Excerpt from ”Matisse Red” (Short Story)
(For more, click on http://www.bbk.ac.uk/mir/)
She roams the crowd in a daze.
Whispers float around her, like a radio in the distance.
She is buried.
Alone.
She doesn’t know where to stand, which queue to join.
All she knows is that she needs to see her.
The woman she was never to meet.
A faint evening breeze fans through the temple like a casual passer-by, brushing the black and white drapes on the walls. The echo of wooden chimes fills the air.
The queue that Runa joined now approaches the main hall. The mixed odour of chrysanthemums, lilies and incense grows stronger and chokes her nostrils. As she turns the final corner, a priest in a plain black robe comes into view.
His chant grows louder and louder in tormenting rhythms, gradually transforming into a reproach: What are you doing here? What are you doing here?
Runa wants to step out of the queue and run.
Instead, she breathes in deeply, enters the hall, and looks up.
Yuji is there, in a black frame, on the altar-like table covered in white cloth, amongst flowers and lanterns, surrounded by sugar-coated cakes, a cup of water, and a bowlful of rice in which a pair of chopsticks stand.
How can this have happened?
Step by step, Runa approaches his photograph. A line of people before her bow and leave the queue, and it is her turn.
Close by, a woman sits sideways, motionless in the dark.
Yuji’s wife.
© Mariko Iwasaki, 2006
