Mars itself would require at least half a year of traveling into the darkness, and a similar amount of time on the surface of the planet, which would be unknown, unfamiliar, despite the rovers and probes and orbiters that had already been there, to collect samples and carry out experiments, possibly to search for traces of liquid water and microbial life. Then another half year going back through the vastness of space, the orbit and trajectory arcing just right at the right time, what only species of a certain technological prowess, curiosity, and risk-taking could do. Would he ever come back? Would he even want to?
He shifted beneath the duvet, the cat lying flat on his chest with her paws curled up beneath her. She lifted her head and glanced at him, then squeezed her eyes together and blinked. She made it harder to breathe, but he had missed the warm presence of the feline and her thrumming, peaceful purring too much to move her. There was a loud meow and the other cat, who was larger and darker and more insistent, jumped up on the sofa. She strode across his belly and curled up on the duvet. The cream-colored cat moved to snuggle against the gray cat and create a chorus of purrs with her. He closed his eyes and a bolt of lightning rose up from his body to pierce him without pain. He let it burn and move as it wished, and fell into sleep to the sound of the cats.
When he woke again the apartment was still semi-dark and the clouds had dispersed to mist. Beneath the closed bathroom door a glow was visible and he could hear the shower going. Beanie was singing, a song he didn’t recognize or catch the words to. The unfamiliar fragrance of her shower gel dispersed by the steam mixed with the scent of basil, rosemary, thyme, and parsley from the potted herbs that now crowded the kitchen counter, making the apartment feel like it truly belonged to someone else. He pulled the duvet with the cats still curled up together gently aside, rose, and knocked on the bathroom door.
“I’m done soon!” Beanie yelled.
“Take your time,” he said. “I’ll shower at the pool. But may I come inside for a towel?”
“Of course!” Beanie said. “And don’t mind my singing.”
He laughed and opened the brown door with a hand over his eyes, ducked into the steam and scent, and pulled a bath towel from the narrow shelves by the sink. The small iridescent tiles on the floor and walls were damp with moisture.
He brought only the towel, a bottle of liquid soap from his backpack, and a pair of sandals from the hallway in the apartment to the swimming pool. When he locked himself into the changing room he saw the clothes and shoes of another visitor on the white wooden benches. Maybe a Christmas guest or someone who used the day off to enjoy the pool. The four shower stalls were empty, their white oblong tiles shining in the light from the LED lamps in the ceiling. The window had no curtains or covering; that didn’t seem necessary nineteen stories up and at an oblique angle to the next tower in the row.
He undressed and showered quickly, then hurried into the next room. The glass ceiling and walls gave him the same feeling of being in the sky as the view from his living room did. In the distance sat the high-rises of the city center and below the tower were the park, the rail line, and the dark wetlands which surrounded it. At night the illumination from the city would turn the sky and the marsh golden, but now they both looked gray and dull.
There was no one else swimming, no sign of the other visitor. They might be just using the gym next door. The lights in the room were off, but the illumination from the sky outside was more than enough to see by. He dove into the pool and swam fifty meters under water, two laps, while watching the white tiles and tiny sand particles glide past on the bottom. Living away from the pool had reduced his breath-hold, but he swam slowly and calmly for as long as he could, then went up for air before he had to. Then he swam another fifty meters under water and five hundred meters at the surface, halving his usual routine since he didn’t want to be late. Finally, he floated on the water that slowly smoothed from the cessation of his motions. Outside it had started to rain, large, slow drops that tapped on the glass and wept down the window. Low-lying clouds surrounded the tower on all sides, so dense he could no longer see the ground.
24
AFTER THE SWIM HE RINSED WELL TO GET RID OF the weak yet pervasive smell of chlorine from his hair and skin, and returned to the apartment. It was humid and filled with multiple fragrances from Beanie’s shower gel, shampoo, body lotion, and perfume. The bathroom door was ajar and the hair dryer was on.
“I’m back!” he shouted at the bathroom door. “Can I sneak into the bedroom to get some clothes?”
“Go ahead!” Beanie yelled over the dryer. “Your things are all there. I haven’t touched them.”
He smiled and hurried into the bedroom. The bed was undone and covered in layers of skirts, dresses, blouses, trousers.
“Let me guess, you have nothing to wear today?” he asked.
“Shut up!” Beanie replied.
With the bedroom closet full of his clothes, Beanie had installed a rack for storage next to it. The steel tubing was full of hangers holding blouses, sweaters, pants, skirts, and jackets in various colors, and the ends of stockings, scarves, belts, and socks spilled out of the half open drawers below. He had to step over three stacks of books, magazines, and vinyl records to reach the closet, and push more aside to open the doors. His clothes were still there, in the clean and folded shapes he had left them.
His brother Katsuhiro and Michael phoned, having arrived at the parking lot to pick them up.
“Come up for a drink first?” he asked.
“No time,” Michael replied. “We’re already late. Use a cattle prod on my sister to hurry her up.”
He laughed. “I’ll be downstairs right away.”
When he opened the door to Katsuhiro’s car, Michael stepped out and hugged him.
“It’s so good to see you,” Michael said, breathing on his neck.
He hugged Michael back and kissed him. Michael smelled of aftershave and newly steamed fabric and his face was very warm. In his skinny suit and narrow tie Michael looked great.
“We need to get Beanie,” Michael said, “or we’ll be standing here for half an hour more.”
Michael took his arm and pulled him toward the entrance. The glass doors admitted them soundlessly. Inside, the foyer was brightly lit and empty, the air still and cold. Michael dragged him into one of the elevators, pushed the button, and kissed him hard. When they reached the floor they were both breathing quickly.
“Let’s leave early tonight,” he whispered. Michael nodded, eyes dilated and dark in the faint illumination in the hallway, and took his hand.
Michael opened the door and yelled, “Beanie! Five minutes, or we’re coming in to fetch you!”
“Seven!” Beanie shouted from the bedroom.
“So how were the mountains?” Michael said with a neutral facial expression.
“A bit strange,” he replied. “The neighbors have started growing wheat, it’s gotten warm up there too.”
“How do you stand it?” Michael said.
“The neighbors?” he said. “They’re all right.”
“No, being alone in that cabin, away from everywhere else, anyone else.”
He laughed. “It’s fine. The cabin’s got everything a person needs, and it’s quiet, peaceful.”
“It’s quiet and peaceful here as well,” Michael said, looking at the apartment. “And the view is phenomenal.”
“There’s no traffic in the mountains,” he said. “I can hear the wind at night and smell the heather in the morning.”
“You look terrible,” Michael said.
“I do?” he said. “I thought I looked fine.”
“You’ve lost weight, and there are dark rings under your eyes.”
“I’m training a lot,” he said.
“How’s that working out?” Michael asked.
“They called me in for a third test,” he said, ignoring Michael’s sarcasm. “Down south. Seems they wish to meet us in person, and do some medical exams.”
“If you are being selected, how long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a long training program, taking place with all the major space organizations, all over the world.”
“You want to become an astronaut but you don’t know how long it takes to go to Mars?”
“A year and a half,” he said. “At best.”
“One way or round trip?”
“Round trip.”
Michael’s eyes grew more and more dark. Then he blinked quickly and glanced down at his watch. “Five minutes, we’re coming in, Beanie!” Michael strode over to the bedroom door and opened it.
Beanie shrieked and tried to keep them out. She was dressed in a twinkling sequin blouse and a short, wide skirt that reminded him of ballet dancers, only it was black. She was even in high-heeled shoes, but kept fiddling with a pair of large crystal earrings that reached almost to her shoulders.
“You’re coming with us now,” Michael said, picked her up, and put her over his shoulder. Working out or running on the nights his job as a financial risk analyst in the city allowed for, Michael had no problem lifting his petite sister.
“My earrings! I’m not finished yet!” Beanie yelled and flailed, but Michael continued into the hallway.
“Take her coat,” Michael said, “we’re late.”
As soon as Katsuhiro saw them he started the car, having been their get-away driver many times before.
He got into the back seat and opened the other door from inside. Michael deposited Beanie, tucked her flaring skirt inside the vehicle, and closed the door, then took the passenger seat in the front.
“Everybody inside, including Beanie’s skirt?” Katsuhiro said.
“Just about,” Michael said and pulled on the seatbelt.
“You bastards!” Beanie yelled. “I lost my earrings! They were so expensive!”
“Don’t forget that you and I have the same parents,” Michael said.
“You’re still a bastard,” Beanie said.
Katsuhiro brought the car into a wide curve on the nearly empty parking lot and started down the road toward the motorway.
It was nearly dark. The honeycomb towers shrank behind them, but even from a distance he could see that more than half the balconies were unlit, several windows seeming to lack curtains. Katsuhiro had moved out early in the spring because of the high cost of living in the building. He wondered how many others had done the same.
They drove westward to one of the oldest residential areas in the city, where tall corkscrew hazel and hawthorn hedges hid long, low houses with flat roofs, expansive windows, and large wooden decks. Katsuhiro eased the car slowly into the driveway, then slipped it neatly around the corner behind the dense hedge which blocked even the view of the garage from the quiet street outside.
When he exited the car and started on the short path to the house, he saw that the low boxwood plant which stood in a wedge-shaped, glazed pot outside the front door had been cut into a tight sphere, garlanded with tiny string lights, and strewn with fake snow for an extra festive appearance. He nearly laughed when he saw it, and imagined Michael’s father kneeling in front of the pot as if in worship, laboring to trim the bush into the perfect holiday ball. But it was an honest effort, as were the lit torches that flanked the rain-glistening shale paving toward the front door.
They were among the last to arrive, the hallway and the living room and kitchen full of Michael and Beanie’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and their partners and children. Since his parents had no relatives in the city, they spent the holiday with Michael and Beanie’s family. Fortunately, there were enough people for him to quietly fade into the background, and only have to muster small talk with a few people.
At the dinner table, beneath the sparkling chandelier and the Christmas garlands, relatives dressed in silk and sequins, velvet and fine wool, took turns clinking their cutlery against their glasses, standing up, and relating to the rest of the family what the past year had brought to themselves, their spouses, children, and pets. He refused to pay attention to the boring stories about who the family members had proposed to or married or given birth to, what they had bought or won or otherwise accomplished, and allowed his mind to relax while keeping his eyes open and his lips curved amicably upward. He was deep in his own thoughts when Katsuhiro tinkled a glass, rose, and started recounting their father’s achievements and those of their mother and of Katsuhiro himself from the year that was almost through, things he hadn’t heard before. But then Katsuhiro said, “And lastly, but not least, my beloved brother applied for the space organization’s new astronaut training program and has already passed the two initial rounds. If this continues he may be the first of our family to go into space!”
Michael and Beanie’s relatives oohed and aahed and toasted him and said, “We didn’t know you had applied, how exciting, when’s the launch?” He didn’t even have to answer them, all he needed to do was to keep smiling through the surprise and irritation that had risen in him, and mumble something or other, and soon enough, another relative banged on their glass with their knife, and stood to recount their branch of the family’s highlights of the year.
After dessert, but before the cognac, coffee, and cake, he snuck out to the hallway and pretended to be waiting for the bathroom while checking his phone for messages to get a break from the chatter and the hot air. His father appeared in the living room doorway and congratulated him on his success with the testing, and his mother beamed at him, hugged him, and said, “We are immeasurably proud of you and we love you!”
He wanted to invite Michael to the apartment to talk, but at the end of the evening Michael and Beanie stayed behind at their parents’ house, and Katsuhiro drove him back to the towers alone.
“Did you really have to tell everyone about the astronaut program?” he said when they were almost there.
“Why not?” Katsuhiro said, pouting a little in the same way he did when they were small and he wasn’t allowed to follow his older brother. “If I hadn’t, you never would have told them.”
“Of course not, that’s my damned point!” he said.
“You are much too modest of your achievements,” Katsuhiro said. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
He turned and glared at the night-dark streets that rolled past them.
“Why does everything with you have to be so secret?” Katsuhiro asked. “If people disapprove of what you do, will that make you refrain from doing it?”
“No, only from telling you about it,” he said and went back to watching the city.
25
THEY SLIPPED INSIDE THE SHADOW FROM THE heat and humidity outside, where it seemed as if the August warmth had caused the air to thicken and vibrate with the frequency of the cicadas’ song. The gloom enveloped them in a fragrance of lotus incense and worn wood, with a musty undertone he couldn’t quite place.
“Stand still,” Katsuhiro whispered in the language of their birthplace, not the tongue of the country they were visiting, that of their father and his family. “Our eyes will adjust to the darkness in a few seconds.”
“Don’t worry,” he growled, annoyed at being instructed by his brother, who was two years younger and a full head shorter than himself. “I won’t trip over anything.”
Katsuhiro nevertheless took hold of his sleeve.
His shirt, although thin, stuck to his back with perspiration, and his heart beat slowly and heavily, as if his blood had thickened from the heat. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, he unscrewed the cap on the bottle of water he had bought in a corner store on the way to the shrine. But as he tilted the nearly empty plastic container back, it sloshed noisily.
“What the hell!” Katsuhiro hissed and tried to slap his hand. “Are you drinking inside a shrine?”
He knew Katsuhiro would do that, so he turned away and switched the bottle to his left instead. “At least I’m not swearing in one,” he said, and downed the last of the water.
Katsuhiro hit his shoulder instead. In the glare from the open door, they could see a robe-draped silhouette lift its head and turn toward them, but the monk didn’t say anything or approach them.
“Let’s have a look, then,” he whispered and sauntered further inside while pretending he didn’t see the sweaty footprints his socks left on the wooden floor. Both he and Katsuhiro had removed their shoes and placed them on the rack outside before they entered the shrine, and they never wore shoes indoors, neither at home nor at their grandparents’. There was just enough light to spot the display which housed the relic and the sturdy pillars that flanked it in the back of the shrine. Even here, away from the sun, it was so hot and humid it was hard to breathe, and he deeply regretted that he had agreed to go to a country where the air grew warmer than the inside of his own body.
At the relic a crowd of candles flickered in the faint breeze from the door, their smoke rising and mixing with the fragrance from multiple bowls of incense. The reliquary itself was a box-like structure, approximately one meter in each dimension, fronted by a pane of uneven glass. In its scuffed and dim surface, the candle flames quivered and gleamed. He gazed at the small space for a while before realizing that it contained a human skeleton sitting cross-legged and draped in the silk robes and tall head-piece of a monk.
Before he could feel surprise that the shrine housed a mummy instead of a more common sacred object, and wonder why it had been sanctified, the scent of tea leaves and tree resin filled his nose and mouth, making him nauseous and dizzy. He staggered backward, cold sweat blooming on his forehead and back, and the urge to throw up, shrine or no shrine, to rush back to the hotel, and spend the rest of the day in the bathroom, overtook him. His pulse roared in his ears and he balled his hands into fists to regain some control of his body. On the other side of the glass, the skeleton’s eye sockets were deep and lightless and the bone ridges above them were as black and smooth as the edge of a lacquered bowl.
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