Lion Cross Point

by Masatsugu Ono

  Originally published as: (Shishiwataribana)

  © 2013 Masatsugu Ono

  All rights reserved. First published in Japan by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo. Publication rights for this English edition arranged through Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo.

  Translation © 2018 by Angus Turvill

  Two Lines Press

  582 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.twolinespress.com

  ISBN 978-1-931883-71-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953866

  Cover design by Liliana Lambriev

  Cover photo © Gabriel Barathieu

  Typeset by Sloane | Samuel

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Contents

  Lion Cross Point

  I hated it. Detested it. I just wanted to get away as soon as I could.

  His mother’s whisper was like blades of grass, rustling, chafed by the wind. He tried to remember the expression on her face as she spoke, but he couldn’t. Wanting to recall her voice more clearly, he closed his eyes, and when he did so he saw grass—dry, sad, tired. The harder he tried to remember her voice the more chafed and torn the grass became. Patches of brown began to appear. Something was eating this wind-blown tangle, eating his mother’s voice. What was it? He peered deep into the green mass, and the brown patches grew. He was probably too young to realize that the pest feasting on the grass was his own longing, his yearning to remember his mother’s voice. If it kept on eating, it would soon form a chrysalis, taking the place of the bud it had consumed, and then form wings in place of the flower that would have grown. And then his mother’s voice, and not just her voice but her expression too, would be recovered. But, mixed with the fluids and fibers of the bug—like how a butterfly bears no resemblance to its caterpillar—both the voice and face would have become something entirely different. Soon, evening came. The faint light on the grass weakened and everything grew darker.

  I hated it. Detested it.

  The voice, the chafing grass, grew hoarse. Darkness and silence. And then, after what could have been a moment or could have been a day, there was brightness. Although the things on which the soft light fell were the same as ever, in fact because they were the same as ever, Takeru was still here, in this place that his mother hated, and his brother was not beside him. He wondered if, just as he was without his mother and brother, some of the things around him might have lost their shadows too.

  But to Takeru it didn’t seem like such a terrible place. The sea was close. He could hear it when he shut his eyes. The gentle sound of the waves brought him deep and restful sleep. He had grown slow to wake, slow to rise. The village was on a narrow stretch of land between a coastal inlet and its surrounding hills. He had come here, to his mother’s birthplace, to spend the summer vacation with Mitsuko. He didn’t know what the connection was between Mitsuko and his mother. They could have been aunt and niece, or cousins of very different ages, or perhaps more distant relations. Regardless, Mitsuko was of an age at which she could easily have been taken for ten-year-old Takeru’s grandmother. She was a small, cheerful, energetic person, her back slightly hunched, her waist and shoulders thick-set. Short dense hair hemmed her narrow forehead. It was dyed black, but showed white at her temples. Her face was always either serious or smiling. Looking at Mitsuko, Takeru realized that his mother’s expression was probably always somewhere in between. But in the broad range between a serious, brooding look and a smile, Takeru could find nothing to hold on to. So he was never able to build an image, and his mother’s face slipped like smoke between the fingers of his memory.

  “I’m only here for the summer, right?”

  “That what ya been told?” replied Mitsuko.

  Takeru didn’t answer.

  “First I heard of it,” said Mitsuko. “Who said that?”

  Then, looking deep into Takeru’s eyes, she asked, “You wanna go home? Back to your ma?”

  Again, Takeru said nothing.

  Mitsuko smiled.

  “If ya wanna stay, you can, long as you like.”

  Mitsuko always gave Takeru a way out. If he didn’t answer a question he’d feel stranded in a dark hole—but then she’d gently open a door. Even when he wanted to speak, he wasn’t good at it; and there were some things he didn’t know if he could speak about at all. For a child like him, a woman like Mitsuko was bound to be a comfort. And everybody here was kind, not just her. Not that he’d met that many people.

  That day, as he woke from a nap, he had the vague feeling that Bunji was in the room. He wondered why Bunji didn’t leave the area. It couldn’t simply be because people here were kind. Perhaps these thoughts came to him because he had just been dreaming about his brother. In the dream his brother had been asleep—face down, one cheek pressed against a tatami mat, his mouth squashed and pouting like a fish’s, a strand of drool hanging from his lip. They were in the apartment in Akeroma where they had lived with their mother, though she had almost always been away. The cries of cicadas poured in through the open window, a shower of sound that smothered all other noise, yet seemed to intensify the smell of rotting garbage that clung to the air. Unless the garbage was in the apartment, the smell must have come in through the window as well. Perhaps the flapping of agitated crows fanned it in. The window had no curtains and the fierce afternoon sun burned down on the tatami where his brother lay. From time to time his brother groaned. He tossed and turned. It was as though when asleep, yes, only when asleep, Takeru’s brother too might have felt troubled. Was that true? It was Takeru who was troubled, desperate at the thought of his brother waking up his usual self. No, he wasn’t. He was used to it. Was that true? You couldn’t get inside someone else’s sleep, so even if there was a maelstrom in his brother’s head, he wouldn’t be able to witness it. But there’d be even less chance of finding out once his brother was awake, wouldn’t there? His brother wouldn’t reply, couldn’t reply.

  Of course, Takeru knew perfectly well that what he was doing wouldn’t get him inside his brother’s mind. Yet in the depths of sleep his brother looked so defenseless (but against what, whom?), submissive (but to what, whom?), and exposed (but to what, whom?). At the same time his little body was like impenetrable armor. It protected his mind, hidden away within. It was closed—firmly and stubbornly. As though tempted by the very strangeness of it, Takeru lowered his clenched fist to his brother’s face. One cheek was flat against the floor. The other bulged upward, and Takeru pushed his fist gently against it. He suddenly increased the pressure and, thinking this might be a way to break through the armor, rotated his fist left and right. Then from behind his ears, from the depths of the dream—no, from somewhere quite unknown—he heard that voice, that bizarre, high-pitched, strangled voice:

  Don’t! Don’t do that!

  It was no longer his brother who turned in his sleep, but Takeru. He woke up.

  He knew the person whose voice it was would be there when he opened his eyes. He was always there. Bunji. His face, with its little eyes and nose, forming its usual expression—a smile? confusion?—looking down at Takeru. Or perhaps Bunji wasn’t looking at Takeru. To Takeru, those eyes seemed to look inward, inside Bunji himself. But how can somebody’s eyes, that only ever point outward, look within?

  “Like this.”

  That’s what old Tsuru in the village would have said. Tsuru was always sitting at the bus stop at the intersection, where the main coastal road from the north meets a local road that leads to another village on an inlet to the east. Veins stood out on his palms like worms, and in the warmth of one of those palms he kept his fake eye. He liked to roll it around and then put it, backward, into his left
eye socket. Takeru couldn’t get used to it. He stiffened with disgust every time Tsuru did it. Tsuru would look at Takeru and smile—a faint slit appearing between his thin, wrinkled lips.

  Takeru never asked Tsuru what he could see with the eye in backward. It seemed to Takeru that at the back of Tsuru’s empty eye socket, at the back of his mouth too, there would be an expanse of terrifying darkness.

  “Everyone’s eyes’re like this when they sleep,” Tsuru said. “They roll right back.”

  Takeru didn’t know if that was true or not. But he remembered seeing white between his sleeping brother’s eyelids. Perhaps his own eyes would look the same if he could see himself asleep.

  “When we dream I figure we see a landscape inside ourselves,” said Tsuru.

  If that was the case, then what about Bunji? He looked like he was dreaming even when he was awake. What did those eyes of his show him? An always unfamiliar scene of desolation? No. Takeru imagined it to be a land of green grass and trees, of brightly colored flowers, of clear water. In fact, Takeru could see it. It was a warm place, but cool in the morning and evening even on the hottest days, so you had to cover up at night. It was a land between green mountains and dark blue sea, which meant it was here. Right here. This place that his mother hated, detested.

  When, in his dream about the apartment in Akeroma, Takeru heard the alarm in Bunji’s voice, he lifted his fist off of his brother’s cheek. Bunji’s tone suggested an intimacy with Takeru and his brother, so Takeru felt, more than ever, like he had known Bunji for a long time. But he couldn’t have. The first time Takeru saw Bunji was at the airport, on the day he arrived here.

  Mitsuko had come all the way to Tokyo to pick him up and bring him to his mother’s old village by the sea. She wasn’t used to trains, and they had to transfer several times on the way from Akeroma to the Tokyo airport. She kept checking with the station staff, or anybody else around, to make sure that she and Takeru weren’t getting on the wrong train. They got to the airport two hours before their flight. Although there was plenty of time, Mitsuko was all flustered, rushing to buy presents for people back home. In the end she bought so many that she couldn’t carry them, and had to ask the shop to ship some of them for her. But she seemed embarrassed as she spoke to the shopgirl. She was trying to speak Tokyo Japanese, which wasn’t natural for her at all.

  She turned to Takeru as she was filling in her address and muttered, “Oh dear, I’ve used a whole year’s spendin’ money.”

  “Will you be paying with cash or a card, Madam?”

  “Card?” Mitsuko frowned, as though a credit card might carry a curse. “No! Oh no!” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “Cash!”

  Mitsuko looked very tense as she paid. She spoke to Takeru in a hurried whisper, but he didn’t really understand what she was saying:

  “A credit card takes money straight out your ’count, don’t it? What if it takes out t’much and you don’t realize it? I don’t like things like that…”

  Unfortunately, Mitsuko’s intended whisper was loud enough for the pretty, young shop assistant to hear. Takeru saw the girl put her hand to her mouth and snicker. He felt awkward. He didn’t want to look at either Mitsuko or the girl, so he kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Restaurants’re too expensive,” sighed Mitsuko, having spent so much money on gifts. “Save, save, save,” she muttered as she made her way to a food stall, where she bought some lunch boxes and tea. The high-ceilinged lobby was lined with seating. They chose a place and settled down to eat.

  “Taste good, don’t it, Takeru.”

  Mitsuko sounded as though she really meant it, and maybe that made it taste good to Takeru too.

  It wasn’t yet the peak summer vacation period, so their flight just before 2 p.m. had quite a few empty seats. Most of the other passengers were businessmen in white button-down shirts. Across the aisle from Takeru was a middle-aged man with his shoes off, reading a newspaper. There were a few women and children on the plane as well, no doubt traveling early to spend the bon holidays with grandparents. A boy of about Takeru’s age was being told off by his mother for not sharing his manga book or game console with his little brother. Mitsuko fell asleep shortly after takeoff. Takeru looked at the side of her face. He’d been told that he’d met her when he was small, but he couldn’t remember. Takeru grew sleepy too. When he opened his eyes again Mitsuko was awake.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Mitsuko, feeling Takeru’s eyes on her.

  No, he had no memory of her at all.

  But the person at the airport seemed familiar right away. Takeru and Mitsuko had picked up their luggage and were walking through the arrivals gate. The person was sitting on a bench by the glass wall of the lobby, thin and frail. Because he was sitting down, it was difficult to be sure of how tall he was, but he struck Takeru as very short, probably no taller than Takeru himself.

  What was most remarkable was his face. It was like a child’s, yet at the same time like that of someone very old. But then it was neither. A mysterious face, as though immaturity and the decrepitude of age had fused together in a fight for center ground. Takeru had no idea how old the person was, but there was no doubt he was male. He couldn’t tell whether the person was looking at him or not. Somehow he reminded Takeru of the old woman who’d always been kind to him at the supermarket in Akeroma. Of course, they couldn’t be the same person.

  “Hii-chan!” Mitsuko shouted, waving her arm. “O’er here!”

  But she wasn’t calling to the person on the bench; she was calling to a man farther down the arrivals hall. He hurried cheerfully toward them. He was small and wore a Hawks baseball cap.

  “You’re late,” said Hii-chan. His face was ruddy, and he had a very large nose. His long white eyebrows hung down to his dark, mischievous, sparkling eyes.

  “Your flight was takin’ so long I went t’see if there was any news ’bout a crash on TV,” he said, pointing to the large screen at the other end of the hall.

  “Don’t be silly,” laughed Mitsuko. “We got lots to carry so give us a hand. I got ya a present, by the way.”

  Hii-chan took her bag of presents. It was so full of candy boxes it was beginning to tear.

  “Whoa! So many gifts!” he said, with an exaggerated show of surprise. “Are you a millionaire now?”

  He turned to Takeru.

  “Welcome!” he said kindly. “Glad t’meet ya.”

  Takeru took off his FC Barcelona cap and bobbed his head. His bangs were sticking to his forehead with sweat. Hii-chan frowned at the length of Takeru’s hair.

  “What’s all that for? Don’t it get in the way? You should get yourself a haircut like me, kid!”

  Hii-chan took off his cap with one hand and rubbed his shaved scalp with the other. He smiled, a silver tooth glinting in his mouth.

  Neither Hii-chan nor Mitsuko looked even once at the person on the bench, and they didn’t seem to notice Takeru stealing glances in his direction.

  Hii-chan had parked in the lot in front of the airport. Takeru followed him and Mitsuko out of the lobby and across the road. He then stopped and turned around. He could see the man through the shiny blue plate glass, his head oddly large against his slight frame, his back stooped. The man wasn’t looking in his direction, so that was all that Takeru could make out. He turned away and hurried after Mitsuko.

  Takeru was astonished to see the man again the next day, after his first night at Mitsuko’s house. When he got up Mitsuko was placing a bowl of rice on the family altar, as she did first thing every morning.

  “Come here, Takeru,” she said. “Look, these’re your relatives. Tell ’em you’ve come home, and ask ’em to look after ya.”

  Takeru pressed his palms together in front of the altar and did as he was told. “I’ve come home. Please look after me.”

  Then he pointed to the small wooden altar drum. “Can I hit that?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Mitsuko, handing him a stick.

  He t
apped the drum and began to chant: “Dummy number dummy number…”—his approximation of a prayer to the Amida Buddha.

  Mitsuko laughed.

  “Look!” she said. “My old man’s enjoyin’ that!”

  On the altar were some small framed photographs. One showed a man of about sixty-five in a suit—Mitsuko’s late husband, Yoshio. He was definitely smiling. Takeru’s tapping quickened and his voice grew louder. He looked carefully at the other photos to see if anyone else was smiling. That was when he noticed. The oldest photo on the altar was so faded that you could hardly even call it black and white. He stretched up to take a better look. In the photo, a group of about ten adults and children were gathered around a bald hermit-like old man with a long goatee, who was sitting on the veranda of an old-fashioned house. In the foreground were a wicker bamboo bowl, some chickens, and a piglet. Takeru’s eye was caught by a woman standing near the frame, farthest away from the old man. She was staring out of the picture with a suspicious frown. Takeru’s dubious mantra stopped. The drum fell silent.

  “Who’s this, Mitsuko?” he said.

  “Which one?” she asked, coming closer to the altar. She picked up the photo and held it out to Takeru.

  “The boy standing in front of that woman…”

  “Ah…that’s her son, Bunji.”

  The shaven-headed boy in the picture was just a child. But Takeru felt sure it was him—the man he’d seen at the airport, the man he somehow felt he already knew. Takeru was about to say so to Mitsuko, but he didn’t. The boy in the picture was looking down—perhaps he was nervous about the piglet whose nose was so close to his foot that it might almost have been eating it. Takeru couldn’t see enough to judge whether his features were definitely those of the face he’d seen yesterday—the strange face that could have belonged either to a young child or an old man. And besides, Mitsuko had suddenly started talking, excited, as though she’d noticed something important in the picture that she’d never seen before.