‘So what was it like?’

Satoko had held back the inevitable question for the most commendable length of time, and Seiji was thankful.

Now, as she placed the miso soup in the customary position on the table, he paused to think. There was a shrimp in the soup, not quite a prawn, but with feelers long enough to keep it afloat against the side of the bowl. Its shrivelled black eyes and their curious angle on him seemed to demand that he give her question due consideration. But he was angry about something, and he could not say what. Don’t take it out on her, the shrimp accused him.

‘Why did you put a shrimp in the miso?’ he said, aware too late that his words sounded a little harsh.

‘Oh, I thought it would make a change.’

It certainly did that, he thought, but he said nothing.

‘Now, what about England? What was it like?’

‘The rooms are very large.’

He looked around their own small, simple back room, and felt comforted.

‘Well, I know that, Seiji. But what was it like in the streets, the people ...’

She stopped when she noticed him staring at the sliding door to the bedroom.

‘What is it?’

‘The door. Has it been changed?’

‘Changed?’

‘It’s closer, I’m sure.’

‘You mean the room’s smaller?’

‘I didn’t say that. How can that be? But the door seems closer, or thicker.’

Satoko laughed, an unusually strong laugh for her, and he did his best not to ponder on it.

The laugh, however, led him to focus on her face. He thought she was wearing make-up. But she never wore make-up, not even at their wedding so long ago.

He was tired, she could see that, surely.

But she would not let him off so easily.

‘Can’t you see it’s just the effect of being in a European country for the first time?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he replied, mustering a smile he did not quite believe in.

He could do that, though, for Satoko. He had known no other woman. They’d had no other partners and married at the age of eighteen.

‘England is not so unlike Japan, really.’ He was becoming enthusiastic. ‘It is an island.’

‘Yes.’

‘It can be quite humid.’

‘Yes.’

‘It rains a lot, and people talk about the weather incessantly.’

‘Yes.’

‘And though we ourselves do not possess many gardens per capita, we share a similar fascination and respect for flora of all kinds.’

‘I see,’ Satoko interrupted. ‘But the people, the people. How did you find them?’

‘They are most polite, but do strange things such as holding the door open for complete strangers!’

She laughed again that harsh, cough-like laugh.

‘But the rooms are too large, and too draughty, with enormous windows, and sometimes it’s possible to look straight into the life of a family. You can see everything.’

‘They don’t draw their curtains?’ Satoko’s words rushed out of her.

In the London suburb where he had stayed those past two months, he had looked into the living room of a house in the neighbourhood. It was evening, but still light. It was pleasant to return from work when it was not yet dark. What slowed him down and demanded his attention on these evenings, however, was not so much the spacious interiors of the living room and the tasteful furniture; it was, rather, the sight of a young girl of perhaps eight or nine. She was unmistakably Asian, and most probably Japanese if he could judge from the parents and a younger brother who occasionally flitted in and out of the room. It was most disconcerting. She sat at a desk placed right against the window, lit from above by an anglepoise lamp.

‘Seiji.’

Without his noticing it, Satoko had brought more dishes, this time cooked pink salmon.

‘Cooked?’

It was his turn to laugh.

‘What is it?’

‘I’ve been talking for so long about how I missed sashimi, and ...’

Satoko’s head drooped slightly.

‘I’m sorry. It looks delicious. You’ve never cooked salmon before.’

When she looked up, he saw for certain that she was wearing make-up. She had, in those few short seconds, managed to cry, and now two narrow parallel lines were running down each cheek. What was he to make of it? She cried so often.

‘When did you bring it anyway. Did I fall asleep?’

‘I brought it straight through from the kitchen, darling. You’re tired. You should sleep.’

He looked at the door to the kitchen.

Like that leading to the bedroom, he thought it was unreasonably close, as if this might explain the alacrity with which Satoko had appeared with the food. Suddenly, he heard unfamiliar sounds from the flat above theirs, and his eyes locked with Satoko’s as if they were criminals caught in the act.

‘The Tanakas have had a baby. Isn’t that wonderful?’ He held himself back from remarking that that was what she always said, a habit which in his opinion devalued the event of any individual significance.

‘Yes, it is marvellous,’ he agreed grudgingly.

What would their baby have looked like? he speculated, not for the first time. He had always maintained that their child would one day appear. Every unborn child was already there in a small room, simply waiting for the door to be unlocked. It was a matter of finding the right way in, purely that. And it was on another balmy evening in London that a door had begun to open, at least partly. As he approached the house where the Japanese girl lived, he had looked up and seen her studying away just as hard as schoolchildren were reputed to do in his own country. This time, however, he caught her eye. It had happened before, of course, but she had never acknowledged it. He had assumed that she was as cold and sullen as so many English adolescents he had come across. But how strange that the girl at the window had grown. She was now thirteen. It must be her sister. But she had waved!

I bet your name is Eiko, he said to himself, half-believing she could hear these words. Then the idea occurred to him.

This time he remembered Satoko taking away the dishes, but drifted off again. He was awakened by her gentle tugging at his arm and by the familiar sound of a sliding door being closed.

She had heated up the sake and was pouring it from the flask into his glass.

‘Did you just close the door?’ he enquired matter-of-factly.

She smiled.

‘Seiji. I have been sitting here for five minutes!’ Her look of amused patience suddenly reminded him.

‘Of course, I forgot the present.’

‘Present?’

‘Don’t pretend you weren’t expecting one,’ he joked.

‘What present would you buy for me?’

He could not tell from the tone of her voice if she was being mock-serious or was genuinely puzzled. Had he forgotten how well he knew his own wife? He did know her well, didn’t he?

He handed over the wrapped present and watched her carefully undo it, folding each layer neatly and putting it aside as if she were undressing a very young child.

‘Oh, Seiji, why do you have to make so many layers?’ Her exasperation was obviously an act.

‘Just keep going.’

He was afraid. Would she appreciate it? Wasn’t it crazy to remind her of the past. Or the non-past? She pulled the present away from the third and final layer of wrapping to find a small, inlaid box not much larger than her own palm.

‘Oh, Seiji, it’s a trick box like any you can buy in Japan.’

‘Yes, but it was given to me in England.’

‘From whom?’

‘Open it and look.’ He thought he was doing very well controlling his exasperation.

It had been only a few days before he left England. He was passing by the house again, and finally he caught another glimpse of the girl. Only now she was most definitely much older. Could his eyes have deteriorated so much, stressful as it must be for them at such an age to take in so many new and different sights?

Anyway, he had decided. He pushed open the garden gate, which he had expected to be bolted from the inside, and it gave easily. He saw her head turn curiously but non-commitally, like a cat’s, as he came up to the door.

He did not ring, only looked at the eighteen-year-old Japanese girl sitting at the window. Finally, she got up, disappeared from view, and reappeared at the front door.

‘I ... I’m sorry.’ He spoke in Japanese. It would have been silly to try any other language, though she probably spoke fluent English.

‘I find it most difficult to explain,’ he continued. ‘I have the feeling that I have seen you before.’

She bowed her head slightly, more in acknowledgement of his embarrassment than as a traditional form of greeting, he suspected.

‘My wife and I, we are childless, and I know it may seem extremely odd, but I have always felt that she ... there was a stillbirth you see, continues to grow ...’

He stopped. He had to stop, or she would surely become frightened. Yet how could he adequately explain himself?

‘I wondered if I might take back with me a small memento, a photograph perhaps?’

She said only, ‘Please wait.’

Very soon, she came back with a slim box which slid open from the side to reveal a black and white photograph of herself taken perhaps at the age of twelve. It was extraordinary. He had not been hallucinating. Her features were an almost exact combination of Satoko’s and his own, her small eyes and near-perfect teeth, his nose and chin.

It was his last communication of any kind with the girl. He did not even dare to look back or go the same way again his last evening in case the whole thing did indeed prove to be his imagining.

Once more he heard the heavy dragging of a sliding door, this time almost as if it were coming from inside his head.

Satoko was looking into the shallow drawer of the box. Holding it horizontally, she shifted towards her a thin panel set into one side of the box, revealing an otherwise secret groove; this action usually ensured that the hidden contents would appear. She repeated the motion several times, but there was no photograph.

‘Oh, Seiji. This is enough. Is there something or not?’

‘You mean you didn’t see it?’

He must have been looking away or drifting off again. She had found the photograph, and, overcome with grief, secreted it on her person somewhere.

‘You have tricked me,’ he said bitterly.

‘Seiji, what are you talking about? You’re tired, I’m sure.’

Again, a door slid across, as if it were right between the two of them. But how could that be?

‘I only wanted to show you something beautiful, what our daughter would have been like. I wanted to do something good for you.’

‘You have always done good things for me, Seiji.’ Her voice was distant, or covered, now. It was coming from the other side of something. Yet he could see her wonderful, small eyes in front of him.

‘You are tired. You must sleep.’

‘What did you say? Satoko, I love you. Do you know that?’

‘Good night, Seiji.’

Good night.

####

Brian Howell lives and teaches in Japan. He has been publishing stories since 1990. Publications include Critical Quarterly, Panurge, Stand (Sept. 2000), and Neonlit: The Time Out Book of New Writing Vol.1.

He has a novel coming out from The Toby Press in their next list ('Midrash', Spring 2002) based on the life of Jan Vermeer entitled The Dance of Geometry available on Amazon.com.

You can reach Brian at brian@suzuki.email.ne.jp