The issue of children was potentially a consequence in waiting.
Yoshi guides his thoughts away from this problematic line of thought. The subject of having a child was one that engendered deep ambivalence in him. Any strong evidence of desire on Madoka’s part would have moved him, but without it, he was becalmed. One problem was that he could not imagine a child of his own. He could not even imagine a miniature Madoka. Babies were always said to change everything. Yoshi was not interested in changing everything with regards to his wife.
He had gotten as far as asking, some weeks ago, if Madoka had seen her doctor and if they should talk about “certain options.” Madoka said that she had, and that she felt “the same way about their options.” The clumsiness of the conversation had embarrassed both of them.
In a way, he envied Sergei and Helen, for whom the question of children had been solved. Especially Helen, whose child was an adult.
He reminds himself that he should not talk overmuch about his crewmates during this last time together with his wife. Anyway, Madoka joked that he was terrible at describing people. It was true, in terms of concrete nouns and adjectives.
For example, when Helen made drawings to illustrate a point she was making, it could be seen that she was able to draw perfect straight lines without the aid of instruments. Yoshi felt that this said quite a bit about Helen as a person, but it would be difficult for him to articulate it further.
Yoshi opens up the refrigerator and peers inside. When it inconveniences nobody, he is a vegetarian. He takes out carrots, picks up a knife. He will make a curry. Yoshi slices a disk of carrot, looks at it, and then is struck, for the first time, with the full comprehension that there is a scenario wherein he will be going to Mars in four years. Heretofore, he has been keeping a mental space—a kind of defensive moat—between himself and the idea of a Mars voyage. He believes the others are doing the same.
God in heaven, Mars, Yoshi thinks, in English.
The phrase God in heaven is not his own. He is not religious.
And will he say this to Madoka, when she returns? When she walks in the door and the table is set and the wine is poured and the candles are lit and the curry is almost done and her underpants are laying flat in a neat stack in a drawer upstairs? Will he wrap his arms around his wife and say, God in heaven, Mars, my love, my true love? And will she understand what he means by this when it is not even his language or his God—that in the words there is awe and wonder, yes, but also inadequacy, for how can you hold a whole planet in your head, or in your dreams? Or in your arms?
MADOKA
The photograph, for those who choose to look at it, has several contradictions. The seated young woman’s hair is cropped to the fashion of 1923, but she wears traditional kimono. One of her hands is placed primly on her knees and the other grasps a pistol, pointed to the floor, but with a finger on the trigger. The woman’s broad smile allows the viewer to see the gap between her two front teeth, but her eyes are closed. Because it is unusual for anyone to frame and display a photograph of a person with their eyes closed, most people assume that the woman’s eyes are closed because she was blind. She was not blind.
Madoka Tanaka is not blind either, but she cannot see the photograph in front of her because she is wearing a sleep mask. The sleep mask was made by a Danish firm and Madoka has made certain modifications to it so that now it resembles the full-face masks worn by Mexican lucha libre wrestlers, except the eyes are blocked and also, it is a tasteful gray. It is very effective: Madoka can see nothing. She reaches her hands out and is surprised by how close the wall is, would’ve guessed that she was almost a meter away, and not centimeters. She has stubbed her fingers on the light switch, and from that, she knows she must be in front of the photograph of her great-great-grandmother.
If she wanted to, Madoka could wear this mask all day, a wildly indulgent idea that is not completely out of this world. Yoshi is gone. Today is a Sunday. She has no social commitments. There is always work that could be done, but why not give herself an entire day off? It is not unreasonable.
Madoka has not been sleeping well, so over the past three months she has been ordering a series of ever more complex sleep masks. She had worn this one last night, and it had not worked, but she had not wanted to take it off this morning. The material is pleasant on her skin, and she finds it more calming to be in darkness when there is light, rather than darkness in darkness.
She runs her fingers around the photograph frame in the hallway, dislodging some dust. It is not an interesting sensation, so she moves on. The photograph of her great-great-grandmother was a gift from her mother, but it was not a gift for her. Madoka’s mother and Yoshi adored one another, and Yoshi had liked the photograph when he had seen it at her parents’ house. He had been struck by the pose—so provocative—with the closed eyes and the gun. Why the closed eyes? Why the gun? No one knew. Yoshi was impressed by the story of her ancestor, who had been a poet, a contributor to the short-lived magazine Bluestocking, and had translated the diaries of Frances Burney into Japanese. That was the sort of thing that moved Yoshi. He was romantic.
Her great-great-grandmother had died in the confusion following the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, of smoke inhalation, unable to get clear of her burning house because her feet had become stuck in the melting tarmac of the street outside. She had not been the only person to die like this.