5

Thanks for your letter, wrote Naoko. Her family had forwarded it
here, she said. Far from upsetting her, its arrival had made her very
happy, and in fact she had been on the point of writing to me herself.
Having read that much, I opened the window, took off my jacket and
sat on the bed. I could hear pigeons cooing in a nearby roost. The
breeze stirred the curtains. Holding the seven pages of writing paper
from Naoko, I gave myself up to an endless stream of feelings. It
seemed as if the colours of the real world around me had begun to
drain away from my having done nothing more than read a few lines
she had written. I closed my eyes and spent a long time collecting my
thoughts. Finally, after one deep breath, I continued reading.
It's almost four months since I came here, she went on.

I've thought a lot about you in that time. The more I've thought, the
more I've come to feel that I was unfair to you. I probably should have
been a better, fairer person when it came to the way I treated you.
This may not be the most normal way to look at things, though. Girls
my age never use the word "fair". Ordinary girls as young as I am are
basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central
question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not
it's beautiful or will make them happy. "Fair" is a man's word, finally,
but I can't help feeling that it is also exactly the right word for me
now. And because questions of beauty and happiness have become
such difficult and convoluted propositions for me now, I suspect, I
find myself clinging instead to other standards - like, whether or not
something is fair or honest or universally true.
In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that,
as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.
In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt
myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self-
justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it
is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I
am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because
if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can't do what you
can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don't
know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give
me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led
you around in circles so much.
This may be an over-analytical way of looking at things. Don't you
agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical,
but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am
here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. "This was
caused by that, and that means this, because of which such-and-such."
Like that. I can't tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify
the world or complicate it.
In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once
was, and people here tell me this is true. This is the first time in a long
while I have been able to sit down and calmly write a letter. The one I
wrote you in July was something I had to squeeze out of me (though,
to tell the truth, I don't remember what I wrote - was it terrible?), but
this time I am very, very calm. Clean air, a quiet world cut off from
the outside, a daily schedule for living, regular exercise: those are
what I needed, it seems. How wonderful it is to be able to write
someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to
sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like
this is truly marvellous. Of course, once I do put them into words, I
find I can only express a fraction of what I want to say, but that's all
right. I'm happy just to be able to feel I want to write to someone. And
so I am writing to you. It's 7.30 in the evening, I've had my dinner and
I've just finished my bath. The place is silent, and it's pitch black
outside. I can't see a single light through the window. I usually have a
clear view of the stars from here, but not today, with the clouds.
Everyone here knows a lot about the stars, and they tell me "That's
Virgo" or "That's Sagittarius". They probably learn whether they want
to or not because there's nothing to do here once the sun goes down.
Which is also why they know so much about birds and flowers and
insects. Speaking to them, I realize how ignorant I was about such
things, which is kind of nice.
There are about 70 people living here. In addition, the staff (doctors,
nurses, office staff, etc.) come to just over 20. It's such a wide-open
place, these are not big numbers at all. Far from it: it might be more
accurate to say the place is on the empty side. It's big and filled with
nature and everybody lives quietly- so quietly you sometimes feel
that this is the normal, real world, which of course it's not. We can
have it this way because we live here under certain preconditions.
I play tennis and basketball. Basketball teams are made up of both
staff and (I hate the word, but there's no way around it) patients. When
I'm absorbed in a game, though, I lose track of who are the patients
and who are staff. This is kind of strange. I know this will sound
strange, but when I look at the people around me during a game, they
all look equally deformed.
I said this one day to the doctor in charge of my case, and he told me
that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to
correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our
problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own
deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way
he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and
feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it
doesn't happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case,
something else might go funny. He gave me a very simp lified
explanation, of course, and it's just one small part of the problems we
have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well
be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to
find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that
these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things.
As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being
hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed". That's what
distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their
lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours
the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear
feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our
deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one
another.
In addition to playing sports, we all participate in growing vegetables:
tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, watermelons, strawberries, spring
onions, cabbage, daikon radishes, and so on and on. We grow just
about everything. We use greenhouses, too. The people here know a
lot about vegetable farming, and they put a lot of energy into it. They
read books on the subject and call in experts and talk from morning to
night about which fertilizer to use and the condition of the soil and
stuff like that. I have come to love growing vegetables. It's great to
watch different fruits and vegetables getting bigger and bigger each
day. Have you ever grown watermelons? They swell up, just like
some kind of little animals.
We eat freshly picked fruits and vegetables every day. They also serve
meat and fish of course, but when you're living here you feel less and
less like eating those because the vegetables are so fresh and
delicious. Sometimes we go out and gather wild plants and
mushrooms. We have experts on that kind of thing (come to think of
it, this place is crawling with experts) who tell us which plants to pick
and which to avoid. As a result of all this, I've gained over six pounds
since I got here. My weight is just about perfect, thanks to the exercise
and the good eating on a regular schedule.
When we're not farming, we read or listen to music or knit. We don't
have TV or radio, but we do have a very decent library with books and
records. The record collection has everything from Mahler
symphonies to the Beatles, and I'm always borrowing records to listen
to in my room.
The one real problem with this place is that once you're here you don't
want to leave - or you're afraid to leave. As long as we're here, we feel
calm and peaceful. Our deformities seem natural. We think we've
recovered. But we can never be sure that the outside world will accept
us in the same way.
My doctor says it's time I began having contact with "outside people"
- meaning normal people in the normal world. When he says that, the
only face I see is yours. To tell the truth, I don't want to see my
parents. They're too upset over me, and seeing them puts me in a bad
mood. Plus, there are things I have to explain to you. I'm not sure I
can explain them very well, but they're important things I can't go on
avoiding any longer.
Still, you shouldn't feel that I'm a burden to you. The one thing I don't
want to be is a burden to anyone. I can sense the good feelings you
have for me. They make me very happy. All I am doing in this letter is
trying to convey that happiness to you. Those good feelings of yours
are probably just what I need at this point in my life. Please forgive
me if anything I've written here upsets you. As I said before, I am a far
more flawed human being than you realize.
I sometimes wonder: IF you and I had met under absolutely ordinary
circumstances, and IF we had liked each other, what would have
happened? IF I had been normal and you had been normal (which, of
course, you are) and there had been no Kizuki, what would have
happened? Of course, this "IF" is way too big. I'm trying hard at least
to be fair and honest. It's all I can do at this point. I hope to convey
some small part of my feelings to you this way.
Unlike an ordinary hospital, this place has free visiting hours. As long
as you call the day before, you can come any time. You can even eat
with me, and there's a place for you to stay. Please come and see me
sometime when it's convenient for you. I look forward to seeing you.
I'm enclosing a map. Sorry this turned into such a long letter.

I read Naoko's letter all the way through, and then I read it again.
After that I went downstairs, bought a Coke from the vending
machine, and drank it while reading the letter one more time. I put the
seven pages of writing paper back into the envelope and laid it on my
desk. My name and address had been written on the pink envelope in
perfect, tiny characters that were just a bit too precisely formed for
those of a girl. I sat at my desk, studying the envelope. The return
address on the back said Ami Hostel. An odd name. I thought about it
for a
few minutes, concluding that the "ami" must be from the French word
for "friend".
After putting the letter away in my desk drawer, I changed clothes and
went out. I was afraid that if I stayed near the letter I would end up
reading it 10, 20, who knew how many times? I walked the streets of
Tokyo on Sunday without a destination in mind, as I had always done
with Naoko. I wandered from one street to the next, recalling her letter
line by line and mulling each sentence over as best I could. When the
sun went down, I returned to the dorm and made a long-distance call
to the Ami Hostel. A woman receptionist answered and asked my
business. I asked if it might be possible for me to visit Naoko the
following afternoon. I left my name and she said I should call back in
half an hour.
The same woman answered when I called back after dinner. It would
indeed be possible for me to see Naoko, she said. I thanked her, hung
up, and put a change of clothes and a few toiletries in my rucksack.
Then I picked up The Magic Mountain again, reading and sipping
brandy and waiting to get sleepy. Even so, I didn't fall asleep until
after one o'clock in the morning.