Fifty Words for Rain(87)
My place is here. The rest of the household will be dissolved; the estate will go into limbo until it is determined which relative it will pass to next . . . but I will remain here as caretaker.
With Akira-sama’s ghost. Perhaps he will see me now, as he never saw me in life. I am the only one left.
My face gives Nori-sama my answer.
She tries to smile, but her face spasms—clearly she has forgotten how.
“Well then,” she says quietly, “you had best pack my things.”
I am flooded with relief. I close my eyes to hold back the tears.
I will keep her safe for you, Obocchama. I know she was your most precious thing.
As you were mine.
* * *
The day she left Japan, the sky cried.
Shinotsukuame. Relentless rain. Rain that would never stop.
But she knew the tears were not for her.
She took with her these things: twelve dresses, two kimonos, the ribbons her mother had given her, six blouses and six skirts, all of her pearls. Her mother’s last diary, which she had not yet finished, and a miniature photograph that Ayame gave her.
It was a picture of Akira right before he came to Kyoto. He was unsmiling, staring straight at the camera. But there was a light in his eyes.
She took his violin. She took all the money from the safe, a small fortune, enough to take her far away. She took the forged papers and passport he’d had made for her, just in case.
And lastly, she took the locket Akira had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
Everything else was hers no longer. She was no longer Noriko Kamiza, the bastard girl.
She was no one at all now.
It was a terrifying prospect: to be free.
She stood in the rain, with her hair matted to the sides of her face, waiting for the boat to start boarding.
Ayame was speaking to the captain. Nori saw money being exchanged. Probably a bribe, to make sure that she was well looked after on the long journey.
Nori looked up at the sky. A wild desperation seized her, a crack in the absolute emptiness she’d felt for days now.
One last time, she pleaded with God. Bring him back to me.
Take me instead. Please. I beg you. Let it be a dream, a horrible dream, and tell me I’m going to wake up.
Tell me life is not so random, so cruel, as this.
He was good, which is better than nice, and he was honest, which is better than kind.
Tell me you didn’t let him die.
Bring Akira back to me.
Please.
The thunder rolled, and Nori was positive, for the first time in her life, that God had heard her.
The answer was no.
Ayame came and took her by the shoulders, guiding her out of the rain and underneath the awning covering the ramp.
“It’s time to go now,” she whispered brokenly, “my sweet girl.”
Nori wanted to feel sadness at leaving Ayame. But she could not. The sun was gone; she couldn’t be sad about anything else.
“Thank you for everything you have done for me,” she said, and she meant it. “I’m sorry it ended this way.”
“It’s not your fault, my lady.”
Nori managed a small smile. “You don’t have to call me that anymore. It’s just Nori.”
Ayame kissed her on both of her cold cheeks.
“You remember who you are,” she whispered.
They shared one last long embrace. Deep in her frozen heart, Nori knew that they would never see each other again.
She climbed the ramp onto the boat.
Instead of going down into her first-class cabin, where there was a warm bed waiting for her, she went to the side of the railing and looked over it.
The ocean seemed never-ending. But somehow, somewhere, it did end.
Perhaps it was the same with her grief.
Though she could not see it.
She turned around to look at the country of her birth, the country she had wanted so desperately to love her, growing farther and farther away.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
Akira’s image came to her.
Goodbye, Oniichan.
The wind rustled, and she strained to hear his voice, as she had always been able to do even when he was far away. When she was deaf to God, when she was deaf to hope, his voice had always been there.
But not now. Now there was nothing.
Akira was gone.
PART IV
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SKIN
Paris, France
March 1964
The cobblestones were slippery. She hadn’t bet on that. Her plan had been perfect; there was no exit that she had not scouted, no route that she had not mapped out. She knew exactly what the last piece was, and she’d planned to slip out during the final six measures, before the lights came up.
No one would ever know she had been here tonight.
But she had not planned on the cellist collapsing in the middle of the Rachmaninoff. She had not planned on him grasping at his starched collar and falling against the screaming woman beside him.
She had not planned on the panic, on the lights coming on in the hall, on the pianist rising to scour the crowd in search of help.
And even then, things might have been saved. She tried to stay seated, with her head bowed. There were a thousand people here, she was wearing a black gown, there was no reason for her to be spotted.