The Premonition

by Banana Yoshimoto

It was over now, but it had to be. In coming to an end, it had given me something, and only by making my way through was I able to begin to live the rest of my life.

It made her seem strangely beautiful no matter what she was doing. The vacant yet bright light she gave off filled the space around her. When she lowered her long eyelashes and rubbed her eyes sleepily, she was as dazzling to me as an angel, and when she sat on the floor with her legs sprawled carelessly in front of her, her slender ankles were as smooth and neat as a marble sculpture’s.

Leaving home was what I did when I had things to figure out. I’d take a trip without telling anyone where I was going, or go stay with friends. It always cleared my head, let me see things more clearly.

I was still too young to understand much about death, but I was saddened by her grief.

I had a premonition of setting out on a journey and getting lost inside a distant tide as the sun went down, ending up far, far away from where I started.

I couldn’t have been more fortunate; and yet, from time to time, I couldn’t help but think— It’s not just my childhood memories. There’s something even more important I’m forgetting.

I guess you need to have a home before you can run away from it, I thought, and I felt it in my heart.

Especially on days when I was feeling down, and lying in bed trying to sleep at night, the sound of Tetsuo opening the front door and coming upstairs made me feel safe. I wouldn’t go out to greet him or anything. But the sounds of him in the house would reassure me like a lullaby until I fell asleep.

I’d never figured out why I got so lonely so easily. Sometimes when I was on my own at night, I’d be seized by an overwhelming sadness I could only call homesickness.

But each time I reached the verge of remembering something, I felt vulnerable. Like a traveler far from home, I lost touch with the security of feeling that I could stay right where I was.

There was always something melancholy about late-night phone calls. And discovering the truth always hurt.

She was so much older, and when I was with her, I felt like I had nothing to fear. Not the dark of night, nor everything I still didn’t know about myself. Strange to think how I’d always felt anxious in my warm home, yet here, where daily life felt so precarious, I was fulfilled.

My aunt had given up looking like my aunt and turned into my older sister. Her expression was open to me, her gaze no longer averted.

You know—none of them are actually related to us at all, including your grandpa who died. They just took us in because they were so close with our real parents.

“I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to deal with it. It was okay for you—you were still young enough to start over. But I couldn’t forget the life we’d had with our real mom and dad. I couldn’t picture myself living any other way. Not that I believe that now, but . . .”

She’s a princess asleep in an old castle where time’s stopped, clinging to dreams of a lost dynasty, I thought. She was the only one left who knew its glory, and her heart belonged to it. What a prideful way to live! What was this thing that held her in its ruthless clutches like a deadly disease?

Days that were endless, but which you could only take one at a time, with no sense of what was coming tomorrow . . . I still can’t shake it. It lives inside me like a curse or a blessing.”

I was fulfilled by the knowledge and the comfort of having found myself.

She was everything that was old and familiar, that I missed, that I regretted.

But the dark feminine magic that was her nature. Behind her hair, her sweet ringing voice, her long fingers on the piano, she harbored something vast, lost, and familiar, and it was like a siren call to those of us who were missing parts of our childhoods. It was something deeper than night, longer than eternity, out of reach.

We saw her in our minds, bearing this burden for so long, how she stayed true, her courage and grace, the pain it must have caused.

But maybe that was what people called happiness. The more beautiful a night away from home was, the more regretful it made you feel.

“When people see too many of something, it just makes them feel sad. No one knows why.”

He smelled of home. Of the house where I grew up; its beams, its clothes, its furnishings. And instead of confusing me, it filled me with so much longing that I thought I might cry.

She had a habit of looking away from things she feared, or found distasteful, or thought might hurt her.

But our destinies had already diverged, and each of us had grown to adulthood by our own way. We couldn’t go back. I tried to dismiss the feeling, telling myself it was junk—pure nostalgia, and disrespectful to both of our realities.

It’s kind of tragic, I thought, how we can never completely escape our childhoods.

The vision seemed so out of reach, with so many obstacles between here and there, that it shone like something out of paradise. Of course, brightness wasn’t everything, but the light was so blinding that it seemed unearthly, almost like a kind of prayer. And for a second, I felt it strongly: This could be real. There was nothing to stop a day like that happening in the future.

Love wasn’t like anything else—it was a creature with a mind of its own. There was no stopping it now.

Just for a minute I could forget about all the other people on the street, the cars, the crowded buildings, and even my aunt. There was only Tetsuo. I’d never known a love before that could blot out the world around it like this.

It pained me: All the love our parents gave you, and I’m the one you want?

I’d seen a lot of people bare their souls around here lately—not just out of a desire to be truthful, but with courage and intention. Me included. And even if it was just a momentary flash, or something that might soon pass, the faith that could be entrusted to a single, all-encompassing look had the power to move hearts.

Ever since we were kids. Every time I thought of anyone else. I’d been disappointed they weren’t him.

And the changes that had happened within me would get subsumed into the process of me growing up. It’s really true, I thought. It’s always better to know than not know.

I was deeply relieved. I finally had the sense that everything would be okay. The confidence that I could take matters into my own hands and put them right had been totally missing from my life lately, when it seemed I’d been feeling my way through the dark blindfolded. Now, it was all mine.

She looked free, and happy, even a little larger-than-life.

I’d seen for myself how fate worked. And yet nothing had been taken away, only given.