driven her to such desperation? Why, finally, was death the only possible escape? I was grasping for clues, playing the detective, but I came up empty-handed. She just vanished, along with her secrets. No probablys or in a whiles this time-she just silently slipped away. Our bodies had become one, yet in the end she refused to open up her heart to me.
Some kinds of things, once they go forward, can never go back to where they began, Hajime, she would no doubt tell me. In the middle of the night, lying on my sofa, I could hear her voice spinning out these words. Like you said, how wonderful it would be if the two of us could go off somewhere and begin life again. Unfortunately, I can’t get out of where I am. It’s a physical impossibility.
And then Shimamoto was a sixteen-year-old girl again, standing in front of sunflowers in a garden, smiling shyly. I really shouldn’t have gone to see you. I knew that from the beginning. I could predict that it would turn out like this. But I couldn’t stand not to. I just had to see you, and when I did, I had to speak with you. Hajime–that’s me. I don’t plan to, but everything I touch gets ruined in the end.
I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she’s gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.
Every day, I scanned the papers from top to bottom for articles about women suicides. Lots of people kill themselves, I discovered, but it was always someone else. As far as I knew, this beautiful thirty-seven-year-old woman with the loveliest of smiles was still alive. Though she was gone from me forever.
On the surface, my days were the same as ever. I’d drive the kids back and forth to the nursery school, the three of us singing songs as we went. Sometimes in the line of cars in front of the nursery school I’d see the young woman in the 260E, and we’d talk. Talking with her made me able to forget at least for a while. Our subjects were limited, as always. We’d exchange the latest news about the Aoyama neighborhood, natural foods, clothes. The usual.
At work, too, I made my usual rounds. I’d put on my suit and go to the bars every night make small talk with the regulars, listen to the opinions and complaints of the staff, remember little things like giving a birthday present to an employee. Treat musicians who happened to drop by to dinner, check the cocktails to make sure they were up to par, make sure the piano was in tune, keep an eye out for rowdy drunks–I did it all. Any problems, I straightened out in a flash. Everything ran like clockwork, but the thrill was gone. No one suspected, though. On the surface I was the same as always. Actually, I was friendlier, kinder, more talkative than ever. But as I sat on a barstool, looking around my establishment everything looked monotonous, lusterless. No longer a carefully crafted, colorful castle in the air, what lay before me was a typical noisy bar-artificial, superficial, and shabby. A stage setting, props built for the sole purpose of getting drunks to part with their cash. Any illusions to the contrary had disappeared in a puff of smoke. All because Shimamoto would never grace these places again. Never again would she sit at the bar; never again would I see her smile as she ordered a drink.
My routine at home was unchanged too. I ate dinner with the family and on Sundays took the kids for a walk or to the zoo. Yukiko, at least on the surface, treated me as she always had. We talked about all kinds of things. We were like childhood friends who happened to be living under the same roof. There were certain words we couldn’t speak, certain facts we didn’t acknowledge. But there was no unconcealed hostility in the air. We just didn’t touch each other. At night we slept separately–I on the sofa, Yukiko in the bedroom. Outwardly, that was the only change in our lives.
Sometimes I couldn’t stand how we were just going through the motions, acting out our assigned roles. Something crucial to us was lost, yet still we could carry on as before. I felt awful. This kind of empty, meaningless