by Mick Jackson
A quarter of a mile or so short of Haworth Denny parks the bike at the side of the road, flips the seat up and tucks the pistol into a secret little compartment there. Then the two of them head into town, with Denny carrying Yuki’s rucksack and Yuki limping alongside her. The first few houses have just come into view when the snow starts to fall again, a little more heavily now, and by the time they reach the steps of the Grosvenor Hotel the air is thick with it and the whole world feels as if it’s shut right down.
Yukiko sometimes has trouble remembering how she felt about snow before the death of her mother. She assumes that, like most other children, she admired its powers of disruption and transformation and considered it great material with which to play. Even now, despite what it did to her mother and, indeed, how it fucked up her entire family, she doesn’t resent or particularly fear it. She’s simply a little more inclined to take it seriously.
It must be five or six years since she first heard of Ukichiro Nakaya and his snow experiments, although she didn’t get her hands on Snow Crystals: Natural and Artificial till she was at college and managed to track down a copy in the library. Nakaya is sometimes credited with compiling the first general classification of snow crystals, and indeed one page of the book has each fundamental type laid out in a grid, like a sort of periodic table of snow. But Yuki knows, even from her own amateur investigations, that Suzuki Bokushi created a similar chart a hundred years earlier, in Snow Country Tales. No, the reason Yuki is so in awe of Ukichiro Nakaya is that he approached snow with the same intelligence and rigour you’d expect of any scientist, and along the way worked out what conditions influence each crystal’s design.
She’s no idea how many years he devoted to snow analysis before attempting to create his own artificial crystal. There are photographs of him out in the snow up Mount Tokachi, bent over a microscope, and to this day Yuki can’t conceive how you take a crystal, fix it to a slide and tuck it under the eyepiece while keeping it intact. He had assistants, Yukiko knows this. Quite possibly a whole team of snow-folk eager to serve him in any useful way. But when she pictures him going about his icy business she prefers to think of him out there on his own – monastic, as befits a man contemplating something as delicate, as ethereal as snow.
The first time she opened up Snow Crystals in one of the study cubicles at the university she all but squawked, like a goddamned bird or something. The book contains some text and a fair number of graphs and tables, but most of it just consists of hundreds of microscopic photographs of snow crystals, half a dozen to a page. In hindsight, she should maybe have limited herself to a couple of pages on that first encounter. Allowed herself to be blown away by the weird mechanical beauty and the astounding symmetry, before returning the book to the shelves – and come back, refreshed and psychically rested, the following day. But she turned the page to find another dozen, even more ornate and viciously barbed creations, all sprouting from the same hexagonal core. So that by the time she turned the page a second, third and fourth time she was inundated, and what had seemed incredible a minute earlier became so strange as to be practically meaningless.
She had to leave her cubicle and walk about, to try and clear her head a little. But even as she did so, with all those peculiar shapes jangling around her, she couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that their only component was plain water, extravagantly spun way up in the clouds.
The astonishing variety was, in part, what drove Nakaya to attempt to create his own crystals – the fact that the sky was apparently capable of casting out an infinite range, all perfectly and elegantly fashioned. It forced him in from the cold, into his mountainside laboratory, where, ironically, he had to replicate the freezing conditions he’d just left behind. Yuki read somewhere that he’d zip himself into an old flying suit to keep himself warm. She’s heard how astronomers in the Fifties and Sixties also wore them – some of them heated, and trailing electric wires – since an astronomer is busiest in the long, dark nights of winter and once the roof of the observatory is opened up, well you’re pretty much out of doors. Yukiko delights in the fact that pilots, astronomers and snow researchers have all worn the same strange suits – entirely different disciplines, but all preoccupied with the sky and what goes on up there.
Sooner or later Nakaya must have grasped that the only way to observe a crystal in mid-formation was to try and cultivate his own. So he got himself a cloud chamber and set about doing just that. The problem he had was replicating the conditions that would normally occur in mid-air, so he threaded all sorts of string and filaments through the chamber to try and give the nascent crystals something on which to grab a hold. It was only by accident, the story goes (and Yuki has noted how it is often an accident that operates at a tale’s significant moment – an accident, in this instance, being another name for Fate) that a rabbit hair off the hood of Nakaya’s coat found its way into the chamber. So that when he next peered in he saw the beginnings of a crystal, perched on the tip of that rabbit hair. Something about its texture offered the crystal the necessary traction, when all the previous lengths of thread and twine had been too smooth or knobbly – or not smooth or knobbly enough.
There is cine footage – Nakaya’s own, Yuki thinks – of the work that followed. Time-lapse sequences of these microscopic forces exploding, in eight different directions. Then even closer/more magnified footage of the growth of a single branch of ice, like a rocket nudging through the upper atmosphere. And if seeing microscopic photographs of crystals in all their glory isn’t mind-blowing enough, then seeing footage of one taking shape, wilful and sinister, will probably do it. On first encountering the film, Yuki was reminded of her own junior snow experiments – how amateur they were in comparison (she was only young, after all, with no major funding) but also how hers were doing quite the opposite, since Nakaya was attempting to replicate this most incredible act of creation, whilst hers were nothing but reduction of the bluntest kind.
Having created the circumstances necessary to cultivate a crystal, Nakaya found that altering the temperature and saturation in the chamber encouraged the crystals to assume different forms. The colder the conditions in the chamber the less ornate the crystal. There were moments, as Yuki sat in her own small cubicle, when she’d think, I’ve ploughed through all this stuff, hoping to get to grips with snow and maybe somehow dismantle, even disarm it. But the deeper I go the more threatening it appears. Through a microscope’s lens most things start to look a little alien, but a snow crystal is like something from a sci-fi nightmare – looks positively murderous.
Then, when she felt she was just about done with Nakaya, a friend put her in touch with someone at Kobe University who was carrying out some real, academic research into the man. They exchanged polite emails and the researcher eventually mentioned that he had a short clip of Nakaya being interviewed in his laboratory in the early 1950s. Unfortunately, the accompanying sound was missing, but the researcher said he’d had the footage digitised and that he’d happily send it over to Yuki, on condition that she promised not to copy it or show it to anyone else. She agreed, and a couple of days later a small package arrived with a memory stick, wrapped in a typed note. Yuki imagines the researcher hearing, through their mutual acquaintance, how her mother had died in the snow and how she’s since become something of a snow-maniac. That this was her way of trying to come to terms with her mother’s death, etc. Either way, she felt honoured to have the footage, despite the fact that it was only two or three minutes long – footage that practically no one beyond Nakaya’s family and close colleagues had ever seen.
As soon as she found the package in her pigeonhole she went straight up to her room and loaded it onto her computer. And there he was, in black and white, sitting in his mountainside laboratory, with a sheepskin hat on his head and the flaps down over his ears, apparently talking quite earnestly, with the warmth of his words turning to steam before his face. Yukiko assumes that he was discussing his work, not least because at various points h
e’d turn and nod towards different corners of the laboratory. But for most of the short film he talked straight to the camera – as if he might have set it up and started it running himself. So that his solitariness, which is of such peculiar importance to Yuki, might be maintained.
She doesn’t particularly mind the fact she’s no idea what he’s saying. Watching someone talk without the sound makes you appreciate their facial expressions – particularly, what they do with their eyes. There are two or three moments in the film when Nakaya looks so intently into the camera that Yukiko really does feel that he is addressing himself quite specifically to her. And on more than one occasion she’s been inclined to think that his words, if she could only hear them, would turn out to be a message, or some sort of explanation. A personal apology, on behalf of the snow.
Yuki finds her key and leads Denny on up to her bedroom. Hasn’t had the chance to properly examine her leg yet, so she sits on the bed, moves her trousers from side to side again and presses down on either side of the bite, as if trying to purge herself of venom – of the memory of the dog getting its teeth into her. The frayed rips in her trousers are blood-soaked and she’s having trouble seeing what’s going on so she stands, undoes her belt. Then hesitates. Denny shrugs. Says, Go ahead. So Yuki eases her trousers down over the wound. The blood has already started to congeal in the four neat holes, and the neighbouring skin is beginning to bruise. Denny leans in. Asks if it hurts. Yukiko nods her head two or three times. She seems kind of bewildered. Has never been bitten by a dog before.
They’re both still looking at the bite when Yuki asks Denny why she did it. Why she shot the woman. Denny thinks for a while. I just couldn’t resist it, she says. And starts to laugh again, but not half so hard now, or for half as long.
It feels to Yuki that her leg has been kicked rather than bitten. The muscle beneath the cut is growing tight and aches like mad. She sits back on the bed and sees the dog’s head easing up beside her, as if it just wanted some attention – a stroke, or a chuck under the chin. Can feel its hot breath against her leg, for that single second … see its ears flatten … its eye roll back and look up at her … its big mouth parting … it leaning in and taking a nip at her.
Denny’s wandering around the room now, looking at Yuki’s belongings on the chest of drawers and hanging over chairs, while Yuki continues to gently prod at her thigh. Here and there Denny stops to have a closer look at a book … a blouse … Yuki’s Japanese toothpaste. Then turns and tells Yuki that if she really doesn’t want to see a doctor, she should at least get some cream and clean things up a bit. Yukiko doesn’t argue. And after a little more looking around Denny takes the keys from the bedside table and heads out into town.
Yukiko can hear the front door being pulled to and Denny’s feet on the steps below the window. She carefully lifts her legs and slips them beneath the covers. Wonders what would have happened if she’d fallen off the bike as they tried to get away. Imagines the dog tearing her to pieces – her disappearing into a small storm of shredded flesh and clothing, like the scene when the Brontë Father chopped up Charlotte’s clothes. And she’s half asleep fifteen minutes later when Denny returns, with snow on both her shoulders and a takeaway coffee in each hand.
Denny fills the sink with hot soapy water and dips the facecloth in it. Yuki perches on the edge of the bed and once the blood’s been cleaned away the two of them have another good look at it. It’s not a huge wound, but as Denny says, you really don’t want any extra holes in you if you can possibly help it. She opens the tube of ointment and smears the thick white cream over the bite marks – can feel the punctures beneath her fingertips as she smoothes it in.
Denny says, Damn. I should’ve bought some plasters. Then stands and looks around the room. Yuki doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, but Denny asks for directions to the bathroom and returns with some toilet tissue, folds it twice and places it over the wound. She hands Yuki her coffee and a packet of paracetamol, kicks off her own shoes and climbs up onto the bed.
Yuki takes the Brontë biscuits from the bedside table and she and Denny are working their way through them when Denny looks round the room at the drawers, the dressing table, the little sink in the corner and says, This place kind of gives me the creeps.
Yuki has a look herself. Other than the hotel room in Leeds and Kumiko’s, it’s the only place she’s slept since she got here. She was beginning to think maybe it wasn’t so strange.
When she’s finished her coffee Denny asks if she can look at Yuki’s notebook – the one in which Yuki asked her to draw a wolf. So Yukiko takes it out of her rucksack, hands it to Denny and sits and watches, to see what she makes of it.
The book is pretty evenly split between text and sketches. Quite a few of the drawings appear to be ideas for eccentric clothing: vast-collared capes … futuristic hats … platform boots with secret compartments. Scattered through the book are various unusual haircuts. In one sketch a woman’s hair is swept up into a towering beehive, with a miniature camera hidden in it. Yuki explains that it’s for a project in which she secretly photographs people’s reactions to her own spectacular haircut, but isn’t sure Denny quite grasps what she means.
There are seating plans for retro spacecraft … cross-sections of residences with rooftop helipads and subterranean swimming pools … a still life of a pair of laceless trainers … mediaeval monsters. Denny works her way through the book, flipping forwards and backwards until she reaches the end. Then starts again, this time looking more closely at Yuki’s handwriting. She points quite randomly at a piece of text and asks Yuki to translate it. Some are just odd little thoughts – poetic, philosophical. Some are quotes from books she’s read.
Denny watches Yuki’s fingers as she translates four or five sentences before appreciating that not only do the lines run from top to bottom, they advance from right to left. She takes the book from Yuki and holds it out before her.
She says, So the front of a book in England is the back of a book in Japan?
Yukiko nods.
Denny is still digesting this when Yuki’s phone starts ringing. Yuki picks it up, checks the screen to see who’s calling, and places it carefully back down on the bed.
My sister, she says.
Then she and Denny sit and watch the phone ringing, as if it’s some strange creature that’s just stirred from hibernation. Until at last it stops. And the room is somehow filled with Yuki’s sister’s resentment at Yuki not having taken her call.
When Yuki finally looks up Denny asks how long it is since her mother stayed in Haworth. Yuki holds up the fingers and thumbs on both hands.
Ten years? says Denny. She can see how just talking about her mother upsets Yukiko. Sees how her eyes are beginning to prickle with tears. All the same, Yuki reaches back over to her rucksack, takes out her precious pack of photos and carefully lays them out on the bed. There’s her mother outside the parsonage … the reservoir … the bent-over tree. And now she adds the photo of her mother by the Grosvenor’s front steps and the small table by the open window. Denny squints down at the last photo. Then looks up at the window next to the sink.
She stayed here? she says, pointing at the bed on which they’re both sitting. Yukiko shakes her head and points at the wall, beyond the tiny TV and chest of drawers.
Next door? says Denny. Your mum stayed in the room next door?
Yukiko nods and gives her a little smile.
Denny slides off the bed and takes two or three steps towards it. Turns. She wants to know if Yuki has managed to get in there yet. Yuki says that she hasn’t. So Denny goes over to the window, opens it up and leans right out, to see if there’s any way of creeping along to the next window. When she pulls her head back in her hair is flecked with snow.
She drags the sash back down and Yuki watches as she tries to work out how they might contrive to find their way in there. Watches her stare at the threadbare carpet, thinking – just as Yuki thought earlier – that maybe there’
s a way of crawling through, under the floor.
Yukiko waits a while – perhaps because she knows where it will lead – then mentions, super-casually, how she’s seen some keys downstairs, near the kitchen. And that she’s pretty sure that one of the keys is for the room next door.
Denny opens her palms out wide and shrugs her shoulders. Well, what the fuck are we waiting for?
Yuki digs out some clean trousers but has trouble pulling them on because her leg won’t bend as much as it should do. Plus she’s trying to keep the dressing in place. She finds some socks and shoes, then she and Denny slip out onto the landing and tiptoe along to the next room. They stand beside the door in silence, listening. Denny crouches down and peers through the keyhole. Takes a grip of the door handle and turns it. The door’s still locked.
OK, she whispers. So where’s this key?
They creep down the stairs and stand in the hallway for a minute among all the leaflets, trying to hear if anyone’s about. Then on into the dining room and over to the door to the kitchen. It’s Denny who finally pushes it open – wide enough for them both to see inside.
There’s a faint sound, but way off in the distance. Somebody talking – or maybe a TV or radio, with the sound down low. Yuki is hoping Denny might volunteer to creep in and take the keys off the hook. It was Denny, after all, who recently shot a woman in the ass. She seems to be quite naturally wayward. But it’s not Denny who’s searching for some psychic trace of her mother – some tiny, telling vibration that may lead to greater, more significant information and help her comprehend what happened ten years ago. So Yukiko steels herself and slips past Denny. Tiptoes over and reaches up to the hook below the number 6. Lifts the keys with such care there’s barely any contact between the ring and the hook. And the moment she has them in her fist, she turns and limps off at speed – past Denny and over towards the stairs.