A Certain Mr. Takahashi. Ann Ireland

the words aloud. How certain they sound!

      Colette starts. “What are you talking about?”

      “I just couldn’t do it any more.” Jean cracks the table with the heel of her hand. The sound echoes in the big room. “Everything started to seem silly. A hundred grown men and women following scores as if they didn’t have a thought in their heads. Audiences that don’t listen then stand up at the end and demand an encore. I can’t believe in it.”

      Colette strains backward in her chair, away from the pounding hand.

      “Most of all, it’s me. I’ve gotten so the cello makes me physically sick. If I hear it on the radio I run to turn it off. It makes me puke. It’s like I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along, for the wrong reasons.”

      “What wrong reasons?”

      Colette’s voice is level, but her face has suddenly paled.

      “Let me tell you the picture I’ve had in my head all these years,” continues Jean urgently. “I see myself, dressed in black, walking across a stage to thunderous applause. A short bow, then-then I sink into the cello, wrap myself around it so there’s nothing between me and the music-until the last note.” Jean swoops her bow arm into the air, almost slugging Colette. “When suddenly I realize where I am. There’s a breathless silence then — boom. Tremendous applause. I stand up, bow once, then glide off-stage.”

      Colette eyes her curiously. “What’s wrong with that picture?”

      “What’s wrong is that I’ve depended on it for ten years. It was Paradise. I thought I had it!” Jean feels herself toppling down some hill, her feet struggling to meet the incline.

      “Now the whole act disgusts me! It’s so self-indulgent. I used to think I was working for the higher cause. Music.” Jean spits out the word. “I think I was just obsessed by the glory of penitence, like those obscure orders of nuns who still sleep on beds of nails—I thought someone cared. No one cares!”

      Colette stares at her sister with an expression of bewilderment. “This just doesn’t sound like you. You were always so sure. I was certain you’d make it-out of blind obstinacy if nothing else.”

      “ ‘Make it,’ ” repeats Jean wryly. “There’s nothing to ’make’ any more, nowhere I want to go.” She leans heavily into the chair. “The worst of it is, even though I know this new understanding is wisdom, I wish to hell I hadn’t lost the original picture. I like it better. I want it back.”

      “Well,” says Colette and pauses. She looks around the room at the posters of Switzerland, London, and China.

      “Maybe you need to do something else for a while. Take a rest.”

      “I am,” insists Jean. “And it’s worse!” She stares accusingly at her sister. “It just makes me realize that I’ve been feeding a fat, grotesque lie.”

      Colette’s mouth forms a cautious “O”.

      She’s trying to figure how much I know, thinks Jean. It’s killing her.

      “Guess what,” she says, more to herself than Colette. “Years ago, Sam said something that made me angry. It was when I announced I was going to study music in New York. She said, ’Take other courses, too. Learn about philosophy and literature and politics. Don’t become a cowboy musician, with nothing but noise on your mind.’ She was right.” Jean pauses. “But boy is it scary. I feel like I’ve been tossed off a moving boat without a life preserver.”

      “You know how to swim,” says Colette with a slight smile. Then she makes a scraping sound with her chair.

      “It’s late,” she says. “I’m going to bed.”

      “Bed?” Jean is taken aback.

      “We can continue the discussion later.” Colette yawns loudly. “But right now I’m dead tired.”

      Jean continues to stare at her.

      “Do you have a watch?” asks Colette. “Nanji des’ka?”

      Automatically, Jean pulls back her sleeve. The words

      come to her. “Sanji jippun mae,” she says, counting it out.

      Colette grins triumphantly. She presses a hand against the dimmer switch until there is only the blue glow from the stove’s pilot light.

      Their room is at the end of the hall. Two sleeping bags are neatly spread on the floor. On each is a pillow and a toothbrush, still in its package.

      They undress in the dark and slip into the bags.

      “Jean?”

      “Mmmm?”

      “You haven’t seen Yoshi in New York, have you?” The voice is carefully offhand.

      Jean is alert. “Only once. Why?”

      “When?”

      “I’m sure I told you.” Jean waits a beat. “He played at Carnegie Hall the first spring I was there.” A short silence.

      “You didn’t go backstage, did you?”

      “No. I was with someone.”

      And I wouldn’t go without you, Jean adds silently. She listens for further questions from the dark, but there is nothing, only the steady breathing of someone pretending to sleep.

      Why didn’t I go? The part about being with someone is a lie. If Colette had seen him down there on the stage half a mile away-a black-and-white dot poised over the miniature Steinway-she would understand. I applauded with the rest of the audience. It was an evening of Chopin. It was sad; I didn’t know this man, there was no connection. Perhaps, if Colette had been there with me … I thought. Like the times we waited until the concert was over, counting off movements until the climax, which was seeing his larger-than-life figure standing outside the dressing-room, elated but tired.

      Once, when he was playing the Emperor Concerto at a student concert, a young man no one had heard of was conducting. We sat on the hard seats of the second balcony, a dollar a shot, waiting for intermission so we could sneak down to the more expensive seats above the keyboard.

      The concert seemed long, and Yoshi kept trying to hurry it up during the solo parts. When it was over we whipped backstage and beamed, “It was great, Yoshi!”

      He scowled. “It was hor-rible,” he said, savouring the word. “So-o boring. I couldn’t believe that guy. You know we take eight minutes more than we are supposed to.”

      When he saw our discomfort, the scowl became a “what-can-you-do?” grin, and he guided us down the hallway with an arm slung over a shoulder of each of us. Yoshi and us.

      “You have to carry me,” he said, suddenly going limp. Giggling, we supported his body, all 130 pounds, out the door onto Victoria Street.

      “We go and have supper,” he declared, suddenly reactivated. “Is that a good idea?”

      “Sure,” we chorused. We didn’t tell him we’d already had a full meal at home.

      I’ve never been backstage at Carnegie Hall. You probably need a special pass.

       Chapter Four

      Jean wakes up much earlier than intended to the sound of car doors slamming. She unzips the sleeping bag part way and stares at the ceiling. Morning light glows through the slats of louvered windows, making staff-lines on the opposite wall.

      She peers over at her sister, who has curled into a ball in the corner. Probably isn’t used to sleeping without Nelson. A new thought occurs to her: has Colette changed her name? She has to know immediately. Still locked in the bag she caterpillars