The Concussion
(Is this story finished? Has it even begun?)
Mavrin came in to light the lamp. "Your trial's tomorrow," he said.
"My trial! Am I to stand trial?"
"That's what I'm told."
"But... it's mad! Since when does the victim stand trial? You know yourself..."
"I know nothing. Absolutely nothing."
Well, I'll tell you then. I was sitting at home when five thugs burst in, seized me, drugged me..."
"Please. Please."
"And the next thing I know..."
"Look. Be reasonable. Who are you telling this to? I'm a servant, an odd-jobs man. I light the lamps, sweep the floors..."
"How long have I been here?"
"I don't know. You lose all sense of time here in this dungeon."
"How long have you been here?"
He didn't answer, having turned his attention to the lamp, which hissed, sputtered, smoked and then suddenly flared into a steady, if pale, glow.
"Tell me this at least. If I'm to stand trial, what am I charged with? What's the charge against me?"
Mavrin shrugged. "Evil thoughts, maybe."
***
The heavy door slams shut and I wake up. Good God. This is past a joke. What time is it? Two forty-two? I grope for the clock at the head of my bed, press down on the top to light it up... Two forty-four. Every night: same dream, same time. What does it mean? Should I see a psychiatrist? Should I call Ron? I've been putting it off and putting it off, but today, I think, I will call him. I can't go on this way, I can't...
***
Suddenly it's morning, a bright, sunny morning; even the drawn curtains (I am always careful to draw the curtains before I retire) can't keep out the sunlight, so eager is it to wish me good morning and usher me into this brand new day. Who was it---some poet or philosopher---who said, "A new day, a new life," or words to that effect? A new day, a new life! And what of last night's dream: Mavrin, the dungeon? Mavrin---what an odd name. Where would that have come from, I wonder?
"Evil thoughts," he says. Evil thoughts. Impossible to tell, so expressionless is his face, whether he's being serious or ironic, whether he's laughing at me or, out of the goodness of his heart, offering me a hint as to where I should direct my research. Evil thoughts. Is that the root of what ails me?
There was that incident the other day on the train: the little girl who quailed at the sight of me. She let out a cry, buried her face in her mother's pale blue down jacket. I looked quizzically at the mother, who, blushing, explained: "Two years ago a foreign man exposed himself to her, she hasn't quite got over it. I'm sorry..."
"May I speak to her?" I asked.
"Yes, please."
"What is her name?"
"Maya."
"Maya-chan," I began... but got no further---what could I say? I simply could not think of a single thing to say! The hideous blankness of the mind as it churns in vain to produce the right word, the right phrase... The train was approaching a station, slowing to a stop. With a sheepish grin at the mother, who smiled as if to show she understood my predicament, I made a beeline for the door and got off. Where was I? I hardly knew. I don't know the city well, though I've lived in it most of my adult life.
***
Ron's name is not really Ron, it's Yasu---Yasuo. Why do I call him Ron? Well, back in the 1980s the Prime Minister of Japan was Yasuhiro Nakasone and the President of the United States was Ronald Reagan; they were on a first-name basis, calling each other "Ron" and "Yasu"---it became known as a "Ron-Yasu" relationship, symbol of close ties between the two countries. What does that have to do with Yasuo Fukuda, my former probation officer? Nothing, nothing at all. He was a child in the 1980s; even when I knew him he looked more child than man. Anyway, his name just naturally suggested "Ron," and that's how I think of him; it's stupid, but I can't help it.
He's not a psychiatrist, though I think of him as one. He was a kind of psychiatrist to me. In another culture he might have been a shaman or a faith healer. It's not so much the advice he gives as his way of listening. I can't explain it. It's a natural gift he has, a gift for listening---at the root of which, maybe, is a gift for caring. He, for example, would have found something to say to Maya. Or---more correctly---she would not have quailed from him in the first place. Even if he had been foreign. Even if he had been the twin brother of the man who... did that thing to her.
He, if anyone, would understand my dream. He would understand, and tell me what to do. Or rather, he would understand and say nothing, but his silence would speak volumes; it would comfort me and instruct me. Yes, if anyone can help me, it is Ron.
Still, I hesitate to call him. It's been ten years, or almost. Ten years. It's awkward to contact someone after such a long time. He probably thinks I'm dead---if he thinks of me at all, that is, which he probably doesn't---why should he? Yes, God has blessed me with a long life; I am six weeks shy of my 87th birthday. Of course, in our time many, many people live to that age and beyond---far beyond. Just the other day I read in the newspaper about the number of centenarians there are in this country. Twenty-something thousand I think it was. Still... after ten years, wouldn't my voice on the phone seem to him as a voice beyond the grave?
***
"A new day, a new life"---I don't know who said it, but does it matter, if there's wisdom in it? And there is, I feel it. I look out my bedroom window on the freshly fallen snow sparkling in the sunshine, and I think to myself, "I've been born again." My years do not weigh heavily on me. I've never been sick in my life, I'm as strong as I ever was---a lot stronger, I think, than the flabby, slack-bellied salarymen I see on the train, men half my age who nevertheless look a lot closer to the grave than I feel myself to be. Suppose, to celebrate my rebirth, I go skiing?
There's a forest-park right in the heart of the city, three train stops from the station nearest my house; I could be there in twenty minutes. It's a vast, vast expanse, with miles of trails, but I go off the trails, deep into the woods on the virgin snow; there's not a soul in sight, not a sound to be heard, except for the occasional bird or the sigh of the wind in the bare treetops... And poking through the snow are the coarse green leaves of the dwarf bamboo, trembling in the breeze as though they were dancing... It's hard to describe... I am not a poetic man, and yet there are times, as I tramp along on my skis, when I feel tears welling up in my eyes---yes, tears, and I think to myself: "This is it, this is pure beauty, and I, a plain man, nobody really, have been granted the privilege of beholding it." It is enough to make even someone like me, with no religion and no beliefs of any kind, almost want to bow down and worship.
Yes, to hell with Ron, to hell with Mavrin, to hell with all of them. I'm off to the forest.
***
Where am I? Not in the forest, that's plain. I am lying on a bed---a cot, rather---among milling crowds, noise---shouts back and forth mingled with what sound like recorded announcements. There are other cots too, with people lying on them, but there's no order, it's not a room; more like a corridor, the walls a pale, sickly green...
As a child I used to dream of being buried alive. I had forgotten; suddenly the memory comes back to me. I would wake up screaming, in terror; my mother would come to me... She didn't know what the matter was, and I was so young, I didn't have the vocabulary to explain... "Nurse!"---for I have oriented myself by now; no grave, this, but a hospital, and the woman sailing past me in her white uniform is unmistakably a nurse. "Nurse! What on earth am I doing here? How did I..."
"Sh! Lie down, calm yourself! I'll call the doctor."
She is gone before I can muster a reply.
A peculiar lassitude comes over me. Have I been sedated? It is strange: I see and hear as before, and yet... not as before, because the sights no longer bewilder me, the sounds no longer irritate; if it's possible to be in a place and yet not in a place at the same time, then I am here without being here, and if it's not possible, then... I simply don't know what!
***
Time passes and the doctor doesn't come; I've been forgotten, but, oddly enough (for I know myself to be not the most patient of mortals!) I don't mind; on the contrary, I am comfortable, content. I don't know that I have ever been more so, though my surroundings are anything but conducive to contentment---there is even, I notice now for the first time, someone somewhere moaning in what sounds like terrible pain, whether physical or mental I can't say. I hear this and recognize it for what it is, and yet---well, let her moan! (For it is a woman, I believe, though if pressed I'd have to admit that I can't be sure.)
Supposing, the thought occurs, I've died, and this is eternity. Just lying here, wrapped in this... whatever it is I'm wrapped in... Looking on at this endless commotion which has nothing to do with me, hearing all this frantic clamor which, though all my life I've been peculiarly sensitive to noise, disturbs me not at all... Supposing the angel in charge (or whatever) were to approach me now and say, "I'm offering you a choice: you can remain here for all eternity, or you can go back to earth for ten more years of life. Choose!" Well, I'd hesitate, I admit, being somewhat attached to life, but in the end... yes, I think I'd choose to remain. I think---
"Mr. Nakajima?"
"Yes."
"How do you feel?"
The label pinned to his white uniform above the breast pocket reads "Watanabe." His hair is covered by a close-fitting cap, his mouth and nose by a mask, so that all I see of him, really, are his spectacles.
"I feel fine. Why am I here?"
"What is the last thing you remember?"
"The last thing..." What is the last thing I remember? Skiing---I was going skiing. To the forest. I remember going to the storage closet where the skis are, dragging them out... I remember putting on my jacket, the sound the zipper made (rather like a fart) as I zipped it up...
"Do you remember leaving your house?"
"Yes, and... I remember being on the street, and suddenly not being sure whether I had locked the door or not. I went back to check. I often do that; it's a sort of quirk of mine I guess you might say."
"And?"
"And..." I look at him in some bewilderment. His eyes behind the spectacles---perhaps it's the effect of the rest of his face being invisible---are intense and concentrated but otherwise devoid of expression; I can read nothing in them---except, perhaps, youth. He is a young man---or maybe not so young; at my age the word "youth" takes on an almost absurdly expanded meaning. "That's all. The next thing I know I'm lying on a cot in bedlam, wondering how on earth I got here."
"I see."
"Would you be so kind as to tell me what you see?"
"My information is that a passerby found you unconscious on the street and called an ambulance. He assumed you'd had a heart attack, but the medics found nothing wrong with your heart. The best guess is that you slipped on a patch of ice and, in falling, struck your head. Are you in any pain of any kind? Does your head hurt?"
"No... well, now that you mention it, yes, I do feel a... a kind of throbbing..."
"Yes, you'd better remain here overnight. You may have suffered a concussion, and it would be best..."
"Remain overnight? Here?"
My sudden panic was of course inconsistent with the peace and lassitude I'd been experiencing a moment before, but, inconsistent or not, the lassitude was gone and the panic very real. "No, that's impossible, I must... I have to... " I raised myself up on one elbow, and suddenly the dull throbbing became a searing jab of pain that sent me reeling back onto the pillow. I can imagine my expression as I gaze up at Dr. Watanabe. It would be one of offended surprise, as though to say, "Why have you done such a thing to me?"
"I'll have the nurse give you something to help you sleep."
***
I sleep and yet do not sleep---it's difficult to explain. I am here and yet not here; me and yet not me. Still on the cot, I feel myself being wheeled somewhere---to the dungeon, perhaps, where Mavrin will be lighting the lamp. That's fine. Let it be there, or let it be somewhere else. For the first time it occurs to me to wonder about my skis. Did I have them with me when I collapsed? I must have---in which case, are they still lying there on the road? Or did someone take charge of them, or steal them? In I go, through a doorway or passage of some sort, and the cot comes to a halt. There is not a sound, not a movement. It is not dark, but it is not light either. It is as if---this is fantastic---as if light has assumed the role of darkness, that of concealing everything. I do not understand, but I tell myself, "I have had a concussion, I've been given a sedative; it is only natural that my perception of reality is skewed.
***
"How do you feel?" asks Dr. Watanabe.
"Fine, perfect. Thank you for everything. With your permission, I will take my leave."
"Yes, certainly. But... tell me: do you live alone?"
"Yes."
"You've no family?"
"No."
"I confess that I would be easier in my mind about you if you did not live alone."
"Oh, you needn't worry about that. I'm used to living alone. I'm what's known as a natural solitary. I've lived alone all my adult life---since I was eighteen."
"Is that so? Well, being eighteen is one thing, being eighty-seven is another. And you have had a concussion. That remains a fact to reckon with, though our tests show nothing amiss. Tell me: how is it you have a Japanese name?"
"I changed my name when I acquired Japanese citizenship."
"And how---"
"It's a long story."
"I see. I don't mean to pry, it's just..."
"Just what?"
Watanabe's eyes narrow; they take on a peculiar cast. He has realized something, made a connection. His face behind the mask must be registering intense surprise. "Nakajima Shoichiro?"
I smile. "The same, at your service."
***
If you are wondering how it is I speak such pure, idiomatic Japanese, without so much as a trace of a foreign accent, the answer is simple: I was born here. My parents had come as missionaries. They ran a small neighborhood church---a cozy, intimate haven of cleanliness, friendliness and godliness. It was a great success. People dropped in as they would on a friend, and the entertainment, so to speak, consisted of prayers and sermons. The god of my parents' church was a nice guy, a helpful neighbor, a charming host; he wore his omnipotence lightly. He consoled those in need of consolation, encouraged those whose courage was flagging, congratulated those whom fortune had favored in some enterprise or other ---gently reminding them, however, to take care because pride goeth before a fall and the mighty can be brought low as abruptly as they were raised high. This ironic tone I'm displaying is habitual with me when I recall my parents' church; it predates the awakening of my critical faculties; I must have been born with it.
Possibly I was also born with the passion for destruction that is soon to become the theme of this story. Possibly irony and destruction go hand in hand. The following memory is vague but insistent; something like it must have happened. I would have been four or five at the time. An electric train set I'd been clamoring for materialized under the Christmas tree, and in due course ownership was conferred upon me. It would be misleading to say that my joy was mingled with, or tainted by, a secret wish to destroy it. No---rather, my joy was the secret wish to destroy it. It was Ron---Ron-Yasu---who, many years later, helped me understand that---not by explaining it but by listening to me with a certain expression on his face, an expression of which he was almost certainly unconscious.
Destruction... yes, in the course of my long life I have destroyed many things, the inexpressible joy that accompanied my rampages being intense enough, deep enough, to be called sacred. I am not joking, and you who laugh know neither joy nor sacredness; you don't even know that you don't know, because you think you do know. Your blind ignorance keeps you out of trouble, no doubt, but your lives are hollow. Never mind. I'm not here to argue with you, or to mock you, though, truth to tell, I do find you funny.
***
Here's something else Ron-Yasu's silence helped me to understand, or at least to suspect: that my destructiveness was rooted in a rebellion against my parents' god. My poor parents! Who wouldn't rebel against such a god? To bind yourself to a god like that is to doom yourself to the condition that sums up my parents' fate, and presumably that of their parishioners as well—innocence, which is to say, living death. Unfortunately they---my parents---did not outlive my childish vocabulary; had they lived longer, or I matured faster, I would have told them, would have found the words to tell them, that being born into this world involves one in a struggle against ever-encroaching Death, among whose other names are Obedience, Goodness, Love. Life! Life is what the human condition demands---unfettered life! To live, I would have told them, is to worship; and to worship, to live. God loves those who live. From those who merely obey him, or who merely love him, he turns his face in disgust. "Grow up!" he reproves them. "Do you think I created you to be children forever?"
And yet---I too was in love once... Even now, a certain tenderness steals over me as I recall that long-ago episode. I was eleven, and she... well, laugh if you like; she was my sixth-grade teacher. Miss Small. The name suited her to a T, because she was... well, I prefer the word petite, though the epithet more generally current among my classmates was dwarfish. Was she pretty? The only honest answer is no, she was not. Wherein, then, lay her beauty? In her helplessness. She was very young, I believe it was her first year as a teacher; certainly it was her first year in Japan; she was a black woman, from Jamaica; she knew no Japanese at all, and the Japanese kids, who made up half the class, were simply beyond her control. Among other childish tricks, they abused her obscenely in Japanese; she faced a class full of children laughing uproariously at she simply knew not what.
A brief autobiographical note will clear up any confusion that may have arisen. My schooling until then had been in Japanese. I grew up speaking mostly Japanese; we spoke English at home, of course, but I spoke it, though correctly, almost like a foreigner, and it was to rectify that that my parents decided to place me in an international school. I don't remember how I felt about it at the time---probably I was indifferent. School was never to me what it was to other children, a venue of struggle, triumph, despair. Perhaps I never was a child in the ordinary sense. As the only foreign kid in a large Japanese school, I learned very early on to face down bullies. Having once made such an example of a would-be tormentor that the others conceded my right to be left alone, I became peaceable enough---I was never one to look for a fight. As for my studies, I suppose I had a kind of knack for that sort of thing---book-learning and such---because, without straining my faculties I was perpetually at the top of my class. Great things were expected of me. Once the principal lamented to my parents what a shame it was that the Japanese system made it impossible for gifted children to skip grades. Maybe a sense that the system was holding me back had something to do with the switch to the international school. I really don't remember.
Japanese school, international school---it was all the same to me. As it happened, it was inscribed in the Book of Life that the international school was to be the backdrop to my fleeting role as poor Miss Small's knight in shining armor---that is to say, her lover, for I was no less.
It happened in this fashion: A boy named Otake Yuji, whom I can see in my mind's eye as clearly as though he were standing before me---his surname means "big bamboo," and it was as appropriate to him as Miss Small was to Miss Small---a doltish lout, as big at age eleven as a full-grown man, and almost as hairy; yes, he had actually started shaving---this Otake abruptly and with no provocation interrupted Miss Small's timid explanation of the Pythagorean theorem to call out, in a voice that had already begun to change, "Shut your face, you black cunt!"
I seem to hear as I recall the scene a faint feminine scream---it would not have been Miss Small's because she would not have understood; one of the Japanese girls, then. But Otake's disciples---every boy like Otake has a band of disciples----quickly rallied, drowning whatever outrage and distaste there may have been in loud, vulgar, braying laughter. Fists pounded rhythmically on desks and a chant was struck up: "Black cunt! Black cunt! Black cunt!" I stole a glance at Miss Small's face, and the image that came immediately to mind was of a human being being roasted on a spit. It was the most intense, the deepest feeling I have ever had in my life; nothing, nothing in the seventy-five years that followed has come close to it. Maybe it was so deep, so intense, that it so to speak overloaded my emotional circuitry, and I have been numb ever since. A person can kill in an emotional state like that---more easily even than he can kill in a numb state. All things considered, I am fortunate to have got through my life thus far without committing murder.
I sprang to my feet, strode over to Otake's desk and, before he was fully aware of my presence, I think, I slapped him hard across the face. I should mention that I was a runty little fellow, destined (as I think I obscurely realized) to grow into a runty little man. I was short and thin; at eleven I probably could have passed for eight; my external appearance gave no hint at all of my strength, and since coming to the international school I had been quiet and, so to speak, undestructive, so this sudden explosion on the part of so unassuming and mousy a kid would have come as a total shock to someone like Otake, whose only notice of me up to that time had been an occasional glance, hard to describe, which seemed to say, "You're prey and I'm hungry; just wait, your turn will come."
I slapped him again, so hard he cried out. He lunged for me but I was too quick for him. Darting behind his chair I threw a headlock on him which, as I tightened it, seemed to immobilize the rest of the class as much as it did him. "Now," I said---and I can only imagine how strange the grown-up words must have sounded in my piping childish voice, "I want you to go up to Miss Small, bow very low, tell her in English what you said, and apologize. Do you understand?" I tightened the headlock, and tightened it again, until I detected a feeble gesture which seemed to indicate compliance. I loosened my hold but did not release it. "Do you understand?" I said again, very quietly. "Yes," he gurgled.
***
Mavrin comes in. I gape at him. It is not lamplighting time; what is he doing here? "I've come for you," he says, his tone neutral as always.
"You've come for me? What..." I struggle to control my trembling voice. "What do you mean, you've come for me?"
"Your trial is about to begin."
"So there is actually to be a trial!"
"Oh yes, most definitely. Did you doubt it?"
***
"Hello... hello? This is... is this the probation office? My name is Nakajima Shoichiro, is Mr. ... Mr. Fukuda there? Hello? Fukuda Yasuo, he was my... my probation officer..."
He no longer works there, the young woman informs me. Two years ago, or was it three, he was transferred to Kagoshima, in the south of Kyushu. Kagoshima! Why there, of all places? He is Hokkaido born and Hokkaido bred, a passionate skier; why, he can't live in a hot climate! For a brief instant it seems as if all the injustice in the world has been condensed into this one trivial administrative decision which transferred the winter-loving Ron-Yasu to a place where there is no winter. He'll wither there. "Shall I give you the phone number of the Kagoshima office?" the young woman inquires. "Please," I murmur, and she reads it out, but I do not write it down. I can't escape the feeling, as I hang up the phone, that something major, something decisive has just happened, something that has irrevocably altered my destiny---I feel this, feel it intensely, though at the same time I know perfectly well that nothing at all has happened, that I can contact him as easily in Kagoshima as I can here, that he'll adapt easily enough to the new climate, and so on, and that if he doesn't it's his problem, not mine.
For the first time in my life a thought occurs to me: that it is time to end my life. It is strange, perhaps, that for all my ups and downs I have never, ever, not once, thought of suicide. Do I love life to that degree? Well, yes. Is that strange? Yes, I plead guilty to loving life---not to fearing death, mind you... although... Actually I was lying when I said I have never thought of suicide. I did think of it once... when? When I was eleven, and Miss Small moved back to Jamaica.
She vanished that very day. After lunch our class was temporarily merged with Mr. Richardson's. Mr. Richardson spoke no more Japanese than Miss Small, but he was a huge block of a man, a former American football player, though not a major-leaguer; the boys were terrified of him, though he never raised his voice---he never had to. A week later it was announced that Miss Small had, as I said, gone back to Jamaica and a new teacher would be coming. The new teacher duly came, and our education proceeded. Of the new teacher my story need not touch upon. She was a teacher, period.
It was a very bad time for me---although, preoccupied as I was with Miss Small, I never lost my position as the undisputed top student in my grade, and I doubt anyone---not my parents, not my new teacher, not my classmates---had even the faintest suspicion that I was passing through an emotional crisis. I was that way---when not actively making my presence felt I became, in a manner of speaking, invisible. Years later I came to know of a Japanese sage of the 13th century, Enroku by name, of whom it was said that he had attained a level of quietness so profound that he actually became invisible. I'm no sage, but I did have the capacity---and still do---to sit quietly for hours on end, not stirring, scarcely breathing. Once, I remember, I came out of my room and met my mother in the hall. "Oh!" she gasped. "I'd forgotten all about you!" Yes, that is what I wanted. I wanted, without ceasing to exist, to have my existence forgotten.
I had a world atlas in my room, and found Jamaica in it, and spent hours staring at it: a tiny egg-shaped island, set in a vast blue sea. Where in Jamaica would she be? Kingston? Montego Bay? "One day when I'm old enough," I told myself, "I'll go there and find her and... and marry her." What made me think of suicide was the suspicion---no, the certainty---that I never would be old enough---the gulf between me and adulthood seemed so hopelessly, hopelessly vast. Why had I been born a child? It was like a deformity I had to learn to live with.
***
Why am I scribbling these rambling, incoherent scraps? I'm not sure. The immediate impetus was the recurring dream about Mavrin and his damned lamp---and then, it just acquired a momentum of its own. If nothing else, it's an occupation; it keeps me busy, it's something to do. I am 87 years old. Maybe I should write my autobiography? I am joking, of course.
***
My thinking about suicide matured to the point of settling on a building from whose roof, twelve stories up, I would jump to the thoroughfare far below. In a kind of ecstasy I pictured myself hitting the pavement and being driven over by vehicle after vehicle until nothing was left of me but a bleeding shapeless pulp, lifeless and yet not---for of course it is impossible to picture ourselves truly lifeless. Why did I settle on that particular building? It was fated. The bus stop where I changed buses to go to school was right in front of it. It was a conspicuously tall building, the tallest one around. And its name, to my childish sense of irony, was irresistible: The Japan Life Building. (Life, I later learned, meant, in this case, life insurance.) And so one morning I slipped out of line at the bus stop, slipped into the Japan Life Building, slipped into the elevator among a throng of gray- and black-suited, briefcase-carrying specimens called in Japan "salarymen," and rode it, gnashing my teeth with impatience as it stopped at every single floor, to the top. There was just me and one other man, everyone else having descended at lower altitudes, and this one other man looked at me curiously, as well he might, for a small boy like me would naturally have appeared very peculiar and out of place there---he seemed about to question me, but I very abruptly turned away and marched down the aisle with an air of someone who knew precisely what he was up to, and I guess he decided it was no business of his, and thus our brief encounter ended.
So there I was on the twelfth and top floor of the Japan Life Building. Well and good---but how to get to the roof? There must be a passage somewhere---or perhaps not; why should there be one? For the benefit of people wanting to kill themselves? Yes, but other people jump from roofs, you read about it in the newspaper from time to time; quite often, in fact... And so I wandered about, seeking the passage, turning the matter over in my mind, my doubts growing, when suddenly I heard, "Nakajima-kun! What on earth...?" I looked up, in a paroxysm of something like terror, to find myself staring into the astonished face of old white-haired Mr. Saito, a member of my parents' church.
My "paroxysm" was momentary. Mr. Saito's vapid old face, smooth as a girl's and stupid as a sheep's, could still at a glance the wildest emotional flights, whether the emotion in question was fear, despair, or, for that matter, happiness. I mumbled something about coming into the building because I'd got cold standing around waiting for the bus, and taking an elevator out of curiosity... etc. etc.; the sort of thing you mumble in a situation like that... He smiled, patted me on the head, and said I'd better run along or I'd be late for school---which I was, but my explanation was natural enough and the matter ended with a warning from the new teacher not to let it happen again.
***
I dreamed of my father last night. Have I mentioned my father? I don't remember. To be perfectly honest, I hardly know what I've written. I am filling page after page with I don't know what. "Page," I say, meaning paper. Invented by the Chinese well over a thousand years ago, it hovers now on the verge of extinction, surviving only so that relics from another age, like me, can compose... whatever it is I am composing. Memoir? Autobiography? "Letter to no one." If I must call it something, maybe that's the best name to give it. Letter to no one. Very likely I will die at this table, pen in hand. Weeks, months will pass; the smell of my rotting corpse will draw attention; the police will be called, they'll break open the door, and there I'll be, what's left of me, grinning horribly, with these yellow sheets of paper scattered about. Will anyone take the trouble to decipher my unsightly scrawl?
My father. His god called him home in rather a peculiar way---or perhaps not. In a characteristically peculiar way, I should maybe say. He was en route to a seminar in Tokyo, a seminar of missionaries, and his plane crashed, killing him and, if I remember correctly, 256 others, my mother among them. Strange---I always have to remind myself that my mother too died in the crash. In my imagination she was a victim not of the crash but of my father's death.
In my dream I was sitting with my father in a restaurant, and we were chatting over coffee---as, during what turned out to be the last few months of his life, we often did. I was twenty-three when he died---a graduate student in philosophy, having switched from mathematics. Why? I could have written a book in answer to that question then. Now I no longer remember, and the anguish the decision cost me, which I do remember, seems to me now merely comical, grotesque. In view of my subsequent life, how could it seem otherwise? "Here, " I said to my father, "this is what it means to believe in God." With that I flung him a copy of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. It is an odd way to present someone with a gift, for that is what it was. The truth is, I loved my father and was ashamed of loving him. To my surprise he read it, and read it with interest. "You see," I said, "the difference between you and Abraham. He believed in God deeply. You believe shallowly." His answer shocked me. "Maybe you're right," he said.
In the dream, then, we are sitting in a restaurant and chatting, as had become our wont, only I am speaking the most patent absurdities, the most arrant nonsense, while my father listens intently, nods gravely, murmurs "Yes, yes, I see. Hm." What am I telling him? Of out-of-body experiences, of traveling in time, of meeting God face to face, Who tells me He has a mission for me, for which I must hold myself in readiness. I describe visions that make those of the prophet Ezekiel seem rational. And at first I am ashamed of pulling the wool over my foolish old father's eyes, but the odd thing is that the more I talk---and my inventiveness seems boundless, I never run out of things to say---the fainter grows my consciousness that I am talking nonsense; in short, I come to believe what I'm saying, my tone grows earnest, my hands begin to tremble; by no means in the spirit of raillery I entreat my father's blessing: "Bless me, father, for I know not what awaits me and I am afraid." I woke up trembling with fear. I soon shook it off, but... well, what if I lose my senses? And a strange thought comes to me: that before I do, before darkness closes in, leaving me helpless and alone... shouldn't I get married?
***
I have never (you will have gathered as much) been married, never thought of marrying. The fact is, the "nonsense" I spoke to my father in my dream has roots in waking reality, and may not be nonsense at all, for the ultimate consequence of my relationship with Miss Small, my brief flirtation with suicide and its abrupt termination, was a conviction, conceived then and germinating silently over time, that I had been reserved for a special fate, not necessarily relating to the service of God, not necessarily not relating to it either. I mentioned my transfer from mathematics to philosophy. Is there a connection? Between my transfer, I mean, and my growing conviction. I think there is. As a child I was a mathematical prodigy, and had always been drawn to the study of numbers, but here was something that could not be explored in numerical terms. Numbers never preoccupied me exclusively; I was literate too, and used my literacy to good advantage during those teenage years when my classmates were occupied with, shall we say, more rambunctious pursuits. Plato and St. Augustine I knew practically by heart, and the Enlightenment philosophers and the German idealists who followed them. So we needn't look to supernatural motivation to explain the transfer; the ground had been well prepared. But around that time a chance meeting occurred which may have been a decisive influence. The meeting was with none other than Otake---the big bamboo.
***
I didn't recognize him. Even after he hailed me, all affability, laughing at my surprise (and discomposure) at hearing my name called in a place where I had every reason to presume I was a perfect stranger to all present; even after he told me who he was---even then I couldn't connect his present appearance---his present incarnation, perhaps I should say---with my memory of that grotesque, prematurely mature bully I'd known at the international school.
"Come into my office, we'll have a chat."
I rose and followed him, almost overwhelmed by a feeling I had never known before---a feeling of inferiority. He led me into a spacious, almost cavernous office and closed the door behind us. The floor was carpeted, the walls covered with paintings, like a museum. He ushered me into an armchair of plush leather, lowering his own frame onto the sofa opposite. "Do you know," he said, smiling, "that I came very close to murdering you? Don't laugh"---could he really have seen anything on my face suggestive of laughter?---"it's true; I even bought a knife, a kitchen knife with a 26-cm blade; it would've made short work of you; you'd never've seen your twelfth birthday; by now, even to your parents you'd be at most a distant memory. What do you drink?" He rose. There was a liquor cabinet under a painting---brilliant dabs of color representing, I think, chrysanthemums, but I know little of either painting or flowers, so it's just a guess.
"Nothing," I murmured. "Thank you."
He sat down again. "It is rather early in the day. So! Tell me about yourself! What are you up to?"
"I'm studying mathematics at X. University."
"Mathematics! Mathematics. Never my strong suit." He laughed, showing even, white teeth. He was so handsome! It was breathtaking. What wouldn't a man give to have a face like his, an air like his! And if the price of such handsomeness---such beauty---was evil and stupidity? Yes, even at that price, I thought, it's worth it.
"But where does it take you, mathematics? What does it get you?"
"I don't know." If I ever had known, I no longer did; I no longer knew anything. There'd been an ad in the newspaper---the such-and-such furniture company was seeking part-time help; I was seeking a part-time job to help pay my tuition; I answered the ad, and suddenly there I was in that enormous office, face to face with Otake!
"I'm married," he said. "I have two kids---a boy, three, and a girl, eighteen months. It changes your life, you know, having kids."
"Does it?"
"You'll know someday. Forget mathematics. Come work for me. Not for me, with me. We'll be partners. I need someone like you. And you---though you may not know it yet--- need someone like me. This is a growing business. My grandfather built it, my father expanded it, and I'm carrying on the family tradition---building and expanding. It's in the blood. What do you say? Come over for dinner tonight, I'll introduce you to my young and growing family. Did I mention my wife is pregnant?"
***
After dinner the young and growing family retired to some other region of the vast house, and it was just the two of us. I was not used to drinking, and soon the familiar contours of the physical universe we all live in dissolved. "Glenlivet," I heard him say, and nodded vaguely in reply, hoping vaguely that my incomprehension was not too blatantly obvious. He talked and talked. Had he been so talkative as a boy? I didn't remember and still don't---perhaps one day I will---but his voice was like music; he was happy, and I felt happy listening to him. He loved his wife, loved his children, loved his business; only one thing seemed to disturb him: the fact that I wasn't as happy as he was. But I could be, he assured me, filling my glass; it was so easy---he would take me into the business, fix me up with his wife's sister... "Forget mathematics." That was his recurring theme. "Forget mathematics, make babies."
I awoke with a splitting headache and a sour taste in my mouth. Where was I? What had happened? I had thrown up all over the sofa. Otake laughed, his teeth gleaming. I was not to worry---there were plenty more sofas where that came from! It was morning. Sunlight streamed into the room. "I cleaned you up as best I could. Now that you're awake, let me put you to bed." He laughed again, still more delightedly. "Come, partner. We have a nice little bed in a nice little guest room..." I would have fled if I could, but my head was throbbing, throbbing... "Maybe you'd like a hot bath first?"
***
Mavrin---where are you? When you come you are a torture to me, you make me cringe, I hate you and long only to be free of you---and yet when you don't come, as tonight... I miss you. Have you abandoned me for good? Has my trial been suspended? Have I been acquitted due to lack of evidence? As to that, I told you there would be no evidence. You didn't believe me. Now you know. But in that case, you must let me out of here. Acquittal means freedom, does it not? Doesn't it? Listen. Never mind the rights and wrongs of the matter. If you let me out, I'll make it worth your while, I'll...
"Naoko-chan!"
"How are you?"
"How long have you been sitting there?"
"Oh, not long. Ten minutes. Can I fix you something? Some hot milk?"
"Yes. Yes, please. Oh, Lord, what a dream! Naoko, tell me..."
"Yes?"
"Tell me the truth. Am I going to live forever, or... or what?"
She smiles. She has such a nice smile. "I wouldn't be surprised."
"But... why? Why me?"
"Why not you? Let me get your milk."
"Wait. The milk can wait. First, let's... settle some things. I'm eighty-seven years old, I could die at any time, and before I do..."
"What about living forever?"
"Well, that's just a hypothesis... a... hypothesis!"
"Well? Before you do... what?"
"Two things. First: will you marry me? Wait, don't answer. Second: will you hear my confession? Yes, the time has come for me to confess to you, to you alone..."
"What can you possibly have to confess to me?"
"That I am not the man you think I am. Listen. Do you remember when your house caught fire?"
"Of course! How could I forget?"
"You were a child at the time."
"You don't forget a thing like that."
"You could have been killed. Your whole family could have been killed."
"Yes, it was very lucky my father happened to be awake. He was working in his study and smelled smoke. It was two in the morning. If he'd been asleep..."
"It was I who set that fire, Naoko."
"You!"
"I."
What is the expression taking shape on her face? Horror? Disbelief? "But... no, it's impossible! You're not serious!"
"I have the sort of face that turns everything I say into a kind of joke---that is true. Still..."
"You're ill, you're not well..."
"You're trembling."
"It's chilly. Let me turn on the heater."
"Naoko, listen to me. You thought of me as a family friend, as a kind of uncle. Your father took me into his business, your mother loved me like a sister. None of you had any idea, any idea, how I... hated you! Oh, my God, my God how I hated you!"
****
Her scream hangs in the air. The door through which she fled is still open. Stupid, stupid... that is not at all how I meant to tell her. So many times, so many times I rehearsed it in my mind---even out loud, sometimes, and always I found the words to make her listen to the end---but face to face, I said it all wrong; why, how? Will I ever see her again?