Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

  “A rule?”

  “If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, go for the one without form. That’s my rule. Whenever I run into a wall I follow that rule, and it always works out. Even if it’s hard going at the time.”

  “You made up that rule yourself?”

  “I did,” he replied, looking at the Peugeot’s odometer. “From my own experience.”

  “If you have to choose between something that has form and something that doesn’t, choose the one without form,” she repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  She considered this. “But if I had to do that right now I don’t know if I could tell the difference. Between what has form and what doesn’t.”

  “Maybe not, but somewhere down the line I’m sure you’ll have to make that kind of choice.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He nodded quietly. “An experienced gay guy like me has all kinds of special powers.”

  She laughed. “Thank you.”

  A long silence followed. But it wasn’t as thick and stifling as before.

  “Goodbye,” the woman said. “I really want to thank you. I’m happy I could meet you, and talk. I feel a little more able to face up to things now.”

  He smiled and shook her hand. “Take care of yourself.”

  He stood there, watching as her blue Peugeot drove away. He gave a final wave toward her rearview mirror, and then slowly walked back toward where his Honda was parked.

  The next Tuesday it was raining and the woman didn’t show up at the café. He silently read until one and then left.

  On this day the piano tuner decided not to go to the gym. He just didn’t feel like exercising. Instead he went straight home without stopping for lunch and lay there on his couch, listening to Arthur Rubinstein playing Chopin ballads. Eyes closed, he could picture the woman’s face, the touch of her hair. The shape of the mole on her earlobe came back clearly to him. After a while her face and the Peugeot faded from his mind, but that mole remained. Whether he kept his eyes opened or closed, that small black dot remained, like a forgotten period.

  Around two thirty in the afternoon he decided to phone his sister. It had been a long time since they’d spoken. How long, he wondered. Ten years? They were that estranged from each other. One reason was that back when her engagement got messed up, the two of them had gotten worked up and said some things they shouldn’t have. Another reason was that he didn’t like her husband. He was arrogant and crude, and treated the piano tuner’s sexual orientation like it was a contagious disease. Unless he absolutely had to, the piano tuner didn’t want to come within a hundred yards of the guy.

  He hesitated several times before picking up the phone, but finally punched in the number. The phone rang over ten times and he was about to give up—with a certain sense of relief, actually—when his sister picked up. Her familiar voice. When she realized it was him, there was a deep silence for a moment on the other end of the line.

  “Why are you calling me?” she said, in a flat tone.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just thought I’d better call you. I was worried about you.”

  Silence once more. A long silence. Maybe she’s still mad at me, he thought.

  “There’s no particular reason I called. I just wanted to check that everything’s okay.”

  “Hold on a second,” his sister said. He could tell that she had been weeping. “I’m sorry, but could you give me a moment?”

  Silence continued for a time. He kept the receiver held to his ear the whole time. He couldn’t hear anything, or sense anything. “Are you busy now?” she finally asked.

  “No, I’m free,” he replied.

  “Can I come over to see you?”

  “Of course. I’ll pick you up at the station.”

  An hour later he picked up his sister at the train station and took her back to his apartment. It had been ten years since they’d seen each other, and they had to admit that they’d each aged. They were each like a mirror for the other, reflecting the changes in themselves. His sister was still slim and stylish, and looked five years younger than her real age. Still, her hollow cheeks had a severity to them he’d never seen before, and her impressive dark eyes had lost their usual luster. He himself looked younger than his years, too, though it was hard to hide the fact that his hair was thinning out. In the car they hesitantly talked about typical things: work, her children, news about mutual friends, the state of their parents’ health.

  Inside his apartment he went into the kitchen to boil some water.

  “Are you still playing piano?” she asked as she eyed the upright piano in his living room.

  “Just for my own amusement. And only simple pieces. I can’t get my hands around the harder ones anymore.”

  His sister opened the lid of the piano and rested her fingers on the yellowed, well-used keys. “I was sure you were going to be a famous concert pianist one day.”

  “The music world is where child prodigies go to die,” he said as he ground some coffee beans. “Having to give up the idea of being a professional pianist was a major disappointment. It was like everything I’d done up till then was a complete waste. I just wanted to disappear. But it turned out my ears are superior to my hands. There are a lot of people more talented than me, but nobody has as good an ear. I realized that not long after I started college. And that being a first-class piano tuner was a lot better than being a second-rate pianist.”

  He took out a container of cream from the refrigerator and poured it into a ceramic pitcher.

  “It’s funny, but after I switched to a major in piano tuning I began to enjoy playing the piano much more. Ever since I was little I’d practiced piano like crazy. It was fun to see myself improve, but I never once enjoyed playing. Playing piano was just a way of solving certain problems. Trying to avoid fingering mistakes or letting my fingers get all tangled up—all just to impress other people. It wasn’t until I gave up the idea of becoming a pianist that I finally understood how enjoyable playing the piano can be. And how wonderful music really is. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders, a weight I never realized I was lugging around until I got rid of it.”

  “You never told me about this.”

  “I didn’t?”

  His sister shook her head.

  “It was the same when I realized I’m gay,” he went on. “Issues I could never understand were suddenly resolved. Life was much easier after that, like the clouds had parted and I could finally see. When I gave up being a pianist, and came out as a homosexual, I’m sure it upset a lot of people. But I want you to understand that that’s the only way I could get back to who I really am. The real me.”

  He placed a coffee cup down in front of his sister, then took his own mug and sat down next to her on the sofa.

  “I probably should have made more of an effort to understand you better,” his sister said. “But before you took those steps you should have explained things to us. Told us what was on your mind, let us in on what you were thinking and—”

  “I didn’t want to explain things,” he said, cutting her off. “I wanted people to understand me, without having to put it into words. You, especially.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Back then I just couldn’t consider others’ feelings. I couldn’t afford to think about that.”

  His voice shook a little as he recalled that time of his life. He felt like bursting out crying but somehow held himself in check and went on.

  “My life completely changed back then, in a short space of time. It was all I could do to hang on and not get thrown off. I was so scared, so very frightened. At the time I couldn’t explain things to anybody. I felt like I was about to slip off the face of the earth. I just wanted you to understand me. And hold me. Without any logic or explanations. But nobody ever—”

  His sister covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook as she silently wept. He gently laid his h
and on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” he replied. He poured some cream into his coffee, stirred it, and took a slow sip, trying to calm himself. “No need to cry about it. It was my fault, too.”

  “Tell me,” she said, raising her face to look straight at him, “why today of all days did you call me?”

  “Today?”

  “You haven’t called for ten years, and I just wanted to know why you picked—today?”

  “Something happened,” he said, “and it made me think of you. I just wondered how you’re doing. I wanted to hear your voice. That’s all.”

  “No one told you anything?”

  There was something different about her voice, and he tensed up. “No, I haven’t heard anything from anybody. Did something happen?”

  His sister was silent for a while, gathering her feelings. He waited patiently for her to explain.

  “I’m going into the hospital tomorrow,” she said.

  “The hospital?”

  “I’m having an operation for breast cancer tomorrow. They’re going to remove my right breast. The whole thing. Nobody knows, though, if that will stop the cancer from spreading. They won’t know till they’ve taken it off.”

  He couldn’t say a thing for a while. His hand still on her shoulder, he gazed around meaninglessly from one object to another in the room. The clock, an ornament, the calendar, the remote control for the stereo. Familiar objects in a familiar room, but he somehow couldn’t grasp the distance that separated one object from the other.

  “For the longest time I wondered whether I should get in touch with you,” his sister said. “I ended up thinking I shouldn’t, so I never said anything. But I wanted to see you so much. I thought we should have at least one good talk. There were things I had to apologize for. But…I didn’t want to see you like this. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” her brother said.

  “If we were going to meet, I wanted it to be under happier circumstances, where I could be more optimistic about things. So I decided not to get in touch with you. Right when I’d made up my mind, though, you called me—”

  Wordlessly, he put both arms around her and drew her close. He could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. His sister rested her face on his shoulder and cried. Brother and sister stayed that way for a long while.

  Finally she spoke up. “You said something happened and you thought of me. What was it? If you don’t mind telling me.”

  “I don’t know how to put it. It’s hard to explain. It was just something that happened. A series of coincidences. One coincidence after another and then I—”

  He shook his head. The sense of distance was still off. Several light-years separated the ornament from the remote control.

  “I just can’t explain it,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “But I’m glad it happened. Very glad.”

  He touched her right earlobe and lightly rubbed the mole. And then, like sending a wordless whisper into some very special place, he leaned forward and kissed it.

  “My sister’s right breast was removed in the operation, but fortunately the cancer hadn’t spread and she was able to get by with mild chemotherapy. Her hair didn’t even fall out. She’s completely fine now. I went almost every day to see her in the hospital. It must be awful for a woman to lose a breast that way. After she went home, I started to visit them pretty often. I’ve grown close to my nephew and niece. I’ve even been teaching my niece piano. Not to brag or anything, but there’s a lot of promise there. And my brother-in-law’s not as bad as I thought, now that I’ve gotten to know him. Sure, he’s still full of himself and a bit crude, but he works hard and he’s good to my sister. And he’s finally gotten it through his head that being gay isn’t a contagious disease I’m going to give his children. A small but significant step.”

  He laughed. “Getting back together with my sister, I feel like I’ve moved on in life. Like I can live the way I’m supposed to now, more than ever before…It was something I had to face up to. I think deep down I was always hoping my sister and I would make up, and be able to hug each other one more time.”

  “But something had to happen before you could?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” he said, and nodded several times. “That’s the key. And you know, this thought crossed my mind at the time: maybe chance is a pretty common thing after all. Those kinds of coincidences are happening all around us, all the time, but most of them don’t catch our attention and we just let them go by. It’s like fireworks in the daytime. You might hear a faint sound, but even if you look up at the sky you can’t see a thing. But if we’re really hoping something may come true, it may become visible, like a message rising to the surface. Then we’re able to make it out clearly, decipher what it means. And seeing it before us we’re surprised and wonder at how strange things like this can happen. Even though there’s nothing strange about it. I just can’t help thinking that. What do you think? Is this forcing things?”

  I thought about what he’d said. You know, you may be right, I managed to reply. But I wasn’t at all sure that things could be neatly wrapped up like that.

  “I’d rather believe in something simpler, like in a god of jazz,” I said.

  He laughed. “I like that. It’d be nice if there was a god of gays, too.”

  I have no idea whatever happened to that petite woman he met in the bookstore café. I haven’t had my piano tuned for over half a year, and haven’t had a chance to talk with him. But I imagine on Tuesdays he’s still driving across the Tama River and going to that café. Who knows—maybe he ran into her again. But I haven’t heard anything, which means that this is where the story ends.

  I don’t care if it’s the god of jazz, the god of gays, or some other type of god, but I hope that, somewhere, unobtrusively, as if it were all coincidence, someone up there is watching over that woman. I hope this from the bottom of my heart. A very simple hope.

  —TRANSLATED BY PHILIP GABRIEL

  HANALEI BAY

  Sachi lost her nineteen-year-old son to a big shark that attacked him when he was surfing in Hanalei Bay. Properly speaking, it was not the shark that killed him. Alone far from shore when the animal ripped his right leg off, he panicked and drowned. Drowning, therefore, was the official cause of death. The shark nearly tore his surfboard in half as well. Sharks are not fond of human flesh. Most often their first bite disappoints them and they swim away. Which is why there are many cases in which the person loses a leg or an arm but survives as long as he doesn’t panic. Sachi’s son, though, suffered a kind of cardiac arrest, swallowed massive amounts of ocean water, and drowned.

  When notice came from the Japanese consulate in Honolulu, Sachi sank to the floor in shock. Her head emptied out, and she found it impossible to think. All she could do was sit there staring at a spot on the wall. How long this went on, she had no idea. But eventually she regained her senses enough to look up the number of an airline and make a reservation for a flight to Hawaii. The consulate staff person had urged her to come as soon as possible in order to identify the victim. There was still some chance it might not be her son.

  Because of the holiday season, all seats were booked on that day’s flight and the next day’s as well. Every airline she called told her the same thing, but when she explained her situation, the United reservationist said, “Just get to the airport as soon as you can. We’ll find you a seat.” She packed a few things in a small bag and went out to Narita Airport, where the woman in charge handed her a business-class ticket. “This is all we have today, but we’ll only charge you economy fare,” she said. “This must be terrible for you. Try to bear up.” Sachi thanked her for being so helpful.

  When she arrived at Honolulu Airport, Sachi realized she had been so upset that she had forgotten to inform the Japanese consulate of her arrival time. A member of the consulate staff was supposed to be accompanying her to Kauai. She decided t
o continue on to Kauai alone rather than deal with the complications of making belated arrangements. She assumed that things would work out once she got there. It was still before noon when her second flight arrived at Lihue Airport in Kauai. She rented a car at the Avis counter and went straight to the police station nearby. There, she told them she had just come from Tokyo after having received word that her son was killed by a shark in Hanalei Bay. A graying police officer with glasses took her to the morgue, which was like a cold-storage warehouse, and showed her the body of her son with one leg torn off. Everything from just above the right knee was gone, and a ghastly white bone protruded from the stump. This was her son—there could no longer be any doubt. His face carried no hint of an expression; he looked as he always did when sound asleep. She could hardly believe he was dead. Someone must have arranged his features like this. He looked as though, if you gave his shoulder a hard shake, he would wake up complaining the way he always did in the morning.

  In another room, Sachi signed a document certifying that the body was that of her son. The policeman asked her what she planned to do with it. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do people normally do?” They most often cremate it and take the ashes home, he told her. She could also transport the body to Japan, but this required some difficult arrangements and would be far more expensive. Another possibility would be to bury her son on Kauai.

  “Please cremate him,” she said. “I’ll take the ashes with me to Tokyo.” Her son was dead, after all. There was no hope of bringing him back to life. What difference did it make whether he was ashes or bones or a corpse? She signed the document authorizing cremation and paid the necessary fee.

  “I only have American Express,” she said.

  “That will be fine,” the officer said.

  Here I am, paying the fee to have my son cremated with an American Express card, Sachi thought. It felt unreal to her, as unreal as her son’s having been killed by a shark. The cremation would take place the next morning, the policeman told her.

  “Your English is very good,” the officer said as he put the documents in order. He was a Japanese American by the name of Sakata.