The Harunobu Face

That there had been no repeat of the vision of Wednesday night must be a good sign. Thinking myself quite clever indeed, I said to myself (half speaking aloud) that clearly it was a suppressed sexual desire for Yuki that had generated the visions. Admitting to myself that I had such a desire, and embracing it, taking control of it myself, had dispelled them for good. So I was less completely straight than I had thought, and had the hots for my Japanese neighbour--nothing wrong with that! She certainly was beautiful enough, at least for one with the eyes to see it.

The idea kept me pretty well satisfied for half an hour perhaps. But I wasn't able to concentrate on the essay I wanted to start. Admitting that I felt desire for Yuki might have stopped the intense visions, but I began to realize that it left an edgy aching feeling which I didn't know what to do about. I listened myself at the glass for a little while, but the silence was discouraging. I set up to record again, and tried to return to work. The temptation to check the recording often was quite difficult to resist, though, and I decided to give up the idea of working at home. I left my phone in the bedroom with the microphone recording on it, and went out with only my laptop to work in my favorite neighborhood coffee-shop.

Two laborious essay-pages later and it was time to go to class. No lunch for me today. I took notes dutifully throughout what was not an interesting lecture for me; my mind wandered regularly to the microphone and what it might be recording. More than once I thought to myself that I really had to decide what if anything I would do about my attraction to Yuki. After the class I tried going for a walk in the park near the university; it was not as beautiful a day as yesterday had been, but it was certainly pleasant, and as often being close to trees seemed to make me calmer. On the way back home I allowed myself to think again about my "situation."

If--no, since!--I was not having a breakdown, haunted, or cursed, instead simply discovering an unsuspected aspect of my own sexuality (I had been wrong to think that I knew it rather thoroughly already), I should try to get to know my neighbour better. No way of telling now how it would go, what might come of it; but if there was to be any chance of those desires, subconscious till just yesterday, being explored further or even fulfilled in part, I would have to speak to her. Ask her to have coffee with me...

Think of the devil! As I turned the corner, almost home, I suddenly realized that Yuki herself was walking next to me. Had she been there for some seconds, a minute? In any case she was looking at me and smiling, a slightly warmer smile perhaps than I had seen from her. Or a smile of concern? "How are you doing, um, Louisa, right?" I hadn't fully realized before how beautiful her voice is, and looking at her real face, not a vision (something my own brain had surely fashioned from its memories), I thought that it too was more beautiful than I had understood. Harunobu made flesh; but details that the artist could not include all seemed perfect to me. The epitome of innocence (but with that thought the vision of Wednesday, and what I had deliberately conjured up in fantasy Thursday afternoon and again Thursday evening, also came to my mind and confused me). It took me a little too long to reply, and now there definitely was some concern in her look. How astonishing that with the tiniest changes, and while remaining calm and lovely in the same way, her face could express different feelings so subtly and yet, to me (a brief flash of pride), clearly.

- "Yuki, yes, how nice! We haven't talked since you moved in! I kept meaning to knock on your door and ask if you need anything, information about shopping or cafes or any kind of help... "

- "Oh, that's so kind of you Louisa" (now I am admiring her English, the slight accent seeming utterly charming--am I indeed besotted?--, and her poise, polite without coolness). "I've been settling in so easily, and it's a lovely neighborhood... No, I don't need anything really. But would you like to come in" (we had already reached the building and were about to enter) "for a cup of tea and a chat? If you have time, it'd be lovely. I know you're often busy, I see you hurrying..."

I said I did have time and I'd love it; I would drop my things in my apartment and might have to do one thing quickly but would knock on her door in 15 minutes. I had thought briefly of asking her into my apartment for coffee instead, but the knowledge of the glass and the microphone in my bedroom made me feel unwilling to do so. Of course it was extremely unlikely that she'd go into my bedroom (wasn't it?) but still...

In my bathroom I considered putting on a trace of makeup, but looking in the mirror I decided against it. I really am attracted to her, I thought, staring at myself in the mirror. It was certainly true, though I also noticed that in her physical presence the feeling of attraction was not some kind of overwhelming lust, as I had almost expected, but just... literally a feeling of being attracted. Wanting to draw closer to her. And a sense of being more alive. Yes, the thought of touching her was rather intoxicating, but it felt different from the way my desire, my arousal, usually felt. "Don't overthink things," I chided myself. There was something to do still.

I wanted to check my recording, to be as well prepared as possible when I went to her. I could see in my audio software that there were two periods during which something had been very clearly audible; the first of about 10 minutes in the morning (not long after I had left the apartment), the second of about 50 minutes in the early afternoon. No time to listen to the whole of them of course. I skipped to the beginning of the first.

It was Yuki's voice (which I already felt that I knew much better now that we had had our brief conversation on the way to the building and going up the stairs); she must have been in the bedroom. It was astonishingly clear, and I couldn't understand a word. But after less than half a minute I thought I knew what it was. It was not Japanese but Chinese recited with Japanese pronounciation. I had heard something very similar; my grandmother reciting, as she occasionally did, the Buddhist Heart Sūtra. This wasn't the same text, I was sure (for one thing it seemed to be much longer), but it must, I thought, be the same kind of thing; a Buddhist sacred text, probably translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, being recited in the special style that Japanese use traditionally for the scriptures.

It was mesmerizing and beautiful; and it reminded me of the dream before dawn (although, I thought to myself, what Yuki had said in that dream had not sounded quite like this; a little perhaps, but somehow different too). I had no time, however; I wanted to check the second, longer, part with audible sound, and I skipped forward. I had seen already from the shape of the waves in my audio software that this must be something different. It was; it was music, played in the living room, I thought, but with the door to the bedroom at least partly open. It was clear enough that I could recognize it: tango, Piazzolla, probably, though I couldn't immediately name the piece. Surprising coincidence! Surely tango is not generally popular among people of my age--I had never known a classmate to share that love with me.

No time to listen, and no need; there was something more exciting and more important. The fifteen minutes were almost up. I hesitated one moment and then set the microphone to record once more. Who knows... Then stepped out of my door, took seven steps (for some reason I noticed the number), and knocked on hers.

*****

Something changed, for sure, when I stepped across the threshold into Yuki's apartment, the mirror-image of mine. I think I knew that, on some level, immediately, but I certainly didn't understand what had changed. In some confused way I was imagining that I was in love with Yuki; that she returned that love, or was soon going to; that we would live happily ever after. Confused, absurd, deluded, indeed. After all I have known for long, very clearly, that there is no happily ever after for us humans...

Yuki had changed into a beautiful kimono (different, I noted in the back of my mind, both from the kimono of my vision on Wednesday evening, and from that of my strange, still not forgotten, dream shortly before awaking this very morning), and she received me with both formal courtesy and genuine warmth. Her apartment was indeed sparsely furnished, but at some point she apparently had had a two-person sofa delivered, and in front of it there was a small but very elegant tea-table. I was put on the sofa; Yuki gave me a cup of Japanese green tea and a plate with several small sweets on it; then produced a zabuton cushion and sat on it on the floor on the other side of the tea-table, seeming perfectly at ease with her legs folded beneath her. So we sat, just sipping tea, at first, for several minutes, in a silence which was not uncomfortable, but seemed most strangely, richly, laden with an electric potential. Strangest of all perhaps, to me, was that that electric tension did not seem to be a sexual one.

Yuki asked what I was studying, and with that a dam broke, conversation suddenly flowing with surprising ease of back and forth. In about an hour (which passed as if it were ten minutes) I had learned that Yuki was studying musicology and was very good at drawing people out, while she had learned everything that I let other people who are not old friends or family know about me...

When I noticed how much the light had changed, and said that it must be getting late, and perhaps I should go, Yuki looked slightly surprised, and asked if I was hungry. No, I said, but I shouldn't impose on her evening and...

She did not let me finish the sentence but rose quickly and came to sit beside me on the sofa. I was surprised, turned to face her. Time slowed down. She put a hand on my shoulder, then on the back of my neck. That was the first time we touched, flesh to flesh: her hand on my neck. I can still feel it.

Her face was very close to mine, and I felt that I could see nothing else but it. I was mesmerized by its perfection. I couldn't speak; I felt for a moment as if I couldn't move. Apart from that face the only things I consciously noticed were the very slight sound of her breathing (was she breathing more quickly?) and an extremely subtle fragrance. It was her; I couldn't perceive anything that was not her, no sight, no sound, no smell. No touch (and here my arms found that they could move, and embraced her), no taste...

It was I who initiated our kiss; Yuki responded to it as a mirror-image, lips parting just as mine parted, tongue meeting mine, when it entered her mouth, with a slightly awkward eagerness (which I found incredibly moving--this young woman with such perfect poise could be awkward in something!), but also (an odd thought, but it came into my mind) with the same mixture of warmth and courtesy with which Yuki had welcomed me into her apartment...

*****

There are some strange lacunae in my memory. Some of them, especially those which make events of seven years ago seem very spotty--a set of vignettes rather than a continuous narrative--I am glad to have. On the other hand I feel wistful about the gaps in my memory of that evening, though they are much shorter. I wish that I could have preserved it in detail, every second of it...

If my vague fantasy had become reality we ought to have gone straight to bed, or made love there on the sofa, the floor. I know that we didn't. I'm not entirely sure though how we transitioned from the eternity of that kiss (which I took then to seal our love, our union, though later I understood that it was my love for her, my giving up everything for her, that it sealed), to... listening to music as the light gradually faded. "I know you like tango, Louisa; I heard some from your apartment late on Wednesday. No, no problem; it was a surprise but I really was happy to hear it! Troilo, Pichuco, wasn't it? I thought so... Now listen to this..."

The music that she played I had never heard though, which surprised me a little, for it was clearly Golden Age tango, not modern. "This one is Nelly Omar, some of these are rare radio recordings; isn't it wonderful?!" She had programmed some playlist and for me, there, with her, as the light of the spring evening faded, everything seemed surreally perfect. A few times Yuki sang along for a while, and her voice seemed to take on the quality of the young Nelly Omar, but with an accent in her Spanish as indescribably charming as her English. After perhaps five pieces (we had moved from Nelly Omar to the Troilo of the 1950s), she began to dance. Tango in kimono, not like any tango I had seen before... It was music and dance which both perfectly expressed the joy and pain of life and love, and the inevitability of loss... After three more songs she undid the kimono, stood still for one moment in her slender beauty, which far surpassed my imagining of the night before, and then danced like that...

I don't know when it was that she told me to rise, undress, and dance with her. The daylight had already completely faded. At some point she had turned on a halogen lamp which was directed towards the wall, and it was in the reflected light that I followed as she led. I think I was a quick learner, and several times a light squeeze of my shoulder, once a brief caress of my left breast, communicated her approval.

I don't know also when it was that the tango playlist came to an end. We ate together, chirashi and inari zushi which Yuki said she had made earlier in the day (why had she made so much?), with more green tea. Perhaps that was around 9 pm; I hadn't eaten since the morning.

Then I remember that the surreally real, surreally dreamlike, character of that Friday became more intense. We sat on the sofa, no dancing now, while Yuki played something else. "These are ghazals, sung by Ghulam Ali; that's Tari Khan, great master too, on the tabla... Listen..." I had never heard such music; but it was music of a kind that lets even a non-expert listener easily enter into its perfection. Unlike the three-minute vignettes of lost love in the tango songs, these ghazals went on hypnotically long, ever fresh, drawing me deeper in, drawing tears to my eyes...

*****

Often, when I listen to beautiful music, and am able to immerse myself into it, I find tears coming to my eyes. But till then it had only happened when I am alone. One of the things that was different that evening, that night, is that in front of Yuki tears came so easily. I suppose I hadn't let them flow freely before anyone since I was a child. But these were tears of joy at hearing perfection, and tears of the still ecstatic pain of knowing that tiny flaw of its impermanence, its being after all still bound by time. And they were the tears of leaving everything else behind.

*****

With that music and with Yuki's proximity, her occasional touches and her kisses (she never kissed me on the mouth herself, instead on my cheek--sometimes tasting and tenderly kissing away the tears that now and again overflowed--or on the edge of my ear; but when I wanted her mouth she always yielded it) during which even the music no longer seemed the most important thing, evening became night, night became deep night... I thought at one point that until now the only experiences I had had that I would call ecstatic were of music. But now everything that I saw, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted, was heightened, exquisite, suffused with a blissfulness I had never recognized before.

*****

I have sometimes wondered if Yuki had drugged me. If so the drug was in the green tea, already the first time that I sipped it. Or it was in the Japanese sweets that she had brought with the tea. In any case, I know that it is utterly unimportant whether she drugged me or not. I am here, in any case, now. I am her, in any case, now.

*****

Another strange thing is that it did not seem strange to me that though we "made out" a little (so different, though, from my only earlier experience of that with poor, eager, Rich) we did not "make love". It was only the next morning, when I did not have her intoxicating presence, that the thought occurred to me that perhaps it had been as if we were not a new couple--I still imagined at that point that we were that--but an old one; deeply loving but beyond the urgent lust of fresh passion. I was eager for intimacy and for being one with her, but it was our eyes, mouths, and minds that again and again met. It seems incredible, but that time I did not even touch her once between her thighs, nor did I take her hand and place it between mine.

*****

I believe, though I do not know (it might in part be just what I imagined or longed for), that I fell asleep in Yuki's arms, and that she, petite though she was (no taller than I, and slimmer) carried me tenderly to her futon. In any case, sometime after 2am I must have lost consciousness. And sometime after 9 am I awoke.

For ten minutes or so I felt that I was lying or floating in the sky--Yuki's futon--in a waking extension of the dreams I had had of flying. I felt no need of anything. Thoughts did not yet follow each other clearly. I was aware that it was Yuki's futon, even though she was not there beside me right now, and that awareness made me feel happy and at peace.

After some time thoughts became more linear and normal. I wondered whether Yuki was in the apartment. The silence at first seemed rich and pleasant, warm, but listening I felt sure that she was not there. And at that the sense of being entirely content became slightly lessened, and a first faint pang of the pain of separation entered my heart.

I got up and in the living room found a note from Yuki on the small tea-table. "Hope you slept well, Louisa! There's not much for breakfast here, I'm afraid. I have to be out this morning. I don't know if I will be free, but if I am may I knock on your door to see if you have time to hang out together again this evening? Yuki" (her handwriting was rounded and a little childlike; there was a little heart dotting the last letter.)

I added, with the pen that lay beside the paper, "I'd love that! L" at the bottom, with a heart, and looked, more out of curiousity than hunger through Yuki's fridge and her cupboards. Both were indeed practically bare. Yuki must have used everything she had for the sushi, and it had been just right for us. She had already washed the dishes we had used the day before. I thought that the apartment felt curiously unlived-in. It hadn't felt that way yesterday.

Back in my own apartment I made my usual breakfast, had twice my usual coffee. I had slept extraordinarily comfortably, and the afterglow of the blissful high that I had been in for so many hours yesterday evening was still strong. I wasn't thinking much about "us," though there was a point at which the thought I already mentioned occurred to me: that it was somewhat strange that we had not felt any urgency to make love; that we were a little like a couple who loved each other deeply but had known each other so long and so well that lovemaking was something they did not need and almost did not do. But I felt so unwontedly good that these thoughts did not make me at all uneasy.

I turned off the microphone in the bedroom and took my phone, which had spent so many hours recording the sounds from Yuki's apartment. I still have that recording of the evening and night that I spent in there. Perhaps one day I will check it, listen to it. Perhaps there will be something on it that will surprise me, something that will help to fill one of those lacunae in my memory. Perhaps there will be a clue as to what Yuki did in those hours in which I slept and she, I believe, did not.