The Japanese Lover(8)

THE INVISIBLE MAN


A year after she started to work for Alma Belasco, Irina began to suspect the older woman had a lover. She did not admit her suspicions to Seth until much later. At first, before Seth had lured her into the intrigue, she had never dreamed of spying on Alma. She had been drawn into Alma’s private world gradually, without either of them realizing it. The idea of a lover started to take shape when Irina was sorting out the boxes Alma had brought from the house at Sea Cliff and when she examined the silver-framed photograph of a man that Alma kept in her bedroom, which she polished regularly. Apart from a smaller one of her family in the living room, there were no other photos in the apartment. This caught Irina’s attention, because all the other residents at Lark House surrounded themselves with photographs to keep them company. All Alma said was that the man in the portrait was a childhood friend. On the rare occasion that Irina plucked up the courage to ask something more, Alma changed the subject. Still, Irina managed to drag out of her that his name was Ichimei Fukuda, and that he had painted the strange canvas that hung in the living room, a desolate snowy landscape beneath a gray sky, with dark one-story buildings, electricity posts and wires, and the only sign of life a black bird in flight. Irina couldn’t understand why, from among the wealth of artworks the Belasco family owned, Alma had chosen such a depressing picture to decorate her home with. The portrait of Ichimei Fukuda showed a man of uncertain age, his head quizzically tilted to one side, eyes half-closed because he was squinting into the sun; even so, his look was candid and direct. He had a fine head of straight hair, and the hint of a smile on his thick, sensual lips. Irina felt herself irresistibly drawn to his face, which seemed to be either entreating her or trying to convey something of vital importance. When she was on her own in the apartment she studied the portrait so avidly that she began to imagine a full-length version of Ichimei Fukuda, endowing him with physical attributes as well as inventing a life for him: broad shoulders, a lonely character, someone whom suffering had taught to keep his emotions in check. Alma’s refusal to talk about him only further aroused Irina’s desire to meet him. In one of the boxes she found another photo of the same man on a beach with Alma. Both of them had their pants rolled up, sandals in hand, and were wading in the water, laughing and splashing each other. The couple’s attitude suggested love and sexual intimacy. Irina guessed they were alone there and had asked a passing stranger to take this snapshot of them. If Ichimei was more or less the same age as Alma, Irina calculated he must be in his eighties now, but she was certain that she would recognize him if ever she saw him. Ichimei had to be the reason behind Alma’s erratic behavior.

Irina could predict Alma’s disappearances from her melancholy, self-absorbed silences in the days leading up to them. These gave way to a sudden, barely controlled euphoria once she had made up her mind to leave. She was waiting for something to happen, and when it arrived, she was overjoyed. She threw a few clothes into a small overnight bag, told Kirsten not to go to the workshop, and left Neko for Irina to look after. The cat was old, and suffered from a series of quirks and ailments. The long list of recommendations and medicines for his care was stuck to the refrigerator door. Neko was the fourth in a line of similar cats, all with the same name, that had kept Alma company at different stages in her life.

Alma would leave with a lover’s haste, without saying where she was going or when she thought she’d be back. Two or three days would go by with no news from her, and then all at once, as unexpectedly as she had left, she would reappear, with a beaming smile on her face and her toy car’s gas tank nearly empty. Irina was in charge of her accounts and had seen the hotel receipts. She had also discovered that on these adventures Alma took the only two silk nightgowns she possessed, instead of her usual flannel pajamas. She wondered why Alma slipped away as though she were committing a sin; after all, she was a free woman and could receive whomever she liked in her Lark House apartment.

Inevitably, Irina’s suspicions about the man in the photograph infected Seth. Even though Irina had been careful not to mention her doubts, Seth’s frequent visits led him to notice his grandmother’s repeated absences. Whenever he raised the subject, Alma said she was going to train with terrorists, or experiment with the hallucinatory drug ayahuasca, or gave some equally absurd explanation, in the mock-sarcastic tone they employed with each other. Seth decided to enlist Irina’s help to solve the mystery, although this was not easy to obtain, as the young woman’s loyalty to Alma was absolute. He had to convince Irina that his grandmother was in peril. Alma appeared strong for her age, he told her, but the truth was she was delicate, had high blood pressure and a weak heart, and was in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, which was why her hands shook. He couldn’t give her any further details, because Alma had refused to undergo the required medical examinations, but the two of them needed to keep an eye on her and avoid her running any risks.

“We want our loved ones to be safe, Seth. But what they want for themselves is autonomy. Your grandmother would never accept us poking our noses into her private life, even if it is to protect her.”

“That’s why we have to do it without her realizing it,” Seth asserted.



* * *



According to Seth, early in 2010 his grandmother’s personality underwent a complete change in the space of two hours. Although she had been a successful artist and someone who always fulfilled her obligations, she suddenly cut herself off from the world, family, and friends, shutting herself away in an old people’s home that was beneath her and deciding, in her daughter-in-law Doris’s opinion, to dress like a Tibetan refugee. She must have had some kind of short circuit in the brain, Doris said. The last they saw of the former Alma was when she announced, after a perfectly normal lunch, that she was going to take a nap. When at five o’clock Doris knocked on her bedroom door to remind her about that evening’s reception, she found her standing at the window staring out into the mist. She was barefoot, and in her underwear. Her splendid formal gown lay abandoned on a chair. “Tell Larry I’m not going to the reception, and that he can’t count on me for anything for the rest of my life.” Her emphatic tone brooked no argument. Her daughter-in-law closed the door silently and went to give her husband the message. The gala was to raise funds for the Belasco Foundation and was the most important event of the year, putting the family’s ability to attract donors to the test. The waiters were putting the finishing touches to the tables, the cooks were busy with the banquet, and the chamber orchestra musicians were tuning their instruments. Each year, Alma gave a short speech that was always more or less the same. Afterward she posed for photographs with the most important benefactors and spoke to the press. That was all that was asked of her: the rest was handled by Larry, her son. That night they had to make do without her.