Munter 2: Mieko

He couldn’t find his shoes. They had disappeared. He found an old pair, but the laces on one of them had snapped. He looked in the bitsbobsdrawer in the kitchen to see if he could find any spare laces. There was nothing in the bitsbobsdrawer except rolls and rolls of sticky-tape, a pair of scissors, lots of pens, one half of a pair of gloves, and some J-cloths - the usual bits, bobs. He was hungry for a breakfast in Marlon’s Café and was determined to go, so he just stripped off a piece of sticky-tape and pasted it on top of the open shoe. He wouldn’t be out for too long anyway. He filled the bag for charity before leaving. As he was choosing which items of clothing to discard, he realised that he needed a whole new set of trouser-pairs because all the ones he owned were tattered and moth-eaten. He decided to give his entire wardrobe of trousers to the bag for charity except for the cords he was wearing. He knew that it would not have been a clever thing to throw away all of them. Even if he was going to buy a whole new set of trouser-pairs, he would need something to wear down to the shops. He left the bag for charity on his doorstep for collection later that day.

*

There was a nice breeze rubbing up against his hind legs. He had a sizeable tear on the back of his cords which he’d made no attempt to repair because he enjoyed the smoothing cold air on his ass. But still it was a sizeable tear and he was aware that people could see his bare ass. He should have donated these trousers to the bag for charity and kept the other pair he liked, the crumpled pinstripes. Too late now.

*

Munter was strolling along the street and was approaching the café when he suddenly noticed Judith Kingdom. She was standing by the door of the café fingering her left ear. Judith had long brown hair like a bronze waterfall in a painting of a tropical rainforest Munter had once seen. She was pale, skinny, pigeon-faced, and wore many black things. Munter had fallen for lots of pigeon-faced girls. Pigeon-faced girls played a mysterious part in his romantic history. She wasn’t wearing as much black anymore. She used to wear mostly black all the time, but now she was barely black. Maybe there was no call for so much black in her life at this time. She was wearing a spangly silver woollen hat as she fingered her left ear.

*

Munter and Judith became intimate one night and met with each other on subsequent occasions to kiss for long periods. It was a leisurely relationship that only lasted for a couple of weeks. She told him she was done kissing with him for long periods when she discovered through a friend who worked at the kiosk in the cinema that he’d behaved in a rude manner when he was told that he would have to wait for the hot dogs to be ready. Judith wasn’t going to stand for him being rude to her friends. Munter had not known that the girl serving the hot dogs was Judith’s friend. If he had known, he would certainly have been less rude. He may even have been not rude at all. Munter got impatient at the cinema. It was the only time he got impatient. He liked to be in time for the main feature and when something kept him late he became frustrated. Munter never really got frustrated anymore; he didn’t give frustration an opening – just sometimes when he was hungry.

&

Munter’s anger with Judith came from a moment of plagiarism in their past. She had stolen his idea - a title he had come up with for a possible cartoon, she had stolen it and used it for a definite play. She was a young playwright with a reputation in those circles. The title was Gender Bending and the World Ending. It wasn’t a great title, but it could have made for a funny little cartoon if Munter had ever gotten around to bringing it into cartoon reality. The play had been performed on radio earlier in the year and now it was soon to be performed on a stage. Munter had seen a few posters advertising this. Gender Bending and the World Ending. That was his, not hers. She didn’t ask Munter if she could use the title or not. She didn’t even give him the credit he deserved at all. It was no different from any other form of theft, as pure and simple as common swipery. Munter did not have many ideas anymore. He couldn’t recall too much before the title for the possible cartoon. Everything blank until that title turned up. He might never have had another idea. That’s what he had to deal with, you see. That’s what really got to him. He’d been chosen to be the vehicle for this idea and he may never have been considered a vehicle for anything else ever again. You can never tell when something is going to happen to you in the way of ideas. Damn Judith Kingdom! She didn’t even need his idea. Why had she stolen it from him? She could have survived without it. She was constantly being picked as a vehicle for ideas and even just mere notions. Munter was no longer classy enough to channel even just a mere notion to the world. He certainly had them in abundance. As did most humans. He lacked the ability to channel. Let her alone, he remarked to himself. What if she has done you some little injustice? At least she’s not using your idea to hurt people. That at least was a comfort to him.

*

With Judith and Munter, it simply wasn’t to be. It was a relationship that from its inception aimed perfectly at collapse. It was not a match made in any heaven you could have imagined. Munter could see that from the beginning, but of course he hoped, and eventually yearned greatly for more. Judith was antagonistic and not at all pleasant, but Munter could see only her deep caramel eyes and delicate figure. That was all he saw in her at first. But these were impossible things to overlook. [And her pigeon-face.] He watched Judith finally finish up with fingering her left ear. He stared at her pigeon-face for a moment. Then he stopped. Pigeon-faces affected him strongly. And hers immensely.

&

Munter realised he was in love with Judith three days before she called it a day because he was rude buying a hot dog. Those three days were wonderful. He realised he loved everything about her that everybody else loved, but also there were things about her that only he could see, and only he could love. He wanted to ring her parents and thank them for her. When she called it a day, he cried to himself in his room thinking about her pigeon-face. Although in his love, he had not wished to own or capture her in any way, the thought of her having sex with other men made him feel sick. He was in love with her, and they hadn’t even got to sex yet. Munter had really wanted to have sex with her. He had bought the condoms and everything; he’d outlined a plan for sex with her. Why had he been such a prude? That first night with her, he should have just acted like an animal, took her home and thrown her into his bed. But it had been difficult with her. He feared making a big error, one that would completely obliterate the possibility of anything continuing, let alone sex happening. Sex mattered, but was hampered initially by his overbearing attitude to the relationship. Falling in love was supposed to be a happy thing, but it was finally just sad for Munter. He wondered if falling in love was all that good at all. His heart said she was the one, but her heart said No. He couldn’t convince her heart. Her heart was a distant world, a planet he would never see. It’s true he felt annoyed when her heart said No. Because he wished it had said Yes. But there was nothing he could do about that except say Okay. Things were fine in Munter’s mind now. It’s funny how things work out like this, he remarked to himself. One minute you’re in love with someone, the next you couldn’t give a balls.

*

Munter waited for Judith to go. He was hungry. He wished she would hurry up and fuck off, so that he could go into Marlon’s Café and get busy with a plate of breakfast. He stood looking in a shop window for a bit waiting for her to leave. The display in the shop window looked very pretty. Everything was laid out in an attractive way and it made Munter want to go into the shop to have a look around, but then a car pulled up beside Judith and she got in and it drove off and the shop window was forgotten. He headed for Marlon’s Café.

Munter loved to watch the trees sway to the murmuring wind of winter and they were swaying good today, it being winter’s first really big day. He could tell it was winter’s first really big day. He had a feeling in his gut that autumn had just about moved on. He was near sure of it. Or maybe not. He suddenly got a slight jolt in his gut that told him autumn was still hanging around somewhere and not to be jumping the gun in respect of this.

*

The bad cold was gone. It had weakened and disappeared. He could feel its final moments. He could feel and nearly see the cold fleeing his nostrils like in one of those ads on the television where the vapour lines are visible. He didn’t think it would happen like the way it happened in the ads. He hadn’t thought those ads truthful in their illustration, but now with this they rang true for him. He would not be so judgmental about those ads in the future.

*

It started to rain pretty heavily as he ran towards the café. He didn’t have a hood on his jacket but he was comfortable because he knew that he most always carried a brown wool hat in his pocket. He checked to see. There was no hat. It didn’t matter. He was near at the café anyway. He ran a little faster.

*

The café’s were changing in Dublin. They looked more like bars than café’s now. And people just drank coffee, and if they ate at all, they ate only a sandwich, or something very light. People didn’t eat big fry breakfast meals as much anymore.
What’ll it be? asked the waiter.
A big plate of fry breakfast, answered Munter. I’ll have some toast, some egg, some rashers, some sausages, some beans, some tea…
We’re out of tea, said the waiter.
You’re out of tea?
Yes, we’re just out of teabags. We’ve sent somebody round to the shop to get some if you don’t mind waiting.
No, I’ll take some coffee then. Black as Hell.
Coffee it is.

*

The breakfast took a while to come. That annoyed Munter a little. But he fought off the hovering frustration. He beat a rhythm on the table to take his mind off the irritation rattling within. When the breakfast finally came, it was a nice one. Lately, Munter indulged heavily in all foods. He remarked to himself that over the last year or so he had grown hungrier as an individual and also rather impatient to say the least about it. He vowed one day to perform an investigation into this.

*

There was nobody in the café but Munter. He was the only person hungry. A feeling of loneliness came over him. It jingled around his skeleton. Then it jangled. It occurred to him suddenly that he had become rather lost in his own life story. There were people who were aware he existed, but if he hadn’t sought them out, they would not have sought him out. They weren’t really that interested in his coming, going, or being. There were a few neighbours he had become friendly with and though the instances were seldom he sometimes ran into an old friend from an earlier part of his life, but Munter was to each of these just somebody to say hello back to when he greeted them. There was nobody else. In his autobiography, he had suddenly become a minor character and these others had assumed the principal roles. His social life was based near solely on the possibility of bumping into an old acquaintance while wandering the streets alone. That wasn’t much of a social life. What people there were in his life may as well have been invisible travellers of the universe. His world was filled with phantoms, dead and alive. He started to feel really really sorry for himself and said a little prayer for his welfare.

*

Munter decided it was time to find out the truth about his ghostly co-inhabitant. He was in a good position to do so. He had a lead. He had a name. He even had an address. It might well not have proved significant, but it was something. He was on to something. He’d put it off for far too long. He carried in his pocket the significant envelope, the one a dreamlike happening had led him to believe mattered. Of the mysterious letters sitting on his mantelpiece holding perhaps the key to his enigmatic guest, there were ten in total. They had been posted to his house and each one was addressed to a different person, a former resident. It was a big house. It had once accommodated more than one person. There was only one living person living there now. That was Munter. The fact that he was living there alone was incredibly apparent to him. He felt a little like an unlighted lighthouse off a dark coast he'd once spotted from a great distance. Munter had bought the house from a man who mostly rented it out to students and young nurses who worked at a nearby hospital. It was a big house with a little yard space out back, although by no means a garden, where you could sit when it was sunny and everything. Unfortunately, Munter would soon have to abandon it. He’d considered renting it out to students and young nurses himself, but that would have been too much for him to manage. He had no talent for ownership. He always messed ownership up somehow. Best to avoid as much ownership as possible. He could not afford to own this house anymore having no longer a regular income from cartoons. It was nearly a year since his last full strip. That was a long time. If only Judith Kingdom hadn’t stolen Gender Bending and the World Ending. Who knows what could have happened with that? It may have brought him artistic serenity. His output over the last ten months had consisted of seven Christmas trees. He recalled the day as though it were a yesterday. He was sitting at his desk wielding a gleaming yellow pencil, an ivory white sheet of paper laid out before him, planning to cook up something of profuse wonder in illustrated form. But the incident merely resulted in seven bloody Christmas trees. They were Christmas trees without function. As he remembered, it wasn’t even Christmas or anything. They were seven Christmas trees with no Christmas to belong to.

(seven munter xmas trees)

The letters Munter had in his possession were addressed to:

Gavin Kinney
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Patrice Donovan
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Catherine Catchpole
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Alice Simons
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Abdul Khan
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Joseph Shywords
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Mieko Harata
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Raymond Pollard
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Padraig Healy
7 Cornwell Terrace…

Jessica Smith
7 Cornwell Terrace…

There might have been a hungry ghost in one of these people. It was possible. The house was only built four years ago. It was relatively brand spanking. It could have been Catherine, could have been Abdul, could have been Jessica, could have been Joseph…

*

Originally, Munter planned to look each of the names up in the phonebook and make some calls. He didn’t know what sort of calls he would make. He would have to pretend he was somebody else and make something pretty good up to get the right information because it would not be clear who the ghost was just by the phonecalls. The ghost may have even just been a friend of one of the people who had lived there; or very probably, it could have been a presence from before the house even stood. Maybe he would get nowhere with these names, but they were in his possession and he had to make good with them. However, Munter did not have to make a single phonecall, because something happened. The phonecalls were not necessary because the ghost decided to come forth and announce itself. A name was put forward to fuel his detective tendencies. Munter was at halfopeneyed on the dusty couch one afternoon when the tap-tap-tap came. He woke to find one of the letters had been placed on his lap. He could feel a ghost’s breath on his face. The ghost’s breath was like a layer of crisp wind gently meeting him on a tall mountain in his thoughts. He could have sworn too that he heard the name whispered aloud. He looked at the letter.

Mieko Harata
7 Cornwell Terrace…

*

Three people came into the café just as Munter was finishing his plate of breakfast. The waiter came darting over to him suddenly.
I found a teabag out the back, he said. Do you want it?
Has the fella not come back from the shop yet? It’s been an awful long time. There’s a wee shop just across the road there.
No, not back yet. Do you want this teabag or not?
No, I’ll make do with this coffee.
The three people who came into the café were a young man and two French ladies of sober cultivation. One of the ladies was older, about sixty; the other was quite a bit younger, in her late-twenties. The young man had a strong Dublin accent, was in his twenties and wearing a Nike top. He possessed a striking facial resemblance to the pop singer Robbie Williams. The French ladies were acting sort of strange. They were fidgeting, laughing way too loudly, and coughing into their coffees and saying things like ‘Son accent est hallucinant; tu comprends quelque chose toi? Moi pas un mot’. Munter drank his coffee and listened to the man say stupid things to the French ladies like about how big bottles of Coke were going cheap in one of the supermarkets.

*

Munter took the letter addressed to Mieko Harata out of his pocket. He had just recently opened it and looked inside, so it came out of the envelope without any hassle whatsoever. It was a birthday card from the girl’s mother. Munter had half-expected it to be written in Japanese, but it was written in English with just a little message in Japanese at the bottom, which he remarked to himself, was probably Japanese for Kisses and hugs, but may not have been.

Happy birthday Mieko

From mother

There was also an address on the back of the envelope. It made Munter think that maybe mother and daughter were not on very good terms at the time, maybe hadn’t seen each other in ages, and the mother was desperately trying to regain contact.

Nobuko O’Neill
12 North Waterwater Street

She didn’t live too far away.

*

There was a brown formation at the bottom of the cup. Munter noticed this when he finished his coffee. It was like congealed brown sauce or something. Munter did not even contemplate giving voice to complaint. It had been a splendid cup of coffee and for all he was aware the brown formation most likely contributed to that experience. The French ladies were laughing away as the young man with the Nike top continued his Dublin character. He was now telling them not to worry too much about the junkies in the area, that they were pretty much harmless if you gave them what they wanted. As Munter was leaving, the younger French woman looked at him and smiled. The look she gave him was one of those intrigued looks that tend to momentarily haunt a shy person. Munter hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been looking at Mieko’s birthday card. But from the look the French woman gave him as he was leaving he gathered she had probably been forwarding glances throughout the duration of their short time together. Munter got an idea as he was walking down the street away from the café. The French ladies were on holiday. They were quite wealthy. The older French woman was looking out for a suitably poor husband for her daughter because she was sick of aristocratic wankers. This was their scam: they asked random male passers-by for directions and then took them for coffee where the men were subjected to clandestine interviews. It would have pleased Munter to be picked for a grilling by those French ladies in a café. The young lady was exquisitely pretty, and perhaps highly illuminated. She would possibly have made the classic wife of all time. But he was too late. They'd picked Robbie Williams.