Читать книгу A Certain Mr. Takahashi - Ann Ireland - Страница 7

Jean steps down the precarious log stairway along the cliff face, reaching at one point for a non-existent handrail. Not built yet. She nearly hurtles into the darkness of watery cold Juan de Fuca Strait before regaining balance. She sits on a step and pauses for breath and nerve.

The sea air is almost too pungent, piercing her nostrils way back into her head.

She thinks of calling Colette’s name. The dark is suddenly frightening. She has left the range of the coach lamps and the fluorescent bug-zappers mounted on poles in the garden.

She cups a hand to her mouth and cries a wolf wail — “Ow-owww”—then holds her breath and waits, her ears filling with the racket of crickets and the rhythmic slap of waves.

“Ow-owwww”: the answering call from below. Again Jean lets one go, full-throated and animal proud, and slips down the remaining steps, one after the other, on her behind.

She wobbles to her feet on the final step.

A tall, slim shape is pressed flat against the shoreline, the posture so familiar Jean could sketch its silhouette without looking. She waits until she feels the sureness of sand beneath her feet and nearly speaks. But a flurry of words screams through her head like a flock of birds, knocking her off balance again. She strains at the darkness, hoping to be masked a while longer.

The shape moves toward her, soundless over sand. Suddenly Jean is wrapped in an embrace so tight that sea and sky disappear and she’s a small rock surrounded by a wiry starfish. She can feel her tears wet Colette’s shoulder, and her ears, blocked since the plane’s descent, pop at last. A rush of clear warm sound pumps in, and she can hear the roar in her veins, a sound like the sea, only higher.

“Come and sit on my rock,” says Colette.

She leads them to a stone platform, far enough from water so they won’t get wet, yet near enough so the largest waves peter out inches away, leaving a clogged outline of silt and seaweed. Jean perches cross-legged, scraping her knee against the remains of an oyster.

“When did you get here?” She hugs herself, chilly now that Colette has pulled away.

“Early morning.”

“You must be beat.”

“I am.”

The sea fills up the silence.

I saw you with him, she begins numbly. But even thinking the words causes a swell of nausea. There will be a reply and explanations, descriptions, and reasons drawn. Too clearly. So she finds herself bone-silent again. When she leans forward something invisible presses tautly against her belly.

“Your hair looks good,” she offers.

It’s been cut short and sticks up straight like a hairbrush.

Colette runs her fingers through it. “You don’t think it looks too butch?”

“Naaah.”

They are silent, each monitoring the other’s shallow breathing.

Last winter, Colette came to New York to visit. Jean had cleared the weekend and planned it start to finish-but Colette wanted to go off on her own. She’d leave the apartment dressed in something she’d just bought on West Broadway, something with wide shoulders, and not come back till early morning. She said she needed to explore on her own, find her own piece of the city. Only on the final night did they curl up on the sofa over steaming mugs of cocoa, Colette pale from lack of sleep, and talk like old times. Colette spoke of Nelson, whom she intended to marry. “What if he’s the wrong guy?” she kept asking, then started to laugh. “You’re supposed to know, Jean.” No wonder she was confused, with Yoshi just left in some penthouse apartment, towel wrapped around his waist, smooth chest glistening with sweat.

Colette reaches into an inner pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“Good for you.”

Jean watches as Colette inhales, only the lit tip visible in the darkness. Her movements are as natural as if she needed the smoke for breathing. She looks like a young guerilla, darkly handsome like the Middle-Eastern soldiers on the six o’clock news. Does Yoshi find her exotic? Innocent?

“Did you get a chance to look at the garden?” asks Colette.

“A little. It was nearly dark when I arrived. What do you think of the house?”

“I like it,” says Colette. “Hopelessly bourgeois, of course—but it’s got style. It’s like one of those Mobius strips: the outside’s inside and the inside’s outside.”

Jean nods. Maybe she should smoke. It looks so intense and reflective.

“What do you make of the secret announcement?” she asks. “Dad just smiles and taps his pipe.”

“I know,” snorts Colette. “We’re supposed to keep guessing. But I’m not that curious.”

“Neither am I,” says Jean quickly, then adds, “Maybe they’re going to announce that after all these years they’re not married and we’re illegitimate—”

“And now that they’re getting older they’ve decided to tie the knot,” completes Colette. “Not bad. Dad just became a Canadian citizen.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“I only found out by chance. He’s so damn secretive — and ashamed.” “Ashamed?”

“For capitulating after all these years.”

“Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“You’re away.”

“So are you!”

“Not so far.” Colette curls one leg under the other.

Jean begins to feel a new wave of resentment. Sucked in already. That familiar sensation that they’re all so fragile, a nest of thin-shelled eggs under attack.

“Have you missed me?” asks Colette suddenly. The cigarette drops to the ground.

“What a question!” Jean means to leave it at that.

But Colette’s eyes remain fixed on her, daring her. Now she could say something. Colette is aching to confess, begging for it. Any simple line will do-“Have you seen ’Him’ lately?”

No. Why should she make it easy?

“I always miss you,” says Jean. Her tone is stiff as new skates. “I’m always looking and can’t believe you’re not in the next room. Isn’t that silly?”

“Not silly at all.” Colette looks away.

They listen to the low crash of waves. Jean’s head buzzes with excitement.

“Yoshi’s going to be in Vancouver,” she announces. She doesn’t dare look at her sister.

“That’s right,” says Colette carefully. “For a record signing.”

“Are we going?”

“Going where?”

“To see him, of course.”

“No.”

“Why not?” She’s pressing in now, cornering her.

Colette seems to decide. “I don’t think we should dig up the past. Let it lie. We’re different people now. So’s he.”

“Exactly why it would be interesting.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” accuses Colette.

“Understand what?” Jean fakes innocence.

Instead of replying Colette slips off the rock. “Let’s go up to the house and make some tea. It’s getting late.”

Jean follows Colette’s rapid tread up the rickety log stairway. It’s a fast pace in the darkness, and Jean has to hurry just to keep her sister’s outline firmly in sight.

“How’s Nelson?” asks Jean, spooning honey into the steaming mug.

“Fine. As usual.”

They are sitting in the breakfast nook. The house is quiet at last. Girdling the kitchen wall is a belt of copper pots, shining like armour. Jutting up the centre is a giant butcher block armed with knives and cleavers in descending order of size. It has taken ten minutes to locate the tea kettle.

“What’s he working at these days?”

“He’s still with the Third World Echo.” Colette pauses and takes a sip from the mug. “They’ve made him editorin-chief.”

“And are you still working for them?”

“I am”-Colette puffs out her chest-“Circulation Director, Community Liaison Officer, and Production Manager of the Third World Echo.”

“No kidding!”

“It’s not a big operation,” allows Colette. “Our subscription base is maybe three thousand, and we do another thou at newsstands.”

“Didn’t you once say they tapped your phone?” says Jean. “Have you been raided?”

“No,” scoffs Colette. “We’re not threatening, yet. But Nelson’s got ambitions. He’d like to try controlled circulation—like Homemaker’s.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“Not at all. Just because it’s never been tried … Anyway,” Colette finishes lamely, “we’ll see.”

“Why didn’t he come?”

“What-out here?” Colette looks astonished.

“Is that so outlandish?”

“God, yes. He’d feel trapped. He married me, not the whole family.”

“Sure, but—”

“We’re not a couple that does everything together, if that’s what you mean.”

Jean didn’t mean anything in particular, so she just nods.

Picture of Nelson with his goatee, then later the bushy Castro beard and bandanna. Flash of Nelson (from a recent Polaroid snapped at Colette’s twenty-third birthday) shaved clean with cropped hair and a dreamboat smile. Always facing directly into the camera, radiating white teeth and confidence.

“What about you?” asks Colette. She reaches her hand across the table and touches Jean’s. “New York still agrees with you?”

“I like it there,” admits Jean, pulling back. “It surprises me that simply living in a place creates a life — a home.”

“Really?” Colette looks unconvinced. “Of course, you’re going to school still— ”

Jean takes a deep breath, sets the mug on the table, and looks her sister in the eye.

“No, I’m not. I’ve quit music!”

It’s the first time she’s spoken the words aloud. How certain they sound!

Colette starts. “What are you talking about?”

“I just couldn’t do it any more.” Jean cracks the table with the heel of her hand. The sound echoes in the big room. “Everything started to seem silly. A hundred grown men and women following scores as if they didn’t have a thought in their heads. Audiences that don’t listen then stand up at the end and demand an encore. I can’t believe in it.”

Colette strains backward in her chair, away from the pounding hand.

“Most of all, it’s me. I’ve gotten so the cello makes me physically sick. If I hear it on the radio I run to turn it off. It makes me puke. It’s like I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along, for the wrong reasons.”

“What wrong reasons?”

Colette’s voice is level, but her face has suddenly paled.

“Let me tell you the picture I’ve had in my head all these years,” continues Jean urgently. “I see myself, dressed in black, walking across a stage to thunderous applause. A short bow, then-then I sink into the cello, wrap myself around it so there’s nothing between me and the music-until the last note.” Jean swoops her bow arm into the air, almost slugging Colette. “When suddenly I realize where I am. There’s a breathless silence then — boom. Tremendous applause. I stand up, bow once, then glide off-stage.”

Colette eyes her curiously. “What’s wrong with that picture?”

“What’s wrong is that I’ve depended on it for ten years. It was Paradise. I thought I had it!” Jean feels herself toppling down some hill, her feet struggling to meet the incline.

“Now the whole act disgusts me! It’s so self-indulgent. I used to think I was working for the higher cause. Music.” Jean spits out the word. “I think I was just obsessed by the glory of penitence, like those obscure orders of nuns who still sleep on beds of nails—I thought someone cared. No one cares!”

Colette stares at her sister with an expression of bewilderment. “This just doesn’t sound like you. You were always so sure. I was certain you’d make it-out of blind obstinacy if nothing else.”

“ ‘Make it,’ ” repeats Jean wryly. “There’s nothing to ’make’ any more, nowhere I want to go.” She leans heavily into the chair. “The worst of it is, even though I know this new understanding is wisdom, I wish to hell I hadn’t lost the original picture. I like it better. I want it back.”

“Well,” says Colette and pauses. She looks around the room at the posters of Switzerland, London, and China.

“Maybe you need to do something else for a while. Take a rest.”

“I am,” insists Jean. “And it’s worse!” She stares accusingly at her sister. “It just makes me realize that I’ve been feeding a fat, grotesque lie.”

Colette’s mouth forms a cautious “O”.

She’s trying to figure how much I know, thinks Jean. It’s killing her.

“Guess what,” she says, more to herself than Colette. “Years ago, Sam said something that made me angry. It was when I announced I was going to study music in New York. She said, ’Take other courses, too. Learn about philosophy and literature and politics. Don’t become a cowboy musician, with nothing but noise on your mind.’ She was right.” Jean pauses. “But boy is it scary. I feel like I’ve been tossed off a moving boat without a life preserver.”

“You know how to swim,” says Colette with a slight smile. Then she makes a scraping sound with her chair.

“It’s late,” she says. “I’m going to bed.”

“Bed?” Jean is taken aback.

“We can continue the discussion later.” Colette yawns loudly. “But right now I’m dead tired.”

Jean continues to stare at her.

“Do you have a watch?” asks Colette. “Nanji des’ka?”

Automatically, Jean pulls back her sleeve. The words

come to her. “Sanji jippun mae,” she says, counting it out.

Colette grins triumphantly. She presses a hand against the dimmer switch until there is only the blue glow from the stove’s pilot light.

Their room is at the end of the hall. Two sleeping bags are neatly spread on the floor. On each is a pillow and a toothbrush, still in its package.

They undress in the dark and slip into the bags.

“Jean?”

“Mmmm?”

“You haven’t seen Yoshi in New York, have you?” The voice is carefully offhand.

Jean is alert. “Only once. Why?”

“When?”

“I’m sure I told you.” Jean waits a beat. “He played at Carnegie Hall the first spring I was there.” A short silence.

“You didn’t go backstage, did you?”

“No. I was with someone.”

And I wouldn’t go without you, Jean adds silently. She listens for further questions from the dark, but there is nothing, only the steady breathing of someone pretending to sleep.

Why didn’t I go? The part about being with someone is a lie. If Colette had seen him down there on the stage half a mile away-a black-and-white dot poised over the miniature Steinway-she would understand. I applauded with the rest of the audience. It was an evening of Chopin. It was sad; I didn’t know this man, there was no connection. Perhaps, if Colette had been there with me … I thought. Like the times we waited until the concert was over, counting off movements until the climax, which was seeing his larger-than-life figure standing outside the dressing-room, elated but tired.

Once, when he was playing the Emperor Concerto at a student concert, a young man no one had heard of was conducting. We sat on the hard seats of the second balcony, a dollar a shot, waiting for intermission so we could sneak down to the more expensive seats above the keyboard.

The concert seemed long, and Yoshi kept trying to hurry it up during the solo parts. When it was over we whipped backstage and beamed, “It was great, Yoshi!”

He scowled. “It was hor-rible,” he said, savouring the word. “So-o boring. I couldn’t believe that guy. You know we take eight minutes more than we are supposed to.”

When he saw our discomfort, the scowl became a “what-can-you-do?” grin, and he guided us down the hallway with an arm slung over a shoulder of each of us. Yoshi and us.

“You have to carry me,” he said, suddenly going limp. Giggling, we supported his body, all 130 pounds, out the door onto Victoria Street.

“We go and have supper,” he declared, suddenly reactivated. “Is that a good idea?”

“Sure,” we chorused. We didn’t tell him we’d already had a full meal at home.

I’ve never been backstage at Carnegie Hall. You probably need a special pass.