“Heaven with a Capital H”
Excerpt from Heaven by MIEKO KAWAKAMI
TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY SAM BETT AND DAVID BOYD
The next morning, I left my house with enough time to arrive fifteen minutes early. I told my mom I was heading to the big library one town over.
I was waiting nervously beside the ticket machine when Kojima showed up, 9 a.m. on the dot. Her hair was the same as always, and so were her sneakers, but she was wearing a beige skirt that went down to her calves and a Hawaiian shirt.
Far from being upstaged by her head of hair and her bunchy skirt, the Hawaiian shirt was enormous, covered with pointy leaves and red fruits that looked like mangoes. Kojima had tied the corners of the hem into a tight knot at her belly button. This was the first time I’d seen anyone wearing a Hawaiian shirt in real life, but I knew what it was instantly. When Kojima spotted me, she jogged over, waving one hand. In the other she had a floppy bag with a drawing of a kitten’s face that almost looked like it could be a photograph.
“You ready?” she said as she came up to me, smiling, kind of shyly. I was feeling the same way, but I put on a straight face and told her yeah. Now that she was closer, I could see the glass beads on the clip she used to pin her bangs up.
“I woke up super early,” she said, scratching at her eyebrow.
“What time?”
“Four.”
“Whoa,” I said. “You’re not sleepy?”
“No, but I was earlier,” she said, “at like seven. Hey, what’s wrong with your voice?” She gave me a suspicious look. “You sound different.”
“I bit my tongue.”
“When?” She squinted at me.
“Yesterday.”
“You must have bit it pretty hard.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I did.”
“Did it hurt?” She squinted even harder.
I said it hurt.
“Did you cry?”
“No,” I said.
She said that if it hurt so bad I should have cried. I told her that in my opinion hurting and crying were different things.
“You think?” she said, tilting her head, then stepped back like she was startled and looked me up and down. “I’ve never seen you wear anything other than your uniform. Look at you.”
“I’m totally normal. Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I mean, look at you.”
“This?” She bent her neck to look at herself. “It’s my tropical outfit.”
“Cool.”
“It’s like my someday best.”
“Your someday best?” I asked. “What’s that mean?”
“What do you mean?” she asked back. “You don’t say that?”
“I don’t think so . . .”
“Well, how can I put it, it’s the clothing you wear on really special days.”
“Oh,” I laughed. “Did you mean Sunday best?”
“Sunday best? That means the same thing?”
“I think so.”
“Whoa.” She took another look at her Hawaiian shirt. I was staring at it too.
“It really feels like summer,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said and looked up at me in a really nice way. “It is. It was still dark when I woke up, but I instantly knew it was summer. Summer starts today.”
We were waiting on a bench on the platform when the dark green face of the train rolled into the station. It made a sound like when a big animal blows air through its nose. The doors slid open in unison, and once we were aboard, the train rolled slowly ahead.
Aside from an old couple, some businessmen, and a woman with long hair, we had the car to ourselves. The train wobbled a little, side to side. Kojima and I each sat quietly, watching the world pass by the windows, but inside my heart was pounding at the thought that she and I were leaving town like this.
After a bit I looked over at her, and so far as I could tell she was excited too. Her face was glowing in a way it never did at school, and even brighter than the time we met up in the fire stairwell. When I looked at her, the nervousness I had been feeling burned off in the glow, and I felt an upwelling of relief. This was going to be fun.
Sitting next to her, way closer to her face than usual, I had no idea where to look and got a little flustered. Kojima didn’t seem concerned about it. She looked me right between the eyes, the way she did whenever we met, and talked about all kinds of things, elaborating with her hands. When she got excited her voice got louder. I kind of liked it, but when she realized she was almost yelling she got self-conscious and dropped into a whisper. Before long she was yelling again, and when I saw her realize we both laughed.
“Happamine.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s, like, dopamine that comes out when you’re really happy.”
“Oh yeah?”
“And when you’re really hurting,” she explained, “that’s called hurtamine.”
“What about when you’re lonely?” I asked.
“Lonelamine!” she laughed.
When the conversation lulled, Kojima turned and looked over her shoulder out the window, placing her hands on the bag in her lap. As if she could feel its fur, she petted the picture of the kitten with her pointer finger.
The train shot through tunnels of houses into long stretches of farmland. We were barreling headfirst into an entire summer.
Kojima told me all kinds of stories about the cat they used to have, about how black and soft her fur was, and about the mutt they had, and how smart and nice he was.
She said when she was really little, they used to have a bunch of different animals at the house. Her real dad got a kick out of having them around.
“I liked the dog and cat, but my dad’s more into little stuff like goldfish, turtles, loaches, carp, things like that. We had so many.”
“Where’d you keep them?” I asked.
“Well, aquariums cost a ton. We were broke then, but my dad found this enormous styrofoam tub somewhere, the kind that has a lid. We could only see in from above, but we made it into the best aquarium ever. Sometimes we walked to the store and picked out something new, like a bridge for the goldfish, or one of those spinny things. I was always making the turtle swim around the tub. Doesn’t your family have any animals?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think they’ve ever really thought about animals.”
“You mean they don’t like them?” Kojima asked, eyes wide. Her eyebrows jumped like they had a life of their own.
“It’s not like that,” I said, “at least not for me. I’ve never really been around animals. I’m not sure about them either way.”
“Yeah,” Kojima said. “I can tell.”
“But I feel like I might be able to get into them,” I said. “I bet living with animals is really different from living with people. I mean, they can’t talk.”
“How would that be different?”
“I dunno. Like, it would actually be quiet, I guess.”
“You mean how people are noisy, even when they’re being quiet?”
“Sort of. People are always thinking about things. Animals seem different, just more quiet overall.”
“But they bark and stuff.”
“That’s just barking.”
“So you’re not talking about actual sound?”
“I guess not.”
“Okay,” Kojima said. “I think I get it. It’s like how when you’re asleep, you dream, and when you wake up, you can think about the dreams. Noisy like that. I wonder if you can actually stop thinking.”
“I bet you can,” I said, “at least for a couple seconds.”
“If that’s all,” Kojima said, chewing through a little yawn, “it’s like you can’t, though, right?”
The warmth of the sun was hitting our necks. It felt good. I looked at Kojima’s face for a second. She looked sleepy. As we rode through the rice fields, the train chugged along, keeping basically the same rhythm all the way.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t have words,” I found myself saying.
“Yeah, I mean, we’re the only ones who need them,” Kojima said, looking me straight in the eye. “Dogs don’t, and neither do things, like uniforms, or desks, or vases.”
“You’re right. Look at everything else in the world,” I said. “We’re completely outnumbered.”
“If you really think about it,” Kojima said, “it’s kind of stupid. Human beings are the only ones talking all the time and making problems and everything.”
She snorted. I nodded.
The train replayed its script of sounds between the evenly spaced stations. Each time we came to a halt, the conductor called out the name of the stop. When he switched off the mic, it made a ticklish popping sound that made Kojima giggle. The rich green rice fields linked together, and little houses shot up between them. Keeping pace with the train, the sharp light flickering off pointed stalks flew into streaks.
“Hey, Kojima,” I said. “This paradise we’re going to . . .”
Kojima glared at me and shook her head.
“It’s not paradise. It’s Heaven.”
“Heaven?”
“Yeah. Heaven, with a capital H.”
“Heaven,” I repeated.
Kojima smiled. “That’s right. But I’m not saying any more. You’ll see when we get there. Sit tight.”
I nodded, and Kojima nodded back like she was satisfied. In silence, we gazed out the windows at the passing scenery while the train made us wiggle.
“That thing you said earlier,” Kojima finally said. “I think I know what you mean. When a desk or a vase gets scratched, it doesn’t show you how it’s hurting.”
“Because desks and vases don’t use words?” I asked. “That what you mean?”
“I don’t know, maybe. More like, desks and vases probably don’t get hurt,” Kojima said. “Even when they’re broken,” she added softly.
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“People are different, though,” she said even softer. “Sometimes you can’t see the scars. But there’s a lot of pain, I think.” After that, she was quiet.
She never stopped stroking the face of the kitten on her bag. I watched her silently. The train stopped at the next station. The doors opened. A few people got off, and a few more people came aboard, replacing them. Then the train rolled off again. A minute later, Kojima asked me something else, like she needed to make sure.
“Hey . . . if we keep doing this, just saying nothing, no matter what they do, think maybe we’d become things, too?”
I didn’t know how to respond and stared at the floor. Light beamed through all the windows, revealing from every angle just how dirty Kojima’s sneakers were. No part of them looked white.
“I mean,” I said, “we won’t literally turn into flowers or desks, obviously . . . but we’ll be acting just like things. So basically . . .”
“Basically?” she said.
“It’s like we’re . . .” I started saying, but Kojima cut me off.
“We’re plenty like things already.” She bit her lower lip and laughed. “You and I both know it isn’t true, but that’s what we are to them.”
Kojima messed around with her hair and stared at the kitten on her bag again. I stared at it too.
“Everyone’s like that,” I said. “That’s the thing.”
“That’s the thing,” Kojima said.
“Can’t do a thing about it,” I said, and Kojima broke into a laugh, but quietly. I started laughing too.
As the train rounded a curve, the houses outside tilted back and pulled away.
“Trouble is,” Kojima said and took a deep breath, “even if we’re just things to them, they won’t leave us alone, like actual things. We can never be like a clock on the wall.” She gazed out the window. “That’s the thing, right?”
She smiled at me.
“Hey, we’re almost there.”
Once we were through the turnstiles, we consulted a wooden signboard and followed the route it gave us, walking down the path, then turning left and heading straight. It took us to a big white building.
It was an art museum.
Inside, it was all white walls and white floors. The ceilings were really high, and there were tons of people, even though it was early in the day. They were all taking their time. Their whispers, rustling like fabric, sank into the whiteness of the walls. Paintings hung as far as I could see, each given its own warm halo of light. When we were standing in front of the first one, Kojima looked at me. Her face was alive with emotion. She stared at the painting, not saying anything, then hopped over to the next one.
I walked a little behind her, looking first at each painting and then at Kojima looking at the painting.
She would start from far away, to take the whole thing in, before edging her way closer, lips tight together. Once she had stared at it a while, she looked at me. When she looked at paintings, she got lines on her forehead. It didn’t look like she was having fun at all. In fact, it looked like she was hurt. After she read the entire explanation on the placard by the frame, she jumped back, like something had occurred to her, and exhaled deeply, moving on to the next painting as if she were being pushed ahead.
The paintings here were mystifying.
In the reds and greens of the canvases, maidens danced with animals, a goat or something carried a violin in its mouth, and a man and a woman embraced under a gigantic blazing bouquet.
This swarm of unrelated images was like a glimpse into a dream. But not a good one. The joy I saw there was ferocious, and the sadness suffocatingly cold. Blues thrown onto the canvas warred with yellows approaching like tornadoes. People gathered round aghast to watch a circus spin to life. Above a city of snow, a man in white robes closed his eyes and prayed. Every painting was a moment of destruction coinciding with the birth of something wonderful. Each frame contained conflicting worlds. A crowd drawn into a sun spinning like a windmill. Fish washed ashore. A tentative horse with eyes more human than anyone alive. A pale maiden.
“You looking?”
I was spaced out in front of a painting when I heard Kojima’s voice. When I realized what she asked me, I said yeah.
“See anything you like?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. Kojima’s face was even more relaxed than earlier. It was reassuring.
“So the museum is Heaven?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said. “Heaven is a painting.” She made a little snort and looked me in the eye. “The one I like the most.”
“It’s called Heaven?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The artist is really good, but the titles are so boring it makes me want to cry. Here, look at this one.”
She pointed at the placard by the painting. She was right. It was pretty bad up against the work itself.
“Sucks, right?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
“So I gave it a better one.”
“You did?”
“Yep.” She laughed proudly. “Heaven is a painting of two lovers eating cake, in a room with a red carpet and a table. It’s so beautiful. And what’s really cool is they can stretch their necks however they want. So wherever they go, whatever they do, nothing ever comes between them. Isn’t that the best?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s right.” Kojima laughed a happy laugh.
“If you look at the room a second, it kind of looks like any other room. But it’s not. It’s actually Heaven.”
“Heaven the place?”
“No, the one I told you about,” said Kojima cautiously.
“Do you call it that because they’re dead?”
“No.” Kojima spoke to me in a low voice coming from the back of her throat. “Something really painful happened to them. Something really, really sad. But you know what? They made it through. That’s why they can live in absolute harmony. After everything, after all the pain, they made it here. It looks like a normal room, but it’s Heaven.”
She let out a sigh and rubbed her eyes.
“Heaven . . .” she said. “I had a picture of it in a book.”
“Yeah?”
“Funny how the more you look at pictures, not just of Heaven, but of anything, the more the real thing starts looking fake. Here, see?”
Kojima pointed.
“They’re milking a horse on the horse’s face. And the horse has a necklace.”
“Look at these colors,” I said. They were warm, but not necessarily comforting. A giant face and giant colors. We looked at the painting together.
“Look at these eyes,” she whispered. “See the white line connecting the horse and the green guy?”
Eyes. The instant the word left her lips, I almost had a heart attack.
Kojima kept staring at the painting.
A little behind us, a boy who looked like he could barely walk let go of his mother’s hand and ran off, bumping into Kojima’s leg. He fell and started crying really loudly. Kojima was startled by the sound and tensed all over. The mother grabbed the child by the hand and pulled him up, bowing and apologizing to Kojima. She didn’t seem to know how to respond and bowed back to the woman. She watched the mother lead her child out of the gallery. Once they were gone, she let out a breath and looked at me with the same startled eyes.
I wanted to say something that would make this sad and difficult expression go away, but before I had the chance she was back over by the paintings, and I joined her without saying anything.
After a while, I finally asked her.
“Where’s Heaven? Is it far?”
When she turned to look at me, I felt like I could see my own face before my eyes.
“Yeah, it’s all the way in the back.” She was speaking so softly. “But I’m getting kind of tired. Let’s take a little break.”
We went outside. Kojima sat down on one of the benches and wouldn’t move or speak.
When I said I was going to get us something to drink, she said she wasn’t thirsty, so I walked over to the vending machines and came back with something for myself. The sun was at a high point in the sky. Just sitting there, I could feel the sweat forming in my armpits and around my neck. The skin under Kojima’s nose was glistening with sweat. From where we sat, we could see onto a big open lawn slightly above us, where families and couples sat and ate their lunch on picnic sheets. Others were passing a ball around, and some had even taken off their shirts and lay on the ground sunbathing. There were big trees growing in the field, and people leaned against them, reading. This was the height of summer, I told myself. From the edge of the horizon, the sky was generously blue. Kojima gripped the kitten bag in her lap, completely still. I took a sip of my drink and realized I wasn’t thirsty either.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, unsure of what to say. Kojima slowly shook her head a bunch of times, then shook her head again, as if she’d missed one. I nodded and looked at the people on the grass. Looks like a painting, I thought. All kinds of people walked past our bench. I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist.
After some time had passed, I asked Kojima if she thought we should head home. She didn’t answer, other than shaking her head again.
“Unhappamine?” I asked, trying to speak her language, but she didn’t say anything. I wished I hadn’t said it. Now all I could do was sit there.
Eventually I realized she was crying.
Not out loud. Kojima turned away from me and pawed her eyes. Tears dripped from her palms onto her cheeks. I squeezed the bottle of my drink, lukewarm by now, and stared down at the ground. I tried to think of something I could say to her, crying silently beside me, but came up empty, unable to act on my feelings.
“It’s not one thing,” she finally said, in a low voice. She rubbed her cheeks with her palms, and in a voice almost too soft to hear, she said she was sorry.
“We came all this way,” she said, smiling at me awkwardly, trying to hide that she was crying, but she still looked like she was crying.
Her eyes were red, and the snot dripping from her nose was sucked in and dribbled out as she breathed. The pin holding back her springy bangs looked like it would pop out any second. I noticed Kojima had a bean-shaped spot on her right cheek where her skin had lost its color. I’d never been this close to her before. I couldn’t believe how vulnerable she looked. She had no fight in her, like some tiny, helpless creature waiting to be snatched away. I know that I was helpless too, but beside me on that bench, Kojima looked smaller than any little kid I had ever seen. Much weaker than the way she looked at school. I felt incredibly sad. Unable to do more than sit and stare, I was just as helpless.
I couldn’t figure out the real reason she was crying, so we just sat there quietly, together. Kojima stroked the kitten on her bag the same way she had when we were on the train. Maybe it was like a nervous tic. She looked up, as if the worst was over, and stared into the sky.
“When it’s this nice out, something keeps me from moving.”
The July sky was saturated with summer. Nothing moved over our heads.
“I feel trapped,” she laughed.
“Like there’s a lid on top of you,” I said.
Kojima slipped a hand into her bag and pulled out a packet of tissues. She asked if she could blow her nose. I said sure. I was surprised by how loud she blew it.
“Good thing I had these,” she said, wiping her nose. “It feels so good to really let it out, you know?”
“I’m glad.”
“I don’t usually carry tissues.”
“Yeah.”
“Glad I had them today.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you wanna blow your nose, too?” she asked.
“I’m fine for now,” I said. I looked at my pockets. “I never carry anything. Just my wallet.”
“What about your favorite pencil? Not even that?”
“I couldn’t write anything down if I only had a pencil.”
“But that’s why everyone carries little notebooks, right?”
“My pockets aren’t big enough for a notebook.”
“Yeah,” Kojima said, “I don’t have that much on me either.” She opened her bag so I could see. “Just my wallet, the tissues, and my scissors.”
“You have your scissors on you?”
I must have looked surprised. Kojima nodded sheepishly.
“Wait, though,” she said, “it’s not like that. I don’t cut things anymore.”
“No, you can cut anything you want. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think you’d bring scissors into a museum.”
“It’s not like I brought them because we were coming,” she said, a little embarrassed.
“No,” I said. “Sorry.”
“I always have them, outside of school . . . not like I’m gonna use them. They’re just good to have. It’s not like they make me feel safe or anything. I just like having them.” She closed her bag and rolled the top down a couple times, then set it on her lap again.
“I know,” she said. “It’s weird.”
She covered her mouth with both her hands and smiled nervously. We could hear girls and guys cheering from the lawn. Several bicycles whooshed past us. A sharp light flashed into my eyes, making me squint, and when I looked I saw that someone on the far edge of the lawn was laying out a silver picnic sheet.
I thought for a second but then I said it.
“Kojima, get your scissors out.”
“Why?”
“Cause.”
“But why?” Little wrinkles formed between her eyebrows.
“Because,” I laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” She looked puzzled. “Stop.”
“Sorry,” I giggled, “I’m not laughing at you.”
“Then why are you laughing?” she asked sternly, with the same puzzled look.
“I’m not laughing.”
“Yeah you are.”
“Yeah, because you’re not listening to me.”
“You’re not listening to me . . . what do you want them for?”
For a minute we were quiet, staring at our shoes. My feet were a lot bigger than hers. I started thinking about how weird feet are. Such a strange shape. As I was staring at her shoes like that, she toed the ankle of my shoe, so I did the same to her. We did that a bunch of times, but then she pressed hers right against mine, and said yours are huge. I laughed and said it’s cause I’m a boy. She said I was right, and then we were quiet again.
“If you want to,” I said to her, “you can cut my hair.”
After a pause, I spoke again.
“You know what you said before? Like, if you start to feel the normal slipping away. If that happens, you can cut my hair.”
Kojima dropped her jaw.
“Your hair? Why?”
“No reason. Just thought that you might want to.”
“What do you mean by your hair, anyway? Like, where?”
“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t mess it up too bad. Or, well, if you need to make it messy to feel better, that’s fine, too. It doesn’t really matter.”
Hearing this, Kojima stroked the back of her left hand with the fingers of her right. She looked like she was about to speak, but something was holding her back.
“When you feel like everything’s falling apart, or things feel too good to be true,” I said, “whenever things get like that, you can cut my hair. Instead of cutting up the junk mail or whatever, when nobody else is home. Just let me know, and you can cut it, whenever you want.”
Kojima stared at me. Sweat seeped from every pore on her face. It made her skin look swollen. It was almost noon, and only getting hotter. The sky was free of clouds, and there wasn’t any shade in sight. Occasionally a breeze blew through the park, grazing the edges of our bodies. Then Kojima looked at me and nodded as if letting go of something big.
Following the nod, she kept her head down and carefully opened the bag in her lap. Even more carefully, she slipped her right hand into the bag and pulled out her scissors. Her nest of hair was hiding her face, making it impossible to see what expression she was making. Now that she held the scissors, she turned her gaze to them. The handle was yellow plastic, and the tips were blunt, for crafts. The blades were flecked with different colors of paint. They looked like they had seen some heavy use.
“I’ve had them since the first year,” she said after a while, looking at the blades.
“Of middle school?”
“No, of elementary school.”
“Whoa, eight years ago?”
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Kojima asked me quietly. “You’re really okay with me cutting your hair?”
“Yeah, a hundred percent sure.”
She held the scissors with her right hand but clasped the silvery blades with her left palm, staring at her hands, like something else was on her mind.
“Chop-chop!” I said, trying to be funny. I sat up straight with my hands on my knees and turned my back to Kojima.
At first she didn’t move, but then I felt her hands in my hair.
She slipped a finger behind my ear and made a little bunch, shaking it a few times to make it the right size. The hand holding the scissors hovered behind my head. I felt my hair slip between the blades. They sliced through the bunch of hair and made a grinding sound. I got goosebumps, and Kojima made a sound almost like a sigh.
I turned around to see her with her head down, holding a fistful of my hair in one hand and the scissors, slightly parted, in the other. She had cut close to the scalp, freeing a clump less than an inch wide and four inches long. The two of us sat just like that, completely still.
Kojima wouldn’t look at me, but she kept pushing the fistful of hair in my face.
“Hey, enough with the hand already,” I said and laughed.
She blushed and shot me a look back, like she was upset, or maybe she was happy, or maybe embarrassed, or on the verge of tears. Honestly, I had no idea what kind of face this was, but she was laughing.
“It’s like . . .” But she just looked at me, still red, then looked away, then back at me. She was still holding the hair up near my mouth, so I pretended to eat it. When Kojima saw this, she laughed out loud, and I laughed too.
“There’s a lot left,” I said, “you can keep going.” I ran a hand through my hair and touched the spot where her scissors had been. Obviously I couldn’t tell the difference from before, but she was holding a fistful of my hair.
Kojima stared at the little bunch of hair, then wrapped it in one of her tissues. When she was about to put it in her bag, I asked her what she did with all the other things she cut. She said she tossed them.
“Okay,” I said, “then toss it. It has to be the same.”
Kojima looked confused. “But it’s not the same.”
“Yes it is,” I said. “It’s nothing special.”
But Kojima looked unsure. She stared at the bunch of hair.
“It’s okay,” I said. “When I say so, open your hand.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong. You can cut more whenever you want. There’s plenty.”
Kojima clenched her fist. Dead still.
“I can’t do it.”
“Yes you can.”
She looked uneasy, but when I said her name she spread her fingers, almost out of reflex. The color returned to her hands and she gasped. Before she realized what was happening, the tissue opened and the cluster of hair fluffed apart and tumbled to the ground, where the clippings scattered and disappeared.
We didn’t go back into the museum.
On the ride home, we played word games. Kojima started feeling a little better, and I managed to make her laugh a few times. We were starving, since we hadn’t eaten anything all day, and could hear each other’s stomachs grumble. It sounded like our belly grumbles harmonized. I made a joke about it and we laughed. But the closer we got to our stop, the less we spoke. We weren’t even really looking out the windows. We sat in silence, only moving when the train moved us.
Outside the station, things were back to usual in the worst way possible. The sunset was spreading over us into the distance, growing longer with the shadows. The summer that had inundated us when we were in the park bore no relation to the summer we met here. Sweat chilled our skin in private, underneath our shirts. Our bodies were becoming tense. We didn’t need to say it. She knew and so did I.
Kojima said goodbye and waved. I said goodbye. She looked back as she walked away, disappearing around the corner.
Standing there alone, I looked all around me. There I was, at the start of summer, standing right in the middle of it, in the same place I had met up with Kojima that morning. I knew it was the same place, but it didn’t feel the same.