ELLA COULD NOT fathom living without loving. She had been loved by her parents and loved them deeply in return. Her love was simply what she was, looking for objects to pour itself out upon. She listened to Dorrigo’s problems at the hospital, she grieved with him when he lost a patient. She sympathised with his struggles with the idiotic bureaucrats who, he said, were going to be the death not just of him but of medical care in Australia, with the surgeons who disapproved of his methods.
She had matured into a striking older woman, her raven hair more remarkable now dyed, dark-skinned, admired by other women for her elegant calm and style, her compassion for others and her easygoing nature. Whether it was her full figure or her radiant complexion, she had an appearance of vigour that belied her age. Men liked the way she looked, the way she moved, the sight of her dark legs in summer, and the way she smiled with such attention when the men talked about themselves. The only blemish on her beauty was a slight upturn at the tip of her nose, which at certain angles made her face somehow look almost a caricature. Most people never really noticed it. Over the years though Dorrigo saw it more and more, until sometimes—first thing of a morning or when he arrived home from work—he could see little else of her.
She so thoroughly believed in Dorrigo and Dorrigo’s life that she repeated his opinions as if they were her own, and she did it in a way that always frustrated him. Damned bloody bureaucrats, she would say, they’ll be the death of more than just patients. Or she would start going on in some detail about the medical ignorance of some stupid surgeons.
And as he listened, all he could see was the slight upturn of her nose, the way it made her face which once had seemed very beautiful rather comical, and he thought how she wasn’t really that beautiful at all, but rather odd-looking. And every time he heard her repeat something he had said a month or a week ago, he’d be astonished at both the banality of the opinion and her loyalty in repeating something that he could now see was trite and stupid. And yet had she dared suggest that what he was saying was banal and ridiculous, he would have been furious. He wanted her agreement and, having got it so unconditionally, he despised it.
With their children she would agree also, much to Dorrigo’s irritation.
It is the parent’s job to parent, he would say to her, and their job to live.
And having said that, he would try to hide his frustration, and would have to look away from her face so he would not focus on the tip of her nose.
But I agree with you, she would say. I couldn’t agree more. If a parent doesn’t parent, what are we here for?
Dorrigo, the children, her friends, and her wider family—they all existed for her as a way of divining the world. It was a far larger and more wondrous place with them than it was without them. If she hoped for the same love from Dorrigo, and if she was disappointed in her hope, she did not feel its absence as a reason not to love him. The problem was that she did. Her love was without reason and would never yield to reason. Though it longed for requital, her love in the end did not demand it.
But when he was away at night, she would lie awake, unable to sleep. And she would think of him and her and feel the most overwhelming sadness. She may have been a trusting woman but she was very far from a stupid one. She repeated his words and echoed his opinions not because she was without thoughts of her own, but because her nature was one that wished to live through others. Without love, what was the world? Just objects, things, light, darkness.
Damn bloody bureaucrats. Stupid surgeon. Oh, that poor, poor man, she would say. Over and over. And then, inexplicably, she would cry until she could cry no more.
5
FOR SOME MINUTES Tenji Nakamura said nothing. He was trying to remember the Japan he had believed in before he went to war; a beautiful, noble Japan that he recalled as strong and good in spirit, which he had served in the fullness and purity of his soul. But something in his memory of the POW painting portraits of him and his men that day in Siam troubled him, but why it did so, he had no idea, and the effort of memory or the effect of morphine meant he next forgot about whatever it was he had just been thinking. All he could think of was how, beyond his vision, frozen monsters loomed over the city, frozen monsters past which he had travelled to come to the Tomokawas’, frozen monsters beneath which he would travel going back to the airport. He realised Tomokawa was talking to him and he tried to concentrate, but the monsters seemed to be in the room now.