Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Louise Heal Kawai).
Title: Ms Ice Sandwich.
Author: Mieko Kawakami (translated by Louise Heal Kawai).
Genre: Fiction, bildungsroman, humour, novella.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 2017.
Summary: A fourth-grade boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there, even though he hears mean whispers about her and her botched plastic surgery (the effects of which he is unable to distinguish). Her aloof demeanor and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. But life keeps getting in the way - there's his beloved grandmother's illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, the novel is a depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ ..I never really get that hungry. I get full after I've eaten about half of my school lunch, and that might be why I'm so skinny and I don't seem to be getting any taller. But I can't help it if I don't like what they serve. Mum got so worried she came to school and showed my teacher how skinny my arms were for a boy, but now that I think about it, that was ages ago, and it seems like she's forgotten all about it by now, or maybe she's just given up, or maybe the moment's passed, or that's what it feels like.
♥ I've been thinking about all kinds of stuff lately, about the money, and about Grandma... so seeing as tonight I'm not tired at all yet, I think I'll go to bed and stare up at the ceiling and think about it all, and then I start thinking, What was it exactly that was what way?, and somehow the swirls in the grain of the wood start to expand and contract and I begin to feel sleepy, and then my head and my chest fill up with some kind of fog and I can't seem to work this or that or anything out in my mind.
♥ I concentrate on Ms Ice Sandwich and I don't ever want my turn to come. I hardly blink. Then when she finally takes my money and gives me the change and her eyelids turn upwards and I can see those great big eyes again, without any warning that squishy, yellowy, orangey stuff inside my head becomes extra bright, then that hollow place right under my chin, above my collarbone, feels like it's being squeezed really tightly. It's like that feeling you get when you swallow rice without chewing it properly first. And that lump begins to move from my throat and travel slowly, slowly all the way downwards, until it ends up in a bigger place, a kind of open, roomy space-a place soft like a rabbit's ear. And with every breath I take, it begins to grow, it gets longer and wider. I've never seen the middle of the ocean or the edge of the sky, but maybe the kind of breeze that blows in those places now comes blowing in out of nowhere and I feel it wrapped around me. Like when you're holding a cat and you touch its soft belly. Or sticking your ginger in a jar of jam and stirring, then slowly sinking in all the rest of your fingers. Or locking the sweet condensed milk at the bottom of your bowl of strawberries. Or when a blanket brushes the top of your feet. Or when butter turns transparent when it melts over your pancakes. As I stand gazing at Ms Ice Sandwich, all of these things are happening to me, one on top of the other, right there in my rabbit's ear.
When I reach out to get my order from Ms Ice Sandwich, the air suddenly goes cold. She's still turned in my direction, but her eyes have shifted to the next customer, and that magical breeze stops blowing. The blanket is ripped away, the condensed milk dries up, the cat runs off, and finally the rabbit's ear droops. There's nothing to do but to walk slowly towards the doors, head down, eyes fixed on the tops of my trainers. I glance up once I'm outside, but there's nothing to see. I realize it's the same old place in this same old town with all its houses squashed together. The stuffy summer evening air rises up from the ground, and it's suddenly difficult to breathe. The place in my chest where I keep the air gets tighter and tighter, and I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know that I'm going to find out sometime that somewhere in this town there's something bad, and that those long shadows creeping up in the dark have come to tell me about it. Afraid of being caught by the shadows, I hurry home, my plastic sandwich bag swinging from my hand, and then the next day, I got to the supermarket again, and just like before I stare at Ms Ice Sandwich's awesome eyes, which gives me a brand-new, really happy feeling. I do the same thing every day and that's how I end up spending the whole summer filling myself with Ms Ice Sandwich's eyes (and my stomach with her sandwiches).
♥ One lunchtime, soon after all the classes were reshuffled, Tutti thought she could get away with secretly farting in the classroom, but she was really unlucky because there was either a misfire or an accident or whatever you call it, but she ended up making this huge noise and everyone knew she'd farted, and worse, there was a big commotion because somehow her fart had that exact stinky, overripe smell that strawberries have when they're in a plastic box in the fridge, and suddenly the word Tutti-Frutti popped into my head, and without meaning to, I blurted it out. Everyone stopped and stared at me, and for a moment the whole room went dead quiet, and then everyone started shouting and laughing, and that was how Tutti got named Tutti. (By the way, Doo-Wop got his name the same way-from the sound of his fart. It's terrible if you're ever unlucky enough to fart at school.) For quite a while after that, Tutti acted like she had a big grudge against me, whenever our eyes met she glared at me like a mad dog, but it wasn't long before she got used to it, and it became totally natural for everyone to call her Tutti, even the teacher was calling her Tutti, and by the time the end of spring term came around, no one remembered that the name had anything to do with her farting, and she was just Tutti. One day, quite a long time after the naming incident, I found myself alone with her and I said, I'm really sorry, I feel bad about giving you your name, but after a little bit, Tutti looked me in the eyes and said Oh well, never mind. And then she said how the name Tutti-Frutti made her seem foreign and different and that maybe she would try dyeing her hair blonde, and then she laughed hahaha.
♥ On that subject, there used to be time a while ago when I was interested in what part of a person's face tells you whether they're sad or happy, and there's even a saying that the eyes speak like the mouth does, but different of course, so I thought that the eyes were supposed to hold some kind of secret, but that turned out to be false, because according to the results of my experiments it turns out that eyes don't have those special powers at all. When I look in the mirror and cover my mouth and eyebrows with my hands, so that all I can see are my eyes, I can't tell what emotion I'm feeling at all. I try pulling all sorts of faces but you can't tell what kind of face it is from the eyes alone. My conclusion is that when it comes to the face, emotions are seventy per cent from the eyebrows and thirty per cent from the mouth. In the case of my grandma, she doesn't have eyebrows any more, and no teeth either, and her mouth which is always a little bit open looks kind of like a dark little hole, but even so, I'm not sure how, I can always tell what grandma is thinking. I look at the pattern of wrinkles on her face and the movement of her cheekbones and stare hard into her eyes, and these things reveal to me what Grandma is feeling. I don't know how it is that I can tell but I do.
♥ The whole day I don't really feel like myself (though, to tell the truth, I don't really know what it means to feel like myself), and today is the worst day of the week for lessons, because it's Tuesday, and we have Maths, followed by Science, and then PE, and then after it in fourth period, Music. I can't believe whoever made that schedule: they know nothing about kids and how they feel through the day, what were they thinking, putting things in that order? I suppose it's made by teachers to suit the teachers, but I have to admit, although I have the perfect schedule in my head, I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist anywhere on this earth, so I know there's no point in blaming everything on Tuesday, but now that I think about it, at least after lunch there's Art class, which makes the day bearable. I like Art. We don't even have to stand up and bow when the bell goes off for class; I can just go over and collect my art project and work on it at my own pace over several weeks and draw whatever I like, and I wish that every day's schedule could be made up of Tuesday afternoons. I'm absolutely serious about this.
♥ At least I could have told Tutti all this stuff that's in my head right now. Or maybe not. Maybe that's not it at all. To start with, my question Why are you painting a gunfight? wasn't a good one. It was probably too nosy, and it was none of my business. Nobody should have to explain what they choose to paint and how they feel about painting it. And this makes my heart turn one shade darker. I wonder if I'll get the chance to apologize to Tutti, or at least explain. Probably not. This whole thing will probably just fade away. People always forget about these little things, but I believe that each one stays somewhere deep on everyone's heart, and without noticing it they grow and harden, until one day they cause something terrible to happen. And as I'm thinking about this, I get depressed, and now all of these things that I thought I'd done such a good job of drawing begin to fade and grow dull-even though I haven't even started painting them yet.
♥ When I get back to Grandma's room, I can tell from her breathing that she's asleep. It's weird but although I know she's been there lying in the exact same position the whole time, it feels as if I'm looking at her for the first time. The little bit of golden sun that sines through the shoji screens on the window lights up the white areas of Grandma's quilt, making a faint shadow of leaves, and each time the wind blows outside, the shadow pattern of leaves shakes a little bit. I go over to Grandma and I hold my breath for a moment. The room goes very quiet.
I think maybe Grandma's going to die soon, and then she won't be here any more. Sometimes when I find myself starting to think that way, I immediately try to stop it, but now I feel the thought slowly creeping out again. I picture a dent in the pillow where her head used to be and I squeeze my eyes tight for a moment. Grandma is sleeping. Peacefully. Her mouth is slightly open, she's making little breathing noises. Grandma's who's asleep and Grandma who's going to die. Are these the same Grandma?
I stare at sleeping Grandma's face and remember a photo I have of me on a swing with her when she wasn't so skinny and was much more healthy. Her loud laugh. The light purple sweater without sleeves that she always used to wear. Her hair long and tied back. Those Grandmas and this Grandma. The Grandmas I have in my head and the Grandma lying here with her eyes closed, qietly sleeping. Which is the real Grandma? The Grandma who used to pick me up from nursery school? The Grandma who made me her special veggie meatballs? Breakfast-time Grandma when she dipper her bread in coffee before eating it? Gentle Grandma who, whenever Mum scolded me and pushed me away, would sit next to me and let me talk? When Grandma goes away from this earth, where will she go? It's not happened yet, but I'm thinking about it now because I know that one day it's definitely, for sure, going to happen. And when I think about it, the air inside my chest gets heavier and heavier and it feels as if there's no escape. Grandma's still here, it's bot like she's already died or anything, so why do I keep thinking that way?
♥ She never gets lots, she's acts every sound, every person, everything is there in her movements. It's perfect, maybe too perfect. In fact, seeing how perfect she is, I begin to feel a little bit scared and I want to shout enough! or stop!, and the words have climbed up into my throat but I swallow them back down, and I don't know why, but I can't take my eyes off Tutti. The gunfight scene is long. It's so long that for some reason I find myself wanting to cry, and I suddenly remember Tutti's dad, and I look over and I see he's got his head tipped back, his mouth open, and his neck is on the back of the sofa and he's fast asleep. He looks exactly as if he's just been shot by Tutti, and this thought makes me feel even more like crying, and the gun battle is getting even faster and furiouser, and as I watch Tutti, as she continues to fit her movements perfectly to the sound and the action, I realize that I'm kneeling on the sofa with both of my hands over my chest, my fingers tightly locked together.
♥ It's right then I suddenly remember that Tutti doesn't have a mother. I think of the house I was just in with its messy living room, and Tutti's dad asleep on the sofa with his mouth open. I've never heard anything directly from Tutti about her mum, we've never talked about it, but somehow everyone in the class knows that her mother died of an illness when Tutti was very young. I'm pretty sure that everyone in the class must know about my dad too, but not one person has ever asked me about him, so I've never talked about him to anyone. As I'm walking with Tutti I start to feel like talking about all that, I don't know why. There doesn't feel like there's all that much to say, and yet I still want to say something about it. But what does talking about it mean exactly, and what should I start by asking, and would the conversation go something like you don't have a mum, right? and then that would be the end, so really it'd make no difference whether we talked about it or not, and this is what I'm thinking, and in the end I realize we've arrived at the vending machine without me ever managing to say anything.
♥ And now I'm beginning to feel so drained and tired that I don't think I can move. I don't even wash my hands and face, I just curl up on the floor and I close my yes, and my eyelids start to get heavy and I can't open my eyes any more. I wonder if when I wake up will I be on my futon, and how nice it will be if I am. I remember a long time ago, maybe before I could have any memories, so it could be a memory that I made up, someone like my dad, when I was half-asleep, picking me up and rocking me and laying me down on mt soft futon, and it feels like a real memory that comes back to me at times like this, and maybe tomorrow morning I will find myself tucked up in my futon. I know it's not going to happen, still I think about it because it feels like I am remembering my dad. I hear myself mumbling, Did you bring me here when I was sleepy? I realize that I am speaking to my dad who isn't here, but he must be here somewhere. And I remember the sensation of being in his arms as I fall asleep with my head on the zabuton.
♥ "Do you never want to see Ms Ice Sandwich again? Is that what you want?"
"What are you talking about?" I ask, stunned.
"What I said."
"You mean, never see her again forever?"
"Exactly."
"Why?"
"Why?" Tutti looks amazed that I don't know why. "You haven't gone to see her, not for ages. And if it goes on like that forever, then you'll never see her again."
I'm speechless.
"I'm right, right?" Tutti stares at me like she thinks I'm dumb. "Because that's what's going to happen. When you say see you tomorrow to someone, it's because you're going to keep seeing them. It's like at school you see everybody because they go to school every day. But when you graduate and you don't go to school any more, it stops and you don't see everybody any more. If you want to see somebody, you have to make plans to meet, or even make plans to make plans, and next thing you end up not seeing them any more. That's what's going to happen. If you don't see somebody, you end up never seeing them. And then there's going to be nothing left of them at all."
I'm listening, still not saying a word.
"The worst thing is, you never know when somebody's going to just disappear."
"Huh?"
"Yes, disappear, like go away and never come back. You never see them again. You want to see them but it's too late, they're gone."
Tutti pauses, kind of smiles.
"And the ones who disappear, they don't know that they're going to. They disappear without knowing. Just like that. They go away and then nobody sees them any more."
I sit there, maybe nodding.
"I stopped doing that kind of thing a long time ago," Tutti says. "You know-putting off stuff and not doing anything, and not going and seeing somebody when I really wanted to. I stopped that. It's too risky... You should just go and see someone when you can, right?"
"When did you figure that out?"
"When I was in first grade. And I wrote it down."
"Really? You're smart."
"Nah, not smart. But there's loads of hard stuff in life, and maybe when we're grown-ups, there's going to be tons more hard stuff to deal with. And when that happens, I'm going to tell myself I can't give in or freeze up and get discouraged and do nothing. I have to believe that. Because I've already had to deal with the hardest thing in the world. You know what that was?"
"What?"
"It was to try to meet someone who's already disappeared."
♥ Tutti and I start walking back under a heavy cloud of feeling, silently.
♥ As I ramble on like this to Grandma, I start to feel a pain in my chest and tears suddenly start to roll down my cheeks, and suddenly I'm crying my eyes out. I'm not sure what's causing it, why I'm so unhappy, but I can't stop the tears. The angel decorations in Mum's salon, or the smell of the blue crayon, the pattern of the zabuton cover that I trace with the tip of my finger, Tutti's backpack getting farther into the distance, maybe all of this-everything inside me feels scrambled. Every time I breathe, my body kind of shudders and I feel like I'm never going to stop crying. With one hand on the sheet of Grandma's bed, I squat down with my knees pulled up to my chin, and my other hand covering my eyes, and I stay like that crying and crying. I cry so hard that my shoulders heave and my face is soaked in tears and snot. And then I feel something touch my head, which startles me. I stop and look up and see that it's Grandma. Grandma who's supposed to be asleep is awake and her little eyes are looking at me tenderly and she's got a faint smile on her face and her hand is gently resting on my head. She looks kindly into my face and there's a little trembling glow in the pupils of her eyes, then in a really, really thin voice, she says, Don't cry. Very quietly, I say, Grandma, and I reach up to touch her but I don't stop crying. We stay that way for a while before I end up falling asleep on the zabuton.
♥ There's a black part of the asphalt, and there's a dark grey part, and they run into one another, and they feel hard under the soles of my shoes as ever.
The supermarket car park, jam-packed with cars. The rounded coloured neon letters on the dry cleaner's signboard. The face of a politician that completely fills a rectangular poster. The broken white line along the edge of the road, its paint worn off in places. The leaflets and advertisements overflowing the postbox of the old house where nobody lives any more. The weeds I don't know the name of. The man who sells vegetables stuffed in cardboard boxes form his truck. The bench where me and Tutti saw the Yorkshire terrier. The big barrel in someones garden that's full of water (I have no idea what it's for). The notices pinned to the community bulletin board. The tip of the faded surfboard sticking out from the balcony of a second-floor apartment. A potter plant. A tricycle in front of a door. A nameplate. A manhole. Gates and rubbish bins. I notice all these different things on the route back.
♥ The hem of her dress falls over my eyes, then blows away again, finally the town stops rushing by so quickly, and my body begins to slow down second by second. My legs become heavier and heavier, and with a great rumbling of the earth, my body is released into a big open space, and now I can't move on the bricks any more, and I just stand there breathing in and out. And as I watch my belly heaving, my eyelids become weighted down, and before long my giant eyes have stopped watching everything. Goodbye. The stars are setting, and in their last breath somebody tells me goodbye. Someone is saying goodbye, and now I can't move at all, and all I can do is hold my breath, and silently listen to the final sound, nothing to do but listen silently to the very last echo of that sound.
♥ After the funeral service, everyone eats a bento together, then we have to do some greetings, and then some of the relatives and Mum and me get into the hearse and go to the crematorium. Grandma looks very small and white wen she's brought back out. She's only bones and ash, which are gathered up and put into a pretty box. I hug her tightly to my chest.