After dark

8

Our viewpoint has returned to Eri Asai’s room. A quick scan reveals nothing changed. The night has deepened with the passage of time, however, and the silence is one degree heavier.

No, something has changed. Greatly.

The change is immediately obvious. The bed is empty. Eri Asai is gone. The bedding is undisturbed, but it is not as if she woke up and left while we were away. The bed is so perfectly made, there is no sign she was sleeping in it until a few moments before. This is strange. What could have happened?

We look around.

The TV is still on. It displays the same room it was showing before. A large, unfurnished room. Ordinary fluorescent lights. Linoleum floor. The picture, however, has stabilized, almost to the point of unrecognizability. The static is gone, and instead of bleeding into each other, the images have clear, sharp outlines. The channel connection—wherever it might be tuned in to—is steady. Like the light of the full moon pouring down on an uninhabited grassland, the TV’s bright screen illuminates the room. Everything in the room, without exception, is more or less under the influence of the magnetic force emitted by the television set.

The TV screen. The Man with No Face is still sitting in the chair. Brown suit, black shoes, white dust, glossy mask adhering to his face. His posture, too, is unchanged since we last saw him. Back straight, hands on knees, face angled slightly downward, he stares at something straight ahead of him. His eyes are hidden by the mask, but we can tell they are locked on something. What could he be staring at with such intensity? As if responding to our thoughts, the TV camera begins to move along his line of vision. At the point of focus stands a bed, a single bed made of unadorned wood, and in it sleeps Eri Asai.

We look at the empty bed in this room and at the bed on the TV screen. We compare them in detail. The conclusion is inescapable: they are the exact same bed. The covers are exactly the same. But one bed is on the TV screen and the other is in this room. And in the TV bed, Eri Asai lies asleep.

We suppose that the other one is the real bed. It was transported, with Eri, to the other side while we were looking elsewhere (over two hours have passed since we left this room). All we have here is a substitute that was left in place of the real bed—perhaps as a sign intended to fill the empty space that should be here.

In the bed in that other world, Eri continues sleeping soundly, as she did when she was in this room—just as beautifully, just as deeply. She is not aware that some hand has carried her (or perhaps we should say her body) into the TV screen. The blinding glare of the ceiling’s fluorescent lamps does not penetrate to the bottom of the sea trench in which she sleeps.

The Man with No Face is watching over Eri with eyes that are themselves hidden from view behind their shroud. He aims hidden ears toward her with unwavering attention. Both Eri and the Man with No Face intently maintain their respective poses. Like animals hiding in camouflage, they curtail their breathing, lower their body temperature, maintain total silence, hold their muscles in check, and block out their portals of awareness. We seem to be looking at a picture that has been paused, which is not in fact the case. This is a live image being sent to us in real time. In both that room and this room, time is passing at the same uniform rate. Both are immersed in the same temporality. We know this from the occasional slow rising and falling of the man’s shoulders. Wherever the intention of each might lie, we are together being carried along at the same speed down the same river of time.