My Falling Down House

by Jayne Joso

  I have slept and heavily, and I wake to find my spring robes mopping up the rains. It’s not good, but this kimono has served me well and kept me covered over as I dreamt. I cannot guess the time of day. I feel quite stiff. I stretch my limbs out slowly and am cautious as I look around. I do not know what I expect to see, but I know what damage a typhoon can do. The rains come again now suddenly, thick and heavy. Something has changed, the storm makes its attack from a new direction and with a different kind of rain. There are things that I should check on. I inch over to the top of the staircase, the waters have grown as I slept. I heave a great sigh, for I have not given a single thought to Cello, I am not even sure where she is. Guilt tightens my chest. I thought of nothing and no one when I climbed the stairs up here, and if I did it was only fleetingly. I wonder now about the shapeshifter. Can they survive big storms? Is it trapped in the room below? Drowned? Fallen asleep on the shelf and deep in slumber woken to a world of murky water, alone and afraid? And the temple folk. I wonder how they have fared.

  I move away, I cannot go down there yet, it isn’t safe. I take off the pale green robe, laying out spring in the hope it will soon dry.

  I placed Cello in a cupboard some time ago, for sure I did – the thought comes back – and have not moved her since. I hope she might be protected there. And I hope the shapeshifter has a form that would save it, that it might swim out or climb and find some safety.

  I have edged towards the window now, totally dark out there, vast sheets of rain block out the light, and I may have slept much longer than I know. Truly, is it night again?

  I had no chance to store away the prototypes, the paper ones. They will be ruined. What a lot of work that was ... and all the coding ... I am not sure I could remember it well enough if I had to start it over. No use to hold this thought. Sneezing and shivering, I look over the spring robe. I feel I cannot manage without it. And don’t want to wear another. Damp and dirty, but dry enough at the top. I place it back around my shoulders.

  I must stay calm. I will find a dry spot up here and lay out the other kimonos once again, perhaps just one at a time, and map the stories painted there in greater detail, for I must keep my mind occupied until this wretched storm has passed. I will trace the scenes along the robes, work at their meanings, and conjure a few more stories of my own. A quiet activity and that being the case I might listen out for Cat, and also for the shapeshifter. No matter what form it takes, if it has grown afraid, I must do what I can to comfort it.

  10.

  I have stayed up here much longer than I expected. It has been some days by now. I have not moved that much, my stomach is strange to me, deeply hungered. My mind, I sense has ruptured, or perhaps it is my spleen, there are pains, numbness elsewhere also, and I can make no sense of myself, body, consciousness, sanity. It does no good to notice. Perhaps I am dreaming. But I’m not. And awake I am so very lonely.

  When I drag myself to look, the lower floor is muddied with a clay-coloured water, the smell is foul and dank. It is not all that deep anymore, but I will let the remaining water find its way out again before I venture there. In all honesty I have found it difficult to consider going downstairs at all. I have slept on and on, warming myself in the sun when it glimpsed through – a form of recompense somehow – and I have indulged in my new activity mapping out tales with the storytelling robes when I have lain awake, truly, the perfect distraction, for the devastation at ground level will be no easy thing to face.

  When I woke again I found drinking water close by me. Not sure if I was dreaming I drank with heart and was glad of it. I was insanely dehydrated. And it occurred to me that perhaps I had been downstairs to fetch this, in a kind of sleepwalk – but the robe would surely betray this, it would be freshly wet and muddied, and if I had climbed down there naked, the stained waters would have left some residue, a tidemark on my legs. Ultimately, I can no more explain the water cup than the noodles I found on my return from the garden. I am grateful for both though they trouble me. And have I eaten something more, just very recently? More than anything I hope I have not been stealing again.

  This lack of clarity surely points to the planting not having taken full effect quite yet. I might be less well than I realise. No hair still, but worse than that, these memory glitches, gaps, perhaps also misremembering; and really, no way to know if this is the case... Is it possible that my actions have taken on greater independence, overriding my conscious mind, that I am really not aware of what I do? I hope it’s not that way. But how can you keep an eye on your behaviour and the state of your mind when you are so entirely alone? It is not good to be so removed from society, I see that, but I am still not fit to find my way back.

  I have not heard the shapeshifter at all. I hope it is safe. I would be comforted at least by the idea of its return, for it would mean I was not entirely alone. It is all I can do to hope that it is well.

  My thoughts, muddled.

  Something else occurs to me, the very faintest sense of my head having been touched and by a hand that is not mine, for just now, as my fingers moved over my scalp, I was reminded of the touch of another. It cannot be a memory of my former girlfriend, Yumi, and nor could it be the fond and early memory of my grandmother’s touch, for in both cases I had a full head of hair, and this was the touch, I might even say caress, of a hand that touched a head that has no hair at all. You do not feel the softness of fingertips through a thick head of hair. What you feel is wonderful, of course, but the sensation is entirely different when your head is smooth and bald. And I know it. It was skin on skin. A soft and caring hand drawn gently over my scalp. And not my own hand. Fantasy? Perhaps half awake my mind conjures this out of loneliness and desire. It is not real? But like the food and water that I can no more easily explain, it brought me comfort. If it is fantasy, then let it be, for I feel so lonely and my mind again becomes unstill.

  And now I am troubled, for I borrowed the soil outside awhile, and I hoped to have treated the space with respect, and to have left it as close as possible to the state in which I found it. But now I don’t remember. Did I make good the ground I laid my head upon? Oh, what goes on with me, that I can never be quite sure? I attempt to track back, but still I cannot speak for my actions with confidence. Oh, useless, useless head. I cannot think about it more. But I need to recover, and make recompense as soon as I am able, wherever there is need. It’s not good to sense that you don’t know what you are doing, that details are lost, perhaps even invented, that you no longer know what you are about, and that you are forced to accept that your mind might wander almost without you at times. Is that what happens? Does my mind just take a walk? Does it forget to inform me of my actions? What state is that?

  Questions, and how they multiply! I have never questioned things deeply, and now I probe about and my curiosity takes itself off on journeys with a map all of its own.

  I lost so much, was overcome with grief, was overwhelmed with self-pity, and the result is that now I am a ‘thinking man’? One who now questions the world and himself? What a luxury. How selfish. For this to have been possible has required two specific things: the absence of work (in the formal sense at least), and the absence of time (without means of measure). I know for sure that my father would have seen this very differently, just the makings of a lazy, useless man. No work and too much time. How could that possibly equate to anything good or useful? But the world must have a place for minds to think, and it must permit the conditions that are conducive. But I am not a thinker, but rather, just a man who thinks, a guy who thinks where previously he did not. Things have shifted about, they have been shaken up, and a set of accidental circumstances have brought this about. Nothing more. And I have no idea if my thinking is of use, or if the mind truly wanders to no purpose. But a shift has taken place. Good or bad, I expect there is no going back.

  I want to believe that the soil has nourished me. I planted a head and thoughts have grown. Is that what I intended? Farming myself, making something
of and from myself, seeing what might emerge, what might evolve?

  Well, perhaps so.

  Simply watching a farmer does not make you a farmer, Takeo. You must do it for yourself. You must plunge your hands into the soil, you must dig and dig and dig, you must understand the weather like no other, you must know what you plant, what it needs, how long to tend it, how long to let it be, and you must appreciate the soil in which it grows. If you only watch, you will see but never do. My father’s words somehow.

  I am not a farmer.

  I stayed the too-long hours at my desk, and so was made a salaryman. Fooled like many others that the part I played was something more, that one day my efforts would be recognised and perhaps rewarded. They were not, I was merely a cog. Easily replaced by any other. But I also gambled, and this made me a gambler. I took risks, but these I calculated, and I won. I am not a salaryman, and I may not always be a gambler, but I’m grateful for what it taught me. So many shifts in me, fault lines, tremors, but perhaps something good emerges also. Perhaps hidden fractures that with the right conditions reveal some unexplored zones. I cannot say, but notice I am animated suddenly. Before the planting, I worked at the prototypes like nothing else, failing again and again and again, but refining my skills, taking my time, solving the problems as they rose. And now I want to push on again in that way, and see where things might run. When the waters have truly drained away, I might have to start some things over, so to say, re-starting them, re-figuring, re-drafting them.

  Well, I am far from being a craftsman, and there is no one here for me to study, and so I invent the methods on my own. I am a craftsman in prototype, a craftsman in the making. So arrogant! What happens here? But arrogance might just be necessary.

  I am not a farmer.

  I am not a salaryman.

  At times I am a gambler.

  And, in time, I will be a craftsman.

  11.

  Downstairs, finally the rainwater has gone. It leaves a dry clay-coloured residue. I sweep it from the steps. It covers the tatami and floor. The tatami are soaked through and will rot.

  In the wake of the rough typhoon of my childhood that filled our home with mud, I remember my mother’s extreme calm. I was dazzled by it, and I remember standing, watching her, waiting for tears, for huge, great tears. But she did not cry, rather, she was determined, and practical. She looked at me straight, and without words we heaved the tatami outside. Father would deal with them later. And we began, like all of our neighbours, to clean up our home. To clean up and get on with our lives.

  The sun has come. It showers in as though with purpose. And all the brighter for its arrival on the back of a meddlesome storm. My mother also gazed at the sun that day, and drenched in a bright white autumn light, she was serene. It’s gone, was all she said. Then she moved out of the sunlight and continued with the clean-up. That went on for days.

  I see no other way forward than to adopt a similar methodical approach to that carried through by my mother. Back then I thought that the mud and dirt and dust would never end, that it could never entirely be cleaned away. But painstakingly we scraped, swept and heaved. I didn’t mind the messiness that much in the daytime, I was a kid, but at night its presence felt so penetrating. It seemed to climb into my ears, crawled up between my toes, coated my feet, dusted my hair, and made my eyelashes twitch. And my eyes became sore. But somehow, finally, it was gone. Free of mud, new tatami arrived, and over time other spoilt things were mended or replaced. We moved on and did not speak about it.

  I cannot readily replace the tatami, but the sun should dry them out if I position them well in here. But I sense I will not manage to clean this place as well as I would like, I am weak again, and now completely out of rice my body has begun at times to shake, but I will do all that I can.

  I have checked the place over and find no sign of the shapeshifter’s presence. I must assume it is safe for I lack the energy to worry. I have looked across at the temple and also at the temple dwelling and realise I did not need to be concerned. So fatigued and anxious I had forgotten that the other architecture is in a very much healthier state than this. Truly robust by comparison. I am content that the damage there will be minor. And the people there, surely safe.

  There is a lot of damage down here, truly, it is a great mess. It is only luck that I had banished Cello from sight. And my cardboard stash is, for the most part, in reasonable order. Had I not recognised my lack of skill and set these boxes aside, and if I hadn’t had the advantage of the plastic sheets, they would most certainly be ruined. There are damp patches on some, but overall they have survived well.

  Those I used to practise on are a different matter, almost entirely destroyed. And the coding I had laboured over and inscribed with such care, now completely indecipherable. Stupid to think it could have been otherwise, but nonetheless I feel this more deeply than I would like. The coding, just gone.

  Collecting these up it was as though something nipped at my flesh, and as I looked them over and took in the full extent of the damage, the scissoring effect on my skin, such as I felt it, only increased.

  I squatted down on the floor awhile, lightheaded. Then came the sensation of slick paper cuts made to my skin. I did not know what caused it, I did not see anything, just a feeling, perhaps imagined. I passed out. When I woke my skin was covered in tiny blood markings. Insects had taken over the tatami in its damp and sun-warmed state, and bitten at me over and over. How quickly these things happen. I itch now terribly.

  I forced the tatami up and pushed them outside on the temple side. And this I did without thinking, without a care of being seen. My body in a trembling state.

  Over and again in endless repetition, I swept the place, but the dirt just re-emerged. Then finally, when I was truly and quite indescribably spent, it seemed to have gone.

  The water damage would have to remain for I had not the energy to do much more. The spring kimono hung about my shoulders but by now was ruined. A deep band of clay and dirt blocked out the scenes as though troubled by a storm all their own. The little figures, houses, picnics under cherry blossom, all of them blotted out.

  Ruined, I folded up spring and placed it by the door.

  Desperate to stem the itching I tried to wash, and lacking food drank enough water to make my belly hurt. My muscles ached and were painful to the touch. My eyes were smarting and I grew concerned about my sight. My hands were often numb; and I was no longer sure of my hearing, perhaps that also failed. None of this was good. I climbed the stairs again. I took out a sand-coloured robe and curled up, a lazy cat in the cosy autumn sun. Soon, for sure, I had to feel better.

  I don’t know how long I slept, but I had the feeling again of my head being stroked. What fantastical events my dreams have become. My bitten and bloodied scalp experienced a caress so gentle, so very sweet and light, I am apt to believe that by taking up the position of a cat I suggested to myself the life of a cat, and so have been treated as such as I slept. The imagination is a powerful thing, my dreams seem now to offer some actual physical sensations, and as long as these are good ones I cannot find anything unpleasant in this.

  There is a bowl laid next to my head. It is empty. I felt so glad when I noticed it and lent over expecting that it might hold food. I run my finger around the rim just now and taste it, there is a trace of something good. Hard to identify, but so long without flavours passing my lips this part at least makes sense to me. I know simply that what was there (for certain there was something) tasted good, perhaps delicious. And now what comes is just a very faint memory. I know that taste. Not well enough to name it, but enough to know that this is something that has touched my palate recently, and more than that, my stomach. Freshly rounded, but not bloated as from hunger or aching from the water, my belly tells me I have eaten. Then have I eaten whilst asleep? Is that possible? It seems that way. But there was no food in this place, none at all; I did not cook, and I did not hear anyone enter. How is it possible that I could sleep s
o very deeply that I did not hear a thing, then also ate and still did not wake? It makes no sense. My faculties are strange to me. My frame of reference shifts and shifts again just as the dimensions of the rooms in this place have so often shifted, at times altering my perception entirely, affecting my work on the prototypes and more importantly the models and my notes. I realise it cannot actually have been the house that altered, but some game played by my mind, but it has been so testing not knowing what I should trust and what I should not, and then dealing with all the extra work brought on by this confusion. A set of calculations sometimes based on phantom walls, on shifting space. I would eventually find myself more fully conscious only to have to start over again with my work. The dimensions ought to have been so easy to calculate, truly the easiest part, but at moments I felt the rooms as though they swung about, the walls moving inwards or out, the inner walls shifting as though by themselves, the shoji swelling in parts or slicing itself up.

  Too often I find the definite becomes indefinite, lines extend or else are truncated, and there is no way to check back, no way of knowing what can be relied upon. You cannot gauge density or proportion, obtuse angles sharpen and then soften; it suggests that what you see is entirely malleable, everything soft. The quality of the light shrouding detail at moments, accentuating, magnifying, even glorifying it at others. The light, it dapples certain areas, in others it highlights a surface, leaving the body of the object behind. Surfaces opaque, then translucent, stretch away and then are lost in darkness. What significance does any of this have? Are these surfaces, these objects, near to me or far? Do they change before me? When a mind is so unstill it is too hard to work things out. To lock things down.

  But I must not doubt my work. I have to, and will, make a very fine box dwelling. The coding is lost, so I will simply master a new system, for there will be coding. What a strange burst of thought comes once the appetite is sated. What a simple being I am. An injection of nutrients or the warmth of the sun! Just like leaves. I am just like leaves.