The window in her hotel room was wet, streaked with raindrops, dotted lines sliding slowly down the pane, moving in fits and starts, their course interrupted abruptly for no apparent reason. Marie had just hung up the phone and was standing motionless at the large bay window, pensive, looking out gravely at Shinjuku’s administrative center, and she watched the city slowly vanish under the rain and fog, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular, beset with that dreamy melancholy incited by the passage of time, by the realization that something is coming to a close, and that, at every second, little by little, the end is approaching, the final moments of our loves and our lives. Presently, an hour before leaving Tokyo, she thought about me — the person she had broken up with in this very place, in this hotel room we’d shared the night we got to Japan, this room where we’d made love for the last time, this bed where we’d loved each other, this unmade bed behind her where we’d clawed and held each other. Marie would have liked to erase me from her thoughts, now and forever, but she knew quite well this wasn’t possible, that I could appear in her mind at any moment in spite of her wish, subliminally, a sudden immaterial memory of my personality, my tastes, a small detail, my way of perceiving the world, an intimate memory to which I was inextricably bound, for she realized that, even when absent, I continued to live on in her mind, to haunt her thoughts. Of my current location she hadn’t the slightest idea. Was I still in Japan, or had I too changed my plans and taken an earlier flight to Europe? And why hadn’t I tried to contact her? Why hadn’t I called or written since my return from Kyoto? She didn’t know, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me, understand, never — enough of me now.
When, in the afternoon, Jean-Christophe de G. came to pick up Marie at the hotel, she wasn’t ready, her room was still a mess, the bed unmade, her suitcases flung open. Marie had arrived in Japan with three hundred pounds of luggage distributed unevenly among various suitcases and trunks, hatboxes and poster tubes, and, although able to leave some bags and suitcases in Tokyo (the exhibition at the Contemporary Art Space of Shinagawa would last several more months), she’d nevertheless accomplished the feat of returning with as much as she came, if not in weight then at least in volume and number of bags, accumulating, like natural outgrowths of her suitcases, a whole host of sacks and bags of all sizes, in leather, in canvas, or in paper, some sturdy, white, and rectangular, with tan handles of reinforced plastic, others loose and sagging and filled with knickknacks, Takashimaya’s decorative logo of blooming red roses adorning the front, stuffed with presents she received or planned to give, purchases of wild silks and other fine material, obis and trinkets, diverse trifles and souvenirs, paper lanterns, seaweed, tea, in bulk or in individual bags, and even fresh products, small vacuum-packed containers of fugu sashimi kept for the past couple of days in her hotel room’s mini-bar among canned beer and tiny bottles of alcohol. Jean-Christophe de G. called her room twice from the lobby, urging her, tactfully, to make haste, reminding her of how little time they had, the horse and cars were waiting. Marie then had a sudden spurt of energy, dashing back and forth through the room, her arms waving and flitting this way and that as she threw her things together in a rush of panic and goodwill (Marie always made up for being late with a final and sudden push before the finish line, constantly arriving at meetings flustered and out of breath, in a show of haste and with a dramatic entrance, even though often an hour late), then, returning to her natural pace, she finished packing absently, carefully placing her last few things in her bags, looking over her belongings arrayed on the large unmade bed, listlessly placing her bags at the door, without of course closing anything (Marie always left everything open, windows, drawers — it was exasperating, she’d even leave books open, turning them over on her night table next to her when she was done reading).
Waiting for Marie in the lobby, Jean-Christophe de G. settled final matters pertaining to the horse’s transport. He was sitting on a couch in the lobby in the company of four Japanese men, each with a laptop and electronic planner, sent there to replace the former trainer’s crew and to make sure the horse made it to the airport and past customs safe and sound. The four Japanese men all wore navy-blue blazers with pockets bearing the crests of various private clubs and were discussing practical matters with Jean-Christophe de G., shuffling through paperwork and certificates that they studied in a whisper. The horse trailer was parked at the hotel’s entrance, its long and still silhouette could be seen through the lobby’s bay windows, its aluminum body just the same as a rock star’s trailer, with two barred windows on each side, the whole grooved mass gleaming under the golden lights of the hotel’s entrance. The trailer’s back door was open and its ramp lowered to air out the rear and give the thoroughbred some fresh air, and three men in light jackets, hired hands or assistants, stood guard at the trailer’s entrance next to the driver, an old Japanese man in a jumpsuit, starched and gray, opened at the neck to reveal the knot of his tie, smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the hotel’s surroundings. As the wait went on longer than anticipated, the workers took advantage of the lull to change the horse’s water, one of the elegant Japanese men in a navy-blue pocket-crested blazer quietly slipped away into the lobby with a metal bucket, new and shiny, engraved with a blazon and initials, similar in color to the trailer, as though it was an accessory of the latter, one piece of a larger set, and he returned from the lobby with a slow-moving, ceremonial gait, carrying the bucket back to the trailer, his hands covered in clear antiseptic gloves (who knows whether he filled up the bucket in the hotel restroom, or if he had emptied out its contents, manure and urine-soaked hay, thus cleaning out the bed of the trailer).
As soon as Jean-Christophe de G. saw Marie enter the lobby — she was walking slowly, her course unswerving and her eyes pale in the chandelier’s light, a vacant look on her face, trailing in her wake a host of hotel employees in black livery who followed her with two golden luggage carts, a varied heap of bags piled high on each — he interrupted his improvised meeting and stood up quickly to greet her, politely offering to carry her small plastic sack of fugu sashimi. We have to leave right now, we’re late, he told her, uncertain of what he should do with the sack of fugu sashimi he now held in his hand, and Marie didn’t respond, she didn’t say anything, followed him silently, insouciantly — Marie, fixing her gaze on nothing in particular, in skirt and black boots, her long leather coat draped over her arm, its loose belt dangling and dragging on the floor behind her. A rented Japanese limousine awaited them outside the hotel (with large cream leather seats, small embroidered coverings over the headrests, and an adjustable armrest with electronic buttons inscribed with the word MAJESTA), and several hotel employees assisted in unloading Marie’s many and disparate bags, placing them in the trunk and front seat of the limousine, while the four Japanese men in navy-blue pocket-crested blazers gathered their belongings and got into a small minibus parked nearby, its doors bearing some sort of golden insignia. There were so many bags on the luggage carts that the employees had to load some in the minibus. Sitting shoulder to shoulder in their narrow seats, impassive among a growing mass of beribboned boxes, designer handbags, tiny frilled sleeves for small precious items, the four Japanese men watched as the bellhops continued to place bags by their sides. Perhaps they were lawyers or jurists, or members of a Japanese horse-racing society, one of them had his hair dyed and sported a pocket handkerchief of bright mauve, which spilled elegantly out of his chest pocket (the sign of an artist, bohemian, veterinarian?).