by Isis, Justin
The reason for my elliptical statements was this: by now I had realized that the “Chinese epiphany” resembled Buddhist enlightenment. While it was possible to frame it in words, this framing could never hope to encompass it. The more I discussed it with others, attempting to transmit intellectual interpretations and form a coherent impression, the more my statements would mislead them.
As soon as I could no longer hear Toshio’s footsteps, I went to the window and looked out. From my vantage point, I could see him coming up on the other side of the street. His stride had slowed. He walked with his hands in his pockets.
Toshio reached a lamp post, then turned back. He leaned against the wall. Something was troubling him.
There was a bench beside the lamp post. Usually there was no shortage of bus commuters to occupy it, but today it was empty. As I watched, Toshio walked over and sat down. From time to time he would look up at me.
Toshio remained seated for fifteen minutes. He looked around at the streets, the sky, then stared intently at the ground, puzzling things out the Toshio way — from A to B. His mind was all right angles. Someone tossed a can into the bin near the bench.
As Toshio finally stood to leave, I noticed that the pace of his steps, so even before, had taken on a nervous irregularity. His shoulders hunched. Even from this distance, there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
He scratched his ear. It was the dawning of “Sino-hysteria.”
•
Hours later, as I boarded the train, I glanced down at my watch. I’d left an hour early, owing mostly to two conflicting impulses: I couldn’t stand to be alone and inactive any longer, but at the same time I found it difficult to maintain my composure when I considered the impending dinner. So I decided to make for Driftwood and circle the area until six forty-five, when I would head to my restaurant to meet Yukino and Hee Ying. I hoped the walking would clear my head.
I stood and glanced out the window. For some reason I was carrying the previous day’s newspaper. I’d marked up the niche marketing article with a black pen. As I looked down at it out of the corner of my eye, the numbers seemed to blur into illegible glyphs.
Now at the thought that I would soon meet Hee Ying I felt an indescribable terror. It did not come about from any kind of expectation; I knew enough not to muddle my thoughts with inappropriate hopes and fantasies. Rather, it resulted from the wonder that anything should be happening at all. It might be supposed that, having freed myself from expectation, I would harmonize naturally with the situation in which I would soon find myself. But I did not feel any comfort at this thought. The arrangement of these circumstances, that they should be happening presently, involving not only myself but the concurrent movements of the others (I imagined them preparing to leave, sharing an anticipatory conversation), seemed to pertain to some order over which I had little influence. Even the role I played in the evening’s orchestration seemed tenuous when I considered the strange fog in which I had acted and in which my motivations were obscured. I felt as though I were being led on against my will, listless and blind, carrying out someone else’s instructions. As a result, my actions took on a belabored, farcical quality.
That was what I thought as I got off the train and began to walk around the perimeter of Driftwood. I can’t remember what else I noticed as I passed the time, but I can recall that, agitated out of proportion as it was by my incessant doubts, my mind lost all track of time. Had it been a minute instead of an hour, it would have felt the same.
In particular, the question of my real motivation weighed on me. Yukino was too guileless to have suspected anything of me, but I hardly knew what to expect of myself either. I am not impulsive, and to the extent that I knew myself before the previous day, I had assumed that it would not be possible for me to act without some definite intended aim. If I was capable of such an action, disconcerting enough as it would have been under normal circumstances, then the possibility of an appropriate response to the Chinese situation was also endangered, because I knew that such a response would require the utmost understanding and mastery of my character. But I understood nothing, and this failure of understanding dilated into desperation in China’s greater eye.
At six forty-five I walked back. Though the restaurant was closed, the street was crowded. Two blocks away from Driftwood, a thoroughfare intersects with the street containing Kenji’s Pizza; and the traffic is always bad at night.
My eyes darted from face to face. Most everyone was young. I thought I saw Yukino, but as she approached I saw that it was only a bar girl on her way to work. I realized I’d never seen Yukino out of uniform.
I felt that I had to see Yukino and Hee Ying before they saw me. If I spotted them first, the situation fell into my control. If they spotted me first, then the matter of my mediation came between my self and my reaction.
As I came within range, a strange vision appeared before me. Two girls stood on the sidewalk facing me, close enough to each other for their shoulders to touch. Both were perfectly still, and of the same height; but what enforced their shared symmetry was their clothes: both wore identical white sweaters. As the movements of others partially obscured them, the stillness of these figures stood out, astonishingly white, centering them in my sight. My vision blurred.
I realized at some point that Yukino and Hee Ying were looking back at me, but there was little urgency in their gaze. I remained transfixed. The process of recognition had been delayed; I was too struck by my first impression to think of anything else. Finally the tiniest movement of Yukino’s arm, upraised to scratch the side of her head, shattered the symmetry and freed me to approach.
—Have you been waiting long?
—Oh no, we just got here, Yukino said.
She made no effort to introduce me to Hee Ying, who smiled but remained silent.
During the brief walk to Driftwood, I learned that Hee Ying was studying Commerce. I asked her what she thought of her courses, and Japan in general, but I received only vague, single-word answers, and in truth nothing she said would have marked my memory. All I could think of was my implicit connection with her — now she was following me; now, if I moved in a certain direction, so would she.
Nothing would have been further from her mind than her Chineseness. To her, a visitor to Japan, it was we who were foreigners. The difference was that the weight of numbers supported her. Realizing this, my perspective shifted to hers, and I became exquisitely conscious of myself as an alien. While I couldn’t know what she was thinking, I felt with some certainty that I could assume a kind of exterior mind, aligned with hers, through which I could see myself and my world anew. I became a peripheral character in my personal drama, and the focus shifted to Hee Ying — and by association, the Chinese reality. This assumed mindset seemed immeasurably superior to my own.
But — how pitiful I seemed to myself, objectifying the Chinese in this fashion. Hee Ying was only Hee Ying and Hee Ying was only the girl beside me. I don’t know what she would have made of her university classes. Short, silent, she walked behind me in Yukino’s shadow. Though she never stopped smiling, it didn’t seem strained. Her Japanese was awful.
I will resist the temptation to describe her features in detail. She was a plain girl, but her face had a pleasing placid flatness. There was nothing about it I could think to add or subtract — she was complete. Two tight braids hung over her shoulders.
Soon we entered Driftwood. It was busy, as usual, but one of the waiters recognized me. Within moments we were seated, and before long Yoshimori appeared.
—Furusawa, he said. Trading Mieko in for these young girls, are you?
—I’ve brought them along so they can learn firsthand from you what not to do in a professional restaurant setting. I’ve told them it’ll be very instructive.
Yoshimori told us that the dinner he intended for us to try was already being prepared, so I ordered wine for myself and Yukino — Hee Ying did not drink.
Now that I ha
d gotten myself into this situation so haphazardly, I was even less certain how to proceed. Despite not keeping much of a professional distance from my employees, I had never engaged with any of them in a purely social setting. There was the matter of our age gap to consider as well. Should I be paternal? Avuncular? A sympathetic older brother? Or should I address them as I would any of my friends?
I needn’t have worried. Within a few moments I found that Yukino was more than capable of carrying the conversation by herself. Relying only on a few prompts from me, she encompassed any number of topics in a drifting, half-connected torrent. At times my attention wavered, but she didn’t seem to notice. I was left somewhat in awe of her.
—... you were there, you should know, she concluded one of her digressions, nudging Hee Ying, who had remained completely silent throughout the dinner.
I laughed, frowned, nodded sympathetically. I ordered more wine. I couldn’t take my eyes off Hee Ying.
At some point Yoshimori returned, looking expectant.
—Your critical opinion, please, he said.
I hadn’t noticed what we’d been eating. I looked down. A thin glaze of gravy remained on my plate.
—Don’t ask me, ask them, I said.
—I liked the vegetables, Hee Ying said.
—I’m glad. But what about the mignons?
—They were really good too, Yukino said.
Yoshimori was looking for more than this, but he didn’t get it. When pressed, Yukino and Hee Ying both looked blank. To make him leave, I made up something about the harmonious union of conventionally incompatible seasonings. But for that matter, what did Hee Ying mean by liking the vegetables? It seemed significant to me that she had taken the initiative in mentioning this.
—How did that compare to restaurants back home? I asked her when we were outside.
—It was very nice.
—When you said you liked the vegetables, I continued, what did you mean by that?
She shrugged.
I became convinced she was deliberately refusing to enter into any detail. From my critical standpoint, everything Yoshimori had cooked was unmemorable — and with her superior faculties of observation, Hee Ying must have realized this, must have realized she had made an error of judgment. Her reticence was thus a kind of protective strategy. By pressing the point, I was letting her know that I realized this. I felt that through it, we had made a connection that was imperceptible to Yukino, who soon took up the conversational slack. Hee Ying and I shared our silence again — a newly aware silence.
—Why don’t we go to a bar somewhere? I said.
Yukino — already moderately drunk — consented. But with this I had revealed my purpose too clearly, and Hee Ying withdrew her interest. As I sat ordering beers for myself and Yukino, the closeness we had achieved fell away. Watching us, though, she maintained a strange benevolence, a gracious tolerance of my failings. Her mouth cracked, but now she never quite smiled.
I found this unacceptable and looked for something else to connect us. Grasping for anything, I seized on death. While Hee Ying and I were separated in life by the Chinese reality, we would both die. Even death was preferable — anything but this terrible immanence.
Yukino slumped into my lap. I lifted her to her feet and supported her. Outside, I held her on my left while Hee Ying walked at my right. We made our way out of the block, towards a cheap hotel in the area, where I ordered a single room. After I took the key, we entered a long hall and found ourselves alone. As I walked, I began to rock against Hee Ying. She didn’t resist.
Our room was furnished with a single bed and two large windows through which the moon was visible. I sat down on the bed and tried to ease Yukino onto it, but she slumped forward and sat on the floor. Hee Ying sat beside me and stared at the wall.
From this angle, Hee Ying’s plain face, now covered with moonlight, took on an unearthly beauty. I reached out and stroked her cheek, felt the softness of her hair. She continued to face the wall in silence.
It was not, I realized, her face itself that contained this beauty; it was that she would not look at me, would not react. But this was not a receptive passivity — she remained inert, distant. As my hand wandered across her skin, I felt this distance in her serene refusal to rebuke me, to do anything other than exist. In the face of it, my shame increased, but so did my excitement.
—Hee Ying, I said. She didn’t respond, but now I saw that her hands had strayed over the edge of the bed and were playing with Yukino’s hair, just as I played with hers. She combed it with her fingers and twined it into braids.
—Hee Ying, I said again, and now Yukino raised her head and turned to face us. Silently, with her eyes half-closed, she unbuttoned her shirt. Hee Ying’s hands were still in her hair as she cast it aside. A shaft of moonlight illuminated her bare shoulders and pale breasts.
The Chinese reality asserted itself once more, and I became dizzy with its peculiar hysteria. I got to my feet, gave Hee Ying money for a cab, and left the room.
I wandered the streets, uncertain of where to go. I walked back to Kenji’s Pizza and stared through the window at the empty tables. Mieko would be asleep by now, I realized. I circled the block again, then somehow made my way to an empty alleyway far from the main thoroughfare. I was having trouble moving. My vision blurred, and the temperature dropped. A light mist seemed to have fallen.
I hesitate to record what happened next, as I can’t be certain that it actually occurred. I had been walking in silence for some time when a voice rang out in the darkness. I turned in its direction and noticed an unusually short man dressed in white, leaning against the wall. A tall wooden crate stood next to him.
—I heard you’re interested in Chinese people, he said.
—What?
—Don’t worry, I can tell. There’s a certain look people get in their eyes when they gotta have Chinese.
I moved closer and he slapped the side of the crate.
—I have some Chinese in this crate, he said. I smuggled them in from the mainland. They’re in near-mint condition.
I stared at the crate’s hard wooden surface.
—For eleven-thousand yen, they’re yours. I don’t screw you like Minami over in Chiba.
I turned and ran. I must have passed out at some point, as I remember awakening on the streetside. I checked my watch and saw that it was four in the morning. I managed to call a cab.
As I was about to crawl into bed beside Mieko, the phone rang. I picked it up before it could awaken her.
—Kenji, it’s about... Toshio’s voice began.
—Think on it all night and all day, I said, and hung up.
My brother tried calling again a moment later but I didn’t answer. I tried to sleep, but could only drift into a kind of insomniac trance, my thoughts heavy with Hee Ying and her strange dumb distance, the obscure wooden crate, the inconceivable spectrum of Chinese activity with which I was united in time but forever divorced from.
•
Several days passed. I made it to work on time each day, but I took to stopping at a bar after I got out. I didn’t want to think clearly. I hadn’t considered what Mieko thought of my periodic absences until one day when I returned home and apologized, as I had taken to doing, for being late.
—I ran into Hideki Yoshimori today, she said casually. Hey... if you didn’t want to take me to Driftwood, you could have just said so.
I turned to face her.
—Mieko, look... I’m really sorry, I’ve just...
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
—It’s nothing.
Mieko didn’t seem upset, but I knew she wouldn’t forget this soon. The Chinese situation had slowly built a wall between us, and it was now uncommon for us to talk much more than this. I’d realized this before, distantly, but now it struck me that Mieko had been continuing to live outside of my thoughts, ignorant of the Chinese situation, and thus anything of real import, but still conscious and present.
; —So how was your day? I asked her later, when we were in bed.
—Oh, not bad. I talked with some of my students about how important it is to tell the truth.
I let out a little sigh and looked over at her, but she only continued reading, without a hint of a smile to betray her. Was she being literal? Or was she mocking Yoshimori’s and my usual style? I couldn’t tell. I turned off my light and rolled over, hugging the pillow to my head. I couldn’t sleep, and wasn’t much surprised when the phone rang at three in the morning.
—Kenji, it’s Toshio, came my brother’s voice from the other end of the line. Don’t hang up.
I didn’t.
—We need to meet, now, he continued.
To my surprise, he gave me the name of the hotel where I’d stayed with Yukino and Hee Ying.
—Why not your apartment? I asked.
—I’ll explain when you get here.
I got up and dressed and, becoming conscious of a stifling heat, pulled back the drapes and opened the window. Outside, from the look of slick dampness on the street, it had just finished raining.
When I arrived at the room Toshio had specified, I found the door unlocked. I knocked anyway, and within a few moments heard a brief grunt of acknowledgment.
Inside, countless books, papers, and empty liquor bottles lay scattered across the floor. The television was on, the volume turned down to a low hum. The window was closed and the drapes drawn. A figure was hunched over the desk, scribbling frantically on a scrap of paper. As I approached, its head turned towards me.
My brother was almost unrecognizable — haggard, unshaven, his eyes abnormally wide, it seemed scarcely possible that this wasted figure was the same dapper, punctual Toshio whom I had known for so long. I started back in surprise as he spoke.
—Kenji, finally. Where have you been?
I looked down and realized Toshio was wearing a Qing dynasty robe. A greasy fringe of hair protruded from the front of his skull cap.
—Toshio. What are you doing staying at this hotel?