Though she came back to Japan, Miu couldn’t get in touch with me for some reason. Instead, she kept her silence, clutching her memories close, seeking some nameless, remote place to swallow her up. That’s what I imagined. I didn’t feel like blaming Miu. Let alone hating her.
The image that came to mind at that moment was of the bronze statue of Miu’s father in the little mountain village in North Korea. I could picture the tiny town square, the lowslung houses, and the dust-covered bronze statue. The wind always blows hard there, twisting the trees into surreal shapes. I don’t know why, but that bronze statue and Miu, hands on the steering wheel of her Jaguar, melted into one in my mind. Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover —drawing towards us the
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thin threads attached to each—what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting.
*
I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams—just as Sumire said. But it doesn’t last for ever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.
I wake up at 3 a.m., turn on the light, sit up, and look at the phone beside my bed. I picture Sumire in a phone box, lighting up a cigarette and pushing the buttons for my number. Her hair’s a mess; she has on a man’s herringbone jacket many sizes too big for her and mismatched socks. She frowns, choking a bit on the smoke. It takes her a long time to push all the numbers correctly. Her head is crammed full of things she wants to tell me. She might talk until dawn, who knows?
About the difference, say, between symbols and signs. My phone looks as though it will ring any minute now. But it doesn’t ring. I lie down and stare at the silent phone. But one time it does ring. Right in front of me, it actually rings. Making the air of the real world tremble and shake. I grab the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hey, I’m back,” said Sumire. Very casual. Very real. “It wasn’t easy, but somehow I managed it. Like a 50-word précis of Homer’s
“That’s good,” I said. I still couldn’t believe it. Being able to hear her voice. The fact that this was happening.
“That’s good?” Sumire said, and I could almost hear the frown. “What the heck do you mean by that? I’ve gone through
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bloody hell, I’ll have you know. The obstacles I went through—
millions of them, I’d never finish if I tried to explain them all—
all this to get back, and that’s all you can say? I think I’m going to cry. If it isn’t
“Where are you now?”
“Where am I? Where do you think I am? In our good old faithful telephone box. This crummy little square telephone box plastered inside with ads for phony loan companies and escort services. A mouldy-coloured half-moon’s hanging in the sky; the floor’s littered with cigarette butts. As far as the eye can see, nothing to warm the cockles of the heart. An interchangeable, totally semiotic telephone box. So, where is it? I’m not exactly sure. Everything’s just too semiotic—and you know me, right? I don’t know where I am half the time. I can’t give directions well. Taxi drivers are always yelling at me:
“I’ll come and get you.”
“I’d like that. I’ll find out where I am and call you back. I’m running out of change, anyway. Wait for a while, okay?”
“I really wanted to see you,” I said.
“And I really wanted to see you, too,” she said. “When I couldn’t see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really need you. You’re a part of me; I’m a part of you. You know, somewhere—I’m not at all sure where—I think I cut something’s throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone. Symbolically, like making a gate in China. Do you understand
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what I’m saying?”
“I think so.”
“Then come and get me.”
*
