Michael Hoffman - Birnbaum: A Novel of Inner Space

Fourth segment

He stopped abruptly; fortunately no one was walking right behind him. Where was he going? "To find a place for myself" - yes, but where? That's not the sort of thing you just walk until you chance to find; you must have something specific in mind, make inquiries... There was a real estate office in Zenibako. He had never been in it, but he knew where it was. Should he drop in? But that was patently idiotic. What kind of freedom would he have in Zenibako, as much under William's and Natsuko's watchful eyes as though he had never left their house? Well - where then? Sapporo? Good. Sapporo. Sapporo wasn't very far, but it was a big city; a man could lose himself in the crowds there; he could take a walk in the middle of the night without anyone fearing he was out of his senses, or toss all twenty-three volumes of his past life into the trash without arousing the faintest curiosity. But as he turned towards Zenibako Station, having made up his mind to take a train to Sapporo, he encountered another setback: he had left his wallet at home. The jolt this caused him seemed far out of proportion to a momentary lapse that was easily made good - all he had to do was walk back five minutes to the house, slip his wallet into his pocket, and be on his way again. He saw this quite clearly, but didn't something deeper lie concealed in this seemingly trivial episode? Was his judgment to be relied on at all? Who leaves home with a supposedly serious purpose in mind without a wallet? Besides, he might return and find Natsuko back. No, he decided, he would interpret his forgetfulness as destiny taking a hand in his affairs, and walk on. What would happen would happen.

And so he walked - past the station, past the fishmonger's, past a cake shop he had never, ever, seen anyone enter or leave, though the window displayed fresh cakes every day - the lemon tarts positively gleamed, almost like sunshine. Should he drop in? He felt a momentary urge to do so, but with no money in his pocket he would scarcely be a welcome customer. As he passed he cast a furtive glance inside - why furtive? he wondered to himself - and glimpsed a young woman in a towering white chef's hat behind the cash register, and though she wasn't doing anything, it was evident that her idleness didn't weigh on her; the impression she gave him in that brief glimpse was of a person who knew her role in life and felt confident of her ability to fulfill it. Further on was an outdoor stall selling beach paraphernalia - fish-shaped floats, manga-character beach balls, goggles and so on. It all looked very gay and enticing, but here too no business of any kind was being transacted, though across the street - Mort had somehow failed to notice them before - were hordes of young people, from Sapporo no doubt ("even the boys have dyed hair!"), walking (their cheerful and unrestrained banter, noisy enough, seemed to reach him only now) from the station to the sandy beach about a kilometer away. Of course - the college kids would be on summer vacation already. Some of them broke from the main group at the 7-Eleven store, filling it with their boisterous presence. Only convenience stores, it seemed, were drawing customers. They never closed, never ran out of conveniences to purvey, or people to purvey them to.

Here was the bank. That clerk he'd run into in the street yesterday - would she be on duty? He had a sudden thought: What if he went in and asked her to lend him two thousand yen? Then he could take the train to Sapporo and get some serious business accomplished. Otherwise, what would the day's outing amount to? A walk in the sun - well, that was a fine thing in its own way, healthful and invigorating, not to be despised, but still, it was unlikely to solve any long-term problems of the sort that called for a practical approach, and his problems were clearly of that nature. She would think it strange, of course...

"Why am I hesitating? Because she would think it strange?" Hesitation on those grounds suddenly struck him as so contemptible, so utterly beneath him, that he strode past the automatic doors that parted to admit him and marched boldly inside - no bank robber could have entered with a more fiercely determined air. The bank's interior was chilly enough to make him shiver. In winter it was always overheated; in summer the air conditioner went full blast, a squandering of resources perhaps meant as a celebration of profligacy, whatever its cost. What was that melody oozing from the overhead speakers? It was vaguely familiar. He stood stock still in the middle of the floor, trying to identify it. "Love is Blue" - that was it. Seven or eight customers were busy filling out forms or waiting to be summoned to a wicket. They were all senior citizens, bent-backed and withered, though in fact probably no older than Mort; some may even have been younger, though he could easily have passed for the son of any one of them.

Was his clerk there? She was. Just at the moment she was bent over some paperwork, and had not noticed his presence.

In a corner near the door stood three people, two men and a woman, chattering away quite oblivious of their surroundings. They made no effort to moderate their hoarse voices or their periodic explosions of throaty, cackling laughter. Perhaps they felt their great age exempted them from conventional rules of conduct. Or possibly, thought Mort, reconsidering, they were deaf and didn't realize how loudly they were talking. Listening - because it was impossible not to, though everyone else in the bank seemed to be pretending not to - Mort began to get the drift of their conversation. One of the men had put forward the claim that he could make whatever he wished for come true, and was now vigorously, even angrily, defending himself against the laughing sarcasm of his two friends. He was a short, reedy little man, no taller than a ten-year-old child. A strong wind would carry him off. Old age had stripped his parchment-textured, liver-spotted face of all individuality; he was old age personified, that and nothing more; you looked at his bald splotched scalp, and it seemed inconceivable that once it had sprouted hair. For all that, though, he knew what he knew; his eyes behind his thick glasses flashed; he seemed ready to resort to violence if his mocking friends pushed him too far. Not at all intimidated, his friends redoubled their mirth. "Wish yourself young then," said the other man in a loud though sepulchral voice. "Wish yourself healthy. Wish yourself - " "Wish yourself in love with someone who loves you!" interposed the woman shrilly. Amid the roar of phlegmy laughter that followed Mort turned tail and fled through the automatic doors into the bright summer sunshine.

"What happened? Where am I?" Momentarily dazed, and dazzled by the sunshine besides, he felt as though he'd been whisked into another dimension. Everything about him was familiar, and yet no less strange for that – just as his room had been during the night. Laughter, hideous laughter rang in his ears. It would haunt him for the rest of his life, that laughter. He would never be rid of it.

He resumed his walk. "'Any direction I please' - how did that poem of Santoka's go? 'Wet with morning dew/ I go off/ in any direction I please' - something like that. Hm. 'Any direction I please' is fine, but do I have the courage to be 'wet with morning dew'? If it's a choice between comfortless freedom and freedomless comfort, which would I choose? Posed as an academic question, the answer is obvious: comfortless freedom wins hands down. But in real life? In real life comfort is not so easy to give up! Santoka did - but no, Santoka never had it. You can't give up what you don't have."

He passed a barber shop, "Dick's Cut House" - 2500 yen for senior citizens. "Damned if I'd pay 2500 yen for a haircut!" He cut his own hair - the hairs he left on the rim of the sink drove Natsuko mad; they would drive her madder still if she suspected he left them there on purpose. And here was the golf course, across the road from the sandy beach. William, an occasional golfer, took his clients here. He had invited his father once or twice, but Mort, with a contemptuous laugh, retorted, "Golf is for old men!"

He came to the main road. It led to Sapporo; how long would it take him to walk? Nineteen kilometers, said a sign. Figuring five kilometers an hour, four hours. There was another possibility. Supposing he stuck out his thumb? Wouldn't someone stop for him? Of course someone would, it was only a matter of time, probably not much time - there was the curiosity factor, if nothing else. He would, of course, have to satisfy that curiosity, give an account of himself. But no, there was a way out of that - he could pretend to know no Japanese! "Hey! Now you're thinkin'! Now you're usin' the old noodle!" He laughed soundlessly to himself. "How delightful, the thoughts that come into one's mind when one is alone, free..." How long would it be before someone stopped? "Less than five minutes, I bet! Should I?" What to do? For the sake of convenience to sacrifice his solitude... But here was a car pulling over already - had he extended his thumb without realizing? It seemed he had. How strange. The driver leaning over to open the passenger door was a young woman - did young women have no fear nowadays? Didn't they read the newspapers? Or had she taken one look at him and decided he was past all that? Maybe he didn't look as young as he thought he did? A horn sounded from behind; she was blocking traffic for his sake. He could not stand there deliberating; he must get in so she could drive off. "I'm going to Shiretoko," said the woman. Shiretoko! That was at the extreme eastern tip of Hokkaido, hundreds of kilometers away.

"Why Shiretoko?" he asked.

"To see it."

"I see," he mumbled stupidly.

She said nothing further; nor did he. Casting sidelong glances at her, he saw that she was perhaps not as young as he had first taken her to be; she must be thirty at least. Neither attractive nor unattractive in herself, her attraction would depend entirely on the mood or character of the man (or woman, such was the ambiguous nature of sexuality these days!) regarding her. She looked, it suddenly occurred to him, rather like Virginia Woolf, the nose in profile a little too thick, the lips likewise. The hair, it went without saying, was dyed - just a shade lighter than the conventional reddish-brown. It was thick and hung down to her shoulders; it might have looked pleasing dancing in a breeze, but the air conditioner was on and the windows were shut. Her air of intense concentration, her tight grip on the steering wheel, suggested she was not used to driving. Well, should he go to Shiretoko with her? Was that the surprise fate had planned for him that morning?

Why didn't she speak? Why had she stopped for him? Had he really extended his thumb? If he ended up in Shiretoko with no money, not so much as a single yen, how would he get back? Maybe the woman thought he had money. Maybe she was counting on it. Maybe that's why she had stopped. Why else? "I have no money," he said. The utterance flowed naturally from his thoughts but, he reflected, reddening, would naturally strike her as rather abrupt, if not - he reddened further as this occurred to him - downright insulting in one of its possible interpretations. But the woman showed no sign of having heard him. Was she deaf? Had he spoken? Perhaps he had not spoken after all?

They were driving through Teine; in ten minutes they would be in central Sapporo. But was she even going into Sapporo? Maybe it wasn't necessary, maybe there was some kind of bypass connecting to the highway. What was this crazy silence that reigned in the car? "Excuse me..."

"Yes," she said, not taking her eyes off the road.

"I... you see, I'm only going as far as Sapporo."

"Where in Sapporo?"

"Where?"

"Yes, I'll take you where you want to go."

"But... you're going to Shiretoko."

"That's all right. There's no hurry."

"You'll want to get there before dark."

"That will be easy. The days are long now."

"Yes, of course. Have you ever been to Shiretoko before?"

"No. Have you?"

"Once. Years ago."

"Where in Sapporo shall I let you off?"

"It doesn't matter. Well, Hiragishi, if it's not out of your way."

"Not at all."

***

He had once lived here - he, Naomi and little William. He had started to say something to the woman about this, but her lack of interest was so plain he broke off. She dropped him off at the Hiragishi subway station - not that he planned to take a subway, but it was the only readily identifiable location he could think of. A horn sounded behind her when she pulled over to let him out, just as one had when she had pulled over to let him in. By the sound it made, it might almost have been the same horn. "Well, goodbye," he said. "Thank you. I hope you enjoy your trip to Shiretoko." She nodded vaguely, smiled vaguely - and drove off. Mort stood on the curb watching her car merge with traffic and disappear from view. No sooner was it out of sight than he wondered if it had ever existed. Hadn't there been something altogether fantastic about the whole episode? A car stops for him in response to his thoughts (even if he had unconsciously extended his thumb, it could not have been a very decisive or noticeable gesture, and for the first passing car to stop at it was, any way you looked at it, most extraordinary). A woman driving alone - to Shiretoko, of all places! - picks him up, a perfect stranger, but has not a word to say to him during the whole ride into town. Why did she stop then? And now, less than five minutes having passed, her face seemed to be fading from his memory. He could recall specific traits - thick nose, thick lips, dyed hair - but the face as a whole escaped him. So did the car. What color had it been? What model? Automatic shift or manual? Wasn't that proof that he had imagined it all? On the other hand, here he was in front of the Hiragishi subway station - proof that he had not imagined it.

"Well, we'll see," he thought. "We'll see what happens. I'll walk in the direction of our old apartment, and if all this suddenly vanishes and I find myself walking along the beach in Zenibako, or lying in my futon at home, or sitting by Aki's bedside telling her a story - or even if I wake up and find I'm seven years old and have dreamed my entire life since then - I won't be surprised. How's that? How's that for objectivity and open-mindedness, eh?"

Twenty years and more had passed, but the neighborhood had changed little. There was the park where William had played; there was the Echo grocery store. "Why is it called Echo?" William had once asked - Mort seemed to hear again the high piping voice the question came wrapped in. "Let's go in and ask," Mort had said. "Aw, it's okay, dad." "No, why, I'm curious myself." And so they had gone in. "We were wondering, my son and I..." The little old man behind the counter was delighted at the question - more delighted than a large sale would have made him; he explained at length how as a child he had learned the English word "echo" as the equivalent of the Japanese word "kodama", and how it had somehow stuck with him. The man would be dead of course. Perhaps a son had taken over the store, and was as aged and withered now as his father had been then. Should he go in and see? Why not? A bell tinkled as he pushed open the door, but behind the counter looking up at him was no old man but a very young woman with dyed reddish-brown hair. She wouldn't even have been born in his day - her parents would have been children. "Irrashaemase," she said briskly - the standard greeting. Well, now that he was inside he must buy something, there was no help for it. What could he buy? He was not hungry, not thirsty, didn't smoke... A newspaper. He would buy a newspaper and make his escape. He picked up an Asahi Shimbun and was about to take it to the cash when he suddenly remembered he had no money.

What an idiotic predicament! He would have to explain, apologize - and what would the woman think of him? Would she think him senile? Of course she would. The thought comes so easily to the young with reference to the old. But where was she? She must have bent down behind the counter, or perhaps she had gone into a back room for a moment. In any case, she was not visible, and Mort, seizing the unexpected opportunity, slipped out of the store, the bell tinkling again as though to bid him goodbye.

Walking rapidly as if making good his escape, he suddenly became aware of the newspaper in his hand. He stopped in mid-stride, horrified. "I've stolen the goddamn newspaper! I can't believe it! I've stolen the goddamn newspaper!" He wheeled around. No, the woman was not coming after him. Either she hadn't noticed, or she had and, feeling sorry for him, had decided to let the pathetic old fellow off lightly. What now? Go back, return the paper, explain the situation and mumble his confused apologies? Yes, that, however humiliating, would be the right thing to do, but no one was in sight, no one was aware of his existence; it is not always possible in life to vanish, but in this case it happened to be, and didn't the possibility itself mean something? Didn't the existence of a possibility point the way to the appropriate action? He was in motion before he was aware of it. He turned a corner, then another, and felt a relief that for an instant bordered on ecstasy at the thought that even if the woman wanted to pursue him, she wasn't likely to find him. Their paths would never cross again, and whatever feelings of disgust or contempt she might harbor towards some senile degenerate old geezer who had walked into her store and made off with a newspaper would not be directed at him, Mort Birnbaum (who was neither senile nor degenerate), because she had not the faintest notion that he, Mort Birnbaum, existed!

It was a strangely exhilarating thought. The freedom from other people's awareness of your existence is a delicious freedom indeed. If only Natsuko, and William too, could be rendered unaware of his existence. Then his freedom would be limitless.

But where was he? He had perhaps turned one corner too many, and seemed to have got himself enmeshed in a network of narrow unfamiliar lanes. How odd, though - such a beautiful day and no one around. Why were there no children playing, no one so much as walking a dog? It was hot, of course, but even he, unusually sensitive to heat, did not find it oppressively so.

He paused. Yes, it really was hot, he thought, as though noticing only now. If only there was a bench he could sit down on and rest. In fact there was - not a bench exactly, but a kind of garden chair that obviously belonged to the family on whose little patch of grass it was, seeming almost too big for it. The houses here were small, wooden and very old, more like sheds than houses. "I will sit down, just for a moment..." Only as he did so did he realize how tired he was. "But why should I be so tired? I haven't walked far, haven't done anything tiring. It's the heat, of course. Damn heat. Damn summer."

He sat down, and unfolded the newspaper. The lead headline was shocking: A seven-year-old girl in Kyushu had been kidnapped and the kidnapper was sending the distraught mother taunting text messages from the girl's cell phone. He would set the child free, he said, if the mother presented herself in her stead as his sex slave. Otherwise he would use the girl after his sick fancies and then kill her slowly. Mort flung the paper on the ground and sprang to his feet. "Slime, slime!" he muttered aloud, and then, unable to restrain himself, cried at the top of his hoarse voice, "Slime!" With his feet he trampled the newspaper as though to kill it. Trembling from head to foot, his fatigue forgotten, he strode on. "Where's the road? Where's the damn... how the hell do I get out of this maze?"

It seemed endless. He knew he wasn't thinking straight. The newspaper story had upset him to such a degree, thrown him into such a state of enraged distraction, that he was surely missing obvious clues, landmarks, maybe even the exit itself. And even as he wandered helplessly in those labyrinthine alleys that seemed almost designed to entrap someone like him, someone in his condition, that loathsome situation in Kyushu was unfolding. "What would be happening right now, at this very moment? Is the girl being tortured? Is she screaming in uncomprehending agony?" He seemed to actually hear screams, and to see a contorted, tear-stained little girl's face - Aki's.

A woman was hanging washing on a laundry rack. She was the first living creature he had seen since leaving the Echo store. She was a plump, round woman, not young but of pleasing appearance, her red face shiny with sweat. Her short straight hair was not dyed, and Mort realized by the forceful way this struck him how rare a sight natural black hair was these days. Her presence calmed him somewhat. She fixed a mildly quizzical look on him. "Are you the gentleman who's come about the room?" she asked.

"The room? What room? What do you mean?"

"We have a room to rent. The agency was to send someone to look at it. But you're a foreigner."

"What if I am?"

"Nothing at all, except that the person I'm expecting has a Japanese name."

"Would you mind showing it to me?" Mort asked. His own question surprised him, as though some outside power had abruptly and without his permission put it into his mouth, but it arose from curiosity. The houses were so small that an extra room in one of them seemed scarcely conceivable.

"Certainly," said the woman, at once laying her laundry basket down on the tiny patio.

***

Ninth segment

Part II

Nothing had changed, except that it was winter – and that Siren, the dog, was a reality. He was a snow-white toy poodle, a tiny ball of fluff that looked more like a big insect than a small dog. Aki adored him, compelling Mort to discover, at his age, new and unpleasant depths to his character, for he was, to his horror and shame, jealous on the dog’s account – Aki no longer gave him her undivided attention and affection; she still sat on his knee, still listened to his stories, but – was it his imagination? – with the barest trace of suppressed impatience, as though she begrudged her grandfather the time she would rather be spending with Siren. Perhaps, thought Mort, Siren I, the stuffed elephant, was feeling similarly abandoned.

It was as if the interlude at Hiragishi had never occurred. His landlady and landlord, Mr. Osaka, that girl at the Echo store from which he had stolen the newspaper… were they figments of his imagination? Supposing he made a trip out there to find out. But what would it prove? If his mind was faulty, then any confirmation it arrived at could be dismissed as yet another imaginary figment. He could see Mr. Osaka, talk to him, share a laugh with him over the time he had offered to take Mort fishing – and still be none the wiser as to the truth of it all. And what of those ten days during which he had supposedly been missing? As if by tacit agreement, no one in the family had spoken a word of that; his conversation with Setsuko, assuming it had in fact taken place, was his only evidence that anything at all had been amiss. How could he have disappeared for ten days? Where could he have gone? What had he done, whom had he met? His memory must have retained some trace, some vague, wispy recollection – but prod it though he did it refused to yield the faintest hint of any such thing.

How strange, given the total unreliability (suspected if not actual) of his mind, that daily life proceeded quite normally. He was constantly on the watch for signs that William, Natsuko and Aki found him peculiar – did they, for instance, exchange significant looks with one another? They did not, there was nothing, and yet surely if there had been some sign, his morbid sensitivity would have detected it? But again – the appearance of normality could be merely his imagination. There was no way out of the trap he was in, no way he could prove to his own satisfaction that the world he perceived and lived in was the real world, no way he could convince himself that he did not have Alzheimer’s or some other disease of the brain that consigned him to a universe of one.

He seemed at times to be doing his perverse best to consign himself to such a universe. The truce with Natsuko that had followed his return broke down when the weather turned cold and Natsuko insisted on having the stoves on all day long. Like most Japanese houses of a certain age – built, that is to say, thirty years ago or more – theirs had no central heating. Each room had its own kerosene stove. The corridors were unheated. Natsuko, who had spent her childhood in Yamaguchi Prefecture in southern Japan, found the Hokkaido cold hard to bear even after fifteen years – she could not get used to it. There was nothing she could do about the cold outside, but indoors she demanded a degree of warmth that to Mort was not only stifling but – more important, he maintained – destructive of the environment. Did Natsuko have any idea of the cost of the fuel she was burning? It was more than a matter of so many yen a liter. In Iraq tens, hundreds of thousands of people were dying – sacrificial victims, he said, to the inability or refusal to understand that neither the human nor the global environment can withstand our relentless, rapacious, unchecked, unlimited greed. His eloquence was impressive, but it did not reduce Natsuko to silence, though even with the advantage that speaking her native language should have given her over an adversary speaking a foreign one, she was no match for him in that regard. Her only counter-argument was the dogged refrain that in her house she had the right to be as warm as she pleased – precisely the sort of dull-witted, narrow-minded thinking you expected from Natsuko; but the blunt force with which she expressed it, and the persistence with which she repeated it over and over as though she were raising a fresh point each time, gave the squabble the appearance of an evenly-matched debate, and Aki, no less sensitive to cold than Natsuko, saw her mother in a new light as a result of it: evidently her mother was not the fool her grandfather was apt to insinuate she was; look at the way she was standing up to him!

“Siren doesn’t like the cold either,” Aki intervened at one point – at which Mort, like a sullen little boy who feels the whole world has unjustly ganged up on him, turned and without a word marched into his room, not quite slamming the door but closing it forcefully enough to signal his wounded feelings.

He sat down at his desk and stared bleakly at the blank wall opposite. The sun had already gone down, the room was sunk in twilight, and if he did not turn on his stove it was out of sheer pig-headed obstinacy, for the fact is he was cold, as indeed he had every right to be, in a room that had not been heated all day and was no warmer than it was outside. He imagined himself coming down with a fever and the landlady nursing him. How cool and soft her hand would feel on his burning forehead! The landlady – where was she? Why had he left? What had happened? Where had he been during those ten days? Wherever it was, why hadn’t he stayed there? Or gone farther?

“How could I have let Setsuko go without getting some solid information out of her? She knows! And Natsuko, and William – they all know! Everyone knows except me – it’s as though doing a thing deprived me of my right to know about it; only onlookers can know, the doer himself is doomed to… what? Forgetfulness? But my memory is sound, I’ll swear it is, I’ll swear it!” He started at the sound his fist made as it came crashing down on the desk – “They’ll all come running…” He sat motionless, scarcely daring to breathe, poised for Natsuko to burst in and demand, “What was that noise? What are you doing? Are you all right?” But the silence was unbroken, there were no rushing footsteps, Natsuko did not come. “You’d think it’d’ve occurred to her that I had a heart attack or something…

“I’ll ask Natsuko.” It would be humiliating, of course; it would mean confessing the inexplicable hole in his memory, but what was the alternative? William? William wasn’t home. Why not, come to think of it? What time was it? He squinted at the clock but could not make it out; he switched on the desk lamp. 6:32. “Already!” Once he had had a good sense of time; even without looking at his watch he could guess and be right within five or ten minutes, but here it was a good hour later than he had supposed – “and William still not home!” He was usually home by five or a little after; if he was held up he phoned. He really was a most attentive husband and father; one thing no one could accuse him of was neglecting his family. Well, maybe he had phoned. Or maybe… maybe it was his exasperation towards him, Mort, that kept him away? The night before there had been a quarrel. Not a quarrel exactly, but a rather sharp exchange, sharper than usual – and over what? Over William’s total ignorance of history. A stupid thing to fight about – but really, it was shocking. He was an educated man, if a college degree signified education, and yet when at dinner Aki had mentioned the ancient Greeks Mort had been telling her stories about – the labors of Hercules, the Trojan War – William, in answer to the child’s question about when all this had taken place, had replied blithely, “Oh, a thousand years or so ago.”

“A thousand years!” Mort burst out, almost choking on a mouthful of lamb curry. “A thousand years! William, a thousand years ago – good God! – a thousand years ago Christ had been dead a thousand years! Rome had fallen to the Germanic barbarians five hundred years before! The Vikings were settled in northern France and were soon to invade England!”

“Oh,” said William with a laugh and a shrug – he did not even seem embarrassed. (Only Natsuko reddened, as though the blunder had been hers and the reproaches directed at her.)

“The Trojan War goes back at least three thousand years!” Mort pursued.

“Well,” laughed William, evidently quite enjoying this joke at his own expense, “there’s your answer, Risa. Three thousand years.”

But to Mort it was no joke. He proceeded to bombard William with other historical milestones. How long ago were the Crusades? When did Socrates live? What about Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses? The Holy Roman Empire? The invention of printing? Shakespeare?

William knew nothing, had no more conception of the past that had molded the present in which he lived than Aki had – less, maybe, for Aki at least wanted to know, while William seemed to despise any knowledge that had no direct bearing on his business or his everyday life.

“All right, dad, all right,” he said, squirming at last.

“It’s not all right!” Mort exploded. “It’s… it’s shameful, it’s…”

“What’s the big deal? What difference does it make whether the Trojan War happened one thousand or three thousand years ago?”
“Because if it’d happened one thousand years ago we’d be living in the time of Christ! We’re not living in the time of Christ! Though some people” – lowering his voice, he flashed a malevolent glance at Natsuko – “don’t seem to realize that.”

That had been the substance of it; such anger as there was had been momentary, and it was absurd to suppose that William’s lateness tonight had anything to do with it. Well, whatever was causing it, it provided a good pretext to leave his dark cold room – he was literally shivering – and rejoin the others where it was bright and warm, and ask whether William had been heard from. Since it seemed he was doomed to live in this house, he really should try to be on good terms with everyone, even Natsuko – especially Natsuko, whose stupidity after all was not her fault (though it often seemed to him that it was, that she had deliberately chosen it over intelligence, just as she had chosen the idiot color of her hair over its beautiful natural lustre). Yes, he would try, he would make an effort. He had reason to be ashamed of himself; his behavior was that of a petulant little boy, not that of a man of mature, not to say reverend, years. He stood up, left the room, closed the door behind him, and descended the stairs. The lights, the warmth, were indeed pleasant. He went into the kitchen, where it was positively hot. Natsuko was busy at the stove.

“You shouldn’t go to so much trouble,” he said gently. Natsuko gasped; he had startled her; she almost dropped a steaming pot full of something. “My God, you’d think I was going to attack her,” Mort thought, disgusted. He recalled his dream of her at the Watanabes, and his disgust, intensifying, turned on himself. “Will I ever, ever escape from this hell-hole? Will I ever be free?” With an effort he stifled his revulsion – “I hope I don’t choke on it!” – and asked in the same gentle tone, “Have you heard from William?”

“No.”

“He’s late, isn’t he?”

“He’ll be home soon.”

“Did he say he was going to be late?”

“No, but it’s snowing heavily, the trains are probably running late.”

“Is it snowing?” He hadn’t known. “It must be hard for you, the… the snow, the cold … you not being used to it…”

“Suppose Aki was not here,” he thought to himself. “Suppose William was out of town on business. Suppose she was just a tiny bit less stupid. Could I… could I… Natsuko, listen to me,” he said firmly, anxious above all to chase away the appalling thoughts crowding his mind – for really, dyed hair aside, she was, there was no denying it, a lovely woman, the more so in her pretty agitation over his unexpected and unaccustomed kindly concern – “listen to me. Where was I during those ten days?” There it was, out in the open. “Where was I?”

“What ten days? Oh! I don’t… really, I don’t know. Nobody knows except you. Sometimes it happens, this loss of memory. One day maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“Has it ever happened to you?”

“No.”

“But you know that it sometimes happens. From experience?” There was that edge of sarcasm creeping back into his voice; he could never suppress it for long when dealing with Natsuko.

“Not from experience, no, but… well, it seems like it could happen.”

“Look at Lazarus. He rose from the dead. Eh?”

“Yes. He rose from the dead.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Father, please, please don’t pick a fight with me, I can’t…” He saw, before she abruptly turned her face away, that she was crying.

“Natsuko, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t… I can’t be fighting with you all the time… every word I say, everything I do…”

They heard a key in the lock. “William’s home!” A moment later he was before them, smiling, his coat caked with snow. “Hi guys! Wow, you should see what’s doing outside! Wanna go for a walk, dad, eh? Ha ha! Where’s Aki?”

“William!” Natsuko almost threw herself into his arms, something Mort had never seen her do before, and immediately shrieked as she felt the snow.

William took off his coat and, apparently without thinking, handed it to his father, who took it awkwardly while William resumed his interrupted embrace of Natsuko. Then Aki and Siren were in the room – where had they come from? – and it was as if William had been gone for ages, so glad was everyone to see him; or perhaps it was relief at Mort’s influence on the household atmosphere being somewhat neutralized. “He hands me his coat like I’m the doorman,” thought Mort sullenly. He left the room with it and slid open the door of the hall closet. “No, don’t hang it there!” Natsuko’s voice rang out. Suddenly she was beside him. “It’s wet.” She snatched the coat and, holding it carefully away from her body, carried it back into the kitchen, Mort following meekly behind. She placed it carefully on the back of the chair no one used. “Go get ready. Supper will be ready in five minutes.”

It was a gay, delightful, delicious meal. Natsuko’s tears, Mort’s missing ten days, the snow storm, Lazarus, world history – all were forgotten. Mort, morose at first, was soon displaying as much good humor as any of them. “Teach me to cook, Natsu!” he blurted out suddenly.

“With pleasure,” said Natsuko, surprised but gratified. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. Of course I’m serious. When am I anything else, eh? Ha ha! Am I serious, she asks!”

William beamed. “You’re a pretty good cook already,” he said.

“You’ll get no false modesty from me,” retorted Mort. “Yes, I am a pretty good cook. I may even say, with no gross violation of the truth, that I am better than pretty good. But suddenly I realized – and this is the meal that proved it – that I have a lot to learn. Natsuko, I will be your devoted and humble disciple. Aki, supposing you join me in discipleship. Would you like to be your grandad’s fellow student, eh?”

“I have no time,” said Aki. Was it Mort’s imagination, or had an unpleasant, sullen note crept into the girl’s tone of late? But he had no chance to pursue that train of thought, for William just then said, “I have news.”

“What? What is it?” cried Natsuko and Aki at once.

“The president of Toshiba is going to Los Angeles on business next month, and he’s asked me to accompany him as his personal interpreter. He’ll pay five hundred thousand yen for a week, plus all expenses. He suggested the fee himself – it’s a good deal more than I’d’ve dared ask for, let me tell you.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Natsuko.

“Congratulations, daddy!” piped up Aki.

“William…” He broke off, clamped his lips shut. No, he would not say it, would even try to remove all traces from his facial expression of what he was thinking: namely that being appointed personal flunky to some wretched figurehead of a company president was not exactly something to boast about or be congratulated for, but here were Natsuko and Aki fawning on him as if he’d won the Nobel Prize, and here was he, William, basking in their admiration, flushing with pleasure. “Solitude! Solitude!” he cried inwardly – had he spoken aloud? They were looking at him in surprise – were they looking at him in surprise? No, they were merely wondering at his failure to join in the general merriment; it was the expression on his face that disturbed them. He would change it, force a smile; at whatever cost, he would be one with the family tonight.

“Great, William,” he said. “Congratulations, my boy. When do you leave?”

“December 15, home the 22^nd. I’ve never been to Los Angeles.”

“Neither have I,” said Mort.

“Really?”

“Never.”

“Grandfather?”

“Yes, my angel.”

“Remember that story you told me the day before yesterday about the Minotaur?”

“Certainly I remember.”

“He was the son of Zeus, right?”

“Well, he was the offspring of Zeus; you can’t call him a son exactly.”

“And Zeus was the greatest of the gods, right?”

“Right.”

“Could you tell me that story again tonight?”

“Again? Oh, but...” Mort smiled through his feigned disappointment. “Tonight I was all primed to tell you about Cassandra, the prophetess who spurned Apollo the archer-god and was punished… and do you know what her punishment was?”
“No, what?”

“No one would believe her, though she always prophesied the truth.”

“What does ‘spurned’ mean?”

“Rejected.”

“What are they talking about?” Natsuko asked William uneasily.

“This’ll be good practice for me,” laughed William. He translated what had been said.

“Why do you fill the child’s head with such fairy-tales?” Natsuko demanded reproachfully, turning to Mort.

“Fairy-tales!” Mort cried. “And supposing I were to tell you that I believe in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece every bit as firmly as you believe in your Jesus Christ?”

He regretted his outburst immediately. He should simply have said, “What’s wrong with telling a child fairy-tales?”

“You can believe in whatever you want,” Natsuko shot back. “I won’t have my daughter being taught a lot of nonsense about God!”

“Natusko,” said Mort gently, his first concern to smooth things over, “they’re just stories.” Suppose she put an end to story-time? She was just the woman – just the sort of mother – to do it, and he glimpsed in that instant the void such a ban would leave in his life. “They’re just stories, Natsuko” – with disgust he heard the wheedling note that had crept into his voice. “Children love stories, stories are good for children, and I happen to know a lot of them.”

“He sure does,” William affirmed. “He told me stories when I was a kid – different story every night. Eh, dad?”

“You bet!”

“He never ran out of them, never told the same story twice. And if my childhood had lasted twice as long…”

“I’d still never’ve run out!”

There was laughter, and to Mort’s relief the matter ended there.

Ninth segment

Part II

“Oh,” said William with a laugh and a shrug – he did not even seem embarrassed. (Only Natsuko reddened, as though the blunder had been hers and the reproaches directed at her.)

“The Trojan War goes back at least three thousand years!” Mort pursued.

“Well,” laughed William, evidently quite enjoying this joke at his own expense, “there’s your answer, Risa. Three thousand years.”

“All right, dad, all right,” he said, squirming at last.

“It’s not all right!” Mort exploded. “It’s… it’s shameful, it’s…”

“No.”

“He’s late, isn’t he?”

“He’ll be home soon.”

“Did he say he was going to be late?”

“No, but it’s snowing heavily, the trains are probably running late.”

“Is it snowing?” He hadn’t known. “It must be hard for you, the… the snow, the cold … you not being used to it…”

“What ten days? Oh! I don’t… really, I don’t know. Nobody knows except you. Sometimes it happens, this loss of memory. One day maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“Has it ever happened to you?”

“No.”

“But you know that it sometimes happens. From experience?” There was that edge of sarcasm creeping back into his voice; he could never suppress it for long when dealing with Natsuko.

“Not from experience, no, but… well, it seems like it could happen.”

“Look at Lazarus. He rose from the dead. Eh?”

“Yes. He rose from the dead.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Father, please, please don’t pick a fight with me, I can’t…” He saw, before she abruptly turned her face away, that she was crying.

“Natsuko, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t… I can’t be fighting with you all the time… every word I say, everything I do…”

“William!” Natsuko almost threw herself into his arms, something Mort had never seen her do before, and immediately shrieked as she felt the snow.

“With pleasure,” said Natsuko, surprised but gratified. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. Of course I’m serious. When am I anything else, eh? Ha ha! Am I serious, she asks!”

William beamed. “You’re a pretty good cook already,” he said.

“What? What is it?” cried Natsuko and Aki at once.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Natsuko.

“Congratulations, daddy!” piped up Aki.

“Great, William,” he said. “Congratulations, my boy. When do you leave?”

“December 15, home the 22^nd. I’ve never been to Los Angeles.”

“Neither have I,” said Mort.

“Really?”

“Never.”

“Grandfather?”

“Yes, my angel.”

“Remember that story you told me the day before yesterday about the Minotaur?”

“Certainly I remember.”

“He was the son of Zeus, right?”

“Well, he was the offspring of Zeus; you can’t call him a son exactly.”

“And Zeus was the greatest of the gods, right?”

“Right.”

“Could you tell me that story again tonight?”

“No one would believe her, though she always prophesied the truth.”

“What does ‘spurned’ mean?”

“Rejected.”

“What are they talking about?” Natsuko asked William uneasily.

“This’ll be good practice for me,” laughed William. He translated what had been said.

“Why do you fill the child’s head with such fairy-tales?” Natsuko demanded reproachfully, turning to Mort.

“Fairy-tales!” Mort cried. “And supposing I were to tell you that I believe in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece every bit as firmly as you believe in your Jesus Christ?”

He regretted his outburst immediately. He should simply have said, “What’s wrong with telling a child fairy-tales?”

“You can believe in whatever you want,” Natsuko shot back. “I won’t have my daughter being taught a lot of nonsense about God!”

“He sure does,” William affirmed. “He told me stories when I was a kid – different story every night. Eh, dad?”

“You bet!”

“He never ran out of them, never told the same story twice. And if my childhood had lasted twice as long…”

“I’d still never’ve run out!”

There was laughter, and to Mort’s relief the matter ended there.

***

Twentieth segment

"You came!"

"Didn't you think I would?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Why! Well – look at me. I'm not exactly... prepossessing."

"I like this place."

"Sit down, let me order you a drink."

As she settled herself I thought, This is the happiest moment of my life. "Waiter! Excuse me... what would you like?"

"Coffee."

"Coffee! Oh, but..."

"I can't drink, I have to go to work at ten."

"It's only six now. Six fifteen. You're fifteen minutes late. But what does that matter? If you hadn't come, I - "

"Coffee please," she said to the waiter, cutting short my feverish babble. Well might my babble be feverish.

"Scotch," I said. "Listen. Listen, Akiko-san. You're name's not Akiko, it's Aki. Nakamura Aki. I read your story last night. I found it online. You really did win the Akutagawa Prize. It's... my God, it's... how can I say it? It's the most... the most despairing story I've ever read, and at the same time, the most hopeful, the most... uplifting. Imagine, me using a word like that: 'uplifting'! A story like that... well, let me tell you the thought that occurred to me. It was this: A happy man who reads your story might finish it feeling he wants to die, while an unhappy man... an unhappy man would emerge from it wanting to live!"

I watched her face intently; she didn't even smile. From her expression, you'd hardly think she'd heard me, though she was looking straight at me. Was she seeing me? Did I exist?

"If I hadn't come you – what?" she asked calmly.

"I would have killed myself."

Now she did smile, but as faintly as she had at the store, almost without moving her lips – unlipsticked again, I noticed; evidently she and make-up were permanent strangers to one another; not that she needed it; what woman of her age does? But how many women of her age realize that? Did she? Or was it just that she couldn't be bothered?

"With thallium?" she said. The waiter brought her coffee and my scotch. Thallium was the poison in her story. A man had fallen hopelessly in love with a woman. She said to him: Murder my husband and I'll live with you. He is a pharmacist, has never harmed anyone, has never had so much as an evil thought. You're a pharmacist, the woman says to him; just give me something to slip into his coffee, you won't be directly involved.

"I would have hanged myself," I said when the waiter had gone.

"And now you won't?"

"I really don't know what to say. Perhaps I will. Only now I'll die happy, whereas before..."

"Why do you want to die?"

"Because I've lost the courage to live."

"A common affliction."

"All too common."

"But dying requires a kind of courage too, doesn't it?"

"No, all dying requires is despair."

We were silent for a time. Aki sipped her coffee, I my scotch. What should I do – ask her to dinner? Invite her to my apartment? No, do nothing. Say nothing. If only we could sit like this forever. If only this moment could last forever; thirty years would pass, I would die of natural causes, and she would get up, pay the bill and go to work

How long was it before she broke the silence? "I sense a story in you," she said.

I nodded. "You sense correctly. There is a story in me."

"I've told you everything about myself, but you've told me nothing."

"You've told me everything! What have you told me? You didn't even tell me your name – I found it out by accident!"

She smiled that vague, fleeting, haunting smile of hers, scarcely a smile at all, and yet, how it seemed to light up her face! "That's as it should be," she said, "given the accidental nature of names. And, by the way, you haven't told me your name either."

"I wonder if it would mean anything to you."

"Do you think it's likely to?"

"Perhaps not. You would have been a child at the time."

"Do you know who you look like?"

"Who I look like? No – who?"

"You'll laugh."

"I rarely do – but if you do make me laugh, I hope at least you'll join me."

"I may, if your laughter is happy. Happy laughter is infectious."

"Who do I look like?"

"Take off your glasses."

I did.

"The emperor."

"The emperor!"

"It suddenly struck me. 'Maybe that's his secret,' I thought – 'he's a member of the royal family, traveling incognito.' You're not laughing. Maybe I've hit it after all."

"As a matter of fact, I do feel inclined to laugh. I would almost have thought I am laughing – but since you tell me I'm not, evidently my laughter hasn't reached my face. The emperor! I don't know – I can't really call the emperor's face to mind; or my own, for that matter. No, far from being a member of the royal family, I am – well... shall I tell you?"

"Please."

"I am... the architect Shimozawa."

I watched her face; no, not a flicker of recognition.

"It all happened before your time," I said.

"What all happened?"

"The downfall of the architect Shimozawa. Who once upon a time was reckoned, as you perhaps are reckoned today, something of a budding genius."
"And what caused your downfall?"

"An easy question to ask; less easy, much less easy, to answer. To this day I don't know. Well, I caused my downfall. I caused it. But the I that caused it, and the I who has suffered the consequences... What is the link between them, or between us, I should say? What is the link between us?"

***

She's a freeter. A freeter is someone who drifts from job to minimum wage job, going nowhere. Aki Nakamura, winner of the Akutagawa Prize for a novella entitled Thallium, is a freeter. Is she happy working at 7-Eleven? Yes, she is, she says – it's better than the gas station she worked at before, or the hospital she worked at before that. What's better about it? Well, the gas station at night was scary, and as a hospital orderly she was forever the beck and call of sick and irritable people. "Aki," I said, "Aki, do you take me for a fool? Don't you think I know there's not a word of truth in what you're saying?" At this she squinted ever so slightly and said, "Why would I lie to you? Since I came here of my own free will." "Well," I said, "you tell me; why are you lying to me?" "I'm not lying," she said, "though it's true I'm not telling the truth." "Why?" "Because," she said, "the truth isn't something you tell. The truth is something that emerges."

She's a freeter, and I... I am the architect Shimozawa. "The truth emerges," she said; and so it does, when it is ready. After eight years of silence, eight years of solitude, the truth emerged. I told her everything, spared her nothing. Let her write a story about me; maybe she'll win the Nobel Prize next time.

"You," she said when my recitation was done, "are a modern-day Job." Was she laughing at me? Certainly there was no laughter on her face, but there never is. At least I have yet to see it. "I have to go," she said. True enough; it was after nine, and her shift started at ten.

"When can I see you again?" I asked, like a fifteen-year-old terrified of being written off after making a bad first impression.

"You know where to find me," she said, and was gone.

The architect Shimozawa – yes, that's me. For months after the scandal broke the press referred to me as "the disgraced architect Shimozawa" – "disgraced." It was as if the adjective had been imposed on them by a higher authority, and my name could not appear in print without it. I have no quarrel with the opprobrium heaped on me; I deserved it, I accept it; but to be judged in such trite, mechanical terms by fools, idiots, ignoramuses... I'm being silly. They're right; "disgraced" I was, having disgraced myself – and why? Why? Why did I do it? Had I no free will? When a certain property developer demanded that I slash costs by specifying less steel in my designs, in violation of laws meant to assure earthquake-proof buildings, couldn't I have resisted? He threatened to cut off his business ties with me, and he was my biggest customer. It would have meant a considerable loss; I might conceivably have gone under altogether; well, what if I had? I could have recovered, started over; I was young, talented... But my wife? My children? Well, yes, my wife and my children. All men have wives and children. A wife and children do not nullify a man's obligation to be a man, to stand up for what he knows is right, and against what he knows is wrong. Instead, I wilted under pressure, did as I was asked. Business poured in, I was successful, prosperous, respected – until word leaked out, and "the disgraced architect Shimozawa" was found responsible for ninety-three buildings in twenty-seven prefectures – hotels, condominiums – that were so far below established earthquake resistance standards that they had to be torn down. And when the dust settled, when the disgraced architect Shimozawa emerged from his three-year prison sentence, he had no wife, no children, not even a name he could use without evoking the adjective "disgraced."