Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. […] Now, though, that meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to me. […] And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it. […] Naoko is not there, and neither am I. Where could we have disappeared to?
“Do you think we could see each other again? I know I don’t have any right to be asking you this.”
“‘Any right?’ What do you mean by that?”
[…]
“I don’t know… I can’t really explain it,” she said. […] “I didn’t mean to say right exactly. I was looking for another way to put it.” […]
“Never mind,” I said. “I think I know what you’re getting at. I’m not sure how to put it, either.”
“I can never say what I want to say.”
The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the seventeen-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well.
I can’t seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I would guess. We continued to avoid any mention of the past and rarely mentioned Kizuki. We could face each other over coffee cups in total silence.
I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do. For my courses I would read Claudel and Racine and Eisenstein, but they meant almost nothing to me. I made no friends in classes, and hardly knew anyone in the dorm. […] What did I want? And what did others want from me? […] I could never find the answers.
I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever.
Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The assholes are earning their college credits and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.
By the time the number of curves began to decrease to the point where I felt some relief, the bus plunged into a chilling cedar forest. The trees might have been old growth the way they towered over the road, blocking out the sun and covering everything in gloomy shadows. The breeze flowing into the bus’s open windows turned suddenly cold, its dampness sharp against the skin.
“You’re one of us while you’re in here, so I help you and you help me.” Reiko smiled, gently flexing every wrinkle on her face. “You help Naoko and Naoko helps you.”
“What should I do, then? Give me a concrete example.”
“First you decide that you want to help and that you need to be helped by the other person. Then you decide to be totally honest. You will not lie, you will not gloss over anything, you will not cover up anything that might prove embarrassing for you. That’s all there is to it.”
“That song can make me feel so sad,” said Naoko. “I don’t know, I guess I imagine myself wandering in a deep wood. I’m all alone and it’s cold and dark, and nobody comes to save me. That’s why Reiko never plays it unless I request it.”
“The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.”
She exposed her nakedness to me this way for perhaps five minutes until, at last, she wrapped herself in her gown once more and buttoned it from top to bottom. As soon as the last button was in place, she rose and glided toward the bedroom, opened the door silently, and disappeared within.
“What marks his plays is the way things get so mixed up the characters are trapped. Do you see what I mean? A bunch of different people appear, and they’ve all got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything.”
A week went by, though, without a word from Midori. No calls, no sign of her in the classroom. I kept hoping for a message from her whenever I went back to the dorm, but there were never any. One night, I tried to keep my promise by thinking of her when I masturbated, but it didn’t work. I tried switching over to Naoko, but not even Naoko’s image was any help that time. […] I wrote a letter to Naoko on Sunday morning.
I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. […] The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. […] I’m going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can’t explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.
“Know what I did the other day?” Midori asked. “I got all naked in front of my father’s picture. Took off every' stitch of clothing and let him have a good, long look. Kind of in a yoga position. Like, ‘Here, Daddy, these are my tits, and this is my cunt.’”
“Why in the hell would you do something like that?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I just wanted to show him.”
Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a swamp—a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it’s going to suck my shoe off each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but an endless swampy darkness.
“Let me just tell you this, Watanabe,” said Midori, pressing her cheek against my neck. “I’m a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing through my veins.”
The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place—a place where I lived with the dead. […] There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said, “Don’t worry, it’s only death. Don’t let it bother you. […] Death is nothing much. It’s just death. Things are so easy for me here.”
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.
