Munter 3: Nobuko

He was in the centre of town walking over the Halfpenny bridge when his shoe came off. The sticky-tape had loosened.
Could you spare some change for a cup of tea, pal? asked a shivering beggar who was sitting on the bridge pressing passers-by for cash.
Munter took out a few coins and gave them to the beggar.
Thanks, said the beggar. I see you’re falling apart there.
Yes, said Munter. My shoes are old.
He turned back to pick up the shoe. He tried to fasten the sticky-tape back on but it was not sticking too well. He thought about going into a Spar to buy some new sticky-tape but then he realised that he had no more cash left in his pocket after the breakfast and the beggar. He couldn’t ask the beggar for his coins back, could he? He had to go home. It was a pity because he was enjoying the stroll in the cool weather. He was also beginning to find the courage to visit this woman, Nobuko O’Neill, to ask her about her daughter, Mieko. He pressed the tape down on the shoe, so that it was glued as best as could be and continued onwards adopting a soft and slow style of walk.

*

Munter was near the Grove bookshop, so he decided to stop in for a bit and read a chapter of something before he went back home. He was sure the sticky-taped shoe could survive that. The Grove bookshop was small, but they had a lot of books. Munter thought it was amazing they could cram so many books in there. They had a coffee machine also and some chairs and tables and you could sit and read your books there if you wanted to. Munter didn’t do this. He liked to stand while he was reading. That’s what he was used to doing in other bookshops. This bookshop was designed to attract a finer clientele, people with nice long coats and opinions on all manner of things, who went home to tastefully-peopled dinner parties every evening. But to the management of the bookshop’s dissatisfaction, it only attracted a particularly removed type of browser, the type not accustomed to long coats, with an opinion or two on only a number of things, the type who went home to nothing but ghosts.

*

The girl who worked in the bookshop was pretty but she didn’t like Munter because she once caught him looking at her breasts. She appeared to enjoy it when others looked at her breasts, but not Munter for some reason. Munter was very embarrassed about that. Her breasts were very large and fascinating. Munter couldn’t help looking at them. They were great. Her boyfriend was always leaning against the counter as she served customers. He was aware that she was kind of on display working in the Grove and he kept a close watch each day. Munter saw a lot of this in the shops he went into where pretty girls worked. Their boyfriends were sure to be standing nearby on guard. There were so many books in the bookshop Munter wanted to read but he couldn’t read them all because he could only read the first chapters. He was lazy, and his attention frequently faltered. He started at C in the fiction section. This was where he always started. He had no idea why. He just found himself looking in the C section first of all. There were so many things in his life that puzzled him and this was very much one of them. He made a decision there and then to start at A, even if just for once, so he took a few steps back and looked along the A shelves. Achebe, Adams, Amis. He knew some of the names, but most of them were completely new. All books were treated with respect in the Grove no matter what colour or creed they were. There was no racism. There was only brotherhood. Romance shared shelf space with Horror, Classics lived alongside Bawdy Humour. All books lived as one. It was an extraordinary society. We could learn a lot from the way these books live, thought Munter. Austen. Auster. The creases in the spines interested Munter. Because of the creasing, some of the books looked skeletal and rickety, like old men lining up to collect pension or something else maybe that old men were inclined to line up for. He wasn’t getting anywhere at A so he moved onto B. Ballard, Borges, Rhys. Wait a minute. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys had strayed onto the B shelf. It may have been having an affair with Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille, Munter remarked to himself. Blue of Noon looked like a book that had a flair for affairs. He took Wide Sargasso Sea and moved down to the R section to put it in its proper place. Once Wide Sargasso Sea had been returned to its rightful home, Munter chose to stay at R. He didn’t fancy looking at C at that moment.

&

Radcliffe, Roth, Runyon. Apart from authors such as these, Munter wasn’t expecting to meet somebody at R, especially not a living human being. He’d never met a living human being before at R. He’d met living human beings at A, at C, at G, and at T, but never at R. The living human being he met was an old friend from his year of college life in Newry called Sadie. It took him by surprise. He nearly fell down and rolled out the door with the shock of it. He hadn’t seen Sadie in a while. They had met each other a number of times since college, but these were short fleeting moments, meetings in the street and encounters in bookstores such as this one. The last time he’d met her it had been in another bookstore a few years ago, at C. She’d been looking for a book by John Cowper Powys, but she wasn’t sure if he was in C or P. Munter said to look in P, but she’d already looked. The bookstore simply didn’t have any John Cowper Powys in stock.

*

The first time Munter saw Sadie she was sitting right across from him on the bus on his first day going to college. She was wearing a red raincoat and she looked a lot younger than she actually was with the hood up over her head and her arms folded over her chest in a youthful and defiant way. Munter was glad he’d come out today. It had been a long time since he’d bumped into anybody of his acquaintance. Munter was always struck by Sadie’s voice. It was a way-way-out-of-town accent. It could be devastating if she had a grudge against you. She could cut you down to a certain size and then her accent would come along and suddenly pummel you to nothing. People went serious when she addressed them. Munter loved that about her voice. She used it well.
How’s it going, Munter?
Not too bad, he replied. Not at all. And you?
I’m absolutely grand, said Sadie. Taking it very easy these days.
Oh, same as myself. Talk about taking it easy.
Oh, right. Yeah. Are you still drawing those comics?
No, I haven’t been working too much lately. I stopped about a year ago, haven’t really got back to it since.
Aw, that’s a shame. I used to adore your wee cartoons when we were at college. Rodney Rude. The Abductor. Toilet Duck. Mikhail the Russian Ballbreaker. Those were so funny.
I’m shocked you remember all those names, Sadie. That was a long time ago. I can’t remember some of them.
Oh, I recall them all nearly. There was the Shaolin Simpleton, Evil Amon. I loved them. I was a real big fan. You always knew that.
Yeah. I’ve done quite a few more since those.
Have you? What have you done lately?
Well, the last one I did was a comic called No Popinjay.
Sadie stared blankly at Munter when he said No Popinjay. He had a feeling she would have heard about it, or known something about it. Sadie was fairly clued in. She had once written in one of his notebooks at college, You’re the next Charles Schultz, Munter! It made him feel good and he decided to dedicate a comic book to her one day; shit, he forgot about doing that dedication.

&

Eh, No Popinjay? asked Sadie. But wasn’t that Katinka Otter who did that?

Munter realised then he hadn’t told anybody about No Popinjay. It was a series he’d published in a magazine in England under the pseudonym Katinka Otter. It was eventually turned into a book. It brought huge acclaim for Katinka Otter. Munter couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. He had a lot of fun creating it, but it wasn’t exactly Don Quixote, or one of those other great things that had managed to find an outlet and an amenable audience. No Popinjay was not a classic, would never be a classic, but nevertheless it became something briefly praised, discussed, and loved. Munter’s drawings were not even very good. He couldn’t draw backgrounds. He could only draw the foregrounds. Munter enjoyed the bliss of anonymity provided by Katinka. He had kept it secret for nearly a year. It was out now; it had slipped out in a moment of flash vanity brought on by Sadie listing all of his old cartoons.
Eh, yeah. It was a pseudonym I worked under.
Oh my God, Munter. I can’t believe it. Now that I think about it, yeah, it had to have been you. Some of the drawings, yeah. They did kind of remind me of the things you used to do in college. My God, Munter! That’s amazing! I can’t believe you’re Katinka Otter!
It was a strange feeling. He’d never before felt the desire to reveal the truth about the pseudonym, but now he felt like a great weight had been lifted off him. Perhaps it was just the right time to do it. The present mood called for it maybe.
Why haven’t you told anybody? asked Sadie. Why doesn’t everyone know? Jesus, Munter, that’s something, that is. That’s a famous comic. Well, pretty famous. You should be famous.
I don’t think about that anymore. I used to think about it. Now I don’t.

*

Munter liked Sadie very much. She was a bubbly, wonderful person. She had once been a radio personality, not a famous celebrity or anything, just a regular voice on a morning show. She had an intoxicating disposition and it came through. She was only audible for a few minutes at a time, but her manner of being brightened up the airwaves. It takes a special something to be a radio personality. You must have a warm and genuinely friendly voice. Sadie had this. Her responses were positive and carried out very naturally. She did the traffic report during a popular breakfast programme and also stayed around afterwards to gossip with the presenter and to poke fun at newspaper stories. She told everyone, including Munter, to listen in one morning because of it being her last day. The presenter of the show was an expert radio personality. His name was Nick. He was completely aware of his radio personality and that could be quite irritating. His radio personality may have been taught to him on a special course because it was extremely shrill. He faked an earthy streetwise thing, but was as bland and dim as the asinine pop music he played. It was recognised by those who loathed him that, being the foundation of the show, he was inclined to heighten buoyancy levels in order to guard his space, but there was something not at all humouring about the way in which he guarded this space. He was too much-too much. Even for Sadie. This was understood fully by everyone during her final appearance on the breakfast show.
I’ve been flicking through the Irish Times this morning, Sadie, and do you know what?
What’s what, Nick?
Well, Sadie. On Page 4, there is a picture of the ugliest puppy I believe I have ever…
Hold on, Nick. I have something to say.
Yeah? Eh, well then, Sadie. Fire away!
Nick, fuck you, just so you know!

*

Munter went home after the Grove bookshop. He said goodbye to Sadie and left. Before they parted company, Sadie said to him, You know, you should really get yourself a new pair of shoes. Her goodbye haunted him. Lots of goodbyes haunted him. Some of the goodbyes haunted him more dreadfully than the ghosts did. Munter did most all of the helloing and goodbyeing in his life. It was depressing, but if he didn’t do it, he would be completely alone with those hellos and goodbyes and that would have been just plain stupid.

*

He was glad to get home, to get inside, and off with the pathetic sticky-taped shoe. He hated having to walk so cautiously. The bag for charity had been collected by the time he arrived home. He’d been hoping he could swap over his torn cords for the crumpled pinstripes before they came to take the bag away. Too late. As he closed the door behind him, he stood in the doorway for a moment and sighed a great sigh of thwarted intentions and then followed it with a short sigh of whatevers. He was thinking he would like to get some sleep, so he went straight to bed.

Munter opened his eyes. He could hear the O’Rourke’s, his new neighbours, having an argument next door. He was surprised to hear them argue. He hadn’t thought quarrelling an aspect of their relationship. He couldn’t fathom it. But he knew too that such things, these married couples, could not be easily summed up. Munter had a lot of respect for the O’Rourke’s and on numerous occasions turned down the music on his stereo, which was often loud guitar music from the seventies, to avoid causing them grief. The ghost liked the loud guitar music from the seventies. Munter could sense spiritual gyrations in the house. One time he stopped the loud guitar music, put on some classical music, and turned it up hoping the O’Rourke’s could hear next door. He wanted to impress them. Then he turned it down again realising the pretentiousness of this and then took off the music completely because the whole thing depressed him. He wanted the O’Rourke’s to like him. They were a nice couple. He lay for a bit thinking about them. The O’Rourke’s. They were nice. Roy O’Rourke had a commanding way about his person, but he was not overbearing. Munter could tell also that he was a deeply forgiving man from the way he smiled and nodded. Munter could tell a lot from a smile and a nod. Roy’s wife, Rita, had been so pleasant to Munter on their first meeting that he wanted to give her some money to say thanks. He reached into his pockets and everything and searched for change, but acknowledged then that this would not have been an apt way of displaying affection and there was nothing there in his pockets to give her anyway. He hoped to see the O’Rourke’s often now that they were his neighbours. He closed his eyes again.

*

Munter slept for five minutes. A lot happened in the world during those five minutes. Birth, Youth, Love, Age, Death. It all happened. Munter had been sleeping. He got up and went downstairs to fix the tattered shoe. Before going to the shoe, he spent some more time looking for his lost pair of good shoes. He searched in all the same places he’d searched previously in case he’d missed something the first time, but he could not find them. What he did find however was the brown wool hat he usually kept in the pocket of his jacket, the one he’d been looking for earlier when it started to rain. It was underneath the dusty couch. He put it in his pocket and went to the tattered shoe. He decided to clothe the shoe entirely in tape this time. He didn’t care if he got funny looks on the street. He didn’t want to come unstuck again. He’d made up his mind to pay a visit to Nobuko O’Neill. There was courage in his being and it was the right time to do it. As soon as he’d had a cup of tea.

*

He put the kettle on and sat down. There was a book on the dusty couch called The Great Masters. It was a book of artworks. The artists were mostly from the time of Impressionism, among them Cezanne, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh. Munter liked to look at the Monet pictures more than anything else. He liked Monet’s water-lillies and the many different and similar colours and kinds. When the kettle stopped, he got up to pour himself a cup of tea. He only had three cups and they were all dirty, so he had to wash one of them. It didn’t wash too easily. It was a stubborn kind of dirty cup. It had only been used once, so why was it being so stubborn? Munter scrubbed it really hard and didn’t let up until the cup was spotless. Then he had his tea. He hoped the cup wouldn’t hold a grudge for scrubbing it so hard, then to avenge itself in the guise of a bad cup of tea. But the tea was fine. He continued looking at the book of master paintings. He was looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The picture had a strong emotional effect on him. His whole body tingled with excitement. He couldn’t explain it.

*

He got the impression the ghost was sleeping. He was so used to its presence that he believed he could sense when something was near. He could feel when the ghost was walking around. One time when he got the feeling inside that there was something close by he made for the kitchen to see if anything was going on there. Sure enough, an invisible force was opening one of the cupboard doors. Munter rushed over and slammed it shut. He had some ginger nut biscuits in there. The ghost was obviously after them. Happy that he’d saved his ginger nuts, Munter returned to the sitting room to find the shepherd’s pie he’d been eating gone.

*

Munter put the television on. There was always something on. It intrigued him. He had often heard people say, There’s nothing on television tonight. He could not understand why such an expression existed. Why were they saying there’s nothing on? There was always something on. He could perceive that the majority of programmes to be seen did nothing more than eat away at the contemporary human brain, but he didn’t mind so much. He was getting bored of the contemporary human brain. He could have sat in his home all day long watching a show that was simply about the making of a television show. That’s what was on now. The show was about how the people behind the scenes coped with the pressures of their job. Most of them did yoga to keep themselves in a calm state of mind.

*

Munter turned off the television. The show was over. He’d enjoyed it very much. He got up from the dusty couch. The council of Munter had ruled it was time to go.

*

As he was leaving the house, Munter met Roy O’Rourke. Roy was just coming back from buying some groceries. Munter noticed a baguette sticking out of the plastic bag. It made him hungry.
Hello there, buddy, said Roy.
Hello Roy. How are you?
I’m fine. Just picking up some things, you know.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, funny seeing you out and about. I thought you were the professional couch potato.
Oh, yeah. No, I’ve been up and about all day actually. I’ve been out and back and now I’m going out again.
Really? You’re an inspiration to us all.
Heh. It’s a nice day.
Yes, it is. Well, it’s bearable. It was raining earlier.
Yeah.
Yeah. Hey, Munter, did you hear about the woman who was found killed out by the North Wall last week?
No, I didn’t hear about that.
Well, she worked in the same office as Rita.
Really?
Yeah, she was found in the river, raped and killed. Just terrible. Her name was Bernadette. Apparently the same lunatic has been at this for a few weeks. Have you not heard about it?
No, I don’t read the papers or anything much. I watch the television a lot, but never the news.
It’s a bit insane to think that there’s somebody out there doing things like that. You never think, you know. Like serial killers and the like of it. I never met the girl, but Rita told me she wouldn’t have hurt a fly, you know. It’s a shocking thing.
Yeah, that’s awful.
I think the sick bastard’s killed three women now. I hope they get him and hang him from his balls.
Yeah, that would be good.
I’ll start to go now, Munter, mate. Better get these groceries inside before the Vienetta melts, you know. Rita will murder me if that stuff melts, you know.
I like Vienetta a lot. It’s an ornamental ice-cream. I like the ornamental ones. That one’s almost like a magical ice-cream showboat.
Yeah, I’ve never thought of Vienetta like that. What are you up to now, Munter?
Yeah, well, Roy, it’s a funny thing. To tell you the truth of the situation, I’m just now on my way to find out the secret of my ghost.
What?
I think I may have a little bit of a ghost living with me.
What? You’re joking.
No, I’m serious.
Are you sure?
No, don’t get worried about it. It’s probably nothing. Here, I have to get going. I’ll see you again, Roy, okay.
Right, mate. Best of luck.
Afterwards, Munter felt real bad about mentioning the ghost to Roy. Nobody bargains on a ghost next door. That was not the correct thing to say. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, it’s still an unsettling thing to hear that a neighbour may have one. Roy was probably freaked out now. He was probably questioning his faith in things.

*

Turning a corner, Munter stepped in a puddle. The sticky-taped shoe was the culprit. Now it looked like it had been dipped in a cauldron of something foul. The tape had gone all gooey, but amazingly it was still sticking. He knew if he went back, that would be the end of it. There would be no paying Nobuko O’Neill a visit. He would go home and he would either go to bed, or make himself some Ready Brek and sit and watch maybe a David Lean film and fall asleep in the middle. He continued. Squelch, squelch! It started raining again. The sound of the rain soaked up the squelch, but the soggy foot remained apparent at the end of his leg.

*

He had his hat. Everything was okay. He took the brown wool hat out of his pocket and he prepared to put it on his head. There were careful preparations to be made before he put the hat on his head. He had to look inside it and fully know its shape and dimensions before he applied it to his head. He looked inside and studied its form. It was fine. It matched the shape of his head. It was okay to put it on. He put it on. It was a short rain. It gave way to a deep blue sky and a rinsing out feeling came over Munter as candy crescent rainbows shot up over him. Munter could feel a sneeze coming, but he had no more tissues left. He raised his arm and his jacket felt the force of the sneeze and the wetness of the stuff that came out.

*

He came to North Waterwater Street. It was where Nobuko O’Neill lived. It was a quiet street, lined with yellow-wheeled auto-clamp victims, overloaded rubbish bins, tiny front gardens, dead plant windowsills; up above, the black-breathed chimneys hawked like coughing old men. It was mostly older people who lived on the street. There were a few dogs and cats living there too. One of the dogs caught Munter’s attention. His face was very non-perplexed for a street animal. He wasn’t acting like a dog at all. He was acting like a wise old sage. The other dogs and cats were sleeping, or wandering about the street sniffing and eating and licking and barking and meowing, but this dog was just sitting, and looking.

*

He looked at Mieko’s birthday card again. He wanted to be sure he had the address right. He didn’t want to be going up and ringing the wrong doorbell. Munter got neurotic about such things. He could not trust his own memory. He had to write things down a lot and keep them on a piece of paper in his pocket. He didn’t rate his memory much at all.

The address stored in his memory read:
Nobuko O’Neill
10 North Waterwater Street…

He checked the envelope to see if his memory was correct.

The envelope read:
Nobuko O’Neill
12 North Waterwater Street…

It was a smart thing not to trust his memory. He’d spared himself an embarrassing doorstep encounter.

*

12 North Waterwater Street was like all the other houses on North Waterwater Street except there were no flowers in the front garden part. It upset Munter’s vision that there were no flowers. His eyes had been enjoying the flowers and now, none whatsoever. The garden gate was broken. It was slightly unhinged and made a horrible creaking sound as Munter entered. He rang the doorbell and waited.

*

While he was waiting in the doorway, he thought about what he would have for dinner tonight. He liked the idea of a sandwich with some chicken and lots of lettuce.

*

A woman answered. She was a small Japanese woman in her forties. It had to be Nobuko. It couldn’t be anyone else, Munter remarked to himself.
Who are you? she asked. She seemed irritated, like his very presence was simply unacceptable to her in her present consideration of life.
Eh…
He was lost. He was lost in her dark arched eyebrows, unnerved by her hostile forehead. There had never been a more hostile forehead in his memory of foreheads. Nobuko’s cheeks shined bright red even though her skin was the softest milk white. Her hair was cropped, an abyss of black, and her eyes were cold and suspecting. She was quite dishevelled in appearance. Munter had a picture in his mind of a Japanese woman and the picture in his mind did not look at all like this woman who was standing before him. Her countenance did not match up. She looked a bit like the traditional Japanese woman he imagined, but a distorted version. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of Braveheart on it and big baggy combat trousers and slippers that looked like little spaceships.
Who are you? she asked.
I hope I’m not interrupting. My name is Munter. I come from not far from here.
Not from far from here? Munter? What sort of a name…? What do you want?
I don’t want to impose. Please tell me to leave if you want. It’s just that I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.
What questions? You’re with the religions? I don’t want any of it.
No, I’m not with the religions. I’m not with them.
Who are you with then?
I’m not with anyone. I was…It’s hard for me to put it.
What do you want from me?
It’s about your daughter, you see.
Yes? She died. Did you know her?
It all suddenly made sense to Munter. The ghost he had been living with, what had been dogging his everyday existence, what had been eating him out of house and home, was Mieko. It had to be.
Eh…yes, in a way, he said. She…well…was an acquaintance, I suppose.
An acquaintance? What a bloody strange way for somebody to talk! I suspect people who talk like that. Should I be suspicious of you?
I’m sure you are suspicious since I’ve just turned up here in front of you out of the blue. It would only be natural of you to hold suspicion of me.
Her tone lightened.
Well, I’m not necessarily suspicious. You seem okay to me. I like your hat.
Thank you.
But I’m suspicious of people who say words like ‘acquaintance’. You don’t say ‘acquaintance’, you write it down. Why didn’t you just say ‘friend’? You’re hiding something.
Eh…I’ve got something here.
He reached into his pocket and he took out the birthday card. It was in its envelope, of course.
I live at 7 Cornwell Terrace now. I found this there along with some other lettuce.
Lettuce?
I mean letters, sorry.
Nobuko opened the envelope and took out the card.
Yes, she said. This is a card I sent to my daughter. It’s useless now. We can throw it. Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?
Eh, yes. That would be lovely. We can talk…
Yes, okay. But listen, hear. I’m not prepared to be your Oedipus fantasy, by the way, okay. There will be no such seductions today.

*

She couldn’t be haunting you, exclaimed Nobuko. She’s haunting me!
What? asked Munter. He’d decided to mention Mieko’s ghost as soon as he got indoors. They were still in the hall walking towards the front room.
She’s been haunting me for nearly a year now. Since she died her death. It annoys the hell out of me.
I don’t understand. How do you know that it’s Mieko?
What, you think I wouldn’t know the ghost of my own daughter? She plays tricks. She visits me pretending to be a terrible serpent. Like that’s gonna scare me, huh?
Munter could not believe it. Maybe his ghost wasn’t Mieko after all. Maybe it was somebody else. But why would it have placed Mieko’s letter on his lap like that? It had to be Mieko.
How did she die if you don’t mind me asking?
She had the worst bronchitis in the world, replied Nobuko. She died of it on New Year’s Eve last year. I know a woman from London whose son died on New Year’s Eve a year earlier. He died in a crash.

*

Nobuko’s house was small and cosy and peculiar like her. Munter had hoped to see photographs on the walls, but there was nothing. He would liked to have seen a photo of Mieko. He wanted to know her face. But there were no photos. The wallpaper featured pink roses against a clear white background with pink ribbons adorning the rich green stems; it looked like something you would see on a bottle of air freshener. There was a tiny mirror in the hall which could not have held a full profile, not even of the smallest face on Earth. The living room was a chaos of bottles, some empty, some still going. Whiskey, wine, vodka, gin. Everything. Munter processed these things he was seeing in his mind. It was a house and a room and a person that required a moment of clear thought. Nobuko was sitting down in a crusty armchair looking at Munter as he slowly came to terms with the situation.
You are mistaken if you think I’m an alcoholic, she said.
I don’t think you’re an alcoholic, answered Munter.
You don’t?
No, I don’t think that one single bit.
What makes you think I’m not?
You just don’t seem to me to be one. And also you just said that I would be mistaken if I thought that, which is saying that you are not one.
Oh, come on. Can’t you see? yelled Nobuko. Of course I’m an alcoholic. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Look at the way I walk.
She stood up and demonstrated her style of walk. She was unsteady, gradually became very wobbly, and eventually fell down in a heap on the floor.
Can’t you see now?
Yes, I suppose.
Munter helped her up from the floor.
You’re very small, he told her.
Yes, I am small. Believe it or not, I used to do great big stretches in the mornings in the hope I’d grow taller.

*

Come on, get those shoes off, they’re horrid, you’ll catch cold, said Nobuko.
I already have a cold, replied Munter.
Well, you don’t want two colds, do you?
Two colds?
Yes, two colds are worse than one.
I didn’t think you could get two colds.
You can get a million colds. Take those things off and we’ll put them in the yard for a while.
Munter started to fiddle with the sticky-taped shoe. The shoe looked like a big piece of toffee.
Oh, Hell, that looks horrid, said Nobuko. What style of shoe is that?
It’s no style.
What have you done to it?
I couldn’t find my normal shoes this morning. I had to tape this here one up because I’d no laces.
I have spare laces here. Why didn’t you call around?
I didn’t know you this morning.
Oh, these are horrid. I must take these shoes and fling them out back.
When Munter had taken both shoes off, Nobuko took them, went to the back door, and flung them into the yard.
Now I have no shoes, said Munter.
And no faith in things. You can collect them from the backyard when you’re leaving.
But what if it rains again? They’ll get worse.
They cannot get worse. The rain will take pity and avoid your horrid shoes.

*

Sorry I don’t have any more seats for you, said Nobuko.
The crusty armchair she was sitting on was the only piece of furniture in the room apart from a lampstand, a desk with bottles on it, and the press in the corner holding the television.
It’s okay. I quite like sitting on the floor.
Do you want some whiskey?
I thought you said you were going to make some tea.
No! Whiskey! That’s what I meant. I’m all out of teabags.
I can go around to the shop and get some if you want. There’s a shop just across there…
No, I’m not in the mood for tea. Will you not have a drink? I have Jameson’s, Glenfiddich, Jack Daniel’s…
I don’t really drink much anymore.
Munter had to be very careful with the booze. He had enjoyed being a drunkard up to a certain point. There is a point where it becomes not so enjoyable, but you’re usually too drunk to be able to clearly see that.
Okay, I’ll have a glass of the Black Bush there. I haven’t had any in a long time.
Mmm, Black Bush, said Nobuko.

*

Nobuko was not a reserved pourer. She filled Munter’s cup right to the top with the liqueur whiskey.
Hey, not that much, he said. Keep some for yourself. That stuff’s not cheap.
Nobuko said nothing and passed him the cup.
Thank you.
He took a sip. Munter wriggled at the taste. It had been a long time since he’d tasted whiskey. Nobuko poured herself a big cup. That was nearly the whole bottle gone. She sat back and started drinking it. As she drank the Black Bush, she started to hum a little tune. She had a pretty hum. Asian women had charming melodic voices, which Munter adored. He recalled once overhearing a Chinese woman singing in a supermarket. There weren’t too many people around. He was at the breakfast cereal aisle looking for something healthy for the mornings. She was pushing her trolley along slowly and protecting a delicate song under her sweet breath. Munter pretended he couldn’t hear so that she wouldn’t be scared out of continuing. It was such a beautiful sound. Nobuko’s hum was even more enchanting. He couldn’t have wished for a nicer sound if he’d been granted a wish for any sound from all sounds.

*

After about five drinks from the glass of whiskey, Munter was turned into a drunkard again. The alcohol swirled around in his nervous system, lacing and permeating his psychology. He wondered about getting drunk, how it happened. He pondered the components of getting drunk. The drink goes down, he remarked to himself, soon it punctures the head, the world spins, and there is happiness, but also much flimsy courage veiling thick fear. Munter knew the feeling only too well. He grimaced.

*

The poltergeists follow people around, you know, said Nobuko. They target someone and make their life a living misery.
I’ve had ghosts before, said Munter. In other places. I don’t know anything about this one. It has been making itself known for about five months now. It comes and it eats all my food, and taps me on the chest to wake me when I’m trying to get to sleep. I think it’s Mieko because everything points to it being her. And she passed away in that house, at 7 Cornwell Terrace?
Yes, that’s where she started off her death. But it didn’t happen there. She died on the way to the hospital. She didn’t die in that bloody house.
Yes, but also there was one day this birthday card that was addressed to her was placed on my lap. It was very ghostly.
Ah, ghosts are tricky. They’re always up to something. The one you’ve got is probably pulling your leg.
I don’t know.
Mieko comes here at least once a week when I’m making my tea. I hear a massive howl in the hall, and then she comes whooshing into the kitchen as a big red serpent with huge muscly green arms I think she borrowed from the guy out of the Hulk show.
That would scare me.
You have the look of someone who would be scared. What’s your name again?
Munter.
Munter. You look like it would scare you. Most people would be scared if they saw something like that. But I’ve seen much worse. I saw her do much worse when she was alive. She stole weed on a man who once lived next door to us. He came banging on my door, shouting and causing a fuss.

It only happened with whiskey. Munter could actually feel himself turning into a drunk. He could feel the alcohol levels in him rise very quickly. In his experience, it only happened this rapidly with whiskey. Munter had enough experience of alcohol to be able to make such a judgement. He’d been drunk 788 times in his life so far. In drunkard terms, this was a small number, but 454 of these occasions happened to be rather emotionally devastating in their severity. Happy times drunk normally outnumbered the bad times drunk, even for furious alcoholics, but the worst drunkards always got more bad times. Munter had been cursed with bad times. He understood the bad times. He understood their meaning. Like all drunkards, he accepted their inevitable appearance in the sequence. But after a while Munter felt it was time to file a complaint with the high office of drunks. He’d received more bad times than he felt was appropriate.

*

Is Harata your original name? asked Munter, pointing to Nobuko’s name on the back of the envelope. Because it says O’Neill here on the card.
No, Mieko changed her name to that. Harata. We never knew anyone called Harata. There was a car dealer in Yokohama when I was younger called Harata, but that’s the only one I ever knew of. I don’t know where she got it. She never told me. If you ask me, it was a pretty bad thing to do to her stepfather. She should have carried his name to the end.
He was O’Neill?
Of course! Fallon O’Neill.
Where is he?
He died too. They all die. Death, death, death. I could write a book about it. I would call the book Death and Dying, Dying and Death by Nobuko O’Neill.
And what about her real father?
Except for him! He didn’t die. I left that damn idiot long ago. He was a damn idiot!
What did Fallon do?
Lots. He was a good man. Films.
Films?
He made some films. Documentary films. He could have done so much if he hadn’t fucked off to God knows where. God’s the only one who knows where he is now.
I thought you didn’t believe in God.
Who said that? I didn’t say I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in the religions. God’s up there for sure. Couldn’t tell you what he looks like, or what he makes of anything though.

*

There was an abruptness in Nobuko’s way of speaking that reminded Munter of somebody he once knew a long time ago, but just before he could pinpoint the individual in his memory, Nobuko abruptly said, God has us in despair.
You think he’s doing it on purpose? asked Munter.
Nobuko drank.
When I was a girl, my friend Eriko killed herself. She went into the harbour and drowned herself. They saw her going in. There were people on the bridge watching. They thought she was just going for a swim, you know. She did it very calmly on a bright afternoon. She didn’t struggle as she was drowning. She intended to drown, so why put up a struggle? The thing is, there was no reason for her doing that at all as far as anyone knew. No reason that anybody but Eriko could see. She was a rich girl. Her father was a doctor at the hospital in Showa University, a great man, and her mother was a really wonderful woman. We couldn’t understand it. There was nothing in her life telling any of us she was capable of doing that. She was the most clever of us all. I’m thinking she had a private despair that nobody would ever understand.
I don’t understand why people kill themselves, said Munter. I feel like shit all the time, but I never considered killing myself.
That’s you, said Nobuko. Others see it differently. Others are filled with it. With the despair. You’re probably only half full of it; the rest of you is full of shit, I’d say.

*

Listen, do you hear that?
Nobuko had her hand up to her ear in an overly dramatic way.
Munter listened. He could hear nothing.
I can’t hear anything, he said.
Ssh, listen, said Nobuko.
The only sound was the dogs outside barking and growling, and the cats meowing and purring, and a not too faraway truck going past not too faraway.
It’s Mieko. She’s back.
She placed her cup of whiskey on the floor and stood up. It struck Munter that Nobuko was acting like a crazy person. It upset him deeply to think that he probably acted just as unstably in his own little ghost story back at 7 Cornwell Terrace.
No, it isn’t her, she said. I thought it was her, but it’s the washing machine next door.
Is this your first ghost? asked Munter.
Oh, no, replied Nobuko. I’ve got a folder as big as a garage of ghosts I’ve had to deal with over the years.
Same here, said Munter. I’ve had lots of ghosts. Why do some people get more than others?
We’ve been wicked. They’ve been wicked. We belong together. We’ll be together forever. The live ones and the dead ones will always share wicked space together. They’re hungry too. That’s why your one has been eating all of your food. They’re unearthly scavengers.
Mieko was wicked?
Oh, she was tough sometimes. She rallied against the establishment, but the only establishment she had for a long time apart from school was me. And I got it far worse than the school did, I can tell you. Many times I was called into the school because she was getting up to no good. Once the headmaster called me in because she’d written a horrible poem in one of her notebooks. It was pornographic, you know. She was only sixteen, I think. She’d written cock and fuck and blow job in it. The headmaster gave me a dreadful look. I didn’t like him. He was a little pipsqueak. I hated that school she went to actually. Nothing but trouble.
Nobuko bowed her head for a moment; then she took a drink.
What age was she when she died?
Twenty-five.
She was very young.
Yes, she was young, sighed Nobuko. She’d been away for a bit. She’d come back here to Dublin and she was staying in that house with some man, that house you live in now. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She was always strange with me after Fallon died. She didn’t really talk to me anymore. There was so much going on in her life at that point, I suppose. I think I was very envious of her. That she had so much going on in her life. My life was very much like it is now. Just stuck here doing nothing whatsoever.
Nobuko took a big drink of whiskey. The gulp she took was so great Munter took an accompanying drink in an effort to help it go down easier for her.

*

As a drunk, Munter had been one of the disagreeable humans. He could not contain himself. His drunkenness explored his decency. Once while drunk he deemed his goodness a lie, a black lie unknown to him previously, but a lie nevertheless. It was a trick of the human condition. The goodness he rendered in his daily routine was merely the falsehood of an apprehensive individual. Elements of goodness performed a waltz around him, but he was no dancer. Especially when shit-faced. He had thought himself good for many years. [Disregarding the alcoholic moments] He’d been polite, generous (benevolent even), helpful, co-operative (convenient even), moral, proportionate (appreciable even). By his reckoning, he had never been wicked, bad, destructive. He was a pacifist. He carried a bag of palms at all times. But he was vain, troublesome, insidious. When drunk, these things helped to make a monster. Although without horns at the top of his head, he had a devilish aspect which was clearly visible to other human beings. He’d been vindictive. He took another drink. It felt good to have a drink. He could not deny that feeling. It made him want to smile, though he didn’t. He thought about his family then for a second. He tried not to think about them too much. They’re probably all pissed right now, he remarked to himself. Just like he was. Was drunkenness in his blood? He knew that other things could exist in blood apart from water and cells. Like artistic talent and such. Maybe drunkenness had its own parkbench in there too.

*

This is one of her discs, said Nobuko, holding up a bruised CD case.
Munter took it and looked at it. It was an album by a group called Ozu. The title of the album was Bold Uniforms. On the cover was a dreadfully morose human face. Munter couldn’t say if it was male or female. He could certainly say it was morose.
Mieko was into the weird stuff, was she? he said.
No, that was her band, said Nobuko. Have you not heard of them? They are well-known.
Munter had never heard of them. He was a fan of music, but he didn’t listen to any new bands. He only listened to the old ones. He had been interested in all kinds of music when he was younger, possibly just about every kind at some stage, but now he was strictly classic rock all the way. Hunky Dory, Houses of the Holy, Electric Ladyland, Tanx by T-Rex. That’s what he listened to.
She was the singer, said Nobuko. I’ve never been able to listen to it. It’s a lot of garbage. You can put it on if you like. There’s the player over there under the lamp.
Munter crawled along the floor until he reached the lampstand. Next to it was a small stereo. He plugged it into the socket and took the CD out of its case. The disc was in a terrible state. It looked like it had been to war, a veteran of the great technological format wars. He put it into the stereo and started to play it.

*

Munter wondered what the song was called. He looked at the track-listing on the back of the CD case. It was called Desperation. The guitars were really loud and trebly, and Mieko’s singing was dead quiet, almost whispered. Her voice made him feel relaxed even though the songs were mostly aggressive in their style. She had a likeable, honest voice. Munter could hear Nobuko’s hum in Mieko’s voice. They had similar voices. He could hear their mother-daughter relationship in Mieko’s singing. The song made Munter calmly ecstatic. The music would travel slow, then a rush of blinding noise would take hold, and Mieko’s quiet voice would turn to mad screaming. He loved it. It was rock music. The guitars, the bass, the drums, the voice, they introduced his body to a perfect thrill, creating a strident ball of rage, sadness, and joy in his stomach. It felt really good. He tapped his feet and nodded his head and nearly got up and made like he was playing a guitar. He took out the inlay card from the CD case. There was a picture of the band. Mieko wasn’t entirely clear in the picture. She was doing a funny pose and one of her hands was raised and nearly covering her face. He could make out that she was extremely pretty though. Her face was very small and appealing. He couldn’t have described it in detail to anyone except to say that it was the perfect shape for a face. The whole band was morose-looking like the sexless face on the cover. Even Mieko was morose. They were all morose. It annoyed Munter that there were so many morose faces on album covers. He couldn’t remember the last person he saw smiling on an album cover.

*

Munter was very drunk. He was enjoying himself. He didn’t care about his jarred thoughts and uneven mind. He was relaxed as he lay there on the floor of Nobuko’s living room listening to Mieko’s voice and looking at her picture as the feeling of intoxication grew and grew with each sip of the whiskey. He didn’t realise it, but the tear on the ass of his trousers had grown bigger with all the rolling around on the floor. He closed his eyes. Just before he fell asleep, he suddenly remembered the last person he saw smiling on an album cover. Randy Newman. That was years ago. He fell asleep.