Palimpsest

She chose the Silver Pavilion out of all the temples. It had been her mother’s favorite, and so, like an inheritance, was hers. It was shaded in autumn leaves so bright the trees seemed to bleed. The persimmons were so golden they hurt her eyes, and the sun stabbed at her through the blazing fruit. She had a terrible dry taste in her mouth, as though she had drunk too much, though she had had nothing but water since Tokyo.

The temple grounds were deserted. She settled onto the grass a ways off from the great silver temple. She watched it, how dark and mottled its silver leaf was, centuries of tarnish which the monks, in their inscrutable perambulations, had never polished, settling on the holiness of obscured metal. It looked like the crouched and looming house of a succubus from one of her mother’s books. She almost expected some yellow-eyed monster with wings of patchworked sin to snap open the door and screech some infernal koan at her. Yet Sei liked the mossy, irritable temple, which seemed honest, unflappable, like an old, hunchbacked elephant.

She opened Kenji’s book on her lap and flipped through the pages. She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.

In Osaka, I heard a very strange account of the antique initiation rituals of conductors. I was told by a retired man who was adamant I not reveal his name that before the war, when new conductors were assigned their first train, they were brought on board on a very cold winter’s night when the train was stopped and no one lingered in the cars. The senior engineers gathered tightly in the conductor’s cabin. They put the earnest young man’s hands onto the control console and anointed them with viscous oil from the engine before pulling loose several wires and tying them into knots around the man’s fingers. He was then told the secret name of the train, which he could reveal to no one. They cut into the third finger of his left hand, mingling his blood with the oil, which was then returned to circulation in the engine. In this way the train became the beloved of the conductor, and the man who told me this story said that it felt very much like a grave wedding service.

Sei’s hands throbbed, feeling the open, oil-spattered wires beneath her own hands, a phantom console alive beneath her. The wind picked up and rustled her blue hair, blowing it over her cheeks. She might have remained in such a pose until the sun slid away below the tin rooftops, her hands frozen over the book, had a young woman not sat down next to her without warning, still dressed in her school uniform, her hair hanging in a long, loose braid. Sei started and scowled, but she uttered nothing, as ma

“It’s fu

Sei blinked.

“My name is Yumiko,” the girl said helpfully.

Sei frowned further. “I haven’t been to the Golden Pavilion yet,” she said, handing over her grudging answer like bus fare. Yumiko shook her dark head.

“If you do, you’ll see what I mean.”

Yumiko was silent then. She stared at Sei for a long while before gri

“What isthat?” she cried, leaping up from the grass. The black book tumbled to the ground. “Tell me!”

Yumiko closed her mouth with a gentle little sound. “Don’t you know?” she said, her brow creased as a page.

“No, of course not, how could I?”

The girl stood, her braid slipping entirely loose, and stood very close, so close they might have kissed. She reached for Sei’s blouse and began to slide the buttons from their stitched eyelets. Sei pushed her away, but Yumiko smiled.

“Please,” she murmured.

Yumiko opened the crisp black shirt like a theater’s curtains. There, on Sei’s skin, were the strange dark lines, snaking across her sternum, arcing slightly onto the curve of her breasts. It seemed as though a great insect had attached itself to her, to suckle and grow.

Yumiko did not step away. She cradled Sei’s face in her manicured hand and leaned back, stretching, a smug, satisfied cat.

“I would like to be a novice here,” she said airily. “I would like to live in the temple and drink bamboo tea every day, and eat only seven grains of rice until I was thi

Sei stared.

“What happened to me?” she whispered. “Who are you?”

“What happens to any of us? Novices all.”

“That’s not an answer! How did you know? Just walking up to a stranger in a temple, how did you know I had that thing on me?”

“It’s not a thing, you know. It’s . . . like a ticket. And once you’ve bought your ticket, and been to the circus, ridden the little red train, then you can sort of see other people who’ve done it, too. They . . . walk a certain way. Smell a certain way. Their whole body becomes like an accent. And you always recognize your own accent. I recognized you.”

Sei’s cheeks burned. She looked at the grass, and then at the sky. She didn’t want to ask, like some stupid club girl begging for drugs, or a child begging for the candy she just knows will make her life complete.

“How do I get back there?”

Yumiko looked at her sideways, puzzled, as though Sei should know this, as though she had asked how to count to ten— basic stuff, kid! Who brought you up?But Yumiko sidled close and lowered her voice until it was no more than a dragonfly’s cough. She let her lips brush Sei’s ear. “Come with me. Peregrine and 125th is on my tongue. I’ll meet you there. We’ll take the subway to the end of the world!”

She kissed her then, and the Silver Pavilion glowed dully behind them. Yumiko slid her hand under Sei’s skirt and pressed her fingers against her urgently, furtively—there was no one around them, but the sun was frosty and white on them, and they were so bare. Sei opened her legs to allow the girl’s hand inside her and shut her eyes against the warm air, the red leaves, the silver temple. She could not draw breath for the taste of sassafras and rum in Yumiko’s mouth, the sharpness of her small white teeth. Sei felt herself flip over—white to black, disappearing into the board, lost.