The Japanese Lover(69)

Nathaniel was the only one who saw the child. Shaking with exhaustion and sadness, he took him in his hands, pushed apart the folds of the toweling, and saw a tiny being, all shriveled and blue, the skin as fine and translucent as an onion, completely formed and with half-open eyes. He bent down and gave his head a long kiss. The cold shocked his lips, and he could feel the deep rumble of silent sobs rising from the soles of his feet, shaking his whole body and emerging as tears. He wept, thinking he was doing so for the dead child and for Alma, but in fact he was doing so for himself, for his constrained, conventional life, the weight of the responsibilities he could never free himself from, the loneliness that had oppressed him since birth, the love he longed for but would never know, the marked cards he had been dealt, all the underhanded tricks destiny had played on him.



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Seven months after the miscarriage, Nathaniel took Alma on a trip to Europe to help her forget the overwhelming melancholy that was paralyzing her. She had started talking about her brother, Samuel, at the time they lived together in Poland; a governess who haunted her nightmares; a blue velvet coat; Vera Neumann and her owl spectacles; a pair of horrible classmates from school; books she had read whose titles she couldn’t remember but whose characters she felt sorry for; and other nonsensical memories. Nathaniel thought that a cultural tour might reawaken Alma’s inspiration and her enthusiasm for her silk screens, and if that happened, he intended to suggest she study for a while at the Royal Academy of Arts, the United Kingdom’s oldest art school. He considered the best therapy for Alma would be to get away from San Francisco, from the Belascos in general and from him in particular. They had not mentioned Ichimei again, and Nathaniel assumed she had kept her word and was not in contact with him. He intended to spend more time with his wife, cut down on the hours he worked, and whenever possible took cases and studied his pleas at home. They continued to sleep in separate rooms but gave up the pretense that they spent the night together. Nathaniel’s bed was installed once and for all in his former bedroom, surrounded by walls covered in hunting scenes, with horses, dogs, and foxes. Neither of them could sleep, but any sensual temptation had dried up between them. They stayed up reading until past midnight in one of the living rooms, both on the same sofa and covered in the same blanket. On those Sundays when the weather was too poor to go sailing, Nathaniel persuaded Alma to accompany him to the movies, or they took a nap side by side on their insomnia sofa, which took the place of the marriage bed they did not have.

The journey was to range from Denmark to Greece, including a cruise on the Danube and another in Turkey. It was to last two months and end in London, where they would separate. In the second week, strolling hand in hand through the narrow back streets of Rome after a memorable meal and two bottles of the best Chianti, Alma came to a halt beneath a streetlamp, grabbed Nathaniel by the shirt, pulled him toward her, and kissed him full on the lips. “I want you to sleep with me,” she ordered. That night, in the decadent palace-cum-hotel where they were staying, they made love intoxicated by the wine and the Roman summer, discovering what they already knew of each other, feeling as though they were committing a forbidden act. All Alma’s knowledge of carnal love and her own body was thanks to Ichimei, who compensated for his lack of experience with unfailing intuition, the same he used to revive any drooping plant. In the cockroach motel, Alma had been a musical instrument in Ichimei’s loving hands. She experienced nothing of this with Nathaniel. They made love hastily, as awkward and anxious as two schoolkids playing hooky, not giving themselves time to explore each other or smell each other’s skin, let alone to laugh or sigh together. Afterward they were overcome by an inexplicable unease that they tried to disguise by smoking in silence covered by the sheet, with the moon’s yellow light spying on them from the window.

The next day they exhausted themselves visiting ruins, climbing ancient stone steps, peering inside cathedrals, losing themselves among marble statues and extravagant fountains. After nightfall they again drank too much, staggered back to the decadent hotel, and for a second time made love without any great desire but with the best will in the world. And so, day by day and night after night, they toured the cities and cruised the waters of the trip as planned, gradually establishing the married couple’s routine they had so carefully avoided so far, until it became natural to share the bathroom and wake up on the same pillow.

Alma did not stay on in London. She returned to San Francisco with piles of museum leaflets and postcards, art books, and photos of picturesque corners taken by Nathaniel. She was keen to take up her painting again; her head was filled with colors and images from all she had seen: Turkish rugs, Greek urns, Flemish tapestries, paintings from every age, icons overlaid with precious stones, languid Madonnas and starving saints, but also fruit and vegetable markets, fishing boats, laundry hanging from balconies in narrow streets, men playing dominoes in taverns, children on beaches, packs of stray dogs, sad donkeys, and ancient roofs in villages dozing under the weight of centuries of routine and tradition. Everything came alive in broad brushstrokes of vibrant color on her silk screens. By then she occupied a workshop of eight thousand square feet in San Francisco’s industrial district, a place that had remained unused for many months and that she aimed to bring back to life. As she submerged herself in work, weeks went by without her thinking of either Ichimei or the child she had lost. On their return from Europe, the intimacy with Nathaniel dwindled away to almost nothing; each of them was very busy, and so the sleepless nights reading together on the sofa came to an end, although they were still united by the tender friendship they had always enjoyed. Alma seldom dozed off with her head in the exact spot between her husband’s shoulder and chin where she had once felt so secure. They no longer slept between the same sheets or shared the same bathroom. Nathaniel used the bed in his study, leaving Alma on her own in the blue room. If they occasionally made love it was by coincidence, and always with too much alcohol in their veins.