A Tale for the Time Being (33 page)

She waited. When he didn’t respond, she went on.

“She’d written, ‘Up, down, same thing.’ And then later when they were at the beach, Jiko said those exact same words . . . ‘up, down, same thing.’ I had
that dream over a week before I read about the beach, so how did I know that?”

“How did you know that?” he repeated.

“Well, it was like old Jiko was texting me the message, too, only telepathically. Is that crazy?”

“Hm,” Oliver said.

“It felt like a premonition. What do you think?”

“Premonitions are coincidences waiting to happen,” he said, without looking up.

“I suppose, but it’s weird, right? Stuff appearing out of nowhere, like the freezer bag and then the Jungle Crow. Stuff disappearing, like that article. I tried to find it again, but
I couldn’t. And the publication?
The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics
? Gone, too. I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Stuff doesn’t usually just vanish,” he said, typing a message with his forefinger. “It’s got to be somewhere. Can’t you do a search for the author and find
out where—”

“I tried! That’s the problem. I can’t even find the author’s name. I could have sworn it was listed in the academic archives site, but when I went back to find it, it was
gone. Vanished! And Professor Leistiko won’t answer my email. It’s like the harder I look, the more stuff slips away. It’s so frustrating!”

“Maybe you’re looking too hard . . . ,” he suggested.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He tapped his screen and she heard the whoosh of an email being sent.

“Are you listening to me or checking your email?”

“Listening, checking email, same thing . . .”

“No it’s not!”

“You’re right,” he said, looking up from the small screen. “Okay, I was checking my email, and at the same time I was listening to you, and at the same time something
came up in my newsfeed that might be pertinent. And I now have two thoughts and one nice piece of news. Which would you like to hear first?”

“The nice news, please.”

“I just got an email from an artists’ collective in Brooklyn. They want to publish my monograph on the NeoEocene.”

“That’s fantastic!” she said, her annoyance vanishing. “Who are they?”

He smiled, modestly, trying not to show how pleased he was. “They call themselves the Friends of the Pleistocene.”

“Amazing.”

“It is. I mean, it’s not perfect. I’m more of an Eocene guy myself, and they’ve got some pretty newfangled ideas. But hey, you know, one million years, fifty million
years . . .”

“They’re interested. That’s what matters.”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding doubtful. “I just hope they don’t disappear, too.”

“They won’t. Not if they’ve been around for that long.”

“You’re right,” he said. “The Friends of the Pleistocene make
The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics
sound like lightweights.”

“Was that your thought?”

“No.” He held up his iPhone so she could see. “First of all, this came up in my newsfeed.”

On the tiny screen was an article from
New Science
about a recent development in the construction of qubits for quantum computing.

She squinted to read the tiny text. “So?”

Oliver enlarged the font and pointed. She saw it then. The name of the researcher filled the tiny screen: H. Yasudani.

“Oh my god,” she cried, sitting up. “Do you think that’s him? It could be, right? Or it could be a typo. That’s so crazy. Email me the link. I’ll see if I can
get in touch—”

“Already done,” Oliver said.

She was half out of bed, one foot in its slipper, heading upstairs to her computer to go online and start the search.

“Don’t you want to hear my other thought?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, fumbling for her glasses.

“It’s just that I’m wondering if maybe there’s a quantum element to what’s happening.”

She sat back down and let the slipper dangle. “What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe that’s the wrong way to put it, but I’m just thinking that if everything you’re looking for disappears, maybe you should stop looking. Maybe you should focus
on what’s tangible in the here and now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve got the diary and you’re reading it. That’s good. Benoit is translating the composition book. That’s good. But there’s still the letters. You
could get someone to help you with them.”

Ruth frowned. It made sense, and it didn’t. “I showed them to Ayako, but she said she couldn’t—”

“Not Ayako,” Oliver said. “Arigato. Hang on, let me check the weather . . .”

“What does the weather have to do with this?”

“Great,” he said. “The storm is just missing us. Should be a calm crossing tomorrow.” He looked up. “I need to bring that damn generator into the shop before it
craps out again. You feel like going for sushi in the Liver . . . ?”

5.

Campbell River, or Scrambled Liver as it was called by islanders, was the closest city of any size to Whaletown, although “close” and “city” are relative
terms. A trip to the Liver required two ferry rides and a drive across an intermediary island and took close to two hours, not counting ferry lineups, which in the summer season could be
interminable. Once in the Liver, there was not much in the way of entertainment, just some big-box stores and half-vacant strip malls, a court, a jail, a hospital, a scattering of thrift stores and
pawnshops, a couple of peeler bars, and a derelict pulp mill that left many people jobless when it closed.

Still, the ferry trip to town was beautiful, a slow chug across the steely sea, past tiny green islets that glowed under the brooding skies. Sometimes a pod of dolphins or porpoises would race
the ship or play in its wake. In the distance, the snowcapped mountains rose high up above swathes of low-hanging mist.

They didn’t go to town for the scenery, though. There were practical real-life reasons for the trip, like hospital visits or car repair, buying insurance, and stocking up on staples and
supplies. It was customary for islanders to wince and exhibit a kind of exquisite pain at the thought of leaving their paradise for the bleak but necessary reality of the Liver.

Ruth, however, enjoyed her trips to town. For her, Campbell River felt refreshing. She liked shopping, and if they stayed overnight they could eat dinner at an ethnic restaurant, although
compared with Manhattan, the choice was not huge: two Chinese buffets, a Thai restaurant, and her favorite, a Japanese sushi bar called Arigato Sushi.

The chef was a former auto mechanic named Akira Inoue, who had emigrated with his wife, Kimi, from Okuma City in Fukushima prefecture. Akira was an avid sports fisherman, and had brought his
family to coastal B.C. for the world-class salmon fishing, before the runs went dry. They opened their restaurant, choosing the name Arigato as an expression of their gratitude to Canada for giving
them a nice lifestyle, and in exchange, they worked hard to refine the palettes of their Campbell River neighbors. They had raised their son here and sent him to university in Montreal, but now
that they were getting older and the salmon runs were in decline, Kimi had finally managed to convince Akira to sell Arigato Sushi and retire to their hometown in Japan. The meltdown at the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant changed all that. Overnight, Okuma City had turned into a radioactive wasteland, and now Akira and Kimi were trapped in the Liver.

“Okuma City wasn’t very special,” Kimi said. “But it was our hometown. Now nobody can live there. Our friends, family, everybody had to evacuate. Walk out of their homes.
Leave everything behind. Not even time to wash the dishes. We invited our relatives to come here. We told them Canada is safe. No guns. But they don’t want to come. For them, this is not
home.”

Restaurants closed early in the Liver, and Kimi had taken a break from washing up in the kitchen to sit with Ruth and Oliver at the sushi bar, while Akira cleaned his knives and put away his
fish. Their son, Tosh, had graduated from McGill University, and now worked in Victoria, but on the weekends he often drove up to help his father behind the sushi counter.

“Is this home for you?” Ruth asked Tosh.

“Do you mean Canada or Campbell River?” Tosh asked, looking amused. He was a tall, quiet kid, well-spoken, who had majored in political science. “Canada, yes. Montreal,
absolutely. Montreal felt like home. Victoria, less so. Campbell River, uh, not so much.”

“How about you?” Ruth asked Kimi.

Kimi hesitated and Akira answered for her. “She never care about fishing.” He nodded to Ruth. “How about you?”

Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what home would feel like.”

Akira tore off a length of plastic wrap and laid it over a gleaming slab of bright red tuna. “I think you are more big-city girl. But you . . .” He leaned over the counter to
refill Oliver’s saké and then raised his glass in a toast. “You are country boy. Like me. Campbell River is plenty good for us, eh?”

Beside her, Ruth could feel Oliver hesitate, but he raised his glass. “To the Liver,” he said.

It was getting late. Ruth pulled her backpack onto her lap and took out the letters. She had explained her problem earlier, and Kimi had agreed to try and help. Now Ruth watched as Kimi wiped
down the countertop before accepting the letters with both hands and a formal little bow.

“Yes,” Kimi said, inspecting the envelope on top. “It is a man’s handwriting. The address is in Tokyo. The postal mark says Showa 18.” She counted on her fingers.
“That is 1943. This canceling mark is not so clear, but I think it is from Tsuchiura. There was a naval base, so maybe you are right, he was a soldier.” She opened the letter and spread
it on the counter in front of her, gently smoothing the creases. Tosh came around the counter and leaned over her shoulder.

“It is very nice handwriting,” she said. “Old-fashioned, but I can read this. I will write down the translation, but please forgive my poor English. I have lived here for
twenty years but still . . .”

Tosh put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “No excuses, Mom,” he said. “I can’t read the Japanese, but I’ll help you with the English.”

Akira gave a short laugh. “Yes,” he said. “No excuses. Now we have lots of time to practice.”

They spent the night at the Above Tide Motel and the next morning got coffee and muffins and made it to the terminal in time to catch the first ferry home. At that hour there
wasn’t a lot of traffic—only three vehicles in the lane bound for their island. One of the ferry crew, a beefy young Campbell River kid in shorts, came over and stood in front of their
car, waiting to give them the signal to load. He eyed the vehicles in their lane and radioed the count to the bridge.

“Three for Fantasy,” he muttered into his walkie-talkie.

Ruth had her window down and was feeding muffin crumbs to the sparrows.

“Did you hear that?” she asked Oliver, who was reading an old
New Yorker
in the passenger seat beside her.

“Hear what?”

“What the ferry guy just said.”

“No. What did he say?”

“Three for Fantasy.”

Oliver looked out the window at the kid. “That’s a good one.”

“How would he even know? He’s too young to remember the show.”

Oliver smiled. “Maybe. But he knows the island.”

1.

I wasn’t sure whether to tell Jiko about meeting the ghost of Haruki #1. First of all, I was afraid it might make her sad, because what if he hadn’t visited her?
Maybe he’d only visited me because I’m an ikisudama? And then if she knew, I would have to confess how I’d blown it by not asking him good questions or making him feel welcome.
Probably there’s a proper way you’re supposed to treat ghosts, stuff you’re supposed to say and special presents you’re supposed to give them. Maybe Jiko would be upset with
me for not doing it right, but how was I supposed to know?

Or maybe she would think I was lying. Maybe she would think I’d made the whole thing up to cover for the fact that I was snooping around the altar and broke the picture frame and stole the
letter. By the next day, I was beginning to think I’d made the whole thing up, too, and it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of opportunities to talk to her, so I decided just to wait to
see if Haruki #1 would come back.

On the morning of the osegaki ceremony, I got up early and sneaked out to the temple gate. It was still dark out, but the lamps were lit in the kitchen, and I could hear Muji and some of the
nuns who’d come to help. I knew if they saw me, they would make me help, too, so I was really quiet. I went and sat on the cold stone step by the gate, half hidden behind one of the huge
pillars. It felt creepy and kind of damp, exactly the way you might think a ghost would like it, and I started to feel hopeful.

“Haruki Ojisama wa irasshaimasu ka?”
¹³²
I whispered.

But the only person who answered was Chibi, the cat, who isn’t a person at all.

I tried again. “Haruki Ichibansama . . . ?”
¹³³

I heard a noise then, a kind of low murmuring and humphing sound, and when I looked down to the very bottom of the steps, I could see there was a ghostly monster climbing toward me. It looked
like a gigantic brown and grey caterpillar.
Tatari!
I thought. Spirit attack! I jumped up and ran behind the pillar before it could see me, holding Chibi tight to keep him from darting
out.

The monster had white spots and bristly bumps and lots and lots of legs jutting out to the sides, and it moved in a kind of winding, galumphing way, slowly rising and falling up the steep stone
steps. I watched it, trying to figure out what it was. It was too slow to be scary, and at first I thought maybe it was an ancient and very pathetic dragon. Sometimes temples have dragons, and
maybe because Jiko was so ancient, her dragon was, too. But when it got closer, I could see that it wasn’t a dragon or even a caterpillar monster. It was just a long line of very old people
from the danka, and from above, their round humped backs and wobbling white heads looked like the caterpillar’s body, and their arms and their walking sticks looked like the jutting legs,
climbing up through the darkness.