Those nights, I open Sensei’s briefcase and peer inside. The blank empty space unfolds, containing nothing within. It holds nothing more than an expanse of desolate absence.
All translation is mistranslation. But maybe there should be a second part to that phrase. All conversation is misunderstanding. I think about the discrepancies that will always exist in the gaps between languages whenever I go anywhere outside Japan, anywhere where Japanese, my native language, isn’t spoken. But even when I use my native language, the same thing does apply. All language is misunderstanding. In degrees.
That’s why I left the apartment. Out on the street, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the only one here, that I wasn’t the only one feeling lonely. But this wasn’t the kind of thing you could tell just by looking at a passerby. The harder I tried to see, the less sure I was.
It was as if everyone doled themselves out in such small portions. Never completely open, not all at once.
It grows because you tend it.′ This was a phrase often repeated by my great-aunt when she was alive. ‘That’s how love is,’ she used to say. ‘If the love is true, then treat it the same way you would a plant – feed it, protect it from the elements – you must do absolutely everything you can. But if it isn’t true, then it’s best to just let it wither on the vine.
Is that what you called benevolence? With Sensei, his benevolent nature seemed to originate from his sense of fair-mindedness. It wasn’t about being kind to me; rather, it was born from a teacherly attitude of being willing to listen to my opinion without prejudice. I found this considerably more wonderful than him just being nice to me.
I had screwed up. Grown-ups didn’t go around blurting out troublesome things to people. You couldn’t just blithely disclose something that would then make it impossible to greet them with a smile the next day.
That was the decision of a lifetime.
The idea... was slightly off-putting, but once I’ve started drinking, not much can stop me, so I went along.
For the first time in ages, we had a no-gravity alert. ‘This is the Disaster Preparedness Office speaking. We have been informed that there is an eighty per cent chance that a no-gravity event will take place between two and five o’clock this afternoon. Please remain indoors during those hours. If you must go out for reason, please make sure you are well weighted down. This has been a message from the Disaster Preparedness Office.
He tried to convince them that, since he was already in his late forties, their marriage might be more of a tea-drinking relationship.
Even the smallest hole is enough to send a balloon spiraling to the ground. The falsification of memory is like that. All it takes is one individual who remembers the truth, said Romi, for the whole edifice to collapse.
People have the right to fall in love, but not the right to be loved.
My wife was the kind of person who didn’t think things through. She just loved the things she loved, and hated the things she hated.
It is hard to be ordinary. Extraordinary things abound. But the extraordinary usually can’t be sustained. Sooner or later, it breaks. Beyond the break it is easy. Keeping it ordinary is hardest of all.
Of course, everyone has a touch of madness in them. In fact, there’s something frightening about a person who isn’t a little crazy.
Not once did he ever bring up anything of consequence. Then again, there aren’t many things in this world that are really of any consequence. Perhaps there are none at all.
Abandoned houses stand empty, foreboding, for a decade or so, but if they are left longer than that, they begin anew, they are reborn as living things.
I hadn’t known that he felt the same way. By the time I found out, my feelings had already been oddly distorted, squashed down into the furthest reaches of my heart.
We could go anywhere at all, as long as I’m with you.
He had underestimated me. All along. Even though I had not underestimated him. But, how do you love someone without blinding yourself? Don’t we all have to indulge each other, let our guard down, and -ever so slightly- lower ourselves, in order to love someone?