I made a bit of progress in my driving skills. I got so I could shift into fourth gear. Nagoyan was still at the wheel for any mountain passes we negotiated, but I realized that cars are like computers or cell phones: they’re designed for human use. I wanted to take real lessons and get a license. Having passed through a tunnel, we saw no more sign of town life; Takamori may have been the last of it. Yet even if that were true, we were still on the right track. Following the gently looping road, we found ourselves now completely beyond the somma. Before us stretched a range of mountains quite unknown to me. They were not particularly high, but as we crossed one after another, the billowing waves of green seemed to go on forever. Was this what it meant to run away, to escape – to be ever heading to places we did not know, that no one knew?
“I never thought about what’s beyond Aso.”
“Could it be Mount Kirishima?”
“No way it could be so close by.”
There was nothing other than the forest and the road. And no sign of human habitation.
“So what’s wi’ that Shihonron?”
I’d never heard of it before, but an image floated up in my mind of a huge, beautiful Chinese bird cooing shi-hon-ron.
“I don’t know it. Whit is it?”
“Were you in the faculty of economics?”
“No, in literature, in the English department.”
“So I don’t suppose you read it.”
“Whit is it?”
“It’s a Communist text – Das Kapital by Karl Marx. I haven’t read all of it, but I did take M.E.”
“M.E.?”
“Marxist economics. But why do you…? It’s all quite mysterious…”
“My ex did economics.”
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than Nagoyan shouted, “Then there’s no mystery to it at all. How boring! He must have read it, and so he’s the source. Once you understand that, your hallucination will disappear.”
“Rather than reasons, I could use some Mellaril.”
I knew this from experience. I’d been told by my doctor as well: “Mental illness strikes both with and without a cause. You fall into the latter category, so instead of digging up the past, you should be thinking about how you’re to live from now on.”
But had I, in fact, read Shihonron? I had no memory of that creepy sentence. Was Tsuyoshi the sort of person who would have encouraged me to read what must be a difficult work? I was trying to forget him but still had the nagging memory of his gratuitous reference to my “mental illness.”
“Bein’ mental, was I wrong to haf a boyfriend?”
“Why?”
“’Cos as soon as he ’eard of it, he dumped me.”
“So that’s what happened…”
“E’en though I was behavin’ normally.”
“Normal people don’t understand.”
“Then only the sick can hang out wit’ the sick…”
“Now you’re taking the argument to an extreme. After all, healthy people don’t necessarily understand each other either. Hegel says
as much.”
“Whit does he say?” I asked, observing the wings of Nagoyan’s nose.
“Human desires do not exist except in relation to the ‘Other,’ and as our will or our ideas do not exist purely on their own, it is a mistake to suppose that there can be understanding between oneself and that Other.”
“I’ve no idea whit you’re sayin’.”
“Well then, never mind about Hegel. The point is that we see only what we want to see.”
“Once I’d made my attempt, I wound up losin’ nearly aw me friends.”
“It doesn’t matter. Anyone who ends a friendship over mental illness is someone you’re bound to lose sooner or later.”
He had spoken generally of friends, but I knew quite well that he meant Tsuyoshi. Still, I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to find another boyfriend if the story about my manic-depression wound up getting broadcast to the world.
“Nagoyan, ye had a girlfriend, didn’t ye?”
“Yes, when I was a student. We tried to keep up a long-distance relationship, but it didn’t work out. We’d already broken up by the time my illness became apparent, so I don’t think she ever knew about it.”
“So ye wanna go back to Tokyo?”
“No. I just like Tokyo.”
“Whit makes ye like it so much?”
“Hmmm… There are so many places to shop… I suppose it’s the volume of information available too. It’s got movies, books, everything…”
I tried to follow Nagoyan in the metropolitan scene of my imagination but lost him, and then again heard the voice: Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat. How long would it echo in my mind? How long would I have to put up with this illness? Perhaps my case was so dire that what I needed was a powerful drug to turn me into a zombie.
“Ye know, Nagoyan, it’s a sad thing, bein’ off yer rocker.”
“Lavender!” said Nagoyan suddenly. “They say it’s good. The smell supposedly calms you down.”
“Really?”
“Let’s go look for some, the two of us.”
It was the first time I heard him refer to “the two of us.” Floating up in my mind was the image of us wandering through the faintly purplish haze of a distant highland picking flowers. I felt a pang in my heart and stole a glance at Nagoyan’s profile.
How handsome he looked, how gentle and kind. I wondered whether we would find any lavender.