The Lake (8 page)

“It’s over near that shrine.” Nakajima pointed. “Where my friends live.”

A small red
torii
was visible on the far shore of the lake.

I looked up at Nakajima. He was sweating buckets, and his face was pale.

“Are you okay?”

I took his hand in mine.

“I’m okay. This is the hardest part. I’ll be fine once we actually get there.”

Nakajima’s hand was frighteningly cold.

What horrors had he endured? I wondered. Physically, emotionally.

Poor guy. Those were the words that came to me. There wasn’t anything else I could say. I knew my sympathy was useless, but I couldn’t help it, I pitied him so deeply. I felt sorry for him for having had to find a way, somehow, to pull himself together, far from his parents.

An awful struggle was playing itself out inside him now. That much I could tell.

From my perspective, we were simply taking a nice walk around the edge of a lake, amid lovely scenery, on an invigorating early spring day. But Nakajima didn’t see that. He was in such pain he might as well have been in hell, dragging chains behind him with every step.

“Hey, Nakajima, hold on,” I said.

“Huh …?” He was in a daze, clammy with sweat.

“Sit down a second.”

He was obviously dying to get this over with as quickly as possible, and he looked annoyed and reluctant, as though he wished he could knock me over and run on ahead. I could see that. I clearly sensed that he wanted to refuse. And yet, for my sake, he grudgingly squatted down.

It’s only in the early days of a relationship that we have to put up with such things. Soon each person figures out what the other dislikes, and stops doing those things. So at this stage it was all right, I told myself, I could still do this.

Okay, so that was just me making excuses. Ultimately, I guess I’m one of those people who always thinks with her body.

I crouched down beside Nakajima, threw my arms around him, and squeezed. Without saying a word, for a very long time. All along, I heard his breath hitting against my neck. There was a dusty odor in his hair. The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free. The wind that gusted over the lake was chilly, and carried the faintest hint of the sweetness of spring.

We stayed like that until Nakajima’s breathing calmed and he stopped sweating.

There was a kind of intensity in us then, but it wasn’t sensual. Neither of us was in control enough for that. I was the one hugging him, and yet I felt as if we were clinging to each other, he and I, at the edge of a cliff.

Sooner or later, he’s going to disappear
.

I felt sure of this. However much I loved him, and as beautiful as the world was, none of it was powerful enough to take the weight off his heart, that heaviness that dragged him down, into the beyond, making him yearn to be at peace. My body sensed it. And my soul.

But this memory will remain
, I thought.

Otherwise, what point was there in his being born? Tears welled in my eyes.

“Thanks, I’m okay now,” Nakajima croaked, even though he wasn’t okay.

Then he gave my hand a squeeze and coldly shook me off.

When we had walked on awhile, my vision started clouding. I thought maybe I was having an anemic spell because I’d hugged Nakajima so hard before, and from worrying so much. I started having some trouble breathing, too. It was like his suffering had rubbed off on me.

“I’m sorry, whenever I try to visit them—I simply can’t do it,” Nakajima said, noticing what was happening. “I can’t help thinking about stuff, even though I shouldn’t.”

“That’s only natural,” I said. “You’re always talking about how you can’t do things. I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t want to hear that. It makes my ears ache just listening to you.”

“I know, it’s a habit. It’s because I used to be in an environment where you either had figured out how to do things well or you died.”

“Really …?”

The people we’re on our way to see hold the key to all this
, I thought. And maybe when he tells me about them, he’ll share something of his own past, too. There was a point in his life when that’s how things were. I do want to know. When you love someone, you want to know. Even about the things that are hard for them.

The lake had started looking blurry, and I realized a mist had gathered. All of a sudden, the world before me was shrouded in it. The lake, seen through the mist, was submerged in a pale, milky white, as if a gauzy curtain hung between it and me.

We kept walking. The path faded into the haze, and we found ourselves padding along with no view of what lay ahead. He’s used to walking here like this, I noticed. Even tiny lights oozed outward, acquiring round, glowing halos.

“Hey, there it is,” Nakajima said.

Beyond the red
torii
was a narrow stone stairway that led up to a small shrine. From up there you would have a good view of the lake. Straining my eyes, off in the distance to one side of the
torii
, I saw a house. It was just as he had described it: a run-down shack. When I saw that wooden structure, blurred by the mist, I wondered if it even had electricity.

A few missing steps in the front stairway had been replaced with boards. Holes in the windows were covered with scraps of plastic sheet. It seemed pretty dim inside.

Looking more closely, though, I saw that the boards and the plastic had been put up with great care, very simply, in the most practical way. Everything looked old, but it wasn’t dirty or unkempt. It called to mind the phrase “honest poverty.”

Various little signs here and there suggested that the people inside were living proper lives: the potted plants, for instance, and the way spokes shone on the ancient bicycle that stood off in an unobtrusive corner, even though there was a hole in the basket.

“Hello!” Nakajima shouted.

The house was as still as the lake—so quiet I wondered if anyone was there after all. But after a few moments, someone wandered out.

He was an adult, perhaps thirty-five or so, and yet he was extremely small, like a child. His face seemed kind of shrunken, giving him the look of a bulldog. His eyes were sparkling, though, and there was something noble in the way he carried himself.

“Hey, it’s Nobu! You really came!” the man said.

He had on a sweater covered in fuzz and a well-worn pair of khakis, but he still looked as tidy as the house. His long hair was pulled into a neat ponytail, and while he was a bit plump he stood perfectly upright. He made a very good impression on me.

“Mino! It’s been ages!”

Nakajima was beaming. There was no trace now of the fear and trembling he had endured at the thought of seeing this friend.

I guess you could say he was acting like a man. You could also say he was a pain in the neck, making me worry so much when he was going to be just fine in the end. Either way, I was flabbergasted by the change.

Seeing him like this, I wondered how much he might still be hiding from me. I could see we had a long way to go.

“So at last you’ve come to see us,” the man said. “I heard about your mother.… I’m sorry. But I guess it’s been a while since that happened, too, hasn’t it.” He gave a little smile. A cute smile that lit up his whole face.

“I know—it took time for me to finally make myself come. I wanted to see you so badly, but it made me anxious. This place is full of memories of my mother—it gets me down.…” Nakajima gazed up at the roof and squinted. Then he turned to me. “It was okay, though, because I’ve got a guide. I finally made it.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mino said, looking my way. “And her name …”

“Chihiro. She’s my girlfriend. Chihiro, this is Mino,” Nakajima said.

I smiled and said hi, my mind awhirl with all I didn’t understand.

There was something special in their intimacy. They could smile back and forth without speaking, like soldiers who had fought side by side.

The wind was beautiful, racing through the sky.

If only we could live someplace like that, so high and lovely, free as birds, liberated from our worries. But we don’t, and I have to confess that Nakajima was a weight on my shoulders. Not a heavy one, but a weight nonetheless. Until lately, I’d lived in a world all my own, and I didn’t like the idea that Nakajima might come to depend on me more than he already did. I didn’t
really
dislike it, but I didn’t like it. In short, I was ready to make a run for it.
I don’t want this responsibility
, I thought.
I don’t want to be part of the gloominess these not-normal people exude
.

Mino peered at me, grinning, as these thoughts ran through my mind.

And all at once I felt content, as if I had an angel watching over me. I didn’t even feel that I had to hide what I was thinking. His eyes were so clear it seemed as though all the bad bits of my personality were being swept away, just like that.

“What about Chii?” Nakajima asked. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s inside. Come on in,” Mino said. “Sorry it’s so cramped and dirty.”

Nakajima and I nodded to each other and went inside.

The inside of the house was as plain and tidy as a European country cottage, the kind you see in movies.

As far as I could tell, the first floor only had a kitchen, a toilet, and a bath. Mino led the way into the kitchen, and after we had each picked a chair we thought we could sit in from the mismatched group around the table, we gingerly sat down. The table was perfectly square, like an oversized school desk.

“I used to live here with my mother,” Nakajima said. “It was like camping, like in an old French film—we didn’t have much, but every day we would gather up whatever we could find, and we lived like that, very quietly. Always looking at the lake.”

“Wow,” I said.

“It was hard sometimes, but in retrospect I had a lot of fun.” Nakajima had gotten a bit hyper, and his tone was cheerful. “The house is so small, we used to go on walks every day. Just wandering around the lake. Sometimes we’d go out in a boat, too. We felt better each day. People look so beautiful when their expressions show that they know they have a future. You couldn’t help seeing how my mother was reviving—it was like watching the mountains turn green, the trees growing new leaves. I remember it so clearly, all that, how happy it made me.”

Tears filled Nakajima’s eyes as he spoke.

The whole house was still. Outside the window there was nothing but the lake, hazy in the early spring.

To me, it was a frighteningly desolate scene.

Mino brought water to a boil over a low flame, and carefully made tea.

I took a sip. A delicate fragrance filled my mouth. This was the most delicious black tea I had ever drunk in my life.

When I told Mino this, he fidgeted shyly.

“The springs here are good for tea,” he said. “I go and get water every day, just for tea.”

No way, it can’t just be the water
, I thought. It’s because this is all he has, in this circumscribed world. Looking out at the lake, drinking good tea. That’s his only luxury.

And what an enormous luxury that is. He’s created a world for himself that no one else can interfere with, I thought. A world free from all external impositions.

Mino’s bearing was sufficiently dignified to expunge the last traces of a middle-aged-lady-poking-her-nose-into-everything sort of sympathy that had managed, in some mysterious way, to keep smoldering inside me, until then.

Good tea is eloquent enough, it turns out, to change a person’s mind.

Nakajima and Mino exchanged various bits of gossip for a while, giddy as two schoolboys. I half listened, staring out at the lake. Sometimes there were waves, and for a second it would look very cold, and then it went back to being a mirror … I watched the water near the shore, smooth as a piece of fine cloth, through the glass.

“Actually, I had a question I wanted to ask Chii. It’s not a big deal, though, if she’s in bed,” Nakajima said.

“What are you talking about?” Mino replied. “She’s always asleep. Let’s go see her.”

Then, for a long moment, he peered at me. And then he spoke.

“You see, Chii, my younger sister, has been bedridden for ages. She’s not exactly sick, but her liver and kidneys aren’t in good shape, so she doesn’t have much energy—it’s hard for her to move around. So she really is always in bed. Even when she gets up to go to the bathroom, she has to sort of slide along the wall because her muscles have atrophied. She hardly eats at all, either: only one meal a day, and basically it’s just rice porridge and saké. She almost never gets up. I guess you could say she’s sick, then, in a general way. But she isn’t seeing any doctors, and I’m happy to give her as much attention as she needs, so we’re fine just as we are, living like this. I move her arms and legs for her sometimes and encourage her to walk around the house, but I try to be as gentle with her as I can.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just said, “I see.”

“And—well, when Chii wants to say something,” he went on, “she looks into my eyes and says it inside of me, into my heart. Sometimes the information she passes on is special, and there are people who come to listen to her speak. That’s how we make ends meet. Only she doesn’t always have information, it’s not as if she has something to say to everyone, so as a rule we try to keep all this secret. So if you don’t mind, we’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

“In other words … it’s like fortune-telling, in a broad sense?” I asked.

“You could think of it that way,” he said. “But often it’s simply a matter of enjoying the conversation. For some reason, people find that talking to her seems to bring something into focus. Perhaps it’s because she spends all her time sleeping—she comes and goes just as she pleases in the world of her dreams, she’s free to go anywhere she wants. And that gives her access to much more information than people have who are up all the time.”

“I guess that sort of makes sense,” I said. “And I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know. Because you had a reason to come here,” Mino said. He grinned again, and the twinkle in his eyes grew even more intense, like a star. “You’re welcome to come anytime you like. Only you’ll never think of this place, never, unless you’re meant to come.”