Territory of Light

Why were children the only ones who ever got to melt down?

During the night, there had been a sound of water on the other side of the wall. In my sleep I was looking out from the fourth-floor bedroom at nearby buildings bathed in rain, gleaming with neon and streetlamp colours.

But my daughter, not minding, scampered off towards the pond. I ran after her, out of breath. A weeping willow stood at the point where the side path joined the main one. As it caught the rays of the sinking sun full on, its brightness was dazzling to eyes grown accustomed to the shadows. My daughter was jumping up and down, trying to grab one of the willow’s dangling branches. All right, I would wow her by grabbing a whole bunch. Shading my eyes with one hand, I approached my daughter in the light.

Quick now, give up this idle pondering! And let’s be off into the great wide world! I tell you: the fool who speculates on things is like some animal on a dry heath, led by an evil fiend in endless circles, while fine green pastures lie on every side.

At Christmastime I had got out the little artificial fir tree from deep inside the closet and assembled and decorated it with my daughter. That tree, its tiny lights twinkling. Her, motionless before it for a long time, rapt in its multicoloured drops of light. And me, standing back, looking on. To her, it was the most beautiful of sights, countless joys shimmering invitingly in their splendour. It was a cheap tree that Fojino had bought at a local supermarket when she was a year old, saying, 'This'll do for now, won't it? It'll only get broken with her touching it. They're really quite expensive.

At daycare the next morning, I learned of the boy's accidental death. My throat tightened at the thought of the scream I'd heard: so it was him. It seemed he had been playing alone on an outside walkway, and he had gone over the railing. What was he seeing as he fell with that cry? It was nighttime; the glow of streetlamps, lighted windows, and neon signs must have streamed like water around his falling body. Perhaps he gazed in amazement at the unfamiliar torrents of lights, wondering where he was going.

I couldn't shake the feeling that deaths lay in wait for me at every turn.

I used to think I must never tell anybody about this discovery of mine. No one else must know about this place that made me yearn to dissolve until I became a particle of light itself. The way the light cohered in one place was unearthly. I gazed at its stillness without ever going in through the gate.

It occurred to me that the glow in that night's sky had perhaps signalled the last of the deaths that had been happening around me. People had died in that light. Died in an instant, I didn't doubt. I had the feeling that I finally understood what the series of deaths had been trying to tell me. The light of heat, of energy. My body was fully endowed with heat and energy. I couldn't help but see myself standing there last night, transfixed by the glowing red sky, never sparing the approach of death a thought.

No deberíamos haber crecido. Si hubiéramos sabido que ser un adulto es tan aburrido, habríamos jugado mucho más de pequeñas.

The apartment had windows on all sides. When the evening sun was gone and the room lay in blue shadow, as it was time to collect my daughter from the neighbor’s house where she was playing, once again I left the fourth-floor apartment and descended to the street.

Once, in my early or mid-teens, I too had dozed off on a stranger’s shoulder on the train: not the usual wobbly nodding off, but a deep, refreshing sleep. It was only when I was eventually woken by a tap on the head that I realized my pillow had been my neighbour’s shoulder. So that was why I’d felt so good: there was a moment’s letdown on finding the cause was so simple. When I struggled upright and looked him in the face, stammering an apology, I met with a grin of obvious amusement. In the middle of my muddled apologies the young man stood, smiling, and got off the train. As my gaze followed his departing back in the knowledge that he must have been aware of my body, through its weight, for some time, I felt a self-consciousness and an attachment that were akin to love.

My husband was still studying for his MA and I hadn’t been working long at the library. Though we each had our own apartment, half the time he spent the night at mine. I had a call from him one day at the library: ‘We have an apartment. It’s new, and quiet, and sunny. It’s fantastic. I said we’d move in on Sunday. OK?’ It had been only the night before that we’d raised the subject of needing to look for a place for the two of us. ‘That was fast. You said we’d take it?’ Though astonished, I was also delighted by the effortlessness of the decision. I was not annoyed at having had no say in where I was to live. I was enjoying the feeling of being swept along by a man.

Eppure forse esistono legami per cui è necessario convincersi di odiarsi a vicenda, non potei fare a meno di pensare. Sia Fujino sia io eravamo esseri umano che ancora non volevano morire.

Los padres son solo padres, no son nadie especial. Hay padres a los que hay que abandonar por el bien de uno mismo.

Y, finalmente, me llegaba un sonido desde el fondo, como el ruido de un cristal roto. No, algo más bello y agudo. Para mí, era el sonido de los huesos humanos al quebrarse. Y, una vez que recibía ese eco, por fin me quedaba tranquila.

Estas mañanas se repetían cada semana, pero yo no me rendía y seguía quedándome en la cama los domingos. Quería ganar aunque solo fuera un minuto más de sueño. «Un poquito más. Ya casi me he deshecho del cansancio»,