In the first part of my life with Sotatsu, he lived in a cell in a jail where the sun came south through the window on an avenue all its own where it was forced to stoop and stoop again until when it arrived at its little house it was hardly the sun at all, just a shabby old woman. Yet we were always looking for her, this sun, when she would come, always eager to have her meager presents, her thin delineations. I would say, oh, Sotatsu, oh my Sotatsu, today you are like a long-legged cat of the first kind. He would smile and laugh, meaning, Joo, I have nothing to do with such a cat as you describe.
In the first part of my life with Sotatsu, he lived in a basket on the back of a wolf that was running westward. I was a flea in the wolf’s coat, and had all the privileges of my grand station. I could visit the prisoner. I could speak to the prisoner. I made the wolf aware of his important profession. I said to the wolf one day, actually, I said, you are carrying a most important prisoner, you know, away beyond the frontier. He said, flea of my coat, it is your work to tell me such things, and mine not to listen.
In the first part of my life, I told Sotatsu everything about myself. I told him I was the youngest of fourteen children (a lie). I told him I had a dress that I wore as a child with a fourteen-foot train and the other children would carry it, so becoming I was. I told him I had a course in fishing where seven would stand in a stream using fourteen hands to weave a rope and the fish would leap up and into the canvas bags we wore on our waists. Every lie was a lie of fourteen. I wanted him to know about me. I said what was true also. I said, I have seen nothing that was worthy of me until you were lying in this cell. I said, I am not my surroundings or my fate and you are not who anyone says. I said, I will say things and you can stop me, but no one else can. I will be a speaker and I will speak on all subjects like a tinny radio rustling in a shop window. I will make up all the world’s smallest objects and doings. I will confuse them, muddle them like a jar, and produce them at odd times. This will be the tiniest edge, the tiniest corner of our love: so much you have yet to expect from me.
In the first part of my life, I knelt by the bars of a cell where my love lay and I called as a woman calls to pigeons when she is old and cannot see them. I made shooing noises with my mouth, for I was sure someone said once, someone said such noises would make birds come to you.
I draped myself on the bars like a blanket. I cried for him. I smiled and laughed. I was a playhouse of a hundred plays where there are no actors to do any but the one play, that first play, made when the theater, unbuilt, is first considered. If we should have a theater, this is the play we would do, and all we would need is one actor and a cloth for her to place before her face. I placed so many cloths, and taught my Sotatsu all manner of things that no one knew, not me or anyone. These were true things in our life, but empty in the common air.
In the first part of my life, I was stopped on the steps of the jail by a woman, my mother, who said she had heard about where I was going, heard about who I was seeing, heard strange things that she would learn the truth of. This woman, my mother, when she stopped me on the steps of the jail, I felt I was in a history of classical Greece, and she was my deceiver. Good mother, I told her. A person visits a friend and is unchanged.
In the first part of my life, I was asked to appear in an old film by an early director. This was filmed many years ago, he told me. You are just right for the part. There will be many scenes that are nighttime scenes, but we film those during the day, for we need all the light that can be mustered. We need as much light as possible to see, because we must be clear. We can afford for nothing to be hidden.
The first part of my life came to an end when Sotatsu was moved to the jail where they would starve him.
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In the second part of my life, as you know, dear friend, my Sotatsu was starved almost absolutely to death by the guards who would give him no food. They said to him, you must ask us for your food. He told me, they say I must ask them for the food. I said, you? You? Ask them for food? He agreed that he would never do so. I am not in charge of my life that way, he said. He said all this by smiling. I said all this by winking. I stood at the cage in my coat and held the bars with both hands. I could see he was very hungry, and thinner.
In the second part of my life, my Sotatsu was thin almost to breaking. He had become like the edge of a hand. I wanted to tell him to eat, but I did not. Instead, I began also not to eat. I said, I will also not eat, but I was not as strong as he. When the dizziness started, and it became hard for me to rise, I knew: I would fail him. Even if I was with him in not-eating, I would be failing in my visits. I could no longer visit him, with such strength as would be remaining. So, I took to eating again, just enough, and visiting.
They would drag him off to a trial. The trial had begun and they wanted him to say things, so they were starving him and speaking to him, examining him, telling him things, asking for his signature. His hands were trembling even when they lay still. His eyes were open — they had stopped closing, I suppose this happens when one doesn’t eat. Finally, it was enough. They brought him food and he began to eat. Even once they were bringing it, though, he could not eat it. His throat had forgotten its purpose. The food just wouldn’t go in. So, it had to be retaught and this took a few days.
In the second part of my life, my love was rescued from starvation by a series of bowls of food. I did not ever see him eat. Such things were not allowed. But, I saw him standing one day. I arrived in the morning, quite early, and he was standing when he could not stand for weeks.
My dear, I called, my standing dear. How well you stand.
He looked at me and explained it, that he had begun to eat once more. That he had broken them. The trial was over, too. I knew that, and I was glad of it. I had the newspapers in stacks. I read them over and over. I had found the place where he would be on the map, and looked up the route.
My dear, I told him that last time, I will join you in the new place.
That was the end of the second part of my life.
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In the third part of my life, I traveled to a prison that was built underground in order to avoid the moon. Jito Joo was the name I would give, and they would allow me to climb through a narrow aperture. They would show me into a hallway and down a hallway. They would show me to a roped-off area, where little rooms knelt like parishioners, each one bending its head. When the guards pulled a lever, the rooms would open, as many as they liked, or as few. I was allowed to go in, suddenly. I who had never been allowed in, I was suddenly allowed in. Sotatsu was sitting on a pallet. He was staring at his hands. He did not look at me. This was the first time I had seen him, I think, in my entire life, such was my feeling. I said, I am looking at him and he is here. He looked up, hearing my voice, and I sat there by him, my arm brushing against his side and shoulder.
Where will we go?
In the third part of my life, I practically lived in the cell with Sotatsu. Properly speaking, I, of course, was far away, mostly. I was mostly on the bus, going to the prison, on the bus leaving the prison, in the house with Kakuzo, sitting, eating, walking on the streets of our village, muttering greetings. I was mostly carrying on that way. But still, as I say, I practically lived in the cell. Every chance I got, I snuck away there. I was like a child with a hiding place. Where is Joo? Where has Joo gone? Joo may be found in the death cell of a prison with her beloved.