Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).

Now only the kitchen and I are left. It’s just a little nicer than being all alone.

When I’m dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen. Whether it’s cold and I’m all alone, or somebody’s there and it’s warm, I’ll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it’s a kitchen, I’ll think, “How good.”

My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false.

The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos.

His smile was so bright as he stood in my doorway that I zoomed in for a closeup on his pupils. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I think I heard a spirit call my name.

Bad as it sounds, it was like I was possessed. His attitude was so totally “cool,” though, I felt I could trust him. In the black gloom before my eyes (as it always is in cases of bewitchment), I saw a straight road leading from me to him. He seemed to glow with white light. That was the effect he had on me.

In front of the large window leading onto the terrace was a jungle of plants growing in bowls, planters, and all kinds of pots. Looking around, I saw that the whole house was filled with flowers; there were vases full of spring blooms everywhere.

Usually, the first time I go to a house, face to face with people I barely know, I feel an immense loneliness. I saw myself reflected in the glass of the large terrace window while black gloom spread over the rain-hounded night panorama. I was tied by blood to no creature in this world. I could go anywhere, do anything. It was dizzying.

Suddenly, to see that the world was so large, the cosmos so black. The unbounded fascination of it, the unbounded loneliness. . . For the first time, these days, I was touching it with these hands, these eyes. I’ve been looking at the world half-blind, I thought.

“So why not move in with us?” he said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

He struck just the right note, neither cold nor oppressively kind. It made me warm to him; my heart welled up to the point of tears.

This was his mother? Dumbfounded, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Hair that rustled like silk to her shoulders; the deep sparkle of her long, narrow eyes; well-formed lips, a nose with a high, straight bridge—the whole of her gave off a marvelous light that seemed to vibrate with life force. She didn’t look human. I had never seen anyone like her.

I felt certain that if you looked really closely you would see a few normal signs of age—crow’s feet, less-than-perfect teeth—some part of her that looked like a real human being. Still, she was stunning. She made me want to be with her again. There was a warm light, like her afterimage, softly glowing in my heart. That must be what they mean by “charm.” Like Helen Keller when she understood “water” for the first time, the word burst into reality for me, its living example before my eyes. It’s no exaggeration; the encounter was that overwhelming.

Wrapped in blankets, I thought how funny it was that tonight, too, here I was sleeping next to the kitchen. I smiled to myself. But this time I wasn’t lonely. Maybe I had been waiting for this. Maybe all I had been hoping for was a bed in which to be able to stop thinking, just for a little while, about what happened before and what would happen in the future. I was too sad to be able to sleep in the same bed with anyone; that would only make the sadness worse. But here was a kitchen, some plants, someone sleeping in the next room, perfect quiet . . . this was the best. This place was . . . the best. At peace, I slept.

The entire apartment was filled with light, like a sun-room. I looked out at the sweet, endless blue of the sky; it was glorious.

It was midday. From the building’s garden we could hear the shouts of children playing in the springlike weather. The plants near the window, enveloped in the gentle sunlight, sparkled bright green; far off in the pale sky, thin clouds gently flowed, suspended. It was a warm, lazy afternoon.

To live alone with an old person is terribly nerve-racking, and the healthier he or she is, the more one worries. Actually, when I lived with my grandmother this didn’t occur to me; I enjoyed it. But looking back, I can’t help thinking that deep down I was always, at all times, afraid: “Grandma’s going to die.”

In my grandmother’s room, which hadn’t changed since I was little, we would tell each other silly gossip, talk about TV stars or what had happened that day; we talked about whatever. I think she even told me about Yuichi during those times. No matter how dreamlike a love I have found myself in, no matter how delightfully drunk I have been, in my heart I was always aware that my family consisted of only one other person. The space that cannot be filled, no matter how cheerfully a child and an old person are living together—the deathly silence that, panting in a corner of the room, pushes its way in like a shudder. I felt it very early, although no one told me about it.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.

Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time. I’ve always lived with that knowledge rooted in my being:

Little by little, light and air came into my heart. I was thrilled.

When my grandmother died, time died, too, in this apartment. The reality of that fact was immediate. There was nothing I could do to change it. Other than turning around and leaving, there was only one thing to do—humming a tune, I began to scrub the refrigerator.

The sky outside was a dull gray. Waves of clouds were being pushed around by the wind with amazing force. In this world there is no place for sadness. No place; not one.

Sotaro loved parks. Green places, open spaces, the outdoors—he loved all of that, and at school he was often to be found in the middle of a garden or sitting on a bench beside a playground. The fact that if you wanted to find Sotaro you’d find him amid greenery had entered into university lore. He was planning to do some kind of work with plants. For some reason I keep getting connected to men who have something to do with plants.

So this day, too, there was Sotaro, sitting in the seat nearest the park in that large coffee shop, looking out the window. Outside, against the backdrop of the entirely overcast sky, the trees trembled in the wind, rustling.

It’s so great, I thought, having tea in the afternoon with someone you really feel at home with.

I loved his hearty robustness, I thirsted after it, but in spite of that I couldn’t keep pace with it, and it made me hate myself. In the old days. He was the eldest son of a large family; without being aware of it he got his sunny outlook from them, and I had been drawn to it. But what I needed now was the Tanabes’ strange cheerfulness, their tranquility, and I didn’t even consider trying to explain that to him. It wasn’t especially necessary, and I knew it would be impossible anyway.

When I got together with Sotaro, it was always like that. Just being myself made me terribly sad.

“Well, bye.” From deep in my heart, my eyes asked the question: Before it’s too late, do you still feel anything for me? “Chin up, kid!” He smiled, but the answer was clear in his own eyes. “Okay,” I said, and waving, we parted. The fee...

Even I, slow as I am, finally understood his excessive unnaturalness. When I took a good look in his eyes, I understood. He was terribly, terribly sad. Sotaro had said that even though she’d been seeing him for a year, Yuichi’s girlfriend didn’t understand the slightest thing about him, and it made her angry. She said Yuichi was incapable of caring more for a girl than he did for a fountain pen. Because I wasn’t in love with Yuichi, I understood that very well. The quality and importance of a fountain pen meant to him something completely different from what it meant to her. Perhaps there are people in this world who love their fountain pens with every fiber of their being—and that’s very sad. If you’re not in love with him, you can understand him.

I’ve touched him, I thought. After a month of living in the same place, at close quarters, I’ve touched him for the first time. In that case, I might end up falling in love with him. When I’ve fallen in love before, I’ve always tried to run it down and tackle it, but with him it would be different. The conversation we just had was like a glimpse of stars through a chink in a cloudy sky—perhaps, over time, talks like this would lead to love.

The next day was when I had to clear out of the old apartment for good; at last I got it cleaned out completely. I was feeling very sluggish. It was a clear, bright afternoon, windless and cloudless, and a warm, golden sunlight filled the empty rooms I had once called home.

I implored the gods: Please, let me live.

“To continue what we were talking about,” said Yuichi. “Are you planning to move out from our place, too? Don’t.” I looked at him, puzzled. It wasn’t a continuation of anything we had been talking about. “You seem to think that I live on impulse, like Eriko, but inviting you was something I thought over very carefully. Your grandmother was always so concerned about you, and probably the person who can best understand how you feel in this world is me. I know that once you’re well again, really okay again, you’ll do what you want. But for now leaving would be wrong. You don’t have anyone but me who can tell you that. The money my mother has saved up from working so hard—that’s what it’s for, times like this. It’s not only for buying juicers!” He laughed. “Please stay with us. Relax!” He looked me straight in the eye and he spoke for all the world with the sincerity of someone trying to persuade a murderer to turn himself in. I nodded.

The night was so deathly silent that I felt I could hear the sound of the stars moving across the heavens. The glass of water soaked into my withered heart. It was chilly. My bare feet trembled in my slippers.

While what had happened was utterly amazing, it didn’t seem so out of the ordinary, really. It was at once a miracle and the most natural thing in the world.

“It’s not easy being a woman,” said Eriko one evening out of the blue. I lifted my nose from the magazine I was reading and said, “Huh?” The beautiful Eriko was watering the plants in front of the terrace before she left for work. “Because I have a lot of faith in you, I suddenly feel I ought to tell you something. I learned it raising Yuichi. There were many, many difficult times, god knows. If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations. That’s where it starts.” As if chanting a liturgy, she related to me her philosophy of life.

“Life can be so hard,” I said, moved. “Yes. But if a person hasn’t ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I’m grateful for it.”

There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that.

As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.

Dream kitchens. I will have countless ones, in my heart or in reality. Or in my travels. Alone, with a crowd of people, with one other person—in all the many places I will live. I know that there will be so many more.

The telephone wasn’t enough. I couldn’t see him. Did he want to cry, did he want to laugh hysterically, did he want to have a long talk, did he want to be left alone? I couldn’t tell. “Yuichi, I’m coming over right now. Is that okay? I want to talk to you and I want to see your face when I talk to you.”

When I regained enough composure to realize where I was, I found I was walking up the wintry street toward the Tanabes’ apartment building. As I walked along under the starry sky, my keys jingling, the tears began to flow one after the other. The street, my footsteps, the quiet buildings, everything seemed warped. My breath became painfully blocked; I felt like I was choking. My eyes were stung by the lashing wind, and I began to feel colder and colder. Things that my eyes normally take in—telephone poles, street lights, parked cars, the black sky—I could now barely make out. There was a strange beauty to their distortion. Everything came zooming in at me. I felt powerless to stop the energy from rushing out of my body; it seemed to dissipate with a hissing sound into the darkness.

From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a gloomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly.

You’ve been on my mind the whole time. That’s the truth. All the time. But somehow I just couldn’t call you.

His sadly cheerful face radiated a dim glow. We moved deeper into the dead of night. I turned around to look out the window at the flickering lights below. The city was fringed with tiny points of brightness, and the lines of cars were like a phosphorescent river flowing through the darkness.

“I really needed you to make me laugh,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his arm, “so much I couldn’t stand it anymore.” I reached out and took his face in both hands. “Thank you for calling me,” I said softly.

Yes, Yuichi, in this world there are all kinds of people. There are people who choose to live their lives in filth; this is hard for me to understand. People who purposely do abhorrent things, just for the attention it draws to them, until they themselves are trapped. I cannot understand it, and no matter how much they suffer I cannot feel pity for them.

Still, no matter how late I waited up, she would not come back.