THE MAN ON THE BOAT

Miu

I fear I have done something unforgivable.

 

Miu was surprised by the slow determination with which her sister completed funeral arrangements. It was out of character. Kiku was someone given to impassioned outbursts. She was a painter of placards. A presenter of petitions. Still, in this matter she played her assigned role perfectly. Their mother might have been proud. 

Who was there to blame for the inevitability of death? 

Miu's sister contacted those households with visiting sons. She politely and methodically requested their assistance unfolding benches and lifting plastic chairs so that there was seating enough for the wake. It was work reserved for an eldest son. It was something Kyou might have done. Should have.

The gallery kitchen provided catering free of charge. The right clothes and flowers arrived on the ferry and were met by enough arms to receive them. The entire population of Bijushima knew Miu’s sister. Kiku was at fundraisers and clean-ups. She shared stories and determined who was in or out of disgrace at any given time. In a way, this was the community effort she deserved at her own funeral, a representation of the love the island had for one of its most stoic supporters. 

The inn was filled with guests who had come to pay their respects. The lounge was alive with bouquets of white flowers and ornate cards. For the family. In loving memory. Kyou’s room had been kept free, just in case. 

Miu had been excluded from arrangements after a fairly mild reaction to one of the photographs, Kiku had pulled it out and gushed to some friends, “Look at us three. So young and happy.” Miu had had to rush from the room to find somewhere that there was air. After that her sister had stated, rather impatiently, that it wouldn’t do to have another panic attack on her hands. That she couldn’t be there to sort out Miu when she had all this to organise. Kyou wasn’t there, and Miu would just be trouble.

Trouble, trouble trouble. As the days before the funeral fell away like crepe petals, Trouble preyed on Miu’s thoughts. Her dreams were mixed with nightmares. When unconscious, Trouble was the tar that tried to drown her, that pushed into her nose, down her throat, and into her ears. Trouble poured grinding, screaming music into her brain: a terrifying, grainy tune she had tried to forget. 

In the midst of the Trouble, she was un-forgetting. The screaming concert. The stuffiness of the room. The ferryman’s knowing look that could have meant anything. She missed Megumi and her patience and curiosity, her frumpy clothes and second-rate lunches, her kindness, her hope. There was no money for more sessions. Kyou’s money had stopped coming.

 Fatigue grabbed at Miu’s wrists and ankles, pressed into her shoulders and temples. Every morning felt worse, as though part of her would be returned to the earth too. It didn't feel beautiful, either. Not soft like incense filtering through fingers. Not elegant as bones transferred with chopsticks from ash to urn. It felt like being swallowed alive, as though each new breath were laced with danger. 

But the guests kept turning up and needing maps and meals, clean toilets and fresh towels. 

Miu was so tired that she thought it an illusion when the man turned up at her doorway. He was in time for the wake. Afterwork mourners were making their way through the streets in colours befitting the dullness of the collective mood. It was time that she left. She didn't want to see this guest. She never wanted to.

It was the ferryman. He hulked on the veranda and looked as old as he had all those years ago. Older than time, she thought. Older and more unstoppable.

So there he was. Her end.

He held his hat in his hands, which were knotted and heavy as the noose he hoisted to dock the boat. 

He stood perfectly still and said in a voice roughened by tobacco and salt storms, "She turned up this afternoon.”

Miu said nothing, wondering whether she would faint before it finally happened.

“Come with me. She needs to know.”

They walked the narrow roads between wooden houses. When Miu and the ferryman arrived at the wake, Miu couldn’t bring herself to enter and join the thick sea of bodies in black. The ferryman did not walk in ahead of her. They were at an impasse.

“My boat comes soon,” the ferryman said, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “I need to take this in. Read it.”

“Tsu,” Miu objected. But the man was already wincing up at the sky, his mind on currents and pressure systems. Then he turned his gaze on her. It burned. The Ferryman did not negotiate. Miu took the letter and sat on a bench outside the hall intended for old people awaiting buses. 

Her hands stilled enough so that she could read the yellowed page:

 

30 November 1992

This is my last will and testament.

I fear I have done something terrible. The sickness is taking me like a madness. Today I am myself. Tomorrow I could be anyone. Or no one. There are times where I am lost. Where I am an animal. I am lucid now, and I have the captain as my witness. 

I lied to my wife. I was not denied the compensation money from the mercury poisoning victims fund like my fellow men were. I took the full amount. It was provided at such a time that I might have arrested the sickness, they said. I told them no. I said I wanted the money. It is enough to set up a young person for life. Is it not better to grow a life than slow a death? It was unkind to my wife, but it is a choice I made.

Without the treatment I will lose myself, they have said. 

I am an expert in Mercury poisoning. There are risks of nausea, double vision and tremors. Risks of psychosis, cancerous growths, death. And there are poisons far, far worse, that are more long-lasting and far-reaching.

I would lose myself rather than keep the animal that attacked a girl. It seems that she will never be herself again. She startles at shadows. She will never sing again. All of that I took from her.

I am sick. 

The money I give in total to my niece. I’m sure she will take care of her mother. If young Kyou wishes, she may have my name and a place on the family register. I know arrangements haven’t been made yet. I understand why. But it is a hard road being cut adrift. May this be the evidence of that connection, however terrible its inception.

To my wife, Kiku Hasegawa, I give my house and property and my honest apology. 

May I be forgiven in death. 

 

So there it was. The truth that Kyou so desired. Miu folded the page and allowed it to be taken by the ferryman and walked into the crowd that was mourning her late brother-in-law, the animal. 

No one came to check on her as the evening went on. Or if they did, it was surreptitious. Miu waited with her face in her hands. Kyou was in there. Kyou would receive the letter. Trouble. Trouble like a tsunami was swelling and rearing back and waiting to spill over into the life that had somehow limped along in relative safety. If she were already being avoided, then how would this go? There was no good way for this to go. Only trouble.

“Miu,” came a voice filled with such sympathy that it might draw tears.

Miu looked up to see Megumi, dressed like someone whose life was in a suitcase.

“I didn’t see you inside,” she continued. “I can guess why. But I was worried.” 

Miu took both of her outstretched hands and gave them a squeeze. Megumi looked back down the empty streets.

“How about a walk, huh? A little fresh air. I met your daughter, you know? Quite the storyteller. Very charming. She claimed to have pawned an antique samurai sword to get the fare down to Bijushima. And she quit her job. She had the guests enthralled. 

What do you think, a little fresh air?”

The walk with Megumi was bittersweet. She was due to leave Bijushima shortly. She needed to help our her mother and missed the cat. She thought Bijushima was a beautiful place touched by wonder, but she had enjoyed her time with Miu most of all. She looked forward to the stories that had been dropped off at reception each week. She thought Miu’s daughter would appreciate them too, but that was up to Miu. There was no need to rush things. There was plenty of time.

When they reached the gate to the inn, Megumi hovered awkwardly. 

“At the wake, your sister took me aside. She seems… troubled. I know I’ve mentioned money before, but I didn’t realise the extent of her debt. She felt the need to confess, I suppose. She said she’d had to wait until her husband was unable to decline treatment so that she could consent on his behalf. She took out loan after loan trying to cover the costs for everyone from medical professionals to self-styled gurus. Anyone who indicated they could extend his life. She seems to be questioning whether it had been the right choice, if he would have wanted it that way. A terrible position.”

Miu nodded. It was no surprise really. Her sister was the most determined person she knew.

“I know you will be kind to her,” Megumi said, smiling. “Be kind to yourself, too.” 

When Miu returned, she worked her way through a backlog of guest laundry, dinner preparations, and lists of demands for those due to leave and arrive. She worked until ten and was grateful to return to her writing desk, where she found—

Nothing. Her journal was gone. The book and all the stories were all—

She rushed down to the guest lounge and then, in a moment of blind hope, drew open the door to Kyou’s room.

And she was there, sitting cross-legged like a child with a picture book, reading over the years of stories made all for her. The ferryman’s letter sat open to her left. So she knew. She understood. 

Miu waited in the doorway, watching her daughter for any sign of anger or disappointment. Kyou stood. Would she lash out? Would she push past and run away?

“Ma,” she said, and she fell against Miu in an embrace so sudden and uncoordinated that they almost toppled to the floor. But they didn’t. Miu steadied them. Calming her breathing, she stroked the back of her wayward daughter’s head—as precious then as when she had first held it—and let Kyou cry into her shoulder. 

Miu swallowed once, twice, and then in as loud a voice as she could manage, she said: 

“Kyou.”