by Riku Onda
I stared at the walls of that room. Cold blue walls. I wanted so much to get out of there, but I couldn’t.
I wanted to ask the person with me to help, but I couldn’t do that either. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. The air felt weird and I was scared.
The person with me didn’t move either. They just stood there behind me. Making sure I didn’t run away.
That’s all.
I don’t remember what happened after that.
All I remember is being with somebody in the blue room, and feeling very afraid.
VII
She feels a cold wind. Every time she remembers that story, and Hisako’s voice as she told it, she feels chilled to the marrow. Even now. Even on this unbearably hot, humid summer afternoon, she feels cold.
A sign of bats. That mysterious saying of Hisako’s.
Hisako frequently spoke about things that were not visible as though they were and vice versa, because having lost her sight very young her knowledge of things she had actually seen was jumbled with things she hadn’t. Her quirky use of language had the effect of making her seem even more mystical and miraculous, while making the other person, who did not understand, feel stupid and in the wrong. That’s why if anyone had noticed that she didn’t know what crepe myrtle was and was using that name for something else, nobody would have thought to point it out. They might have even wondered in the back of their mind if Hisako wasn’t actually correct.
“It’s a wonder. I feel anger and sadness swelling up,” she used to say.
Hisako often tried to explain very carefully what she perceived. She couldn’t see but she had a sense of size, and to her emotions were like balloons expanding in the dark. She knew their scale and texture. An excited cheerful mood would sparkle, because she could tell something was twinkling high up in the air. Love and adoration were like air currents, or heat. But sometimes, out of frustration perhaps, she would suddenly break off.
“We have crepe myrtle at home.” She often said that too. We all thought she meant the tree outside the Aosawa house. That big crepe myrtle tree in front of the house with the round windows. That’s what anyone might have thought.
We were always listeners. That was our role. Very few people could actually have a discussion with her. She told us about lots of different things. And we asked her questions. Then she would explain, and we would nod. Our conversations always went like that. She would laugh, and we would be in raptures hearing her laughing voice.
“We have a crepe myrtle tree at home.”
No one knew what she meant. No one apart from me. And until I met that smooth-faced policewoman, I didn’t know either.
VIII
She sits slumped on the bench. Her face is pale and contorted, her eyes are closed. Sweat pours down her forehead.
The blue room.
Behind closed eyelids she sees the small room in the old house she has just left, and a young girl in a white blouse standing in the passageway. Their eyes meet. The girl becomes Hisako in a polka-dot blouse, standing in the chilly, dark corridor. She stands in the middle of the corridor, staring at Hisako. There is a distance between them.
“I thought it was this room,” she says.
“Oh, did you?” Hisako answers.
“Yes. This famous room. The one literary giants wrote about. With walls painted blue by a rare pigment. A jewel case of a room, but somehow unwelcoming. No cracks, exquisitely crafted. Where local children come on school excursions. In a building in the corner of a famous garden. A tourist destination. I thought this was the place. But when I spoke to that policewoman, I realized my mistake.”
She stares at Hisako.
“There’s no white crepe myrtle here. This isn’t the blue room you talked about.”
She looks around the cool corridor.
“That’s right,” Hisako answers.
“There’s another blue room, isn’t there.” She looks at Hisako again.
“So there is,” says Hisako.
She remembers the days of her childhood, and the house she used to pass by with her friends on their way home from school.
“Your house. With the porthole windows. The three round windows in a row. From a distance they looked like a ship.
“Nobody ever called the people who lived there by their name. It was always Round Windows so-and-so. At first I thought Round Windows was a surname. I went there quite a few times. To the grand house that was the centre of the neighbourhood. Your younger brother was always nice to me. Whenever he saw me he’d ask me in and give me sweets. Ramune lollies that dissolved on the tongue. I still remember the kick from that bittersweet taste.
“It was classy inside your house, Round Windows. Classical music always in the background and no unnecessary clutter. The floor was polished to a sparkle and the ceilings were high, like a grand house in a film.
“‘Over here! Let’s go to my room. I’ll get us some soft drinks.’
“I can hear your little brother trotting along the passage as I followed behind him, looking round the house as I went. I was searching for those windows because I wanted to know what it was like to look through them.
“When I asked him where they were he pointed to the end of the passage. The wall with the windows was partitioned into three small rooms. One for the telephone. One had a washroom with a sink. And the third one…
“The mistress’s room.
“The room where his mother said her prayers was a tiny, tiny room.
“The door was shut when I saw it the first time. I’d never heard of a special room to pray in before and was disappointed when I saw the door was closed. It was usually closed, but once I found it slightly open for some reason, and I peeked inside. What I saw when I put my head around the door gave me such a shock I immediately pulled it out again.
“Inside was blue. A pure blue space.
“I was scared, but I peeped in once more, and then I understood. There was blue glass in the window, and the light coming through the window made the room look blue.
“But it wasn’t only the glass. The plasterer who had done the work had excelled himself in lining the walls with blue tiles.
“A blue room. A still, blue space.
“Then I noticed the shelf. On it was a single white lily in a small vase.
“The white lily. A pure flower blessed by God. The mistress’s favourite flower.
“Time seemed to pass at a different speed in that room. For some reason, I felt robbed of words. I felt as if I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.
“So, you see, I knew about that room. But I’d forgotten about it all these years. The other blue room that you repeatedly spoke of that day.
“The flower in that room was crepe myrtle to you, wasn’t it? Not a lily. But you should have known what a lily was. The design at the centre of the blue glass window was a fleur-de-lis. But you called it crepe myrtle. I don’t know where that misunderstanding came from. But I have no doubt that to you this flower was ‘the crepe myrtle at our house’.
“Am I right?” she asks Hisako, facing her in the cool corridor.
Hisako simply stares at her with an enigmatic smile.
A long silence falls.
“Which means,” she mutters, “the adult you were with…”
IX
The mistress was a fine woman. Everybody said so. She was a devout Christian, a pillar of support to her husband in his grief over their daughter’s misfortune. She exerted herself in the service of the community and visited churches in all the surrounding districts, engaging in selfless activities for the less fortunate.
Hisako’s mother often took her on these visits. I remember her telling me how she enjoyed hearing the different sounds of the towns they went to. How she could immediately tell from the sounds which town they were in.
The mistress loved her daughter, and no one wished for Hisako’s happiness more than her. She was unassuming and retiring, not talkative, someone who stood by her family in the shadows. Whi
ch of course included Hisako.
Her emotions were never visible on the surface, but she obviously had some kind of belief that sustained her. Nobody can know now what that was.
Was it the mistress who hoped for a miracle? Did she believe that her daughter was a kind of sacrifice? Or that some kind of atonement was required? Did she think that a big sacrifice was necessary? Or was it possible that she hated those who were not less fortunate?
She crosses her arms on her knees and rests her head on them. The pain behind her eyes is becoming unbearable.
Wasn’t Hisako’s existence itself a miracle? But perhaps what was miraculous to me was not for the mistress.
I don’t know.
She lifts her head painfully. The sun is low, and tourists are leaving.
In a room lit by blue rays, a woman in a kimono stands over a girl in a white blouse. She stands behind them, watching.
“Say your prayers,” the woman says to the girl.
The girl’s back twitches and trembles.
“Tell God everything,” the woman orders her harshly.
The girl’s shoulders tremble even more.
“What is it? What’s happened between you?” she says to the woman’s back and the girl’s shoulders. Neither answers.
“I have to know. I’m the observer, after all,” she entreats, trying to get their attention. Their backs remain turned.
White backs, blue light, fleur-de-lis in the window.
What did Hisako confess to as a little girl in that room? What did she repent of and pray for? Why did the mistress take her there in the first place?
The policewoman said that Hisako had rolled her hands round and around.
Might not that have been Hisako making the sign of the cross in childhood? What sin could such a small girl possibly need to beg forgiveness for? What was the mistress trying to make her small daughter confess to?
She doesn’t know.
She rises sluggishly to her feet and sets off for the teahouse. Her throat is parched. Her body feels like lead. Her field of vision has narrowed so much she can barely see around her. Blood pools in her lower body, unable to reach her head.
I have to keep moving, she thinks. I must get a drink and get away from here.
She walks through the garden as twilight descends, tormented by the pain from bullets of light raining down on her from the sky.
The bullets turn into blue light. She is not thinking any more. She is a small girl alone in the blue room, wandering in search of forgiveness and water.
Through the long summer that has continued since that day. Her eternal, never-ending summer.