Lara closed the passport and left it face down on the counter.
‘Why did you leave him? Why change your name?’
‘I don’t know. I could say that he is nineteen years older than me. That he knows his mind. He never makes mistakes. He is always certain. I could say that I always make mistakes. I make too many mistakes.’ Mizuki bowed her head. ‘But I don’t know that these are the right reasons.’
‘He doesn’t know where you are?’
Mizuki shook her head. ‘Nobody knows. Not even my family. If they knew they would tell him.’
‘What about your friends?’
‘I had friends before I was married, but he didn’t like them. He told me they were bad people, or they were stupid, or strange, and that they were not a good influence. Then, slowly, they stopped calling or inviting me out. It’s complicated. When I’m with him I don’t know my own mind.’
‘But if he can’t find you here. If he doesn’t know where you are, he can’t bother you.’
‘My husband is very wealthy. I thought that if I told somebody they would find out how wealthy he is and they would tell him where he could find me. I don’t think they would want to — not at first. But I’m certain that this would happen.’
Lara propped her elbows against the counter. Both women looked hard at the coaches and taxis under the station awning. ‘This is my second attempt to finish my studies? I never finished — the first time — because I met someone. It was a terrible mistake. I gave up everything. When it was over, when I came back, I had to start from the beginning again. I had nothing. Nowhere to live, no money, no work. I had to start everything from the beginning.’
Mizuki fell quiet for a moment. It was sad, she said, when one person gives too much and the other takes for no proper reason.
‘It’s never that simple. But why don’t you tell him where you are?’
Mizuki paused then closed her eyes. The story was not true, not quite. She hadn’t left her husband exactly, but run away for an adventure, something happenstance, the kind of encounter suggested by the brothers at the station: one thing couldn’t end without another starting.
Lara saw her onto the train and then left.
* * *
Immediately out of the station the line ran between empty warehouses and loading bays stacked with rusted shipping containers, the shore visible between the gaps. Mizuki sat beside the window, her shirt stuck to the small of her back, and she regretted explaining herself to Lara. Why had she done this? After spending six weeks as Mizuki Katsura, she had spoiled this illusion in five, less, three minutes of careless chatter. She couldn’t understand why she would do this, and couldn’t see what she could do to correct it. In an attempt to dismiss the day’s events she began to take notice of the passengers, and sensed among the men an air of opportunity. They looked at the women dressed in thin skirts and tight summer tops with long glances and lowered heads. A dog-like expression, she thought, common, hopeful, indolent, and nestling threat.
Mizuki looked at the sea through breaks between the apartment buildings. Her mobile rang as the train came into San Georgio, and she was bothered to see that the call came from Lara. More questions. More explanations.
One man dressed in a business shirt, his tie loose about his neck, stood too close. Mizuki shut off the phone and closed her eyes. How disappointing these men were, and how unlike the brothers. If she saw them now what would she do? Would she speak with them, follow after them? The idea of two brothers took on a new shape and possibility. It wasn’t the older brother who interested her, no, it was both of them, together, and how would it be to spend time with two men? One intense, the other removed.
The train slowed as it approached Torre del Greco; men drew out cigarettes, lighters ready in their hands. The businessman paused on the platform as he lit his cigarette. He caught Mizuki’s eye as the door shut between them, then gestured, hands raised, unresolved.
* * *
Anxious that her sleep would again be interrupted, Mizuki prepared carefully for bed. She ate early and moderately, and then focused on completing her assignments. Once she was done she sat at the dressing table and declined verbs, then answered simple questions with direct answers and watched Italian bubble out of her mouth. Mizuki practised the tricky rolling consonants, the unchanging vowels, and wondered at how her expression, fierce with concentration, appeared to show anger, when she was seldom, if ever, harsh or bad-tempered.
In the hour before bed Mizuki set her books aside and took a long shower. She bathed the stings with antiseptic. She double-checked her tongue and throat. She turned the sheets, opened the shutters to refresh the room, laid out her clothes for the next day, so that even the smallest decision would not trouble her, and she knew, even as she did this, that she should call Lara and attempt to undo what she had said.
The call came after Mizuki had gone to bed. The line fizzed and a voice, immediately familiar, crackled out, saying nothing except an inquisitive, ‘Hello, hello?’ in Japanese.
‘Hiroki.’ She said her husband’s name without inflection then cancelled the call. She checked the screen to make sure that the connection was cut.
The phone rang again, two bursts, and stopped.
Mizuki sat up, turned on the lights, assured herself that she was far away, that it was only her husband’s voice which could carry to the room. How had he found her? Less than five hours after she’d spoken with Lara. How could this happen so quickly? Mizuki set the phone on the pillow and lay beside it so that her ear was close. She watched it ring and stop. Ring and stop. A counter clocked the number of incoming calls.
* * *
Lara answered on the first ring and asked Mizuki if she was all right. ‘I was worried,’ she said. ‘You didn’t answer.’
Mizuki wasn’t sure where to start. ‘What if everything I told you wasn’t true?’ she asked.
Lara said she didn’t understand.
‘What if everything I’ve told you came from another person? All of the details. What if I’d taken everything from somewhere else?’
Silent for a moment, Lara said she didn’t understand. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
A silence grew between them. Mizuki wanted to know details, she wanted to understand how Lara had found him so quickly, how she could have come to such a decision with so little thought. Not five hours even. Not even one night. But all she could ask was why.
‘Are you in trouble?’ she asked. ‘Because if you needed money, I could have given you money. You could have asked me.’
Lara said she didn’t understand.