When his father died, Kosuke was in the sky somewhere between Los Angeles and New York, feeling about as content as he had ever been. Because his flight had been overbooked, the airline had upgraded him to business class and given him a window seat. So he was able to watch in comfort as the earth slipped away and the tall skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles were swallowed by the purple haze. When the plane curved away from the surf-edged shoreline, he turned his gaze to the darkening eastern sky where giant cumulonimbus clouds edged in scarlet were creating a whole other landscape, separating and regrouping, changing shape constantly.
As Kosuke watched the clouds, his mind brimmed over with possibilities. What if one could construct buildings from materials that responded to sunlight? Then the sun would dictate the form of the building: walls would automatically become transparent to allow in the morning light, darken when the sun hit them, and clear as clouds passed over them. At night, they would become opaque to conserve heat, but the roofs could become transparent so that those inside could look out at the stars. Windows would be able to open and shut like the pores on a leaf so that the temperature inside the building remained constant. He tried to imagine himself walking through such a city. It would be like walking through a forest in which every passing cloud made the shadows dance. He smiled at the thought, but the smile quickly grew strained. For while he had made entire cities, and destroyed them too, he had yet to design something of his own, something unique that would last through time. Sometimes he wondered: would he even know how, anymore?
A stewardess arrived, providing a welcome distraction. She offered him a glass of champagne with a friendly smile, and he was reminded of the first time he’d set eyes on Kirsten on the sets of “Wild Things”. He’d taken her for an actress and had been dumbfounded when she introduced herself as the producer of the Netflix miniseries. He remembered the feeling he’d had then, a wave of recognition bursting upon him and something deep within him coming to life. As he took a sip of his champagne and settled even more comfortably into his chair, he looked out at the sky again, now clad in shades of blue and purple, and grew sombre.
Kirsten had been waiting for him when he got off the red eye from New York that Saturday morning. The weekend had stretched before them and he had felt full of hope. But they hadn’t gone back to her apartment. Instead, she had driven them to Malibu, to the beach, and after a quick swim, for the water had been icy, they had walked along the beach and then back to the boardwalk, stopping for breakfast at Mel’s, where inevitably, they had met friends and lingered, so that it was past lunchtime when they finally got back to her apartment, Kosuke had fallen asleep almost immediately. In the evening, Kirsten had given him another surprise – two tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the newly reopened Walt Disney Concert Hall, a building that had been designed by one of Kosuke’s heroes, Frank Gehry, but which he hadn’t yet been inside. Just as it had then, Kosuke’s heart missed a beat as the soaring curves of Gehry’s building rose within his mind’s eye and he could hear once more the extraordinary acoustics within the hall. That night he hadn’t been able to sleep, for Gehry’s building had reawakened the urge to design a building of his own, one that would last instead of being torn down the moment the filming ended.
Would he have remained in the film industry if he hadn’t met Kirsten, he wondered. She was the one who had pushed his career, recommending him to other directors she worked with, talking through and helping him refine his ideas, shooting down those that wouldn’t pass, either because they were too expensive or because they were too unusual. Ideas and words came easily to him when he was with Kirsten, and as they worked together on project after project, it had seemed logical to live together. He finished the rest of his champagne in a single gulp.
Everything had been perfect, till Kirsten had begun to talk about having a baby. It had not come as a total surprise to Kosuke. Some part of him had been expecting it, for they had been living together for four years by then and Kirsten had just turned thirty-four. Yet, once the issue had been raised, Kosuke found himself unable to come to a decision. Each time his mind broached the subject, a black and white picture that had sat on his mother’s dressing table till her death would appear before his eyes. It was his parents’ wedding photo, with the two families arranged in three stiff rows: cousins, uncles and aunts standing at the back, grandparents and parents seated in the middle, on either side of the bride and groom, and the children on the ground, in the forefront. The upper half of the photo was dominated by the shrine, its heavy-eaved taisha roof encircling the group like a giant pair of wings. Other than his grandfather, who wore his priestly robes, all the men were wearing single-breasted dark Western suits with the buttons done up. But the women were all in kimonos. In the centre, his mother, dressed in a white wedding kimono with a hood and his father, in a formal black and white hakama, were staring unsmilingly into the camera, too nervous to even glance at each other. Yet, an invisible thread bound the group together. He had tried to imagine himself and Kirsten at the centre of a similar photograph but failed. And though he told himself a million times that it didn’t matter, that he and Kirsten would probably have a civil ceremony in New York or at her parents’ place, he couldn’t put the photo out of his mind.
Sensing some of what was behind his hesitation, Kirsten had suggested that they have the baby and allow time to decide whether they would get married or not. But he hadn’t been able to agree to that either. For that would have meant dishonouring her and their child. As he struggled to resolve the conflict within himself, another, even more troubling thought had occurred to him: what part of himself would he be able to pass on to the child? To this question he could find no honest answer. So he had said nothing, hoping her question would fade away or answer itself some future day. After waiting a year for him to say yes, Kirsten had quietly told him that she was moving to Hollywood. They had been in a long-distance relationship ever since.
The aeroplane’s engines quietened as the plane attained cruise altitude. The stewardess stood up, getting ready to serve them dinner. Kosuke thought of the delicious cup of genmaicha Kirsten had made for him before he left. Then he remembered something else: that afternoon, he had woken up before Kirsten, full of the knowledge of their impending separation, and had stared long and hard at her sleeping face. All of a sudden, he had noticed that fine lines had appeared around Kirsten’s eyes and on the sides of her mouth, the first marks of age on her flawless porcelain skin. But the wrinkles hadn’t made her less beautiful, he told himself defiantly. They were like the cracks in the tea bowls that his grandmother would repair so painstakingly, filling them with almost invisible threads of gold. They only made her even more beautiful and precious to him. He wondered what she was doing at that moment. Was she working on her computer or cooking a lonely dinner in her apartment? More importantly, was she missing him as he was missing her? Or had she gone out, secretly relieved to have her freedom back? He stared out of the window at the endless sky, where purple had turned to indigo and the first stars had appeared. When would she decide she didn’t want him back? Surely, she must know he was a coward? He was answered by silence, and the monotonous drone of the airplane’s engines. After a while, he reached into his bag, pulled out his book, and began to read. But tiredness soon overcame him, and his eyes closed. He did not waken till they landed in New York.
In the taxi on the way to his apartment, Kosuke switched on his mobile phone and checked his messages. There were three of them. The first and second were work related. The third was from his sister and made him forget the first two entirely. “Father’s dead,” she said bluntly in Japanese, “you had better come home.”
Till the end of his days, Kosuke could not remember what happened next. A roaring filled his ears, like a giant tidal wave crashing onto a beach. The city melted away and all he could hear through the noise in his head was the taxi radio spouting a language he didn’t understand. When the taxi stopped at a traffic light in Williamsburg, Kosuke asked the driver to let him out, paid, and walked the rest of the way to his building.
Excerpted with permission from The Hidden Forest, Radhika Jha, Tranquebar/Westland.
