Water Lily (21 page)

The bathroom was open and hot water filled the tub. Runa entered the changing room and slipped off her T-shirt and leggings.
It would be easier to sleep after a hot bath, easier to wake in the morning with a decision freshly made.

She sat on the wet tiles at the side of the bath, dangled her feet in the scalding water. Then she lowered her whole body,
slowly, into the heat.

In England she would make new friends, perhaps meet a real husband, get a job. And after a couple of years, with new qualifications
and experience, she’d return home and start afresh, get it right this time. She wouldn’t be a teacher again. She’d try something
new, be a journalist, or a florist. Then again, she had always thought it would be fun to have a little bookshop selling English
books. Or she would open her own bar. She could re-open the Octopus, start up the karaoke machines. She would look after her
guests, ensure no one was ever lonely. Or it might be better to set up an identical place in a different part of Japan. But
if all those aims were impossible when she first got home, she’d take anything just to save a bit of money. She’d work in
a garage, waving cars onto the forecourt. She’d work in a department store, spraying perfume on customers or pressing buttons
in the elevator. She’d live near Nanao and rent a little flat in the countryside not far from the station. She’d cycle around
the village doing her shopping, humming as she went. She’d fall in love for the first time in her life and it would be with
someone who wouldn’t desert her in the night. In the meantime she must make the most of going to England with the heron. She
was not being quite honest with him, but that was OK. Runa understood what he wanted her to be, and she could be that, easily.

She was dreaming about the footbridge by the shopping center and the women who worked in the department store. She was running
around the shops with Ping, being chased by shop assistants in pink uniforms. She sank further into the water and in the dream
she was swimming with water bubbling around her mouth.

Runa opened her eyes and sat up straight. Her heart was beating fast, her nose was full of water. If she was not careful she
would drown herself and that would be the end of her plans. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, seconds or minutes.
Her body was burning now but she felt too heavy to pull herself out.

What if she didn’t marry the heron? at if she got a boat straight back to Kobe, started again in another part of Japan? But
they would be looking for her, the journalists, Jun Ikeda’s parents, the school authorities. Now she had used a stolen passport
it was even worse; she was a genuine criminal. Her knees bent and she slipped further down, let the water lap around her chin,
imagined she was in the sea, rocking along in the saltiness, just Runa and the sea and sky. She shut her eyes.

There was a noise from the direction of the corridor. Perhaps someone was coming to empty the bath for the night. It occurred
to her that she hadn’t checked that this was the women’s bathroom and not the men’s. She must have, but she didn’t remember
looking at the door. She hoped no one planned to join her now. These moments were hers and she wouldn’t share them. The door
opened but she could see nothing through the steam. She kept still and willed the intruder to leave.

A man cleared his throat. It was a weak noise, a nervous clearing or an attempt to say
I am here
, rather than a necessary shifting of phlegm. Runa looked around. There was no way out of the room except in the direction
of the person. She heard him breathing, a wheezing, tired kind of breathing. Was it Ralph? She should lift herself from the
water to see, but she had no towel and her clothes were out of reach. She squinted hard at the steam but could make out no
shapes. Ralph always breathed heavily, but it didn’t sound like him. The sound was distorted by the tiles and steam so it
was hard to tell. Whoever it was, surely he would go away now that he knew there was a woman in the bath.

This may be the man she was going to marry. And she would do it but would have no more to do with him tonight. Could she pretend
to be asleep in a bath? She managed to lift herself to a squatting position without making a sound but still saw no one. She
spoke in Japanese.

“Actually, this is the women’s bathroom. Or have I made a mistake?”

Perhaps it was the old woman again—not a man’s voice at all—loving the bathtub even more than Runa did. Runa didn’t want to
see her again but felt safer thinking it was the woman so she waded through the water, climbed out of the other side, skidded
slightly on the tiles, and stopped to steady herself. She lunged toward the changing room for her clothes. They had gone.
She stood among the damp wooden shelves, protected only by a thin film of water. Now what was happening to her?

S
he reached into the water to pull out her clothes. She was making no attempt to cover any part of her body. Ralph blinked
and his whole vision turned scarlet. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her into the bath with her sinking clothes.
There was no scream, just a cutting intake of breath that made him shudder and step back.

She cowered in the corner, squatting in the water. She was coughing and hiccuping. But he loved her. Her body was perfect,
a revelation in its smooth neatness, and she had promised it to him. She was weak now and would answer him.

“Who are you?”

But she didn’t answer, and then she couldn’t because his hands were on her neck. He couldn’t help it. Not tightly, he wasn’t
hurting her, just making a point. He put one hand over her mouth and picked her up, put her back in the bath. Her arms and
legs were flailing all over the place and she was trying to bite his hand. He would have a couple of nasty bruises in the
morning, but fortunately he had brought some lotion.

“I’m not going to force you, but you’re hurting me and I want you to know what that feels like.”

She coughed up water. Her face was red and her eyes were narrow, quite ugly. She spat out her words. “I don’t care.” “You’ve
made a fool out of me.”

She made a strange spluttering sound, and he was afraid that he had really hurt her. But he looked at her face and saw that
she was not choking, she was laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“I saw that thing in your cabin. Asian brides by mail order or whatever it was. I guess I’m the perfect girl you were looking
for.”

She was laughing, coughing, and sobbing all at the same time.

He pulled back her hair, pushed her head down under the water, and held her there, just to make her see. All that hair turning
the water’s surface black, like paint dispersing. And he let the weight of his body push her down quickly, because she was
small, and because she was laughing at him.

R
una woke up. Jun was massaging her temples. He rubbed her skin from her shoulders down to her fingers to warm her. Then from
her waist, down her legs to her toes. Stars were exploding in her head.

Jun, where am I? What’s happening to me?

Nothing, he said. Let’s go home. We’ll go to the Octopus. Are you laughing or crying, he asked. Laughing, of course, she told
him.

Something slapped against her face and neck, felt like a mosquito swatter. She pulled herself up onto her elbows and was sitting
at a low table on a heated carpet. Nanao was at the other side of the table. She was excited to see Runa but kept forgetting
what she was saying and didn’t listen to Runa. Nanao skipped from subject to subject not covering anything, not finishing
a single thing she said.

So you’re getting married then, Runa, she said. We’re pleased to hear it.

No, you’re wrong. I’ve changed my mind you see. You’re wrong.

And then Runa was slipping down through water, reaching up to be pulled out, but she couldn’t find any other hands to grasp.
She must fight to stay awake. Nanao would soon be here to help because Runa was thinking of her. She was sure that if she
concentrated hard enough, Nanao would know and would come to her.
You’re my sister and I will help you.

Pictures jumped and flickered in her mind with the stars crashing around the edges. The blue-fronted café near Nanao’s university.
A plastic tablecloth with hard spots where it had been burned and melted. A cold glass of liquid with bubbles rising to the
surface. Runa trying to open her mouth but finding nothing to say and waiting for her sister to speak. Nanao sipping a bright
orange liquid, smiling.
I’m pregnant, Runa. There’s going to be a baby and you’re going to be an aunt. Imagine
.

You’re right. That is good news.

Pain seared through her body. More pictures. A dark room with a low ceiling and no corners. Yellowed newspapers on the round
table. Her father sitting with a grey blanket over his knees, his eyes on the tiny goldfish in the tank beside his chair.
Calling out in a cracked voice for Runa to come and visit.

*     *     *

Her mother walking by the lake at the summer festival with fireworks, fire-flowers burning the sky. Runa and Nanao dressed
in blue
yukatas
, running behind, tilting their heads back, and trying to keep their eyes on the sky. Fireflies in the night. Their mother
smiling.

Runa tried to cough. They weren’t stars that she saw before but exploding gunpowder, fireworks. Was her mother here with her?

Nanao in the hall telling her to go off to school. A priest bowing his head in the doorway, the curtains closed, her mother’s
cold body in the living room, and Ping waiting around the corner of the house to walk with Runa to the footbridge. Ping sucking
in her cheeks to light a cigarette. Cars and trucks speeding past in both directions and drowning all other sound.

A little girl putting a water lily into a jar and filling it from a cold tap to give to her English teacher.

Water. The strange ferry and the tall ugly man, trying to stop her finding her friend, herself plunging a knife into his chest,
pulling her body free from his. His face bulging and sweating, his spit spraying all over her face. Nanao’s voice murmuring
in her ears about something important. An empty wooden shelf and Runa’s clothes out of reach, underwater.

*     *     *

Runa coughed and took in air. She could almost open her eyes. She was fighting to open them.
I’m crying, Nanao. Can you hear me? Make me stop. You can’t imagine the pain I’m in
.

She couldn’t breathe. Had she brought Nanao’s knife? It must be here, somewhere near her hand. Her fingers opened and then
closed around water, again and again, grasping desperately for something solid.

I
t was clear what had happened. She’d fallen asleep and drowned. Or slipped on the tiles, fallen in, and then drowned. He could
leave her in the bath where she’d died.

Apple was begging him to get out and save himself as he had before. He couldn’t go out and he couldn’t stay in the bathroom.
He hovered over the body, looking away then looking at her. She was still beautiful and she was still a liar.

He stepped out of the misty room into the bright corridor, closed the door and stopped. It all looked the same. Everything
had changed but you couldn’t see it. They would find her in the morning but there might be scratches on her skin, could be
bruises. His safety depended on whether or not anyone saw him enter the bathroom. Sam and his friend had been sitting on the
stairs as he passed, but they were arguing, again, and would never have noticed him.

Ralph went back into the bathroom and waited an hour or two. He sat beside the bath. It was strange to be so close to an empty
person. If he could just fill her up again, pump her back to life. He rocked on the floor with his knees up by his ears and
didn’t look at the bath. Perhaps she had been clever and escaped. He hadn’t pushed her so hard, after all. When he went out
of the room before, she could have crept out and hidden in the changing room, then slipped away when he returned. He couldn’t
have hurt her. He stood, looked at the bath as if waking up and realizing, gradually, that the horrors of the imagination
in sleep weren’t real. But she was there. Her face floated on the bath water’s surface like a water lily in a pond. There
was an intensity in her expression but of no particular kind or color. His arms and legs moved forward mechanically. He closed
her eyes to let her sleep.

Enough time passed. He carried her out of the bathroom, onto the deck. The door banged open in the wind and he had to force
it shut with his foot. She was heavy but he was strong. The problem was stopping her hands hurting as they dragged on the
ground. The air was so cold he was almost burning. It felt good, as if he were being scoured clean. He could hear nothing.
The noise of the sea was there but it was something that vibrated in his limbs, in the back of his head, not like a sound.

Ralph rested Nanao—no, she had no name—on the ferry’s edge for a moment. He didn’t look around to see if he was being watched;
there was nothing he could do now. He was sorry that she would be so cold and wished he had dressed her again, just to give
her a little warmth. He cupped his hands and blew into them to give himself courage. Then with one movement, he pushed her
over. There was no splash though the drop was far, no opening up of the water to swallow her. She’d gone. The sea hadn’t changed
and there was nothing left of her on the boat. Ralph was alone, as before. Perhaps he was meant to be alone forever.

He turned back, walked toward his cabin, met no one. He was safe. The girl was a nobody with a stolen passport. Who would
know she was missing? If someone did, how would they report it? Which name would they give? The lights in the corridor were
weak now. He walked, bumping slightly from side to side as the boat tilted. It would be strange to walk on dry land again.
Sam was sleeping, snoring loudly. His bruised arm hung over the edge of the bunk. Ralph changed quietly into his pyjamas and
slipped under the blanket. Sam didn’t stir.