The Last Leaves Falling (6 page)

Sleep, for now it ends.

9

The next morning, I wake early. The sun has not yet risen, and the light that filters through the slats of the window blinds is dim and gray. My room is steeped in shadows.

I could reach out and switch on the lamp, slowly get myself up out of bed, but instead I lie here, staring at the gray space above me, letting it wash over me. It is a long time since I’ve heard the apartment this quiet. My mother wakes with the first crow and switches on the radio before she bustles in, opening the blinds and offering a hand to help me up, and most nights she sits with the TV long after I have gone to bed. But now, all I hear is my own breath.

I wonder whether anybody else is up this early. The road-sweepers, perhaps, and early morning traders. If I wheeled myself outside, I bet I could get all the way to the Imperial Park before I saw another soul. But it is warm and safe, cocooned in the softness of my sheets, and there’s no chance of gawking strangers, full of pity and repulsion.

Instead, I close my eyes, focus on my breathing, and try to imagine the oxygen traveling through me; trachea, bronchii, bronchioles, alveoli, then into the bloodstream, whooshing from my heart to my toes and back up again. One minute per cycle. In, out, up, down.

Breath and blood. Life. It’s mine, and I do not want to waste it.

As a gentle pinkish light begins to rise, banishing the shadow, my mother’s alarm clock sounds, a tinny, desperate cockerel. Two minutes later I hear the mattress creak as she gets out of bed. My thinking time is up, the day’s begun.

I’m going to make this one count.

•  •  •  •

My mother almost choked on her toast when I asked if we could watch the procession.

“The
ages
procession? Are you sure? There will be a lot of people there.”

She was right, there
are
a lot of people. The streets are lined with eager crowds, filled with laughter and anticipation. There are children
everywhere
, dressed in bright kimono, with their faces painted white. Some adults, too, although most are dressed in ordinary clothes. And there are flags and balloons and bags and bags of candy.

“Excuse me, sorry.” Mama bows awkwardly as she pushes us toward the barriers right at the front. “Excuse me.”

She pushes, I balance the paper cups of tea upon my knees.

“Excuse me.”

One small white face stares up at me, tugs on her mother’s sleeve. “What’s wrong with that boy?”

“Husshhh.”

I almost want to answer her, but before I find the courage, the crowds have closed behind us and the chance is gone.

Perhaps this was a bad idea. Even with a view mostly of people’s waists, I can
feel
their eyes on me. A hundred too-obvious glances all at once; the “oh, poor kid, poor
mother
” looks, and the “I was here first” stares.

But,
I cannot mourn for I have lived
 . . . I
want
to be here. And then we break out of the crowds, right at the front, and the sun is shining, and when Mama moves around beside me she is
smiling
, and I do not care what anybody else thinks.

She takes her tea, leans against the barrier, and stares out across the street. Anticipation bounces off the empty tarmac. “Not long now,” she says.

“No. What do you most want to see?”

“I don’t know. The juni-hitoe?”

Twelve-layer robes of richest silks. My mother is more of a traditionalist than she’d ever admit. I grin.

“I want to see
everything
.”

And then we hear it; the drums and pipes of the gagaku, and the whole street turns almost in unison to see the commissioners’ carriages, pulled by tall white horses, lead the way for the procession; a journey through the city’s history.

It’s wonderful. My mother claps at the women’s clothes, and I imagine sitting atop those horses with a sword at my back. I could fight
anything
from up that high. Back we go in time, further and further away from all the problems of today. And I could not be happier.

10

The outer doors to the hospital slide open, and the gases of a thousand sick drift out into the street. Hot, sweaty body smells, sharp disinfectant, and that strange, sweet scent of medication. I try not to breathe as we cross the threshold, but you can’t not breathe for that long, and before we even pass the information desk I have to gasp in great lungfuls of warm, rancid air.

The hallways all look the same, and if it weren’t for the big blue signs and brightly painted arrows, you could get lost for days. To get to Pediatrics, you have to go along to the east wing, then up inside the elevator and back the way you came along the upper floor, past the general wards.

My mother is silent. I can almost feel the tension in her shoulders as she pushes me along; she does not like it in here any more than I do. I wish that I could make it to the hospital alone so that she did not have to come.

Downstairs, it’s quiet, full of people waiting in nervous silence, shifting in their seats uncomfortably every time a name is called out by a nurse. But when the elevator doors swing open at our floor, the gentle squeak of wheels on polished linoleum is lost to other noises, people talking and the clattering of bowls and cutlery.

Lunch time? Yes. An overcooked-rice aroma greets us halfway down the hall; starchy and sour.

“Hey, Mama,” I say quietly, so that she has to lean over to hear me. “I’m glad
you
know how to cook.”

“Hush,” she whispers, but she sounds as though she’s smiling.

Nobody else seems to mind the smell, though. In every room people are eating happily, although one woman is shouting at the top of her lungs that her Jell-O isn’t right. “It doesn’t wobble! How on earth can that be right?”

I peer into the ward as we pass, and there are three nurses around her bed, trying to calm her down.

Halfway down the last corridor before you round the corner into the bright, muraled Pediatrics, there’s a ward I’ve never seen into before. The doors are always locked, with frosted glass instead of clear. But today, the doors are open.

It’s quiet though, none of the everyday noise of the other wards.

My stomach knots as we approach, but I cannot help but look.

It only takes a second to go past the doorway, but I still see them. Three elderly gentlemen surrounded by wires and monitors, each as thin as paper-covered skeletons. The man in the nearest bed lay with his neck at an unnatural angle, his mouth open a little. And his glassy eyes stared right past me.

It’s like they are all already dead, hanging around the hospital so they can feed, turn unsuspecting victims into one of them. I shudder. I can’t help it. And then I realize something even worse.

I just saw my future.

I won’t be white-haired like those men, but I’ll be just as frail, just as
stuck
as they are. Just as creepy.

Will anybody visit me, or will I scare them all away?

As we wait in the hallway for Doctor Kobayashi, I wonder about the old man. Who was he? Does he have kids or grandkids who care for him? Who visit him at weekends? Or is he all alone?

Perhaps he was a businessman with no time to start a family. Or maybe he has children who spend every evening telling him the latest stories from the office. Perhaps he survived Hiroshima. Or maybe he flew to America on business and fell in love with a beautiful film star.

Yes. He fell in love with a Hollywood actress and she moved back to Japan. They had three beautiful babies, and every weekend they would all go out to the lake to fish. And his children went to university, and had families of their own; grandchildren who paint pictures to pin up by his bedside. Yes.

Except the walls around his bed were bare.

•  •  •  •

“It must be tough for you.”

I wonder how the bonsai tree can stand it in here, in this heat, this airless room.

Doctor Kobayashi tries again. “It must be hard, knowing your peers will be cramming for exams. I know you . . . would have liked to—”

I shrug, and try not to think about the classrooms I once thought were home.

•  •  •  •

Soon after the consultant had said those two awful words, “no cure,” my mother and I sat in another too-small room, on the wrong side of the desk, and my school principal frowned down at us over steepled fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re simply not equipped to deal with it.”

“But Kouchou-sensai, he’s a bright boy. And he studies hard. It would be such a waste.”

His frown deepened, and he studied my face before he spoke. I wondered whether he was counting the days I had left, calculating the value of high school if it does not lead to university, and what I could
possibly
offer now.

I raised my eyes to meet his.
I want to be here,
I tried to transmit to him with nothing but my gaze.
I want to learn everything while I still can.

“Well,” he sighed, “I’m afraid we do not have the budget for adaptations to the building. I suggest you contact the Sunshine School, try to get your son admitted there, but in the meantime, while he can still get to his classrooms, Sora is welcome to stay.”

Three months, two crutches, and one walker later, the time had come; I could no longer manage the hallways, and he did not want me littering his school with difficulties.

•  •  •  •

“I know you wanted to stay.” Doctor Kobayashi’s voice is gentler now. “I’m sorry.”

I stare harder at the tree, cannot look at her as I say, “The principal was right, it would be impractical.”

She nods, and is quiet for a moment. Watching me until I cannot stand it any longer.

“Thank you for the book. It was very kind.” I reach into my bag and pull out the thin gray volume.

“You’ve read them all?”

I nod.

“What did you think?”

It wasn’t really what I thought, more like what I
felt
. But I don’t know how to put it into words.

“They were beautiful.”

Silence.

She’s still watching me.

“You know, everything dies, Sora. Eventually.”

Er . . .

I nod, because I don’t know what to say.

“Everyone. Some people sooner than others, and that isn’t fair, but it’s a fact of life.”

I study the tiny branches before me. How old is this tree? How many patients has it seen?
Stopped
seeing?

“The samurai . . . they knew this. You can see it in their words, right? What matters is not how much time you have, but how you use it.”

I . . . guess.

I nod again, wait for her to continue, but she seems to be waiting for me. I hold the book out to her. “Thank you. I liked it. Very much.” I bow.

She rests a hand upon the cover, and gently pushes the book back toward me.

“Keep it for a while longer. You might find a need for them again.”

“Thank you.”

She waits while I slide the book back into my bag, and I feel her watching me. The shakes are not too bad today, but a rucksack zipper is small, dependent on the right degree of pressure, and I have to concentrate to coordinate the movements.

I wonder if she noticed.

When I look up, book finally packed away, Doctor Kobayashi folds her hands into her lap decisively and smiles.

“What do you want out of life, Sora?”

What?
I think I might have recoiled; physically flinched at her words, but if I did, she does not show it. There’s no indignation in her eyes.

“I mean, what do you
really
want?” She reaches across the table, squeezes my hand. “Because, we can make things happen you and I; use your time wisely.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a group of people who arrange for . . . they grant wishes. And I think you’re the perfect candidate.”

“Wishes?”

She nods.

“Like what?”

“Well, some people go on holiday, all over the world. They seek tigers on safari, or go to the Olympics and meet their country’s fastest runner. Some people skydive, or get a tattoo, or record an album. Anything, really. You think of it, they make it happen.”