the appropriate response. Cpt Yokota maintains the East Indies oilfields would still be Japanese territory if the wings of the military had fought together and not against each other, and if radar technology had been seriously developed. Now we must resort to begging the Germans for radar sets. He accuses the Imperial Army of operating subs undeclared to High Command as ‘wheelbarrows’, to support troops stranded on Rabaul and islands the enemy have bypassed. Most worrying of all is the Cpt’s firm conviction that our secret codes have been cracked. Abe, perhaps rashly, observed that the codes were invented by a Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist to be undecipherable to the occidental brain. Cpt Yokota retorted that no Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist was ever ambushed on the high seas by a pack of destroyers that knew his vessel’s exact whereabouts.
‘But what if’ – I unpick loops in my phone cord – ‘you are right, and meaning is just something the mind “does”, how come different people have different meanings of life? How come some people have no meaning? Or forget the meaning they started with?’
‘Experiences, influences, diseases, divorces. What is that noise?’
‘Suga snoring.’
‘What cat snores that loud?’
‘Suga is human. Sort of.’
‘Oh. And is Suga a he, or a she?’
I hunt in vain for traces of jealousy. ‘He. A drunk friend crash-landed far from home. I let him kip on my floor but he took my futon. You were saying.’
‘I forget . . . I remember. Want to hear something private, about myself?’
I sit up. ‘Sure I do.’
‘I am a full-blown diabetic. Every evening, for the last thirteen years, I have injected insulin into my arm. I conform to a meal plan. If I neglect this, I may go into a hypo. If my hypo is severe enough, I may die. The meaning of my life is to balance death and sugar. People without time bombs built into their genes are not likely to have the same meaning. Maybe the truest difference between people is exactly this: how they see why they are here.’
Suga growls in his sleep. My cigarette glows. ‘Mmm.’
‘What’s up with you tonight, Miyake?’
I tap my cigarette into a beer-can ashtray. ‘Meeting my father has been my meaning. Now I am about to – what do I do after I meet him?’
‘Why worry about it now?’
‘I dunno. I worry about things and I can never stop.’
‘Eiji Miyake, I want to sleep with you right now.’
I choke on a lungful of smoke. ‘What?’
‘Only a joke. I wanted to prove that you can stop worrying if you want to. Anyway, Debussy never worried about his meaning of life.’
‘Debussy? What band was he in?’
‘Claude Debussy. Tell me you are joking.’
‘Claude Debussy . . . played drums for Jimi Hendrix, right?’
‘Do not blaspheme the sacred, even in jest, or eagles will peck out your liver. I’m playing him for my tone piece in tomorrow’s audition. Want to hear?’
‘Sure.’ This is a first.
I hear her clunk and shuffle about. ‘Lie back and gaze at the stars.’
‘Above Kita Senju the night sky is all neon murk.’
‘Then I’ll play you Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut.’
‘Help.’
‘“And the moon sets o’er the temple that was.”’
‘You speak French as well as everything else?’
‘I’ve been planning to run away to France since I was six, remember.’
‘France. What an elegant meaning of life.’
‘Shush, or you won’t hear the stars.’
The oil in the frying pan spits. I botch the second egg, feel shell fragments between my fingers, and the spermy mess drops in. I love the way the clear part skins over white. I rescue the toast, nearly in time, and scrape the charcoal into the sink. The pile on my futon stirs – ‘Uuuoooeeeaaaiii.’ Suga – this unclodded lungfish – winches his head and surveys my capsule. I stub out my Philip Morris in an eggshell, draw the curtains and the unwashed morning streams in over three days of washing-up and a major spillage of socks and papers. Suga is not pretty. He neck is boiled-octopus pink and a volcanic island chain of mosquito bites trails over his face. He blinks. ‘Miyake? What are you doing here?’
‘I live here.’
‘Oh. What am I doing here?’
‘This is where you died last night.’
‘I gotta do a dinosaur piss. Which is the pisser?’ I point with a nod. Suga gets up and goes. And goes, and goes. He comes out sighing, zipping up his flies. ‘Your toilet smells as bad as Ueno. Smells like a serious upchuck.’