Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturnes - five stories of music and nightfall

After another ten minutes, I went back into the kitchen and stared some more at the purple notebook. Then I sat down, where I’d sat before to drink my tea, slid the notebook towards me, and opened it.

One thing that became quickly apparent was that if Emily confided her innermost thoughts to a diary, then that book was elsewhere. What I had before me was at best a glorified appointments diary; under each day she’d scrawled various memos to herself, some with a distinct aspirational dimension. One entry in bold felt-tip went: “If still not phoned Mathilda, WHY THE HELL NOT??? DO IT!!!”

Another one ran: “Finish Philip Bloody Roth. Give back to Marion!”

Then, as I kept turning the pages, I came across: “Raymond coming Monday. Groan, groan.”

I turned a couple more pages to find: “Ray tomorrow. How to survive?”

Finally, written that very morning, amidst reminders for various chores: “Buy wine for arrival of Prince of Whiners.”

Prince of Whiners? It took me some time to accept this really could be referring to me. I tried out all sorts of possibilities-a client? a plumber?-but in the end, given the date and the context, I had to accept there was no other serious candidate. Then suddenly the sheer unfairness of her giving me such a title hit me with unexpected force, and before I knew it, I’d screwed up the offending page in my hand.

It wasn’t a particularly fierce action: I didn’t even tear the page. I’d simply closed my fist on it in a single motion, and the next second I was in control again, but of course, by then, it was too late. I opened my hand to discover not only the page in question but also the two beneath it had fallen victim to my wrath. I tried to flatten the pages back to their original form, but they simply curled back up again, as though their deepest wish was to be transformed into a ball of rubbish.

All the same, for quite some time, I carried on performing a kind of panicked ironing motion on the damaged pages. I was just about coming to accept that my efforts were pointless-that nothing I now did could successfully conceal what I’d done-when I became aware of a phone ringing somewhere in the apartment.

I decided to ignore it, and went on trying to think through the implications of what had just happened. But then the answering machine came on and I could hear Charlie’s voice leaving a message. Perhaps I sensed a lifeline, perhaps I just wanted someone to confide in, but I found myself rushing into the living room and grabbing the phone off the glass coffee table.

“Oh, you are there.” Charlie sounded slightly cross I’d interrupted his message.

“Charlie, listen. I’ve just done something rather stupid.”

“I’m at the airport,” he said. “The flight’s been delayed. I want to call the car service that’s picking me up in Frankfurt, but I didn’t bring their number. So I need you to read it over to me.”

He began to issue instructions about where I’d find the phone book, but I interrupted him, saying:

“Look, I’ve just done something stupid. I don’t know what to do.”

There was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said: “Maybe you’re thinking, Ray. Maybe you’re thinking there’s someone else. That I’m going off now to see her. It occurred to me that might be what you were thinking. After all, it would fit with everything you’ve observed. The way Emily was when I left, all of that. But you’re wrong.”

“Yes, I take your point. But look, there’s something I have to talk to you about…”

“Just accept it, Ray. You’re wrong. There’s no other woman. I’m going now to Frankfurt to attend a meeting about changing our agency in Poland. That’s where I’m going right now.”

“Right, I’ve got you.”

“There’s never been another woman in any of this. I wouldn’t look at anyone else, at least not in any serious way. That’s the truth. It’s the bloody truth and there’s nothing else to it!”

He’d started to shout, though possibly this was because of all the noise around him in the departure lounge. Now he went quiet, and I listened hard to work out if he was crying again, but all I heard were airport noises. Suddenly he said:

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, all right, there’s no other woman. But is there another man? Go on, admit it, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Go on, say it!”

“Actually, no. It’s never occurred to me you might be gay. Even that time after finals when you got really drunk and pretended to…”

“Shut up, you fool! I meant another man, as in Lover of Emily! Lover of Emily, does this figure bloody exist? That’s what I’m getting at. And the answer, in my judgement, is no, no, no. After all these years, I can read her pretty well. But the trouble is, precisely because I know her so well, I can tell something else too. I can tell she’s started to think about it. That’s right, Ray, she’s looking at other guys. Guys like David bloody Corey!”

“Who’s that?”

“David bloody Corey is a smarmy git of a barrister who’s doing well for himself. I know exactly how well, because she tells me how well, in excruciating detail.”

“You think… they’re seeing each other?”

“No, I just told you! There’s nothing, not yet! Anyway, David bloody Corey wouldn’t give her the time of day. He’s married to a glamourpuss who works for Condé Nast.”

“Then you’re okay…”

“I’m not okay, because there’s also Michael Addison. And Roger Van Den Berg who’s a rising star at Merrill Lynch who gets to go to the World Economic Forum every year…”

“Look, Charlie, please listen. I’ve got this problem here. Small by most standards, I admit. But a problem all the same. Please just listen.”

At last I got to tell him what had happened. I recounted everything as honestly as I could, though maybe I went easy on the bit about my thinking Emily had left a confidential message for me.

“I know it was really stupid,” I said, as I came to the end. “But she’d left it sitting there, right there on the kitchen table.”

“Yes.” Charlie was now sounding much calmer. “Yes. You’ve rather let yourself in for it there.”

Then he laughed. Encouraged by this, I laughed too.

“I suppose I’m over-reacting,” I said. “After all, it’s not like her personal diary or anything. It’s just a memo book…” I trailed off because Charlie had continued to laugh, and there was something a touch hysterical in his laughter. Then he stopped and said flatly:

“If she finds out, she’ll want to saw your balls off.”

There was a short pause while I listened to airport noises. Then he went on:

“About six years ago, I opened that book myself, or that year’s equivalent. Just casually, when I was sitting in the kitchen, and she was doing some cooking. You know, just flicked it open absent-mindedly while I was saying something. She noticed immediately and told me she wasn’t happy about it. In fact, that’s when she told me she would saw my balls off. She was wielding this rolling pin at the time, so I pointed out she couldn’t very well do what she was threatening with a rolling pin. That’s when she said the rolling pin was for afterwards. For what she’d do to them once she’d cut them off.”

A flight announcement went off in the background.

“So what do you suggest I do?” I asked.

“What can you do? Just keep smoothing the pages down. Maybe she won’t notice.”

“I’ve been trying that and it just doesn’t work. There’s no way she won’t notice…”

“Look, Ray, I’ve got a lot on my mind. What I’m trying to tell you is that all these men Emily dreams about, they’re not really potential lovers. They’re just figures she thinks are wonderful because she believes they’ve accomplished so much. She doesn’t see their warts. Their sheer… brutality . They’re all out of her league anyway. The point is, and this is what’s so pathetically sad and ironic about all this, the point is, at the bottom of it all, she loves me . She still loves me. I can tell, I can tell.”