Tuvalu (18 page)

‘Mami? It's Noah.'

‘Stay away.'

Without the slightest hesitation I burst through the door.

Having never burst through a door before, and having been so coldly and effectively rebuffed by the front one, I expected significant resistance. When I hip-and-shouldered this particular door, however, taking a run up and striking it flush, it popped straight off its hinges as if made of plastic. For a moment I was confused, lunging. Then I crashed down on top of it and tumbled forward onto tatami, more sliding than rolling. I had banged my head. There was no pain but the sound of my skull striking wood lingered long after I came to a stop. One hand went to my hairline, groping blindly for blood.

I lifted my head to survey the room. Mami was standing on a chair, completely naked and with a noose around her neck. This was tied off to an aluminium bar of a type I knew well. I used an identical one to hang my laundry—an inch thick, but hollow with plastic caps at either end. Mami had set it on two right-angled windowframes in a corner of the room, forming a triangle; a crude but effective set-up. For a moment we stared at one another in silence.

‘Take it off, will you? Please. This is stupid.' Speaking, I became aware of a swirling pain in my forehead.

Mami's lips curled into a smile. ‘I told you I would.'

‘I know, but take it off.' My voice hardened as I noticed further details. Mami had tied her feet up with the same kind of rope used for the noose—fluorescent yellow climbing rope. She held a short length of it and was trying to tie off her wrists without success. Her feet were purple and there was something small in her hands. Whatever this was, she seemed to be keeping it hidden from me.

‘Are you scared?' she asked.

‘Aren't you?'

‘No.'

I moved to stand up but Mami rattled the chair beneath her.

‘Don't come any closer.'

‘Okay. But why send me the letter? If you're so damn bent on killing yourself, why warn me?'

‘How can you be sure I'm bent on killing myself?'

‘Don't play games.'

‘You think I'm playing? Or you hope I am?'

‘Take off the noose.'

‘You know,' Mami said, ‘it's a real noose. It's a good thing my father keeps a laptop in the conference room. The internet's useful.' She paused, waggling the noose with a wry smile.

‘Mami, please …'

‘My father comes here once a month. Did you know that? My family's from Nagoya but he comes and inspects the hotels.'

‘Really?'

‘Mmm.'

‘He didn't notice the porn on the walls or the noose, or anything like that?'

‘I lock this room whenever he visits.'

‘Get down and get dressed, will you? If you slip on that chair you'll die. Really die. It'll snap your neck and you'll be dead and none of this will seem funny.'

‘That's the idea. Most people—well the ones who kill themselves like this—they strangle themselves. That's what happens. Death by suffocation. That didn't appeal to me so I learnt how to tie this knot and position it properly.'

Mami waggled the knot again, smiling.

‘Just take it off.'

‘Is that all you can say?' Her voice contained a trace of annoyance now. ‘I might as well get on with it. Be on my way.' She widened her stance on the chair. ‘Like you said, a split second and it'll snap my neck. Nothing to fear.'

She rattled the chair and I tried to stand. My headache was worsening by the second. Glancing back towards the door I wondered where the hotel staff were. Surely the maid had reached the lobby, alerted people.

‘You've told them,' Mami said, noticing my interest in the doorway. ‘You complete idiot.' She reached up for the rope. The chair abruptly went onto two legs and it seemed to me she was finding leverage to fling it from beneath her.

I leapt towards her just as the chair fell back onto four feet. For a split second Mami was still, her hands up, her eyes wide, her mouth ajar. She stared at me coming at her. No doubt she believed she was going to die. I hardly noticed the chair. I collided with her, clamped my arms around her hips, boosted her up and held her, my mouth puffed like a blowfish.

But in my haste to cover the distance I had moved too quickly, and my momentum caused us both to teeter. The chair, Mami's weight no longer on it, toppled, and I felt myself falling forward with no way to prevent it. I knew I had to let go of Mami, but could not.

Mami screamed. ‘Get off me!'

I tripped on the upturned chair and fell awkwardly across it, losing my hold. Mami swung out and away. Above me, her bound legs jolted like a hooked fish. For a moment she appeared to be hanging by her neck, then I realised she had one hand beneath the noose, the other high up the rope. Whatever she had been holding was gone, flung out into the room.

As she began to swing back in I pulled myself to my knees and prepared to get a hold of her legs, but she swung in faster than expected and her knees crashed into and sheered off my shoulder. I was set to topple but, having reached a low apex, she came in on me again. This time she struck me from behind with her heel and painfully righted me.

I grabbed her waist as best I could.

‘Get off!' she yelled. ‘You'll kill—' ‘Fucking stay still!'

Mami kneed me squarely in the face with both legs. I felt as though I had been struck by a shovel. My eyes smarted and watery blood wet my face and neck. Though I tried to keep a hold of her, my body gave out beneath me in segments like a building dynamited from the first floor up. I slumped, hands protecting my face.

Somewhere behind all this, in the recesses, someone knocked on a door. But my only concern was for Mami, swinging in her noose. Looking up through a film of tears I saw the aluminium bar bounce above her and dislodge. She seemed unable to break her fall. She fell silently and without emotion, like a crash-test dummy. Her body thudded and bounced on the tatami. The bar struck her left thigh and she let out nothing more than an irritated grunt. I tried to scramble to her, blood splashing onto my T-shirt, but she knocked the bar off her leg and, with increasing speed, loosened and removed the noose around her neck. Without looking at me she untied her feet, stood up shakily and crossed to a pile of clothes to dress.

‘Coming,' she yelled in response to another sharp rap on the front door. She pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped into high heels, gripped her hair back, tied it off with a band and took a deep breath.

‘Stay here,' she said.

I listened to her run towards the front door, her footsteps softening, then finally flopped onto my back. My face and chest were covered in blood, my nose felt hideously swollen, my head throbbed and I was thirsty. I heard three voices apologising profusely. Then came the sound of the front door closing and, though I kept on listening, nothing more. No one was left.

Mami returned to the apartment fifteen minutes later, by which time I had somewhat recovered. I had dabbed at my nose with toilet paper, gulped down a few glasses of apple juice and dropped my bloody T-shirt into a sink full of hot soapy water. As a replacement, I had found and put on a business shirt which I guessed to be her father's. She appeared out of nowhere.

‘I had to see the manager of the hotel. I feel like a naughty schoolgirl.'

Wanting to convey my displeasure I stared at the floor.

Mami frowned. ‘Okay, I'm sorry for kneeing—' she began, before shaking her head. ‘You still haven't figured it out, have you?'

‘What?'

‘What I was doing.'

‘I have.'

‘What then?'

‘Killing yourself.'

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘Then what?'

‘Come with me,' she said.

I followed her back to the Japanese-style room. A section of the tatami was splattered red with blood.

‘You see the photos on the walls in here?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, they're all by Araki Nobuyoshi.'

‘So?'

‘So stop being snooty and listen. Women go to him and he takes their photograph. At least, I think that's how it works. He sleeps with a lot of them, too, from what I gather. But afterwards he takes great photographs. I like the fact women go to him. That's my point. He doesn't tie up moaning models. Well, maybe he does. But he also ties up women who have decided to be tied up. The government arrests him for obscenity and the feminists get upset, call him a misogynist, but if women go to him, aren't they only doing as they please? Isn't there a perverse liberation in choosing to be ‘obscene'? In choosing to be vulnerable? There's such beauty in some of these photos.'

‘What does this have to do with you hanging yourself?'

Mami rolled her eyes and pointed to a large camera on a tripod tucked in a corner of the room. I had failed to notice it. Suddenly I understood.

‘The thing in your hand,' I said. ‘It was a remote?'

‘I tried to keep hold of it. In fact, that's why I only got one hand up under the noose. But my body wouldn't allow it. It requisitioned the free hand, threw it up the rope. Were it not for that we'd have photos.'

‘Maybe you could've mailed one to Nobu-what's-his-face,' I said nastily, sinking down against the wall.

‘Maybe.'

‘Assuming you lived.'

Mami crossed the room and picked up the remote control. She held it aloft as evidence, then tossed it to where I sat.

‘You owe me one hell of an apology,' I said. But even requesting this I knew it was pointless.

‘Pure madness!'

‘Why?'

‘You almost killed me.'

‘I didn't string you up. You strung you up.'

‘Yes, but the whole thing was safe so long as I didn't rattle that chair.'

‘Which you did—the moment you thought someone was coming.'

‘To get down.'

‘You're telling me you never planned to kill yourself?'

‘Of course not. I wanted to see the photo. To do that, I had to survive it. It was a private experiment.'

‘Then you should have left me out of it.'

‘I should have,' Mami said, surprising me. ‘But it was too tempting to see if you'd come. Let's go for a walk. I want to show you something.'

‘Not today.'

‘Yes today.'

I collected painkillers for my headache and a few tissues for my nose. My health insurance had expired months earlier so there was little I could do but self-medicate. I followed Mami to the door where she spun unexpectedly.

‘By the way, you can't come back here.'

‘Why not?'

‘The manager.'

‘The hotel manager?'

Mami nodded. ‘I promised him you'd never enter the building again and in return he promised not to tell my father about you.'

‘What have I done?'

‘Apparently you abused a maid. Something had her on strings. They're furious. I saved you. You don't understand how hard it is to get my father's employees to lie to him. Or even just omit sections of the truth. If my father found out about half the things I do, like the noose, he'd lock me up.'

‘He should.'

Mami, oddly dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, led me from the hotel to the Imperial Palace East Garden, a five-minute walk. We crossed a murky green moat, then passed beneath a tall wooden gate, inspecting a guard house which had once housed a hundred armed guards. From here the road into the garden was steep. Mami walked up each incline without difficulty, countering my belief she was unfit, and all the while refusing to tell me where we were going, what she wanted to show me. We crossed a number of open, perfectly manicured lawns to a large stone structure reminiscent of a wartime bunker.

‘This is part of the castle tower from the 1630s,' she said. ‘I'm pretty sure it was the tallest castle in Japan.'

‘A history tour?'

Mami pointed back towards her hotel.

‘No. I look out over the thing every day. Eventually I started asking questions, bought a book which I'm still reading, one chapter a year—
The Complete History of
Japan
. Do you like history?'

‘Not much, no.'

Mami laughed. ‘There's that honesty again. Most people would have said yes to that question. It sounds better. But I'm like you. I find it hard to stick at history books. I only bought the one I have because I wanted to learn about this garden. That and because history books are good procrastination. I never feel like I'm wasting time reading
The Complete History of Japan
.'

‘Just what exactly do you put off doing?'

‘Study.'

‘You're at university?'

‘No.'

‘Then what?'

‘I'm between school and university.'

‘Which means?'

‘Which means I attend private classes.'

‘For what?'

‘Application tests.'

‘To?'

‘Universities. Well, one. Tokyo University.'