A Tale for the Time Being (25 page)

“No,” she said. “It feels good. Don’t stop.”

I put some more soap on the washcloth and started moving it down the knobby curve of her spine. Like most old people, her spine was pretty stiff and twisted, but when she sat zazen, her posture
was perfectly upright. She didn’t say any more, and when I finished, I scooped a couple of basins of hot water from the tub and poured them over her back to rinse off the suds, and then I
swiveled around so she could start on mine. We took turns like that.

I waited. Old Jiko liked to take her time, and she was really good at it because she’d been practicing for so many years, so as a result, I was always waiting for her, and you’d
think that waiting would be annoying for a young person like me, but for some reason I didn’t mind. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do that summer. I sat there on my little
wooden stool, naked and hugging my knees and shivering, not from the cold but in anticipation of the scalding heat of the water, so when, instead, I felt her fingertip touch a small scar in the
middle of my back, I was startled. My body stiffened. The light was so dim, how could she see my scars with her bad eyes? I figured she couldn’t, but then I felt her finger move across my
skin in a pattern, hesitant, pausing here and there to connect the dots.

“You must be very angry,” she said. She spoke so quietly, it was like she was talking to herself, and maybe she was. Or maybe she hadn’t said anything at all, and I’d
just imagined it. Either way, my throat squeezed shut and I couldn’t answer, so I shook my head. I was so ashamed, but at the same time, this enormous feeling of sadness brimmed up inside me,
and I had to hold my breath to stop from crying.

She didn’t say anything else. She washed me gently, and for the first time I just wanted her to hurry up and finish. After we were done, I got dressed quickly and said good night and left
her there. I thought I was going to throw up. I didn’t want to go back to my room, so I ran halfway down the mountainside and hid in the bamboo forest until it got dark and the fireflies came
out. When Muji rang the big bell at the end of her fire watch to signal the end of the day, I snuck back into the temple and crawled into bed.

The next morning I went looking for old Jiko and found her in her room. She was sitting on the floor with her back to the door, bent over her low table. She was reading. I stood in the doorway
and didn’t even bother to go in. “Yes,” I told her. “I’m angry, so what?”

She didn’t turn around but I could tell she was listening so I went on, giving her an executive summary of my crappy life.

“So what am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can fix my dad’s psychological problems, or the dot-com bubble, or the lousy Japanese economy, or my so-called best friend in
America’s betrayal of me, or getting bullied in school, or terrorism, or war, or global warming, or species extinctions, right?”

“
So desu ne
,” she said, nodding, but keeping her back to me. “It’s true. You can’t do anything about those things.”

“So of course I feel angry,” I said, angrily. “What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you’re angry. I don’t need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that.”

“So why did you ask?”

Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me. “I asked for you,” she said.

“For me?”

“So you could hear the answer.”

Sometimes old Jiko talks in riddles, and maybe it’s because I spent so many years in Sunnyvale that I still have some trouble with the Japanese language, but this time, I think I got her
meaning. After that, I started telling her little things about what was going on in school and stuff, even when she didn’t ask. And as I talked, she just listened and made her juzu beads go
round and round the string, and I knew that every bead she moved was a prayer for me. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something.

<105
>
¹⁰⁶

That’s what she just texted me. That’s how old she says you have to be before your mind really grows up, but since she’s a hundred and four, I’m pretty sure she’s
joking.

1.

The power was out for four days, which was relatively brief for a winter blackout. During these outages, they could keep their computers and some appliances running, but only
if the generator was working, and only for as long as they had gas. When they ran out of gas, they could get more only if one of the two pumps on the island had its generator going, and if the
roads had been cleared of the trees that had brought down the power lines in the first place.

When their generator stopped working, the well pump stopped, too, so they ran out of water. Indoor toilets, running hot water, baths, electric lights—after four days, these seemed like
unimaginable luxuries from another age and planet.

“Welcome to the future,” Oliver said. “We’re on the cutting edge.”

Ruth moved through the house in a darkened, kerosene-scented dream, listening to the pounding of the rain and the groan of the wind. Inside, without the constant ambient humming of fans and
compressors, the house was quiet and still. At first she found herself straining to hear the twin engines of the seaplane, bringing in the hydro crew, but after a day or two of not hearing, she
gave up and surrendered to the silence. She sat in front of the woodstove with the cat and read by the light of an oil lamp. She was trying to read Proust. She was trying not to read ahead in
Nao’s diary. Mostly she stared into the flames. Sometimes, at dusk, she stood in the doorway listening to the wolves as they moved through the mist-enshrouded forest. Their call started low,
a singular uneasy moan that threaded through the trees and gathered, as one by one the pack joined in, their voices wild and raw, rising into a full-throated howl. She shivered. Oliver insisted on
going running in spite of the rain, and she waited for him, worried. She’d seen cougar scratchings on trees behind their house, fresh scat on the path, wolf paw prints in the mud.

The wolf population was on the rise, and the packs had become bolder. They approached people’s houses, snatched cats, and lured dogs into the forest to eat. Back in the 1970s, when the
wolves killed cattle and sheep, the islanders responded with a wolf cull, hunting them down, shooting as many as they could, and stacking their bleeding carcasses like firewood in the backs of
their pickups. People still remembered this, and so did the wolves, and for a while they stayed away. But now they were back. Provincial wildlife officers had come to the island to teach people
what to do. Haze them, the officers said. Shout at them. Throw things. Easier said than done. Once she had looked out her office window to see Oliver in his running shorts, brandishing a huge stick
and bellowing as he chased a wolf up their driveway. Oliver was running full tilt. The wolf was barely loping, taking his time.

How had she become a woman who worried about wolves and cougars eating her husband? She had no answer. Her mind just hung there, in a strange kind of limbo.

When the power came on, the house slammed back into the twenty-first century: lights blazed, appliances hummed, aquarium pumps gurgled, the taps sighed, and Ruth jumped over
the cat and scrambled through the tangle of extension cords on her way upstairs to check her email. The world was restored to its place in time, and her mind was back online.

She logged on. Nothing from the professor. It had been almost a week. Was he ignoring her, or was he having a power outage, too? Did they have power outages in Palo Alto?

She checked the meteorological service. Another storm was brewing. There was no time to waste. With so many loose ends and unanswered questions, she chose the issue she thought could most easily
be resolved. She launched her browser and typed in
Japanese Shish
ō
setsu and the Instability of the Female “I.”
The Internet was fast for a
change, as though it had come back refreshed from a much-needed vacation. Within seconds she had returned to the academic archives site, and there it was, the preview of the article she was reading
just before the crash. She clicked the link, which took her to the website of a publication called
The Journal of Oriental Metaphysics
. Brilliant. The article was listed
in the index. She clicked through, and the same preview came up, but this time there was an
ORDER NOW
button at the bottom of the page. She clicked it, quickly filled out
the order form, and then turned her office upside down to find her credit card. On the island, she could go days without needing her wallet and often lost track of its whereabouts completely. When
she finally found it, wedged behind a cushion in the corner of the armchair, she entered her credit card number. She clicked the
CONFIRM PURCHASE
button and waited for the
download to begin, but instead a new message appeared.

“NO!”
she cried, so loudly that Oliver heard her from his office, even with his noise-canceling headphones on. He paused and waited for a moment to see what would happen
next.

2.

Outside in the cedar tree by the woodpile, the Jungle Crow cocked its head, listening, too. A few moments passed, maybe a minute. The windows of the house were bright
again—glowing squares that floated in the darkness of the forest. Another cry, longer this time, emerged from the window closest to the woodpile.

Silence followed, and then the window went dark. The crow lifted up its slick black shoulders and shuddered, which was the corvine equivalent of a shrug. It flapped its feathery wings once,
twice, thrice, and then rose up from its perch, flying through the heavy cedar boughs. It circled the roof of the house. Down below, a ragged line of wolves ran silently, in single file, following
a deer trail through the salal. The crow cawed out a warning, in case anyone was listening, and then flew higher, away from the little rooftop in the clearing, until finally it cleared the canopy
of Douglas fir.

Soaring now above the treetops, it could see all the way to the Salish Sea and the pulp mill and the logging town of Campbell River. A cruise liner bound for Alaska was passing through the
Strait of Georgia, all lit up like a birthday cake, covered with candles. Circling higher still, up and up, and the mountains of the Vancouver Island Range came into view, the Golden Hinde, the
white glaciers glowing in the moonlight. On the far side stretched the open Pacific and beyond, but the crow could not fly high enough to see its way home.

1.

The vibe in the Apron is definitely weird today and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to write much. Babette just came over to ask me if I was interested in a
date, which I’m not, but when I lied and told her I had my period, her smile froze and her face got cold and hard, and she whipped around and almost took out my eye with the lacy edge of her
petticoat. I don’t think she knew I was lying, but I can tell that writing in this diary is becoming a problem, and my antisocial behavior is starting to piss off Babette and the other maids.
I hope they don’t try to make me pay the table charge, because it’s insanely expensive and I’ll have to find someplace else to write. I can see their point, though. I didn’t
know this before, but I get it now that writers aren’t exactly the life of the party, and I’m not doing my part to help create an upbeat and cheerful atmosphere around here.

Today Fifi’s Lonely Apron feels even lonelier than usual.

Oh well. That’s what’s going on in my world. How about in yours? You doing okay?

2.

I don’t know why I keep asking you questions. It’s not like I expect you to answer, and even if you did answer, how would I know? But maybe that doesn’t
matter. Maybe when I ask you a question like “You doing okay?” you should just tell me, even if I can’t hear you, and then I’ll just sit here and imagine what you might
say.