A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

  “Professor,” he said, in slow, careful English. “I am very sorry to disturb you.” He held out his business card and bowed again. The card identified him as Haruki Yasutani, a computer scientist at one of the rapidly growing IT companies in the Valley. I invited him in and offered him a seat.

  In stilted English, he explained that he was originally from Tokyo and had been headhunted to work on human-computer interface design. He loved his work and had no problem with the computer end of things. His problem, he said, was the human factor. He didn’t understand human beings very well, so he’d come to the Psychology Department at Stanford to ask for help.

  I was astonished, but curious, too. Silicon Valley is not Tokyo, and it would be natural for him to be suffering from culture shock or having problems relating to his co-workers. “What kind of help do you want?” I asked.

  He sat with his head bowed, gathering his words. When he looked up, I could see the strain in his face.

  “I want to know, what is human conscience?”

  “Human consciousness?” I asked, not hearing him correctly.

  “No,” he said. “Con-sci-ence. When I search for this word in the English dictionary, I find that it is from Latin. Con means ‘with,’ and science means ‘knowing.’ So conscience means ‘with knowing.’ With science.”

  “I’ve never quite thought about it that way,” I told him. “But I’m sure you’re right.”

  He continued. “But this does not make sense.” He pulled out a piece of paper. “The dictionary says ‘A knowledge or sense of right and wrong, with a compulsion to do right.’ ”

  He held out the piece of paper for me to see, so I took it. “That seems like a reasonable definition.”

  “But I do not understand. Knowledge and sense are not the same thing. Knowledge I understand, but how about sense? Is sense the same as feeling? Is conscience a fact that I can learn and know, or is it more like an emotion? Is it related to empathy? Is it different than shame? And why is it a compulsion?”

  I must have looked as baffled as I felt, because he went on to explain.

  “I’m afraid that even though I am trained in computer science, I have never felt such a sense or feeling. This is a big disadvantage for my work. I would like to ask you, can I learn to feel such a feeling? At my age, is it too late?”

  It was an extraordinary question, or rather barrage of questions. We continued to talk, and eventually I managed to piece together his story. While his company was primarily involved in interface development for the gaming market, the U.S. military had an interest in the enormous potential his research might have for applications in semi-autonomous weapons technology. Harry was concerned that the interface he was helping to design was too seamless. What made a computer game addictive and entertaining would make it easy and fun to carry out a massively destructive bombing mission. He was trying to figure out if there was a way to build a conscience into the interface design that would assist the user by triggering his ethical sense of right and wrong and engaging his compulsion to do right.

  His story was moving and tragic, too. Although he claimed not to understand matters of human conscience, it was precisely his own conscience that led him to question the status quo, and which would cost him his job later on. Needless to say, technology design is not value-neutral, and military contractors and weapons developers do not want these kinds of questions raised, never mind built into their controllers.

  I did what I could to reassure him. The very fact he was asking these questions in the first place demonstrated that his conscience was in fine working order.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That is not conscience. That is only shame from my history, and history can easily be changed.”

  I didn’t understand and asked him to explain.

  “History is something we Japanese learn about in school,” he said. “We study about terrible things, like how the atom bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We learn this is wrong, but that is an easy case because we Japanese people were the victims of it.

  “A harder case is when we study about a terrible Japanese atrocity like Manchu. In this case, we Japanese people committed genocide and torture of the Chinese people, and so we learn we must feel great shame to the world. But shame is not a pleasant feeling, and some Japanese politicians are always trying to change our children’s history textbooks so that these genocides and tortures are not taught to the next generation. By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.

  “This is why I think shame must be different from conscience. They say we Japanese are a culture of shame, so maybe we are not so good at conscience? Shame comes from outside, but conscience must be a natural feeling that comes from a deep place inside an individual person. They say we Japanese people have lived so long under the feudal system that maybe we do not have an individual self in the same way Westerners do. Maybe we cannot have a conscience without an individual self. I do not know. This is what I am worrying about.”

  Of course, I’m paraphrasing here, remembering what I can of that stilted conversation many years ago. I don’t recall how I answered, but the exchange was mutually satisfying and resulted in further conversations and eventually in friendship. You can see how this inquiry into notions of individual self would lead to, among other things, the topic of shame, honor, and self-killing, which was the subject of the letter that caught your attention. My own interest in cultural influences on suicide, while initially prompted by the activity of suicide bombers in the Middle East, was informed over the years by my exchange with Mr. Yasutani. He always asserted that in Japan, suicide was primarily an aesthetic, not a moral, act, triggered by a sense of honor or shame. As you may or may not know, his uncle was a WWII war hero, a pilot in the Tokkotai, who died while carrying out a kamikaze mission over the Pacific.

  “My grandmother felt so much pain,” Harry said. “If my uncle’s plane had a conscience, maybe he would not have done such a bombing. For the pilot of the Enola Gay, it is the same thing, and maybe there would not have been a Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too. Of course, technology was not so advanced then, so such a thing was not possible. Now it is possible.”

  He sat perfectly still, studying his hands in his lap. “I know it is a stupid idea to design a weapon that will refuse to kill,” he said. “But maybe I could make the killing not so much fun.”

  Toward the end of his stay in the Valley, Mr. Yasutani was having trouble with his employer, which was unwilling to jeopardize its relations with the military and investors on account of one Japanese employee’s tortured conscience. They asked him to refrain from pursuing this line of research, but he refused. He was dropped from his project team. He grew anxious and depressed, and while I do not have a clinical practice, I counseled him as a friend. The company fired him shortly after.

  That must have been March of 2000, because less than a month later, in April, the dot-com bubble burst and the NASDAQ crashed. He came in to see me and told me that he’d had most of his family’s savings tied up in the company’s stock options, and that he’d lost everything. He was not a practical man. In August of that year, they moved back to Japan, and I didn’t hear from him for a while.

  The following year, I decided to make some of my research available online and I launched my website. A few months later, I received an email from Harry, an excerpt of which you read online. It was a beautiful and moving cry for help, and I corresponded with him for several months after that by email and also by phone. It was during that time that I asked if I could post his comments on my website, and he said if I thought it would help others, I could have his permission. I felt strongly that he needed professional counseling, and I suggested the names of a few clinicians in Tokyo. I don’t know whether he followed through on that or not. I suspect not.

  I lost track of him after the September 11 bombings. It was a busy time for me, as world events prompted much media interest in my research. I recall we may have had one exchange a few years
later, but around the same time, a virus obliterated my computer files and much of my archived email, including those from him, was lost. I wanted to contact him after the earthquake and tsunami, but I discovered I no longer had his email address. I consoled myself with the thought that he and his family lived far from Sendai; however now, after hearing from you, I feel motivated to try to track him down.

  You mentioned some letters in addition to the diary belonging to the daughter. If these contain any information that might help me locate Mr. Yasutani and his family, I would appreciate it if you would share it with me. I would like to ask, too, what it was that led you to be concerned for the daughter’s well-being. You said you felt it was a matter of some urgency. Why is that?

  Finally, I would also be interested to know how the diary and letters found their way into your possession, but that is perhaps a story for another time.

  And speaking of stories, I trust you are working on a new book? I look forward to reading it, as I enjoyed your last one very much.

  Sincerely yours,

  etc.

  2.

  She skimmed the email quickly, and immediately wrote back, describing her discovery of the diary in the tangle of kelp, her theory as to its origins in the tsunami, and her failure thus far either to corroborate this theory or to explain how else the freezer bag might have wound up on the beach. She summarized, briefly, the passages in Nao’s diary that were causing concern: the descriptions of her father’s precarious mental health, his suicide attempts, and Nao’s decision to commit suicide herself. She explained that she couldn’t help but feel a strong sense of almost karmic connection with the girl and her father. The diary had washed up on Ruth’s shoreline, after all. If Nao and her father were in trouble, she wanted to help.

  She concluded her email with a mention of the article about qubits in New Science that Oliver had found, citing H. Yasudani, whom she had tried, and failed, to track down. She sent the email off and sat back in her chair, savoring the rush of relief and excitement. This was it, then. The corroboration she’d been waiting for. Nao and her family were real!

  She stood up and stretched and wandered across the hallway to Oliver’s office. He was sitting with the noise-canceling headphones clamped to his ears. The co-pilot chair was empty.

  “Where’s Pesto?” she asked, waving her hand to catch his eye.

  Oliver took off the headphones and looked at the catless chair. “He hasn’t been here all day,” he said, glumly.

  They had made up at breakfast. Ruth apologized again for calling him a loser, and he apologized for calling her a sicko, but there was still tension lingering between them. Sometimes the cat, feeling a chill in the air, would stay away. Ruth felt it, too, which was why she’d crossed the hall to share the good news about the professor’s email, but now, seeing Oliver slumped in his chair, she hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s nothing. Just that I’ve got a whole flat of baby ginkgos, ready to be planted, but the covenant holder won’t let me. They’re saying the ginkgos are potentially invasive.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his hands across his face. He had a particular fondness for G. biloba. “It’s insane. That tree is a living fossil. It survived major extinction events over hundreds of millions of years. The entire population disappeared except for a tiny area in central China where some of them managed to hang on. And now they’re going to die on our porch if I can’t get them in the ground soon.”

  It was unlike him to sound so discouraged or to cast a relatively small problem like this in such dire terms. He must be upset about the cat.

  “Can’t you make a nursery bed here on our property?”

  He sighed, heavily, staring at his empty hands in his lap. “Yeah, I’ll do that. I just don’t see why I bother, though. What’s the point? Nobody understands what I’m trying to do . . .”

  He must be really upset about the cat. She decided to save the news about the professor’s email for later, but just as she turned to leave, he looked up. “Did you want something?” he asked.

  And so she told him. She recounted what Leistiko had written, his surprising revelation of Nao’s father as a man of conscience who had been fired for his beliefs, and she summarized her reply, but then she broke off, realizing Oliver was looking at her strangely.

  “What?” she said. “You’re giving me a look. What’s wrong?”

  “You told him it was a matter of some urgency?”

  “Of course. The girl is suicidal. So is her father. The whole diary is a cry for help. So, yes. Urgency. I’d say that about describes it.” She heard the defensive edge in her voice but she couldn’t help it. “You’re still looking at me.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, you’re not making a lot of sense. I mean, it’s not like this is happening now, right?”

  “I don’t understand. What’s your point?”

  “Do the math. The dot-com bubble burst back in March of 2000. Her dad got fired, they moved back to Japan, a couple of years passed. Nao was sixteen when she started writing the diary. But that was more than a decade ago, and we know the diary’s been floating around for a least a few years longer. My point is that if she was going to kill herself, she’s probably already done it, don’t you think? And if she didn’t kill herself, then she’d be in her late twenties by now. So I just wonder if urgency is really the right word to describe it, that’s all.”

  Ruth felt the floor tip. She put her hand on the doorjamb to steady herself.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, swallowing hard. “I . . . of course, you’re right. Stupid. I just . . . forgot.” She could feel her cheeks burning, and a tingling sensation inside her nose, like she was going to sneeze, or cry.

  “You forgot?” he repeated. “Seriously?”

  She nodded, already backing away. She wanted to run somewhere and hide.

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s crazy.”

  She turned, crossed the hall, and headed downstairs.

  “I didn’t mean you’re crazy,” he called down after her.

  3.

  She didn’t get far. Just to the bedroom. She crawled into bed, pulled the covers up to her nose, and lay there, breathing rapidly. Outside, the bamboo tapped against the windowpane. Tall sword ferns had grown up from below. The blades of the bamboo, ensnared by the thorns of roses, cut off much of the light. She stared at the entangled foliage and thought about the email she’d just sent the professor. She felt the blood rush to her face. How could she have been so stupid?

  It wasn’t that she’d forgotten, exactly. The problem was more a kind of slippage. When she was writing a novel, living deep inside a fictional world, the days got jumbled together, and entire weeks or months or even years would yield to the ebb and flow of the dream. Bills went unpaid, emails unanswered, calls unreturned. Fiction had its own time and logic. That was its power. But the email she’d just written to the professor was not fiction. It was real, as real as the diary.

  Oliver knocked on the door and then opened it a crack. “Can I come in?” She nodded. He walked over and stood by the bed. “You okay?” he asked, studying her face.

  “I got confused,” she said. “In my mind, she’s still sixteen. She’ll always be sixteen.”

  Oliver sat down on the edge of the mattress and put his hand on her forehead. “The eternal now,” he said. “She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the point.”

  “Of writing?”

  “Or suicide.”

  “I’ve always thought of writing as the opposite of suicide,” she said. “That writing was about immortality. Defeating death, or at least forestalling it.”

  “Like Scheherazade?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Spinning tales to forestall her execution . . .”

  “Only Nao’s death sentence was self-imposed.”

  “I wonder if she ever carried it out.”
/>   “Keep reading,” Oliver said. “You won’t know until the end.”

  “Or not . . .” She thought about how not knowing would make her feel. Not great. Then something else occurred to her.

  “Oh!” she said, sitting up in bed. “She doesn’t know!”

  “Know what?”

  “About why her dad got fired! She doesn’t know that he’s a man of conscience. We have to—”

  There. She was doing it again. She slumped back down against the pillow. At least this time she caught herself.

  “It’s too late,” she said, glumly.

  “Too late for what?”

  “To help her,” she said. “So what’s the point? The diary’s just a distraction. What difference does it make if I read it or not?”

  Oliver shrugged. “None, probably, but you still have to finish. She wrote to the end, so you owe her that much. That’s the deal, and anyway, I want to know what happens.”

  He stood and turned to go. She reached for his hand.

  “Am I crazy?” she asked. “I feel like I am sometimes.”

  “Maybe,” he said, rubbing her forehead. “But don’t worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

  The phone started to ring, and he headed out to answer it, but then paused at the door. “I’m really worried about Pesto,” he said.

  4.

  Benoit sat in a battered armchair in front of the woodstove, smoking and staring into the flames. He looked up when he heard Ruth enter. His eyes were red, as though he’d been crying, and he’d been drinking, too. The cloying scent of Canadian whiskey mingled with the smell of cigarettes and wood smoke and wet socks.