—
That Thursday I received a letter from my wife. This was the first time since I’d left home in March that she’d gotten in touch. My name and address and hers were written on the envelope in her familiar, beautiful, steady handwriting. She was still using my last name, I saw. Maybe it was more convenient, somehow, until the divorce became official, to continue to use her husband’s last name.
I used scissors to neatly snip open the envelope. Inside was a postcard with a photo of a polar bear standing on top of an iceberg. On the card she’d written a simple message thanking me for signing the divorce papers and mailing them back so quickly.
How are you? I’m managing to get by, nothing to report. I’m still living in the same place. Thank you for mailing back the papers so quickly. I appreciate it. I’ll get in touch when there’s been progress in the process.
If there’s anything you left at the house you need, please let me know. I’ll send it to you. At any rate, I hope both our new lives work out.
Yuzu
I reread the letter many times, straining to decipher the feelings hidden behind those lines. But I couldn’t detect any implied emotion or intention. She just seemed to be transmitting the clearly stated message that the words conveyed.
One other thing I didn’t understand was why it had taken her so long to prepare the divorce papers. It’s not that much trouble to get them ready. And she must have wanted to dissolve our relationship as fast as possible. Even so, half a year had passed since I’d left our house. What had she been doing all that time? What had been going through her mind?
I gazed at the postcard with the polar bear, but couldn’t read any intentions in that either. Why a polar bear from the North Pole? She probably just happened to have the polar bear card on hand and used it. Most likely that’s the case, I figured. Or was she suggesting that my future was like that of the polar bear, stuck on a tiny iceberg, directionless, carried away by the whims of the current? No—that was reading too much into it.
I tossed the card into the envelope and put it inside the top drawer of my desk. Once I shut the drawer it felt like things had progressed one step forward. Like with a click the scale had moved one line up. Not that this was my doing. Someone, something, had prepared this new stage in my stead, and I was simply going along with the program.
I recalled how on Sunday I’d talked to Mariye Akikawa about life after divorce.
Like you’re walking along as always, sure you’re on the right path, when the path suddenly vanishes, and you’re facing an empty space, no sense of direction, no clue where to go, and you just keep trudging along. That’s what it feels like.
A directionless ocean current, a road to nowhere, it didn’t matter much. They were both the same. Just metaphors. I was experiencing the real thing, and being swallowed up by reality. If I had that, who needs a metaphor?
If I could, I wanted to write a letter to Yuzu to explain the situation I found myself in now. I didn’t think I could write something vague like I’m managing to get by, nothing to report. Far from it. My honest sense was there was too much to report. But if I started writing about every single thing that had happened to me since I started living here, it would spin out of control. The biggest problem was that I couldn’t explain well to myself what was happening. At least I knew I couldn’t find a consistent, logical context in which to explain it all.
So I decided not to write back to Yuzu. If I did start writing there were only two ways to go: either explain everything that had taken place (ignoring logic and consistency), or write nothing. I chose the latter. In a sense I really was the lonely polar bear left behind to drift on an iceberg. Not a single mailbox as far as the eye could see. A polar bear has no way to send a letter, now does he.
* * *
—
I remember very well when Yuzu and I first met, and started dating.
On our first date we had dinner, talked about all kinds of things, and she seemed to like me. She said I could see her again. From the first our minds seemed to inexplicably click. Simply put, we seemed a good match.
But it took some time before I actually became her lover. Yuzu had another man she’d been seeing for two years. Not that she was head over heels in love with him.
“He’s really handsome. Though a bit boring sometimes,” she said.
Very handsome but boring…There was no one I knew like that, so I couldn’t picture that type of person. What came to mind was a dish of food that looked delicious but ended up tasting bland. Would anyone be happy with that kind of food?
“I’ve always had a weakness for good-looking men,” she said, as if making a confession. “Whenever I meet a handsome man it’s like my brain goes out the window. I know that’s a problem, but I can’t do anything about it. I can’t get over that. That might be my biggest weakness.”
“A chronic disease,” I said.
She nodded. “That could be. An incurable disorder. A chronic disease.”
“Not exactly great news for me,” I said. Handsome features weren’t my strongest selling point.
She didn’t deny that, and just laughed happily. At least she didn’t seem bored when we were together. She had a lot to say, and laughed a lot.
So I waited patiently for things to not work out between her and this handsome boyfriend. (He wasn’t merely good-looking, but had graduated from a top university and had a high-paying job at a top corporation. I bet he and Yuzu’s father got along famously.) All this time she and I talked over all sorts of things, went to all sorts of places. We got to understand each other better. We kissed, held each other, but didn’t have sex. Having a physical relationship with several partners at the same time wasn’t her style. “I’m a bit old-fashioned that way,” she said. So all I could do was bide my time.
This went on for about half a year. For me, it felt like eternity. Sometimes I just wanted to give up. But I managed to hang in there, convinced that someday soon she would be mine.
And finally she and her handsome boyfriend broke up (at least I think they broke up—she never said a word about it, so it was conjecture on my part), and she chose me—not much to look at, not much of a breadwinner—as her lover. Soon after we decided to get married.
I remember very well the first time we made love. We’d gone to stay at a small hot-springs town in the country, and spent our first night together there. Everything went really well. Almost perfect, you could even say. Maybe a little too perfect. Her skin was soft and pale, and silky smooth. The somewhat slick hot mineral water of the hot springs bath, combined with the pale glow of the early-autumn moonlight, may have contributed to the beauty and smoothness of her skin. I held her naked body for the first time, went inside her, she moaned quietly in my ear, and dug her nails hard into my back. The autumn insects were in full chorus then, too. A cool mountain stream burbled in the background. I made a firm pledge to myself then: Never, ever, let this woman go. This may have been the most sublime moment of my life up till then. Finally making Yuzu mine.