Midnight and the Meaning of Love (51 page)

“I knew you wouldn’t. I love my parents so much. I would do absolutely anything for either of them. And if there was ever a misunderstanding between us, even if I thought I was right, I would drop on my knees down to the floor and beg their forgiveness.” I was watching Josna’s painful expression at imagining any type of disagreement with her parents.

“The split between Akemi and her father is a great secret between them. All I can say is it has something to do with her mom. She and her mom were extremely close, like twin sisters instead of mother and daughter. Shiori-san, Akemi’s mom, was an amazing mother. She was a mother to me also. Their family seemed happy together. A great sadness came only after she passed away, brain cancer. I am sure you already knew.

“When Akemi entered
these drawings
into the competition, everyone was shocked. But no one seemed more shocked than Mr. Nakamura. The skill of her art was so great; Nakamura-san felt he would lose face with his young daughter drawing such revealing artwork. Besides, the first prize was an all-expense-paid trip to New York and scholarship to that New York art school. Mr. Nakamura hates America and American culture. So of course he was against his daughter going there. I mean, he hates it so much that he says, ‘English is not a language.’ He told us that he refused to speak it when he was in college even though it was required, and he refused for Akemi to learn or speak it as well. When Akemi won the exhibition competition and
was selected to represent not only Japan but the entire artistic Asian continent, she was featured in several newspapers. Mr. Nakamura never admitted to the press that he and his daughter were having
hankouki.
Instead, when the press wanted his comments, he accepted interviews and spoke only on how proud he was of his daughter and how high his expectations were of her. He denied any suggestion that the nude drawings resembled his daughter. Akemi also never publicly explained who the model was in her drawings or the motivation or meaning behind them. When her artwork received more and more exposure, she simply announced that she wanted to address through art ‘the controversial issue of the presence of seven hundred thousand Koreans living in Japan, many of them born in Japan, but still not accepted and treated as fairly as Japanese.’ That silenced everyone and confused a lot of people as well. Although they wanted to understand her, they were afraid to ask. No one in Japan wants to discuss these kinds of topics, not the elders or the youth. Japan is unlike anyplace in the world!” Josna said, inhaling and exhaling exasperation.

“I have been living here since I was six. I grew up here with Akemi. Really, I should be angry with you for taking her away from me. But I can’t be. Akemi loves you. So I love you too,” she said warmly but without flirtation. Her words “I love you” made my heart shift some, as those words always do.

Josna looked at the ceramic clock on the wall. Then she dashed across the room and through the velvet curtain to the triangular rear of the house. I followed her, walking slowly. An Indian statue of a shapely woman stood guard on the side of the curtain entrance. Her hands were slim and pretty and she held her fingers in a peculiar position. Pausing, I wondered if Josna had sculpted her. My thought was interrupted by the sound of running water.

“Can I come through?” I asked calmly, before sweeping aside the high-quality, heavy curtain.

“Come, I’m in the water closet,” Josna said without hesitation. I expected to enter a kitchen area. Of course I knew that it might also be her bedroom. The Muslim in me knew that I should stay out. The man in me wanted to rush in before she could rearrange anything. I wanted to check to see if there were any traces of another man in her and Akemi’s art studio. If there were beer bottles or cigar or cigarette butts, or even a man’s house shoes or robe, a jacket, briefcase, or coat,
or anything that might cause me to distrust Josna or my wife. It would be bad, but better for me to know than to be played like a puppet.

I pulled back the curtain. The scent of eucalyptus rushed up my nostrils. It was a clean, fresh, welcoming, and soothing scent. When I entered and let the velvet curtain drop behind me, I could feel the difference in the atmosphere. As the sun shone through each of the four-foot-wide stained-glass windows, it cast a kaleidoscope of colors onto the pink satin bedspread and sheets and piles of pillows. Purple curtain, pink bedding, and every variation of purple pouring through. I was beginning to form a picture in my mind.

The floors were made from bamboo, which gave the room a peaceful, clean feeling. Her queen-sized mattress was raised up a foot from the floor and mounted across a wooden frame seated on six sturdy wooden feet, nicely carved. There was no back board and her entire bed was surrounded by a light-colored lace net. I was unsure whether the net was there to stop mosquitos and pests or to seduce men with the exotic lure of its intricate stitching.

Josna was standing with her back toward me facing a strange statue. It was a man with four arms who some sculptor had caught in the midst of a wicked dance move. In one of his four hands, he held a flame of fire. She lit some incense as she stood there. She was more silent than she had been before. I thought maybe she was in some unusual ritual. We Muslims do not believe in religious symbols or idols or worshipping anything or anyone other than Allah.

I took the opportunity to search with only my eyes. There were no men’s cologne bottles or men’s robes or shoes or an ashtray containing cigarettes or cigar butts, no men’s clothes draped over a chair. Nor were both sides of the bed turned down or the blankets or the sheets ruffled or disturbed. There were no condoms or ripped condom plastics or photos of a man or men at her bedside on either of the two short end tables. There were no men’s hats or weights or even a piece of sports equipment.

In fact, there was only what was completely familiar in a feminine place. Perfumes, sweet scents, fresh-cut flowers, calming colors, silk, satin and lace, velvet, and a pile of pretty panties in a wicker basket at the foot of her bed.

“This is my room. Come sit down,” Josna said, as she spread the lace net open and sat on her bed. I opted to remain standing.

“Sometimes Akemi sleeps in here, but mostly if we do an overnight, she sleeps in her hammock upstairs. You probably already know though, she prefers the swing. She has one in her bedroom here in Kyoto. She likes to rock herself to sleep.”

I didn’t respond either way. I had swung my wife back and forth without a swing and rocked her until she moaned, cried, and slept. Akemi, so excited and relieved once, she even peed.

“Akemi’s bedroom is like another world. Before you leave Japan, you have to see it. Look at it one time. You’ll never forget,” she said, speaking slowly as if she was imagining it. “That’s how we met, Akemi and I. Mr. Nakamura commissioned my father to make the ceiling for Akemi’s bedroom.”

“The ceiling?” I repeated.

“Yes, my father designs stained-glass windows like these two here, but these are really nothing compared to what he has done in temples and churches and buildings and even restaurants.”

“Just these two are dope enough,” I said staring at them.

“Huh?” she asked.

“I said your windows right here are no joke. But how do you see outside?” I asked.

“There is not much to see outside on this street. You must have noticed. This was just a great location because my college is three minutes away. My father gifted me these two windows and they’re best when the sun is pouring through in a million colors, like now. Akemi prefers when the rainwater from Japan’s famous typhoons are beating against the glass. She says it looks like the colors are leaking one onto the other.”

I pictured my wife lying down beside Josna on that bed, behind the net, the two of them watching the rain race down the glass.

“Mr. Nakamura summoned Babaji from Nepal with his special order. Babaji says that four-year-old Akemi described exactly what she wanted. It seemed as if she was fascinated with the sky. She only wanted the glass to have colors that she could see in the sky. She even drew the design of the sky, saying that it was how the sky looked on her favorite day.”

I listened while keeping my eyes moving around the room on all the trinkets and objects instead of on Josna, who was now holding her legs up and leaning her face on her knees, her bare toes and polished
nails burrowing into the satin as she spoke. I was also recalling that in Akemi’s mother’s poem, there was a line like that. “My first love was the sky.” Then I wondered if it was Akemi or her mother who was in love with the sky, or perhaps both of them? Then I nixed that thought and decided it was Akemi who was in love with the sky, and her mother had written these lines while thinking of her only daughter.

“When Mr. Nakamura learned that Babaji had four children—”

“Babaji?” I interrupted.

“That’s ‘father’ in Hindi, sorry,” she clarified. “Babaji in this case is my father. Back then, when Mr. Nakamura realized that Babaji had four children and one of them was a six-year-old girl, he asked my father to bring me along with him once he began the work of designing and installing their stained-glass ceiling. Mr. Nakamura said that Akemi was his only child and that she would enjoy the company.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ Babaji, I mean my father replied to Mr. Nakamura. Then, the way Babaji tells the story, Mr. Nakamura told him something that I have heard Mr. Nakamura say at least fifty times over the past twelve years. ‘There is nothing that can’t be done.’

“And here I am! Mr. Nakamura sponsored our entire family in Japan. My father went through the awesome process of redrawing the design, matching and merging all the colors, and cutting the glass in odd shapes to make them exactly like what Akemi remembered clearly. Then there was the cooking of the glass at incredible temperatures. After the long process of creating the perfect glass picture, my father even supervised the careful installation of the stained-glass ceiling into Akemi’s bedroom. When everything was completed, almost two years later, the rest of my family returned to Nepal. Akemi and I were like sisters by then. My father allowed me to remain. After all, Mr. Nakamura’s job heightened my father’s professional profile in so many ways. So I practically grew up here in Kyoto.”

“Don’t you miss your family?” I asked her.

“My parents now have a total of ten children. I’m number four. Of course I miss every one of them, but Mr. Nakamura sends me home for every holiday. Once he even sent Akemi along with me.”

Instinctively, I checked my watch.

“I know …” was all Josna said after observing me checking the time. “She should’ve definitely come by now.”

“Can you hear if someone is at the door when you’re all the way back here?” I asked her.

She pointed to a metal rack in the corner where the two walls intersected. It appeared to be a traffic light with three bulbs, one lime green, one yellow, one red.

“Akemi has the key,” she said. “Besides, if anyone comes through our front door, the lime light will come on right up there. If someone comes through the side door, the yellow light will come on. If someone comes through the back, well obviously the red light will come on.” She clapped her hands together once, proud of her little light system. I thought it was clever.

“You see, sometimes I am listening to music and would not be able to hear my doorbell. Other times I have my pieces in the kiln in that oven you saw out there. It can be quite noisy. Or if I’m at the potter’s wheel or whatever. It works well for Akemi too because once she begins drawing and painting and all that she does, who can reach her there in that world? So she also pays attention to the lights.”

My eyes landed on her weird statue and burning incense that had become sticks of leaning ash.

“It’s Lord Shiva,” Josna said. I didn’t acknowledge her idol. She noticed my feeling. “I know that you are Muslim,” Josna said suddenly. “And Hindus and Muslims have a long history of war and a lot of blood spilled between them. But I am a Hindu girl from Nepal and you are Muslim man from the Sudan. Akemi is my best friend. Akemi loves you, so I love you too,
dosti
,” she said, clapping her pretty, unpainted hands together lightly as if to say the subject was closed.

“Dosti?”
I asked.

“Ha!”
she said, meaning yes. I was learning.

“
Dosti
means ‘friendship,’” she explained.

“In the Hindi language?” I checked.

“
Ha!
Hindi language.” She smiled. “But in any language, this is the meaning of friendship. Yes?” she asked. I agreed with her. “So it is only right for me to love you too,” Josna said matter-of-factly, agreeing with herself.

I didn’t think I could describe in details and words or in feelings the adventures of my life to anyone, male or female. But each day was moving me into a space where I had never stood before. As a youth, I kept on top of knowing when and if I grew taller or was running
faster than before or becoming more accurate at hoops, or the current count on my push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and squats. But growing in my thoughts and understanding and feelings as a man was becoming harder to track and even harder to explain. When I turned to ease myself out of this intimate setting and warming mood, I walked instead to her clothing closet, where the sliding doors were already half-opened. I rifled through her belongings. Finally, I found something long and light yet concealing and tossed it at her. It landed on her lap.

“Since you know that I am Muslim, put some more clothes on and come out.” She looked at me, lowered her eyes, and didn’t say nothing.

As I exited, I saw for the first time the metal dragon swooping down from her bedroom ceiling. Its body was made curiously from metal forks and spoons and its angry face was made more pronounced by two bulging red rubies for eyes.

She emerged into the rectangle wearing her beautiful long dress, a Nepali version of the Sudanese
thobe
, I imagined. Now she was completely covered except for her bare feet. I wondered why some women could not know that
this is better.
Her other clothes just raised a fire in a man, an untamed feeling and wild thoughts attack that are completely physical and not about love. These images and thoughts misled many men and could also slip into disrespect at best or, at worst, violence. For a woman to cover was more respectful and calming. It was better that she be mysterious, a subtle suggestion, rather than a desperate scream. Of course the Islamic
hijab
and
niqab
did much more. It is a protective covering and an announcement from a woman that she doesn’t want to be viewed wrongly, misunderstood, harassed, or even approached without respectful purpose.