Ground Zero, Nagasaki by Yuichi Seirai

Author:Yuichi Seirai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC029000, Fiction/Short Stories (single author), LCO004030, Literary Collections/Asian/Japanese
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

SHELLS

When I found the seashell by my pillow this morning, my first reaction was one of relief: maybe now they’ll believe me at last.

The small, round object on the tatami was glistening, wet. I heard a rustling as crabs scuttled to their hiding places. The tide had gone out. Just moments before, I’d been sleeping on a beach, wrapped in my futon.

Our apartment is two miles from the sea. The idea that the tide could come in this far at night is absurd. I don’t blame people for thinking it’s all a delusion. Why, when everyone else is safely asleep, should I be having panic attacks about drowning in bed? Night after night. And the apartment is up on the twelfth floor. Even if there were a major flood, the water would never reach us here.

My nightmares and constant tossing and turning ultimately made it impossible for my wife to sleep next to me. She kept shaking me awake, but the disturbance continued as soon as I dropped off again. I can imagine her getting up in despair, thoughts of the sashimi knife in the kitchen running through her mind as she stares at me with weary, bloodshot eyes.

Yes, it must have been hard on her. The pain of losing Sayaka was bad enough; for me to go nuts on top of everything else was more than she could take. In the end, she left for her parents’ place without a word. I suppose I should be thankful that she didn’t decide to put me out of my misery with that knife.

But even she wouldn’t deny how wet my hair used to be when she shook me awake. It was like seaweed. I remember her muttering, “God, your sweat stinks of the sea.” And now there was the shell by my pillow—something plainer still. If it’s real, it’ll prove that waves brought it here during the night. You can’t have shells without the sea. Their fossils can be found on mountaintops, proof that the area was once underwater.

I lift my head and inspect the shell blearily. It looks absolutely real, quite solid. If I were imagining things, surely there wouldn’t be so much detail.

Try closing your eyes and imagining something. The interior of your house, something you saw walking around town yesterday, anything. An image, from memory. How does it look? Not sharp, right, but vague and blurry? “Memories lack detail,” as the philosophers would say.

If the shell in front of my eyes turns out to be a hallucination, then I must be as unhinged as everyone says I am. All I need do is reach out and touch it. If my short, plump fingers encounter nothing but bright morning sunlight… then, all right, they win. I will have to admit that it isn’t proof of the sea at all, but proof that I’m falling apart.

That might not be such a bad thing. Maybe I need to put more trust in people. Maybe I need to stop being so stubborn and loosen up a bit.

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