NEVER LET ME GO
September 10th 2009 06:17
“Sometimes,” I told my host brother, “I like to believe that one particular hour or one particular minute could actually last shorter or longer than one particular hour or one particular minute, but then I’d just be fooling myself.”
We were standing by a bus stop. I had my luggage next to me. It was so sunny that the both of us had to keep a hand above our eyes.
“I wanted to get more drunk with you,” he said.
The bus arrived. Lugging my luggage with me, I hopped on and gave the bus driver my ticket. I rushed to a chair and looked out the window. My host brother was looking at me with a strange, emotionless expression, an expression I grew quite fond of. The bus hissed, then headed off. I felt disgustingly sad. He watched me disappear for good.
I arrived at the airport ten hours early. A lot of the friends I’d met gave me all sorts of damn cakes and fish biscuits before I left, so I spent a lot of that time eating those cakes and fish biscuits. I’d never eaten so many cakes and fish biscuits in my life. In fact I’d never actually eaten fish biscuits until then. After what felt like a day, I threw away all the packaging and headed for the nearest toilets. I opened the cubicle door and looked at the bowl and thought about whether or not I should vomit cake and fish biscuits all over the place. I decided not to.
I walked around for a while and realised that the airport actually had a Lawson (a type of 7-11). I walked inside and purchased a pizzaman and browsed through the magazines. As usual, there was an adult section populated by surreptitious guys in jackets and hats. Wherever there was porn in Japan, there was a guy in a jacket and a hat. I walked to a restaurant, ordered food, ate the food, considered vomiting again. I walked to a few souvenir shops and decided to buy some things for the folks in Brisbane, for my family, for Melanie, for Vail, for Jude. I walked to another store and found a postcard with an image of a bunch of sumo wrestlers. I looked at the area where I was supposed to write something. I started to write.
Dear Eva,
I would’ve liked to believe that, when remembering an old love, I would’ve been a natural at spinning something out of my arse. I wanted to lie to her, to tell her that I was alright, I wanted to tell her the truth, to tell her that I was alright. I stared at the blank piece of postcard. Nothing came out. I wrote down her Sydney address (I still had it memorised) and put it away.
The flight was an airplane, it was me looking outside during takeoff, it was me smiling at a pretty stewardess, it was thinking that I did not want to return to Brisbane, it was writing letters to my host family that I would be too lazy to send, it was browsing through photos and magazines and a paperback, it was me briefly considering Natalie, it was wondering what I’d do when I’d return, it was ordering an Asahii, it was ordering a few more Asahiis, it was falling asleep and dreaming about being about twelve years old, looking at an entrance to something I could not recognise.
An interview with Kazuo Ishiguro.
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Comment by Lara M
Love Speaks
Food Slate
I'm sure you'll enjoy Summer back in Brissy...with some Asahiis in tow