The Crane Wife (15 page)

George had declined, mainly because Kumiko seemed reluctant to involve others, but by then it hardly mattered. Word was spreading, without George seemingly having to do anything to make it spread.

‘You’ve got buzz,’ Mehmet said, in an annoyed way, after they’d shipped off the fifth tile to a buyer in Scotland who hadn’t even seen it in person. ‘God knows why.’

‘If God does know,’ George said, ‘he’s not telling me.’

Kumiko, meanwhile, kept out of the way, letting George handle all the selling while she kept on working industriously, taking whatever cuttings George offered her and somehow turning them into breathtaking compositions that seemed to have always existed, merely waiting to coalesce and reveal their ancient, fully formed shape rather than just being newly made. She worked on further tiles to sell but also added George’s cuttings to her private stack of thirty-two that even he hadn’t seen all of. These were kept secret and off-sale, but for the others there was already a growing queue of people who snapped up the sixth and seventh tiles within hours of them being finished, paying increasingly preposterous prices.

Preposterous enough, for example, for a substantial down payment on this top-of-the-line, affordable-only-by-proper-publishing-folks printer.

It was gorgeous. It was his. It barely seemed real.

‘It seems somehow . . .’ He turned to Mehmet. ‘Am I missing something here? How did this happen?’

‘I don’t know, George,’ Mehmet said. ‘I’m not sure anybody does.’

‘Don’t you find it strange?’ he said as Kumiko lathered up his hair.

‘Lean back,’ she said, to keep his head over the sink.

‘The
speed
of it,’ he said. ‘The
hunger
for it. It seems . . .’

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t really know
how
it seemed.

‘I am surprised as well,’ Kumiko said, rinsing off the shampoo with a measuring cup. She squeezed out the excess water, then sat him up and started combing out his wet locks, a pair of short, sharp scissors in her hand.

‘I suppose I’m just dazed,’ he said.

He felt a small hesitation in her hand, so small as to hardly even be there, before she gathered up a line of his hair and snipped its ends cleanly away.

‘Dazed in a good way or a bad way?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure it’s either good or bad. It’s just . . .
dazzling
. There was nothing. Just this idle hobby of mine that meant
nothing.
And then there was you.’ He looked at her. She gently guided him back into a more suitable position for the haircut. ‘And all of this, too,’ he said. ‘And . . .’

‘And?’ She took another snip of his hair, moving with the confidence of a professional.

‘And nothing, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Just that this extraordinary thing has happened.
Is
happening.’

‘And that unnerves you?’

‘Well,
yes
.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘It unnerves me, too. I am not surprised at the hunger you mention. The world has always been hungry, though it often does not know what it hungers
for
. But the suddenness, yes. It
is
rather remarkable, isn’t it?’

She combed his hair again, ready for more snipping. This haircut had happened simply. He’d said he was going to visit his local barbers – a pair of Brazilian brothers, surprisingly young, outlandishly handsome, utterly gormless – and she’d said, ‘Let me.’

‘Where did you learn to do this again?’ he asked.

‘On my travels,’ she said. ‘Plus, it isn’t so far from what I do in my work, is it? They are complementary skills.’

‘I wouldn’t want to try cutting
your
hair.’

He could almost feel her smile, feel the warmth of it behind him in his little kitchen, as he sat in this chair, an old sheet wrapped around his neck, newspapers on the floor to catch the clippings. He closed his eyes. Yes, he could feel her. Feel her against him. Feel the brush of her breath against his neck as she leaned in close.

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

‘I know,’ she whispered back, but it didn’t feel like a rebuke. Her knowledge felt like delight, and he knew that this was enough.

But then there was an accompanying feeling that it wasn’t enough.
Do you love me?
he wanted to ask, and it shamed him. Even when she said the words to him – which she did, though not as often – he always had to stop himself from asking for confirmation.

He knew so very, very little about her. Still.

But it wasn’t as if he’d told
her
everything either. Rachel had gone unmentioned, for one, though that was more for his daughter, who he suspected, almost certainly correctly, would be crushed if she knew. There were also, of course, the whole host of bad habits kept secret in the early days of any relationship – the toenail ablutions in bed, the
laissez-faire
approach to whisker maintenance, that whole dabbing himself with a square of loo roll after peeing thing – but even compared to that, Kumiko had given him almost nothing. It was unreasonable, it was untrusting, it was–

He pushed it down, fought it away.

‘I once tried cutting Amanda’s hair,’ he said, ‘when she was little.’

He heard Kumiko chuckle. ‘And how did that go?’

‘Not bad, I thought.’

‘And yet still it was only once.’

‘Well, little girls, eh?’ He frowned, his chest slightly over-filled with love for his difficult daughter. ‘Though Amanda was never a very usual little girl. Funny, always funny, and Clare and I thought that meant she was doing all right.’

‘I like her,’ Kumiko said. ‘She makes very much sense to me.’

‘I still can’t believe you met like that.’

‘The only unnatural thing would be if there were
no
coincidences, George. I could have walked into any print shop, for example. But I walked into yours and look at the upheaval that has resulted.’

He turned to her. ‘So you feel the upheaval, too?’

She nodded, turning him back again. ‘I have not as much time as I would like to work on my own story.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, thinking once more of the thirty-two tiles, of what he had seen of them – the lady and the volcano, the world they were making – and of all the ones he had yet to see. She hadn’t even told him how the story ended yet. ‘Are you okay with that?’

‘For now,’ she said. ‘But you know this yourself. A story needs to be told. A story
must
be told. How else can we live in this world that makes no sense?’

‘How else can we live with the extraordinary?’ George murmured.

‘Yes,’ Kumiko said, seriously. ‘Exactly that. The extraordinary happens all the time. So much, we can’t take it. Life and happiness and heartache and love. If we couldn’t put it into a story–’

‘And explain it–’

‘No!’ she said, suddenly sharp. ‘Not explain. Stories do not explain. They seem to, but all they provide is a starting point. A story never ends at
the end
. There is always after. And even within itself, even by saying that this version is the right one, it suggests other versions, versions that exist in parallel. No, a story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all,
never
all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us.’ She sagged a little, as if exhausted by this speech. ‘As it surely, surely would.’

After a moment, George asked, ‘Has something extraordinary happened to you?’

‘To me,’ she said, ‘and to everyone. To you, too, George, I’m sure.’

‘Yes,’ he said, feeling the truth of it.

‘Tell me,’ she smiled, a smile so kind he felt as if he could live in it for the rest of his life.

He opened his mouth to tell her about the crane in his backyard, a story he’d been shy of up until now, especially given Amanda’s sceptical reaction to it, but maybe now was the moment to tell her of the strange bird whose life he may have saved, whose origin he could never know, whose appearance had marked the beginning of this impossible segment of his life, a segment his heart was in continual danger of breaking over in fear that it would end.

But instead, he surprised himself by saying, ‘When I was eight years old, I was run over by a car. But that’s only one version of it.’

And as she cut his hair, he told her.

‘There once was a lady,’ George said, holding JP’s hand as they walked together around the pond, ‘who was born in a cloud.’

‘Well,
that
can’t happen,’ JP said.

‘It can. She was born in a cloud. Like this one.’ He blew out a warm, steamy breath into the cold air.

JP’s eyes lit up and he did the same, puffing out long streams of clouds, then a row of small ones. ‘Are clouds made from breathing?’

‘I wish they were, kiddo, but it’s something to do with evaporation over the ocean.’

‘But
I
breathe clouds.
I
make clouds.’

‘Maybe you do.’

‘
Grand-père
?’

‘Yes?’

‘Does farting make clouds?’

George glanced down at him. JP’s face was entirely sincere.

‘Mama says farting is just stinky air,’ JP said, ‘and that everyone does it, even the Queen, but she also says my breath is sometimes stinky so that makes it stinky air, too.’

‘Impeccable logic so far.’

‘So, and if, so, if my
breath
makes clouds . . .’ JP paused, letting the conclusions line up in his little head. He looked up with a grin. ‘If I farted, it would make a cloud, too.’

‘A stinky cloud.’

‘A stinky cloud where the lady was born.’

‘A cloud she’d want to leave very quickly.’

‘Did you bring bread?’

‘Did I what?’

JP pointed. ‘For the ducks.’

A few shivering geese who should really have flown somewhere for the winter by now were looking hopefully up at them.

‘Damn,’ George said.

‘Is that a swear word?’

‘No. It’s something beavers make.’

‘Beavers have flat tails,’ JP said. ‘And buck teeth.’

‘
You
used to have a flat tail.’

‘NO!’ JP said, astonished.

‘Yeah, we were all worried about it. It fell off after you were born.’

‘After I was born in a cloud?’

‘Absolutely. A stinky cloud.’

‘
Je suis une nouille
,’ JP sang.

‘You’re a noodle?’

‘A cloud!’

‘Ah,’ George said. ‘
Nuage
.’

‘That’s what I said!’ JP said. ‘
Je suis une
cloud!’ He ran around in a circle for a moment, arms out, shouting it over and over, before stopping suddenly. ‘
Grand-père
!’ he said, thunderstruck. ‘You spoke French!’

‘Not really. I just remember a little from high school.’

‘What’s high school?’

‘Secondary school. It’s what they call it in America.’

JP’s eyes dimmed a little as a very-small-person’s calculation was made. ‘You were American?’

‘Still am.’

‘Whoa.’

‘That’s how most people react. Now, I need your help, remember?’

‘The tall bird!’ JP said and looked ferociously across the pond, standing on tiptoes to see over the heads of the geese who thought his circle-running was some kind of prelude to feeding. ‘I am not a goose,
grand-père
!’ JP shouted.

‘If you’re too loud, you might scare the tall bird away.’

‘I am not a goose,’ JP whispered, very loudly.

‘I believe you.’

‘I am sometimes a duck.’

‘I believe that, too.’

‘I don’t see the bird, George.’

He looked down at his grandson. ‘
What
did you call me?’ he asked, a bit too sharply.

JP’s face fell, his mouth stretching tight across his little jaw. ‘That’s what Mama calls you,’ he said, two tiny tears fleeing down his cheeks.

‘No, no, no,’ George said, kneeling down. ‘I’m not mad, JP. I’m just surprised.’

‘She calls you that because she loves you. Is what she says.’

‘That she does, little one,’ George said, taking JP in his arms and picking him up. ‘But for you? For you, the best love I feel is when you call me
grand-père
, and you know why?’

‘Why?’ JP sniffled.

‘Because you, Jean-Pierre Laurent, are the only person in this whole wide world who can call me that.’

‘The only one?’

‘The only one.’

‘I’m the only one,’ JP said quietly, trying it on for size.

‘How do you like them apples?’

JP’s smile blazed. ‘I LOVE apples! Pink Ladies are the best! Sometimes
I’m
a Pink Lady!’

‘Aren’t we all?’ George said, setting him down and taking his hand. They walked back along the path by the pond, but all they saw were the increasingly disappointed geese, several sleeping ducks, and the inevitable startled pigeons.

No crane, nothing unusual at all.

‘What happened to the lady in the cloud?’ JP asked.

‘She met a volcano,’ George said, slightly distracted, still looking out across the empty pond. ‘There were complications.’

He dreamed again. That he was flying.

The world was islands floating in the air, connected by rickety bridges or rope walkways. The crane flew beside him, its legs trailing behind it. ‘Which is typically crane-like,’ the crane told him. Pieces of the world spun beneath them, and they flew past flat stone saucers with rivers that flowed in rings, past ball-shaped stones where JP and Henri, both dressed as the Little Prince, walked in a happy circle, waving to him as he flew by.

‘People don’t dream like this,’ George said, setting down on a rock shaped like a football field.

‘You mean a football
pitch
,’ said the crane, landing next to him.

George frowned. ‘No, actually, I don’t.’

The crane shrugged, then looked away as George peered at it more closely.

‘Your eyes are wrong,’ George said.

‘Eyes are eyes,’ said the crane, still not quite looking at him. ‘Especially in a dream.’

‘Especially
not
in a dream, I would have thought.’ George stepped closer to the crane. It flapped its wings and flew back a few steps.

‘Manners,’ it said.