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Part IV Like a Dream
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p a r t i v l i k e a d r e a m Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire [3.227.239.9] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:07 GMT) 173| Running| I have been out. No longer inside, hiding; no longer whispering my worries in my head, voicing them to Brian who will not listen. I’ve been plucked off the ground—running from interview to interview to bar. If I’m not home, I don’t have to answer the midnight calls from well-meaning friends about anthrax. If I’m out, pumping more alcohol into proper Japanese women than they have ever drunk before, I’m in a world where people will reveal themselves; they will confess to me, worry, ask me questions I can answer; they will give in to me, race down the center of deserted streets on their bicycles in the early morning. Here I am, wind in my hair of my own making. Behind me, a whoop of warning that my companion is gaining inches. Behind me, white poison, and unease about where the next envelopes will be mailed. Do you want to come to Japan now? I ask Brian again. Maybe now, with the anthrax . . . 174 He scoffs into the phone, and then lets the sound sink beneath the careful calm we’ve been trying so hard to create. Even though we have not stated it so baldly, the camel that was our life together, which had always seemed infinitely hardy, has become so burdened we’re afraid to add to the load. I have ranted at him, in my own cloaked terror at not being able to recognize—not him, not my city—I am navigating by old snapshots of before. He has dismissed me: I have no idea. This is his mantra, this and the fact that he is waiting for this to be over. These are the gates we must pass through every time we pick up the phone. In the chasm between us, black and white are beginning to edge each other, and the flexible grey that was our life together no longer has the strength to lead us through. While we are gathering ourselves, waiting for the echoes to fade, he does not ask me whether I want to come home. This omission is immediately obvious, and all the louder for remaining unsaid. Am I being judged on my inability to get on an airplane to return to the center of the storm? I jump to this, read threat into it because that’s how we communicate . If he asks, then he will be responsible for my loss of my fellowship; if I offer, the choice is mine. His silence is my chance to give up my life here, to choose him and the web that has always supported me. This is my old world, the one I excelled in: of “shoulds” and “supposed tos”; of definitions and absolutes ready to jump on any offered word. The questions, refusals, agreements , counter responses—the permutations have a calculus of their own, with volumes and surface areas that change 175 depending on who says what, who says it first, on the exact formula of the sentences. But none of the equations are harmless. He is waiting for me to respond. The children . . . but that’s a vague start. I would interject: you can bring them here where it’s safe. And he would finish: . . . are fine. Death is a crapshoot. It doesn’t matter where you are. It appears, on the silent surface, that we’re in perfect agreement. We are struggling to see the war as “not a big deal”—each one continuing to live a life, equally, separately, in the way we once agreed. The anthrax is nothing; it is not connected. In the space where there are no answers, it is better to pretend it’s not happening at all. If I once thought my trip would be easier on him in his own environment, it is now easier for me in some ways, because I can fill my head with another war, with the question of war, its nature, philosophy, with its broad history that has nothing at all to do with us, and little to do with what he’s feeling. If only he would tell me what he was feeling, if only he knew. He will not admit to injury, and neither of us...