Fuminori Nakamura - Last Winter We Parted

I wonder how long I’ve been wrong.

But, when I look back on my life like this, I always get confused. Just when exactly did I screw up? Sometimes I get depressed and can’t help but feel that, ultimately, it goes all the way back, and I should have just been born differently. Maybe life is just like that. Even if my life has been wrong, I’m going to wait and see what happens at the very end. Whatever I am, I’ll be until the end. I guess …

Let’s talk about us. Because there’s little else in my life that has any meaning. Do you remember the first time we met? It was at the library. At a small symposium on Braille. I had never seen anyone experience someone’s words so beautifully.

You accessed the words written in books through the tips of your fingers. Now and then, as your fingers slid forward, you smiled. You never believed it, but you were a very beautiful woman. At the time, you were reading Snow , by Orhan Pamuk. It’s one of my favorite books. Back then, when I asked you what you were reading, you smiled as you replied to my question.

After that I quickly apologized. For disturbing you while you were reading, for disrupting the world of the book and rudely calling you back to this world. You gave me a puzzled look as I apologized. At that moment you … you were so lovely.

“I’ve read many books,” you said to me. “I think something happens when you read — it’s like the passage of your own life becomes immersed within something else. I’ve spent my life amidst the words of so many writers. Among well-chosen words, the various life stories, the frustrations and sorrows experienced by other people, as well as their hopes … I consider myself very fortunate.”

I wonder if you remember the first time we kissed. It was on a bench in front of a fountain that was lit up. But it wasn’t romantic at all. They were trying to conserve water so the fountain was turned off, and the bench was in disrepair. I was a little worried about people around us seeing, but you said, “It’s all right, no one is looking.” It was so strange. You, the blind one, seemed to know exactly what was going on around us.

“I love your book.”

That’s what you said to me. You meant a book that I edited, a biography of Michel Petrucciani. You told me that it was as though the letters you touched on the page were flooded with the unearthly melodies he played on the piano. I was so happy. But I had been pathologically obsessed with making the author rewrite that very passage, over and over again. It must have been tough on the author. Yet in return for all his hard work, he had been able to impress a woman as beautiful as you.

Making love with you was like a miracle to me. You had been worried about your own body, but you were really, truly beautiful. I was wild with excitement, and you were wild for me too.

“One’s bigger than the other.”

You said this to me sheepishly, while cupping your own breasts with your hands.

“Don’t worry, everyone’s are.”

“Really?”

“Really, take your hands away.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Ha ha, take them away.”

I was so excited, I couldn’t wait. I touched my lips to your breasts over and over again. Looking at your body, I thought to myself: What a gorgeous creature. What a gorgeous creature, right here before my very eyes. And someone this gorgeous wants to be with me. The body of the person you love is the most wonderful. And I was in love with you. From the bottom of my heart. So much that I didn’t care what happened to me.

It seems like people who can’t see are generally thought to be quiet and meek. But you were quite the opposite. You went everywhere. You told me you had been to Nepal, to Jamaica, to Singapore. When we went to Kyoto together and stood before the temples, you explained everything about them to me. The quality of the materials they were built with. Their shape and appearance. The expressions on the faces of the tourists who had come to see them. You even explained my own impressions to me. Listening and breathing it all in, you seemed to be comparing the knowledge you learned from books with everything around you, seeing it all recreated in the back of your mind. At the time, you wore a faint smile. I think it’s possible that the temples you imagined in your mind may have been more beautiful than the real things.

You went everywhere. To concerts to hear the jazz you loved, to author readings and amusement parks, on walks to nature parks and to restaurants you had discovered in magazines. In places that aren’t public institutions, there isn’t any yellow tactile paving on the walkways. There you were with your walking stick, and I was right beside you, when a car rushed recklessly past us. Worried about you, I followed you wherever you went. You seemed so amused by my concern. You even made me stop when I tried to insist on walking on the street side to protect you. You laughed and said, “I’m worried about you.”

One time we were having dinner at the apartment when there was a report on television about a murder. As you heard this on the news, you suddenly put down the chopsticks in your hand and touched my arm. Then you said, “I don’t know what I would do if you were murdered,” as if whispering to yourself.

“Here I am with you now, in this cozy apartment,” you went on softly. “But if this reality were shattered by an event like that, I don’t think I could go on.”

I had been staring vacantly at the television. A young man had been stabbed numerous times in a robbery homicide. The amount stolen was only ¥12,000. The perpetrator had been arrested and was expressing his remorseful plea.

“If you were murdered, I would want revenge. Of course, that’s not right, and if anything, I’m against the death penalty. But … if someone I cared about were murdered, I don’t think I’d have a choice but to consider revenge first. I mean, it’s not really to say whether it’s right or wrong. To lose someone I loved would destroy my life, and in that state, I don’t think I’d listen to anyone.”

You were clasping my arm tightly, as if to assure yourself that I was still there with you. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I was thinking the same thing as you.

I was at work when you were in the traffic accident. I had just left a big publishing house for a smaller one, and I was caught up in the dizzying pace. I rushed madly to the hospital, to find you there in bed, your leg suspended in traction, and you smiled at me in greeting. I was forced to face the possibility of losing you. Of you disappearing from this world. That terrified me. My entire world would become worthless. Grasping your hand — such a slender, warm hand — I could only be grateful that you were here now. Such a soft, irreplaceable thing … I would go on holding your hand forever.

After you left the hospital, I asked you to stay at home while I was working. But you just smiled at me and, as always, went everywhere. Sometimes when I was stressed out from work, I raised my voice at you without thinking. You looked at me with such sad eyes that I immediately apologized. But I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about you.

I started leaving work as early as I could. When I’d get home and not find you there, I’d feel a slight panic. I’d call you and, ignoring your protests that you were all right, I’d drive over to get you. You kept telling me you could do things on your own. That you only get one life. That you didn’t want to limit yourself. You wanted to experience it all. And that you didn’t like it when I interfered too much in your life. Everything you said was true. Yet I couldn’t control myself. “It’s because I can’t see,” you said at last. “You worry about me because I can’t see, don’t you? In that case, maybe you ought to go after one of the other girls walking around out there.”