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solongsun 4
'This is a place where you can be completely honest. I want you to feel comfortable.'
Dr Kimura gestured to a long, low couch beneath the window. 'This is about you,' he said, 'And what helps you to talk. You can sit or lie down, or stand up if you prefer. It its easier for you, you're under no obligation to look at me whilst we're talking. I'm going to record you on my tape recorder here, and I might also write down a few things from time to time. Do you have any questions?'
Ruki deliberated.
'Can I smoke?'
'Certainly you can smoke.'
Uneasily, Ruki dropped himself onto the sofa and lit up a cigarette. He hesitated, perhaps trying to judge his choice of seat, wriggled a little, and finally drew his legs up onto the couch and crossed them like a kid in primary school. Kimura passed him a glass ashtray, and he settled it on the arm of the sofa carefully.
'These conversations can sometimes be difficult, Ruki, and some of the questions I ask you might have answers that make you feel sad, or angry, or ashamed. I want you to try very hard to answer all of them, though, and be perfectly truthful and honest.'
Ruki gave a lopsided shrug, which the doctor seemed to comfortably interpret as a yes.
'Very good. Why don't you start by telling me about the first time you can remember something bad happening – the first time you felt frightened, or sad, or cross?'
Ruki shot him a distrustful glance. 'Is that important?'
'Maybe. A lot of what happens to us when we're children stays with us when we're adults, even when we don't realise it.'
Ruki sighed, rubbing at his forehead awkwardly.
'I guess it'd have to be – getting lost. I mean, not really lost. But I was in a department store with my mother, and I wandered a little way away from her to look at something. When I turned around, she was gone.'
'How did that make you feel?'
'Scared.'
'How old were you?'
'Four, I guess, or maybe five.'
'So if I had that four or five year old in front of me, what do you think he would say about what happened?'
Ruki slid Kimura a strange look, and the doctor smiled. 'Humour me.'
'I...' Ruki studied the ash at the end of his cigarette, watching it grow more and more unstable, 'I guess he'd say that he was scared, because she left him. I mean, as a kid, you leave your parents all the time. But they're not supposed to leave you.'
'So you felt abandoned?'
'For a few minutes, I guess.'
'And how do you feel about people leaving now?'
'What?'
'Well, when people die, or relationships break up, how does it make you feel?'
Ruki gave him another look, and Kimura smiled.
'I know it seems an obvious question. Let's try this: does it make you feel sad, or does it make you feel scared?'
'Can't I feel both?'
'If you had to pick one, that you felt the strongest?'
Ruki hesitated for a long while. 'Scared, I guess,' he said at last.
The doctor nodded, as if that had been just what he'd expected him to say, and Ruki felt a small prickle of irritation. It was irresistible, like an itch that was begging to be scratched; like the aching tooth you can't stop tonguing. He stirred slightly, as if by accident, and knocked the glass ashtray onto the floor, where it broke.
He met the doctor's eyes. 'Sorry,' he said. But he knew he wasn't.
The one-to-one sessions with Kimura were supposed to take place three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from four until five. Ruki imagined that he was the last patient of the day for Kimura; that after that, the man would settle into a nice car and drive back to his home, which would be in a suburb of Kyoto, and would be a sort of fishbowl where his wife and children swam around happily and in a state of constant forgetting.
It had been raining when he'd gone in, but it'd stopped by the time he came out, and the sky was starting to show evening colours in the gaps between the clouds. He passed the sitting room, where the doorway was actually just a doorless frame, so that the nurses could always see in; a few men were scattered about in there, like afterthoughts. At first Ruki thought that they were totally still, but then he realised that they moving very minutely; Uruha was reading a book – The Local's Guide to Italy, by Takashima Hayato – and tapping his fingertips along its spine steadily; Die was lying with his head hanging upside down off the sofa, grinning toothily as he talked to Aoi, who was sitting on the floor with his legs outstretched, eating a banana that he kept waving enticingly in his friend's face.
'Quit it.' The way Die was lying caused his shirt to ride up, and his hipbones looked as sharp and flared as two wings. Even the blood rushing to his face couldn't hide how tired he looked, or how pale; still, that megawatt grin, easy as a kid's.
'I'm not doing anything,' Aoi said. 'Quit looking at me. Unless you like what you see.' He pushed the fruit inappropriately far past his lips and gave Die a decidedly lewd look. Then, he bit down, causing the redhead to break up into laughter.
'You know that's a lot more threatening than sexy, right?'
With some effort, Aoi swallowed his mouthful. 'Sure I do. You're too skinny for me to fuck in any capacity; it'd be irresponsible. When you don't eat, your muscles waste, and I'm not going to be the sexpot who explodes your heart.'
'Sounds like a shitty sci-fi film. “The sexpot who exploded my heart”.'
'Just fucking eat something, twiggy.'
Ruki left them to it. The sound of their chatter was friendly, but isolating; watching them, he had the feeling he was watching a movie or a TV show.
He wondered about Aoi; about his strange life. How did he feel, being cooped up in a place like this because of his sexuality – was there anything more to it than that, and if not, how did he cope?
Just the thought of it made Ruki feel tired and sad. He wandered aimlessly further down the corridor, knowing there were thirty minutes until dinner and feeling them roll out in front of him endlessly. Time in this place did strange things; it was so long, so wide, so flat, at once still and ever changing, shifting like the ocean, breaking and reforming into wave upon wave. Like standing on a beach, and looking out at the sea, right up until it curved at the horizon and fell away into space.
Gentle, watery piano music was trickling out from under the music room door, and he found himself following it. The music room was normally a pretty popular hangout, being the home of the only record player on the ward – at least, as far as Ruki could tell – and so it was a surprise to see it almost empty. The only people in there was a nurse, absently filling in patient charts, and the patient who had been sedated at dinner last night, looking much fresher and tidier than when Ruki had last seen him; when he heard the door open, he finished the piece of music and turned, setting his hands neatly in his lap. He didn't say anything, though; he appeared to be waiting politely for Ruki to speak, his head slightly cocked, like a dog.
'Hi,' Ruki volunteered after a while; as if that had been just what he'd wanted, the other man smiled at him.
'Hello.'
With gentle, tidy motions, he began to gather together his sheet music and stack it neatly.
'Don't let me stop you playing.'
'Oh no; it's nothing.' The sheet music went away into a plain manilla folder, and he directed his very level, very lucid gaze at Ruki. 'What's your name?'
'It's Ruki. And you're Shinya, aren't you?'
He nodded, his hair swaying softly over his shoulders.
'I know you're new,' he said – his voice very quiet and smooth – 'I'm sorry if I scared you last night.'
'You didn't scare me.'
'That's good.' He smiled faintly. 'I find it hard to remember what happened.'
'Does it happen...often, like that?'
'No; not often.' His smile widened a little, 'You were scared. I can see it in your face.'
Ruki shrugged awkwardly. 'A lot of this stuff scares me,' he admitted.
'I'm very sorry,' Shinya said, his voice almost a whisper. 'Sometimes I get headaches. And sometimes, the things I hear and see – they aren't really there. But it's hard to tell. It's like having a vivid dream that you don't wake up from. If you don't wake up, how do you know that you're dreaming?'
The nurse glanced up from her charts. 'Don't upset yourself,' she said, which Ruki thought was strange, because Shinya didn't look upset. He bit his lip, though, and lowered his head in assent.
In direct contrast to the previous night, he was exceptionally self-possessed. If he hadn't been crazy, Ruki could imagine him as a Buddhist monk, never breaking meditation, sitting in the wind and the rain without a shiver, starving slowly and reasonably to death.
'It's time for your medication,' the nurse said now, sensibly. 'Why don't you go down to the nurses' station, and make sure you take it before dinner?'
'Yes,' Shinya agreed mechanically, his voice vague. Through his hair, he glanced up, and the look in his eyes startled Ruki into taking a step back; never had he seen a single person look so trapped, or so desperately unhappy.
It scared him more than the previous night had – much more. But the next moment, that look was gone, and Shinya gave him one last gentle smile and left to take his medicine.
Dear E. O.—
'It's like having a vivid dream that you don't wake up from. If you don't wake up, how do you know that you're dreaming?'
I met a man called Shinya today, who said that. I must be crazy, because I thought he made a lot of sense.
If I'm sick, I'm starting to think that maybe the people here could be the cure. Not the doctors and the nurses; the other patients. Seeing somebody so sad makes all the shit that happened – art school and what you said and the bleach and the pills – seem so fucking idiotic. It seems so far away. I don't know what's the 'real world' any more, but if the real world is where you are, I know that I'm not inside of it now.
Maybe I got further towards dying that I thought, and all of this has been one long aching nightmare, in a coma in a hospital someplace. Maybe I'm in limbo. That would make sense. That's why I'm stuck here with everybody else who wanted to die; we're being sorted into heaven and hell, it's just like a waiting room.
I don't know what I mean. My thinking isn't organised. But seeing somebody like that, it was like he was already dead, and when you look at death that way, doing it to yourself just seems like the stupidest thing imaginable.
What frightens me is that I have no idea how to get out of here. Can you be cured if you don't even know what's wrong with you – if the doctors don't even know; or if they won't tell you?
My doctor's name is Kimura. He said I could tell him anything, but how can that be true? One of the patients is here because he's a homosexual – if they can keep us here on those grounds, how could I ever tell him how I feel about men? I could never tell him a thing about you.
The truth is that I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of how I feel. Sometimes about you, and sometimes about men in general. When you're growing up, those feelings start out so fuzzy, so formless, compared to how razor-sharp it becomes later; I want a man to touch and love and hold; I can't help it. I want it so badly that I don't know what to do; it's too big and I'm lost inside it.
I thought it would be you always, too, right up until you were kissing me on the forehead and saying things that didn't make sense about 'May-September relationships'.
I don't know why I fell in love with you.
I'm picturing the real world, your world, as a tiny bright blue marble hovering and spinning in the far distance, like a sort of twinkling light, the only star in the centre of a huge dead universe.
Dinner that evening was quiet. Ruki didn't talk to anybody;. He picked at his food and got through the meal by making it into a series of small challenges: chew this mouthful, swallow this much, clear this section of your plate. He kept his eyes focussed straight down on the small section of table in front of him and, as if they sensed something, people mostly kept away; he was aware, a few times, of curious eyes upon him, but nobody said a word. They were all distracted anyway; Die had received a package that had morning that had finally, finally passed its content inspection, and he opened it excitedly at the table. It was a new LP, The Doors' Morrison Hotel, and he admired the record gleefully: 'It only just passed the content inspection,' he boasted gleefully, 'So it must be full of good stuff.'
'Man, your parents are the best,' Aoi said jealously, grabbing at it, 'Get them to send you a Bowie record next time. I want The Man Who Sold The World. You know what's on that?'
'What?'
'“I'd rather stay here...with all the madmen...for I'm quite content they're all as sane as me...”'
Kai clapped a hand to his mouth to disguise his sudden bark of laughter, and Die snorted loudly.
'I'm just a big mail order catalogue to you, aren't I?'
'We'll I'd ask my parents, but they're withholding love and gifts until I stop sucking cock. You know?'
The two of them grinned at each other, and Ruki pushed quietly back from the table.
He felt funny – anaemic. Every reflective surface seemed to be full of his wan face, blank as a piece of paper; his pale lips and nose barely features, his dark eyes swimming hugely, like two black holes. It was entirely believable, presented smearily in front of him like that, that it wasn't his own face. His hands seemed small with distance, too far away from him; they appeared fine and detailed and tiny as something viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
I don't belong here, he thought, and in a single velvety moment it happened; his mind slipped shut, tight as a clamshell.
Amazing how it happened. Just the same as the day of the explosion. It was a kind of mental blackout and he felt it that time, the darkness, breaking over him like a wave would break over him.
He stumbled into the bathroom without bothering to sign in on the sheet posted outside the door, and dashed cold water over his face straight from the tap. Droplet appeared lividly all over his skin, like wax melting down a candle. He felt his body rolling loosely with febrile heat; he clamped a sweating hand over the mirror desperately.
I don't belong here.
'Ruki! You know you shouldn't be in here without signing in. Every patient...'
The face in the mirror cracked, and he dashed his fists down hard against the sink. Pain shot straight up through his bones and a grimace-like smile passed over his face; he could feel it vibrating numbly in his bones before the orderly who had followed him in grasped him firmly from the back, attempting to pin his arms down to his sides.
'Now calm down – calm down—'
'I don't belong here,' Ruki gasped, feeling the man's arms like vines around his chest, and the lack of air and the panic made him start to struggle violently, 'I don't belong here—'
He spun suddenly away and fetched up against the sink and the wall, catching his face against the faucet so that he blinked stars; he was aware of shouting, code grey, code grey, and of an impossibly huge scream struggling against the tight confines of his throat.
The door burst forth from its hinges, and the room was white with nurses. One grasped him by the forehead and dragged his head back; more caught his arms; one of them yanked his sleeve up. He felt the prick of a syringe and let out a sound somewhere between a yell and a sigh, savouring the tiny hurt; he could still feel himself fighting, but stiffly and disjointedly; he knew now that he was losing.
His head spun, and his legs slackened threateningly. The arm they'd shot him in felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. His eyelids dragged halfway down and he was aware of his mind defending itself fiercely; felt its corners turning themselves in and out, in and out like a cat's cradle, that playground game, he'd used to play when he was a kid...
A soft sigh slid from between his lips, and his eyes closed.
That was about all he knew for the next fifteen hours.
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It's an interesting juxtaposition how comfortable Aoi is with his sexuality versus how uncomfortable Ruki is. I'm curious whether that's just the result of Chibi-san's upbringing, or if he's seen some nasty homophobia up close.
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