Tuvalu (26 page)

To Harry, I was invisible. He left the hostel early every morning and stayed out late. If he did run into me, he was too busy to talk. And never once did he raise the matter of money. I lay awake most nights thinking about how much I hated him, polishing the barbs I planned to fling given half a chance. But I always put off challenging him. I needed him on side. Without that there was no hope.

Around the hostel everyone discussed our missing landlady. They feared not for her, her fate, but for themselves. She could have been trapped in a well and I doubt any one of us would have thrown down a rope without first receiving a guarantee of accommodation. The more talk there was, the less credible the information. Eventually it was concluded, and generally accepted, that we had no idea where she was. No one dared put out rent in case it remained uncollected or was stolen. And in time most expected to be evicted or at least notified of a change in ownership. But no word came. It was as if we had stepped out of the vast economy surrounding us.

I began regularly crossing the alley to Nakamura-san's apartment, using it as an escape. Perhaps inspired by Harry's progress, I often took a Japanese language textbook with me. Lying on the tatami I would try to study. I never stuck at it for more than ten minutes and afterwards shut the book, fell backwards and slept. Something about the place invariably put me to sleep. Never a light, fretful sleep, but always a deep, refreshing slumber that could last hours.

This odd routine might have gone on for the full duration of Tilly's contract were it not for three Japanese men in summer suits. They were standing just inside the entrance of the hostel upon my return from an especially satisfying snooze. One was obese and it was clear that his pants were causing him discomfort around the groin. He was unashamedly sorting things out, making complicated adjustments while the other two tacked up A4 signs.

I paused to read one.

Due to the change in of ownership in this lodgement, this
will be collapsing in eight weeks from today (the date above
written inward.)

‘Fuck,' I said.

I stormed to Harry's room and hammered on his door. He answered, chest bare, looking sleepy.

‘The money, right?' he asked with a nod.

‘Right. Give it to me now, in full, or I'll go to the police. Time's up.'

He rubbed at the mat of black, coarse, curled hairs coating his bloated little belly and stretched to his full five-foot-nothing.

‘You'll have it tomorrow. My apologies.'

And, like that, without another word, he shut the door.

‘It was stupid of me, wasn't it?' Tilly said, sliding half off the bed.

‘What was stupid?' I asked.

Her voice fell to a mumble. ‘Coming back was stupid. Everything's changed. Not just us, but the whole hostel. Half the tenants who were here last time are gone. And now they're just going to tear it down. It'll be like it never existed, like
we
never existed.'

I shut my book—Harry Potter and the something's something. ‘I'm glad you came back,' I said without conviction.

Tilly slid the rest of the way from the bed, ending up with her back to it. ‘Of course you are. You're thrilled.'

‘I am. Honestly.'

‘Anyway,' she said, taking a sharp, tense breath. ‘We can't rent this room much longer and I don't see any point in forcing you out ahead of a demolition. You might as well stay until we're kicked out.'

She seemed to have more to say, so I waited.

‘I think I came back to Japan to break up with you,' she said. ‘I wasn't going to tell you that, but it's bothered me. All along I was planning to leave you. Even back at the farm, waiting for the train. Only it wouldn't come out then.'

‘I see.'

I stood and took two steps to the window. The heat had given out to a typhoon. Dark clouds whipped across the sky at an unnatural pace, gusts of wind whooped excitedly around the tallest apartment blocks, and the alley below dripped loudly.

‘Is all that okay with you?'

‘Well it has to be,' I said, surprised by my anger.

‘I guess it does.'

I had expected we would talk about things in more detail, but Tilly stood and left, looking miserable.

Hours later the storm reached its peak, or what I guessed to be its peak. Tilly returned and said nothing as she prepared for bed, following the steps she always followed and which I had come to know well. While she applied moisturiser to her face—more patting than rubbing it in, her mouth ajar, her eyes on the ceiling—the hostel grunted in the frenzied, inconstant wind. Rain marched across corrugated iron and continued surreptitiously to leak in beneath the window sill. I watched Tilly return her toothpaste and other toiletries to a cheap plastic case.

‘What?' she asked. ‘Why are you watching me?'

‘You look pale.'

‘I do?' she said without interest.

‘I'm worried about you.'

Holding the ends of her baggy nightgown together she stepped over me and crossed to the door. There was a dark, apple-shaped bruise just above her ankle.

‘I'm putting out the light.'

‘Okay.'

I was lying in jeans and a T-shirt on the thin, uncomfortable futon she had set for me on the floor. In the dark she stepped back over me. I could tell from the sound of her walk she was again holding together the ends of her nightgown. This seemed pointless, since I could see nothing anyway, but I shut my eyes out of courtesy. It saddened me to have to do it. I had once known her body so well and she had never been shy. Often during the previous summer she had performed her nightly routine wearing nothing at all. Everything she had to hide—freckles, a birthmark and a faint, cheap tattoo—I had seen.

I fell into an uneasy sleep and woke at some indeterminate point in the night to discover the typhoon all but gone. Tilly was sobbing into her pillow, a wretched sound that cut out when I coughed.

This unacknowledged sobbing continued for weeks. We fought during the day and missed each other at night. Even the fighting changed. Whereas once we had been able to say anything, we now watched our every word, aware there existed matters we could not address without the two of us quickly coming to hate one another. We knew too much and could wound too deeply, and instead fought about inconsequential things—wet towels, disposable razors, toenail clippings, hair, post-it notes and even stock cubes, which I accused Tilly of stealing. The two of us seemed always to be on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the tussle that would send us over.

Perhaps because of this tension, Tilly fell ill. She took a week off work and I, exhausted, moved into Nakamurasan's apartment. I reasoned Tilly would right herself in my absence. She would not let me nurse her and I was therefore only a cause of fatigue.

I had been crossing to the apartment regularly, but rarely took much in the way of personal belongings— a book or a magazine at most. But after Harry departed without warning, leaving no forwarding address, I began to take food and stay for days, leaving this item or that behind until most of my belongings were secretly stowed in the apartment's numerous cupboards. There was a real risk of being caught and I was careful to check nothing had been moved whenever I arrived. Night after night I slept from dark until sun-up and felt I was living dangerously, that there was some modicum of autonomy in my life.

One afternoon, collecting things for the apartment, I found Tilly ankle-deep in bloodied tissues. All this blood had come from her nose, and when I asked her how long it had been bleeding she only shrugged and said, ‘What do you care?'

This reply caught me off guard. ‘You can break up with me and still be nice, you know.'

‘You think this is breaking up?'

‘You said you wanted to, that you've wanted to since Australia.'

‘Yeah. But it's words, isn't it? Go somewhere, stop showing up pretending to give a shit. Why can't you just leave me alone? Why can't you vanish?'

Her eyes, when she looked up, contained a trace of tears, and her face was drawn and tired. ‘Please,' she said. ‘This is exhausting, Noah. There are no nice break-ups.'

Later, I sat staring at her dark window. I wanted to hold her, but could not. Did I believe she had come back to Japan simply to break up with me? No. Why return for so long? And why plan to share a bed? It made no sense. I suspected now that with every push Tilly was inviting me closer, but I did not want to look at it. Not like that. Not now. Not at all. Holding on to her was as scary as letting go.

The
Deconstruction

A
week passed, then another. Tilly recovered from her illness and returned to work. I saw her head out each morning. By this time I was used to the apartment. I was living there in earnest—sleeping there, showering there, even keeping a toothbrush in a cup there. Tilly knew where I was. Occasionally she would catch sight of me moving around behind the dark glass and peer through. I liked this. I had not lost her, only found an adequate limbo. I soon forgot even to fear losing her.

Lying on my side in that empty room between naps I often thought of my father. Who can say why he came to mind? Maybe it was because I was breaking the law simply by being there, and he had always promised to turn his back on me if I broke the law in any serious fashion. Looking back, that had been something of an idle threat. He had not abandoned me when I hit Wang. If anything, he had saved my skin. But long before that he had clearly explained why I had to behave better than most children my age. I was not simply a son of God, but also the only son of a priest (or expriest, thanks to my mother). People expected more from me because, morally speaking, I had been given more.

Growing up I had lived by my father's rules and never questioned his beliefs. Yet they sat inside me now like a lump of metal, forced in and wholly foreign. The more I thought about it, the more I came to thank Nakamurasan's apartment for enabling this realisation—my breaking into the space, my choosing to be at ease within it, my sleeping soundly on the smooth tatami. Day by day, as alone as I could bring myself to be, I sensed I was cutting the lump out, cutting it out messily and with little idea how to get at it, but it was certainly coming out. With no one there to watch, to judge, I had the time and freedom I needed to grope inside, to prise back muscle, tissue and fat, fingers wet with blood, and get some sort of a grip on it.