After Dark (16 page)

18

E
ri Asai’s room.

Outside the window, the day is growing brighter. Eri Asai is asleep in her bed. Her expression and pose are the same as when we last saw her. A thick cloak of sleep envelops her.

Mari enters the room. She opens the door quietly to avoid being noticed by the other members of the family, steps in, and closes the door just as quietly. The silence and chill of the room make her somewhat tense. She stands in front of the door, examining the contents of her sister’s room with great care. First she checks to be sure that this is indeed the room as she has always known it—that nothing has been disturbed, that nothing or no one unfamiliar is lurking in a corner. Then she approaches the bed and looks down at her soundly sleeping sister. She reaches out and gently touches Eri’s forehead, quietly calling her name. There is absolutely no response. As always. Mari drags over the swivel chair from its place by the desk and sits down. She leans forward and observes her sister’s face close-up as if searching for the meaning of a sign hidden there.

Some five minutes go by. Mari stands up, takes off her Red Sox cap, and smooths out her crumpled hair. Then she removes her wristwatch and lays it on her sister’s desk. She takes off her varsity jacket, her hooded sweatshirt, and the striped flannel shirt under that, leaving only a white T-shirt. She takes off her thick sport socks and blue jeans, and then she burrows softly into her sister’s bed. She lets her body adapt to being under the covers, after which she lays a thin arm across the body of her sister, who is sleeping face-up. She gently presses her cheek against her sister’s chest and holds herself there, listening, hoping to understand each beat of her sister’s heart. Her eyes are gently closed as she listens. Soon, without warning, tears begin to ooze from her closed eyes—large tears, and totally natural. They course down her cheek and moisten the pajamas of her sleeping sister.

Mari sits up in bed and wipes the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. Toward something—exactly what, she has no concrete idea—she feels that she has committed some utterly inexcusable act, something she can never undo. The emotion has struck with great suddenness, and with no tangible connection to what has come before, but it is overwhelming. The tears continue to pour out of her. She catches them in the palms of her hands. Each new falling tear is warm, like blood, with the heat from inside her body. Suddenly it occurs to Mari:
I could have been in some other place than this. And Eri, too: she could have been in some other place than this.

To reassure herself, Mari takes one more look around the room, and then again she looks down at her sister. Eri is beautiful in her sleep—truly beautiful. Mari almost wishes she could preserve that face of hers in a glass case. Consciousness just happens to be missing from it at the moment: it may have gone into hiding, but it must certainly be flowing somewhere out of sight, far below the surface, like a vein of water. Mari can hear its faint reverberations. She listens for them.
The place where they originate is not that far from here. And Eri’s flow is almost certainly blending with my own,
Mari feels.
We are sisters, after all.

Mari bends over and briefly presses her lips to Eri’s. She raises her head and looks down at her sister’s face again. She allows time to pass through her heart. Again she kisses Eri: a longer, softer kiss. Mari feels almost as if she is kissing herself. Mari and Eri: one syllable’s difference. She smiles. Then, as if relieved, she curls up to sleep beside her big sister—to bond with her if possible, to share the warmth of their two bodies, to exchange signs of life with her.

“Come back, Eri,” she whispers in her sister’s ear. “
Please
come back.” She closes her eyes and allows the strength to leave her body. With her eyes closed, sleep comes for her, enveloping her like a great, soft wave from the open sea. Her tears have stopped.

The brightness outside the window is increasing with great speed. Vivid streaks of light stream into the room through gaps in the shade. The old temporality is losing its effectiveness and moving into the background. Many people go on mumbling the old words, but in the light of the newly revealed sun, the meanings of words are shifting rapidly and are being renewed. Even supposing that most of the new meanings are temporary things that will persist only through sundown that day, we will be spending time and moving forward with them.

In the corner of the room, the TV screen seems to flash momentarily. Light might be rising to the surface of the picture tube. Something might be starting to move there, perhaps the trembling of an image. Could the circuit be trying to reconnect? We hold our breath and watch its progress. In the next second, however, the screen is showing nothing. The only thing there is blankness.

Perhaps what we
thought
we saw was just an optical illusion, a mere reflection of a momentary fluctuation in the light streaming through the window. The room is still dominated by silence, but its depth and weight have clearly diminished and retreated. Now the cries of birds reach our ears. If we could further sharpen our auditory sense, we might be able to hear bicycles on the street or people talking to each other or the weather report on the radio. We might even be able to hear bread toasting. The lavish morning light washes every corner of the world at no charge. Two young sisters sleep peacefully, their bodies pressed together in one small bed. We are probably the only ones who know that.

I
nside the 7-Eleven. Checklist in hand, the clerk is kneeling in an aisle, taking an inventory. Japanese hip-hop is playing. This is the same young man who received Takahashi’s payment at the cash register. Skinny, hair dyed rusty red. Tired at the end of his night shift, he yawns frequently. He hears, intermingled with the music, the ringing of a cell phone. He stands up and looks around. Then he checks each of the aisles. There are no customers. He is the only one in the store, but the cell phone keeps ringing stubbornly. Very strange. He searches all parts of the store and finally discovers the phone on a shelf in the dairy case.

Who in the hell forgets a cell phone in a place like this? Must be some crazy dude.
With a cluck of the tongue and a look of disgust, he picks up the chilled device, presses the talk button, and holds the receiver to his ear.

“Hello,” he says.

“You probably think you got away with it,” announces a male voice devoid of intonation.

“Hello?!” the clerk shouts.

“But you can’t get away. You can run, but you’ll never be able to get away.” A short, suggestive silence follows, and then the connection is cut.

A
llowing ourselves to become pure point of view, we hang in midair over the city. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. Commuter trains of many colors move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective entity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this dualism of theirs skillfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying neckties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, exchange words with their families, eat, and defecate.

With daybreak the crows flock in, scavenging for food. Their oily black wings shine in the morning sun. Dualism is not as important an issue for the crows as for the human beings. Their single most important concern is securing sufficient nourishment for individual maintenance. The garbage trucks have not yet collected all of the garbage. This is a gigantic city, after all, and it produces a prodigious volume of garbage. Raising raucous cries, the crows soar down to all parts of the city like dive bombers.

The new sun pours new light on the city streets. The glass of high-rise buildings sparkles blindingly. There is not a speck of cloud to be seen in the sky, just a haze of smog hanging along the horizon. The crescent moon takes the form of a silent white monolith, a long-lost message floating in the western sky. A news helicopter dances through the sky like a nervous insect, sending images of traffic conditions back to the station. Cars trying to enter the city have already started lining up at the tollbooths of the Metropolitan Expressway. Chilly shadows still lie over many streets sandwiched between tall buildings. Most of last night’s memories remain there untouched.

O
ur point of view departs from the sky over city center and shifts to an area above a quiet suburban residential neighborhood. Below us stand rows of two-story houses with yards. From above, all the houses look much alike—similar incomes, similar family makeup. A new dark blue Volvo proudly reflects the morning sun. A golf practice net set up on one lawn. Morning papers freshly delivered. People walking large dogs. The sounds of meal preparations from kitchen windows. People calling out to each other. Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.

We choose one house from among all the similar houses and drop straight down to it. Passing through the glass and the lowered cream-colored shade of a second-story window, we soundlessly enter Eri Asai’s room.

Mari is sleeping in the bed, cuddled against her sister. We can hear her quiet breathing. As far as we can see, her sleep is peaceful. She seems to have warmed up: her cheeks have more color than before. Her bangs cover her eyes. Could she be dreaming? Or is the hint of a smile on her lips the trace of a memory? Mari has made her way through the long hours of darkness, traded many words with the night people she encountered there, and come back to where she belongs. For now, at least, there is nothing nearby to threaten her. Nineteen years old, she is protected by a roof and walls, protected, too, by fenced green lawns, burglar alarms, newly waxed station wagons, and big, smart dogs that stroll the neighborhood. The morning sun shining in the window gently envelops and warms her. Mari’s left hand rests on the black hair of her sister spread upon the pillow, her fingers softly opened in a natural curve.