The Naked Eye (New Directions Paperbook) by Tawada Yoko

Author:Tawada, Yoko [Tawada, Yoko]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780811223508
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2009-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

C h a p t e r S i x

D r ô l e d ’ e n d r o i t p o u r u n e r e n c o n t r e

My feet kept walking in a single direction. I stopped nowhere, not even in front of a movie theater that beckoned to me with its twinkling placards. Soon there were no more shop signs, only slumbering apartment buildings, followed by little parks, warehouses, gray walls, and vacant lots.

It was already dark by the time I reached the parking lot. A single car was present, surrounded by the white lines separating the absent cars from one another. A public bathroom, a cigarette vending machine. Whenever a car drove past, I flinched. I would see the car’s two eyes without being able to make out the eyes of the driver. A policeman cruising by would stop to interrogate me. I was a suspicious woman in a parking lot—no car, no bags, no companion. It occurred to me that it might be better to keep out of sight, so I walked toward the women’s bathroom. Cold, moldy air rose from the sodden earth by the entrance. Midges hovered around a lantern like bits of fluff. They were remnants, left over from summer, or perhaps shrunken vampires, the afterimage of a film. Why was I here when I could be sitting in a movie theater? Was I planning to spend the night in this damp, cold bathroom? The money in my pocket was barely enough for a movie ticket, let alone a night in a hotel. I left the bathroom and immediately was attacked by a harsh light. I shielded my face with my elbows. There was a screech of brakes. The door of the car opened, and a rectangular businessman stepped out. “What are you doing here?” I couldn’t have explained my situation even in my native tongue. The man demanded an instant response. With both hands he gripped my shoulders, shaking them violently while yelling: “What are you doing here? What happened? Say something! Speak!” I put my right hand in my pants pocket as if I had an explanation stored inside. My fingers were surprised by a slip of paper. I held it to the dim light of the lantern. The man tore the paper out of my hand and read it aloud in his gravelly voice. Then he roughly put a hand on my back, which was still sore from the skin experiments, and pushed me into his car. I remembered the young man who’d given me the note at the movie theater. The word “meeting,” a date, a time, and the name of a cinema. With an exasperated expression, the man stepped on the gas and abruptly drove off. When we arrived at the theater, the young man came running up to me. When I turned back to look at the man in the car, he was already gone.

The young man asked me something, probably who the man in the car was.

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