Parallel Rivers Read online

  “Look!” said my wife. “The field of colza flowers!”

  We gazed into the valley. We saw the field, I swear. And swallows diving. So many flowers; the children playing under the matsu tree there in the corner of the yellow field.

  “Matsu!” said my daughter.

  Ah!

  We knew exactly what she was seeing. That these moments might pass beyond our recall, I ache to think. Here we are, my family. And though my sister is coming from nowhere and going nowhere, even she participated in the magic. All day long my daughter, excited with travel, proud of her new knowledge, hardly ceased talking. They joked, she and her aunt, as they dressed for the ride to the village. Threw gloves and scarves at each other like devoted sisters released from their parents’ authority. Outside, the sun bounced off their goggles. Snow plumed from their roaring machines and then silence returned. Deer tracks led into the trees. Our lovemaking was slow, my wife smiling back at me, telling me this is not a dream, this is not a fantasy. When the two returned, I drank a little saki, they drank beer, and we nibbled sweet cakes and created the colza field as the sun went down. The women cooked miso, rice, and boiled tofu while I looked at the books in my room, touching each title to bring its tiny package of memories. We ate, then my daughter and my wife took turns reading passages from Yukiguni. Just as they did in the novel, we decided to spread our kimonos on the thick snow in front of the house tomorrow if the sun continued to shine.

  “We could dress warmly and open the doors and windows,” said my daughter.

  “Mmm,” said my wife and sister.

  “We could build a huge fire,” said my daughter.

  “Mmm!”

  Before they went to bed we listened to Miles Davis, “In a Silent Way.” I made them aware of the bird songs Miles Davis imitates in his solos. Now I’m alone with the music and black windows. My face there, a weak reflection across the table, these hands clasped on the paper. Soft female bodies breathing under goose down. The moon comes. Love is already here. A train in the distance. I’m a little worried for my sister. Tired in my bones.

  When I finally slept I took a disturbed journey of nightmares, each stop a violent wakening. I had chest pains, and this morning feel feverish, but I won’t mention it to the women; they have held on to yesterday’s mood and are gay, poking fun at me for sleeping so late. Their voices as I tried to rest sounded like geese. By the time I rose they had already laid out the kimonos on the snow, four shapes like crashed festival planes. I will be careful not to show my peevishness. But how inattentive and self-concerned they are! My daughter sets the tone with her mindless babblings, and the whole house seems populated with adolescents. I’m embarrassed when I think of my performance yesterday. We spent a good day, but I find I acted in an emotional, undignified manner, telling my 4500 yen fantasy, showing such enthusiasm last night, and now must suffer the unbridled giddiness I should never have encouraged. I can only try to overcome my low spirits by getting to work. I ask my daughter to carry my folding chair and blankets up to the old shrine in the woods. After eating I will spend the afternoon in the silence I have looked forward to all winter. They must not interrupt. I forbid them to use the skidoos or play music. If they want distraction they can go down to the village. My wife, it seems, thinks my words harsh, but as I explained to her, I have a project to complete, we had our celebration yesterday. After all, I did not invite them, and because of them I have lost one day.

  Nobody has been up here since the summer. In the years before I was married the family came regularly to celebrate the festivals. We would visit the shrine and pray. In the cold I’m reminded of those times, but I want to stop thinking of the past because it hurts, it gets between my eyes and the beauty of the place. A fox trotted by a moment ago. Smoke rises from the village, from individual fires no doubt, though it hangs in a dull cloud under the sky. I should have let my daughter make a fire in the brazier beside my chair; she wanted to. So at last I’m alone. The bird names come unbidden, write themselves on the paper in my lap. The binoculars nudge at my eyes, the trees slip by, a branch looses its snow. There are my tracks up, my daughter’s up and down. I can’t see the house from here. Sun in a clear sky. The blanket wrapped round my shoulders. She said I looked like an Apache Indian. I sip from the Thermos of saki. Warm belly, cold toes, white hills. The shrine, in sad need of repair, has been forgotten. Ancestors moved it from the village a long time ago, an enormous and expensive task. This present generation must not be interested in its significance, religious or historical. It’s not my responsibility; nor is it my position to pass judgement. I only visit a few days each year, usually in summer, less since my success in the computer industry. My sister, married, divorced, moves from city to city, job to job, writing letters that tear my heart they are so simple, so rigorous in sounding happy. I can’t help her. She will no longer confide in me; even though I more than contribute to her support; our eyes do not meet. She stays with family members all over Hokkaido. I only stand and smile, like yesterday, look at her, and bow. Return to my catalogue. I can do this: return to my birds that keep me from thinking of my work in the city and from wondering what is it like to be her. An unreasonable fury in me is spurred by her desperate need of family. I don’t know if fragility or strength lies beneath her shame. She has nowhere to go, and it’s too late for children. I remember our childhood prayers at this shrine. The surprise game. Her eyes so clear and full of promise. She loved her nephew from his birth till he was eight and in his little coffin. She loves my wife. She loves me. She carries shame and I carry anger. I bow and bow, and don’t know what it means or what I’m doing.

  My pen in falling has made a deep slash in the snow. Water drips from branches, polishing the decaying ice edges till they gleam, almost transparent beside the brown earth under the surrounding trees. Enough twigs for a fire. I could use paper from my pad, but have no matches. Where are the pheasants this year? It requires too much effort to unzip my camera bag, fit the long lens. Though this in the past has brought birds, even flocks. Curious magic.

  My wife approaches the shrine from the south along one of the overgrown paths. This traditional approach is foolish, it has meant she has had to cross diagonally in front of me from the house to the trees, then double back. The hem of her kimono is furred with white, her feet must be wet. She scoops snow from the chōzuya, touches it to her mouth, rubs her hands. I’m happy to see her, but will not show it. She claps her hands and, ignoring me for a moment, gazes at the shrine.

  “Tonight,” she tells me, “you must invoke baku to devour your nightmares.”

  “Um.” So she is aware I slept poorly.

  “I am sorry to disturb you. I will wait until you finish.” She stands patiently while I pretend to make a note, while I scan the valley with my binoculars. A rhythmic tock, like wood blocks, has started below in the village.

  I put down my pad. Motion her to come under the roof overhang. “I am concerned about my sister,” I say, as if I have summoned my wife up here to speak of this. “Do you know what she intends to do?”

  “No. She seemed upset before we arrived. She is happier here. I think she would like to stay. Do you want me to ask her?”

  This requires no answer. We will let enough silence pass, then she will tell me what she has come for.

  I shut my eyes against the bright sun. The wood block sound echoes around the valley. Otherwise nothing. I remember the bridge over the stream on the village road. The face of my son before he died. The one-armed monk at the funeral. My face mirrored in the window last night.

  “Our visit is not without a purpose. Your daughter has asked me to tell you that she has an opportunity to study in Canada.”

  “Does she want to live in Canada?”

  “There is a young man she mentions a great deal.”

  “You think she has fallen in love?”

  “The young man will not come to Japan. He’s an engineer. His father is an engineer with a company in Vancouver. She is too young
to marry.”

  “Did she ask you to tell me this?”

  “She speaks only of the necessity of learning in an English environment. She has slept with this young man.”

  “How do you know?”

  A cold wind rushes up the hill. Branches freed of their burdens spring into the air. A dusky thrush lands in the kabushi magnolia. I’m on a boat with my daughter in summer, drifting under the humpback bridge. My neck is stiff.

  “You are shivering,” I tell my wife. “Go back. Our daughter cannot return to Canada now. She must finish her education in Tokyo. In two years I may consider the matter again. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will say to her that this is what we have decided.”

  My wife shakes her head. “I think she will not listen to me. She knows how much I disapprove of her living away from Japan.”

  “Give me your hands.” Under my blanket her hands are frozen carp, dug from the ice one very cold winter when I was a child. I thought they would come back to life next to my skin. I slept with them all night, a bowl of water on the floor of my room for when they began to wriggle. In the morning the stink was everywhere, in every corner of the house. “Send her to me, then.”

  I smile. So she comes straight up from the house, my daughter. I’m certain her mother would have advised her to take the southern access if she wanted to have a propitious dialogue with me. Unbidden delight to see my only child. I give my attention to the thrush who has flown several times to other trees, but always returned to the magnolia. The bird has not uttered a note. I do not lower the binoculars when I hear my daughter move past me to stand at my back.

  “I’m waiting for the thrush to sing,” I say.

  She is breathing hard from the climb. I expect her immediately to start talking. She doesn’t.

  “I can tell you are angry. But look around. Listen to this peaceful place. You have every possibility of a good life. You must not go away, you must remain. I have given it thought. I assume you will not have a child. You must take responsibility for your life, show your gratitude, and choose a path in keeping with the design I have created for you. Afterward, in a few years, you may listen to your heart. Do not be like your unfortunate aunt, my unwashed sister, who does not know how to live, who will never learn, for whom it is too late.”

  I have stared so long toward the sun that when I turn she is a silhouette, and only slowly do I recognize my sister, standing just where my wife has stood.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry. I could not speak. I wanted to give this to you alone.” Into my lap she presses a box, which I hold out in one hand as she runs quickly away, slips and slides down the hill. I’m still gripping the box when she turns from the house and disappears behind the camellias lining the road to the village. A stone magatama, the curve that symbolizes love, an exquisite specimen. I shake myself from the blanket and stamp about the shrine. How could I not have known? The open box sits on the railing. An indictment. I wash my hands at the chōzuya, eat snow to rinse my mouth. I spoke nothing but the truth. Soon I have trampled the snow on two sides of the shrine. When I sit again I’m warmed. It looks as though a ceremony has taken place, a winter ceremony involving many people. I must concentrate. Again I begin to pace the sacred area. Ever since my experience on the train two days ago things have been unexpected and jarring. The passage of birds from one side of the valley to the other seems as pointless as symbolic love. What have I given? What have I received? It could not be a revelation to my sister that she is lost. She could have stayed with her husband. But what would she feel on hearing such words from me?

  “My unwashed sister.”

  The pain comes fast. Knocks me to the slush. I pull the chair close, manage to heave myself into it. What about my life, does no one care what happens to me? Must I decide everything for everyone? The smell of the carp, violence of separation, eroticism of the bleached wood of the shrine. The snow itself is defiled. I know my daughter will be next, up from the house, and I will try to guess which way she’ll come. What she will bring. What I will send her away with. Ah, I do not want us to cut at one another. I want my daughter to take me in her arms and carry me down, I want my wife to bathe me, my sister to dress me in the cold kimono, and the three to build that great fire so that all the village will see our family and know that we persist in love. I sit upright in the sun. It has moved barely an hour in the sky since I arrived. As white as a single knuckle. Water drips from my cuffs. Will no one understand I can’t let go of what I love? If I’m to die now I must prepare. Matsu. “In a Silent Way.” But the dream of violence, for which I will not pay, is as close and bright as the jewel on the railing. “O baku!” Wind rolls the smoke across the valley, the wood-block sound stops and the thrush begins to sing.

  PERFECT CRIMES

  Day

  EDDIE AND IRENE’S SON NIGEL WAS killed when he was ten, a month before his eleventh birthday, by a stray bullet from a shootout between a cornered drug dealer and two cops.

  All this happened a long time ago, Eddie thought as he woke up. “I used to believe silence was depression,” he said in the darkness of their bed. “But silence is the antidote to depression.” He was concentrating on not trembling, thinking how traffic was quieter now the trees were in full leaf. His back ached. “Irene?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I mean quiet like this. When we’re quiet together.”

  “I know.”

  “I was dreaming about him.”

  “Were you?”

  “Just now. Riding his new bike fast downhill. You were there, blaming me. Then I was fighting my father on a beach, the tide way out.”

  “It’s nearly dawn, Eddie. We’ve a lot to do. Let’s try and sleep. Please.”

  “I wish we could fool around. I can’t stop shaking.”

  “Let go, Eddie.”

  “It is quiet though, isn’t it? Quieter than usual?”

  “Never use power when you can use hand,” Eddie told his grandsons.

  “Why?” said their mother.

  “Eddie’s dad died in a chainsaw accident,” said Irene.

  “Gutted,” said Eddie. “Eviscerated. Bled to death.”

  The two boys leaned forward, eyes shining.

  “Eddie,” said Irene. “Don’t.”

  “It was the angle of the cut. Saw bucked. You wouldn’t believe it could happen. One minute it was in his hand, next minute — ”

  “Eddie!” said Irene.

  “That’s enough,” said Anna. “Boys, go get cleaned up. Your dad’ll be here soon and then we’ll eat.”

  The first weekend in July they always got together at the allotment for a picnic. The grey day was already darkening and it annoyed Eddie that both their children were late. He looked around at the kids, his daughter-in-law, his wife, and for a second didn’t know who they were.

  “Shit!” he said. “Where’s Winston?”

  “He had a mid-afternoon meeting with a client,” said Anna. “Remember? He sent me and the boys on ahead.”

  “Where’s Gabrielle? Isn’t it her turn to bring the food?”

  “She’s always late,” said Irene. “She was two weeks late being born, late home from school, kept every one of her boyfriends waiting.” She winked at Anna.

  Anna smiled. Eddie looked away. He played with his wheelchair brake. The barbecue coals he’d lit were almost gone.

  Then Pete’s Land Cruiser finally bounced in a spray of mud onto the new road and crunched to a stop; Winston’s Miata peeled in and parked alongside. Winston and Gabby and Peter and Robin jumped out, laughing. Winston hugged his sister and Robin and shook hands with Peter. Everyone ran around piling everything on the picnic table that Eddie had built ten years ago.

  Eddie squinted at the tops of the trees. It wasn’t quite raining but the sky was overcast.

  “They keep falling down,” Robin said.

  “What, sweetheart?” said Gabby.

  “My underpants.”

 
“They’re old that’s why. Why don’t you wear the new ones?”

  Eddie watched Gabby smiling at Winston as he showed off the new sports car to his niece who seemed shy and puzzled. Suddenly the sun was shining through a crack in the clouds on brother and sister, and the others seemed fainter, less defined, somehow integrated into their surroundings: Gab’s Peter, Win’s Anna, their limb-perfect, clear-eyed kids. The hill that used to shield the allotment had gone and the noise of highway traffic moaned like sea in a cave. Eddie blinked. He felt relieved, as though a weight had been taken from him. The dirty old creek flew sparkling out of a new culvert below the six lanes.

  “What I can’t understand,” he said, “is happiness. Is it the cart and I’m the horse, or the other way around?”

  “I want to go home,” said Robin.

  “Well you can’t,” said Gabby.

  “Why?”

  “Because this is what we do every year. We start the season by eating things we grow. I’m not telling you the whole thing again. Ask Grandad.”

  “I’m cold, Mom.”

  “Go see if the bees are flying. Go on. Run! Catch your cousins.”

  The three children chased along the stream and became small as anyone’s children in the distance. Peter and Win fiddled with the barbecue.

  “You’re broody,” said Anna to Eddie. “I bet you were a broody boy. I bet you were never happy.”

  “You’d lose that bet,” said Eddie. “My past was full of happiness.”

  “What past?” said Gabby.

  “My childhood. Most of it. Nearly all of it.”

  “Was it?” said Gabby.

  “Sure,” said Eddie. “Now you’re all here with me, looking back is pleasant.” He could feel his eyes begin to moisten.