Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

“And it is a pity.”

Yes, a pity, indeed. “I thought you didn’t like talking to doctors.”

“It was important enough to learn about your wounds that I couldn’t avoid it.”

That was the end of that day’s discussion about my missing penis; already more than I had intended to say.

Each time she visited, Marianne Engel was more elaborately dressed than the time before, blooming into a new woman. Her wrists jangled with bracelets from the world over: Aztec, Mayan, Tonka Toy, Ojibwa. She wore plastic rings on her fingers, yellow elephants named Duke Elliphant and Ellaphant Gerald. Her sneakers were covered in sequins that made me think of a fluttering school of tropical fish. When she left my room for a cigarette, she would hold out the edges of her purple dress in a curtsey. I asked what caused the change in her fashion sense and she answered that since everyone thought she was crazy, she might as well dress the part.

It was interesting: this was her first humorous comment regarding her own mental state. I thought it might be the opening I’d been waiting for, and I asked her-pointing out that she had already discussed my burns with my doctor-with what condition she had been diagnosed. She shut down the topic by stating that the doctors simply didn’t understand her particular brand of charm.

She reached into her rucksack and pulled out a small leather-bound book. She wanted to start reading it aloud to me, she said. The Inferno, by Dante. An interesting choice for the burn ward, I commented, and added that despite my love of literature, this was one classic that I had never read.

She smiled as if she knew something that I did not. She had a very strong feeling, she said, that I would find the story not only to my liking, but very familiar.

Marianne Engel was telling a story of her life that dated back to the fourteenth century. Now, if she could do this, surely the reader will excuse me for providing some information on Sayuri’s life that I did not yet have at this point of my hospital convalescence. In defense of my jump out of the timeline, I will plead that Ms. Mizumoto told me all this later in our acquaintanceship-and at least her story is true.

Sayuri was the third child, the second daughter, of Toshiaki and Ayako Mizumoto. Her birth position was most unfortunate, because it meant that as a child she was the fifth person to bathe each night. It is tradition that Japanese family members share a single tub of bathwater and, although they rinse before getting in, the water darkens with each bather. The father goes first, and then the male members from oldest to youngest. Only then will the women bathe, again from oldest to youngest. This meant that the father, the older brother, the mother, and the older sister all used the bathwater before Sayuri. Throughout her entire childhood, she was forced every night to soak in the accumulated filth of her entire family.

Toshiaki and Ayako’s union was the product of omiai, an arranged marriage. If not a union brimming with love, it was at least functional, as evidenced by the three children. Toshiaki worked hard hours at the office, followed by drinking and karaoke; Ayako ran the home, looking after the household finances and making sure that there was food waiting for her husband when he came home intoxicated and sung-out. They fulfilled the requirements necessary to be classified as a normal Japanese family, and all Toshiaki and Ayako wished for their children was that they meet the same requirements.

The first son, Ichiro-a name which, incidentally, means First Son-attended a good university. Therefore, he got a good job with a good salary at a good company after graduation; that’s how these things work. In fact, Ichiro didn’t even need to apply himself to his schoolwork after he’d been accepted, because simply attending the right university was the important thing; learning, less so. After he got his good job, he worked for a few years before he married a good Japanese girl from a good family at a good age. Coincidentally, a good age for a Japanese girl is younger than twenty-five, because that’s when she turns into a “Christmas cake.” Christmas cakes, as everyone knows, are desirable before the twenty-fifth but afterward quickly become stale and are put on the shelf. Ichiro’s wife was twenty-three, so she was still well before her expiration date. Toshiaki and Ayako were pleased; Ichiro would inherit the family house and would tend to the parents’ graves after they died.

Sayuri’s sister, Chinatsu-a lovely name, meaning A Thousand Summers-also went to a good university, then got a job as an office lady for a few years, and got married at the age of twenty-four and a half. Just in time. She quit her job and embarked upon babymaking. Again, the parents were pleased.

Then it was the turn of their youngest daughter, the somewhat troublesome Sayuri. (Her name means Small Lily. If nothing else, the Japanese are expert namers.)

Sayuri was some years younger than Chinatsu. Her parents would never have gone so far as to call her an accident, but they would, on occasion, let slip that she was “not planned.” Her parents would also, if pressed, admit that unplanned things can be problematic but, on the other hand, if two children were good then a third child must be one third better. So never let it be said that Sayuri’s parents regretted her birth. However, Sayuri’s math skills were advanced enough to tell her that adding one to two actually increases the amount by half, not one-third.

Ichiro and Chinatsu had both walked the appropriate path and had done what was expected. The pattern had been firmly established, folded neatly and put away like a fine kimono; this pattern of proper behavior was practically a family heirloom to be handed down. All Sayuri had to do, to continue the perfection of her parents’ lives, was imitate the examples of her older siblings. But this, unfortunately, was the very last thing she wanted to do. If she did, she reasoned, she would be doomed to spend not only her childhood but her entire life in her family’s dirty bathwater.

The problem was that Sayuri was unsure about what she did want to do, so she kept her mouth shut and bided her time. She worked hard enough at her high school studies, but when her parents had their backs turned, she spent all her extra time studying English. Unbeknownst to them, an Australian woman named Maggie tutored her on Tuesday nights when Sayuri’s parents thought she was at volleyball practice. Sayuri went to the movies each Saturday, not for entertainment but to learn to speak like Jodie Foster, Susan Sarandon, and (unfortunately) Woody Allen. On Sunday afternoons, she went to the local museum to hunt American tourists and when she cornered one, she’d ask him whether he would speak with her for five minutes so she might practice her English. Invariably the tourist agreed, because who could refuse such cute enthusiasm? Meanwhile, Sayuri dutifully filled out applications for the correct Japanese universities and was accepted into one of them. Her parents were happy. Now Sayuri only had to graduate, work a few years as an office lady, and get off the shelf by twenty-five.

Right after her high school graduation, Sayuri visited the Australian embassy with Maggie to pick up a work visa. One week later, Sayuri called her parents long distance from the Sydney airport. Needless to say, they were less than pleased, not only with her rash and disrespectful actions but because she had not even had the courage to say goodbye before she left the country.

In truth, it was not a lack of courage that had dictated Sayuri’s actions, but an excess of it. If she’d tried to reason with her parents, they never would have let her go. It would have been an argument that Sayuri could not win but one that she was unwilling to lose, so she simply did what she had to do to start a life on her own terms. At first Sayuri’s parents thought she was joking-she couldn’t really be calling them from Australia, could she? She couldn’t really be planning to stay, could she? When they finally accepted the truth, they threatened and cajoled her. Sayuri hung up, because nothing would have changed if she’d stayed on the line.