Water Lily (11 page)

And the scene repeated and repeated. He imagined the hotel bed was a magic carpet and he soared away from Japan, over all
the countries in Asia—where he saw the most beautiful women in the world, ready to be plucked—and toward his very own house
and garden in England. His castle and his kingdom.

L
ater Runa dressed, left the loveless hotel behind her, and caught a bus to the port. The sky was half light, half dark. It
could be dawn or dusk. As the bus pulled into a stop at the port, it opened out into sunshine. Then she glimpsed the sea and
smiled. She walked into the departure area at the port, swinging her bag in the sunny room. She was pleased to be there, but
only because of the sunshine and the sea. She knew that if it were raining, she would not be feeling so light. This was not
a holiday, after all. She found a wall made entirely of window and pressed her face against it. The sea was a strange shade
of turquoise, as if dyed extra blue for the benefit of the travelers. Maybe, like the flawless round red apples in the supermarkets,
they had now managed to color and perfect the sea.

Runa’s stomach churned when she imagined sailing out on it, over it. The blue reached so far she could hardly believe it had
another side, where it may, for all she knew, be raining. It seemed dangerous, perhaps impossible. But she had to go. She
wanted to be at the other side without the journey in between. It would be better not to look, better not to think about the
sea and how hard it was to believe in the blueness.

The last time she’d watched the sea she had been with Jun. Runa had rented a car and they’d driven away over the mountains
to where they would never be found. Runa enjoyed winding through the steep roads, catching snatches of the sea as they drew
closer. Jun wanted to drive too and she let him, on a safe stretch of land. They went to the cliff’s edge and stayed till
the sky was dark. Jun was still in the driving seat. He said, suddenly, that his mother was ill. Runa didn’t reply. Most of
the time she tried to forget that he had a family. But he went on,
I don’t know what’s wrong with her
. She could hear his voice now, the fear and need for reassurance. She’d said that she was sorry and asked if it was serious.
Don’t know
. He then looked ahead over the cliff and his expression lightened.

“I could drive this car forward and we’d probably die.”

“Don’t do that, Jun.”

“I’m not going to. You’re funny. You’re suddenly talking like a teacher.”

“I am one.“

“I know, but you never act like one. You’re just funny. Can we go and get something to eat? I’m hungry.”

“Yes, but let me drive now.”

They switched places. Runa tried to reverse the car but it didn’t go into reverse. They shot forward and stopped within a
meter of the cliff’s edge. Jun grasped the dashboard, looked terrified. Runa smiled.
Don’t worry, Jun. I’ll get it right this time.

And she did. The car moved slowly back over crunching sand. She knew that nothing would go wrong because Jun was there and
she had to protect him. If she’d been alone, she might well have plunged the car over the cliffs and been killed.

Jun rested his head on her shoulder as she drove back to the main road, one hand tucked gently under her thigh. They stopped
at an American all-night restaurant. He didn’t mention his mother again.

If she was ill then, Runa thought, she would be much worse now that the affair must have been splashed across the papers.

Lines formed around her, lengthened, shortened, disappeared, and re-formed. She found a plastic orange seat in the waiting
area and took out her travel documents. Ticket, fax showing confirmation of her one-night hotel reservation in Shanghai, passport.
She also found a coffee-shop discount card, some receipts, and a karaoke-club membership card. None of these things would
help her if she didn’t find Ping.

She flicked open the passport. Nanao’s picture caught the sun so that only her hair showed up. Runa cupped her hand around
it to cut out the light. It was a poor photograph. Nanao was grimacing and there was a look of certainty in her expression
that Runa had never seen before. It didn’t look much like her. Her forehead was crumpled and creased but should have been
smooth and clear, like Runa’s. Her straight, high eye-brows looked low and heavy. It didn’t look much like either of them.
When Nanao and Runa were small, people said that they were like two halves of a cucumber. They were sisters, not twins, but
similar enough, Runa thought, to confuse the officials. Officials never checked properly. When she imagined Nanao looking
for it, her skin burned. For all Runa knew, Nanao might have planned a holiday or have some overseas conference to attend.
Runa should have asked. Nanao may not have needed it and may have said yes. Except, Runa thought, that Nanao would never break
the law, would never break any little rule.

She wondered if anyone was looking for her. The reporters would not simply lose interest on hearing she had run away. They
would be keener than ever. But, if they searched her room, they would see that she had not taken her passport and would search
only in Japan. She knew that her affair with Jun was scandalous, but she didn’t know if it was illegal. She would lose her
job, perhaps never find another one, but could she go to prison? How was she supposed to know these things? Was there a book
of rules somewhere that everyone else knew about?

While carrying Nanao’s passport, Runa would be Nanao. She would behave as Nanao would so as not to draw attention to herself,
so as not to get into more trouble. She unbraided her hair and let it fall over her shoulders. She peered into her compact
mirror with a serious, intellectual expression, imagined she was Nanao. She looked like Runa.

A woman’s voice came over the speakers, unclear as though she had slipped into the sea and was speaking underwater through
a tube. Runa didn’t hear what the voice said but people around her surged toward a large door. Children pushed past her knees
and she swayed as though she were already out there. So it was time to escape. Her legs wobbled as she walked. It was like
a teenage dream coming true. An adventure. And at the end of it, Ping, her best-ever teenage friend.

R
alph descended in the hotel elevator. His suitcase stood beside him and his money belt was strapped around his waist. The
elevator was small but quite grand with wooden walls, glinting mirrors, a floor of dusky pink tiles. The lighting was pinkish
too, so that his reflection appeared smooth and rosy. He thought he might be considered quite handsome in the elevator. A
shame there was no girl to push the buttons and share the sight of him.

The doors opened on the ground floor and he strode into the lobby, resolved not to look into another mirror today but to keep
the image from the elevator in his mind until bedtime. He left his suitcase with the receptionist and headed for the business
suite. He was starting to like the hotel, now that he had to leave. The staff was friendly and he knew his way around. Everything
was clean. He noticed that the receptionist disinfected the desk pen every now and then, even running the cloth along the
chain that connected it to the desk. The shuttle bus would depart in half an hour so he could check his email one last time.
Li Hua had already agreed to see him but he wanted to be sure that she hadn’t changed her mind about coming to meet him at
the port.

There were two new messages. One from Barry, saying that the weather was worse—non-stop wind and rain—and he didn’t mind calling
a builder to look at Ralph’s roof. The other was from Li Hua.

By this evening he would be at the port in Kobe, ready to set off for Shanghai. It was too late to send a photograph and just
as well. It wouldn’t help him. In front of a mirror, with a kind shade of light, he was sure he had no reason to be ashamed.
But in photographs he never looked quite right. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with him—certainly not from an Asian
woman’s perspective, because he was tall and slim with fairish hair—but because he was too conscious of the person with the
camera. He looked tense, severe. His mother had always told him he had a coat hanger in his shoulders in pictures. She used
to make him lean against things—trees or walls—to appear more relaxed, though it never worked. Li Hua could judge when she
met him and he would do the same for her. He would be a gentleman and forget her picture—perhaps her mother had had something
to do with it—and wait to see her in the flesh.

He replied to Barry’s message.

Don’t fix the roof. Don’t do anything about it. I’ll sort it out when I get back.

The bus arrived on time. Ralph boarded it and worried about his roof for the whole journey. Perhaps he should have put a couple
of exclamation marks in to make his message clearer. He really didn’t want Barry, or anyone, going into the attic. It was
his private place. It was where he kept his private things. He wouldn’t want anyone rooting around up there.

R
una was the last person to board the ferry. Her legs felt soft and weak, like plasticine. What if she never found Ping? at
would she do in China on a stolen passport with a tourist visa, little money, and no friends? And yet she couldn’t stay in
Japan and become the whore who abused a schoolboy, because she couldn’t deny anything but didn’t feel guilty. She had always
thought it would be interesting to be famous or notorious, but not like this. And she remembered Kawasaki’s words—
I’d wring her neck
—and felt sure that he would.

So she picked up her bag, carried a can of Coke from which she sipped as she walked, and crossed from rough concrete to water.
Almost immediately it seemed she was lost in a crowd of ecstatic, waving people, unable to see the sides of the deck for arms,
legs, and suitcases. She stood still in the middle, absorbed the chaos. She kept drinking the Coke in small cold sips. She
was not Runa; she was Nanao. The boat dipped and rose. She felt a little nauseous. That was good. Runa never got seasick but
Nanao always did.

T
here was nothing wrong with seasickness pills. They hardly counted as medicine. Even if you didn’t take them, you felt better
having them in your pocket. The floor lurched as Ralph pushed the cabin door, and he wished he hadn’t thrown away the packet
before taking even one. It was an accident. When he’d stood at the water’s edge and decided to drop his other pills into the
sea—to show that he didn’t need them anymore—he’d chucked the wrong container, the packet instead of the bottle. It was a
bit stupid but sometimes little things confused him. Sometimes he allowed stress to get in the way of noticing. The pills
were supposed to stop the stress but they didn’t work well. His body seemed to have got used to them, because they didn’t
have much effect. It was his heart that was sick, ever since Apple, and he was on his way to healing it. But if he hadn’t
thrown the other pills away he might have taken one and he would be fine now instead of having this uncertain nausea, the
feeling that his body may screw up at any second, then explode. His throat was contracting involuntarily and saliva filled
his mouth. He swallowed repeatedly, breathing deeply between gulps.

He put his suitcase on the floor, glad to be rid of it for a while. He had been swapping the case from arm to arm all the
way from the port building and now both his elbows ached. A big framed rucksack would have been more practical but he’d felt
it would make him look like a student—a mature student—and he wasn’t one. Rucksacks always looked dirty, even clean ones.

The cabin was a dark little box with two bunks and a few cupboards. He rubbed a finger down the side of the wardrobe. It seemed
clean. In the corner was a door leading to the bath-room. His cabin-mate had already chosen the top bunk, slung a jacket over
the pillow, piled sports magazines beside it. Ralph sat underneath wondering if the man would come to introduce himself, what
he would be like. He took more deep breaths.
Steady, Ralph, steady
. If there had been single cabins he would have been happy to pay more. He hoped the man didn’t snore, or have a cold, or
leave hairs in the shower, or walk around naked. People should take care to be considerate of others, but of course they never
did.

He swung his legs, checked his watch. The time meant nothing. It wouldn’t mean anything for two days. His next appointment
was his arrival in Shanghai and he had no control over that. He looked through his cabin-mate’s magazines. Young muscular
baseball players in action shots, tanned, with taut, compact limbs. The writing was all in Japanese or Chinese. While he was
in Tokyo, someone in the hotel lounge had explained how to tell the difference between the two written languages but he’d
forgotten. Or hadn’t been paying attention in the first place. Ralph wished he had brought some books to read. He reached
into his case for
Eastern Blossoms
and flicked through pages that were already familiar to him, then threw the catalog down. The pictures of the girls’ faces
depressed him. They were so pretty, like Apple, and not at all like Li Hua.

It was funny that after forgetting Apple quite successfully for more than two years, she was suddenly hanging around again,
like a ghost. It was as if she didn’t want him to be happy with another woman. She was getting into his thoughts so that she
could control him as she used to. Next she’d be wanting money to spend, somewhere out there. Good luck to her. He would marry
again and that was that.

And he would read the catalog, too, in his own good time, but not now with Apple looking over his shoulder. To make the time
pass, he could take a pill—since he still had the bottle—or he could try and make new friends. He went back along the corridor
and up on deck to join the crowds.