(Stories are the property of Kirsten Lincoln.
Please do not reprint without my permission)
Hands that Hold Moonlight
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I hate the gloating face of the moon. Today I was kept at work by a meeting that went far too long. Now her infuriatingly serene face is peeking over Oakland's hills as I finally pull out of the school parking lot.
I purposefully try to avert my eyes from the sky, avoid remembering Kazuhiko, avoid remembering loss. But trapped in the car, I cannot escape the teasing coolness of her light across my hands. It is calling to that part of me that held moonlight once, the part of me that dreams of holding power and beauty in my hands.
Usually when the moon makes me remember Kazuhiko, I see a montage; his hands at the desk across from me in the teacher's room, graceful fingers delicately picking at cucumber sushi, the paleness of his skin.
Tonight, the moon mocks me with a purely sensual memory. I am overcome with the feeling that he is behind me in the car. My skin crawls with his breath, and I expect to feel his large, slender hands on my shoulders any moment. I smile in defeat at the cruel moon's persistent glare, and open myself to the memory of that night in his room, when Kazuhiko showed me how to hold moonlight.
***
Kazuhiko's hands were pretty much all I saw of him the first month I taught English at Josei Junior High. Just graduated from college, fleeing a home where my dead father stained every room with unbearable memories, I was so shy with the native teachers that I rarely raised my eyes above waist level. This discouraged them from asking me some question that I could only respond to in my broken Japanese, or any attempt at an intimacy I was unprepared to offer. I would sit, pretending to read an English newspaper, all the while watching his hands grading students' diaries in red ink, the curve of his thumb on a calligraphy brush, or his immaculate nails tapping with impatience on the telephone.
Something about the gracefulness of his movement made him utterly fascinating. I stared at a rough callus he had on the pads between his thumbs and pointer fingers. I recognized the callus as the result of constant practice with the bamboo practice sword used in Kendo. My brother back home was almost a black belt, but even he didn't have a callus as defined as Kazuhiko's.
My only other contact with him was limited to the required rituals of beer-pouring and plate-passing enacted at school sponsored teacher parties. Kazuhiko usually spent the night nibbling on kappa maki, refusing the taunts of older teachers to try some red snapper or tuna. His strong fingers gripped the chopsticks like a sumie brush. I half expected him to have a picture of mountains and cascading waterfalls drawn in bits of cucumber and seaweed by the night's end. However, by the time the drunken cavalcade left the bar, Kazuhiko somehow be gone.
The second month I was there, I followed him after a party one evening. Something inside me could no longer stomach the forced joviality of those teacher parties, and longed instinctively for true knowledge of another human being, even if I gathered that knowledge surreptitiously. Waiting until most of the other teachers were drunk on sake and Asahi beer, I slipped out. I pulled up the hood of my jacket to cover my blonde hair, to be as inconspicuous as an American woman can be on the street in a small Japanese town.
He walked through side streets I was unfamiliar with, almost losing me in the darkness, illuminated neither by street lamp nor star in the cloudy sky. I wasn't in the habit of following men at night. I surprised even myself when I waited outside his apartment complex, watching for a tenant to come out so I could slip in the building. After brushing by a confused old man taking out his trash, I walked slowly along the first floor. I saw a window in the first floor light up right after he entered the building. I counted doors till I came to the door I thought was Kazuhiko's, number nine.
The only light came from passing car lights, flashing through the open curtains on the dusty window down the hallway. There was no one in sight. Some strange impulse made me press my ear to the door.
My father, before he died, told me stories about my Irish grandfather who would know instantly when a relative died or if a storm was coming. When I listened to those stories, the hairs on the back of my neck would rise, and I could feel a kind of tickling in my fingertips. At those moments I felt comforted, as if my grandfather touched my hand. Now, for the first time since my father's car accident, I felt the humming heat begin inside my skin as it touched the door. I pressed both my hands into the cold metal, feeling a presence against the skin of my cheek and palms. I could almost hear the agonizingly slow rhythm of the man breathing inside.
An image of Kazuhiko, pressed against the other side in a mirror of my own position flashed into my brain. I drew back with a start. Outside the window, clouds parted for the moon to peak through, now the entire corridor was awash in pale light, streaking the walls with fingers of silver. Where the outline of Kazuhiko's door began, the light slowly faded out, as if somehow it was seeping into Kazuhiko's apartment. As the door opened I fled, but not before I caught a glimpse of eyes brimming with silver yearning.
The next day Kazuhiko didn't come to school, his desk was empty for the entire day. After my last class I rushed through my paperwork to leave before one of the other teachers could corral me with a cup of coffee and the desire to practice their English. At a local convenience store I bought sweet anko buns and instant miso soup. My feet found their way to Kazuhiko's apartment with no help from my brain, which was occupied with images of the curve of his palm against a marker and the strange yearning in his eyes. I pressed my hands against his door again. My hands felt a tickling wind, like someone was breathing on the palms lightly.
I rang his doorbell before I realized what I was doing. The door opened right away, as if he had been standing there waiting for me. Kazuhiko looked at me curiously, then turned and walked back into his apartment without a word.
I entered, slipping out of my shoes before I stepped up onto the tatami mats. The apartment was sparse, the only furniture a kotatsu and a tansu, a Japanese bureau. On the wall above the tansu, was the most beautiful pair of swords I had ever seen. The swords were unsheathed, very unusual, and the fine lines of their blades glistened in the fading light. At the low, heated table two asymmetrical cups of Japanese tea were set, he gestured towards one.
"Keri-san, ocha wo doozo," he said, offering me tea.
"Kore wa tsumaranai koto desu ga..." I apologized for the cheapness of the gift of anko buns and soup as I set the bag on the table.
Kazuhiko nodded. There was no evidence that his absence was due to illness. In fact, although a black tank top emphasized the whiteness of his skin, it also revealed the flush of health on his shoulders and cheeks. As he reached for his tea, hard and supple muscles that spoke of hours of practice with a bamboo Kendo sword rippled under his skin.
"You don't have to speak Japanese. My English is good," he told me.
"Ahh, umm, you weren't at school today. I thought maybe you were sick," I explained hesitantly. While it was not unusual for one teacher to bring gifts of food to a sick fellow teacher, usually it was someone of the same sex who did the bringing.
"School doesn't really matter now," he sat cross-legged. "I have been waiting for you."
"You've been waiting for me?" I repeated, astonished. "Since last night, I knew you would return today. You must help me." He gently took the teacup from my hands, and cupped my palms with his callus-roughened touch. I felt the humming begin in my fingertips, and the sound of his breathing suddenly sounded overwhelmingly loud in my ears.
"I ...I don't know what you are talking about. The vice principal just told me to stop here with some food and check on you," I lied.
"Your hands, they are like mine" he replied, dismissing my half-baked excuse.
How could our hands be the same? I inherited the stubby fingers of my mother. Fingers meant for playing full octaves on the piano graced his hands.
"I don't understand."
Kazuhiko traced the line of my palm with one finger, leaving a trail of spiders on my skin. I pulled my hands away, trying to understand why I wasn't afraid of this strange man. There was stillness in his presence that reminded me of my father, even made me believe him enough not to run away at his crazy words.
"You have hands that can hold moonlight," he said. Then he got up, walked to the window and drew the curtains open.
Somehow night had fallen completely as I sat in Kazuhiko's apartment, discussing hands. The moon was as full and round as the night before, its light streaking through the window and falling all around Kazuhiko's body like a caress. Kazuhiko reached into the stream of light, holding his hands cupped against the moonlight. I stared. Behind where his hands cupped the light, there was a patch of darkness deeper and darker than any shadow I had ever seen.
"Do you see?" he asked, turning to me. "Your hands can hold back the moonlight like mine."
"Ah, I don't know what you are talking about, but this is getting just a little stran--" I tried to say, but Kazuhiko had circled around me as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Now he put his hands on my shoulders from behind, bringing a humming sensation akin to power where his palms touched my skin. My breath stilled within my lungs for one instant. Then, as he slowly trailed his fingertips down my arms to gently grasp my hands, I felt a deep breath gather in my belly and slowly be expelled through my lips. The roughness of his Kendo callus against my wrists tickled the fine hairs on my skin, making them all stand at attention. His fingers curled around mine, cupping my palms so that I felt like my hands were being held over a candle flame.
Kazuhiko thrust our hands into the moonlight, and I instantly felt an electric chill where my palm was exposed to the pale light. The sensations of heat and cold warred for a moment, then resolved itself into a powerful surge of energy that coursed over my entire body. It was only then that I noticed the permanent ache that inhabited my ribcage since the car accident was gone. Kazuhiko let go of my hands, and I turned away from him, pulling my hands to my sides in a frightened gesture.
Fear battled with the sense memory of Kazuhiko's hands on my shoulders. I had seen, for an instant, the same darkness behind where my hands cupped the moonlight. Confusing images of my father's calm and protective gaze, the play of shadow and moonlight, and Kazuhiko's graceful hands warred in my brain.
In the battle for my emotions, fear won, and I bolted from his apartment, keeping my eyes from the sky on the entire walk home.
The next day was Saturday, a day I usually reserved for sleeping in. However, my mother, whose math is abysmal, miscalculated the time difference as usual and called me at 5:30 in the morning. Feeling groggy, I pushed myself out of the futon and ran to the phone before the answering machine could pick up.
"Hello darling" said the cheerful voice from Ohio.
"Hi mom"
"Oh, were you sleeping? I'm sorry, I keep forgetting the time difference. Should I call you back in a few hours?"
"No mom, its okay, I'm awake now."
"Mikey wants a pair of Japanese swords," she said without preamble. My mother believes that the cost of long distance calls from the States to Japan is astronomical. She never spends much time on the phone, preferring to write long, rambling letters every week instead.
"What?" I asked sleepily.
"For his birthday, Kelly, you remember. It's in two weeks."
Damn, I had forgotten my brother's birthday.
"Mom, I don't know if I can find a pair that soon. It takes about a week for stuff to ship from here to Ohio anyway. Isn't there something else he wants?"
A meaningful silence ensued on the other end of the line.
"He really wants the swords. He needs them to go up to black belt. And, you forgot to send him a present when he turned eighteen last year...."
"Okay mom, I'll try." I hated caving into my mother's blatant guilt trip, but she was right. I owed Mikey a present good enough to make up for my lapse last year. Unfortunately I knew very little about Japanese swords let alone where to buy them. I wasn't literate enough in Japanese to read the yellow pages.
That left me with only one choice; ask someone at school who knew about swords. On Monday I ventured into the smoky copy room first thing in the morning and braved the bemused looks of the physical education teacher and the vice-principal. After explaining several times why I wanted the swords in my less than perfect Japanese, I asked if they knew of a place in town where I could buy some by next week. The vice-principal sucked air through his teeth and my heart fell. This was a bad sign. The physical education teacher hemmed and hawed for a second around his cigarette, then both finally admitted they didn't know. I thanked them and started to leave the room. As I turned the knob, the vice-principal yelled out a final piece of advice.
"Yamada-sensei ni kitte kudasai. Kare ga shiteru kamo shiranai" Ask Mr. Yamada, he knows, I repeated to myself. Great. Anxiety began to circulate somewhere in my stomach. The problem was, Mr. Yamada was Kazuhiko, a man I was trying desperately to avoid.
I managed to avoid Kazuhiko that whole day, by the simple fact that he didn't come to school again that day. I tried to overhear what the other teachers were saying when they looked worriedly at his empty desk, but couldn't make out much beyond the fact that he didn't seem to be sick. One of the math teachers had seen him in a park on Sunday, doing kata with a bamboo practice sword. After my last class, I sat at my desk grading essays and tried to figure out what to do about my brother's swords. All the other teachers I asked had repeated the vice principal's advice, I should talk to Kazuhiko.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go back to his apartment. The memory of cold moonlight in my hands sent a chill down my spine. But my fear seemed less immediate in the daylight, and I knew that I had to come through with the swords for Mikey's birthday or I would never hear the last of it from my mom. The essays were graded pretty quickly, and I tried to stall my decision by making myself some coffee. Usually one of the Japanese English teachers would take that as a sign to come and practice their English with me, but they were all busy with preparations for the school's culture festival. After finishing my third cup of coffee, I realized that if I procrastinated any longer it would be dark and the moon would rise.
Not wanting to scare myself with a repeat of the incident at Kazuhiko's apartment several nights before, I grabbed my coat from the cloakroom and walked quickly out the door. I knew before I walked into his building that Kazuhiko was home. The humming in my fingertips began this time before I even walked through the front door. I rubbed my hands on my jeans to get rid of the unnatural feeling. He opened the door to his apartment on my first knock.
"Konban wa, Keri-san" he greeted me. I saw through the open doorway two hand crafted, expensive-looking mugs of tea sitting on his table.
"Ah, is it okay to speak in English? I just have a question for you. I can't really stay, ah, my friend is waiting for me downstairs" I lied, trying to find an excuse not to go into his apartment. Yet, even as I spoke the stillness in his eyes soothed the anxiety tightening my stomach.
The corners of Kazuhiko's mouth turned up in a slight smile. Then he turned around and walked into his apartment. I had to follow him inside to ask my question, or stand like a fool on his doorstep shouting into his apartment and probably disturbing his neighbors. I stepped into the entrance and shut the door behind me.
"Ocha wo doozo" he said, gesturing towards the tea.
"Ah, actually, I can't stay long, I just wanted to ask if you knew where I could find some Japanese swords not the really expensive kind but not the cheap imitations either it's for my brother's birthday." I reeled off the question in one long stream, trying to dispel my growing awareness of the rhythm of his breathing.
"Yes, I think I can help you" he answered. Amazed at the simple answer, I took off my shoes and joined him at the table. Dark eyes looked into my own for a long moment.
"You have seen my swords?"
"Ah, yes, they are beautiful." I replied. Kazuhiko got up from the table and lifted the longer sword from its stand. He brought it to the table, caressing the metal with his pale fingers in one long motion. I watched the movement, fascinated by the reflection of his skin in the unmarred perfection of the blade. He passed the sword to me, hilt first. As I reached for the hilt, his hand clasped mine tightly against the leather. I felt the heat spill over my hands and the humming begin in my palm.
"You will help me? You will hold the moonlight for me tonight?" he whispered fiercely to me. Instead of fear, all I felt was his need, and my own desire to answer it. I couldn't speak, his breath had entered my lungs and I was held captive by the touch of his hand on mine. He kept his grip as he came around the table and knelt beside me. He raised my hand to his face, and laid his soft lips against the center of my palm. My breath caught as heat spread up my arm and down to my stomach to join the confusion there.
"Keri-san?" he asked, making my name a question.
Images of Kazuhiko whirred in my mind. I saw graceful hands laying on the desk across from me at school, a smile shared amidst the revelry of a teacher's party, the yearning in his eyes when he held moonlight in his hands two nights before. I didn't know what he meant when he asked me to help him hold back the moonlight, but this was a need I could answer. I chose my answer not only for him, but also for that part of me that feared letting another person come close, even if they didn't come as close to owning my heart as my father had.
"Yes" I answered, finally breathing.
Sometime in the night I awoke to find Kazuhiko standing in front of the window, pale and quiet. The feel of his arms around me lingered on my skin. I watched him breathe for a minute, curiously unattached to the reality of my presence in his futon. Where the moonlight touched his body, he was beautiful. Even the tatami he was standing on seemed to glow with a special light. Kazuhiko turned around.
"Do you see?" he asked quietly. I didn't know how to answer. "Where the moonlight falls, everything is different" he continued, wonder entering his voice. I did see. I saw how the paleness washed everything in the room with a delicate coolness. I also saw, now, how much Kazuhiko ached to be a part of that beauty.
The full, round moon hung perfectly framed in the window, shining with an intensity that seemed to encourage him. Kazuhiko went to the wall and took down his long sword. Assuming a basic Kendo stance, he began the slow, stylized movements of a kata in the darkness of the corner. As he moved across the room, the tip of the sword entered the stream of light. I gasped in surprise. Where the sword touched the moonlight an instant of blackness was created, to fade away as the streams of light coalesced in the wake of the shining silver. Kazuhiko began an exercise I often saw my brother do, but never with the intensity that showed in Kazuhiko's every movement. His sword traced the elements of the Japanese character for "spirit" in the air. I could see the character take shape then dissipate, over and over again as Kazuhiko repeated the kata in all directions. His movements quickened and I could no longer see the individual strokes, just a blur of silver reflecting in the moonlight, cutting swathes of blackness that hung in the air around him.
The humming began in my fingertips, and heat began to slowly spread up my hands and arms. I knelt on the futon, hands held awkwardly at my sides, only half-convinced this wasn't a dream. With a kiai that surely penetrated the entire apartment building, Kazuhiko made one last diagonal slash across the light shining through the window. Instead of disappearing, the slash hung for an instant in the air. Kazuhiko dropped his sword and cupped his hands inside the darkness, keeping back the tide of silver light with his fingers. He looked at me and I stood up slowly. Underneath his hands there was a complete and utter darkness. I had to see what it contained.
Gingerly I poked one finger, then an entire hand into the blackness. Knuckle by knuckle my hand disappeared up to the wrist. I felt a pull on my hand, as if something were trying to reach under my skin and pull out my breath. I held on, fascinated by the play of shadow and light on my arm. The feeling became stronger, like the force was trying to squeeze my bones out through my fingers. I looked up into Kazuhiko's face and he dropped his hands to his side quickly.
The moonlight filled in the darkness, causing my hand to reappear, shining faintly.
"What was that?" I asked, looking up at Kazuhiko with wide eyes.
He sighed. "It's hard to explain Keri-chan."
"Try."
"You saw how the moonlight changes everything it touches during the full moon," he began to explain, placing the sword back on the wall. From a drawer in the tansu he retrieved a small mirror. "See how the moon reveals your face, " he continued as he held the mirror in front of me. Standing in the full glare from the window, I saw reflected in the mirror a face I recognized as my own, yet subtly changed. The planes of my cheeks were sharper, my hair fuller and streaked with white, and my eyes reflecting in strange ways so that they far older than my twenty-five years. Could this be me? Was this some trick of the mirror?
When I looked at Kazuhiko, however, I saw the same changes. The moon carved his thin face into a mesmerizing chiaroscuro containing eyes that shone infinitely deeper than during the day.
"I have trained so that my sword would be quick enough to cut moonlight," he stated matter-of-factly. "I succeeded tonight only for the second time. But this is not enough. I must have someone else here who can hold back the moonlight once I've cut it."
"Why? What is that darkness? Where did my hand go when I felt that pull?" Kazuhiko turned away from me to look out the window. The moon was on descent, hovering just above the roof of the nearest apartment building. "The moon is not a jealous mistress. She shares her light with us every month, lets us catch a glimpse of our powerful selves in her reflection. But I want more than just a night of truth," Kazuhiko spoke with quiet yearning. "If I could enter into the heart of the light, then maybe I could exist there, held by the moon, completed forever."
Kazuhiko turned back to face me, gripping my hands in his. "I trained my whole life with swords, always wanting to be better and better. It wasn't until I saw myself in the reflection of the moonlight for the first time that I realized I would never be satisfied. Then, when I reached into that darkness behind the moonlight, I realized that was where I would finally be completed. You will help me, Keri." Kazuhiko reached for his sword again. I could only stand there and watch as he twirled faster and faster, the characters forming in the air.
As Kazuhiko became surrounded by a blur of silver, the humming in my hands became stronger than I had ever felt before. The sensation intensified until it was almost a burning pain, a pain that filled me with a fierce joy at my own ability to summon power. I ached to touch the cool light from the moon that was just beginning to dip below roof level. Again a kiai ripped through the apartment as Kazuhiko cut a swath of darkness in the air. I plunged my hands into the cut he made, feeling the cold silk soothe the heat of the energy boiling in my fingertips. Clarity flowed through my hands and up into my arms. I breathed for the first time in months without the ache of loss.
"Pull up Keri, pull up" Kazuhiko ordered breathlessly. I cupped my fingers and tried to pull the rift further open, feeling the weight of the moonlight against my hands and shoulders. Kazuhiko placed his hands gently on my shoulders once, causing heat and energy to spiral in all directions across my back. I pulled up with all my might, ripping open a man-sized hole of darkness.
Suddenly I realized what all his explanations meant, what the yearning in his eyes was for, what he was going to do. Before I could form the words to stop him, Kazuhiko stepped into the darkness. As the moonlight closed over him, the rift began to shrink, tearing at my fingers. I barely withdrew my hands in time to see the moon and it's light disappear altogether as it set behind the apartment building next door.
It was dark in the room. I could see nothing but the faint gleam of starlight on the sword that now lay discarded, in front of the window.
I was alone again.
The pain underneath my ribs welled up again, releasing itself in ragged sobs that shook my shoulders and forced hot tears from the corner of my eyes. The moon had swallowed Kazuhiko up, and he was gone.
***
Interstate 880 is hopelessly gridlocked. Although the cars in the lane next to me are moving along, the lane I chose hasn't moved for ten minutes. I sigh with frustration and catch a glimpse of the full, mocking moon in the rearview mirror.
How I hate that pale face, for showing me Kazuhiko's face, then taking him away forever. The darkness is now complete, both outside on the highway, and inside my heart. My eyes blur with the memory. As the moon clears the mountains, the entire highway is flooded with silver light, and my shoulders begin to tingle. It has been so long since I have allowed myself to be outside on a night of the full moon. I had forgotten how powerful the caress of moonlight could be. Now, my hands begin to hum, as if Kazuhiko were behind me.
Laughing at my foolishness, I look over my shoulder to see nothing but my books and jacket in the back seat. As I turn back to the front, I see myself in the mirror, sharp planes, silver-streaked hair, eyes too deep and old for my age, and my skin glimmering with beauty I only saw reflected, once, in Kazuhiko's eyes. My breath catches. It has been so long since the moon granted me a look at my self.
The heat spreads through my arms. It is almost as if I could feel Kazuhiko's presence, the rhythm of his breathing filling me. Gripped by memory, my hands begin to burn painfully. There is only one way to relieve the pain, even if by doing so the moon wins this little battle of wills. I lace my fingers together over the steering wheel, and cup my hands underneath the light streaming through the windshield. The cool weight in my hands brings clarity for a brief moment. A clarity that lingers like the scent of Japanese tea in a tatami room. A clarity that was forgotten when I let bitterness overwhelm me for a second time the night Kazuhiko entered the moonlight.
I smile a little shame-facedly at the pale face in my rearview mirror, and whisper a quick apology to the moon. Maybe she wasn't gloating at my losses after all. Maybe she was just trying to remind me of what Kazuhiko had shown me, and what I had avoided out of fear since I returned to California from Japan, the feeling of moonlight and power, held, like a cool benediction, in my palms. .
THE END
