Under Shoko's Bed

By M. Harmon Wilkinson

Something follows Shōko Kawasaki home from her solitary walk on the levee path. She knows he is trailing behind her. Ignoring all reason, she even beckons the forlorn creature inside. Utterly bereft, he crawls under her bed and hides. Caring for him in the secr

• Language: English
• Publisher: M. Harmon Wilkinson
• Release date: Nov 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954362024

Book preview

I

Stray

野良猫

Sunday, 5 July 2009

1

STABBING JAGGED AND SLOW, DESOLATION HAD WORKED IN SO DEEP that he was now, at his core, pain itself. He imagined having done it, his body tumbling downstream in the chill water, limbs dangling loose, an empty bag, altogether careless—unless agony follows you when you die. He shuddered. Of all the horrid reflections that had grated away his sanity in the last three days, that thought may have been the worst. If only he could drown body and spirit, self-awareness slipping out in a trail of bubbles; or better yet, just blink off and be gone.

He lay motionless on the hardwood floor, his soul dripping out into a gradually expanding puddle beneath him. Through a window to the west and another to the south over her bed streamed the last direct sunlight. Against the air conditioner’s breeze, the sunbeams’ warmth gave the floor a baked feeling that pulled his eyes closed. But bleak thoughts, too real, stared back at him in disgust, so he opened his eyes and let them roam the floor. The low sun showed every scant speck of dust in high relief. It was a house pet’s perspective that would surely prick less tidy people into pledges to clean more thoroughly and frequently, which they never do. Witless people, making vows they can’t keep.

He wasn’t sure when his benefactress would return, if that mattered at all. Even if he’d found a place to stay the night, what did he amount to anymore? Lying on the floor, as small as he could be, nearly lifeless, he barely cast a shadow despite the sun’s low angle.

He shifted his gaze around her room. Between exposed structural wooden posts, the walls were fiberboard, rough and a little sparkly. The ceiling was smooth, unstained cedar panels. The furniture appeared to be European, not Japanese. Her single bed looked soft, its pillows and cotton print bedspread all pastel yellows and blues, tranquilly mated. It was unusually high off the floor, but its shadows held only a pair of shallow boxes.

Can you tell something about a woman by the space under her bed? Not that he’d seen underneath many women’s beds. Dark, private, hardly glimpsed by happenstance, it was a place to put things away, but not too far; totems she dared not display, yet could never discard; perhaps even secret treasures. The space under this bed was vaguely sad, as if her past was too meager to fill it. Could his have? Was there anything he could claim? The faithless woman had owned him so completely that every object, every memory, seemed bound to her, the one who abandoned him. Anyway, he would stay the night, but this one would not own him. No one would ever own him again.

He closed his eyes but saw the traitor sauntering away, oblivious to his devotion, thick, gluey, now splattered like slowly cooling tar on a road waiting for gravel to be spread. So he stared at the oddly clean floor. As the time crept by, it wasn’t the sparsity of dust that fascinated him, though, but its uniform distribution. There was no buildup anywhere—even under the bed, where people always miss spots, if they sweep at all. But a length of loosely wound red yarn was all that was out of place there. This one was obviously thorough, but the cleanliness hinted at . . . training, regularity, duty? So why on a whim bring home a stray? Whatever her reason, at least for now, he would rather be here than the levee, or that empty apartment.

He was lost in the dust again when the bright spot on the floor vanished. He lifted his head and yawned, but his stretch was abbreviated by a deep ache in his back, followed by the hollow where his insides used to be. The warmth gone, he wanted somewhere he wouldn’t be seen, a safe place, small, completely his. So, struggling with each movement against the weight of a life better ended, he crawled under the bed as far as he could, turned to face out, and stared; first at the expanse of the floor, legs of the table and chairs rising like perfectly sheer pinnacles of an alien landscape; then at the yarn, a forgotten scrap like him. He yearned to have it wind through his mind until his entire existence was the mental creation and keeping of that intricate coil of red.

It was good to have moved. His darkness was returning. His magical yarn woefully short for a cocoon, he took comfort in the shadowed closeness under the bed. It was a space clearly delimited, wholly without connections. He was done with them. They pull you, rip you, and finally dismember you—or you tear them—one way or another, everything ends in pain. Inevitably near, how painful would his end be?

He was bearing that question into his shell of a world when the door slid open, the light turned on, and feet came padding quietly into the room. He watched her walk briefly here and there. Then she sat, her feet tucked back under the chair. In his mind, he traced them, following the gentle curve of her arches into toes curled up against the floor. He was playing with the subtle range of colors reflected from the soft, smooth soles when, with the simplest grace, she crossed her feet at the ankles, and hushed though it was, his breath escaped in an audible sigh.

He could stay tonight, perhaps longer, in this dark place, clean and undemanding, with those soft feet. Maybe soft feet stay.

ALTHOUGH SHŌKO had never lived overseas, neighbors knew that she used to speak English in her job in Tokyo. In early June, a month ago, two of them asked her to tutor their middle schoolers. She had time Sunday mornings, so she agreed, although she refused to take any money. The girls had midyear exams coming up before the summer break, so today Shōko earned tomatoes, cucumbers, and a small watermelon from their families’ gardens with a particularly long session. Though she was laughing with the girls as they slipped their shoes on in the genkan and waved goodbye, she was tired. It was a clear day in an especially wet rainy season, though, so prodded by the sun, Shōko ventured out for a simple picnic in the shade of the riverside locust trees.

He had joined most of her Sunday picnics or riverside strolls since she started them nearly two months ago. Today, though, she was already on her way home, walking along the path atop the levee, before she found him sitting alone. He was staring blankly at the river as if it were flowing through his own head. Over the last few weeks, she had witnessed with growing concern his deterioration, like a cardboard box left wilting in the rain, but he had never been this haggard. Wondering whether he was hungry, she offered him an o-nigiri, but he showed no interest in the rice ball. She tried to lift his spirits with a gentle voice, but though she broke his communion with the river, his eyes stayed mostly on the ground. He occasionally looked at someone walking by, but only a few times at Shōko, and only at her feet. Still, she sat with him, and as an hour spun into two, he lifted his gaze. She tried a few times to get him to move, without success, so they sat, silently watching the people and looking out at the river, still swollen from yesterday’s rain. Eventually, home duties had been calling so long that, worried though she was, she whispered a final encouragement, touched her hand to his back, and got up to leave.

Shōko was halfway home when, sensing a pursuer, she looked back in alarm, but it was just him, following half a block behind. As the adrenaline rush faded, she slackened her pace, unsure of what to do. It was strangely beguiling to see him trailing after her, trying not to be obvious, but not enough to hide from view. Might she keep him for the night? Her parents would more than disapprove, but did they have to know?

The idea of taking him in was so peculiar that she wondered with a wan smile whether it was a first step to becoming a neko obasan, the neighborhood madwoman with a hundred cats. Did he want to stay? Realizing it was her intent but perhaps not his, the eccentricity of it stunned Shōko all the more. As she walked on, though, thoughts circling in uncertain spirals, she saw the same thing every time she glanced back: him, still a half block behind, feigning nonchalance, oddly endearing, hopelessly pathetic. So, when she reached the house, she motioned to him to catch up, then encouraged him with a smile to accompany her up the short path through the rhododendrons to the front door and into the genkan.

The kitchen, living room, bathroom, and her parents’ small bedrooms were on the first floor. Upstairs were only Shōko’s room and a spare room used for storage. It took an expectant, reassuring look back from the stairs before he followed her up. Once inside, she slid the bedroom door closed behind him, and while she set her purse and hat on the table, he tarried near the door and took in the space.

The room brightened as sunlight suddenly illuminated the curtains. She thought natural light might be cheery and stepped over to the window, took hold of the curtains, but hesitated, rubbing the familiar calico-print cotton between her fingers. She picked out this fabric when she was seventeen. Most of the color had faded in the thirty-five years since. She looked down at her hands, at the age that showed in them, and watched her fingers tremble.

I can open the curtains. It’s been long enough.

She clasped the fabric firmly to stop from shaking.

I can.

Still, she stared at the sunlit cloth for a long minute before she squared her shoulders, drew back the curtains, and let in the sun for him. It was the first time she had opened them since returning home seven months ago.

Shōko smiled at him as he walked over to the window, but he did not look out, or at her. His eyes were on the floor. There they remained as he sat, then lay down, all in such perfect stillness that it left her with goose bumps, as if she were witnessing a spirit linger for a few final moments before flight.

She had to make dinner for her parents, though, so she left him there on the floor. The sunset was fading before she returned with a bowl of rice and roast fish, only to find the room empty. She sat at the table. Should she go out and search for him? But then she heard a soft sigh from under the bed. She knelt and looked. There he lay, the light reflecting in his green-gray eyes. Apparently, that was where he wanted to be, so she set the food down in the space he had chosen as his home for the night.

She could hear the faint sound of him eating. It lifted her spirits. It had been a very long time since she had cared for anything she felt was her own. It was just for this one night, of course; any more and her parents would surely find him and be angry. Shōko didn’t quite feel like a boarder, but her childhood sense of ownership had dulled over the twenty-five years since she last lived here, a dismal few months of abject dejection after her divorce. Secretly harboring him tonight was disrespectful, but she focused on the charity, compartmentalizing and choosing the contented space with him and the compassion he aroused. Shōko knew full well that bundling him off to the nearby kōban would be the reasonable, responsible thing to do. The officer at the neighborhood police box took care of minor questions and troubles all the time. But she ignored reason. Unfathomable though it was, she wanted this bond. At least for tonight, he belonged to her.

The evening proceeded in perfect silence until bedtime. She changed into pajamas when she went downstairs for her evening bath. Having slid something soft for him to lie on under the bed, all that remained was to turn off the light, and tonight for the first time since she could remember, to say good night within the confines of her room. She spoke in English: Good night, my tired friend. I hope you sleep well.

He was soon asleep, but Shōko lay awake in the bed above him long after, resting in the rhythm of his breathing, grieving the dreams that had outrun her, and wondering whether fate had contrived to show one on the horizon after so long.

2

HE LAY CURLED UP AGAINST THE WALL, HIS FACE HIDDEN.

I think you are awake now, Shōko said.

He had to leave with her. Last night she was here to watch over him. What if her parents found him? Faced with walking him to the street and saying goodbye, though, she wavered. It would be tantamount to sending him back to the river, to that levee where she had stood, twenty-six years ago, facing the same choice she feared he was contemplating yesterday. At least here under the bed, even by himself all day, he could feel welcome and wanted.

She stood and checked her purse. She looked at her watch. It was past time to leave, and she was never late.

She thought of his eyes looking back at her from beneath the bed yesterday.

Shōko closed her eyes and sighed. In the surfeit of anger and resentment she sat in each day like a pool of winter slush, he was sunshine.

She checked her watch once more, then knelt by the bed and said, again in English, My friend, I hope you are resting here today. I leave foods for you. Please be quiet. My parents don’t know you stay here and too loud noises could be scaring them. You may leave anytime. I just want you being comfortable.

Shōko walked briskly through a light rain, an umbrella in her left hand and, as always, a phone clutched in her right. She kept to the middle of the empty neighborhood streets in the few blocks to the kōban, where she took comfort and eased her pace. Bowing to the police officer standing in the doorway as she passed, she turned and headed up the large thoroughfare that was her safest route downtown. She paused at the bus stop but decided to save the money and walk. It was not a big city, and it only took twenty minutes, passing another kōban and the main police station, before she would turn and hurry the final blocks.

Shōko’s steps stayed quick as she picked her way between the puddles. She wore the older of her two pairs of shoes. They were well-worn, but she was hoping to keep them from the cobbler at least into autumn. Her uniform, a skirt of baby-blue polyester gabardine and an ill-fitting matching vest, was immune to the weather, but she was careful to keep her white blouse dry. Though she hated wearing a uniform just as she had in high school, at least it spared her the humiliation of asking her parents for money to buy clothes.

A block past the second kōban, though, thoughts of him under the bed disappeared as a sudden premonition seized her. She twisted her head in a frantic search, but there was no one. She tried to tell herself that her tormentor wasn’t really there, like countless times before. But a vise was crushing her chest and her skin crawled at the thought of him close enough to see her. She turned and stepped back toward the kōban as she forced herself to breathe. Her second step was tentative—and she leapt to the curb and waved frantically for a taxi.

3

HE HEARD THE RAIN STOP, BUT FITFULLY WAKING AND SLEEPING, HE saw afternoon sunshine on the curtains only briefly. Through the long hours, his thoughts and dreams were a caustic obsession: the inhumanity of his abandonment, despair at the anguish that would be his existence until the day he died, and grief that he was not already dead. He heard the river’s constant beckoning, cold, dark, infinitely deep, but he was too exhausted to move. Unsure whether time was passing or had stopped altogether, he was so tired when awake and slept so poorly that it was difficult to tell them apart. All he could do was lie there and wonder at how vivid and awful his dreams could be, while reality was a nightmare, totally surreal.

In one of his brief periods out from under the bed, he looked out the window at the dense, gray sky. With the rain, the river would be high again today. It would take only minutes to walk there, and once in the water, one short, final minute before the panic passed, then the pain, then the world.

He stared at the clouds. . . .

It would take too much effort to walk that far and finish himself, so he sat on the floor. He would do it, though. Hour upon hour of torment, knowing it would only stretch into days and weeks and a lifetime of pain; no one could endure it.

He closed his eyes to take the measure of his despair, but somehow thought of those soft feet walking through the door. In his imagination she smiled, then said:

I am glad you are better enough to come out into the bedroom. We can walk outside.

Shaking his head, he silently responded, Not today.

But you were thinking about it a minute ago.

He was quiet.

What you need now is someone for talking. That is it, more than anything. Or we can walk, sit, whatever you need. You are not alone.

I’ll always be—

No, she interrupted his thought. Maybe always from now you have a lonely place deep inside. You think I don’t have? Everyone has, I think. That does not mean you are alone.

He looked at the door.

Don’t do that, she said.

Why wait? To relive her leaving me a hundred times a day? To make the stabbing persist? To somehow savor the feel of the blade?

I don’t ask for you waiting forever, just today. See me again when I get home. We can go out. It will not be dark yet.

He sat silently.

Yes, she said softly in his mind.

‘Yes’ what?

Yes, it is worth pain for afternoon to see me again.

He hung his head.

You may wait under my bed, but you must see me.

4

SHŌKO SPENT HER DAYS HOPING THAT MINDLESS DRUDGERY WAS not the actual cause of dementia. In Tokyo, she had handled English-language correspondence and customs compliance for a midsize trading company. The work required vigilance and constant learning, and she had spent much of each day on the phone in English. In contrast, today she was entering data into electronic files that were unindexed and therefore would probably never be used.

The monotony left Shōko’s mind free to vacillate between how best to extract her guest from beneath the bed and get him out the door today, and how she might keep him until she found him a safe, stable place to land. She realized that he might already be gone, and she shook her head countless times to free herself from the vision of him walking to the river in the rain. Yet the pitiful movie played out every time she imagined ushering him out the door, so on she dithered. It was midafternoon before she realized that despite all her concerns, she had yet to shake off a vision of what might happen if she let him stay.

IT WAS STILL MISTING on her way home, so Shōko held her umbrella loosely, a grocery bag hanging from her arm. As she walked along the levee path, she listened to the soggy crunch of her shoes on the rough asphalt and noted the progress of the weeds in the cracks. She began taking this path home regularly only a couple of weeks ago. It still wasn’t an option in the morning, when she took comfort in the police presence on her way to work. Her departure from the house would be much more predictable than the timing of her afternoon or evening return. And there were others on the path later in the day. Despite them being strangers, she was safer with people in sight.

Most days she heard birds, but the air today was full of the churning sound of the river that made a great arc around her neighborhood. Its main channel, thirty meters wide and three meters deep, was near the far levee. The river was high today, enough to overrun the shallow channels that meandered closer to this bank, though it still did not fill the entire river bottom. She often thought of the river as her life: swift, steady, its serpentine channels a seemingly endless braid, no repetition quite the same, but repetitions, nonetheless. It was going somewhere, but only to the ocean, which amounted to oblivion for the river. Looking into the future at fifty-two, childless, back living with her parents, was a fatalistic journey. Her trips into memory were worse, though. Her failed marriages, both short-lived, one ending in divorce and the other without hope or desire for reconciliation, draped her in such shame at her ridiculous choices that she hid from the memories, though they still stalked her. Myriad other decisions, dense with regret, begged, What if I’d . . . ? in an existence that promised no joy. So, though Shōko longed for more, she invariably focused on the current, a daily routine of helping her parents and meticulously doing her job, her river flowing still and steady, resolutely channeled, levees just a waste of dirt.

Shōko opened the door and shouted, "Tadaima! She didn’t like to shout so loud, but her parents would not consider hearing aids; her mother insisted her hearing was fine and her father said he enjoyed the quiet. Shōko was about to shout out again even louder when she heard her mother call back from the living room, O-kaeri-nasai!"

Shōko stepped up out of her shoes, artlessly aligned in the genkan, picked them up, and stowed them in the shoe cabinet. She deposited the groceries in the kitchen before returning to the front hall. Turning toward the stairs, though, she stopped, lifted her eyes to her room, and listened.

The house was perfectly still. Her parents were probably reading.

As she climbed the stairs, it seemed like there were more of them today. Her heart was racing by the time she got to her room. Stairs never winded her, but her chest felt tight, so she stopped at her bedroom door and took a deep breath.

He shouldn’t be there. It will be simpler if he’s gone.

Her fingers on the door, Shōko paused for one last breath, as if readying herself for a doctor’s needle, before she slid it open. She glanced about as she walked to the table in the middle of the room and set down her purse. Nothing appeared out of place. The food was untouched. So was he . . . ?

He shouldn’t be there. And I shouldn’t care either way.

Stop caring!

She dropped to her knees and looked. He was there! And ignoring the foreboding that gripped her at the sound of her heart pounding exultantly in her ears, she smiled and said, Hello, old friend. Are you comfortable still?

SHŌKO GAVE UP READING and dropped her book on the bed. She listened intently for any sound, but there was only the faint ping of rain on the roof and the languid splashing of puddles beneath the eaves.

Preoccupied with his eyes under her bed, she’d read only a few pages, yet still had dallied long enough that dinner was late. She was setting out the dishes as her parents sat down.

Did you buy the fish fresh today? asked her mother.

I always do, replied Shōko politely as she set a small bowl of rice in front of her mother. As she did the same for her father, he looked up and caught her eye. She paused as he held her gaze. It was only a second, and he did not smile or change his expression, but there was appreciation in his eyes. Thankfulness showed back in her own for the moment before she sat, they all said, "Itadakimasu," and turned their attention to the food.

They ate silently. Her father was a quiet man, and Shōko was thinking of the eyes under her bed. She thought of her father’s, too, and whether she would ever see appreciation in another’s eyes.

Shōko’s mother broke the stillness: I saw him today.

Shōko froze.

Her father frowned. I told you not to say anything.

But she should know.

If you really saw him, yes, but not a single one of your sightings has turned out to be true. You worry her needlessly.

Shōko rested her hand on the table, the ends of her chopsticks shoved under the lip of the plate to keep them from shaking.

Her mother chewed slowly. The rice is a bit dry, isn’t it?

Shōko dropped her chopsticks, pressed her hands to her eyes, and ran from the room.

At the stairs, she stopped short and looked up at her door.

No, he can’t see me like this.

She spun and faced the front door, but the thought of what could be outside made her quake so violently that she dropped to the floor. There she knelt, her face in her hands, curled up so her forehead nearly touched the floor, trembling.

Her father knelt behind her. We haven’t seen him for four months.

Shōko nodded.

Whoever your mother saw, it wasn’t him. Every time, he’s shown himself. Remember, he wants only to terrorize you. He can’t do that if he stays hidden.

She whispered to the floor, I know.

He placed his hand on her back before he took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her upright. He remained behind her, both of them kneeling.

Keep in mind that the times he’s come, it’s unlikely he saw any sign of you. He’s not even sure you’re here. Forget him. He’s given up.

He handed Shōko his handkerchief and she wiped her eyes.

You should eat.

She nodded again, but it was a few more minutes before she was back at the table, eating in silence.

5

WHEN THE ALARM WOKE HIM TUESDAY MORNING, HE FOUND HIMSELF halfway out from his hiding place. He pushed back under the bed until he reached the wall, where he took solace in his near invisibility. In the darkness it was easy to imagine his presence as a secret even from the one person who knew he was here.

He fell asleep again but woke to the sound of breakfast being placed on the floor beside the bed. Still pressed against the wall, he hesitated but soon gave in to hunger and moved. He lay there watching her dress as he ate. Why was a woman this kind and beautiful alone? The question tarried, even as she said goodbye.

He did not sleep as much as yesterday. As the hours dragged by, he counted, first his breaths, then the sparkles in the wallboard, and time and again, how long the false-hearted one had owned him. Tallied in years, in days, in seconds, each total left him at the same moment, the swift slice that gutted him. He didn’t need a thumb to count the four empty days since. He struggled to evacuate his mind, simply to stare—at the bottom of the bed, the floor, the curtains, the walls—until he could see the textures of this new box even with his eyes closed. This was his space to lie in, beached. Here the sand would parch and his skin crack and bleed as he waited, not for the return of the one who forsook him, but for the weightlessness that would come as he shriveled into nothing.

Hurts go away, came his friend’s imagined voice from the bed above him.

Only if you let them, he said silently.

So do.

He was still.

You are choosing this pain? she asked.

Deserving.

Why?

After a long pause he said, I did nothing to stop her.

After a full minute she said, I leaved foods for you, like yesterday. You can eat something, or at least take a drink.

His eyes went to the water. It looked cool, and he was thirsty.

When I get home, I am happy to see you took a drink.

He did not move.

You know you don’t really dry up and disappear. You just get more thirsty.

He was quiet.

Take a drink. I will sit with you while you go back to sleep.

6

SHŌKO DID NOT EVEN PUT HER PURSE ON THE TABLE BEFORE SHE knelt and checked under the bed. He did not move at all as she looked at him, but his eyes were open and he met her gaze steadily. She smiled at him for a few seconds, without speaking, then stood and turned on the air conditioner. Catching sight of her smile in the mirror, though, she checked herself sharply.

Shōko opened the curtains and took a long look out the window to the west. It was cloudy, but she was warm, as if the sun were gleaming directly into her face.

But it was a brisk walk. And the room is hot. I should turn on the air conditioner before I leave tomorrow.

She surveyed the room. It appeared he spent a second full day under the bed, languishing at best, food again untouched. At least he had a good drink today. Despite the eye contact, though, he looked more ragged than yesterday, which was worse than Sunday. He needed more from her than safe harbor, and there was a limit even to that. She had to draw him out while there was still time.

Shōko pressed