Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness Read Online Free PDF Page A

sort of sentence for one whose pangs of curiosity were as sharp as my own was the question. Question composition became my pastime, a meditative practice I undertook while shelving, while affixing labels to the spines of books, while feeding patron records to the steel teeth of the shredder like so many privately swallowed desires. My practice was not confined to idle moments at the library (even as my hands busied themselves, there was an element of idleness to my brain) but continued as I walked along the highway, as I stood at the small stove frying noodles for Maria and Var (I began, perversely, cooking Var’s favorite foods as a form of penance for sins I hadn’t committed), as I lay next to Maria, waiting for sleep to release me from one reality and take me to the next, my eyes, without glasses, straining to see the stars whose magnificent designs might bear for me some message.
What makes you happy? What makes you laugh? What do you wish you could change?
The practice ceased when he appeared and resumed when he was gone. Certainly I must have thought of other things between encounters, but I can’t now remember what.
    I quickly ruled out the obvious, questions the answers to which I could not have wanted more, but could not, without violating one or more laws of etiquette, ask. They were the questions that cut with dizzying speed to the chase:
Are you available? May I kiss you? May I make love to you now in the stacks?
I gained new respect for those men who thought little of posing such questions on a regular basis and to complete strangers. The very men I once felt assaulted by now struck me as boldly in touch with Fate and the Implications of Time. If not now, when? The bomb of time was ticking!
    In trying to slow my frantic pace, I had done a series of calculations, all of which returned the same discouraging result. There was no time for a leisurely courtship, a long engagement, a four-year college career. Within a year, the trim figure I had managed to maintain would surely sag, my skin’s elasticity would, without warning, snap. Within five, I would be infertile. Within ten, my hair would be white. Within fifteen, I’d be old enough to withdraw money from my retirement account. There was no time for patience or common sense or delayed gratifications of any kind. The time was now and there was much to be discovered.
    There were the questions pertaining to his person.
What’s your favorite film and why? Who’s your favorite filmmaker? Are you close to your father?
There were the questions pertaining to his whereabouts.
Where do you live? Do you have a job? Are you in college? Do you have plans to leave the island?
All of which I intended to ask at some point but which seemed too mundane, necessary but not revealing enough. In the beginning I felt I shouldn’t waste my one question (though perhaps I might squeeze in two) on any query that didn’t reveal something intimate about him or that might result in a “yes” or “no” answer.
    Everything was different in real time. I had finally settled on a question, one I hoped would extract the maximum amount of meaning while necessitating a minimum amount of effort on his part:
Would you rather be: a) a filmmaker, b) a film critic, or c) a film star?
With the utterance of a single letter I stood to learn something essential about his self-concept and his conception of the world, not to mention something about the nature of his relationship to film. (I had become convinced that he was no ordinary viewer of films but watched films with purpose, with a certain destiny in mind. That is, I fancied him a filmmaker. Not one who currently makes films but one who will grow up to do so. Part of the appeal of youth is its immense sense of possibility.)
    My theory was corroborated when, during his next visit, he borrowed neither a film nor a book but
The Odyssey
and
Crime and Punishment
on CD. As I watched him set the plastic cases sheepishly (as if I would be judging his