I Called Him Necktie (12 page)

A week passed this way. Nine o’clock, I was there. I would see him appear and then have to accept: It wasn’t him. I mistook a high school student, a career woman who smoked, a dancing shadow, for him. I invented stomach pains, the unexpected visit of an old friend, a trip to the mountains, a sudden whim. When I ran out of reasons the rainy season began.

MILES TO GO.

The umbrella I’d left behind stood in the corner. It proved nothing. No voice called out to me. I actually began to doubt whether we had met. Whether I hadn’t, was it possible,
invented him, like I’d invented the many reasons for his absence. The tie was the only reliable assurance. I touched it and knew, he exists. A tingling on my scalp. My hair was growing again. In the café, on the other hand, time stood still. The same music. To want a love that can’t be true. Sometimes I wished I could lie flat on the floor and soak it through and through with my tears. No, you don’t invent something like that, something like that is true. I sank down and ordered a cola. Coming right up. With eyes closed I tried to remember his face. But the contours had lost their definition. As with Yukiko and Kumamoto, it was a particular expression I retained. A sad charm. With him it was a sad weariness. When I opened my eyes I noticed that the people surrounding me were mired in this weariness, and we all appeared to be waiting for someone who would set us free. A cold hell we persevered in. Now and again a sentence recurred: You must do something.

It took six more weeks, countless utterances spoken to him, the one who never came, until I found an answer.

His business card. I had memorized it. With the address in my head I decided to seek him out at his home, and I didn’t think any further than that point, where I would press the bell, ding dong, and wait for some sound behind the door. The first real decision since I nodded to him. I made it early yesterday. I woke up. In front of me the crack in the wall. If only one were crazy enough to do everything differently. To break out just once. Kyōko. I felt she was connected to me as well. I quickly got dressed. With each movement my decision grew firmer. I would wait for a sound and then. Not contemplate how it would
work out. It would work out. I slipped out. The tie in my jacket pocket. I touched it at each corner I passed. It propelled me onward. Into the crowds. Bought a ticket. I had not forgotten how. Crossed the turnstile. Into the subway. His world, day after day, his hand holding the strap. I stood a bit sideways, with bent shoulders, rowed against the current. While everyone went into the city, I went out. I saw the things he must have seen. The billboards. The posters. The garbage cans. Full to bursting. My gaze glanced around, not only mine now, as it observed and was observed. I got onto the train. Father’s shoes everywhere. I repeated the address to myself. Seven weeks have passed. A period of
mourning*
. Why does that occur to me now? And got out. There is the platform where he had stood, the platform on which he asked himself whether anyone would miss him if he were not there. Nobody there. I slowed my steps. What would I say if the door were to open? Was my hope of seeing him behind it any different from my parents’ hope, right at the beginning, when they thought I would come out and tell them: Everything’s all right? I got on the bus. It drove off. Beside me, on the seat, a book left behind. Proof. Of what? The driver called to me: You must get out here. Hot air engulfed me. I had arrived. A short walk. Then.

Tsik-tsik-tsik. The cry of the cicadas. I captured one and released it again. I was walking through a commuter town, a slumbering community. White shirts on the clothes lines, each house like the next. Parched gardens like handkerchiefs. Potted palms. Women and babies. The children were at school, the men at work. Over there! The gnarled root. Cracked asphalt everywhere. The garden gate. I looked up. A window was open. Fluttering curtain.
I rang. Now the door would open. Kyōko’s flower pots. The glove. I rang again. From the house next door came gentle piano music, interrupted by the clatter of silverware. Soon it would be midday. I sat down on the curb. Felt: So this is what it’s like. When the door stays closed. So this is what it’s like. When you stand outside and wait in vain for a human sound. The sun burned down. I blinked.

Hello? A bright female voice. She was coming up the street.

Still blinking, I tried to make out her shape. She was coming towards me. I jumped up. Ohara-san?

Yes, that’s me. And you are? Taguchi Hiro? A friend of my husband’s? Please forgive me. He never.

I pulled out the tie.

Or perhaps he did? She pushed open the garden gate, invited me in. She took the tie with a greedy gesture. Two steps at a time. As I took off my shoes in the entrance, I saw his, painfully neat. The briefcase beside them. A sports jacket hung on the hook. It smelled of cigarettes, bittersweet.

I followed Kyōko through the hall and into the living room. No rattle on the floor. It was silent. While she put the water on in the kitchen for tea, I sat on the couch, a cushion at my back, and looked around. At home. In front of me was the television. To the left, the sideboard. The snow globes and musical clocks. The ballerina revolved
around herself on the side table. The naked lady hung on the wall, her body a knot, and the sailor, a girl beneath his gaze, rising smoke. Pink artificial flowers. A swan with a curved neck. Crystal figurines. A full ashtray. I had a hole in my sock, I curled up my toes. Soft carpet. Books. Stacked in piles. The shelves were full. They could have used a new one.

Some
yokan*
with your tea? Kyōko poured us two tiny bowls. If I had known you were coming. But. She smiled. I didn’t know. Taguchi Hiro, you said. I don’t believe he told me about you. Or did he and I have forgotten? I often wonder, since he. Her smile collapsed. I often wonder whether I really knew him. Such a sudden death. Afterwards you wonder all sorts of things. And as I collapsed with her smile: Yes, he’s dead. A heart attack. On the way home. On the train. On a Friday. Seven weeks ago. Yesterday his ashes were buried. If I’d known. I would have told you. All the same. You must have. I mean. The tie. He was wearing it on the day he died. Can it be? You were the last to? She didn’t hide her face from me. Not when I began to tell her. Not after I’d told the whole story. I saw how she cried, then laughed, remembered, then returned, how she turned pale, then red, and finally was simply there. How she never let go of the tie the entire time, held it tight. How she caressed it. With her fingers. She made it part of herself. Wanted to melt into it. Melted.

Which is worse, asked Kyōko after a while. The fact that he concealed his situation from me or the fact that I helped him conceal it? You heard right. I did, knowing full well he had lost his job and couldn’t tell me because of the shame of it, I helped him stay with this shame. I
wanted to give him time. To wait with him, until. He needed that: Someone to wait with him. Someone who was patient. Sometimes I took a long step towards him. I talked of breaking out. Of leaning back. Of doing nothing. Or sometimes. About his firm. About his managers. About his colleagues. All this to smooth the way, to illuminate it for him, to help him understand: You don’t have to. To slave away. But he distanced himself. A game, at first it was a game, then I lost control. Ghastly. When you lose control. One moment it’s within your power to initiate movement toward a turning point, and then nothing happens. You have become part of the audience. The other person is on stage, a solo performance, the spotlight on his face, all alone. While you, in the back row, in the dark, incapable of intervening, watch as the performance emerges. The curtain falls. I wasn’t allowed to join in, at any point. Even though I did it for his sake, I must have known that a game like that has no happy ending.

At the beginning of course I had no idea. He left the house punctually at half past seven, came home in the evening, tired, went to sleep in front of the television. Not unusual. I covered him up. And as I was covering him I heard him whispering my name in a dream. Kyōko. Suddenly he was awake. I say: Suddenly. Like a dead man on a bier rising up with a jolt, his arms full of life flung around me, holding me in his embrace, almost crushing me, his breath close to my ear: Forgive me. Please. Forgive me. I gasped for breath. Then he let me go. His arms limp again, he sank back, fell asleep once more, deeper than before, his mouth half open. What a fool I am, I thought, and called up the firm the following day. When I put down the receiver I became aware of the significance of our decisions: He wanted to stay with the promise of his daily routine, I wanted to stay with him for the sake of our daily routine. In this tiny moment, as I put the
receiver back on the cradle, I became aware of the beauty of it, that harmonious beauty, in our attempt to remain true to the decisions we had taken.

In a way he worked hard right to the end. If you understand. He didn’t particularly like his work. What he liked about it was only the routine and the satisfaction he got from keeping it up. The seamlessness of it. Even when nothing else functioned. To maintain this seamlessness, despite the reality, was the hardest work he had ever done.

It’s only obvious to me now. Kyōko put the tie around her neck. But I’m doing the same thing as him. Do you see the ashtray there? All the butts? I can’t bring myself to throw them away. The newspaper spread out over there. He read it, in his bubble, turned the pages back and forth. I can’t manage to throw it away. The pack of
senbei*
on the side table. No longer crisp. The bottle of beer he drank with them. Flat. In the sink in the bathroom I found one of his gray hairs. I’ve kept it. His toothbrush. The bristles all bent. The hand towel. The razor. Everything in its place. They gave me what he had been wearing. The watch. The shoes. The briefcase. Inside was a note: You only live once, they say, so why do you die so often. Only the tie was missing. I looked for it. They call it mourning. And I think that was the reason he tried so hard to be someone who functioned. By holding on to how things had always been, he was mourning what was missing: Our son, his love for him. What you don’t do, what you omit, often has more painful consequences than what you do. If I had shaken him awake. If I had spoken to him right after the phone call to his firm: I am not staying with you because of our daily routine, but for your own sake. And also. If
you hadn’t acted on your desire to come here, I would still be searching for his tie tomorrow and thinking: I did not know him. I want to thank you for that. Kyōko took my hand and squeezed it. Thank you for having met him.

Before you go. She pointed to the door opposite, on the other side of the hall. In there, in the baby’s room is the
Butsudan*
. It would be nice if you. Three breaths, a pause. Would sit with him one more time.

Stepping over the threshold.

I closed the door behind me. A small room, no bigger than mine, ten square meters at most. No furniture. Only the altar. A floor cushion in front of it. I sat down. Fresh flowers on either side. His bento box, wrapped in blue cloth. A photo. Tsuyoshi. A second one. Him. I put in the incense sticks, rang the bell, placed my hands together. As my palms touched, it was as if there were no walls around me. Something gave way inside me. I burst into tears. I hadn’t cried for so long that my tears were like those of a child or a very old person. I cried without restraint or discretion. Cried for him and all the others who were gone. For Kyōko. My parents. Myself. Cried most of all for those who remained.

Can you hear me? Sighing. You were right. My requiem is well prepared. Still to be written is the poem that is never complete, an endless rubbing on the ink block, an endless dipping of the pen, an endless swoop over the white paper, the poem of my life. I will try to write it down. Soon, no, now, I will try. The first line. I called him Necktie. I
will write: He taught me to see with eyes of feeling.

They say a teacher is immortal. Even if he leaves his body, what he has taught lives on in the hearts of his pupils. I was compelled to think of that as I traveled home, down the hill. With a detached stare I saw the people, heads on their chests, being shaken to and fro, and all at once my gaze penetrated to a deeper level, beyond the bones and organs, beyond even that, into the indefinable, which no longer terrified me, but filled me with amazement. It was as if the tears I cried had cleared a sad veil from my eyes, and my I can no longer! turned into a question: What can I do?

Taguchi!

Someone was calling my name.

Taguchi Hiro!

In the crush of the subway station someone grabbed me by the shoulder. I turned around.

Kumamoto!

How could it be? There he stood, alive before me. The white hand, there it was. He stretched it out towards me. I grasped it.

Long time no see. Come on, let’s go up there. He was limping. To the café over there? A free table. What luck, he laughed, dammit, what luck. An empty table at this time of day. Giggling girls sat at a nearby table, busy deciding whether the lip gloss they bought suited their skin
color. A few salarymen too. They were talking on their phones. A student chewing gum, who pulled the gum out with his fingers and let it snap back, blew a bubble, it burst. What luck, repeated Kumamoto. I’ve often wondered what it would be like if I bumped into you. I had prepared entire sentences. Just in case. Stupid really. I can’t remember a single one of them. All gone. Up there. He tapped his forehead.

What happened, I asked. I thought you were ...

... dead. Yes, well, I was. To the core. He didn’t put his hand in front of his mouth, didn’t lower his voice: Five weeks of artificially induced coma. After that I woke up. It was a slow awakening, blinking, a light lift of the covers, spreading the fingers. As the memory dripped back into my brain, I would rather have gone to sleep again. Motionless, without consciousness. To lie still there while outside there was life. From my window I saw the city lights. You were in my thoughts too. How you came towards me. Your trust in me and my cheerfulness. I did not want to be responsible for abusing your trust. I felt it like a sharp pain below the left hip.