Hardboiled & Hard Luck

  “As a matter of fact, it’s my favorite, too. Hey, you want a mikan?”

  “Is it tangerine season already?”

  “Come to think of it, it was something else—some other fruit with a ‘kan’ at the end. I forget what they’re called. Your mom said some relative had sent them.”

  “I wonder who? My aunt in Kyushu, maybe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll have one. Where are they?”

  “Right here.”

  Sakai spun around and took a single round fruit from a basket on top of the TV, a set that was only there for visitors. Kuni wouldn’t be watching TV anymore. She would never again get to see Nakai, her favorite member of Smap.

  “My sister loves these things,” I sighed. Every year she would look forward to eating them—these fruits that looked kind of like mikan.

  “Really? Well, then, let’s give her one to smell!”

  Sakai grabbed another piece of fruit, split it in two, and held it under my sister’s nose. A sweet, tart aroma wafted through the room, and somehow I found myself watching as a certain scene unfolded before me.

  I saw my sister sit up in bed, bathed in afternoon light, and say, with a big smile and in that bell-like voice of hers, “God, what a wonderful smell!”

  Of course that didn’t really happen—I was daydreaming. My sister lay there with a grim look on her face, making all sorts of noises, fast asleep. But the scene the smell of the mikan called to mind seemed so vividly real that I started to cry. It was the first time in ages that I had seen my sister looking that way.

  “Did you see it, too?” asked Sakai, ignoring my tears, his eyes widening.

  “I think so,” I replied. “Do you think that means part of her is actually aware of what’s going on around her?”

  “No way, not a chance,” Sakai said, his tone so definitive that I was taken aback. “That vision we had was brought on by the mikan. It brought something back for the two of us, because it remembers Kuni’s love.”

  I started to wonder if Sakai might be crazy.

  But he had such a great smile on his face as he went on to say, “The world is a wonderful place, isn’t it?!” that something else burst inside me, and I began to sob. I bent over the edge of the bed and wailed as my nose ran and shudders wracked my body. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t care what it took to make it happen, whether it was a mikan or a ponkan or something else. I just wanted to see Kuni.

  Sakai waited in silence for me to calm down.

  “I’m going,” I said. “I’m sorry I cried.”

  “I’m going, too.” Sakai got to his feet.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Kuni might get lonely if you and I both leave at once, and then she’ll get jealous.”

  “All right,” Sakai replied, “wait for me downstairs, at the kiosk.”

  When our eyes met, I noticed something frightening.

  He likes me. Oh, so that’s it, I thought.

  To tell the truth, I was happy.

  But we couldn’t do anything about it. This wasn’t the right time, and besides, I would be leaving for Italy pretty soon.

  The sky was very blue when I went outside. All different kinds of patients and their visitors were gathered around the kiosk.

  Somehow none of the patients seemed all that dispirited. Even the ones who were clearly in pretty bad shape were smiling brightly. It was nice and warm in the sun, there were lots of appealing beverages lined up on the counter, and for some reason everyone looked very happy. It struck me that hospitals can be very comforting environments for people who aren’t doing too well.

  A little later, I saw Sakai heading in my direction.

  What would I peg him as, I wondered, just going by how he looks? He doesn’t look like a gangster, but then he’s not an office worker type, either... some kind of entrepreneur, maybe, or—wait, I’ve got it! He looks like he writes manga! Either that or a chiropractor, I guess.

  I was still thinking when he reached me.

  “Why don’t we have a cup of tea before we go?” he asked.

  “I’d like a nice strong coffee, actually,” I replied.

  “There’s a good place not too far from here.”

  “Why don’t we walk there, then?”

  We began walking.

  I felt as if we had been walking around together like this for years. But it was really the first time we had ever been alone together. It felt odd to be leaving the hospital with him, since I would never have gotten to know him if my sister hadn’t ended up there. You never know what life will bring. My eyes were so puffy that I couldn’t really make out my surroundings. I probably hadn’t cried that way, with that same degree of oblivious intensity, since I was a baby.

  The sky was distant, perfectly unique, and translucent; the green leaves on the trees were beginning gradually to lose their color.

  I thought I detected the sweet scent of dried leaves drifting in the wind.

  “I suppose it’ll just keep getting colder from now on,” I said.

  “I guess so. You know, I never tire of the beauty of this season,” Sakai said, “no matter how many times I see it.”

  I wonder when the day will come when he does get tired of it, I thought.

  “How do you feel about your brother’s behavior, Sakai?” I asked.

  “I think he’s being just as cowardly as I’d expect—he changes so little that it’s actually kind of touching,” he replied. “The thing I’m worried about is whether or not he’ll actually be able to make it as a dentist and take over the family business. I guess he’ll be OK—he’s a nice person, after all, and he’s good with his hands, and he’s pretty sturdily built. I’d be against it if he were going into surgery or something, of course, knowing what a crybaby he is.”

  A lovely swath of bare branches was visible behind him. It was only November, yet already the branches these trees stretched toward the sky were as bare as bones. I felt safe when I looked into Sakai’s eyes. I saw a light there so deep and forceful that I felt as if he would forgive anything.

  “I always thought he seemed pretty weak myself.”

  “He is. And since he’s so honest, he just ran away from it all. I’m sure he’s been crying constantly, without even stopping to eat. He’ll put his emotions back in order before long, though, and I’m positive he’ll be there when your sister dies.” Sakai paused. “I know he hasn’t come to the hospital, and he did agree to break off the engagement, but I can’t really blame him for doing either of those things.”

  “Neither can I. I doubt Kuni does, either.”

  “Everyone comes to terms with things in his own way, right?”

  “It’s true. I mean, if you think about it, even I’m starting to make preparations for the future. The way the two of us are acting, your brother and I, isn’t all that different, really. I do hope he’ll come to the funeral and stuff, though.”

  “I’m sure he will. He’s very reliable when it comes to things like that.”

  “Do you think he might not have left Kuni if her injury had been minor enough that he still could have married her?”

  “It’s impossible to say for sure, but I doubt he would have. There’s something fundamentally different between the hypothetical situation you’re describing and what actually happened. The truth is, I think, that Kuni is already saying goodbye to the world—she’s going steadily through that process—and in the meantime we’re all caught in this odd space, the oddly empty block of time that’s left before her death, going through the motions of making a decision. That’s how I see it, anyway.”

  I knew what he meant. The moment I started doing the paperwork for my trip to Italy, the moment I opened my now dusty textbook of conversational Italian and threw myself back into my studies, time, which had ground to a halt, started moving, and I began to feel things again.

  It wasn’t death that saddened me, it
was this mood.

  It was the shock of it all.

  That stunned feeling remained in the core of my mind, as hard and tight as ever. No matter how hard I tried to make it go away, it never did. Even when I thought I had finally gotten a grip on myself, all I had to do was call up an image of Kuni and all that confidence would disappear.

  One morning, Kuni walked into the kitchen clasping her head in her hands.

  I just happened to be back visiting my family—I had arrived the night before. I was sitting in the living room, having a cup of coffee.

  “Would you like some coffee?”I asked.

  “No thanks,” she said, her tone strangely gentle. “My head is killing me.”

  I thought about how Kuni would be getting married soon, and then eventually, when her fiancé was ready to go home and take over the family business, moving to a place much further away. I started feeling a little sentimental.

  It occurred to me that we would never talk about the skylight we used to dream of having, and that our dream would never come true.

  Memories of childhood rose up inside me, so vivid that I was dazzled. The air, the different smells, the magazines piled beside our pillows—it all came back to me. Every minute had been fun, I realized, so much fun it made my heart ache.

  I went and poked through the cabinet until I found an herbal tea that I’d heard was good for headaches and made a pot for Kuni. She gave me a little smile and washed down two aspirin with a gulp of tea.

  I didn’t have the slightest premonition of what was going to happen.

  If I had, I would have prevented it.

  She had on the same pajamas as always and had the same haircut.

  I always focus on the present, so why does the passage of time make me so sad? My sister, hopelessly romantic dreamer that she was, used to make me go with her at night when she set out to gaze at the window of her first love. As we walked along the darkened streets, we would listen to some song we both liked, playing it again and again, each of us using one earphone from the same Walkman. I wasn’t interested in the boy my sister liked, but standing in front of the building where he lived, staring up at the light in his window, was something that made my heart thrill and ache. There were always stars overhead. The asphalt looked much closer when we listened to music while we walked. And the headlights of the cars were beautiful. Sometimes, even though we were still just kids, a guy would try to hit on us, or we would notice someone following us, and we found that electrifying. But as long as we stuck together, nothing could frighten us.

  Waves of feeling began surging out, one after another, from the place where they had been dammed up.

  Death isn’t sad. What hurts is being drowned by these emotions.

  I want to run away, I thought—to escape this distant autumn sky.

  “What have you done to me, Sakai? I can’t stop crying.”

  “It’s not my fault,” he said, taking my hand in his as I continued to cry.

  The warmth of his palm made me even more emotional.

  “Today is your crying day. Go ahead and cry.”

  “Were you in love with my sister, Sakai?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I only visited her to get closer to you.

  I laughed. “Too bad I’m going to Italy, huh.”

  “It is too bad.”

  Sakai didn’t look like he felt bad, so I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “You did know Kuni, though, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Sure, I knew her.”

  “Tell me something about her.”

  “OK.” He agreed right away. “Once, my brother went to a party with a lot of students from other colleges, and he asked a girl there for her phone number. He stuck the slip of paper he wrote it on in his notepad. When he got back to his apartment Kuni was there, and the paper dropped out and fluttered down to the floor, and Kuni kind of sensed what it was, so she tore the whole notepad to pieces right in front of his eyes.”

  “What kind of story is that?”

  “I was staying with him that night, so I saw it happen. I felt this heavy cloud of anger gathering, and I figured they would probably get into an argument later that night, so I put in my earplugs and went to bed early. But it turned out that Kuni was really good at putting things behind her. The two of them went right back to normal after that. Kuni’s behavior wasn’t forced, and she didn’t try to act as if nothing had happened—she just did what she always did. I realized then, for the first time, what a beautiful individual she was. Until then, I had always thought she was just an ordinary woman, and that she was bound to have a pretty frightening temper. Kuni and my brother had this cute conversation after that. What should we have for breakfast? We should get something really good, since your brother is here. Why don’t I go get some bread at the bakery that just opened over by the park? Even better, let’s go eat there, all three of us! God, it’s great to be on vacation, isn’t it? Yeah really. Things like that. They kept their voices down so as not to wake me, of course.”

  “I know what you mean. That’s so like Kuni,” I said, as tears began to trickle from my eyes again. “God, why am I crying so much today?”

  “It’s not because you’re sad, you know—it’s the shock. The sense of shock you felt at the beginning is coming back for an encore now that the end is approaching. It takes time, and I doubt you’re going to get used to it, either.”

  “How come you know all this stuff?”

  “Because I understand you,” said Sakai.

  “Thanks, even if you are just saying that.”

  If only we could have talked at some other time, I thought, in other circumstances. Right now, I need time and I need space. But something in his easygoing ways made me feel so comfortable that I couldn’t be bothered about those needs.

  We walked into the café. It was empty.

  We sat down at a table by the window and sipped our coffee. Everything was very natural, except for the existence of my sister. She had penetrated my world like a dream silently raining down into my life. And the worst thing was that it didn’t bother me at all. I wouldn’t have minded if things stayed like this forever. Life was better this way, since the only alternative was a world without her.

  “Who can say that Kuni is unhappy, just because she’s in that state?” Sakai said. “It’s her life and only she can decide. No one else should try. I feel like thinking about that only makes her weaker.”

  “I agree. I’ve always been happy because Kuni and I were such good friends. And I’m sure things will never be harder than they are now. My mother doesn’t really have a cold, you know—she’s just feeling really down. But I know that sometime in the future, a day will come when my family will start to feel differently. The world out there, this landscape we’re looking at now, through this window, will start to seem good to us, and different from the way it is now—so different that we aren’t even allowed to imagine it yet. It’s just that I’m tired of waiting. Because in the early days, I was always waiting for a miracle.”

  Sakai nodded. “It’s natural for you to be tired. Everyone is still stunned by what happened. Even me, as removed from it all as I am. Even the tangerines. We’re all stunned that Kuni isn’t here anymore.”

  “Who would have imagined that something like this could happen? And yet right now, even as we speak, similar things are happening all around the world. There are plenty of stories like this in the hospital. I’ve talked with people about all sorts of problems. They’ve told me about all kinds of hard choices they’ve had to make. But until recently, I never even suspected that this world existed.”

  “That’s right. And I’m sure all those people are looking out the window, just like you. But if you turn to face in a different direction, you can get by without having to consider the fact that people like them even exist. Of course, those tragedies and all sorts of other tragedies keep happening whether or not the ones who
don’t look out the window are aware of their existence.”

  “Which direction do you face?”

  “I think hard about whatever comes before me,” he said.

  For the first time since all this happened, I really laughed.

  Laughing made me forget about everything.

  There was a shopping arcade outside, and the strange music that was playing over its loudspeakers drowned out the Mozart playing in the café.

  There could be no more affection or hope or miracles now that my sister was getting ready to leave our world behind. Unconscious, her body warm, she gave us time to think. Steeped in that time, I smiled a small smile. There was eternity there, and beauty, and my sister was still with us, the way she was meant to be. Did anyone ever imagine, back in the old days, that eventually a day would come when people and their brains would each die a separate death?

  None of this mattered to my sister, who was dying. This was a sacred time set aside for us survivors to think about issues we didn’t usually consider.

  To focus on the unbearable only marred what was sacred.

  And it struck me that if anything was a miracle, it was this: the lovely moments we experienced during the small, almost imperceptible periods of relief. The instant the unbearable pain and the tears faded away, and I saw with my own eyes how vast the workings of the universe were, I would feel my sister’s soul.

  Sakai understands all that, I thought, and the fondness I felt for him deepened a little more. For me, love is always accompanied by a feeling of surprise. I like people who are always doing things that would never have occured to me at that moment. As crushed and dispirited as I was, that part of me didn’t change.

  “It’s a perfect November evening—you can smell the end of autumn in the air,” said Sakai, looking out the window. “I guess we just have to try and keep our spirits up.”

  “Keep our spirits up, yes, but not by forcing ourselves to be cheerful.”

  “Your mom said this morning that if we give ourselves over completely to our grief, Kuni will only move farther away.”

  “I’m impressed that she can say something like that so soon.”