Midnight and the Meaning of Love (60 page)

“Come here.” I pulled her close again, stroked her hair and comforted her. When I released her, I put my hand over her belly and asked what I knew she understood. The question that kept me climbing the Hidaka. She smiled and raised two fingers.

“Two,” she said in English. She placed one finger over her lips. “
Naisho
, secret, Akemi, Mayonaka, secret.”

I knew it wasn’t a secret. My talented wife was sensitive and smart in so many ways, yet naïve in others. Of course the doctor had informed Nakamura without Akemi realizing. Of course that is why he forced her to Hokkaido so rapidly and so randomly. Of course that is why he allowed Akemi to finally meet her grandmother, who he had kept her away from for a lifetime, and whom he had avoided for more than half of his own life. Of course he planned to extinguish my seed, my seeds, two, twins, oh Allah,
inshallah
.

“The flower dress”

“Go put on some shoes,” I pointed to her feet. She ran and got her heels from in front of her door and put them on. Then she took them right back off and waved me to come inside the cabin. I followed her, mindful of the time and urgency but remaining calm and cool. In the corner room on the first floor she had a simple room with two single beds intersecting one another. I could see her touches everywhere. She had begun to decorate it, something I think she would do even if she were in a cave in the mountainside.

“Pack,” I told Akemi.

“Okasan …,”
she said softly, her eyes changing from delight to sadness.

“Wakarimashta,”
I told her, meaning I understood.

“Passport?” I asked her. Her eyes changed again.

“Makoto …,” she spilled out softly.

“Makoto what?” I pushed. “Makoto has your passport?”

“Hai,”
she acknowledged with regret-filled eyes.

“Why?” I asked.

“Otosan …,” she spilled out even softer.

But this was a race against time. Allah had made an opening, and no matter what, I needed to take my wife and leave.

When she lifted a blouse from her pillow, I saw a walkie-talkie lying there. I picked it up. She watched me but didn’t say a word, didn’t instruct, complain, or protest. Josna’s face appeared pressed against the bedroom window now. It was half-open, allowing in the morning breeze.

As I purposely raised the volume on the walkie-talkie and pressed the button and held it so that Chiasa could hear and listen in, Josna said, “That one is ours. Shota has one and Makoto has the other.”

“They won’t be able to use these from their hotel. These are not powerful enough. If they’re off this large property, they’re completely out of range,” I told her.

“You’re right! How could you know? We’re just using these here on the property. Everyone constantly wants to know where Akemi is. Like yesterday with her kite making and kite flying, these walkietalkies turned out to be very handy. When Shota and Makoto reach here, at least one of them will tune in to locate us,” she explained. Then she began speaking to Akemi through the screen in Japanese. Akemi spoke back to her in their language, walking over toward me, pressing herself against my back. I think this gesture was more of an answer to whatever Josna was asking than Akemi’s words. It sure felt good to me.

Also, now I knew that both Josna and Akemi did not know that Shota was here on the property.

“What’s next?” Josna asked, still from the outside looking in.

“I need to get my backpack. I have Akemi’s urn.”

Josna gasped. Immediately, she translated to Akemi, who, still pressed against me, hugged me more tightly. Josna seemed shocked that I had actually brought the urn along, but Akemi seemed confident about me one hundred percent. “Then I want to take Akemi to the next town over so we can have some time to ourselves while we figure out what to do. You will help us,
dosti
, right?” I leaned on her, as I stalled to give Chiasa enough time to get my backpack and also prepare herself to leave here immediately.

“Of course, I’ll do all that I can. We really must hurry. Shota and Makoto will arrive at ten, in a bit less than two hours.”

It was confirmed in my mind now. The grandmother had sent Shota the driver away to the hotel along with at least Makoto and whoever else was on security. Shota drove the men to the hotel. Then because he was sweating my wife so heavy, he doubled back and hid his car in the bluff by where Akemi had flown the welcome kites. He knew I would show up to get my diamond, because he understood her value. The problem for him was that
it is my diamond.
If he touches it, or ever touched it, he’d pay with his life. So far I had gone mad easy on him because of his relationship to Akemi’s family.

It worked out better for me that Josna had no idea that Shota and at least one other man had secretly returned to the property.

“Josna, do you have a driver’s license?” I asked her.

“Ha,”
she swiftly confirmed. “But very little driving experience,” she confessed.

“Whose station wagon did I see parked by the big house over there?”

“Hana-san’s. It’s grandmother’s.” She clarified. “And it turns out that big house does have electricity. It’s these old cabins that don’t. Oh, and there’s a working telephone there in the big house also, thank goodness.” She was talking out of a little nervousness, I believed.

“Let’s write a note to Grandmother and to Makoto and Ichiro and Shota, letting them know that just you and Akemi went out to shop and take a look around, and that you’ll both return by sunset,” I told her.

“Ha,”
she said swiftly. “But where are we actually going?”

“What’s the name of the nearby hotel that the security fellas are staying in?” I asked.

“Ana Hotel,” she responded.

“What town is that in?”

“They said it’s thirty miles from here in Kushiro.”

“Then I want to go some place different so that Akemi can feel relaxed. How about Asahikawa?” I asked knowing, that it was where the closest airport was located.

“
Ha!
That’s the airport we flew into,” Josna said happily, and then her eyes switched knowingly. “Akemi doesn’t have her passport.”

“Do you have yours?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, come inside. You and Akemi change your clothes; we’re going into town,” I told her, as though we were headed out for a leisurely day. I knew I had to go easy with Josna.
Akemi is her first priority, but her loyalties are entangled with the whole family,
I thought to myself.

As I excused myself to allow Josna to come in and get dressed also, I walked out of hearing distance and spoke to Chiasa by walkie-talkie. As soon as she heard the sound of my voice, she said, “I got it. Give me ten more minutes. Don’t worry about him. We are about to make friends and Sleeping Beauty is hibernating. I’ll meet you in Asahikawa at the biggest hotel by ten. The Grand Hotel,” she said and signed off.

With Josna’s handwritten note nailed to grandmother’s front door and my backpack in the trunk, Akemi’s mother’s urn in her hands, me, Akemi, and Josna left in grandmother’s station wagon at
8:45 a.m. It must’ve been meant to be. The keys had been left in the ignition.

* * *

Nervously, Josna drove like the two old men who had brought Chiasa and me part of the way, doing only about forty-five miles per hour.

On the almost hour-long ride, I heard the story of Akemi’s mother’s ashes. I heard it twice, once in Japanese as my wife spoke it, and once in English as Josna translated. It started off:

“When my mother was dying, she said she felt more powerful than she had been while she was healthy. She said that in living and being greedy for life, there are many more burdens. Preparing to transcend relieves the soul of all its luggage and hefty, hefty secrets.

My mom relayed to me first her true identity. She was never Shiori Nakamura, and pretending to be so had heaped a great pain in her heart. ‘Joo Eun Lee,’ my mom introduced herself to me, her twelve-year-old daughter with whom she had spent virtually every available moment of her life.” Akemi inhaled, her eyes getting glossy, as she continued.

“Second, she told me the lessons of a mother’s love. My mother said she loved me from when I was only an idea in her imagination. She loved me more when I was an egg in her womb. She loved me more when her egg was being fertilized, as she secretly lay in the tall grass surrounding her home, bursting with passion and writhing with pleasure. My mother said she loved me more each day that I became more than an idea, and that this intense love is what led her to do whatever it took to bring me into this world properly, to raise me well and keep me safe. A mother’s love is like this, she said. A mother will sacrifice all that she has for her gift from God, including her freedom, her dignity, her possessions, and even the food from her mouth.” Akemi’s tears formed. I could also see through the rearview that Josna’s eyes were flooded. She tried to look only straight ahead at the road.

“Third, my mother told me that just as she loves me and I love her, she loved her own mother, from whom she was separated at thirteen years old. She described a great canyon in her heart and a deep craving in her soul for her mother’s embrace, her mother’s voice, or even just her mother’s scent. She said that only becoming a mother herself
could fill a quarter of the canyon in her heart. She said that now that she was dying, her dream was to have her body handed to her mom, who was living in South Korea but in an unknown place. She requested to be cremated because she forbid her body to be placed into the ground anywhere in Japan, which she said was an indescribably beautiful and charming country whose heart was way too cold. She said she would be cold here, even in death, and that anyplace in Korea would be warm for her. But the best place would be to be placed in the palms of her mother’s hands.

“Four is the number of death on this side of the world. And because my mother was dying and feeling more powerful than ever before, she told me her fourth secret. She said, ‘Akemi, love is better and stronger and more real than all else. Marry the man whom you love, and the man who loves you. If he has only one grain of rice, marry him for love and that will feed you. No one can remain married today because they are not married to the one they love, they are married to their sacrifice, and pretending to love is too damned painful. Love and build, love and work, love and fight. Always love first. Anything placed before love will fail,’ Omahnee
¹
said.

We rode in silence for a while, the three of us. The weight of Akemi’s words and revelations, which seemed to have never been spoken before also helped Josna to see and understand.

Akemi’s words helped Josna to continue to help us without swinging back and forth between fear, doubt, and resistance.

My mind was still shifting all the jigsaw pieces around and fitting things together. I wondered if Akemi could read between the lines of her mothers “secrets.” Even if she could not understand the implications when she was twelve years young, maybe she could understand them now that she was sixteen and a half. It must be difficult, I thought, to discover that you lived your entire life with an identity that is not true. Akemi, my Japanese wife, was obviously Korean. My math was leading up to that conclusion back when I was reading the Nakamura book on my first trip from Tokyo to Kyoto, and now I was almost one hundred percent certain that it was a Korean man making Akemi’s fifteen-year-old mom sweat and burst with passion, perhaps only days or weeks before Naoko Nakamura kidnapped her. When I
read Joo Eun Lee’s poems, I felt that she was a young woman who had been loved and made love to in an unforgettable way but not nearly enough. Her words were laced with a longing for something she had known but had somehow lost along the way.

* * *

I triple-checked that the Asahi Grand Hotel was the largest hotel in Asahikawa. I handed Josna 25,000 yen up front to check us in for one night, although I had not one intention to stay. She did. She and Akemi rode up in one elavator. Josna was purposely wearing my backpack, as I rode up in a separate elevator.

In the one-bedroom suite, I told Josna and Akemi to make themselves comfortable as I dug in my backpack to get fresh everything. Akemi’s eyes followed my every move. I handed Josna the television remote. I understood what Akemi must have been going through these past few years and these most recent highly emotional days. I knew that after losing the people and things that she believed in the most, she was left believing in me. I felt and I knew what she wanted to do. And now I knew where a lot of her heat and passion and swing was coming from. I knew how come she could draw such emotional creations and pull out such intensity and cause anyone looking too close to feel something strong. As I looked back into her eyes, I wanted to do the same thing she did, but this time I would complete the mission first.

In the hot shower I had nothing but exit routes running through my mind, ticket exchanges and purchases and costs and of course the sound of the clock ticking in my ear.