A Tale for the Time Being (44 page)

2.

She skimmed the email quickly, and immediately wrote back, describing her discovery of the diary in the tangle of kelp, her theory as to its origins in the tsunami, and her
failure thus far either to corroborate this theory or to explain how else the freezer bag might have wound up on the beach. She summarized, briefly, the passages in Nao’s diary that were
causing concern: the descriptions of her father’s precarious mental health, his suicide attempts, and Nao’s decision to commit suicide herself. She explained that she couldn’t
help but feel a strong sense of almost karmic connection with the girl and her father. The diary had washed up on Ruth’s shoreline, after all. If Nao and her father were in trouble, she
wanted to help.

She concluded her email with a mention of the article about qubits in
New Science
that Oliver had found, citing H. Yasudani, whom she had tried, and failed, to track down. She sent the
email off and sat back in her chair, savoring the rush of relief and excitement. This was it, then. The corroboration she’d been waiting for. Nao and her family were real!

She stood up and stretched and wandered across the hallway to Oliver’s office. He was sitting with the noise-canceling headphones clamped to his ears. The co-pilot chair was empty.

“Where’s Pesto?” she asked, waving her hand to catch his eye.

Oliver took off the headphones and looked at the catless chair. “He hasn’t been here all day,” he said, glumly.

They had made up at breakfast. Ruth apologized again for calling him a loser, and he apologized for calling her a sicko, but there was still tension lingering between them. Sometimes the cat,
feeling a chill in the air, would stay away. Ruth felt it, too, which was why she’d crossed the hall to share the good news about the professor’s email, but now, seeing Oliver slumped
in his chair, she hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said. “It’s nothing. Just that I’ve got a whole flat of baby ginkgos, ready to be planted, but the covenant holder won’t let me. They’re saying
the ginkgos are potentially invasive.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his hands across his face. He had a particular fondness for
G. biloba
. “It’s insane. That tree
is a living fossil. It survived major extinction events over hundreds of millions of years. The entire population disappeared except for a tiny area in central China where some of them managed to
hang on. And now they’re going to die on our porch if I can’t get them in the ground soon.”

It was unlike him to sound so discouraged or to cast a relatively small problem like this in such dire terms. He must be upset about the cat.

“Can’t you make a nursery bed here on our property?”

He sighed, heavily, staring at his empty hands in his lap. “Yeah, I’ll do that. I just don’t see why I bother, though. What’s the point? Nobody understands what I’m
trying to do . . .”

He must be really upset about the cat. She decided to save the news about the professor’s email for later, but just as she turned to leave, he looked up. “Did you want
something?” he asked.

And so she told him. She recounted what Leistiko had written, his surprising revelation of Nao’s father as a man of conscience who had been fired for his beliefs, and she summarized her
reply, but then she broke off, realizing Oliver was looking at her strangely.

“What?” she said. “You’re giving me a look. What’s wrong?”

“You told him it was a matter of some urgency?”

“Of course. The girl is suicidal. So is her father. The whole diary is a cry for help. So, yes. Urgency. I’d say that about describes it.” She heard the defensive edge in her
voice but she couldn’t help it. “You’re still looking at me.”

“Well . . .”

“Well, what?”

“Well, you’re not making a lot of sense. I mean, it’s not like this is happening now, right?”

“I don’t understand. What’s your point?”

“Do the math. The dot-com bubble burst back in March of 2000. Her dad got fired, they moved back to Japan, a couple of years passed. Nao was sixteen when she started writing the diary. But
that was more than a decade ago, and we know the diary’s been floating around for a least a few years longer. My point is that if she was going to kill herself, she’s probably already
done it, don’t you think? And if she didn’t kill herself, then she’d be in her late twenties by now. So I just wonder if
urgency
is really the right word to describe it,
that’s all.”

Ruth felt the floor tip. She put her hand on the doorjamb to steady herself.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, swallowing hard. “I . . . of course, you’re right. Stupid. I just . . . forgot.” She could feel her cheeks burning, and a tingling
sensation inside her nose, like she was going to sneeze, or cry.

“You forgot?” he repeated. “Seriously?”

She nodded, already backing away. She wanted to run somewhere and hide.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s crazy.”

She turned, crossed the hall, and headed downstairs.

“I didn’t mean
you’re
crazy,” he called down after her.

3.

She didn’t get far. Just to the bedroom. She crawled into bed, pulled the covers up to her nose, and lay there, breathing rapidly. Outside, the bamboo tapped against the
windowpane. Tall sword ferns had grown up from below. The blades of the bamboo, ensnared by the thorns of roses, cut off much of the light. She stared at the entangled foliage and thought about the
email she’d just sent the professor. She felt the blood rush to her face. How could she have been so stupid?

It wasn’t that she’d forgotten, exactly. The problem was more a kind of slippage. When she was writing a novel, living deep inside a fictional world, the days got jumbled together,
and entire weeks or months or even years would yield to the ebb and flow of the dream. Bills went unpaid, emails unanswered, calls unreturned. Fiction had its own time and logic. That was its
power. But the email she’d just written to the professor was not fiction. It was real, as real as the diary.

Oliver knocked on the door and then opened it a crack. “Can I come in?” She nodded. He walked over and stood by the bed. “You okay?” he asked, studying her face.

“I got confused,” she said. “In my mind, she’s still sixteen. She’ll always be sixteen.”

Oliver sat down on the edge of the mattress and put his hand on her forehead. “The eternal now,” he said. “She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the
point.”

“Of writing?”

“Or suicide.”

“I’ve always thought of writing as the opposite of suicide,” she said. “That writing was about immortality. Defeating death, or at least forestalling it.”

“Like Scheherazade?”

“Yes,” she said. “Spinning tales to forestall her execution . . .”

“Only Nao’s death sentence was self-imposed.”

“I wonder if she ever carried it out.”

“Keep reading,” Oliver said. “You won’t know until the end.”

“Or not . . .” She thought about how not knowing would make her feel. Not great. Then something else occurred to her.

“Oh!” she said, sitting up in bed. “She doesn’t know!”

“Know what?”

“About why her dad got fired! She doesn’t know that he’s a man of conscience. We have to—”

There. She was doing it again. She slumped back down against the pillow. At least this time she caught herself.

“It’s too late,” she said, glumly.

“Too late for what?”

“To help her,” she said. “So what’s the point? The diary’s just a distraction. What difference does it make if I read it or not?”

Oliver shrugged. “None, probably, but you still have to finish. She wrote to the end, so you owe her that much. That’s the deal, and anyway, I want to know what happens.”

He stood and turned to go. She reached for his hand.

“Am I crazy?” she asked. “I feel like I am sometimes.”

“Maybe,” he said, rubbing her forehead. “But don’t worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s
your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

The phone started to ring, and he headed out to answer it, but then paused at the door. “I’m really worried about Pesto,” he said.

4.

Benoit sat in a battered armchair in front of the woodstove, smoking and staring into the flames. He looked up when he heard Ruth enter. His eyes were red, as though he’d
been crying, and he’d been drinking, too. The cloying scent of Canadian whiskey mingled with the smell of cigarettes and wood smoke and wet socks.

His wife stood in the doorway of the living room. She did not look pleased. She had been the one who’d called, and Oliver had spoken to her. Her husband had finished the translation of the
French diary, she said. Would Ruth please come to their house to collect it, tonight. Oliver hung up the phone, put the chainsaw in the truck, and offered to drive. The wind was picking up, and the
tall trees were beginning to sway. Another storm was coming, this one heading right toward them.

Benoit held out a sheaf of about twenty sheets of ruled notebook paper, which shook in his outstretched hand.

“Le mal de vivre,” he said. “You ask me what it means.
This
is what it means. Evil, sorrow, suffering. How can there be so much pain in the world?”

Ruth took the pages from him.

“Thank you,” she said, glancing down at the translation.

“Take this, too,” he said. He held out the thin composition booklet that contained the diary, wrapped in its waxy paper.

“I really appreciate . . . ,” she started, but he shook his head and stared back into the flames.

His wife stepped forward then and touched her on the arm. She led Ruth from the room and showed her to the door. “He’s been drinking.”

Ruth didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry . . .”

His wife softened. “It’s not just your fault,” she said, lowering her voice. “His little dog got snatched by the wolves last night. They sent a young bitch out and he
followed. Stupid dog. The pack was waiting on the far side of a ravine. Set on him and killed him, just like that. Tore him to shreds and ate him.” She looked back toward the living room,
where her husband was still sitting. “He watched it happen. Called him and chased after, but couldn’t get across the ravine. He’s too big. Too slow. There were just pieces of fur
left by the time he got there. He loved that little dog.” She opened the door and cocked her head, listening. “You better go. Wind’s picking up. It’s going to be a bad
one.”

1.

December 10, 1943—We sleep together in one large room, my squadron members and I, laid out in rows like small fish hung to dry. It is only when the moon is nearly full
and the sky is clear that I have enough light to write. I slip these pages out from inside the lining of my uniform, where I keep them hidden, careful not to rustle. I unscrew the cap on my
fountain pen, worried that the ink might run dry and be insufficient for my thoughts. My last thoughts, measured out in drops of ink.

We have been instructed to keep a diary of our training and our feelings as we face certain death, but I have been warned by one of the other student soldiers that the senior officers will
inspect these diaries, as they will read our letters, without warning, so I should be careful not to write truthfully from my heart. Duplicity is a hardship I am unwilling to suffer, so I have
decided I will keep two records: one for show, and this hidden one for truth, for you, even though I hardly expect you will ever read this. I will write in French, ma chère Maman, following
the good example of your idol, Kanno-san, who faithfully persisted in her English lessons right up until the moment they led her to the gallows. Like her, we must keep up our studies even as
civilization collapses around us.

2.

Clench your teeth. Bite down hard!
our commanding officer, le Marquis de F—, orders. He punches K in the face with his fist until K’s knees buckle, and then
he kicks him when he’s down. Last week, he crushed two of K’s back teeth, but K acted as though he didn’t feel a thing, blinking and smiling his sweet, otherworldly smile as the
blood ran from his mouth.

K is my senior in the Philosophy Department and I have a duty to him. Yesterday, when the beating got particularly bad, I stepped in front of K to take his blows. The Marquis de F—was
delighted. He punched me on both sides of my face and beat me with the heel of his boot. Afterward, the inside of my mouth was like minced meat and even the smallest sip of miso soup brought tears
to my eyes, the salt in the wounds was so painful.

Chère Maman, I am wrapping this composition book in oilskin and hiding it under the rice in the bottom of my lunchbox. I will try to find a way to get it to you before I die. I cannot
write candidly in my letters to you, but the hope that someday you will know the truth about this imbecilic lynching comforts me. No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I
have this hope, I can endure any pain.

3.

Last night, during the pleasure quarters game, I sensed a change come over K as he watched my humiliation. As I crouched behind the rifle rack, following the orders of le
Marquis, reaching out my arms through the slats and waving my hands seductively like a lady of the night, I saw K turn away for the first time, as though the sight of me was too much to bear.

Le Marquis, noticing K’s withdrawal, perhaps, ordered me do it again and again. He feeds me my lines.
Hey there, soldier
, I call. Like a director, an auteur, he studies my
performance with his head cocked to one side. He tells me to make my voice higher and sweeter. There is a seriousness, almost an innocence, to his attention.
Won’t you come inside and
play with me?
I cry, and it is only a matter of time before he obliges. The games don’t finish until long after the final bugle call, signaling lights-out. At night, sometimes I can hear
K, weeping.

Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques;

De tes bijoux l’Horreur n’est pas le moins charmant . . .
¹⁴⁶