A Tale for the Time Being
‘This is one of the most deeply moving and thought-provoking novels I have read in a long time. In precise and luminous prose, Ozeki captures both the sweep and details of our shared humanity, moving seamlessly between Nao’s story and our own. The result is gripping, fearless, inspiring and true’
Madeline Miller
‘Ingenious and touching, A Tale for the Time Being is also highly readable. And interesting: the contrast of cultures is especially well done’
Philip Pullman
‘A Tale for the Time Being is a downright miraculous book that will captivate you from the very first page. Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki proves that truly great stories – like this one – can both deepen our understanding of self and remind us of our shared humanity’
Deborah Harkness
ALSO BY RUTH OZEKI
My Year of Meat
All Over Creation
Published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
www.canongate.tv
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2013
Copyright © Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States of America in 2013
by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA)
British Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 796 4
eISBN 978 0 85786 798 8
For Masako,
for now and forever
CONTENTS
Part I
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Part II
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Haruki #1’s Letters
Part III
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Haruki #1’s Secret French Diary
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Part IV
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Epilogue
Appendices
Appendix A: Zen Moments
Appendix B: Quantum Mechanics
Appendix C: Rambling Thoughts
Appendix D: Temple Names
Appendix E: Schrödinger’s Cat
Appendix F: Hugh Everett
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Part I
An ancient buddha once said:
For the time being, standing on the tallest mountaintop,
For the time being, moving on the deepest ocean floor,
For the time being, a demon with three heads and eight arms,
For the time being, the golden sixteen-foot body of a buddha,
For the time being, a monk’s staff or a master’s fly-swatter,1
For the time being, a pillar or a lantern,
For the time being, any Dick or Jane,2
For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.
—Dōgen Zenji, “For the Time Being”3
Nao
1.
Hi!
My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you’re reading this, then maybe by now you’re wondering about me, too.
You wonder about me.
I wonder about you.
Who are you and what are you doing?
Are you in a New York subway car hanging from a strap, or soaking in your hot tub in Sunnyvale?
Are you sunbathing on a sandy beach in Phuket, or having your toenails buffed in Brighton?
Are you a male or a female or somewhere in between?
Is your girlfriend cooking you a yummy dinner, or are you eating cold Chinese noodles from a box?
Are you curled up with your back turned coldly toward your snoring wife, or are you eagerly waiting for your beautiful lover to finish his bath so you can make passionate love to him?
Do you have a cat and is she sitting on your lap? Does her forehead smell like cedar trees and fresh sweet air?
Actually, it doesn’t matter very much, because by the time you read this, everything will be different, and you will be nowhere in particular, flipping idly through the pages of this book, which happens to be the diary of my last days on earth, wondering if you should keep on reading.
And if you decide not to read any more, hey, no problem, because you’re not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you do decide to read on, then guess what? You’re my kind of time being and together we’ll make magic!
2.
Ugh. That was dumb. I’ll have to do better. I bet you’re wondering what kind of stupid girl would write words like that.
Well, I would.
Nao would.
Nao is me, Naoko Yasutani, which is my full name, but you can call me Nao because everyone else does. And I better tell you a little more about myself if we’re going to keep on meeting like this . . . !
Actually, not much has changed. I’m still sitting in this French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, and Edith Pilaf is singing another sad chanson, and Babette just brought me a coffee and I’ve taken a sip. Babette is my maid and also my new friend, and my coffee is Blue Mountain and I drink it black, which is unusual for a teenage girl, but it’s definitely the way good coffee should be drunk if you have any respect for the bitter bean.
I have pulled up my sock and scratched behind my knee.
I have straightened my pleats so that they line up neatly on the tops of my thighs.
I have tucked my shoulder-length hair behind my right ear, which is pierced with five holes, but now I’m letting it fall modestly across my face again because the otaku4 salaryman who’s sitting at the table next to me is staring, and it’s creeping me out even though I find it amusing, too. I’m wearing my junior high school uniform and I can tell by the way he’s looking at my body that he’s got a major schoolgirl fetish, and if that’s the case, then how come he’s hanging out in a French maid café? I mean, what a dope!
But you can never tell. Everything changes, and anything is possible, so maybe I’ll change my mind about him, too. Maybe in the next few minutes, he will lean awkwardly in my direction and say something surprisingly beautiful to me, and I will be overcome with a fondness for him in spite of his greasy hair and bad complexion, and I’ll actually condescend to converse with him a little bit, and eventually he will invite me to go shopping, and if he can convince me that he’s madly in love with me, I’ll go to a department store with him and let him buy me a cute cardigan sweater or a keitai5 or handbag, even though he obviously doesn’t have a lot of money. Then after, maybe we’ll go to a club and drink some cocktails, and zip into a love hotel with a big Jacuzzi, and after we bathe, just as I begin to fe
el comfortable with him, suddenly his true inner nature will emerge, and he’ll tie me up and put the plastic shopping bag from my new cardigan over my head and rape me, and hours later the police will find my lifeless naked body bent at odd angles on the floor, next to the big round zebra-skin bed.
Or maybe he will just ask me to strangle him a little with my panties while he gets off on their beautiful aroma.
Or maybe none of these things will happen except in my mind and yours, because, like I told you, together we’re making magic, at least for the time being.
3.
Are you still there? I just reread what I wrote about the otaku salaryman, and I want to apologize. That was nasty. That was not a nice way to start.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not a stupid girl. I know Edith Pilaf’s name isn’t really Pilaf. And I’m not a nasty girl or a hentai,6 either. I’m actually not a big fan of hentai, so if you are one, then please just put this book down immediately and don’t read any further, okay? You will only be disappointed and wasting your time, because this book is not going to be some kinky girl’s secret diary, filled with pink fantasies and nasty fetishes. It’s not what you think, since my purpose for writing it before I die is to tell someone the fascinating life story of my hundred-and-four-year-old great-grandmother, who is a Zen Buddhist nun.
You probably don’t think nuns are all that fascinating, but my great-grandmother is, and not in a kinky way at all. I am sure there are lots of kinky nuns out there . . . well, maybe not so many kinky nuns, but kinky priests, for sure, kinky priests are everywhere . . . but my diary will not concern itself with them or their freaky behaviors.
This diary will tell the real life story of my great-grandmother Yasutani Jiko. She was a nun and a novelist and New Woman7 of the Taisho era.8 She was also an anarchist and a feminist who had plenty of lovers, both males and females, but she was never kinky or nasty. And even though I may end up mentioning some of her love affairs, everything I write will be historically true and empowering to women, and not a lot of foolish geisha crap. So if kinky nasty things are your pleasure, please close this book and give it to your wife or co-worker and save yourself a lot of time and trouble.
4.
I think it’s important to have clearly defined goals in life, don’t you? Especially if you don’t have a lot of life left. Because if you don’t have clear goals, you might run out of time, and when the day comes, you’ll find yourself standing on the parapet of a tall building, or sitting on your bed with a bottle of pills in your hand, thinking, Shit! I blew it. If only I’d set clearer goals for myself!
I’m telling you this because I’m actually not going to be around for long, and you might as well know this up front so you don’t make assumptions. Assumptions suck. They’re like expectations. Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship, so let’s you and me not go there, okay?
The truth is that very soon I’m going to graduate from time, or maybe I shouldn’t say graduate because that makes it sound as if I’ve actually met my goals and deserve to move on, when the fact is that I just turned sixteen and I’ve accomplished nothing at all. Zilch. Nada. Do I sound pathetic? I don’t mean to. I just want to be accurate. Maybe instead of graduate, I should say I’m going to drop out of time. Drop out. Time out. Exit my existence. I’m counting the moments.
One . . .
Two . . .
Three . . .
Four . . .
Hey, I know! Let’s count the moments together!9
Ruth
1.
A tiny sparkle caught Ruth’s eye, a small glint of refracted sunlight angling out from beneath a massive tangle of drying bull kelp, which the sea had heaved up onto the sand at full tide. She mistook it for the sheen of a dying jellyfish and almost walked right by it. The beaches were overrun with jellyfish these days, the monstrous red stinging kind that looked like wounds along the shoreline.
But something made her stop. She leaned over and nudged the heap of kelp with the toe of her sneaker then poked it with a stick. Untangling the whiplike fronds, she dislodged enough to see that what glistened underneath was not a dying sea jelly, but something plastic, a bag. Not surprising. The ocean was full of plastic. She dug a bit more, until she could lift the bag up by its corner. It was heavier than she expected, a scarred plastic freezer bag, encrusted with barnacles that spread across its surface like a rash. It must have been in the ocean for a long time, she thought. Inside the bag, she could see a hint of something red, someone’s garbage, no doubt, tossed overboard or left behind after a picnic or a rave. The sea was always heaving things up and hurling them back: fishing lines, floats, beer cans, plastic toys, tampons, Nike sneakers. A few years earlier it was severed feet. People were finding them up and down Vancouver Island, washed up on the sand. One had been found on this very beach. No one could explain what had happened to the rest of the bodies. Ruth didn’t want to think about what might be rotting inside the bag. She flung it farther up the beach. She would finish her walk and then pick it up on the way back, take it home, and throw it out.
2.
“What’s this?” her husband called from the mud room.
Ruth was cooking dinner, chopping carrots and concentrating.
“This,” Oliver repeated when she didn’t answer.
She looked up. He was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, dangling the large scarred freezer bag in his fingers. She’d left it out on the porch, intending to deposit it in the trash, but she’d gotten distracted.
“Oh, leave it,” she said. “It’s garbage. Something I picked up on the beach. Please don’t bring it in the house.” Why did she have to explain?
“But there’s something in it,” he said. “Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”
“No,” she said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
He brought it in anyway and laid it on the kitchen table, scattering sand. He couldn’t help it. It was his nature to need to know, to take things apart and sometimes put them back together. Their freezer was filled with plastic shrouds containing the tiny carcasses of birds, shrews, and other small animals that their cat had brought in, waiting to be dissected and stuffed.
“It’s not just one bag,” he reported, carefully unzipping the first and laying it aside. “It’s bags within bags.”
The cat, attracted by all the activity, jumped up onto the table to help. He wasn’t allowed on the table. The cat had a name, Schrödinger, but they never used it. Oliver called him the Pest, which sometimes morphed into Pesto. He was always doing bad things, disemboweling squirrels in the middle of the kitchen, leaving small shiny organs, kidneys and intestines, right outside their bedroom door where Ruth would step on them with her bare feet on her way to the bathroom at night. They were a team, Oliver and the cat. When Oliver went upstairs, the cat went upstairs. When Oliver came downstairs to eat, the cat came downstairs to eat. When Oliver went outside to pee, the cat went outside to pee. Now Ruth watched the two of them as they examined the contents of the plastic bags. She winced, anticipating the stench of someone’s rotting picnic, or worse, that would ruin the fragrance of their meal. Lentil soup. They were having lentil soup and salad for dinner, and she’d just put in the rosemary. “Do you think you could dissect your garbage out on the porch?”
“You picked it up,” he said. “And anyway, I don’t think it’s garbage. It’s too neatly wrapped.” He continued his forensic unpeeling.
Ruth sniffed, but all she could smell was sand and salt and sea.
Suddenly he started laughing. “Look, Pesto!” he said. “It’s for you! It’s a Hello Kitty lunchbox!”
“Please!” Ruth said, feeling desperate now.
“And there’s something inside . . .”
“I’m serious! I don’t want you to open it in here. Just take it out—”
But it was too late.
3.
He had smoothed the bags flat, laid them out on top of one another in descending order of
size, and then sorted the contents into three neat collections: a small stack of handwritten letters; a pudgy bound book with a faded red cover; a sturdy antique wristwatch with a matte black face and a luminous dial. Next to these sat the Hello Kitty lunchbox that had protected the contents from the corrosive effects of the sea. The cat was sniffing at the lunchbox. Ruth picked him up and dropped him on the floor, and then turned her attention to the items on the table.
The letters appeared to be written in Japanese. The cover of the red book was printed in French. The watch had markings etched onto the back that were difficult to decipher, so Oliver had taken out his iPhone and was using the microscope app to examine the engraving. “I think this is Japanese, too,” he said.