Tatehata Akira / 建畠晢 – Ⅳ

Bach’s Scar
 

 

 

 

There was a thin scar. Her white skin was bathed in the morning light,

and transparent down hair softly enclosed its outline. I put the scar afloat on

her shoulder within the width of my fingers and knew that the width between

my forefinger and middle-finger was the same as the width of a distant grove.

We were on the morning terrace. Similar widths were in places other than the

grove.

“Bach,” she whispered in my arms. “Yesterday’s Bach’s scars.”

*

I can no longer finish reading difficult books. Without knowing it, I was

deteriorating. Youths “babble away” on Thursday—I put the from-morning-

to-evening novel back into my knapsack. “Do you know what I’ve been

reading all this week? Just catalogues and newspapers.” An exhibition on the

Asian Continent, and a photo of a female saint of small build… The morning

wind stopped for a moment, my aged words.

“I close my eyes and I’m alone,” she said.

*

Yes, if young this morning we would cross the bridge and go to the

airport on the prairie. She with a beige aviation cap, I with green goggles, we

would head for a light plane in the hangar. Yesterday’s girl who sank into a

Baroque musical score with her mouth shut would return me a refreshing

smile and the two of us would fly up in the clear morning sky where there are

no catalogues, no newspapers.

*

Bach’s thin scar. I put that shoulder scar within the width of my fingers

and was looking for “other” similar widths within my view from the morning

terrace devoid of conversation. Without throbbing, without anger… Even in

this limpid spectacle, I was repeating the gestures of “those who have ceased

to babble away even on Thursdays.”

“What are you measuring?” “The width of your shoulder scar. “You

are like a furniture maker.”