“What’re you doin’, Takeru?”
Saki had been walking up the path to the graveyard behind the temple, but had retraced her steps to where Takeru was standing in front of the main building, his palms pressed together in front of his face.
“Praying,” replied Takeru.
“Look up there!” said Saki, her voice suddenly loud.
She was pointing up the hill. Takeru could see nothing special among the rows of graves.
“Not there. Farther up! Look!”
Takeru looked higher. On the boundary between the graveyard and the woods beyond was a small figure sitting on a large branch in a tree. It was hunched over like an old woman.
Takeru immediately looked away.
“Bunji?” he murmured. What made him think that?
“What’d you say?” asked Saki, her voice low now too.
“Nothing… It’s a monkey,” he said, putting into words what his eyes saw.
“Yeah,” said Saki, looking at the ground. “Make sure you don’t catch its eye.”
Takeru looked down too. He reacted more to the fear in her breath than the words themselves. If you catch a monkey’s eye it might bite you.
“It’s drunk,” he said.
It seemed funny once he’d said it. All Japanese monkeys have red faces, but according to Hii-chan’s personal theory of evolution the red faces of the monkeys here came from drinking the liquor that people left at their loved ones’ graves.
Saki tried to nod, but her chin was already against her chest. All they had to do was avoid the monkey’s gaze, but the children were so nervous that their eyes were glued to the ground and they didn’t even look at each other. Then, as though prearranged, they simultaneously turned their heads. They tried to make the movement look casual, as if they were tracking some troublesome mosquito. Once their heads were turned, they rotated their bodies as well until they had their backs to the graveyard, and to the monkey beyond it.
The path they were standing on had been cemented by the head priest, an avid do-it-yourselfer. Older villagers on their daily visits to the graveyard did not let themselves be deterred by wet concrete, so the path, far from smooth anyway, was peppered with footprints. Hii-chan had mentioned that there were also prints left by deer and boar. Takeru wondered if Bunji’s footprints might be there too. He scoured the surface. “What kind of footprints are those?” he said, pointing. “A monkey’s,” laughed Saki, not bothering to take a closer look. There were piles of weeds on the side of the path, pulled up by the old folks visiting the graves. In some places the weeds had been snapped off, rather than pulled up completely. They’d soon grow again, their leaves spreading and waving in the wind. Perhaps the old folks left the roots in so they could have a reason to come back more often.
From the graveyard there was quite a clear view of the head priest’s house, only partially obstructed by a clump of bamboo grass. They could see the priest’s daughter-in-law hanging out laundry in the garden. On one pole was a sheet billowing gently in the wind. On another were pieces of toweling.
“What are those?” asked Takeru.
“Diapers, of course,” said Saki, like she was amazed by his ignorance.
“Oh.”
“Cloth diapers like those’re a real luxury. There’s so much laundry t’do.”
“Oh.”
Takeru remembered that his brother had worn disposable diapers for a long time. It had been odd having his older brother wear diapers when he himself no longer had to.
“Paper must be easier,” he said.
“Cloth’s better for the environment,” said Saki.
“Oh. Still, it must be a real pain doing all that laundry,” he said.
But wearing the same clothes every day or not taking a bath didn’t kill people. Takeru thought of his time in Akeroma. One morning when it was cold and the days were short, Joel came to visit them. He brought his few household items and gave them to Takeru, along with a folded ten-thousand-yen note. The blankets had a spicy smell. After that, every time he thought of Joel that smell came back to him. Joel told him he was going home for Christmas, and that he might not be able to come back to Japan. There was sadness in his large eyes. Takeru wondered how Joel knew he might not be able to come back, so he asked. Joel replied, in his slow, stumbling Japanese. He seemed to be saying that if he left Japan he might not be allowed back in. He used words like “permit” and “visa,” which Takeru didn’t understand, even in Japanese. Unless someone was dead, why would they be unable to come back? Takeru was already in the village by the sea when he heard about the big earthquake that had happened early in the New Year. The name of the country seemed familiar, and although it had been over six months since the disaster happened, Mitsuko found an article for him about it in an old newspaper. The Chinese characters in the article were too complex for Takeru to understand everything, but the map looked familiar and he got that over three hundred thousand people had been killed. The number was beyond Takeru’s imagination. Was that the country Joel came from? He wasn’t sure. For all Takeru knew, Joel might be back in Akeroma by now, worried that Takeru and his brother weren’t there or, perhaps, relieved they weren’t.
A strong gust of wind blew down the hill, dispersing the smell of Joel and lifting the sheet on the laundry pole. The sheet gave a flapping sound like the wings of a large bird, though its movement was more like the squirm of someone concealing something under their coat. The young woman was busy hanging out more laundry. Neither Takeru nor Saki could take their eyes off of her and the baby on her back. Takeru began to feel hot at the back of his neck. Perhaps it was sunlight filtering through the mass of leaves, or perhaps it was the gaze of the monkey in the tree. The baby started to cry. The mother left the laundry for a moment and turned around.
The baby stopped crying.
The mother didn’t seem to see Takeru and Saki. If Takeru felt the power of the monkey’s gaze behind him, why couldn’t the mother notice his own burning stare?
It was the baby. That’s why she didn’t notice. The baby could feel his gaze, but it wasn’t crying yet. Takeru stared harder.
It began to fidget.
That’s it! Be miserable!
Don’t! Don’t do that!
But Takeru didn’t listen. He knew that whatever Bunji said, even if it sounded negative, was an affirmation of everything about him.
The baby bawled. But time was running faster now, and so the mother’s reaction was fast too. She’d already turned away from the laundry pole.
Perhaps that’s what Takeru had wanted to see her do. Perhaps that’s why he’d put so much effort into his stare.
The mother turned around. But not, of course, to meet Takeru’s gaze.
The baby wasn’t going to share its mother with anybody. It monopolized the mother’s attention and entirely negated anybody else who might be staring at her longingly. It was as though Takeru had been staring at the baby, trying to make it miserable, because he had wanted to see the mother’s emotion channeled toward it, her love bound to it.
It made Takeru want to cry. But no, maybe his sadness came just from seeing the baby’s impotence—though it cried with all its might, its whole body convulsing, it was, in this vast world, entirely helpless. But Takeru was helpless too. Perhaps he was sad because the baby’s crying made him realize just how helpless and alone he was.
“Sounds healthy, don’t it?” Saki said.
Her voice brought Takeru back to earth.
“It’s doing its job…crying,” he said.
“It’s so cute!” said Saki, though she couldn’t see the baby’s face.
“Babies have one other job too,” said Takeru. “Do you know what that is?”
“No,” said Saki.
“Don’t just say no… Think!”
Saki crossed her arms and cocked her head. A mischievous look came to her eye.
“Poopin’.”
“Bull’s-eye!” said Takeru, laughing loudly.
“Shh,�
� said Saki, putting her finger to her lips, “she’ll notice us.”
But the woman seemed conscious only of her crying baby—all other sounds were blocked out entirely. She cradled it in her arms, not looking up the hill once. Yo-i yoi, yo-i yoi, she chanted, swaying the child from side to side. The cry seemed out of keeping with her youthful appearance, her neat, dyed-brown hair. It sounded like an old person’s. But why?
The newly washed sheet must have been heavy, but it moved easily in the wind, as though the sun had already dried it out. It rose and fell like a wave, and with it the mother’s loving voice bobbed gently up and down: Yo-i yoi, yo-i yoi. The baby’s crying gradually faded away, breaking up like smoke in the wind. Takeru’s body shook, tickled by rising laughter. He inhaled deeply, and as the smell of grass and leaves flowed through his nose to his chest, he no longer felt the helplessness of a baby. Yo-i yoi, yo-i yoi.
The hill of the graveyard behind the temple was not that high, but the view extended over the head priest’s residence to the houses beyond. Windows and roofs glared with reflected sunlight. The telephone wires linking the houses swayed from time to time, shaking off birds and the clinging air. Farther away was the sea. The sea and the sky slumbered like twin beasts, their breath, heat, and bodies kneaded inseparably together. Time too lay still. Takeru had a strange feeling that he wasn’t here. No, Takeru was here. He was here, but it seemed as if “here” was inside someone else’s memory. Yo-i yoi, yo-i yoi. The mother’s tender, gentle, soothing voice wrapped around him, lifting him up from a place higher and further than the light of the sun, and taking him away. If Takeru were inside someone else’s dream, that person hadn’t noticed him. The clear sunlight played with the shining tiles. It squabbled with the shadows, jostling to be the confidant of the green leaves and grass that quivered and whispered in the wind. But Takeru was not noticed. He wanted to lift his hand and wave.
Because he feels uneasy being forgotten? Is that why he wants to wave? No, that doesn’t frighten him at all. But doesn’t he feel uneasy waving, when this isn’t his place? He doesn’t know. But he wants to communicate that he is here. He simply wants to declare the fact that he is filled by something big, strong, and positive. Hey!… Hey!
But then he heard a voice.
There was something like hatred in it. And it shot him out of the sky. Irrespective of whether this was his place or not, his mind had been expanding to cover the entire world. But the voice stopped that.
Takeru turned around. The monkey in the tree was beaming, laughing, its canines jutting from its ecstatic mouth, its bright red face strangely contorted. Perhaps it had been into the liquor on the graves. Takeru immediately turned his back. He stumbled and almost fell. Was he drunk from the monkey’s stare?
Takeru was laughing. Laughing, sounding happy. And it wasn’t just Takeru and the monkey—the laughter in the air was so loud and boisterous it was as if all the dead in the graveyard might have been laughing too. It whirled around inside his head. He could hear nothing else. He could not hear the cicadas. Where were the mewing kittens? Was the baby crying? The flapping of the sheets and diapers in the wind… he couldn’t hear them either. No, he could. He could hear all sounds. And so he could hear nothing. He could think about nothing.
There was the sound of chafing blades of grass. I hated it, detested it. I wanted to get away as soon as I could. The pressure on his back suddenly lightened, and he turned his head. There was no sign now of the monkey on the branch. The drunken animal must have fallen from the tree and gone back to its home in the hills.
That afternoon Takeru was watching high-school baseball on TV with Mitsuko when he heard Hii-chan’s truck pull up behind the house.
“Octopus!” cried Hii-chan, coming into the garden with a net bag.
Mitsuko immediately stood and went outside.
“It’s huge!” she said.
“They caught it in a pot this mornin’, and it’s been in a tank by the quay all day. They brought it out just now and gave it t’me.”
Takeru joined them outside. They were standing by the washtub, looking down at the soft mass of red and black that had slipped from the net bag. Takeru prodded the slimy body nervously with his finger. The color changed slightly where he touched it. It was beautiful. But Takeru said, “Ugh! It’s disgusting!”
“It may look disgustin’, but it’ll taste good,” said Mitsuko happily. “And it’s so big!”
“Boil it over charcoal—it’ll be wonderful,” Hii-chan said.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Mitsuko, retrieving the charcoal grill from the storage space.
She asked Hii-chan to light the grill and went into the kitchen, bringing out a large tin bowl and a box of salt. The octopus clung to her hands as she lifted it from the tub. She crouched down, put it into the bowl on the ground, poured a vast quantity of salt on it, and rubbed it vigorously.
“Do you always use so much?” asked Takeru.
“You’ll never get the slime off otherwise,” she said.
She squeezed her fingers tight as she pulled the octopus through her hand. From time to time she lifted it and then brought it down hard against the bottom of the bowl. The octopus was now covered in thick white bubbles—a mixture of salt and slime. For some reason Takeru thought of his brother. It was strange that nobody ever asked about him. Mitsuko pressed her fingers hard into the inside of the octopus’s head and pushed it inside out.
“Ugh!” cried Takeru.
He shuddered at the different shapes and colors of the octopus’s guts. Mitsuko scraped them away, throwing them nonchalantly into the sink.
“Water’s ready,” said Hii-chan, a fan in one hand. A large gold-colored tin pot was bubbling away over the grill.
“Well,” said Hii-chan. “I done my bit, so I’ll be off t’home now.” He smiled at Takeru. “Enjoy it!”
“We’ll bring some over when it’s ready,” said Mitsuko.
“Don’t bother. I had some the other day. Eat it all yourselves.”
He walked to his truck and waved.
Mitsuko took the lid off the pot and slipped the octopus into the seething water.
“Oh, I forgot somethin’,” she said, then disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with some tea leaves and vinegar and put them into the boiling water. “That’ll help soften the octopus,” she said.
“Mitsuko?” said Takeru.
“Yes?”
“In that photo on the altar there’s that child named Bunji, right?”
“Bunji? Oh yeah, Bunji.”
“You said he died when he was small. Are you sure?”
Mitsuko’s face flickered with surprise. She looked at him, as though trying to figure him out.
“Why’re you askin’ ’bout that again?”
Takeru hesitated. He couldn’t bring himself to say it: I know him; I’ve seen him; I’m always hearing his voice. He couldn’t say that. Instead his mouth said:
“How did he die? Was he sick?”
“I may’ve said he died when he was little, but I suppose he was ’bout twelve or thirteen. It was before I was born, so I don’t know that much ’bout him, but they say he was a bit weak—not just his body, his head too. He didn’t go t’school—he couldn’t. These days there’re schools for people like that, but not back then. But havin’ him wanderin’ around the village wasn’t no nuisance to people. I suppose they just accepted it. One day, though, he went away somewhere.”
“Went away somewhere? You mean he disappeared?”
“Yeah,” said Mitsuko, lifting the lid of the pot to check on the octopus.
“Where?”
“Nobody knew. Night came and he didn’t come home. The whole village was worried ’bout him. In those days when someone disappeared people thought they’d been taken by spirits. If it happened in the mountains, they’d blame tengu; if it was at sea, they’d blame sea spirits. It was that long ago. Anyway, the last place Bunji was seen was Lion Cross Point. A fisherman was comin’ back t’shore in his boat when
he looked over to the point and saw him and another child of ’bout the same height… People thought the other one must’ve been Takeshi, his younger brother—the one we all thought ya were named after. He was a kind and clever boy. He always was lookin’ after Bunji—like Takeshi was the older brother and Bunji the younger one. From what the fisherman said it sounded like Takeshi was leadin’ Bunji by the hand. Everybody asked Takeshi, but he said he didn’t know anythin’ ’bout it, that he never went as far as Lion Cross Point. Well, Takeshi wasn’t the type of child to tell lies, so in the end everybody came ’round to thinkin’ Bunji had drowned. So, though I said he died, nobody had any real proof. There wasn’t a body, so they couldn’t be sure he was dead. And we can’t ask Takeshi again now—he’s not with us anymore either. I expect they’re together in Heaven, walkin’ along hand in hand, just like they did here.”
“Mitsuko,” said Takeru. Or perhaps he didn’t.
Takeshi was lying, he wanted to say. He was with Bunji. I know he was.
Because Takeru saw them. He didn’t know whether they were at Lion Cross Point, but he saw Takeshi and Bunji walking together. Takeshi went ahead and Bunji tried to keep up with him. Takeshi looked irritated, as though Bunji were a nuisance. Bunji walked at Takeshi’s heels, keeping as close as he could. His elbows were bent, and he looked off-balance, as though he might fall over or walk into the middle of the road at any moment. There wouldn’t have been any cars here in those days. The road wouldn’t have been paved. But Takeru saw the odd car go by, sometimes a truck or bus.
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