South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,72

man,” she said. As if she were reading aloud something written large on a wall. Maybe it really was written on the wall, I thought.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I know I don’t want to leave you. But I don’t know if that’s the correct answer. I don’t even know if that’s something I myself can choose. Yukiko, you’re suffering. I can see that I can feel your hand here. But there’s something beyond what can be seen or felt Call it feelings. Or possibilities. These well up from somewhere and are mixed together inside me. They’re not something I can choose or can give an answer to.”

Yukiko was silent for a long time. Every so often, a truck rolled by outside. I looked out the window but could see nothing. Just the unnamed time and space linking night and dawn.

“The last few weeks, I really did think I would die,” Yukiko said. “I’m not saying this to threaten you. It’s a fact. That’s how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Like the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like that, dying doesn’t seem like such a big deal. I never even thought of the children. What would happen to them after I died didn’t enter my mind. That’s how lonely I felt You didn’t know that did you? You have never seriously given it any thought, have you? What I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I might do.”

I didn’t say anything. She took her hand away from my chest and laid it in her lap.

“Anyhow, the reason I didn’t die, the reason I’m still alive, is that I thought if you were to come back to me, I would be able to take you back. It’s not a question of rights, or right or wrong. Maybe you are a hopeless person. A worthless person. And you might very well hurt me again. But that’s not what’s important here. You don’t understand a thing.”

“Most likely I don’t,” I said.

“And you don’t ask anything,” she said.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. She was right: I never did ask her anything. Why didn’t I? I had no idea.

“Rights are what you build from here on out,” Yukiko said. “Or rather, we build. We thought we’d constructed a lot together, but actually we hadn’t made a thing. Life went too smoothly. We were too happy. Don’t you think so?”

I nodded.

Yukiko folded her arms over her chest and looked at me. “I used to have dreams too, you know. But somewhere along the line they disappeared. Before I met you. I killed them. I crushed them and threw them away. Like some internal organ you no longer need and you rip out of your body. I don’t know whether that was the right thing to do. But it was the only thing I could do at the time…. Sometimes I have this dream. The same dream over and over. Someone is carrying something in both hands, and comes up to me and says, ‘Here, you’ve forgotten something.’ I’ve been very happy living with you. I’ve wanted for nothing and never had any complaints. Still, something is chasing me. I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat I’m being chased by what I threw away. You think you’re the only one being chased, but you’re wrong. You’re not the only one who’s thrown away something, who’s lost something. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Maybe you will hurt me again. I don’t know how I’ll react then. Or maybe next time I’ll hurt you. No one can promise anything. Neither of us can make any promises. But I do still love you.”

I held her and stroked her hair.

“Yukiko,” I said, “tomorrow let’s begin again. It’s too late today. I want to start out the right way, with a brand-new day.”

Yukiko looked at me for a while. “I think that you still haven’t asked me anything.”

“I’d like to start a new life beginning tomorrow. What do you think?” I asked.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said, a faint smile on her lips.

After Yukiko went back to the bedroom, I lay for a while on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. It was an ordinary apartment ceiling, nothing special. But still I stared at it closely. Every once