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Yoko flushed, deeply shaken by his words and actions. Forcing back her yearning for him, she let out a deep breath and gave a little laugh. “I’m getting married soon.” “I came here to stop you.” He looked straight at her. Those were the very words she had been hoping to hear. She’d been anticipating them for a long time now, probably ever since she was in Baghdad. But she felt conflicted and anguished at the misfortune of having to hear them now. For the past three weeks, certain signs had led her to suspect she was pregnant with Richard’s child.
If she was really pregnant, she intended to give up her love for Makino and marry Richard. She was prepared to accept that as her destiny.
If she was carrying a child, she could not bring herself to say the words “I love you” to any man not the father. She should not do such a thing, nor did she want to.
Makino said quietly, “I know it’s difficult. But we met. I can’t pretend otherwise. A life without Yoko Komine would be surreal for me now. You are part of me, of my reality. And I want you by my side always. I want to be with you every day like this, to sit across from you and talk while we eat . . .”
“Will you let me think about it until you come back from Madrid?” she asked. “I’ll have my head clearer by then.”
“You made me happy. Truly. It’s me. I’m sorry . . .”
It occurred to him that he might be sick of the guitar or of music in general. Thirty-six years had gone by since he first took up the guitar at age three. Who could blame him if he had grown disenchanted? Uncertainty made him afraid.
Why had his conversation with her that night gone so wrong? First and foremost, he had felt pressed to tell her how he felt. That he loved her. But that was a given. He had planned other, more-specific things he needed to say. She had no idea of basic things like how much he earned, where he planned to live, his health, whether or not he wanted a family.
Thinking it over calmly now, he could see that a thoughtful woman like Yoko was hardly likely to make so momentous a decision on the spur of the moment.
I’ve reached that age. The realization hit him as he watched the Polish youth greet another guitarist. Loneliness, when it came down to it, was the awareness of your utter lack of influence in the world—knowing that you could and would have zero influence on either your contemporaries or on future generations.
The singing notes on the upper part of the arpeggios formed a quiet melody, succeeding one another the way reality and recollection alternate even as, underneath, the present moment melts incessantly into the past.
As long as they gave themselves over to the music, his listeners were freed from anxiety about every imaginable eventuality.
His performance told of trying to bring something to an end but unwittingly repeating it, intending to flee something, but realizing that instead you are chasing after it. Yet prayer that brought recovery from suffering was just such a complicated process, was it not?
Then he was seized by the odd idea that impending silence was not before him but behind him. Would it catch up?
Silence suddenly caught up, passed him, and stood before him, blocking his way. In that moment, the music fled from his hands. He heard nothing. All was hushed; time was febrile and bore the clarity of nothingness. The silence was dazzling, like stage lights shining in his eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Like the victim of a purse snatcher in a crowd, he searched frantically for the music. He was left only with violent throbbing and a burning sensation.
The audience was astonished that the performance had abruptly ceased. Makino himself appeared stunned, as if he didn’t know what had happened.
As the audience began to murmur, he stood up and wordlessly bowed. Uncertain how to react, they gave him a smattering of applause.
Perhaps one of these days he would marry someone else, someone not Yoko, and over the years to come, their two families would get together periodically, and one day he would look back and say, “Imagine that—I used to be in love with you,” as if it were a joke. They claimed time had that power. Would the day come when, in a completely natural fashion, he stopped loving her?
People are spurred to act less by eager dreams of a happy future than by anxiety over the danger, remote or otherwise, of remaining stuck in the status quo. Regret still lay far off, but already the waters of that chill lake were lapping at her feet. She could not simply close her eyes and do nothing. Time and again she repeated to herself what Makino had said, adjusting the words to make them her own. The Yoko Komine that didn’t love him no longer exists. She isn’t real.
She began to feel as if she had stumbled on a new definition of “wantonness.” To be wanton meant not merely to be extravagant but somehow to lose track of one’s fundamental being in the joy of complete abandonment to the other—a joy that knew no bounds.
He loved the look on Yoko’s face when she was thinking hard. He loved the seriousness of her approach to life. That the answers she gave others must always apply equally to herself. He was intensely attracted to her unswerving principles.
He didn’t necessarily want to deny himself the grace her love might bestow; however, the words of the ancient swordsman Miyamoto Musashi summed up how he felt: “Respect the gods and Buddhas, but do not rely on them.” It was unreasonable to look to her for salvation, and the mere thought of her giving him unwanted advice and him responding in anger was painful. In the end, there was nothing to do but go on as he had always done and work through his troubles on his own.
She felt a disjunction similar to the optical illusion where train tracks stretching into the distance appear to converge at the vanishing point, but as station after station goes by, the view ahead never changes, and the parallel rails of course never meet. What appears in the present moment to be an inevitable convergence is, in the end, only an illusion.
Everyone, no matter who they were, committed sins in the course of their life, and from that perspective, she still had a long way to go before she had used up her allotment.
