Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

The her that lived in her looked out through her eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.

“I don’t know the answer, no. Sometimes I think it’s the only question, and that all other questions are tributaries that flow into it.” He ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Might the answer be ‘love’?”

But who are Takeshi or his wife to lecture anybody? If not love, then what?

Hiding in my cave, watching the rain, I wished I could change into a bird, or a pebble, or a fern, or a deer, like lovers in old stories. On the third day the sky cleared. The smoke from the Village had stopped. I cautiously returned to my Tea Shack. Wrecked again. Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people’s women who pay the most. I set about clearing up the mess. What choice is there?

“I live here quietly, minding my own business. I don’t bother anybody. Why are men forever marching up the path to destroy my Tea Shack? Why do events have this life of their own?” “That,” answered my Tree, “is a very good question.”

I’m going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean. But like I said, I’m not a political woman. The things you think of, sitting here.

“It’s strange and it makes me sad,” I thought aloud, “that a place carries on without you after you’ve left.” Tatyana nodded. “It’s the world slapping you in the face and saying, ‘Look, honeybunch, I get along without you very well.’ The sea does the same thing, but nobody lives there. It hurts more if it’s a place where you’ve grown up, or worked, or fallen in love.”

I’ve decided to live near a waterfall, so I can drink fresh water from the glaciers every day. St. Petersburg water contains so many metals it’s almost magnetic. I’ll keep hens. Why am I crying?

I guess I’m not anything much these days, apart from older. A part-time Buddhist, maybe.