haruki #1 would come back.
On the morning of the osegaki ceremony, I got up early and sneaked out to the temple gate. It was still dark out, but the lamps were lit in the kitchen, and I could hear Muji and some of the nuns who’d come to help. I knew if they saw me, they would make me help, too, so I was really quiet. I went and sat on the cold stone step by the gate, half hidden behind one of the huge pillars. It felt creepy and kind of damp, exactly the way you might think a ghost would like it, and I started to feel hopeful.
“Haruki Ojisama wa irasshaimasu ka?”132 I whispered.
But the only person who answered was Chibi, the cat, who isn’t a person at all.
I tried again. “Haruki Ichibansama . . . ?”133
I heard a noise then, a kind of low murmuring and humphing sound, and when I looked down to the very bottom of the steps, I could see there was a ghostly monster climbing toward me. It looked like a gigantic brown and grey caterpillar. Tatari! I thought. Spirit attack! I jumped up and ran behind the pillar before it could see me, holding Chibi tight to keep him from darting out.
The monster had white spots and bristly bumps and lots and lots of legs jutting out to the sides, and it moved in a kind of winding, galumphing way, slowly rising and falling up the steep stone steps. I watched it, trying to figure out what it was. It was too slow to be scary, and at first I thought maybe it was an ancient and very pathetic dragon. Sometimes temples have dragons, and maybe because Jiko was so ancient, her dragon was, too. But when it got closer, I could see that it wasn’t a dragon or even a caterpillar monster. It was just a long line of very old people from the danka, and from above, their round humped backs and wobbling white heads looked like the caterpillar’s body, and their arms and their walking sticks looked like the jutting legs, climbing up through the darkness.
I ran back into the temple and announced that the guests were coming, and things went into overdrive, with Muji running around and bowing and showing people into the shrine room. Across from the main altar for Shakasama, we’d set up a special osegaki altar for the hungry ghosts, and old Jiko sat in a fancy golden chair. There was a whole bunch of chanting and praying and incense offering, and then Jiko unrolled this scroll and started reading all the names of the dead. They were all names of family and friends that people from the danka had put on the list, and the scroll was really long, and Jiko’s old voice droned on and on. The room was still and hot and quiet, and nothing was moving except for the names, and it was kind of boring, but just as I was starting to drift off, something strange happened. Maybe I was half-asleep and dreaming, but it seemed like the names were alive, like they were alive and floating through the shrine room, and nobody needed to feel sad or lonely or afraid of dying, because the names were here. It was a nice feeling, especially for the old people who knew they were going to be names on the list very soon, and when Jiko was finally done reading, everybody got a turn to stand up and make an offering of incense, which took forever but was nice, too.
So it was a long ceremony, but I didn’t mind, because the visiting nuns and priests helped Jiko and Muji with the chanting and bells and the ceremonial stuff, and I got to play the drum. Muji had trained me to play it and I’d been practicing for weeks. I don’t know whether you’ve ever played a drum before, but if you haven’t you should really try it, because first of all, it feels good to beat something with a stick as hard as you can, and second of all, it makes an amazing sound.
The temple drum is as big as a barrel, and it sits on a tall wooden platform. When you play it, you stand in front, facing the stretched hide, trying to control your breathing, which is jumping all over the place because you are so nervous. The priests and nuns are chanting by the big altar, and you listen for your cue, which is getting closer and closer. Then, at just the right moment, you take a big breath, raise your sticks, draw back your arms, and
You have to get the timing just right, and even though I was scared to make a mistake in front of all those people, I think I
did a pretty good job. I really like drumming. While I’m doing it, I am aware of the sixty-five moments that Jiko says are in the snap of a finger. I’m serious. When you’re beating a drum, you can hear when the BOOM comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise. Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that’s what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you’re breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder.
Jiko says that this is an example of the time being. Sound and no-sound. Thunder and silence.
2.
After the osegaki ceremonies were over, we had a party for the guests, and I helped serve the food, which was hideous because I’m such a clumsy girl, so I’m not even going to bother to describe it. Finally Muji, who was a total wreck by then anyway, got fed up and sent me out on some errand, I don’t remember what, and I happened to walk by Jiko’s study and noticed that the sliding door was open. It looked like someone was inside. I was still worried about the picture frame and the letter, so I went over to see.
The room was dark, but the candles on the family altar were lit, and an old man was kneeling in front. His back was bent, and his hands were pressed together in front of his face. He bowed, touching his head to the floor, and then he stood up and shuffled to the altar. His body was as thin as a skeleton, and his suit was hanging off his bones. He had some kind of sash decorated with rows of medals that he wore around his shoulder, which gave the impression that maybe he was a soldier. When he reached the altar, he lit an incense stick and touched it to his forehead in offering, and as he reached forward toward the bowl, the trembling ember at the tip of the long thin stick of incense looked like a tiny firefly, wobbling around in the darkness.
He shuffled back and knelt at his place in front of the altar and stayed there for a long time. Sometimes he pressed his hands together with his juzu, and his lips would move. Sometimes he stopped and listened and then started muttering again. I watched for a while, and then I noticed that Jiko was in the room, too, kneeling in a shadowy corner by the bookshelf, with her eyes closed, like she was waiting for the old guy to finish whatever it was that he was doing. Of course, I was totally freaked out and afraid they were going to notice that the picture frame was broken and the letter was missing, but just as I was about to escape, I heard a noise behind me, like an old door sliding open or someone clearing his throat.