You've been living with me all this time, she said, but you've hardly paid any attention to me. The only one you ever think about is yourself.
Now wait just a minute, I said, turning off the gas and setting the wok down on the range. Lets not get carried away here. You may be right. Maybe I haven't paid enough attention to things like tissues and toilet paper and beef and green peppers. But that doesn't mean I haven't paid any attention to you. I don't give a damn what color my tissues are. OK, black Id have a little trouble with, but white, blue-it just doesn't matter. If s the same with beef and green peppers. Together, apart-who cares? The act of stir frying beef and green peppers could disappear from the face of the earth and it wouldn't matter to me. It has nothing to do with you, your essence, what makes Kumiko Kumiko. Am I wrong?
Instead of answering me, she polished off her beer in two big gulps and stared at the empty bottle.
I dumped the contents of the wok into the garbage. So much for the beef and green peppers and onions and bean sprouts. Weird. Food one minute, garbage the next. I opened a beer and drank from the bottle. Why'd you do that? she asked. You hate it so much. So you could have eaten it.
I suddenly didn't want beef and green peppers anymore. She shrugged. Whatever makes you happy. She put her arms on the table and rested her face on them. For a while, she stayed like that. I could see she wasn't crying or sleeping. I looked at the empty wok on the range, looked at Kumiko, and drank my beer down. Crazy. Who gives a damn about toilet paper and green peppers?
But I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. OK, I said. I understand now. I'll never buy blue tissues or flowered toilet paper again. I promise. I'll take the stuff back to the supermarket tomorrow and exchange it. If they wont give me an exchange, I'll burn it in the yard. I'll throw the ashes in the sea. And no more beef and green peppers. Never again. Pretty soon the smell will be gone, and well never have to think about it anymore. OK?
But still she said nothing. I wanted to go out for an hours walk and find her cheery when I got back, but I knew there was no chance of that happening. Id have to solve this one myself.
Look, you're tired, I said. So take a little rest and well go out for a pizza. Whens the last time we had a pizza? Anchovies and onions. Well split one. It wouldn't kill us to eat out once in a while.
This didn't do it, either. She kept her face pressed against her arms. I didn't know what else to say. I sat down and stared at her across the table. One ear showed through her short black hair. It had an earring that I had never seen before, a little gold one in the shape of a fish. Where could she have bought such a thing? I wanted a smoke. I imagined myself taking my cigarettes and lighter from my pocket, putting a filter cigarette between my lips, and lighting up. I inhaled a lungful of air. The heavy smell of- stir-fried beef and vegetables struck me hard. I was starved.
My eye caught the calendar on the wall. This calendar showed the phases of the moon. The full moon was approaching. Of course: it was about time for Kumiko's period.
Only after I became a married man had it truly dawned on me that I was an inhabitant of earth, the third planet of the solar system. I lived on the earth, the earth revolved around the sun, and around the earth revolved the moon. Like it or not, this would continue for eternity (or what could be called eternity in comparison with my lifetime). What induced me to see things this way was the absolute precision of my wifes twenty-nine-day menstrual cycle. It corresponded perfectly with the waxing and waning of the moon. And her periods were always difficult. She would become unstable- even depressed-for some days before they began. So her cycle became my cycle. I had to be careful not to cause any unnecessary trouble at the wrong time of the month. Before we were married, I hardly noticed the phases of the moon. I might happen to catch sight of the moon in the sky, but its shape at any given time was of no concern to me. Now the shape of the moon was something I always carried around in my head.
I had been with a number of women before Kumiko, and of course each had had her own period. Some were difficult, some were easy, some were finished in three days, others took over a week, some were regular, others could be ten days late and scare the hell out of me; some women had bad moods, others were hardly affected. Until I married Kumiko, though, I had never lived with a woman. Until then, the cycles of nature meant the changing of the seasons. In winter Id get my coat out, in summer it was time for sandals. With marriage I took on not only a cohabitant but a new concept of cyclicity: the phases of the moon. Only once had she missed her cycle for some months, during which time she had been pregnant.
I'm sorry, she said, raising her face. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I'm tired, and I'm in a bad mood. That's OK, I said. Don't let it bother you. You should take it out on somebody when you're tired. It makes you feel better. Kumiko took a long, slow breath, held it in awhile, and let it out. What about you? she asked. What about me? You don't take it out on anybody when you're tired. I do. Why is that? I shook my head. I never noticed, I said. Funny. Maybe you've got this deep well inside, and you shout into it, The kings got donkeys ears! and then everything's OK. I thought about that for a while. Maybe so, I said. Kumiko looked at the empty beer bottle again. She stared at the label, and then at the mouth, and then she turned the neck in her fingers. My periods coming, she said. I think thats why I'm in such a bad mood. I know, I said. Don't let it bother you. You're not the only one. Tons of horses die when the moons full. She took her hand from the bottle, opened her mouth, and looked at me. Now, where did that come from all of a sudden? I read it in the paper the other day. I meant to tell you about it, but I forgot. It was an interview with some veterinarian. Apparently, horses are tremendously influenced by the phases of the moon-both physically and emotionally. Their brain waves go wild as the full moon approaches, and they start having all kinds of physical problems. Then, on the night itself, a lot of them get sick, and a huge number of those die. Nobody really knows why this happens, but the statistics prove that it does. Horse vets never have time to sleep on full-moon nights, they're so busy.
Interesting, said Kumiko.
An eclipse of the sun is even worse, though. Nothing short of a tragedy for the horses. You couldn't begin to imagine how many horses die on the day of a total eclipse. Anyhow, all I want to say is that right this second, horses are dying all over the world. Compared with that, its no big deal if you take out your frustrations on somebody. So don't let it bother you. Think about the horses dying. Think about them lying on the straw in some barn under the full moon, foaming at the mouth, gasping in agony.
She seemed to take a moment to think about horses dying in barns.
Well, I have to admit, she said with a note of resignation, you could probably sell anybody anything.
All right, then, I said. Change your clothes and lets go out for a pizza.
That night, in our darkened bedroom, I lay beside Kumiko, staring at the ceiling and asking myself just how much I really knew about this woman. The clock said 2:00 a.m. She was sound asleep. In the dark, I thought about blue tissues and patterned toilet paper and beef and green peppers. I had lived with her all this time, unaware how much she hated these things. In themselves they were trivial. Stupid. Something to laugh off, not make a big issue out of. Wed had a little tiff and would have forgotten about it in a couple of days.
But this was different. It was bothering me in a strange new way, digging at me like a little fish bone caught in the throat. Maybe-just maybe- it was more crucial than it had seemed. Maybe this was it: the fatal blow. Or maybe it was just the beginning of what would be the fatal blow. I might be standing in the entrance of something big, and inside lay a world that belonged to Kumiko alone, a vast world that I had never known. I saw it as a big, dark room. I was standing there holding a cigarette lighter, its tiny flame showing me only the smallest part of the room.