6

Inheriting Property

Inquiry on Jellyfish Something Like a Sense of Detachment I sat in the dark. Far above me, like a sign of something, floated the perfect half-moon of light given shape by the well cap. And yet none of the light from up there managed to find its way to the bottom.

As time passed, my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness. Before long, I could just barely make out the shape of my hand if I brought it close to my face. Other things around me began slowly to take on their own dim shapes, like timid little animals letting down their guard in the most gradual stages imaginable. As much as my eyes became used to it, though, the darkness never ceased to be darkness. Anything I tried to focus on would lose its shape and burrow its way soundlessly into the surrounding obscurity. Perhaps this could be called pale darkness, but pale as it might be, it had its own particular kind of density, which in some cases contained a more deeply meaningful darkness than perfect pitch darkness. In it, you could see something. And at the same time, you could see nothing at all.

Here in this darkness, with its strange sense of significance, my memories began to take on a power they had never had before. The fragmentary images they called up inside me were mysteriously vivid in every detail, to the point where I felt I could grasp them in my hands. I closed my eyes and brought back the time eight years earlier when I had first met Kumiko. It happened in the family members waiting room of the university hospital in Kanda. I had to be in the hospital almost every day back then, to see a wealthy client concerning the inheritance of his property. She was coming to the hospital every day between classes in order to tend to her mother, who was there for a duodenal ulcer. Kumiko would wear jeans or a short skirt and a sweater, her hair in a ponytail. Sometimes she would wear a coat, sometimes not, depending on the early-November weather. She had a shoulder bag and always carried a few books that looked like university texts, plus some kind of sketch pad.

The afternoon of the very first day I went to the hospital, Kumiko was there, sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed, wearing black low-heeled shoes and concentrating on a book. I sat opposite her, checking my watch every five minutes until the time for the interview with my client, which had been moved back an hour and a half for some reason that had not been shared with me. Kumiko never raised her eyes from the book. She had very nice legs. Looking at her helped to brighten my spirits somewhat. I found myself wondering what it must feel like to have such a nice (or at least extremely intelligent) face and great legs.

After we had seen each other in the waiting room several times, Kumiko and I began to share small talk-exchanging magazines we had finished reading, or eating fruit from a gift basket someone had brought her mother. We were incredibly bored, after all, and we needed someone our own age to talk to.

Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.

Soon I found myself dissatisfied with the choppy little conversations we were fitting in between other things in the hospital area. I kept wishing I could meet her somewhere else, so that we could really talk to each other for a change. Finally, one day, I decided to ask her for a date.

I think both of us could use a change of air, I said. Lets get out of here and go someplace else-where there arent any patients or clients.

Kumiko gave it some thought and said, The aquarium?

And so the aquarium is where we had our first date. Kumiko brought her mother a change of clothes that Sunday morning and met me in the hospital waiting room. It was a warm, clear day, and Kumiko was wearing a simple white dress under a pale-blue cardigan. I was always struck by how well she dressed even then. She could wear the plainest article of clothing and manage, with the roll of a sleeve or the curl of a collar, to transform it into something spectacular. It was a knack she had. And I could see that she took care of her clothing with an attention bordering on love. Whenever I was with her, walking beside her, I would find my- self staring in admiration at her clothes. Her blouses never had a wrinkle. Her pleats hung in perfect alignment. Anything white she wore looked brand-new. Her shoes were never scuffed or smudged. Looking at what she wore, I could imagine her blouses and sweaters neatly folded and lined up in her dresser drawers, her skirts and dresses in vinyl wrappers hanging in the closet (which is exactly what I found to be the case after we were married).

We spent that first afternoon together in the aquarium of the Ueno Zoo. The weather was so nice that day, I thought it might be more fun to stroll around the zoo itself, and I hinted as much to Kumiko on the train to Ueno, but she had obviously made up her mind to go to the aquarium. If that was what she wanted, it was perfectly all right with me. The aquarium was having a special display of jellyfish, and we went through them from beginning to end, viewing the rare specimens gathered from all parts of the world. They floated, trembling, in their tanks, everything from a tiny cotton puff the size of a fingertip to monsters more than three feet in diameter. For a Sunday, the aquarium was relatively uncrowded. In fact, it was on the empty side. On such a lovely day, anybody would have preferred the elephants and giraffes to jellyfish.

Although I said nothing to Kumiko, I actually hated jellyfish. I had often been stung by jellyfish while swimming in the ocean as a boy. Once, when swimming far out by myself, I wandered into a whole school of them. By the time I realized what I had done, I was surrounded. I never forgot the slimy, cold feeling of them touching me. In the center of that whirlpool of jellyfish, an immense terror overtook me, as if I had been dragged into a bottomless darkness. I wasnt stung, for some reason, but in my panic I gulped a lot of ocean water. Which is why I would have liked to skip the jellyfish display if possible and go to see some ordinary fish, like tuna or flounder.

Kumiko, though, was fascinated. She stopped at every single tank, leaned over the railing, and stayed locked in place as if she had forgotten the passage of time. Look at this, shed say to me. I never knew there were such vivid pink jellyfish. And look at the beautiful way it swims. They just keep wobbling along like this until theyve been to every ocean in the world. Arent they wonderful?

Yeah, sure. But the more I forced myself to keep examining jellyfish with her, the more I felt a tightness growing in my chest. Before I knew it, I had stopped replying to her and was counting the change in my pocket over and over, or wiping the corners of my mouth with my handkerchief. I kept wishing we would come to the last of the jellyfish tanks, but there was no end to them. The variety of jellyfish swimming in the oceans of the world was enormous. I was able to bear it for half an hour, but the tension was turning my head into mush. When, finally, it became too painful for me to stand leaning against the railing, I left Kumikos side and slumped down on a nearby bench. She came over to me and, obviously very concerned, asked if I was feeling bad. I answered honestly that looking at the jellyfish was making me dizzy.

She stared into my eyes with a grave expression on her face. Its true, she said. I can see it in your eyes. Theyve gone out of focus. Its incredible-just from looking at jellyfish! Kumiko took me by the arm and led me out of the gloomy, dank aquarium into the sunlight.

Sitting in the nearby park for ten minutes, taking long, slow breaths, I managed to return to a normal psychological state. The strong autumn sun cast its pleasant radiance everywhere, and the bone-dry leaves of the ginkgo trees rustled softly whenever the breeze picked up. Are you all right? Kumiko asked after several minutes had gone by. You certainly are a strange one. If you hate jellyfish so much, you should have said so right away, instead of waiting until they made you sick.

The sky was high and cloudless, the wind felt good, the people spending their Sunday in the park all wore happy expressions. A slim, pretty girl was walking a large, long-haired dog. An old fellow wearing a felt hat was watching his granddaughter on the swing. Several couples sat on benches, the way we were doing. Off in the distance, someone was practicing scales on a saxophone.

Why do you like jellyfish so much? I asked.

I dont know. I guess I think theyre cute, she said. But one thing did occur to me when I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but thats not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Dont you agree?

Two-thirds of the earths surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about whats underneath the skin.

We took a long walk after that. At five oclock, Kumiko said she had to go back to the hospital, so I took her there. Thank you for a lovely day, she said when we parted. There was a quiet glow in her smile that had not been there before. When I saw it, I realized that I had managed to draw a little closer to her in the course of the day-thanks, no doubt, to the jellyfish.

Kumiko and I continued to date. Her mother left the hospital without complications, and I no longer had to spend time there working on my clients will, but we would get together once a week for a movie or a concert or a walk. We drew closer to each other each time we met. I enjoyed being with her, and if we should happen to touch, I felt a fluttering in the chest. I often found it difficult to work when the weekend was drawing near. I was sure she liked me. Otherwise, she wouldnt see me every weekend.

Still, I was in no hurry to deepen my relationship with Kumiko. I sensed a kind of uncertainty in her. Exactly what it was I couldnt have said, but it would come out every now and then in her words or actions. I might ask her something, and a single breath would intervene before she answered-just the slightest hesitation, but in that split-second interval I sensed a kind of shadow.

Winter came, and then the new year. We went on seeing each other every week. I never asked about that something, and she never said a word. We would meet and go someplace and eat and talk about innocuous things.

One day I took a chance and said, You must have a boyfriend, dont you? Kumiko looked at me for a moment and asked, What makes you think so? Just a hunch, I said. We were walking through the wintry and deserted Shinjuku Imperial Gardens. What kind of hunch? I dont know. I get the feeling theres something you want to tell me. You should if you can. The expression on her face wavered the slightest bit-almost imperceptibly. There might have been a moment of uncertainty, but there had never been any doubt about her conclusion. Thanks for asking, she said, but I dont have anything that I want to make a special point of talking about.

You havent answered my question, though. About whether I have a boyfriend? Uh-huh. Kumiko came to a stop. Then she slipped her gloves off and put them into her coat pocket.

She took my gloveless hand in hers. Her hand was warm and soft. When I squeezed her hand in return, it seemed to me that her breaths grew smaller and whiter.

Can we go to your apartment now? she asked. Sure, I said, somewhat taken aback. Its not much of a place, though. I was living in Asagaya at the time, in a one-room apartment with a tiny kitchen and a toilet and a shower the size of a phone booth. It was on the second floor and faced south, overlooking a construction companys storage yard. That southern exposure was the apartments only good point. For a long time, Kumiko and I sat next to each other in the flood of sunlight, leaning against the wall.

I made love to her for the first time that day. It was what she wanted, I was sure. In a sense, it was she who seduced me. Not that she ever said or did anything overtly seductive. But when I put my arms around her naked body, I knew for certain that she had intended that this happen. Her body was soft and completely unresisting.

It was Kumikos first experience of sex. For a long time afterward, she said nothing. I tried several times to talk to her, but she made no reply. She took a shower, put her clothes on, and sat in the sunlight again. I had no idea what I should say to her. I simply joined her in the patch of sunlight and said nothing. The two of us edged along the wall as the sun moved. When evening came, Kumiko said she was leaving. I saw her home.

Are you sure you dont have something you want to say to me? I asked again in the train.

She shook her head. Never mind about that, she murmured.

I never raised the topic again. Kumiko had chosen to sleep with me of her own volition, finally, and if indeed she was keeping something inside that she was not able to tell me, this would probably be resolved in the course of time.

We continued our weekly dates after that, part of which now usually included stopping by my apartment for sex. As we held and touched each other, she began more and more to talk about herself, about the things she had experienced, about the thoughts and feelings these things had given her. And I began to understand the world as Kumiko saw it. I found myself increasingly able, too, to talk with Kumiko about the world as I saw it. I came to love her deeply, and she said she never wanted to leave me. We waited for her to graduate from college, and then we got married.

We were happy with our married life and had no problems to speak of. And yet there were times when I couldnt help but sense an area inside Kumiko to which I had no access. In the middle of the most ordinary-or the most excited-conversation, and without the slightest warning, she might sink into silence. It would happen all of a sudden, for no reason at all (or at least no reason I could discern). It was like walking along the road and suddenly falling into a pit. Her silences never lasted very long, but afterward, until a fair amount of time had gone by, it was as if she were not really there.

The first time I went inside Kumiko, I sensed a strange kind of hesitation. Kumiko should have been feeling only pain this first time for her, and in fact she kept her body rigid with the pain she was obviously experiencing, but that was not the only reason for the hesitation I seemed to feel. There was something oddly lucid there, a sense of separation, of distance, though I dont know exactly what to call it. I was seized by the bizarre thought that the body I was holding in my arms was not the body of the woman I had had next to me until a few moments earlier, the two of us engaged in intimate conversation: a switch had been pulled without my noticing, and someone elses flesh had taken its place. While I held her, my hands continued to caress her back. The touch of her small, smooth back had an almost hypnotic effect on me, and yet, at the same time, Kumikos back seemed to be somewhere far away from me. The entire time she was in my arms, I could have sworn that Kumiko was some- where else, thinking about something else, and the body I was holding was nothing but a temporary substitute. This might have been the reason why, although I was fully aroused, it took me a very long time to come.

I felt this way only the first time we had intercourse. After that, I felt her much closer to me, her physical responses far more sensitive. I convinced myself that my initial sense of distance had been the result of its being her first experience of sex.

Every now and then, while searching through my memories, I would reach out to where the rope ladder was hanging against the wall and give it a tug to make sure it hadnt come loose. I couldnt seem to shake the fear that it might simply give way at any moment. Whenever the thought struck me, down there in the darkness, it made me uneasy. I could actu- ally hear my own heart pounding. After I had checked a number of times-possibly twenty or thirty-I began to regain a measure of calm. I had done a good job of tying the ladder to the tree, after all. It wasnt going to come loose just like that.

I looked at my watch. The luminous hands showed it to be just before three oclock. Three p.m. I glanced upward. The half-moon slab of light was still floating there. The surface of the earth was flooded with blinding summer light. I pictured to myself a stream sparkling in the sunlight and green leaves trembling in the breeze. The light up there overwhelmed everything, and yet just below it, down here, there existed such a darkness. All you had to do was climb a little ways underground on a rope ladder, and you could reach a darkness this profound.

I pulled on the ladder one more time to be certain it was anchored firmly. Then I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. Eventually, sleep overtook me, like a gradually rising tide.