The Japanese Lover(79)
“What can we do with this happiness that appears for no obvious reason, the joy that needs no cause to exist?” asked Alma.
They took short, shaky steps, leaning on one another and feeling the late-autumn cold, dazed by the rush of stubborn memories that gripped them, memories of love, flooded by a mutual happiness. Alma pointed out to Lenny a fleeting glimpse of pink veils in the park, but it was growing dark, and possibly it wasn’t Emily heralding disaster, but a mirage like so many others at Lark House.
THE JAPANESE LOVER
On Friday Irina Bazili arrived early at Lark House to look in on Alma before starting her day. Alma no longer needed her assistance to get dressed, but she was grateful to the young woman for coming to her apartment to share the day’s first cup of tea.
“Marry my grandson, Irina; you’d be doing all the Belascos a favor,” she often said to her.
Irina ought to have explained that she hadn’t yet succeeded in overcoming the terrors of the past, but could not mention it without dying of shame. How could she tell Seth’s grandmother that the monsters of her memory poked their lizard heads out of their lairs whenever she thought of making love with him? He understood that she wasn’t ready to talk and stopped pressing her to see a psychiatrist; for the time being it was enough for him to be her confidant. They could wait. Irina had proposed a drastic solution: to watch together the videos filmed by her stepfather, which were still circulating around the world and which would go on tormenting her to the end of her days. But Seth was afraid that once unleashed, these deformed creatures would become uncontrollable. His prescription consisted in taking things little by little, with love and good humor, advancing in a dance of two steps forward and one step back. They now slept in the same bed, and occasionally awoke in each other’s arms.
On this particular morning, Irina did not find Alma in her apartment or see any trace of the overnight bag she took on her secret outings, or her silk nightgowns. For the first time, however, Ichimei’s portrait had also gone. She already knew the car wasn’t going to be in its parking place but Irina was not alarmed, because Alma had grown steadier on her legs and she assumed Ichimei would be waiting for her. She wasn’t going to be alone.
Since it was Saturday, Irina did not have a shift at Lark House and had snoozed until nine, a luxury she could afford on weekends now that she was living with Seth and had given up washing dogs. He woke her with a big cup of milky coffee and sat beside her on the bed to plan their day. He had come in from the gym, freshly showered, his skin moist and still pumped up from the exercise, never imagining there would be no plans with Irina that day: it was to be a day for farewells. At that moment the phone rang. It was Larry Belasco calling to tell his son that his grandmother’s car had slid off a rural track and rolled fifty feet down a ravine.
“She is in the intensive care unit at Marin General Hospital,” he told him.
“Is it serious?” Seth asked, terrified.
“Yes. Her car was completely wrecked. I’ve no idea what my mother was doing driving out there.”
“Was she on her own, Papa?”
“Yes.”
At the hospital, they found Alma conscious and lucid, despite the drugs being dripped into her vein, which, according to the doctor, would have knocked out a horse. She had received the full impact of the accident. In a more solid car, the disaster would possibly not have been so great, but the tiny lime-green Smart car was smashed to pieces and Alma, strapped in by her safety belt, was crushed. While the rest of the Belasco family were grief stricken in the waiting room, Larry explained to Seth that one extreme course of action remained: to slit Alma open, reposition the displaced inner organs in their proper places, and keep her body split open for several days until the swelling subsided and they could intervene. After that they could consider operating on the broken bones. The risk, already huge for a young person, was much greater for someone in her eighties like Alma; the surgeon who saw her at the hospital did not dare attempt it. Catherine Hope, who came at once with Lenny Beal, maintained that such a major operation would be cruel and pointless; all they should do was to keep Alma as comfortable as possible and await her end, which would not be long in coming. Irina left the family discussing with Cathy the proposal to move her to San Francisco, where there would be better facilities, and slipped silently into Alma’s room.
“Are you in pain?” she whispered. “Do you want me to call Ichimei?”
Alma was on oxygen but breathing independently and made a slight sign for her to approach. Irina didn’t want to think about the wounded body under the sheet-covered frame; instead she focused on her face, which remained intact and looked more beautiful than ever.
“Kirsten,” stammered Alma.
“You want me to find Kirsten?” Irina asked in surprise.
“And tell them not to touch me,” added Alma in a clear voice, before closing her eyes in exhaustion.
Seth phoned Kirsten’s brother and that afternoon he brought her to the hospital. She sat on the only chair in Alma’s room, waiting patiently for instructions as she had done during the previous months in the workshop, before she began working with Catherine Hope at the pain clinic. At some point when the last rays of daylight were filtering in through the window, Alma came around from her drug-induced lethargy. She ran her eyes over those around her, trying to recognize them: her family, Irina, Lenny, Cathy; she seemed to revive when her gaze rested on Kirsten. Kirsten got up and approached the bed, took the hand not hooked up to the drip, and began placing wet kisses on it from fingers to elbow, asking Alma anxiously if she was ill, if she was going to get better, and repeating how much she loved her. Larry tried to pull her away, but Alma feebly signed that he should leave them alone.