The diving pool: three novellas (9 page)

I listened without turning to look at her. Lowering the heat on the stove, I stirred a big spoon through the pot. "It's nothing to be afraid of. A baby is just a baby. They're soft and cuddly, with little curled-up fingers, and they cry a lot. That's all." I stared down at the jam curling around the spoon.

"But it's not that simple. Once it's born, it's mine whether I want it or not. And there's nothing I can do about it, even if it has a birthmark covering half its face, or its fingers are stuck together, or it has no brain, or it's Siamese twins. . . ." She went on for some time listing awful possibilities. The spoon made a dull sound scraping the bottom of the pan as the jam began to congeal.

I stared into the pot, wondering how much PWH it contained. Under the fluorescent light, the jam reminded me of a chemical, something in a clear bottle, perfect for dissolving chromosomes.

"It's done," I said. Gripping the handles of the pot, I turned to face her. "Here, have some." I held it out to her, and she looked at it for a moment. Then, without another word, she started to eat.

JULY 22 (WEDNESDAY), 35 WEEKS + 2 DAYS

My summer vacation has started. I suppose it will be spent watching my sister's pregnancy. Still, a pregnancy doesn't last forever. It has to end sometime.

I've tried to think of the baby as something positive for my sister and her husband, and for me. But I never quite manage. I just can't imagine the look in my brother-in-law's eyes when he holds the baby in his arms, or the whiteness of my sister's breasts when she's nursing it. All I see is the photograph of chromosomes in the science magazine.

AUGUST 8 (SATURDAY), 37 WEEKS + 5 DAYS

So we've reached the month for her delivery, and she could go into labor any day now. Her belly is about as large as it can get, and I find myself worrying whether her organs can function properly when they're so compressed.

The three of us wait quietly, though the house is terribly hot and humid. We say nothing about it, but we're all thinking of the approaching delivery. My sister's shoulders heave as she tries to catch her breath. My brother-in-law waters the yard with the hose. The only sound is the humming of the fan as it turns on its stand.

I'm usually anxious when I'm waiting for something—even when it's someone else's labor pains. It scares me to think how nervous my sister must be. I'd like this hot, uneventful afternoon to go on forever.

But even in this heat, she is still lapping up my grapefruit jam as soon as it's done. She swallows it so quickly I'm afraid she'll burn her mouth, and I don't see how she can taste it at all. Her face looks sad, almost as if she were weeping, as I see it in profile, bent over the pot. The spoon flits back and forth from the pot to her mouth, and she seems to be trying to hold back the tears welling up in her eyes. This afternoon, the yard beyond her was glowing brilliant green in the sunlight. The cries of the cicadas were deafening.

"I can't wait to see the baby," I murmured. The spoon stopped for a moment and she blinked at me. But then she went back to the jam, and my thoughts returned to the shape of the damaged chromosomes.

AUGUST 11 (TUESDAY), 38 WEEKS + 1 DAY

When I got back from work there was a note from my brother-in-law on the table: "The contractions have started. We've gone to the clinic." I read these few words over and over. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a spoon coated with jam lying on the table. I tossed it into the sink and thought about what I should do. Then I read the note one more time and left the house.

Everything was bathed in light. The windshields of the cars in the street seemed to glow, and the spray from the fountain in the park sparkled. I walked along, staring at the ground and mopping the sweat from my face. Two children in straw hats ran past. The gate to the elementary school was closed, and the playground was deserted. Farther on there was a small florist's, but I saw no sign of a salesperson or any customers. A tiny bunch of baby's breath lay in the glass case.

I turned the corner and found myself in front of the M Clinic. Just as my sister had said, time seemed to have stopped here, and the clinic was exactly as it had been preserved in my memory for all those years—the big camphor tree next to the gate, the frosted glass in the front door, the peeling letters on the sign. Here, too, there was no one in sight, only my shadow clearly etched on the street.

I followed the wall around to the back of the building and slipped through the old, broken gate into the garden. My heart started to pound the moment I set foot on the carefully tended grass, just as it always had. I looked up at the clinic, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun reflected in the windows.

As I approached the building, the smell of paint drifted toward me. The air was still, and there was no sign of life around me. I was the only thing moving in the garden. I was tall enough now to look into the examination room without standing on a box, but there were no doctors or nurses to be seen. It was dark and deserted, like a science classroom after school gets out. I stood looking in at the bottles of medicine, the blood-pressure cuff, the breech-birth poster, the ultrasound monitor. The glass was warm against my face.

I thought I heard a baby crying in the distance. A tiny, trembling, tear-soaked cry coming from somewhere beyond the blaze of sunlight. As I listened, the sound seemed to be absorbed directly into my eardrums, and my head began to ache. I stepped back and looked up at the third floor. I saw a woman in a nightgown staring off into the distance. Her hair fell across her cheeks and her face was obscured in shadow, so I wasn't sure if it was my sister. Her lips were parted slightly, and she was blinking—the way you blink when you're close to tears. I would have gone on watching her, but the angle of the sun shifted and she disappeared into the reflection.

Following the baby's cries, I climbed the fire escape. The wooden stairs groaned under my feet. My body felt limp and warm, but the hand that gripped the railing and the ears absorbing the baby's cries were strangely cool. As the lawn receded slowly beneath me, its green became even more brilliant.

The baby continued to cry. When I opened the door on the third floor, I was blinded for a moment while my eyes adjusted to the light. I stood, concentrating on the baby's cry as it swept over me in waves, until at last I could see the corridor leading away into the darkness. I set off toward the nursery to meet my sister's ruined child.

DORMITORY

I became aware of the sound quite recently, though I can't say with certainty when it started. There is a place in my memory that is dim and obscure, and the sound seems to have been hiding just there. At some point I suddenly realized that I was hearing it. It materialized out of nowhere, like the speckled pattern of microbes on the agar in a petri dish.

It was audible only at certain moments, and not necessarily when I wanted to hear it. I heard it once as I was staring out at the lights of the city from the window of the last bus of the evening, and another time at the entrance to the old museum, as a melancholy young woman handed me a ticket without looking up. The sound came suddenly and unpredictably.

But the one thing all these moments had in common was that I was thinking, in each case, about a particular place from my past—and that place was my old college dormitory, a simple, three-story building of reinforced concrete. The cloudy glass in the windows, the yellowed curtains, and the cracks in the walls all hinted at its advanced age, and though it was meant to house students, there was no sign of student life—no motorbikes, tennis rackets, sneakers, or anything of the kind. It was, in short, the mere shell of a building.

Still, it wasn't exactly a ruin, either. I could feel traces of life even in the decaying concrete, a warm, rhythmic presence that seeped quietly into my skin.

But the fact that I could recall the place so vividly six years after moving out was due, no doubt, to the sudden reappearances of the sound. I would hear it for the briefest moment whenever my thoughts returned to the dormitory. The world in my head would become white, like a wide, snow-covered plain, and from somewhere high up in the sky, the faint vibration began.

To be honest, I'm not sure you could even call it a sound. It might be more accurate to say it was a quaking, a current, even a throb. But no matter how I strained to hear it, everything about the sound—its source, its tone, its timbre—remained vague. I never knew how to describe it. Still, from time to time, I attempted analogies: the icy murmur of a fountain in winter when a coin sinks to the bottom; the quaking of the fluid in the inner ear as you get off a merry-go-round; the sound of the night passing through the palm of your hand still gripping the phone after your lover hangs up . . . But I doubted these would help anyone understand.

A call came from my cousin on a cold, windy afternoon in early spring.

"Sorry to phone you out of the blue," he said. At first, I didn't recognize his voice. "It's been almost fifteen years, so there's no reason you should remember, but I'll never forget how nice you were to me when I was little." He seemed anxious to explain himself. "You used to play with me at New Year's and during summer vacation. . . ."

"It
has
been a long time!" I said, finally placing him. The call had caught me off guard.

"It really has," he said, letting out a sigh of relief. Then his tone became more formal. "I'm calling because I have a favor to ask." He got right to the point. Still, it wasn't immediately clear why a cousin, who was so much younger and had been out of touch for so long, should be calling to ask for something, nor could I imagine what I could possibly do to help him. Instead of answering, I waited for him to continue. "You see, I'm coming to college in Tokyo in April."

"You can't be that old already!" I blurted out, honestly astonished. He'd been a boy of four the last time I'd seen him.

"And I'm looking for a place to live, but I'm not having much luck. Which is why I thought of you."

"Me?"

"Yes, I remembered hearing that you lived in a good dormitory when you were in school." My years in the dormitory came back as we spoke, but the memories seemed as distant as those of playing with this young cousin.

"But how did you know that I lived in a dormitory?"

"You know how it is with families—people talk about these kinds of things," he said.

It was true that it had been a good place to live. It was quiet and well run, but without lots of strict rules; and the fees were so low that it almost seemed the owner had no interest in making money. Unlike most places, it was privately run, rather than by a corporation or a cooperative, so it was technically a boardinghouse rather than what might normally be called a dormitory. But it was unmistakably a student dorm. The high-ceilinged entrance hall, the steam pipes lining the corridors, the little brick flower beds in the courtyard—everything about it said "dormitory."

"Yes," I said, "but it was a long way from the station, and the rooms were old and small even back then." I made a point of listing the drawbacks first.

"That wouldn't bother me," he said, as if he'd already made up his mind. "I just need something cheap." This was natural enough, since his father, my uncle, had died when he was still little—in fact, that was one of the reasons we'd been out of touch all this time.

"I understand," I said. "In that case, it might suit you."

"Really?" he said, sounding delighted.

"I'll give them a call. It was never very popular and there were always empty rooms. I doubt you'd have trouble getting in—if it hasn't gone under since then. At any rate, you're welcome to stay with us until you find a place—you can come whenever you like."

"Thank you," he said. I could tell that he was smiling on the other end of the line.

That was how I came to renew my ties with the dormitory. The first thing I had to do was call the Manager, but I had completely forgotten the number. I tried looking in the yellow pages. I wasn't sure a tiny place like that would even have a listing, but there it was, flowery advertising copy and all: "Heat and air-conditioning, security system, fitness center, soundproof music room. All rooms with private bath, phone, and ample closet space. A green oasis in the heart of the city." And the telephone number tucked in almost as an afterthought.

The Manager himself answered. He lived on the premises and served as both landlord and building superintendent, but to the residents he was always "the Manager."

"I graduated six years ago, but I was there for four years. . . ." He remembered me as soon as I mentioned my maiden name.

He sounded exactly as he always had. My memory of him was closely tied to his peculiar way of speaking, so there was something reassuring about hearing it again, completely unchanged after all these years. His voice was hoarse, and he seemed to be exhaling each word very slowly, as if he were doing deep-breathing exercises. It was an ephemeral sort of voice that seemed on the verge of being lost in the depths of those long, slow breaths.

"I'm calling because I have a cousin who'll be starting college this spring. He's looking for a place to live, and I was wondering whether you might have room."

"Is that so?" he stammered, sounding hesitant.

"Then you won't be able to take him?"

"No, I didn't say that," he muttered, but his voice trailed off again.

"Has the dormitory closed down?" I asked.

"No, we're still open. I have nowhere else to go, so as long as I'm around we'll be in business." There was something particularly emphatic in the way he said the word "business." "But things have changed since your time."

"What sorts of things?"

"Well, it's a bit difficult to explain, and I'm not quite sure I understand myself. But things are more
complicated
now, more
difficult
, you might say." As he coughed quietly at the other end of the line, I found myself wondering what sort of "complicated" or "difficult" circumstances a dormitory could fall into. "Actually," he continued, "we have very few residents now. I know there were some empty rooms in your day, but there are a lot more now. We can't serve meals anymore. Do you remember the cook who ran the dining hall?"

"Yes," I said, recalling the silent man who had labored away in the long, narrow kitchen.

"Well, I had to let him go. It was a shame, really— he was a fine cook. And we're only heating the large bath every other day. The deliverymen from the dry cleaner and the liquor store leave us off their route now, and we've given up all the dormitory events, even the cherry blossom picnic and the Christmas party." His voice seemed to be gradually fading away.

"That doesn't matter," I said. "That doesn't sound so 'difficult' or 'complicated.' " Something made me want to try to cheer him up.

"You're right," he said. "The changes mean nothing in themselves. They're just an outer manifestation, the skull housing the brain, and what I really mean to say is hidden somewhere in the pineal gland, deep in the cerebellum at the heart of the brain." He spoke cautiously, as if weighing every word. An illustration of the human brain in my elementary school science book came back to me as I tried to imagine what sorts of difficulties the dorm was facing, but I was still drawing a blank. "I can't tell you any more than that," he said. "But in some peculiar way the dormitory seems to be disintegrating. Still, it's not the sort of thing that forces us to turn away people like your cousin. So tell him he's welcome, by all means. I'm so happy you remembered your old dormitory. Have him come around to see me, and ask him to bring a copy of his family registry and the letter of acceptance from his university—oh, and a copy of his guarantor's signature."

"I'll tell him," I said, and hung up, feeling a bit confused.

Spring was cloudy that year, as if the sky were covered with a sheet of cold, frosted glass. Everything—the seesaws in the park, the clock-shaped flower bed in front of the station, the bicycles in the garage—was sealed in a dull, leaden light, and the city seemed unable to throw off the last vestiges of winter.

My life, too, seemed to be drifting in circles, as if caught in the listless season. In the morning, I would lie in bed, looking for any excuse to avoid getting up. When I finally did, I would make a simple breakfast and then spend most of the day doing patchwork. It was the most basic kind of occupation: I would lay scraps of fabric out on the table and sew them together one by one. In the evening, I made an equally simple dinner and then watched television. I never went out to meet people and had no deadlines or projects of any sort. Formless days passed one after the other, as if swollen into an indistinguishable mass by the damp weather.

It was a period of reprieve from all the usual concerns of daily life. My husband was away in Sweden, working on the construction of an undersea oil pipeline, and I was waiting until he was sufficiently settled to have me join him. Thus, I found myself rattling around in the empty days, like a silkworm in a cocoon.

Sometimes I would get anxious wondering about Sweden. I knew nothing about the country—what the people looked like, what they ate, what sorts of TV shows they watched. When I thought about the prospect of moving to a place that was, for me, so completely abstract, I wanted this reprieve to go on for as long as possible.

On one of these spring nights, a storm blew through the city. It was louder and more furious than anything I'd ever heard, and at first I thought I was having a nightmare. Lightning flashed in the midnight blue sky, followed by enormous crashes of thunder, as if huge dishes were being smashed into a million pieces. A wave would roll across the city and explode right over the roof of our house, and before the echo had died away, the next one would come. It was so loud and close, I felt I could reach out and catch it in my hand.

The storm went on and on. The shadows around my bed were so dark and deep that they might have come from the bottom of the ocean. When I held my breath, I could see them trembling slightly, as if the darkness itself were quaking with fear. But somehow, even though I was alone, I wasn't afraid. In the middle of the storm, I felt quite calm—the sort of peace that comes from being far away from everyday life. The storm had carried me off to a distant place that I could never have reached on my own. I had no idea where it was, but I knew that it was peaceful. I lay in the darkness listening to the storm, trying to see this far-off place.

The next day, my cousin arrived.

"I'm glad you came," I said. But it had been so long since I'd talked with someone his age that I had no idea what else to say.

"I hope I'm not putting you out," he answered, bowing slowly.

He had grown a great deal since I'd seen him last, and I was quiet for a time, studying the young man standing before me. The relaxed lines of his neck and arms were brought together neatly around his muscular frame. But it was the way he smiled that made the greatest impression. He did it discreetly, his head slightly bowed, as the index finger of his left hand played over the silver frames of his glasses. A soft breath escaped between his fingers, and you might almost have imagined you'd heard a melancholy sigh. But there was no doubt that he had smiled. I found myself watching him closely to avoid missing the slightest change of expression.

The conversation proceeded fitfully. I asked about his mother. He gave me a quick update on his life from age four to the present. I told him why my husband was away. At first, there were painfully long silences between each new topic, and I would cough or mutter meaningless pleasantries to fill them. But when we moved on to the topic of the times we'd spent together at our grandmother's house when we were children, the conversation flowed more easily. My cousin had a surprisingly clear memory of that time. He had little sense of the context of the events, but he could clearly recall specific moments in vivid detail.