Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World

We left Buenos Aires and returned to Japan via the same route. Again, it took ages. For the whole twenty-six hours that it took to get home, we never spoke one word to each other.

Had we talked too much while we were in Buenos Aires? No, that’s not what it was. We could just no longer find the words. It wasn’t that we wouldn’t talk. We just couldn’t. We sat there right next to each other and couldn’t explain what we were thinking or feeling. We couldn’t speak. We were both in pain because a friend had died, but now we were at a loss for words.

And as we sat there in silence for twenty-six hours I think we both realized that was the end. I mean, of us. We were so very over.

How strange. We had both felt like we were meant to be together, and both of us had seen the end coming.

I couldn’t take the long hours of silence so I started to read back through the travel guide. There were photographs of a massive mountain range. There was Mt. Aconcagua located on the border between Argentina and Chile, the highest peak in South America. I turned the page and there was the figure of Christ the Redeemer of the Andes on top of a mountain, towering over the surrounding area. I wondered if Tom ever made it there, or whether he died before getting a chance to see it.

I imagined Tom getting off the bus and gazing at the beautiful earth spread out below the mountain peaks. As he turns around he notices the huge shadow of the cross and looks up to see the figure of Christ, arms open in a welcoming gesture. The sun hangs in the sky behind the statue at shoulder height, silhouetting it brightly against the clear sky, and Tom squints as he stares up at this vision of light.

I began to well up. It was too much so I turned to look out of the window of the plane. Outside I could see the ocean filled with icebergs stretching on and on into the distance. The setting sun gave the endless sea of ice a purple hue—it was so beautiful it was almost cruel.

Twenty-six hours later we were back in our little Monopoly town.

“OK, see you tomorrow.”

She shouted over her shoulder as she got off at her station and headed down the steep hill just as she always did. I saw her off, silently watching the figure with perfect posture move gradually into the distance.

A week later we broke up. One short five-minute phone call and it was done. Just like that. It was like filling out a change-of-address form or something at the local council office. A short, businesslike conversation and it was all over. Over time we had clocked up more than a thousand hours in telephone conversations, and now all it took was five minutes to end the relationship that had been the basis of it all.

The telephone made it easy for us to get in touch quickly, but in exchange, we missed out on the chance to get to know each other in a profound way, to become truly close. The phone did away with the time needed to develop real feelings and memories, and finally what feelings there were just evaporated.

My phone bill, which arrived without fail each month, would list a total of more than twenty hours’ worth of calls, with a charge of 12,000 yen. I don’t remember us ever talking about whether the cost of talking on the phone was worth it. I wonder how much I was paying per word.

We could talk all we wanted over the phone, but that still didn’t guarantee that we’d really have a deeper connection. And then, when we stepped out of the Monopoly game we’d been playing around our little college town, and into the real world, we found out that the old rules—the only things that made our relationship possible in that particular time and place—no longer applied.

In any case, the romance between us had been over for a while. For some reason we’d carried on playing anyway, following all the rules. All it took was a few days in Buenos Aires to make it obvious to us that those rules had become meaningless.

But one small morsel of pain remained. Just one little regret. And that is the feeling that if we had just had our phones with us on that flight back to Japan, maybe, just maybe we could have talked about our feelings and wouldn’t have had to break up. Monopoly was over, but maybe we could have tried a new game.

This is how I pictured it:

We’re on the plane and God brings us telephones. So I call her (even though she’s sitting right by me) and start to speak.

So what are you thinking about?

You go first.

I’m sad.

Me too.

I was thinking about you.

I was thinking about you too.

So what are we going to do?

I don’t know. What should we do?

I just want to go home.

Yeah, me too.

So what shall we do next?

I don’t know.

Why don’t we move in together?

That might be a good idea.

We can have coffee at home.

And cocoa.

If only we’d had telephones with us then…

We could have talked on the phone during the whole flight back to Japan. Not about anything special, necessarily—just talking would have been enough, so the other would know someone cared. It would have been nice to have taken the time to listen to what the other was feeling. If only…

I still remember the faint smile she gave me when we said goodbye at the station near her house. That smile became a small wound that opened somewhere in the back of my brain. It acted up on rainy days like an old football injury.

But when I think about it, I guess it’s not that unusual. I mean, I must have a whole collection of small injuries, tucked away somewhere in the back of my memory. I suppose that’s what some people call regret.

“Um, so about today…”

The sound of her voice suddenly brought me back to the here and now. I realized that we’d arrived at the movie theater where she lived.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I said a lot of mean things to you.”

“Oh, no big deal. It was interesting.”

“But you remember, right, we made a promise?”

“Huh?”

As usual I had forgotten what she said.

“Don’t you remember? We promised that if we ever broke up we’d say what we didn’t like about each other.”

That’s right. We had made a deal. We promised that we’d admit all the things we didn’t like about each other if we ever broke up. We thought that way we’d learn something about love, about being in a relationship. The lover is the eternal teacher. I’m pretty sure I used those exact words (without any irony!). At the time, she said she couldn’t imagine ever breaking up with me. I felt the same way.

“So I told you everything I didn’t like about you. Just so you’d know before you die.”

She was clearly enjoying this—she let out a little laugh.

“Thanks for keeping your promise. Even though it’s not exactly what I want to hear when I’m on the brink of death.”

I laughed too.

When we began our relationship, I just couldn’t imagine it would ever end. I just assumed that because I was happy she must be happy too. But a time came when that was no longer the case. Feelings can’t always be mutual.

Love has to end. That’s all. And even though everyone knows it they still fall in love.

I guess it’s the same with life. We all know it has to end someday, but even so we act as if we’re going to live forever. Like love, life is beautiful because it has to end.

“You’re going to die pretty soon, right?” she said, opening the large, heavy doors of the movie theater.

“You make it sound like it’s no big deal.”

“Well, I was just thinking I could do a screening of your favorite film for you, one last time, if you know what I mean?”