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II.4. Pretending
On entering his room, Hisao almost steps on a piece of paper. He bends to inspect it. It's ragged edge suggests that it has been torn from a notebook. On the paper are columns of text: tiny kana and kanji spread across the paper, leaving little white. Hisao blinks at the dizzying display, then uses thumb and forefinger to pick up the paper, at a corner, one of the few places that do not contain any writing. He holds it up, looks at it a while, then finally enters the room.
A letter from Miya. What else could it be? The door falls shut behind him, but he doesn't bother to lock it. Instead he walks over to his desk and puts the paper down on it. It is Thusday. On Monday, she has told him that she never wants to see him again. Till next time. He has since been waiting for her to pop up somewhere, perhaps at a time chosen to inconvenience him. What he did not expect was a written communiqué.
Hisao scans the page looking for a name, but there is none. No addressee, no sender, nothing. But there needn't be. He turns the paper over and finds more writing, although at least half the page is empty. So the side he's looked at first is page one. He turns it over once again. An incongruity strikes him: the torn edge is
very ragged. It has been torn out without much care. It cuts off no writing, so it's been torn out empty and only then written on.. The writing itself is anything but careless. The letters are tiny but surprisingly easy to read, even the kanji. Why would anyone tear a page from a notebook, not caring to leave a neat margin, and then take the utmost care to make the writing pretty. It makes no sense. He looks the page over. Nothing is crossed out. This is unlikely a first draft. Hisao wonders if the incongruity is deliberate, but he can find no reason for it.
And if this text is not from Miya?
He starts to read:
You wanted to know what history I have with Ikezawa.
It's from Miya, all right. He takes a deep breath and reads.
***
You wanted to know what history I have with Ikezawa. Very well, I'll tell you as much as I can remember. I'll also write about “Atsuko”; why I wasn't lying when introduced myself that way, why I'd be lying if I introduced myself that way now. It all boils down to me being the only member of the non-existant Yamaku drama club. Of course, it all goes back further than Yamaku (not Ikezawa, of course, but the rest). You see, I pretend. I pretend to be someone, I pretend to do thinks, I pretend to want things. I pretend.
The first thing you need to know about pretending is this: pretending is not equivalent to lying. When you lie, you deliberately state a falsehood with the hope that others believe it. When you pretend? You just act as if. The prototype of pretending is the stage. You play a role other than yourself. You pretend to be someone else. You're fooling nobody. Instead the people who watch you pretend conspire in the pretence. It's a conditional, situational belief in some sort of reality that is hard to pin down as true or false. So here I am, in real life, treating it like a stage. The role I play is myself. I have to play that role, because inside I'm empty. I'm tired. I feel like I don't exist, but that's not quite true. Something inside me chooses how I play my roles after all. I think the governing principles are alternately: a minimum of fuss, a maximum of interest. It's just that no identity sticks; there's only that roster of familiar roles.
You may think this is a very personal revelation, but it is not. This letter you are reading, it is an act just like everything else. Don't take it too seriously. At the same time, it
is a revelation. It's as close as you'll ever get to a statement from me. I cannot avoid pretending, so I don't try. But that doesn't mean I can't try to communicate via pretence. If a message, through some miracle, arrives let me know what is. I'm curious. So why am I writing this? Selfish bitch that I am (= pretend to be; I will not bother to tag my language again, so get used to doing it yourself, okay?), I have a favour to ask of you. I'll do that in person, but you'll need to be prepared. You'll need to know about what pretending means to me. Don't worry if you don't get it. Not even my mum does, fully. Not even
I do.
You should have a hint, now, of what the non-existent drama club means to me. Let me clear up a misunderstanding that you may (or may not) have: I do not want to be an actress. I do not want people to look at me. I want to be in the audience. Maybe, just maybe, I want to write a script or two, but I'm no actress. I'm pretending because I'm forced to. You meet people and you have to react to them. Even if you have nothing to say, you need to say something. Do you see? I might be pretending the truth at times, and not know it. I might get so used to my roles that I confuse them with myself – until I talk to someone else and the script changes. All is nonsense, but it doesn't always feel like it. So you see, if you know who you are, you have no business joining the non-existent drama club.
Atsuko is - no, I should say was another member of the non-existent drama club. Atsuko was me, but she was better defined. She had a shape, a history. She had problems and solutions. She had the potential to be happy and sad. And for all that, she was less real than Miyako. It's Miyako's body that write's this letter. Atsuko can no longer write letters; she's gone. But even if she could, she'd be using Miyako's body. All this is a roundabout way to say that I know I made her up, but she was an important part of my inner life. She wasn't real. Right. At Yamaku, that made her the perfect member of a non-existant club. Don't you agree?
Well, Atsuko has left me. I've seen her walk away on Sunday, with her mother into a new and happy life. Yes, that was just
an Atsuko, and not
the Atsuko, but: A girl and her mother, while I was already upset because of having met you. Something in me snapped and I could no longer believe in the act. It just seemed... silly. Atsuko is out there, not in here. (Imagine me pounding my temples right now.) You may not understand what that means: she was my mirror. She has been with me for over a decade. Was I five or six? I can't quite remember.
You see, even as a child I had my problems. And I wanted to ask my mum for advice, but if I had done that, she'd have worried about me, and she had problems of her own. I was such a clever little girl, wasn't I? If I ask questions for a friend, mum won't worry, right? Atsuko has this problem, Atsuko has that problem. Not Miyako. Atsuko. See? Doesn't every child try something like this? And does any mother ever fall for it?
I can't remember a single moment of finding out that my mother has known all along. We never really talked about that, except much later when we'd already stopped that game. There certainly was no single moment when we admitted to each other that we knew. I just kept on telling Mum Atsuko's problems. At some point, I just knew she knew they were really my problems. And then, a bit later, I knew she knew I knew she knew. That's the evolution of pretence between two people. I think it works like that for every one, really. So we had this pretence going on, and then it was to silly to keep up (probably around the time of my first period, but I can't remember), and much later we could look back and laugh about it. In a way.
See the evolution of pretence? It starts out as a deliberate lie on my part. It fails as a lie; Mum doesn't believe it for a second. But she pretends to believe it, humouring me. Is that a lie? It may be; it's less clear cut though. At some time, I realise that she is humouring me, but I still play along. Another layer of pretence. In the end, what we have is a mutual act; we're both actor and audience. At that point, we might as well just talk about my problems in a straightforward manner. Might but don't. Is it any surprise that, when we finally quit the act, I stop telling Mum about my problems?
I'm not sure my mum knows that I've kept Atsuko alive inside. She might, or she might not. Now, I'm pretending for myself. Inside. For nobody else. Atsuko's been my little secret self for quite a long time, now. How to describe how she felt inside? Maybe a bit like a virtual stuffed toy that looks like yourself? Uh, that not only sounds silly but also a tad creepy. I can't explain. She's been me so long, now that she's someone else, I'm frightened. See, everything I do is always Miya now. And she has never been clearly defined to begin with. The complexity level rises. There's more confusion. I'm frightened.
Atsuko being gone is frightening, sure, but it's also somewhat a relief. See, if all my problems are Atsuko's, and if Atsuko can solve them, but Atsuko isn't real... Don't think I wasn't aware that she'd been a tool of denial. But somehow it worked, kept me going. Well, no longer. It's only Miyako now, inside out. Not even I can tell what will become of her. A corpse, sure, but before then?
If I'd still had Atsuko, for example, when we entered the Shanghai, who knows? I could have borrowed her, played her on the outside, too, rather than only on the inside. Maybe as Atsuko I could have faced Ikezawa, but as Miyako? Impossible. You see, Ikezawa was one of the first people who had the misfortune of meeting me at Yamaku. Back then, oh I can't quite remember what I thought, but I was at a bad spot. Yamaku was little but a haven for freaks to me. I felt like I didn't belong there, like I was the wrong sort of freak. A queer freak among your garden-variety of freaks. I mean, I have sleep paralysis. Is that a bodily problem, or a mental one. Sure they accepted me. But somewhere out there was a poor little freak who didn't get to go to freak haven, because I stole his place. I felt like an usurper. And then I spotted Ikezawa. And all she had were those burns. That's all? I must have thought. Or not. I really can't remember. Well, she was so apologetic. As if she chose to have burns. I couldn't take it. So I played along. Boy did I play along! I really can't remember the details, but it was quite plain to see that she didn't like being a freak (even if she's really just a second-rate freak, compared to most of Yamaku), so I pretty much told her to be proud of it. I'm sure if I've had a pair of scissors on me, I might have cut her hair. It was
that bad.
Anyway, she pushed me down the stairs, and I broke my little finger in the process, and we were
both suspended for a week. Well, big deal. I don't think either of us would have wanted to go to class after that. Then we had a feel-good session, and I'd decided to play along, but then she apologised to me, and, again, I couldn't take it. See? I think I offended her by not accepting that apology. She's a good girl at heart and doesn't want to hurt people. Not even if they deserve it. Good thing she went to Yamaku. Any old school in Tokyo? Oh dear. Poor little princess. Or maybe not. She's stronger than she seems. You should have seen her anger when she shoved me down the stairs. Beautiful. My memories may be a bit hazy, but I'll never forget
that look on her face.
I'm sure once I'm dead she'll be relieved, but she's a good girl, so she won't want to be relieved. It's silly really, that moral side of her. She'll feel guilty for being glad I'm dead. Mark my words. (And don't tell me I may survive Yamaku. It's possible, and I know that. I prefer to pretend I won't. I wish I could say statistics are on my side, but I'm an outlier already. Wrong gender, wrong age. Maybe my father is/was Lao? That's at least possible. Statistics have little to say about me in that respect.)
So who was being mean to poor little Hana chan back then? It certainly wasn't Atsuko. Atsuko doesn't do that. Yes, that's right. It was Miyako. But not yet Yamaku Miyako. There was some left-over Tokyo Miyako in there. I was transitional. Basically Ikezawa was a victim of role rehearsal. There are bound to be overdramatic moments, before you get it right. (Of course, I probably still don't have it “right”, but let's not talk about that.) Maybe non-Yamaku experience led me to believe Yamaku would be harsher than it turned out to be? I don't know. I simply don't know. You see, those who live to see graduation, which may or may not include me, will go back to the real world eventually. And then? It's sort of a reversal: if the environment around me isn't nasty, then I have to be. For balance. I don't know how to move in a gentle world. I think I may be learning. Of course, I'm still pretty nasty, but believe me, I was nastier to Ikezawa than to anyone before or after. Well, certainly after. But if I've been nasty before, it was in self defence. (Look, I'm rationalising!)
You see, I'm good at poking into the wounds of the people around me, because they show me my own pain. I don't exist, unless I see myself in others. And since different people are different, I'm never the same either. My actions are more real than I can ever be. The results of my actions are hints that I exist. And I use them to fabricate my roles. That's pretending. When we're together, I'm our joint project. When someone else is there, too, I'm something more complex. But I'm never me, because there is no such thing.
That's pretending. And if that makes no sense to you, don't worry. You may have guessed that I need you for an act, and that's true. If you agree, and you probably shouldn't but you probably will, already extant rumours are going to go into overdrive. I'm half sorry to drag you into this, but then maybe you're also only pretending. You have that look sometimes, as if you want to disappear into others.
I'll see you when I work up the courage (you didn't think I was fearless, did you?), and it will have to be soon. There's a dead line, see?
Anyway, that was my writing self, and now I'm exhausted. Bye.
***
Hisao stares at flood of words. Meaning flies at him in a spray. She needs to ask a favour? Hisao, Yamaku drama club member #2? She managed to get herself pushed down the stairs by
Hanako? Hisao has trouble picturing that. But there is something in the image that roots him in the text: the broken finger. A body in pain. Pain. I hurt therefore I am. She may feel empty. She may not identify with the things she does. But the pain is real and personal. Does she ever feel joy? Feelings beyond all meaning, raw and real and fleeting. What about the rest of the time? Boredom? What was it she said?
Meanwhile I wait. And suddenly, death doesn't seem that terrible any more. Is she rubbing off on him?
But people waiting for death don't ask for favours, do they? There is something she
wants. Hisao flips over the paper and reads it through once again. Then excerpts, jumping back and forth. He reads and reads, and at some point starts making notes, until all the world is words and his head an aching swirl that could sink the sturdiest of concepts.
***
Writing Home (#2)
Mum, mum, mum!
He's
not my boyfriend! He's not! I understand you want to meet him, but no promises. What if you scare him away? Then it's
all your fault? (Kidding!)
Seriously, I don't even think about a relationship. I mean we have no future. Is that fair? He knows about my condition, and maybe that's why he makes no move, but it's better like that, really. He's still around, though.
There's also that minor detail that he's not really my type. You'll see what I mean (if he doesn't agree to see you, I'll point him out to you in secret – I'm sneaky like that). Really, sometimes I wonder about myself. Do I hang out with him, because I'm missing something? He's a good boy, and it's a shame that pretty much describes him.
So don't tease him too much (if he comes). He's already got me to deal with.
Love you,
Miyako
P.S. I didn't say that I'm looking forward to your visit, but you know I do, don't you? The date is fine. See you then! Bye.
)