by Isis, Justin
—Okay.
He looked at her for a while, then made his way to the door. Outside, it was still mid-afternoon; but it would be dark by the time he got home. On the way to the station he took out his mobile phone and scrolled through his old messages. He was still checking them when he got onto the train. Then, taking a seat, he deleted them one by one, starting with those from Mutsumi and moving on to Tomo’s. Finally his inbox was cleared. He rested for a while, then opened the phone again and composed a message to Tomo. It read:
Tomo,
I read everything on your laptop. I’m sorry but nothing is going to happen between us.
—Park
After sending it, he turned off his phone and leaned back against the seat.
When he got home, Sujung looked at him in surprise, noticing his haircut. She’d had hers cut today too, he saw; and at this meaningless coincidence, she seemed amused out of all proportion.
—Where did you get yours done? she asked him.
He sat down at the table.
—My girlfriend cut it.
—Oh. I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.
—Well, I don’t, really.
He looked at her hair. Now, it only came up to her shoulders.
—I couldn’t find my clip, and I thought it was getting to be too much trouble. Oh, but I thought I’d treat myself, too. You’re going to be surprised to hear this. Mrs. Matsukawa and I are going to be opening another shop. She’s come into some money because of the sale of a house. Anyway, the new shop will be in Yokohama, and she’ll be managing it. It’s going to be a risk, of course, but I know we can make it work.
—That’s great, Park said.
Obviously affected by the new venture, she went on in a tone of reminiscence:
—I used to wear my hair like this when I was a girl. I think it was about this length when I met your father.
Park stared at her. She didn’t often talk like this, but he’d heard the story of his parents’ first encounter before. His father had been twenty at the time, a first year medical student who’d moved to Gwangju from the countryside. He’d met Sujung through her older brother, a friend of his. She’d been just sixteen then, ‘the head of her class and a first-class beauty’, he remembered his father telling him. They’d spoken briefly, then encountered each other at random on a bus. He’d sat beside her and discussed the future. What did she want to do, what were her dreams? She told him of her hopes for love, success, adventure. She wanted to travel, if she could — America, Europe, Japan, anywhere would do. Impressed by her sincerity, he asked her brother for permission to date her. When it was granted, he progressed slowly, letting her know his intentions only after he’d won her trust. They were married a year later.
Park studied his mother’s face and tried to subtract thirty-seven years, to imagine her as the girl who’d met his father. All of their actions, he told himself, would have been performed without the least self-consciousness. And there was no connection between those young people and himself. He tried to imagine their emotions, but it was impossible. They were like perfect tin robots, clockwork dolls set in motion. It seemed incredible to him that there had ever been such people, that their emotions had existed anywhere.
•
His phone woke him in the morning. He let it ring for a while, but when it didn’t stop he sat up and checked the clock. It was still five A.M, and fragments of a dream lingered in his mind — something about enormous eggs filled with statues. He wanted to sink back into it, to lose himself in sleep. But the phone kept ringing. Rubbing his head, he picked it up and answered.
—Hello.
—It’s me, Tomo said.
—Okay.
—I got your message.
—Right.
There was a pause. Tomo seemed to be speaking from far away.
—Tell me again what you said about nothing contradicting anything else.
—There’s nothing to say about that. We won’t have any opinions, one way or the other.
—Describe it to me, Tomo said. I want you to tell me what it’s like.
Park felt himself drifting back to sleep. There was no way for him to tell that any of this was really happening.
—I can’t describe it, he said.
Tomo suddenly spoke very quickly.
—I feel it’s like a watercolor, he said. It’s like a watercolor with very pale colors that are dissolving into each other.
—It’s not like that. Stop trying to think about it.
There was a sound from across the line, a kind of cry, a little animal sound.
—I don’t care about any of this, Tomo said. Will you love me. Will you ever love me, it doesn’t have to be now, it can be in the future, I don’t care when...
Park hung up.
•
On the train in the morning, before he reached school, Junko called him. She was on her way to work, but would be coming home early. She wanted to ask him some questions about the florist, and wondered whether it would be okay for him to meet her after school. Not having made any plans, he said yes.
—Are you going to pick Tomo up too? he asked her.
—He’s not coming in today. He said he wasn’t feeling well.
—Oh.
As he walked past the gates at the end of the day, he saw Shiho ahead of him, trailing a group of her friends. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, her long white socks bunched up around her ankles. She carried an enormous golden handbag. He watched the afternoon sunlight shining on her hair, catching the golden surface of the bag. Everything about her seemed purified, as if she were surrounded by a pane of perfect glass.
He wondered how many more days he would see her like this, in class or outside the school. No matter how long it went on, he realized, nothing would happen — he would never talk to her, and nothing would happen. His life would run parallel to hers, never touching. He would have to keep living like this, at a remove from everything. There was nothing else.
Strangely, even with her head turned away, he felt as if she were watching him, that something else was watching him through her. He wasn’t certain whether to call it her mind, the world, or a part of himself. It was nothing conscious, he knew, only a resistance — the resistance to time that held her in place. The development of her flesh and the expansion of her bones had been orchestrated by death; it was death that softened her skin, glossed her hair, sparked the light in her eyes. Like a camouflaged insect assuming the colors of the leaf that overshadows it, the surface of her flesh reflected the death that surrounded her. Gazing at her shoulders he felt a perfect nothing, a hopelessness distilled to two dark curves of light like a band of beaten gold breaking the sun. Immediately the emotion retreated, enamelled itself. Looking at her he could imagine dying beneath her feet, his blood staining her boots. But he felt neither love nor sexual desire. Both seemed distant and insubstantial, insulated out of existence. He knew that even if he were to sleep with Shiho he could never really touch any part of her, that even if he were to impregnate her he would only be acting out a farce. The laws of physics would not allow two objects to exist in the same space, which was what he wanted — to have every dream, every cell, every trace of his existence in time entangled with hers. The nervous system prevented any real communion; only an atomic weapon would be enough to smear their shadows together—
But it was not necessary to rewrite the universe — this romanticism, he decided, could be fulfilled as easily by hanging himself from the ceiling. Since a fixed mind gave rise to desire, the removal of the mind eclipsed any possible attainment. But this was a matter of faith — the quality of his mind that he recognized as having the tenderness of a young girl was nothing more than the unexamined hope that death consisted of an immediate communion with absolute existence.
Probably the idea of the thread had come to him as a child. He remembered waking one morning on his birthday and lying in bed, imagining the presents waiting for him downstairs. Since he hadn’t asked for
anything, there was no way for him to know what his parents had gotten him. But he could imagine the gleaming red ribbons, the rainbow-colored wrapping, the boxes piled beside the door. Or else a small, sombre parcel, tied with a bow and placed on the table. Or a tall silver cylinder, topped with a card, propped against the bed. Eventually any thought of the presents themselves vanished as he found himself imagining ever greater and more opulent boxes. When his mother opened the door and asked him why he hadn’t gotten out of bed, he closed his eyes tightly against the pillow until the colors blurred behind his lids like a sheet of shimmering foil. When he walked downstairs an hour later and found two asymmetrical bundles bound in plain green paper, he wasn’t disappointed — all of his expectation shifted to their contents. But instead of opening them he made himself breakfast, and as he ate he stared at the presents across the table, feeling both excitement and complete calm, giving his mind the freedom of absolute abstraction, so that the spaces inside the wrapping became the same as nothing. In this state the presents became more and more desirable, until finally it was impossible to open them at all. If not for his parents he would have left them on the table forever, perfect and unknowable, seen always from the corner of his eye.
Then an absurd thought came to him: that if he were to die right now, the joy of anticipation could be prolonged forever.
He sat up as his mother came in from the kitchen, carrying a cake. Although he knew she couldn’t read his mind, he felt as awkward as if he had spoken aloud. The thought itself was like an entrance into death and holding it in his mind was like holding a part of death. He was surprised to find himself refusing it less out of fear than a kind of luxurious apathy, the pleasure of an indefinite deferral. Just as the luxury of not opening the presents had outstripped any possible joy at their contents, so refusing death lightly had assumed a subtle perversity. He felt immortal, impotent; his life extended in all directions forever; nothing would happen.
But neither did he want to free himself from suffering, which was finally inseparable from perception. Tragedy could not make the thread descend; it was indifferent to horror and despair, sadness and doubt. Even if a war were to pile a mountain of corpses at his door, the sky would offer him nothing. The thread descended only at moments of supreme joy, when the universe sharpened itself to the clarity of a lens, reminding him that nothing could be touched, known, or penetrated, that he was only himself forever. There was no immediacy to perception, because he knew that the mind was only the shadow of a greater joy on the tied-end of the thread, that the world and its perfections were only cleansing his palate for a feast that would never arrive, an imaginary banquet all the more sumptuous for never having existed.
He was careful not to be troubled by his own inaction. Since nothing could be attained, everything could be procrastinated; if all actions parodied themselves, then all hypocrisy was justified. A complete consistency existed in all facets of his life; already he seemed hundreds of years old. It was only necessary to wait. But here too, amused, he questioned his faith — couldn’t he say that, like a patient who refuses treatment in fear of confirming his disease, perhaps a terror at immortality had prevented him from entering death?
As he reached the street, he saw Junko’s car pulling up. Seeing him, she rolled down the window and waved him over.
—Thanks for coming, she said.
He nodded and got into the passenger side. The car pulled off the curb and rejoined traffic.
—I’m sorry to take your time like this. It’s for Maiko, I told her where you work, what your mother does. She’s thinking of decorations for the wedding.
—I thought it was going to be in Kyoto, Park said.
—She’s thinking of having it here now. Of course, Takahiro — that’s her fiancé — he wants it in Kyoto, where his family’s from.
—Uh huh. Well, you could talk to my mother, probably. They’re starting another store, they’re going to have another florist in Yokohama.
—Is that so? She must be very excited.
—Yeah.
They pulled onto the highway.
—You should be very proud of her, Junko said. It’s not easy, working and raising a child at the same time by yourself. It’s not a position you want to be in. That was my position too, I know what it’s like.
—You were left with your son.
—Yes.
—Probably wasn’t what you wanted...
—It doesn’t matter what I wanted, she said, a little abruptly. Sometimes you don’t have a choice.
—No, you’re right.
Even in her there was something hidden, something that wanted to be young. He thought absurdly of love suicide, of some desperate escape with her. For such a practical woman, it would be like a luxury she was forever unable to afford.
—I can get you some of the newer catalogues, he said. We’ve helped out with weddings before but you’re going to have to specify what you want. What Maiko wants, I mean.
—She left some instructions. I’m going to call her tomorrow in the afternoon, so I told her I’d talk to you. I’ll get you to look over it when we get back.
They drove the rest of the way without speaking, accompanied by the steady beat of the radio. As they turned into the sun, Junko put up the visor and turned on the air conditioning. Park leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. After being awakened at five A.M., he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, and now he felt tiredness settling over him again. In this half-sleep, the feel of the seat, the undercurrent of the radio, and the sunlight through the window all merged into a single sensation, a feeling of being rocked back and forth, weightless. Eventually he felt the car come to a stop, and when he looked out the window, he saw that they had arrived.
—I think Tomo will be pretty surprised to see you, Junko said. I didn’t tell him I’d be picking you up today.
He followed her to the door. She knocked, but there was no answer.
—He must be sleeping, she said, taking a key from her bag. When she opened the door, he saw that the house was dark. He stepped forward just as she reached for the light switch. For a moment the electricity flickered and he glimpsed a heavy shape suspended from the ceiling, pointing at the floor like a stilled pendulum. Then the light flashed on and the shape resolved ahead of him. Before his eyes Tomo’s body slumped in space, close enough to touch, hung from the neck by a dark black strand. His limbs hung lifeless, his face swollen as a frog’s.
Park felt Junko seize his hand. For a moment her nails bit into his skin, then she let go and screamed. He looked down at his wrist. Two red dents stood out against the blue of his veins like the twin prongs of an electrical cord. He’d never imagined that a woman’s hand could grip so tightly.
When he looked up she was clawing at Tomo, reaching for his face, or trying to pull him down, he couldn’t tell. He stepped forward and she turned back to face him, lips stretched taut in a rictus, her jaw set so tightly that he felt her teeth would shatter.
He tried to say something, but his mind stopped him. It felt as if spiders were crawling in his head, weaving threads too quick for him to follow.
He pushed past her into the hall and opened the sliding screen to Tomo’s room. The windows were open. As he’d guessed, all of Tomo’s paintings had been propped on their easels, the plastic covers discarded. Together they formed a triptych, a semi-circle facing the screen. The self-portrait stood on the left, its edges retouched, a deeper flesh-tone to the face. On the right, Park’s portrait had also been adjusted, the eyes tilting heavenward. In the center stood the unidentified canvas, the boy with fine bones and close-set eyes. This painting, which had once struck him as a caricature of his own face, revealed its purpose when placed next to the others. It was not his face — not strictly. Neither was it a self-portrait of Tomo. Instead it combined them into one, an impossible hybrid or child. Tomo had filled in the frame of Park's face with his own features, averaging out what wouldn’t fit the structure: the ears enlarged to match the brow; t
he slight sallowness of the cheeks contrasting the prominent nose. Park stared at it, repelled at first, then unable to look away. Whether Tomo had intended it or not, the painting reminded him of his own ideals, and he felt as if he had entered a stranger’s house and found something of his own among the shelves, something he’d misplaced.
A cry came from the living room. He made to enter the hall, then changed his mind and turned back to the painting. Looking at it, he felt himself drawn into its gaze. The open mouth was Tomo’s, but the eyes were his own, stripped of their usual context as if in revolt against him. He felt them staring back at him, accusing him of weakness, calling him a liar. But the accusations were marks on paper, a pile of rags, all useless. Even the painting’s eyes paled in comparison to the room and its faded posters, the shirts stacked on the dresser, the week-old trash in the basket. A thousand signs of Tomo’s presence surrounded him, but finally there was no connection between them, the painting and the corpse in the living room. He looked down at his hand and felt again for the red marks of Junko’s nails. They, too, seemed only an emblem, a desire for which there was no fulfillment, nothing.
From the other room he heard Junko cry out again. Ignoring her voice, his heart racing, he took a palette knife from the nightstand and slashed apart the canvas.
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