Fracture

by Andres Neuman

  Yoshie found it harder to accept. Like a lot of men, he valued himself through his work. Sometimes, I could see that he was feeling a bit down and I’d try to cheer him up. Now you can spend all the time you want in the retrete! Then we’d laugh. But as soon as his guard dropped, he would let out a sigh for his company. If it wasn’t the yen that was making it uncompetitive, it was the euro, or it was Toshiba, which had started subcontracting, or this, that, or the other thing.

  With the banjos it was different, don’t ask me why. He still looked at them, but he tuned them less frequently. He no longer cared if they sounded so-so. Sometimes he would even say it amused him. That now, instead of a choir, they sounded like neighbors trying to get along. He hadn’t lost his fondness for music. I was getting a bit fed up with jazz, so one Christmas, I gave him something different. One of those bizarre fusions of traditional Japanese music in the form of Spanish madrigals. Yoshie went through a phase of playing it on a loop. He told me he wished he could live right there, always between two places.

  To be frank, I find Christmas a bore. I love it when we get together as a family. But not in December. All the shopping and engagements make my head spin. Isn’t the end of the year supposed to be a time for reflection? Yet the whole thing seems designed to prevent you from having a moment to think. Without being aware that you’re going to die, you don’t enjoy celebration as much. And people walk all over you. Mamá, says Nacho, you’re talking politics! That may be, Son, but I can’t find anything about it in the newspapers.

  Fear of death is a funny thing. I was talking about it to my brothers and sisters at dinner the other day. The closer you get to dying, the less you like it and the more you understand it. You don’t want it to happen to your loved ones ever. And yet you begin to see that it makes sense. Imagine how awful it would be, I don’t know, making doctors’ appointments, paying your taxes, or shopping for sales—for all eternity. I’m not exactly looking forward to dying but it will no longer catch me unawares.

  Aging is different, of course. You never get used to that. You wake up one age in your head and, as the day wears on, you realize what age you really are. I fought against it until I became a grandmother. It was as if I were shouting, I’m not what it looks like, I’m not old! Things are different now. You can’t kid your grandchildren. And they’ve made reaching this age worthwhile.

  Yoshie was horrified by old age. After all his narrow escapes, he wasn’t expecting it, he thought it would never happen. I guess that’s what Madrid meant for him: the place where he confirmed he had grown old. That’s why I’m not surprised it was his last stop before returning home. If indeed he had a home.

  The best thing about our retirement was that we could finally travel together. We spent a couple of years visiting all sorts of places. When I was young, I couldn’t believe how many elderly foreign tourists there were. But once I became one of them, I immediately understood. What a pleasure it is to mix leisure and experience. I’ve gone to more places since I got old than at any other time in my life.

  * * *

  Every cloud has a silver lining, as the saying goes. But every silver lining also has its complications. Now that we were spending all our time together, Yoshie started to seem a bit less special to me. I had always thought of him as mysterious. Now I sensed that some of his silences stemmed from a lack of desire or initiative. Sometimes the mystery is simply absence. I used to say it to my daughter Sonia, who has just separated from her husband. Don’t get married, my girl, it just makes things worse.

  Of course it was lovely. We gorged ourselves on traditional food, walked around a lot of museums, took thousands of photos, laughed a lot. Yet, at some point, it became a kind of padding, a pleasant way of filling the time we weren’t quite sure what to do with. It’s very important for me to spend part of the day staring off into space, and I started to miss being at home, doing nothing.

  When we’d arrive at our hotel, our backs stiff from the flight, I wondered if Yoshie wasn’t weary of all that. He claimed to dislike traveling. What he really liked was to have traveled. A week before a trip, the idea of leaving would start to make him uneasy. On the eve of our departure, it appalled him. With only hours to go, he would invent excuses to miss the flight. Then a week after, he’d think it was the best place he could possibly have visited. That was the traveler’s task, he said. To prepare that future moment.

  The same would happen to me, actually. What I most enjoyed about our trips was remembering them together. Like when you’re back after some time away, and you wonder whether you couldn’t experience the same joy simply by staying at home. Well, no, smarty-pants, you can’t.

  Now that I had my first cell phone (the rogue had conspired with my children to get me one), we invented a game. Every day, we sent each other a brief text message about one of our trips. It could be a memory, an anecdote, an image, anything. Messages such as:

  The belvedere in Toledo, when we realized one of our suitcases was missing.

  Driving in the Pyrenees, with the Chet Baker CD that skipped.

  The steaming soup on the Stockholm ferry.

  The ice-skating dogs in Hamburg.

  The angler in the Highlands who told us his brother was learning Japanese.

  That unique wine in Cagliari that cost an arm and a leg, and which we then found in the store opposite your place.

  The little boy in Avignon dressed as a bullfighter.

  The Loch Ness Monster doll that appeared upside down every morning.

  And so on.

  When you’re old, every place you see becomes important. You feel that you’re saying goodbye. It’s one layer of joy and another of sorrow. One on top of the other.

  My fondest memory, and I don’t mind sounding corny, is the time we spent in Venice. I’d never been there. He insisted we avoid the crowds in San Marcos by staying on the Lido. That way, he said, we could see Venice from a distance. What a snob. I didn’t let him wriggle out of the gondola ride, of course, with a glass of champagne and all the rest. The gondoliers were so handsome. I would have given them a free lumbar massage any day.

  The only tense moment was at the abandoned hospital on the Lido. Imagine how horrified I was, after working in hospitals for more than thirty years, to see that ruined building. Yoshie seemed to find it fascinating. For heaven’s sake, he wanted us to sit there all afternoon, like consumptives or something.

  When I persuaded him that it was time to leave, I noticed a beautiful antique typewriter lying on the ground. I suggested we take it back as a present for Nacho. He loves old junk. I bent down to pick it up. It weighed a ton. Instead of helping me, Yoshie grabbed my arm and he wouldn’t let me move it. He was stronger than I’d imagined. It was brusque and unpleasant. That evening, I felt like I didn’t even know him.

  * * *

  Not working filled him with the past, as if his memory had suddenly expanded. Yet he didn’t seem at ease with what he remembered. He started to have panic attacks and problems breathing.

  Occasionally, he would fantasize about us going to Japan. Not for a visit, but forever. Although I never said yes, he behaved as if it were an option. We visited Tokyo. It was great and took my breath away. We brought back a few of the latest gadgets for my grandchildren, lots of clothes for my daughters. And I thought to myself, No way would I ever live there.

  The food was good, although everything tasted of fish, even dishes that didn’t contain any. If such a thing even exists in Japan. They eat fish for breakfast, seriously. They have tea with everything. Green tea that’s so bitter you feel you’re chewing a plant. And they slurp their soup so noisily that you have to look away so as not to stare.

  The bathrooms are impeccable, I’ll give them that—and talkative. Yes, they have talking toilets, I’m not joking. Robots instead of retretes. I got nervous when I heard them pipe up. Despite all the tea, nothing came out. I suppose I need peace and quiet to pee.

  Seeing Yoshie in his own country unnerved me a little. He wasn�
�t the person I knew in Madrid. Not better or worse. Just different. I was afraid that if we ever moved there, I wouldn’t only have to get used to another culture, but to another man.

  Interestingly, that worried him too. He told me he no longer knew his own language. You mean you don’t understand it? I asked. Of course I understand, Kah-men. They don’t understand me. Every time I say something, they look at me like I am a foreigner!

  In my view, Yoshie ended up going back first and foremost because of his retirement. Second, I don’t know. Homesickness, roots, call it what you will. I asked him to stay and he asked me to go. Learn Japanese at my age? No way. It was easier for him to stay, he had already adjusted, we only had to carry on as before. The final straw was the Atocha bombing. I think that changed both of us.

  After the attack, I lost all desire to do anything, including to travel, make plans for the future, anything that involved leaving my loved ones. When we ate as a family, we talked less. When we did talk, we would occasionally quarrel. We couldn’t even agree about who was responsible. We had the impression, I don’t know, that we would never feel good about anything again for the rest of our lives.

  Perhaps we hadn’t changed, perhaps the city had. The air was heavy. We walked differently, it felt like the ground was moving. We looked over our shoulders. We loved everyone more, and everything scared us. We ended up asking everyone we met what they’d been doing on March 11 at twenty to eight. We couldn’t move on from that morning. Or rather, the opposite—we still didn’t believe it, we kept having to ask the question because it seemed so unreal. I thought about the mothers. About the mothers without children.

  And Yoshie? What did he think? He had always told me that he dreamed of retiring to some Mediterranean beach. A little house on the Costa del Sol. All that ended after March 11. He never mentioned it again. That’s when I began to sense what was going to happen.

  * * *

  Our last trip together was to Barcelona. It was a couple of months after the bombings and I didn’t want to go, but Yoshie kept insisting.

  He’d been invited to a symposium of international businessmen. I almost dozed off once he began his speech. He made a touching gesture at the start, though. He paid tribute to his old schoolmate from Nagasaki, the one who had died not long before. He talked about how they had met up again in the States. He said he’d been an admirable colleague, an example to them all, and that he would never forget him. He got a standing ovation.

  Everyone and their mothers turned up at that circus. Kings, presidents, Nobel Prize winners. Felipe was there, he never misses a trick. Zapatero. Lula. Gorbachev. Even the Spanish astronaut who had been to the moon. And Angelina Jolie, though I’ve never understood what exactly she does at these things.

  There was also some controversy—this is Spain, after all. There were rumors about the cost of the venue, as well as urban speculation. Here? Never.

  I couldn’t say when it was, towards the end of that year or the beginning of the next. We had a few serious talks, and finally he put it to me. He was leaving with or without me. Yoshie had given this a lot of thought and he was absolutely clear. Tokyo or nothing. It wasn’t easy for me, and I struggled to reach a decision. I liked the idea of us going away together and I didn’t want to lose him, but my family, my life was here. What was I to do? Run after a man, like my mother had?

  Besides, after all those years, I had just finished paying the mortgage on the apartment. It meant something to me. When I married Enrique it was our dream to have a place of our own, and I had achieved that. It was nothing special, but it was mine. The apartment in Leganés where we’d always lived. Three bedrooms, big balconies, overlooking Plaza de la Fuente Honda, next to the ancient psychiatric hospital. We couldn’t have afforded anything remotely as big anywhere else. Funnily enough, it’s shot up a lot in value since then.

  Neither of us left the other. We simply disagreed about how to go on with our lives. He blamed me for being frightened of change, and I criticized him for being incapable of staying put, even in the places he felt happy.

  After a few dramatic scenes, his departure was relatively calm. We’re too old to start creating fresh resentments. We’ve got quite enough with the past ones. I even helped him pack his boxes. That dreadful rug was full of holes by then, but he stubbornly refused to throw it away.

  In the end, he didn’t take all that much with him. He shipped the essential things back to Tokyo. He tried to leave me a lot of stuff, which I didn’t want. I don’t like to inherit things when someone dies, so you can imagine how I feel when they’re still alive. The only thing I did accept, because Yoshie dug his heels in about it, was that banjo, the one that had belonged to Charlie so-and-so. What on earth did I want it for?

  I didn’t go to the airport, I couldn’t bring myself to. My clearest memory is of his last day over at my place. The guy wouldn’t admit defeat so easily. He arrived with a flower bouquet designed to impress and a bottle of my favorite wine. He put on an innocent expression and after we clinked glasses he asked me again, in case I’d had a change of heart. He already knew the answer, but romantic movies have destroyed people’s common sense.

  After the door closed, I stared at it in a daze, as if it were a painting. Yoshie had left to catch a train at Atocha Station. Now that he had more time, he was in the habit of walking. From here it takes no more than fifteen minutes. I poured myself another glass and stepped out onto the balcony. I turned toward the Casa del Reloj, even though you can’t actually see it from my place.

  At that very instant, I’ll never forget it, I had the mad idea of running to the station. I, who never run. I simply had to catch up with him, speak to him, tell him what I was feeling then and there.

  But I know what I’m like when I drink. So I came in from the balcony, put down the glass, and turned on the TV.

  * * *

  Yes, we’ve kept in touch. As far as I know, neither of us has got together with anyone else, which helps, I suppose. We all have our pride. As soon as I found out about the earthquake and Fukushima, I called him. I asked if he needed help or anything. That was before I had this.

  The last real message I remember sending him (the kind you plan, write, and edit before sending, like a letter) was to tell him about something I had seen that made me think of him.

  I was spending the weekend in Cuenca with my family. We were driving somewhere and we came across a protest march against the nuclear waste dump they want to build next to the area. Some of the protesters were from here. There were a few politicians and even some foreign activists, carrying placards in English mentioning Fukushima.

  One woman was holding a banner that caught my attention. It showed the radiation hazard symbol and the words: I DON’T WANT TO DIE AT 60 FROM CANCER, I WANT TO DIE AT 90 FROM AN ORGASM. I’m not sure how fighting against nuclear waste will help you have extreme orgasms at such an age. Perhaps she likened the orgasm to recyclable energy? I wish I could have asked her, but the children wanted to get going. So I wrote to Yoshie about it.

  From that day on, more and more stories about the dump appeared on the news. As soon as the new administration took office, it chose that location next to Cuenca to bury nuclear waste. It will cost a cool billion euros, others say even more, the zeros make my head spin. The person most in favor of the dump was the president of Castilla–La Mancha. They say she’s on the way to becoming a minister.

  In fact, the project was the idea of the previous administration, but they’d shelved it because of the technical studies. I mentioned some of this to the Argentinian journalist when he brought up the subject. Then the other party won the elections and all of a sudden, Villar de Cañas was once again the ideal place for all our garbage. Now the minister of industry is warning that our electricity bills will go up unless we build the waste dump. Higher still? How on earth is it that we, who live in the country with the most sun in Europe, can’t start seriously developing solar energy?

  The topic interests me because in th
e end, it’s science. The other day I read that the Germans aren’t sure how to bury their waste and the Finns are consulting anthropologists and theologians. Bearing in mind how long radioactivity lasts, they say they’ll need to invent warning markers that can still be understood a hundred thousand years from now. That’s some faith for you! At this rate we won’t last another hundred years. But thanks for the optimism, Helsinki.

  As for power stations, well, it doesn’t matter that the one in Garoña is the smallest. If they give the go-ahead for it to be reopened, the expiration date of all the others will be extended and they’ll remain operational until they’re sixty years old. Just wait and see, nuclear power stations will stop working when they’re older than us!

  So the fight over energy here is the mother of all fights. I don’t know why that surprises me. This country needs an osteopath to get its structure moving properly, or some hydrotherapy to get things flowing at last.

  * * *

  As I say, we still speak once in a blue moon. He sends me a birthday present every year. I’m less attentive about that kind of thing, but the Christmas after the earthquake I bought him a CD that had just come out—Gregorian chants of Japanese music, which I thought might interest him. The strange thing is that Yoshie never acknowledged receiving it.

  Considering what we had together, it would have saddened me to lose touch with him completely. No one’s made of steel. Which is precisely why I broke my hip. I’m a lot better now. I’ll pull through, I’m resilient. I know how to mend myself.

  On a couple of occasions, he even invited me to Tokyo again. I made polite excuses. Such visits seem a little dangerous to me. I prefer to be at peace, each in our own little home, where the past is the past.

  9

  PINEDO AND THE ANTIPODES